yesterday afternoon. There’s handprints all over the windows.’
09:49
John pulled on to the Patels’ driveway and blasted the horn of his yellow and blue recovery truck.
‘Hello, Mr Patel?’ John said, jumping down from the cab as Michael came out of his front door. ‘Is this the vehicle with the problem?’
Michael nodded. ‘Yeah, the wife was taking my daughter to nursery this morning and it wouldn’t start. It’s as dead as a doornail.’
‘Was there any sign of a problem before this morning: squeaks, rattles, high oil consumption?’
Michael shook his head. ‘I’ve had the car just over six months and this is the first glitch we’ve had.’
John nodded, as Michael handed him the car keys. ‘Nice cars, BMWs. All the fancy gizmos go wrong now and then, but we still don’t get to see many of them.’
John leaned under the steering wheel and popped the bonnet open. He spent a couple of minutes under the hood, waggling the dipstick and pretending that he knew what he was doing, before looking up at Michael.
‘Was this car ever in an accident?’ John asked.
Michael shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. What makes you ask that?’
‘There’s a lot of paint spattered inside here, like it’s been resprayed. Did you get a mechanical inspection before you bought the vehicle?’
‘I didn’t think I needed one. The dealer I got it from is an old mate of mine.’
John smiled a little, knowing that the microphone in the van had just recorded Michael admitting his friendship with Leon Tarasov.
‘This car has had a heck of a lot of repair work done on it,’ John explained. ‘Come and look here. You see those bolts in the bottom of the engine bay?’
Michael leaned under the bonnet.
‘You see how the paint has pooled inside the heads? That would never happen in the factory, because the engine is fitted after the bodywork is painted. It means that a large area of the car has been resprayed at some point.’
Michael looked shocked. ‘How much damage are we talking about here?’
‘It’s hard to be sure,’ John said. ‘But I can certainly see all the signs of a big smash-up. Do you mind if I look in the back?’
‘Not at all,’ Michael said anxiously. ‘What for?’
‘I want to see if there’s any evidence of respraying at that end too.’
John popped the boot and made an ah-haah noise.
‘Mr Patel, I have to say I’m starting to feel extremely concerned about the history of this car.’
John tore up a corner of the carpet lining the boot, revealing patches of red paint.
‘A silver car with patches of red paint in the boot,’ John said suspiciously.
Michael Patel had worked as a cop for long enough to know what this meant. ‘Are you telling me this car is a cut-and-shut?’
‘Or something along those lines,’ John nodded, as he ran his finger over a bump where the rear pillar joined the boot sill. ‘This weld looks more like the work of some bloke in a back alley body shop, instead of a high-precision robot in a BMW factory.’
Michael Patel was breathing hard and his face looked gaunt.
‘The front appears to have been heavily resprayed in its original silver and the back end clearly has parts that originally belonged to another vehicle that was painted red,’ John continued. ‘I’m afraid what you have is the front and rear portions of two different BMWs that were involved in serious accidents. The good bits from each car have been crudely patched together.’
‘I know what a cut-and-shut is,’ Michael said bitterly.
‘It’s an impressive piece of work,’ John said. ‘There’s no obvious joins on the exterior bodywork. Although if you jacked her up, I’m sure you’d find clues underneath. They tend not to be so thorough prettying up the bits that are out of sight.’
‘These things are death traps,’ Michael said, shaking his head. ‘My wife and daughter have been driving around in this crate …’
‘Absolutely,’ John nodded. ‘A cut-and-shut car has nothing like the structural strength of the original vehicle. If you’d been involved in an accident, this whole lot might easily have snapped in two. Do you have details of where you bought it?’
‘I’ve got a receipt inside the house. But, like I say, I bought the car off a man I thought I could trust. I can’t believe that he’d do this to me.’
‘I’m going to have to inform the police about this,’ John said. ‘I could probably get the car running again, but I’m obviously not prepared to do that. This vehicle isn’t