To Kill For by Phillip Hunter Page B

about Brenda. It wasn’t common knowledge. That was good.
    â€˜Anything I can help with,’ he was saying, ‘let me know, alright?’
    â€˜What do you know about Mike Glazer? Friend of Paget’s.’
    Green nodded.
    â€˜Thought as much,’ he said. ‘When King called me, I remembered that you and him knew each other. I wondered if this Glazer bloke was anything to do with what’s going on.’
    â€˜You ever heard of him?’
    â€˜Glazer? Can’t say I have. Sorry.’
    â€˜Did you ask around?’
    â€˜Haven’t had a chance yet, mate. I’m run off my feet here till eleven. Thing is, like I told King, I’m a bit out of the loop these days.’
    â€˜You straight now?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t go that far. Man cannot live by bread making alone.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll see what I can do, though, alright?’
    â€˜You haven’t spoken to anyone?’
    â€˜Not till you got here. The boss don’t like us making personal calls. He’s a bit of an odd one, exacting, you know? Type who’d get out of the bath to have a piss. ’Sides, we get busy this time of day.’
    He took another drag on his cigarette and looked around the yard, as if he was looking for a way to escape.
    â€˜Can’t afford to lose this job,’ he said. ‘My wife’s expecting another.’
    He made it sound like it was all her fault.
    â€˜See what you can find out for me. There’s a couple hundred in it.’
    â€˜I could use it.’
    â€˜Be careful. Someone doesn’t want questions asked, and they know I’m asking.’
    â€˜Right. Don’t worry. I still know some people to ask.’
    I was about to leave him to it when he said, ‘She wants to call him Jaydon. The kid. Believe that shit?’
    I believed it.
    â€˜Joe,’ he said, ‘this stuff, it’s not going to come back on me, is it? These are dangerous people and, well, I got a family.’
    There wasn’t much I could tell him. He was right, they were dangerous people.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    I found the Ford garage easily. You could hardly miss it. You travelled down the A12 for a while and it was like you’d hit one of those American strips, all huge signs and used cars and burger joints. It looked like everyone had conspired to make it as ugly as possible, as a kind of joke on the people who came here to spend their money.
    An old bloke was on the forecourt cleaning cars. I asked him where I could find Siddons. He pointed at the showroom and I could see a tall, thin man with a tanned, pinched face and a flat, pudding-bowl haircut. He had a gangly look, as if his limbs and trunk had been stretched. It made him look sly for some reason.
    I went inside. He was showing a silver Ford Focus to a young Asian bloke. The car was the kind of thing half of Britain drove. Siddons had that mean cockiness that all successful salesmen have – a smugness that made them look like they had a mirror stuck in front of their eyes and they were always talking to themselves.
    The young man kept glancing over at a red ST injection model, five grand more than the silver one. Siddons knew this and kept saying things like, ‘The 1.6 is great at fuel economy, a nice car, really. Doesn’t give you any trouble. My brother-in-law’s got a 1.6 five door. Takes the family out, every weekend, three kids.’
    The young bloke was getting the idea that the cheaper car meant family and mortgage and a safe, steady, boring life. His eyes were spending more and more time on the sports model, which, after all, had alloy wheels.
    There was a blonde secretary at a desk in the corner of the showroom and a small salesman who wandered around with a clipboard, making some notes on the cars there. The blonde woman glanced at me once, and then didn’t take her eyes off the typewriter. The small salesman didn’t want anything to do with me. I suppose I