The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman Read Online Free PDF Page A

much bigger than mine. He was bent over a yellow Jag which had seen better times when I drove up, and he waited until the Porsche juddered to a halt before he came over, rubbing greasy hands on a piece of grey cloth hanging out of his overall pocket.
            ‘Sounds rough,’ he said, rubbing his pencil-thin moustache below a mottled, bulbous nose. ‘Very rough. Cylinders are definitely on their way out, you’re kicking out a lot of smoke.’ He wiped his nose on the greasy cloth.
            ‘Performance is right down, too,’ I said. ‘It used to kick you in the pants when you put your foot down, but now it’s worse than a twelve-year-old Cortina. Haven’t had it that long either.’
            ‘Should still be under warranty, then?’ he said, putting the cloth back in his pocket, grease smeared over his nose.
            I tried to look sheepish, a guilty schoolboy caught with his pockets full of stolen apples. ‘I’d rather get it done on the QT, actually.’
            ‘Ah,’ he sighed, and winked. ‘I get your drift. Well, I might be able to help. Hang on while I make a call.’
            He busied off to the back of his lock-up, keen to help now that he reckoned he knew the score. When somebody wants to pay good money to fix a car that’s still under warranty that can mean only one thing. And if he thought my pride and joy was stolen, who was I to put him right?
            He came back after five minutes, a grin on his oil-stained face. Bert just happened to have a friend who had a friend who could get me a complete Porsche engine for half the price the dealer had wanted, including fitting, no questions asked.
            ‘Have to be a cash deal, though,’ he said. ‘You bring her in Saturday morning and she’ll be back with you by Sunday night.’ I tried to look relieved and grateful, shook Bert by the greasy hand and drove back to Earl’s Court and parked my battered Porsche.
            An hour later I was back in Camden, this time on the Honda in a massive black anorak, red crash helmet and yellow plastic trousers, a clipboard pinned to the handle-bars, just one of the hundreds of would-be cabbies doing the Knowledge in London.
            It was four o’clock, Thursday afternoon, and if Bert wanted my Porsche in on Saturday morning the chances were that he’d be going off for the engine tonight or tomorrow. I felt lucky, and an hour after I arrived back at his garage he locked up and walked over to a battered red pick-up. I was about a hundred yards down the road so he didn’t hear me start up the bike. He pulled out from the pavement, grey smoke belching from the exhaust, and I followed as he turned into Camden High Street and down past Euston Station and its throngs of home-going commuters.
            There was no problem at all in keeping up with him, in the rush hour traffic the Honda was much faster than his truck and it was so distinctive I could hang well back.
            He drove through Bloomsbury, and before long we were over the Thames and heading for Battersea. I felt luckier and fifteen minutes later he pulled up in front of another lock-up garage, much the same as his own except this one had the legend ‘Kleen Karparts’ above the brown-painted twin doors.
            Bert wiped his nose again on the dirty cloth and sounded his horn three times. A door opened and he disappeared inside. Kleen Karparts was in the middle of a row of small businesses, a bathroom shop with suites for £199, a bookmakers, three or four shops with shutters down and ‘For Sale’ signs up and a couple which were open for business but with nothing in the windows to give a clue as to what they sold.
            At the end of the road was a narrow passage which led to a muddy track behind the backyards of the shops. Karparts was fourth from the end and set into the wall there was a weatherbeaten door painted the same dirty brown as the front entrance. The door had warped