The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [282]
“No, thank you,” said Anna firmly. “We have to go in search of a marooned car.”
“Heaven knows if it will still be there after all this time,” I said as she rose from her place.
I took Anna’s hand, led her toward the entrance, back up the stairs and out onto the street. Then I began to retrace my steps to the spot where I’d abandoned my car. As we strolled up the Aldwych and chatted away, I felt as if I was with an old friend.
“You don’t have to give me a lift, Michael,” Anna was saying. “It’s probably miles out of your way, and in any case it’s stopped raining, so I’ll just hail a taxi.”
“I want to give you a lift,” I told her. “That way I’ll have your company for a little longer.” She smiled as we reached a distressingly large space where I had left the car.
“Damn,” I said. I quickly checked up and down the road, and returned to find Anna laughing.
“Is this another of your schemes to have more of my company?” she teased. She opened her bag and took out a mobile phone, dialed 999, and passed it over to me.
“Which service do you require? Fire, Police, or Ambulance?” a voice asked.
“Police,” I said, and was immediately put through to another voice.
“Charing Cross Police Station. What is the nature of your inquiry?”
“I think my car has been stolen.”
“Can you tell me the make, color and registration number please, sir?”
“It’s a blue Rover 600, registration K857 SHV.”
There was a long pause, during which I could hear other voices talking in the background.
“No, it hasn’t been stolen, sir,” said the officer who had been dealing with me when he came back on the line. “The vehicle was illegally parked on a double yellow line. It’s been removed and taken to the Vauxhall Bridge Pound.”
“Can I pick it up now?” I asked.
“Certainly, sir. How will you be getting there?”
“I’ll take a taxi.”
“Then just ask the driver for the Vauxhall Bridge Pound. Once you get there, you’ll need some form of identification, and a check for £105 with a bank card—that is if you don’t have the full amount in cash.”
“One hundred five pounds?” I said quietly.
“That’s correct, sir.”
Anna frowned for the first time that evening.
“Worth every penny.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Nothing, officer. Goodnight.”
I handed the phone back to Anna, and said, “The next thing I’m going to do is find you a taxi.”
“You certainly are not, Michael, because I’m staying with you. In any case, you promised my brother you’d take me home.”
I took her hand and hailed a taxi, which swung across the road and came to a halt beside us.
“Vauxhall Bridge Pound, please.”
“Bad luck, mate,” said the cabbie. “You’re my fourth this evening.”
I gave him a broad grin.
“I expect the other three also chased you into the theater, but luckily they were behind me in the line,” I said to Anna as I joined her on the back seat.
As the taxi maneuvered its way slowly through the rain-swept post-theater traffic and across Waterloo Bridge, Anna said, “Don’t you think I should have been given the chance to choose between the four of you? After all, one of them might have been driving a Rolls-Royce.”
“Not possible.”
“And why not, pray?” asked Anna.
“Because you couldn’t have parked a Rolls-Royce in that space.”
“But if he’d had a chauffeur, that would have solved all my problems.”
“In that case, I would simply have run him over.”
The taxi had travelled some distance before either of us spoke again.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Anna eventually said.
“If it’s what I think it is, I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Then you go first.”
“No—I’m not married,” I said. “Nearly, once, but she escaped.” Anna laughed. “And you?”
“I was married,” she said quietly. “He was the fourth doctor in the practice. He died three years ago. I spent nine months nursing him, but in the end I failed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling a little ashamed. “That was tactless of me. I shouldn’t have raised the subject.”
“I raised it, Michael, not you. It’s me who should apologize.”
Neither of us spoke again for several minutes, until Anna said, “For the past