“Are you serious? Who would steal it?” Pavel was standing at the door of Craig's office.
Craig could only shake his head slowly. He'd been home to have a shower and get dressed, and was sitting at his desk eating a bacon and egg roll.
“Who knows. I’m over it. There'll be more mess, more paperwork, more questions from the cops and the insurance company. We're supposed to be a SMASH REPAIR business, and I've got bugger all to show for it this week. And all I ever do is answer the BLOODY PHONE!” It rang again. He picked it up and slammed it straight back down. Pavel retreated and Craig stayed focussed on his breakfast.
The police left shortly afterwards, and the team struggled to shrug off the shock of the first ever break-in at Advanced Smash Repairs. Every job seemed to need parts and no clients were expecting to pick up their cars in time for the weekend. Not many new jobs had made their way in this week, in spite of the phone call avalanche and the wet weather that had apparently claimed the BMW.
“Boris?”
“Yeah?”
Craig slipped him a few notes. “I want double the Friday morning cake ration today. Can you arrange that?”
“Of course.”
Boris returned with an elaborate gateaux, mounded high with chocolate gloop from a Russian lady who sells cakes from her home – just what they needed. Clint poured some evil looking coffees to wash it down. They were devouring it with unseemly haste, faces and hands all covered in cream, when Monahan appeared at the top of the ramp.
“No wonder you never get anything done around here. How can you work when you've always got tools down and covered in . . . .”
“Cake, Kendrick?”
“No thanks, I've got to get this BMW off again, then . . . .” He looked around the workshop. “Where is it?”
“Didn't Perrin tell you? I rang him first thing. It was stolen last night. Stolen – a written-off car. Dumb crooks.”
Monahan stood there in his uniform, arms akimbo. His face went white with rage and frustration, matching his white gloves.
“Come on, don't get too down on yourself. You must have three hours budgeted to do this job, so the next one can wait. Have some cake.” Oblivious to Pavel's barbs, Monahan shrugged his shoulders, and carefully removed his gloves, finger by finger, as he stalked towards the cake with intent.
They had just finished their first pieces of cake when Halphen walked into the workshop.
“Detective Halphen, join us! We're dosing up on sugar to keep us going through the day. Want some?”
Rod looked as tired as Craig. He gave a little nod, and sat in the circle around the altar of cake. He spoke before anyone could ask the obvious question.
“OK, lads, let's have a guessing competition. Everyone write down where they think we found the car this morning.”
“Ooh, you found the car. OK, let's all play.” Craig went to the office, and grabbed a pile of paper from his recycling bin, and some pens.
“Place your bets, gentlemen, nearest correct answer gets the last of the cake, after Detective Halphen has had his piece, of course!” Craig was cheering up a bit. He handed Rod a wodge of cake on a makeshift plate made out of a piece of A4 paper. Halphen didn't even notice that the office cake knife was shard of hard plastic that was in fact a fragment of the back bumper of a Citroen they had repaired the previous year.
They scribbled their guesses and held them to their chests.
“Kendrick Monahan. Reveal your guess!”
