no doors in any of the walls, no closets, no large square boxes, no locked compartments. There was nothing thrust down the centres of the stacks of tyres.
‘No guns here,’ Nice said. ‘It’s an auto repair shop. What you see is what you get.’
I didn’t answer.
She said, ‘We have to go.’
I thought about Little Joey, in his Bentley. Already through the city centre, by that point, probably. Out the other side, going fast on a wide road heading west.
‘We have to go,’ she said again.
In his Bentley.
‘Wait,’ I said.
‘For what?’
No large square boxes, no locked compartments.
Bullshit.
I said, ‘The main man wouldn’t drive a rent-a-wreck. Why would he? Karel Libor had a Range Rover. The Romford Boys use premium brands. Wouldn’t the Serbians too? They wouldn’t want to look like poor relations.’
‘So?’
‘Why was the guy carrying the key to a clunker?’
‘Because they fix clunkers here. That’s their job. Or their cover.’
‘It’s not the boss man’s job to look after the keys.’ I went back to the boxed-off room, to the guy’s pocket, and came back with the key. It had a metal shaft and a plastic head, but not a big bulbous thing like a modern car has. No battery, no transponder, no security device. Just a key.
I looked around. I started with the dusty sedan parked in the corner, with the soft tyres and the missing front wing. Because why would a car stay in the shop long enough to get soft tyres? That was no kind of an efficient business practice. A car needed to be on the road, earning its keep. If it was unfixable it needed to be towed away and crushed. Because the workshop needed to earn its keep, too. Every square foot had to turn a profit.
I looked at the car’s trunk. It was a large square box, and a locked compartment, right there. Hiding in plain sight.
I tried the key.
It didn’t fit.
Nice said, ‘Reacher, we have to go.’
I tried the next car, and the next. The key didn’t fit. I tried the Skoda we had arrived in, even though I knew it would be hopeless. And it was. I went from car to car. The key didn’t fit any of them.
Nice said, ‘We’re out of time.’
I looked around, and gave it up.
‘OK,’ I said.
I went back to the boxed-off room’s doorway, and knelt over the guy lying there. He had stopped whimpering, but he was still alive. He must have had a skull like concrete. I found the Skoda key in his pocket. I tossed it to Nice and said, ‘Start the car. I’ll get the roller door.’
The roller door had a palm-sized button on a switch box, which was connected to its winding mechanism by a long swan-neck metal conduit. I pressed the button hard, and the motor jerked to life, and the slack was pulled out of the chain, and the door rattled and started to rise. The daylight came back, inch by inch. It spread across the floor, and up the wall on the other side of the space. I saw Casey Nice in the Skoda’s driver’s seat. I saw her looking down at the controls. I saw a puff of black smoke as the engine started.
I saw another palm-sized button on another switch box. And another. And another. On the hoists. Hydraulic mechanisms, up and down. The hoists were empty, all but one. Which had a car raised high, its underside all black and dirty, its trunk way up there, above head height. Out of sight and out of mind. Some cop I was.
I hustled back and gave Nice a wait sign. I hit the button. There was a grinding noise and the hoist came down, slowly, slowly, past my eye line, and onward. The car on the hoist was a boxy old thing, covered in dust. With soft tyres. The hoist slowed and settled, and the car rocked once, and went still, and the grinding noise stopped, and at the same time the roller door at the entrance hit the top of its travel, and its noise stopped too, leaving only the heavy diesel beat of the Skoda’s idling engine.
I stepped up to the dusty car’s trunk lid. Which was less dusty than the car itself. It had fingermarks all over it near the lock, and palm prints all over it near the lip. It had been raised and lowered about a hundred times since the passenger doors had last been opened.