I glance over my shoulder, to check that no one’s about to walk in behind me.
“Look, I could pay you instead.” I tap the pink carbon copy on the counter again. “Just let me have a glance at your sales records for ten seconds; you must have a name, address, or phone number, right? And I’ll give you that two hundred pounds right now.”
“I can’t help you.”
I take my wallet from my jeans pocket. “Three hundred?”
She glances up at the wall-mounted camera covering this side of the shop.
“Are you trying to entrap me, sir?”
“What?” I shake my head. “No. I just have to get that watch back. It’s really,reallyimportant. For family reasons.” I try to judge how much I should tell her; how honest I should be. But it seems I have nothing to lose. “The truth is, there’s been a… misunderstanding and there’s someone else who thinks it belongs to them. They’ve started to get nasty. Making threats unless I return it.”
Her face softens with concern.
“In that case you should go to the police.”
“I’ve tried that already. They said there wasn’t much they could do, hence why I’ve come back here.”
She peers at me over the half-moon glasses, a hint of warmth in her eyes.
“Perhaps,” she says finally, “you could leave your number with me? I’ll drop a message to the buyer, pass on your details. Leave it up to him as to whether he gets in touch.”
“Thank you.” I scribble my number on the back of a receipt. “I really appreciate it.”
“Obviously I can’t make any promises,” she says. “But you never know. Perhaps he might be willing to come to an arrangement.”
36
Leah’s school day ends at 2:30 p.m. but I get there forty minutes early. Bluecoat Academy sits beside the ring road, and I pull off the dual carriageway to circle the school site a couple of times slowly, looking for a gray Volvo parked up anywhere nearby. There is no sign of it.
I replay my conversation with the jeweler. Whoever had bought the watch probably wouldn’t sell it back to another shop—there was more margin to be made by selling it online. I buzz the windows down and spend fifteen minutes trawling eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and a few other sales sites in the hope it might already be for sale, but there is nothing even similar to the Rolex being advertised by a local seller.
If they even wanted to sell.
As per Leah’s request, I wait on a side street off Aspley Lane, in sight of the school’s main entrance but not too close. Also as agreed, I stay in the car and don’t do anything to draw attention to myself.No waving, Dad, no shouting, and definitely no hugging. The digital clock on the dashboard ticks past two thirty and I watch as gray-uniformed pupils start to stream out of the gates, Leah among them. She gets into the passenger side, sliding down in her seat as if she doesn’t want to be seen. I start the engine and pull up to the junction. “Hey, Leah. How was your day?”
“Terrible,” she says, yanking her seat belt down. “The head of Year Eleven made a big thing of what happened yesterday during full-year assembly, warning everyone to ‘be vigilant’ and ‘walk with a friend if possible’ and ‘report anything suspicious.’ Oh my God, it wassoembarrassing. I nearly died.”
“She mentioned your name?”
“No, of course not. But everyone knew it was me by the end of first break.Socringe. Like when they used to bang on about ‘stranger danger’ all the time back in primary school.”
It’s only five minutes later, after I’ve turned right off the ring road—away from the city, away from home—that she seems to sense even without paying attention that we’ve deviated from the normal route. She glances up from the screen, the smile fading from her face.
“Why are you going the wrong way, Dad?”
I mumble something about roadworks on the direct route home and not wanting to get stuck in a traffic jam. After a moment, she goes back to Snapchat, thumbs flying over the screen of her mobile as she reads, replies, responds to a string of messages.
I don’t tell her about the gray car I’ve spotted in the rear-view mirror.
It slid into the lane behind us a couple of minutes before and has been keeping pace in the stop-start traffic ever since. Only shifting lanes when I do, keeping at least three other cars between us the whole time. Not speeding up to pass or turning off, flashes of gray just about visible in my rear-view mirror.
The gray car follows me all the way around the double roundabout at Crown Island, still steady behind me as I embark on the little detour but never close enough for me to get a good look atthe driver. I’ll take the long way around Wollaton Park, all the way around and back to this junction—a full circle that won’t make any sense except if the gray carisactually following me.
In fact, I can do better than that. I drop down to third gear and slow my speed to twenty miles per hour, waving an arm out of the window for the white van behind to overtake. Gripping the wheel a little tighter with my left hand as the van driver comes close, flashes his lights, honks his horn, then pulls out in a roar of exhaust and comes past me to flash through an orange traffic light on Wollaton Road. If I can get the gray car close enough, I can make a note of the number plate and get a proper look at the driver. For a strange moment I wonder whether it might be Maxine or Charlie behind the wheel. But that wouldn’t make any sense.
The light turns green and I slowly pull away, keeping my speed down and waving for a black SUV to pass me. I flick my hazard lights on for good measure, but he has to wait for a break in traffic before he can overtake. Only two cars now.
