Craig Comino sat in the front passenger seat of the ailing Alfa Romeo with his eyes gently closed, breathing in the aroma of the leather interior. As the car barked through the gears, there was a gentle shuffling noise from the friction of the driver's wash-and-wear covered legs rubbing against each other.
The driver brought the car to an idling standstill, awaiting instructions.
Craig opened his eyes. “Again.”
With a nod, Boris Batmanov revved the car awake, turned it around, and drove back over the same three kilometre circuit they had already covered twice. Craig had his eyes closed as usual, but this time leant forward and rested his craggy hands on the stitched leather dash. About half way through the circuit, he snapped out of his trance, and sat back in the seat.
“OK, that's it, back to the workshop, Batman.” Craig reached for his mobile, turned off “Flight Mode”, and his fingers danced across the screen.
“So, what is it, boz?” Boris was the test driver, not the mechanic, but he was always curious about the result of Craig's diagnoses. He'd long given up on the “how”.
Craig didn't look up from his tapping. “Umm, it's the cruise control. Causing interference with the injection system somehow, which is why it's cutting out sometimes.”
Boris just kept driving. He was sure that the intermittent fault that had plagued the owner's life for months had not shown itself during their test drive, and he was pretty sure that amongst the usual array of incomprehensible but gorgeous looking knobs and dials, this car didn't have cruise control.
Craig's phone rang, and he immediately regretted not checking the caller ID.
“Hi, Craig, it's Melinda, Melinda Heise.”
Melinda was as perky as the little red VW that Craig had raised from the dead two weeks earlier. She'd hit a kerb-side bollard while swerving to avoid an elderly lady who was zig-zagging across the road, propelled by a fully laden tartan-covered shopping trolley. Undriveable, the car had been towed away and fixed by a large repair shop run by her insurance company. Afterwards they had refused to acknowledge that they'd messed up the job, in spite of Melinda's protesting for weeks that it “doesn't drive right.”
She'd brought it to Advanced Smash Repairs in desperation, and Craig had been able to zero in on the problem before he and Boris even reached their test circuit. With the VW back in the workshop and up on the hoist, they started poking around in the front suspension, and it was Clint the apprentice who found the culprit. What looked like the remains of an iPod and some headphones wrapped around a small shifting spanner, presumably the former property of an apprentice at the large workshop, were jamming things up, affecting the left front just as Melinda had described.
Since then, Melinda had become increasingly insistent on taking Craig out for a drink as a thank-you, as he hadn't billed her for the work – he'd decided that the fun of pursuing direct payment from the insurance company and exposing the incompetence of their workshop was all the recompense he needed. Even though he looked like he was going to get the money after a few frank exchanges with their assessor, it had been a hollow victory now he was being stalked by Melinda.
“Oh, hi Melinda. How's the Volksy?”
“Perfect, thanks to you. Perfect,” she replied. “Perfect, just like you,” was what she thought.
“Craig, you must let me take you for a drink after work tonight. I won't take “No” for an answer!”
Craig looked across at Boris in desperation. Boris just raised an inscrutable eyebrow.
