Never Had a Spanner on Her by James Leasor

Author:James Leasor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vintage cars
Publisher: James Leasor

5

I went to find Kent, to tell him, but he wasn't in his room or in the bar. Finally, I tracked him down on the veranda. He was sitting alone at one of the circular marble tables, drinking a Perrier water, which was the cheapest drink he could find, short of putting his head in the sea.

'I've been thinking it over,' I told him, 'and the answer is No.'

I sat down, facing him.

Kent didn't get up; he just looked across the table at me coldly, as though trying to decide whether I was serious, or whether I could be persuaded, but at no cost to himself, either in cash or kind.

'You're sure?' he said at last.

'Certain. I may be a bit bent, but I'm not circular. I've never switched a car, and I don't want to start now. Even though Maria has told me that legally it could even be hers because some relation was never paid for it.'

'That's true, you know.'

'Maybe. But it seems just a bit too convenient a discovery for my taste.'

Kent stood up, held up his glass in case there was a drop of water left that might escape him when he'd paid for it. There wasn't, so he put it down again.

'Then we'll do it without you,' he announced grandly. 'But, remember this. There's no cut out of this car for you when we get back to London. Right?'

'Absolutely right,' I said. 'So long as you pay me back my five hundred quid. I don't deal in hot cars.'

'The way you go on, like a bloody Sunday School teacher, you're lucky to be dealing in any cars,' said Kent irritably. Then: 'I'll tell the others.'

He went up the steps into the hotel. I didn't want to stay where his jack had been warming the seat, so I moved to another table and tapped on the top until a waiter appeared, and I ordered a whisky.

Even if I wasn't any longer personally involved, my name was still on those manifests. I could still be hauled in for questioning if anything went wrong - and I'd still be the only one not sharing any profit, if they succeeded. It was an ironic, heads-they-win, tails-I-lose situation, but there was nothing I could do about it now, so I drank the whisky and watched the sun bedding down for the night behind the hills.

It suddenly grew cold, and I shivered, for I felt that the dying sun was also watching me. I wished I was miles away, aboard that boat, out beyond the twelve-mile limit, heading for home. Most of all, I wished all this aggravation about spiriting away an old car was simply something I'd read about somewhere. I felt uneasy in my bones and my water about the turn events had taken. I had allowed myself to be manoeuvred into a position of acute disadvantage, as the nun told the roué, and I didn't like it. If someone has to be pushed, I liked to do the pushing.

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