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CHAPTER 1
Mittel
Picture a city, its architecture a mix of Austro-Hungarian empire and former Eastern bloc. A mix that should sit uneasily together but instead fits comfortably from long familiarity. Picture this city, its long strings of trams dominating wide streets that feel dusty but which are in fact surprisingly clean. Picture this city, its inhabitants going about their imaginable business, their pace brisker than by the Mediterranean but more sultry than in its colder northern sisters. Picture this city. Call it Mittel.
And in this city, a street. And in this street, a cafÃ(c). And in this cafÃ(c), a table. And at this table, a woman. And in her hand, a pen.
What she is writing is not important. It is not part of the lesson she has to teach you. The fact that she is writing at a table, alone, however, is part of that lesson.
You have spent years living with a different woman, one who never understood that when you were irritable or impatient it was seldom with her. It was simply your way of externalising other stresses, other frustrations. And it made you crazy, her inability not to take this personally.
And now the wheel has turned and you are in love with a woman who is sometimes distant and shrouded. And you are slowly grasping the fact that this is seldom anything to do with you. It is simply her way of externalising other stresses, other frustrations. And you are having to learn not to take this personally.
You walk up to the table in the café in the street in the city of Mittel after the agreed length of time has passed. And now the sun is out. Her smile dazzles you with its warmth. And suddenly the tumblers click, the juggler hangs seven balls in the air and you know you've done the right thing. 'Perfect timing,' she says.
Yes, you think. But it doesn't last. Every time you take a run at it, your feet stumble on unexpected cobbles. And there's always a good reason for it, a reason that makes perfect sense to both of you, but a reason that still leaves you feeling bleached and split like driftwood on the shores of love.
At last, you call her on it. 'Is everything all right between us?'
Apparently surprised, she says, 'Of course it is.'
'Only, you haven't touched me since we got here. I'm not talking about sex, I'm talking about just touching me, kissing me, holding me.'
'You know I'm not comfortable with public displays of affection.'
'I know that. But I'm talking about when we're here together, in bed, in our room, in the hotel. By ourselves.'
'I'm nervous about my presentation today,' she says. 'And I'm tired. And this bed's uncomfortable. And it's hot. And I'm premenstrual. And I find it hard to combine work and pleasure. And it's not fair, I'm not even awake.' And she turns away because she doesn't want to feel your eyes on her.
You tell her you love her. She grunts, 'Love you too.'
So you keep your distance all day. You leave her to talk to everybody else, to dazzle them with her discourse, which she does supremely well. You notice this, in spite of your efforts not to let her feel you're scrutinising her. You stay back, out of her face, give her space. And at last, at the end of the afternoon, you're back at the hotel, there's the prospect of a couple of hours together before the evening marathon of more presentations in languages neither of you speak.
Listen to this. A city where the low boom of church bells calling the hours is lost in the rattle of rain on café awnings. Breathe this. A city whose market square is heavy with the perfume of strawberries and lavender. Imagine this. A city where wars have left recent scars and where history is alive and kicking, where conversations turn to conflicts on the turn of a nuance. And in this city, a hotel. And in this hotel, a room. And in this room, a woman. She's standing behind you, fingers tentative on your shoulder blades. You wish to fuck she'd stop it. You told her right at the start that you don't do reassurance. Your self-sufficiency makes you impatient of neediness. And today, with an unnamed anxiety gnawing at you, making her feel better isn't something you're capable of.
You love this woman. You've opened yourself up to possibilities with her. You don't do commitment, but you've committed to her by the simple — but for you, infinitely complicated — act of telling the people you care about that you're with her and you're happy. But sometimes you wish she was a million miles away. She's easier to love at a distance when her need surfaces and makes demands on you that you don't want to meet. Sure, you are touched by her pain. And there are times when you are proud to be the one that this strong woman is willing to be vulnerable with. But sometimes it's just too damn hard.
You know you're not always fair to her. She'd pay whatever it took to love you, and all you're required to do is to make a space in your life big enough for part- time love. But she's not a small, insignificant person. She's big in every way and she's already carved a niche in your world. Her name follows you round at work and at play. Her face insinuates itself at unlikely and unpredictable points in your daily existence. You turn on the radio and her voice fills the room. And sometimes her ubiquity even in her absence feels like suffocation, her very generosity a trap.
You want this to work, more than you've wanted anything for a long time. You want what she brings in her gift — reliability, intelligence, good humour and a sense of a future that contains what you both want. And you do want so many of the same things; truly, you do. You know because you've both spent a long time working them out before either of you even knew that you would end up letting this love breathe.
But still you shrug away from the stroke of her fingers. Just a tiny movement, almost imperceptible but enough for her to get the message. From the corner of your peripheral vision, you see her hand jerk back.
'What do you want to do?' you say. 'It's probably too late in the day for a museum or a gallery. We could go back up to the old town. Or look at shoe shops.' This last with a grin. You know her weakness for footwear.
'I don't care,' she says. 'This is the last time we'll have alone together for ages. I don't mind what we do. I'd be happy to stand on a street corner in the rain as long as I'm with you.'
You know she means it. You picture the two of you locked in an embrace on the busy corner of the street, oblivious to the trams clattering past, the traffic cop dressed in white directing the cars and buses, the umbrellas parting around you as the rain pours down, plastering your hair to your head, running in rivulets down the inside of the collar of your leather jacket. You imagine the tender warmth of her lips against yours, the feel of her body soft against the stiff leather, and you know you love her enough to do it too.
'OK,' you say. 'Let's go.'
And then she reaches for you, hands at your waist, eyes pleading. And it's gone, the dream of love in the rain on the street corner.
Your hands flutter up in a defensive gesture. 'I'm not ... I can't ... I'm not in the right place for this.'
You see the hurt she tries to hide and you hate the way she can make you feel bad for nothing more than being who you are.
Out in the street, the rain falls relentlessly. Two blocks from the hotel, she stops abruptly and says she doesn't want to walk. 'You go off and do your thing,' she says. 'I'll catch up with you at the presentation.'
You smile. It's a real smile and you see that register in her eyes. And suddenly, surprisingly, she's smiling too. And her smile is a mirror of yours in its genuineness.
And that's when you understand it might just be fine.
Picture a city. A city whose tacky souvenirs include a pair of wooden figures sheltering under an umbrella. A city where statues of heroes are turned to face the direction of the latest enemy. A city that tries not to wear its hurt on its sleeve. Picture this city. Call it Mittel.
CHAPTER 2
Driving a Hard Bargain
I'd find it a lot easier to believe in therapists if they acknowledged the existence of the inner spiv as well as the inner child, parent, teacher and washingmachine mechanic. We've all got one, and no matter how hard we try to be stylish and sophisticated, our inner spiv will sabotage us every time. It's the driving force that dictates Prince Charles's cuff links and Hugh Grant's sexual hot button.
I share my weakness with Princess Diana. No, I'm not talking bleating, indiscreet me. I'm talking motors. But it's not the big Mercs and the turbocharged Bentleys that speak to the spiv in me. It's flashy cabriolets, sleek feline coupés that make teenage boys on street corners drool. Tragically, these days, like sex for men with XXXX-large beer guts, it's all in the mind. The one drawback to my chosen career as Kate Brannigan, private eye, is that when it comes to cruising the mean streets of Manchester, it's anonymity that cuts it, not flamboyance.
A girl can still dream, though. So when Gerry Banks told me he'd lost his BMW Z3 roadster, one of only half a dozen then in the country, an advance release that had cost him a small fortune to come by and which turned every head when he drove down the street, I understood why he spoke as if he was talking about the death of a particularly close and beloved family member. If I'd been lucky enough to own one of those little beauties, I'd have probably replaced the bedroom wall with an up-and- over door so I could sleep with it. And if some rat had kidnapped my baby and held it to ransom, I'd have hired every investigator in the kingdom if it meant bringing my darling home to me.
Banks had revealed his pain behind the closed door of his office, a functional box on the upper floor of the custombuilt factory where his company made state-of-the-art electronic components. The sort of things that tell your tumble drier exactly when to scorch your favourite shirt. The best you could call the view of the nearby M62 would be 'uninspiring'. But if, like Gerry Banks, all you could see was a hole in the car park where a scarlet roadster ought to be, it must have been heartbreaking.
'I take it that's the scene of the crime,' I said, joining him by the window.
He pointed to the empty parking space nearest the door, the series of smooth curves that made up his pudgy features rearranging themselves into corrugated lines. 'Bastard,' was all he said.
I waited for a couple of minutes, the way you do when someone's paying their respects to the dead. When I spoke, my voice was gentle. 'I'm going to need full details.'
'Fine,' he sighed, turning away and throwing himself miserably into his black leather executive chair. I was left with the bogstandard visitor's number in charcoal tweed and tubular metal. Just in case I didn't know who was the boss here.
'Take me through it from the beginning,' I urged when he showed no signs of communicating further.
'He turned up on Tuesday morning at nine. He said his name was John Wilkins and he ran an executive valet service for cars. He gave me a business card and a glossy brochure. It quotes half a dozen top Manchester businessmen saying what a great job this Valet-While-U- Work does.' His voice was the self-justifying whine of a man desperate not to be seen as the five-star prat he'd been. He pushed a folded A4 sheet towards me, a business card lying on top of it. I gave them the brief glance that was all they deserved. Nothing that couldn't come out of any neighbourhood print shop.
'So you agreed to let him valet your car?'
He nodded. 'I gave him the keys and he promised to have it back by close of business. But he didn't.' He clenched his jaw, bunching the muscles under his ear.
'And that's when you got the fax?'
He looked away, ostensibly searching for the piece of paper I knew was right under his hand. 'Here,' he said.
'We've got your car. By this time Friday, you'll have ten thousand pounds. Fair exchange is no robbery. No cops or the car gets it just badly enough not to be a writeoff. Yours faithfully, Rob-It-While-U-Work,' I read. A villain with a sense of humour. 'The price seems a bit steep,' I said. 'I thought the Z3 only cost about twenty grand new.'
'If you can get one. They're not officially released till next January and there's already a twoyear waiting list. Money can't buy a replacement. I'm not interested in common rubbish. You know where I live? Not in some poxy executive development. I live in a converted sixteenth-century chapel. There's not another one like it in the world. Anywhere. I want my car back, you understand? Without a scratch on it,' Banks said, the ghost of his management skills starting to emerge from the shadows of his grief. 'I'll have the money here tomorrow afternoon, and I want you to take care of the exchange. Can you handle that?'
I'm so used to middleaged businessmen taking one look at my twenty-nine-year-old five feet and three inches and treating me like the tea girl that it barely registers on the Brannigan scale of indignation any more. 'I can handle it,' I said mildly. 'But wouldn't you rather get the car back and hang on to the cash?'
'You think you could do that? Without putting the car at risk?'
I gave him the stare I'd copied from Al Pacino. 'I can try.'
Like journalists, private eyes are only as good as their sources. Unfortunately, our best ones tend to be people your mother would bar from the doorstep, never mind the house. Like my mechanic, Handbrake. He's no ordinary grease monkey. He learned his trade tuning up the wheels for a series of perfect getaways after his mates had relieved some financial institution of a wad they hadn't previously realized was surplus to requirements. He only got caught the once. That had been enough.
When he got out, he'd set himself up in a backstreet garage and gone straight. Ish. But he still knew who was who among the players on the wrong side of the fence. And as well as keeping my car nondescript on the outside and faster than a speeding bullet on the inside, he tipped me the odd wink on items he thought I might be interested in. It sat easier with his conscience than talking to Officer Dibble. He answered the phone just as I was about to give up. 'Yeah?' Time is money; chat is inessential.
'Handbrake, Brannigan.' The conversational style was catching. 'I'm working for a punter who's had his BMW Z3 ripped for a ransom. The guy called himself John Wilkins. Valet-While-U-Work. Any ideas?'
'Dunno the name but there's a couple of teams have tried it on,' he told me. 'A Z3, you say? I didn't think there were any over here yet.'
'There's only a handful, according to the punter.'
'Right. Rarity value, that's what makes it worth ransoming. Anything else, forget it - cheaper to let the car walk, cop for the insurance. I'll ask around, talk to the usual suspects, see what the word is.'
I started the engine and slipped the car into gear at about the same time my brain did the same thing. A couple of minutes later, I was grinning at Gerry Banks's receptionist for the second time that morning. 'Me again,' I chirped. Nothing like stating the obvious to make the victim of your interrogation feel superior.
'Mr Banks has gone into a meeting with a client,' she said in the bored singsong you need to master before they let you qualify as a receptionist.
'Actually, it was you I wanted a word with.' Ingratiating smile.
She looked startled. I'd obviously gone for a concept she was unfamiliar with.
'Why?'
'Mr Banks has hired me to try to get his car back,' I said. 'A couple of questions?'
She shrugged.
'When the car valet bloke arrived, did he ask who the Z3 belonged to?'
She shook her head. 'He said, could he have five minutes with Mr Banks concerning the ongoing maintenance of his roadster. I buzzed Mr Banks, then sent him in.'
'Those were his actual words? He said roadster?'
'That's right. Like Mr Banks always calls it.'
I'd been afraid that's what she would say.
I was being ushered into the presence of my financial advisor when Handbrake rang me back. Josh waved me to one of his comfortable leather armchairs while I wrestled the phone out of my bag and to my ear. 'You got a problem I can't solve,' Handbrake said. 'Whoever's got your punter's motor, either they're not from around here or they're new talent. So new nobody knows who they are.'
'I had a funny feeling you were going to tell me that,' I said. 'I owe you one.'
'I'll add it to your next service.'
I hung up. This was beginning to look more and more like something very personal. 'Drink?' Josh asked sympathetically.
'I'm not stopping. This is just a quick smashandgrab raid. Gerry Banks, Compuponents. Who's got it in for him?'
The only thing in common between Gerry Banks's home and the flat whose bell I was leaning on was that they'd both been converted. Somehow, I couldn't see my client in this scruffy Edwardian rattrap in the hinterland between the curry restaurants of Rusholme and the street hookers of Whalley Range.
Eventually the door opened on a woman in jeans faded to the colour of her eyes, a baggy chenille jumper and her early thirties. Dark blonde hair was loosely pulled back in a ponytail. She had the kind of face that makes men pause with their pints halfway to their lips. 'Yeah?' she asked.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Stranded"
by .
Copyright © 2005 Val McDermid.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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