Where There's A Will

Chapter Forty-Nine

Stone threw open the passenger door the moment Grey stopped his car alongside the porta-cabin that housed the office of Tredegar Scrapyard. He was out and at the door before Grey had his seatbelt off.

"Good morning," he said pleasantly when the office's sole occupant had finished on the phone.

"Morning," the stocky scrapyard worker returned the greeting absently as he searched the desk in front of him for a pen. "How can I help you?"

"DI Stone," he introduced himself. "I'd like to speak to someone about a car that was sold for scrap in the last month. Can you help?" he asked, taking out his notepad, in which he had the details of the car stolen from Sharon Hawkins.

"I'll do my best," Clark – Stone assumed that the name stitched across the pocket on his grubby denim shirt was his – said. "Are you sure it was sold to us?" he queried.

Stone nodded. "Yes. It was declared a write-off after being stolen and torched, and the remains were sold to this company for scrap by the insurance company; it's a Renault Clio, registration, Y715 CLH."

"In that case it should be in our records." Clark crossed to a shelf at the rear of the office and took down a ring binder. "I don't suppose you know the date the wreck was sold to us, do you?" he asked hopefully, flicking through the receipts in the binder in search of the one for the car in question – there were hundreds for him to go through.

"I've got the date from the insurance company's letter," Stone said, "but I don't know if that's when you guys got the car."

Clark looked at the date Stone had scribbled in his pad, and then quickly flipped through the receipts and invoices until he reached the start of the paperwork for that date. "Why're you interested in the car?" he asked. "Nothing wrong, is there?"

Stone wondered if Clark's question stemmed from natural curiosity, or worry that the scrapyard had gotten itself involved in something illegal. It might even be, he thought, that Clark was involved, somehow, in the kidnapping, and was concerned that the police were on to him.

"A vehicle used in a serious crime," he said, "was recovered yesterday – the license number on the van belonged to the Clio. I'm trying to discover if the license plates from the Clio were stolen from here and used, if they were sold to the people I'm looking for by one of your employees, or if someone made copies. What are the chances of you being able to answer that for me?"

Clark was silent for a few moments while he continued his search for the Clio's paperwork. "Ah, here we are," he said in relief when he finally located it. "According to this, a variety of parts were recovered." He held the binder up briefly so Stone could see the short list of recovered parts at the bottom of the paperwork. "And then it was crushed; this was about two weeks ago, and the DVLA was informed of the vehicle's destruction the same day. The license plates would have been put with the rest of our collection – we've got a shed at the back of the yard where we keep all the plates from the vehicles we've destroyed.

"It'll take a bit of time, but I can have someone check if the plates are still there." The look on his face suggested he would rather not have to get someone to do that. "I can't imagine anyone would waste their time breaking in here to steal a set of plates, though, or that any of the guys would sell plates; they wouldn't get enough cash to make it worthwhile."

"You're probably right," Stone agreed. "I doubt it'd be worthwhile for them to make duplicate plates either." He was sure that a pair of license plates would only be worth about twenty pounds, though he didn't doubt that that would be enough for some people. "To be honest, I can't say I understand why they used these plates, when they could have gotten plates from just about..." He stopped speaking abruptly as Grey stepped into the office and caught his eye. "What is it?" he asked, not pleased with the interruption.