The Chairman In The Garage

Chapter Seven: The Driver Who Changed Sides

Camille arrived at Rothwell Motors at nine on Tuesday morning because Juliet had sent her a two-word text. Come early.

She found the first Sable Solace parked in the front window, deep blue under the spotlights, and Juliet standing beside it with a bucket of warm soapy water and a toothbrush still in its packet. The sales staff had already drifted toward the window, and most of them had their phones out.

"You made a promise on this floor," Juliet said, pleasantly and loud enough to carry. "If Sable renewed us, you'd wash the car in the front window with a toothbrush. Sable renewed us." She tore the packet open and held out the brush. "This is our display car, the first Solace in the country, so do be gentle with the paint."

Camille glanced round the showroom for someone to rescue her. Nobody moved. "Jules, it was a joke."

"So was the prison car-washer." Juliet held the toothbrush out a little further.

Grayson stood by the service door with a mop he wasn't using. He hadn't slept. Yannis had rung off on a withheld number before saying where he was, and Grayson had spent the rest of the night waiting for a second call that never came. He watched Camille now and didn't say a word.

She took the brush. She knelt on the polished floor in her good trousers, dipped the toothbrush in the bucket and scrubbed at the front wheel while the phones clicked and somebody at the back snorted into his sleeve. She managed one wheel. Then she dropped the brush in the water, snatched up her bag and ran for the door with her face burning, and the bell above it was still jangling when her car pulled away.

Juliet fished the toothbrush out of the bucket and didn't look at Grayson. She didn't need to.

Two minutes later, the receptionist put her head round the office door. "There's a call for the car-washer. He won't give a name."

The voice on the line was even thinner than the night before. "Top deck of the old multi-storey by the freight yard. It's shut, nobody comes here. Please hurry. A grey car's gone past twice."

Juliet had the showroom doors open before Grayson reached her. "Take it to be detailed properly," she said for the benefit of the staff, and pressed the silver key back into his hand.

***

The old multi-storey stood beside the freight yard like a stack of grey shelves, its barrier arm snapped off and weeds pushing up through the ticket booth. Grayson took the Solace up the spiral ramp past six empty levels and came out onto the top deck under a low white sky.

Yannis was crouched behind a pillar near the stairwell. He was twenty and looked younger, thin in a filthy hoodie, with a split lip and the same hunted eyes that had stared at Grayson through the glass on the coast road. When he saw who was driving, he stumbled across the deck and threw himself into the back seat.

"They're coming," he gasped. "They're right behind me."

He was right. Engine noise rose through the levels below, fast and climbing. A grey Sable swept round the last curve of the ramp with three men inside, all of them leaning forward like dogs on a scent.

Grayson already had the black app open. He found the grey car on the map, touched it and gave the same command he had given on the coast road.

The car stopped dead halfway up the ramp with its nose tilted at the sky. The engine died and the locks dropped. Through the windscreen he could see the driver wrenching at his handle while the man beside him slammed a shoulder into the door, again and again, and the car didn't so much as rock.

The Governor's men had come for Yannis in one of Grayson's own cars.

He called Renata. Her security team arrived nineteen minutes later in two black vans, and Grayson didn't release the locks until they had the ramp sealed at both ends.

In the back seat, Yannis was shaking so hard his teeth clicked. Grayson passed him a bottle of water and waited.

"I drive," Yannis said at last. "That's all I do. A broker found me through a mate. One job, good money. Drive the Rothwell woman out to the coast road, stick a little box under her seat, then wait."

"Wait for what?"

"He never said. Just wait." Yannis wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I never met the Governor. Nobody does. Reece used to joke he didn't even exist." His voice cracked. "Now Reece is in the harbour."

"How did you know which woman was her?"

Yannis dug a cracked phone out of his hoodie and scrolled with an unsteady thumb. "The broker showed us this so we'd know her face. It was sent forty minutes before she left the house."

It was the Rothwell dining room that night. The candles were lit and the good silver was out, and the plates of lamb were still full. Laurent sat in the guest's chair at the head of the table with his leather folder by his elbow. Juliet sat halfway down in her green dress, her jaw set, looking at someone just out of frame.

Whoever had sent it had been sitting at that table.

"I'll tell the police all of it," Yannis said. "Court, statements, whatever you need." He looked out through the rear window at the grey car on the ramp, where Renata's men were hauling the three out one at a time. "They were going to put me in the water like Reece, and you came up a ramp for me. I'd rather drive for you than for him."

Grayson nodded once, and Yannis sagged against the seat as if someone had cut his strings.

Then Grayson took the phone and studied the photograph again, slowly. It had been taken low, from just below the edge of the tablecloth, at the window end of the table. He knew exactly who sat there. He had laid that table every night for four years, every knife and fork and glass in its place.

Only two chairs stood at the window end. One was Hayden's. The other was Camille's.