Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [36]
He took the stairs two at a time and, on reaching the final landing, opened a second door, which led directly into his flat. He paused, and despite instincts telling him that nothing had been disturbed, he let his eyes make their routine three-second sweep of the room. His scrutiny began at the far end, checking for three reassuring things: undisturbed bookshelves, his bedroom door still closed, and his beloved Bel Ami jukebox unplugged and unharmed. All OK. Finally, he made sure that his pile of papers still lay on top of the closed case of his laptop. He concluded that nothing had been moved, which gave him his cue to unwind one more turn.
He frowned, finding his own habit of double-checking things annoying, and acknowledging that it wasn’t far from bordering on compulsive. But, hell, everyone had their personal foibles, and it wasn’t like he wasted much time on it.
He changed into jeans and a t-shirt, poured a glass of orange juice, and set his jukebox on free-play. The mechanism clicked and whirred before making its selection and dropping the single on to the deck. The arm swooped, giving the stylus a bumpy landing on the run-in strip. The 45 crackled, then broke into the opening bars of Chuck Berry’s ‘School Days’. How apt.
Gary slid his Sony Notebook from one of the bottom bookshelves, pressed the power button and, as he waited for it to boot up, flipped open the Yellow Pages and flicked towards ‘Car Repairs’. He had expected he’d need to use search engines for electoral rolls and credit checks, and possibly even a visit to Friends Reunited, but the Notebook was not even in the running – by the time it had fully loaded Windows, Gary had already drawn a blue box around the name ‘O’Brien and Sons’ with his Biro.
He checked his watch. Ten past seven. He rang the number. No reply. No surprise there then. But it was within easy walking distance, just across Parker’s Piece and then a few streets further on, behind the swimming pool. His curiosity had been stirred and he decided to go there in any case. He waited for Chuck Berry to finish, then pulled the plug from the wall socket and left his flat again.
Gary saw Parker’s Piece as the no man’s land between two distinctly different parts of the city. He lived on the historic side, the tourist trap brimming with distinctive buildings and enough magnetism to draw people from, literally, all over the world. The other side was certainly poorer and less distinctive, with a criss-cross of any-town backstreets and a surfeit of struggling or vacant premises. Personally, he had no preference for either area, knowing that, like backstage and front of house, neither could function without the other.
He had no idea what to expect now from a visit to a locked workshop, probably nothing more than a sign saying ‘Closed’, and another indicating the phone number that he’d already tried. He walked on anyway.
Bryn O’Brien had heard the phone ringing; in fact it was impossible to miss the sound of the extension which made an outside bell jangle up under the eaves of the garage. But he made no move to answer it. He was sitting within reach of it too, and knew, without looking, that the handset was resting on the bench, less than two feet from his left shoulder. Only one item lay between it and himself: a face-down copy of the Cambridge News.
He stayed where he was, sunk into the improvised battered vinyl settee that had once been the bench seat of a ’62 low-line Ford Consul. He still wore his maroon overalls, and his steel-toed working boots were planted squarely on the concrete floor. Bryn had short blond hair and blue eyes, made brighter by the smudges of grease that he’d smeared on to his face during the day. One palm rested on each knee, and the first two knuckles of his right hand were grazed, pink circles left by a sudden departure of skin.
In front of him, his current project was elevated to full height on the ramps. It was another Mark II Ford, but this time a Zodiac, the fully equipped and subtly modified version of its deceased cousin.