[b]New Cross
8:51 AM[/b]

Bobby awoke with a jolt as his elbow slipped from the ledge of the passenger side door. Coach smiled in his direction from the driver’s seat. It took Lewandowski a few seconds to get his bearings but slowly he began to recall the last few hours. Coach had called on an old friend by the name of Yorkie to help them out. He’d shown up in Honor Oak Park with a tow truck with one of his younger brothers in another car following behind him. The Mathis brothers had loaded the wrecked cab onto the tow truck and Coach had given them the address of a garage, then Bobby had piled into the car with him.

There was a cup of cold tea resting on the dashboard. Bobby reached for it and took a grateful mouthful of it before looking over at Coach. “It is good that Red is okay.”

“Yes, it is,” Crowded nodded.

They had left Turner in the care of Mariana Thompkins. Their relationship still confused Bobby – the nurse had the run of all three of them, but she’d definitely had the run of Coach most of all. There was something else going on there. The Pole thought for a second to ask about her but his timidity got the better of him. It, however, did not go completely unnoticed by Coach.

“Is there something you want to ask me, Bobby?”

“This nurse,” Bobby enquired sheepishly. “How do you know her?”

Coach shook his head wistfully as he steered the car after the tow truck. “How much time do you have?”

“Ten years ago Mariana was engaged to some big-shot doctor at the time. His old man was Chief Medical Officer – some blue-blooded type with two last names and a “Sir” before his first one. You know the type. Anyway, so this kid meets Mariana while travelling across Spain. He’s out there helping some poor kids or something. Fuck knows. Somehow the pair of them fall in love. He decides to bring her over to England where she doesn’t know a soul. Being no more than a kid herself she jumps at the chance.”

A mischievous smile appeared on his face. “That’s when yours truly comes in.”

“Back then I used to make a little money doing chauffeuring on the side every now and again. Picture it if you can, me all dressed up in my Sunday best driving around people with more money than sense.”

Bobby swallowed another mouthful of cold tea and encouraged Coach to continue. “And one of them was this Mariana woman?”

“Correct,” Coach nodded. “Turns out Mr. Doctor’s not around much. I end up driving Mariana around town every weekend for the best part of six months. As you’d expect in those circumstances, we grew … close. Closer than we should have got, if you know what I mean.”

The Pole couldn’t work out whether Coach’s story was romantic or desperately sad. He knew what it was like to be a stranger in a foreign land. He knew how isolating it could be to be apart from your family and friends. He’d felt that way until he and Klaudia had grown close. Now he was on the verge of proposing to her he couldn’t stomach the thought of going back to his old life. It was only then that Bobby remembered that Coach himself was married and had been for a long time – Carol, he recalled.

“But this was ten years ago, no?” Bobby asked as he realised the arithmetic didn’t quite add up. “Your wife?”

A guilty look appeared on Coach’s face.

“Trust me, you don’t need to remind me, Bobby. I haven’t always been the world’s best husband, I’ll admit. I won’t sit here and pretend that I have. You saw her, though. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? That a woman that looked like that would so much as look in my direction … it made me lose my senses. I’d never so much as looked in another woman’s direction until Mariana came along. And I haven’t since. But she was different.”

Bobby did his best to put himself in Coach’s shoes, but it was no good. Klaudia was the only woman he’d ever loved, he couldn’t imagine being untrue to her because of something so fleeting as looks. Though he had to admit that Mariana was beautiful, even if she had been seething from the moment they had met.

“If you loved one another, why did she seem so angry with you?”

“Well,” Coach sighed. “You might have noticed she’s working at a vets and not being ferried around in fancy motors anymore. Let’s just say I have something to do with that.”

A bemused look appeared on Bobby’s face as he tried to decode the meaning of Coach’s statement. “I don’t understand.”

“Her old man found out what was going on. He got me sacked, of course, which was no real skin off my nose if I’m honest with you, but worse of all he called off the engagement. He didn’t want to, mind. But daddy wouldn’t have him marrying an adulteress, no sir. Never you mind that the cheeky bastard was getting his end away elsewhere every time he left Mariana behind.”

Lewandowski grimaced. 

“Your wife, does she know?”

Coach let out a heavy sigh. In all the years that Bobby had known the taxi driver, he had only ever seen him upset once – that day on Putney Heath after the Cecil boy had committed suicide. Now for a second time, the Pole saw Coach moved to sadness.

“It would break her heart.”

He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of cobwebs, and then smiled in Bobby’s direction. “Love’s a complicated thing, Bobby.”

After a few minutes, Coach signalled to the truck in front of them to stop. He let Bobby out outside of a train station and they said their goodbyes. Bobby was going to head home to get a couple of hours of sleep in before they made their next steps. As he approached the turnstiles, Coach’s story rattled around his brain. He thought of Coach’s wife Carol and all the nights she must have spent alone and then of his own girlfriend Klaudia. He would hold her a little tighter when he got home.

[center][b]***[/b][/center]
[b]Streatham
9:34 AM[/b]

He’d done it. The unthinkable. Once he’d dropped Bobby off at the station, Coach had raided the dash of Yorkie’s brother’s motor and found a loose, near-broken cigarette. As if this business with Fingers wasn’t bad enough, dredging up ancient history had left Crowder feeling morose and in need of some nicotine. It had more than done the job.

By the time the Mathis brothers and Coach had pulled into Coach’s old haunt, Proctor Motor Repairs, he was back to himself again. He’d bunged Yorkie a tidy sum for his help and sworn him to secrecy as they offloaded the battered taxi onto the lot of the garage. It hadn’t taken long to arouse the interests of the garage’s namesake.

“As I live and breathe!” Archie Proctor bellowed as he appeared out of his grubby little office. “Jamie-fucking-Crowder in the flesh. Is it really you or are these old eyes of mine deceiving me?”

Coach smiled sheepishly. “It’s me, alright.”

Proctor was pushing seventy and weighed upwards of twenty stone. He’d always been a bigger man, but he’d grown bigger still in the years since Coach had left, and now needed the help of a cane to walk around.

He thrust one of his gelatinous hands towards Coach, who shook it warmly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Crowder pointed over his shoulder at the taxi. 

“I need a favour.”

The two men inspected the taxi together for around five minutes. Proctor prodded loose bits of it with his cane and peered through the bullet holes in the ceiling. With each prod of the cane, he let out a disappointed tut and Coach was sure he was jotting up the bill as he went along. Proctor had been good to him when Coach was starting out – but he was every bit a crook as the Binneys or Kanes.

Finally they retired back to Archie’s office to discuss terms. Proctor sat in an arm-chair that Coach noticed had been reinforced with several planks of wood. Crowder himself declined a seat and stood instead by the grubby window that looked out onto the yard.

“By Monday?” Proctor’s laugh was so deep that his gut wobbled with it. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding. I could work round the clock all weekend and there’s no way I could get that thing sorted out. I’m almost offended you bloody asked.”

Coach pinched the bridge of his nose. “Come on, Proctor.”

“Don’t you ‘come on’ me,” Archie said, brandishing one of his sausage-like fingers at Coach. “It can’t be done, Jamie.”

A black kid wearing beige trousers, a striped shirt, and a brown flat cap entered the yard. He couldn’t have been any taller than five foot ten but there was a wiry strength to him. At least, there might have been if he had a decent meal once in a while. Even from a distance Coach could tell the kid was starving and in need of a bath.

The kid stopped in front of the damaged taxi in the yard and stared at it with intrigued. He reached one of his brown hands out to touch the wing mirror and as he did so it fell to the ground with a bang. Instinctively the boy’s head spun round and looked in the direction of the office.

Proctor screamed at the kid from his seat. “Oi, what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Get away from there, you little bugger.”

Coach smiled. He’d been on the receiving end of Proctor’s temper more times than he could count. “Who’s the kid?”

“Oh, him?” Proctor chuckled. “That’s Clinton. We call him ‘Sparky’ around the yard though. Best mechanic I’ve had on my books since … well, since you left us. Not sure why I waste my breath shouting at him given the black bastard’s as deaf as a bat.”

A frown appeared on Coach’s face.

“Can he speak?”

“No idea,” Proctor said with a dismissive shrug. “Never asked him. We get by using hand signals most days. He can read, but not a lot, so worst case scenario we’ll jot a couple of things down for him or draw him a picture if needs be.”

Coach watched as Clinton reached down to pick up the wing mirror and placed it gently atop the taxi cab’s bonnet. The boy thrust one of his finger’s into the bullet hole in the roof and then drew it back quickly once he realised how sharp the hole was. His knelt down and looked at the wheel that was one nut away from hanging off entirely and screwed up his face a little. Coach recognised that look.

“Why all the interest, eh? Never had you down as a nigger lover, Jamie.”

Crowder exhaled a little and asked for Proctor’s permission to talk to Clinton. Archie was confused as to why he would want to but he allowed it on the proviso that Coach not keep the boy too long. He had a laundry list of jobs that needed doing.

Clinton turned to face Coach as he approached him. He smiled weakly, as if unsure of Crowder’s intention, and the taxi driver offered him a friendly wave. They stood in front of the cab in complete stillness for a few moments before Clinton made a gun sign with his hand and mocked shooting a bullet through the roof. Coach returned the gesture with a knowing smile. 

Finally he let out an exasperated sigh and pointed towards the wreck. “Can you fix this?”

Clinton looked at him confused and pointed towards his ears.

“What are you doing? He can’t hear a bloody word you’re saying,” Crowder chastised himself as he rooted around in his pockets.

He pulled free a musty yellow envelope and a pencil and began to write on the back of it. “Can you fix this?” it read. Clinton nodded. “By Monday?” Coach added and handed the envelope to the boy they called Sparky. He stared down at the words, then looked again at the wreckage of a cab, and gritted his teeth.

Sparky’s mouth trembled slightly as he tried to form a word. It had clearly been a long time since he had spoken and even the effort alone looked exhausting. Finally, his lips parted and he nodded determinedly as a single word left his mouth.

“Monday.”