Apart from that, there was nothing reported. But as far as crime was concerned he had been looking in the wrong place. He knew now he should have been looking inside his own household. Trying to deal with it meant that Perry had his own dirty little secret, one that would quite possibly bring him down.

Chapter Eight

The bridge at Lacey Dutton looked forlorn in the watery spring sunlight. Though the water levels had dropped considerably, and the riverside path had re-emerged, each arch was still choked with uprooted trees and boughs, with car tyres, caravan panels, polystyrene containers and a thick sludge of mud and plastic. Every waterside tree sported a stork’s nest of debris well above the reach of a stretching man, a clear high-water mark that would no doubt one day be engraved into the cast-iron flood record bolted to the centre of the bridge.

Newsome’s Garage was on a side street opposite the Jolly Boatman, and had been spared the worst of the rising waters. It was a tiny place, petrol pumps removed a decade ago, two years after the BMW franchise was lost. Now it was just for repairs, and had only two employees. The Allegro, now right way up, had been pushed onto a lift in one of the repair bays.

Any idea Gillard had that the car may have been driven anywhere in recent years was instantly dispelled. The sills were rotted, there was only one hub cap, and there was mildew on the windows. Gillard, wearing overalls and latex gloves, was greeted by Brian Newsome, proprietor, a vigorous-looking seventy-year-old with greased back grey hair in a teddy boy DA, and the stub of a cigarette burning between fingers and thumb which he dropped on the ground and stamped out.

Newsome already had firm opinions about the car. ‘There’s no such thing as a good Allegro. But this one, well. Non-runner, guaranteed, a hundred not very careful owners. Illegal tyres, severe long-term corrosion, electrics well-fucked.’

‘Show me.’

Newsome hit the button which raised the vehicle lift, hoisting the two-door saloon to shoulder height. It looked tiny compared to most modern vehicles. He pointed out the broken oil seals underneath, the worn bearings, the extensive rust like a Martian landscape.

‘My guess?’ Newsome said, though he hadn’t been asked for it. ‘It’s been sitting in a puddle for a decade.’

Gillard nodded, unwilling to share any details.

‘You won’t get no forensics nor dabs off of this,’ Newsome said with finality, folding his arms as if daring his expertise to be contradicted. ‘I watched The Bill.’

‘Things have moved on since the eighties,’ Gillard said. ‘Can you bring it down, please?’

Once the vehicle was down, Gillard opened the door. The interior stank of weed and stale water. Various insects of the crawling and sliding variety seemed to have made their homes underneath the seats and in the fabric roof lining. The hardest thing to gauge was how much of that had occurred since the waters carried it away, and how much before. It was conceivable that someone would willingly sleep in an old car if it was dry, or more likely may have sheltered in it from the rain. But it was hard to imagine that this car had been dry for a very long time.