No Place in the Sun Read online

  ‘No stock here, lad. They cleared it all out last night, the old guy and his poofter friend were here very late, Polish fellow with a truck, we nearly had to throw them out but they got it all into the lorry ok. Nothing left, lad, not a sausage, come and look if you like.’

  Tom followed the stranger through the empty canteen, not even the coffee machine remained. He walked through the swing doors and out on the shop floor, where a team of builders was removing ceiling panels and lifting the carpet tiles. Two big electric platform hoists trundled around the floor, warning sounders bleeping and amber lights flashing, as the electricians removed the old lighting units. The emptiness of the place stunned him and he looked around in amazement.

  ‘Fucking bastard. What about my fucking money?’

  The foreman shook his head sadly. ‘How much did they stick you for?’ He asked kindly.

  Tom just couldn’t believe what he was seeing. ‘Two fucking grand. I’ll kill the bastard.’

  The Englishman kicked a length of ceiling trim out of his way. ‘Same old story, I see it everyplace we go. Companies close and leave fellows hanging. Forget about it, lad, and move on. Be wiser the next time.’

  Walter smiled sadly as he took a swallow from the pint. ‘Hate to say I told you so, son, but the odds were always against getting that bonus.’

  ‘But old Milton, mister fucking pious churchgoer. I never thought he would screw me.’

  Walter wiped the beer froth from his moustache. ‘They’re all the same, Tom; you have to keep yourself covered all the way.’

  ‘I was fucking caught rightly, wasn’t I? What a bastard, I never saw that coming. I must be fucking thick; I should have listened to you.’

  Walter played with the beer mat, flicking it over and over. ‘It looked likely enough to me; he gave in too easy when I pushed him for the bonus. I just had an instinct that he wouldn’t deliver, just a feeling, kind of thing that has kept me out of trouble up to now.’

  Tom chugged down half his pint and called for two more. ‘So how is the real estate business then?’

  Walter brightened. ‘Easiest money I ever made, to be honest. When you spent your life selling washing machines and cookers, it’s very easy to sell a house. You have a buyer who wants a house, and one house is much like another when you think about it. All you have to do is push them a little bit; just close a sale like you would in a shop.’

  Tom was suddenly interested. ‘Making money so?’

  ‘A lot more than I made in Milton’s. These lads haven’t a clue about selling; they just show the punter the house and step back. What I do is just what I always did, stop the buyer from thinking about the next place and focus them on the one I’m showing. I’m selling as much as the other four put together, and the commission is damn good.’

  ‘So any chance of a start for me in that place?’

  Walter hesitated. ‘Not at the minute, but I’d say I might get you in there in a few months. If I keep outselling those guys there’s bound to be a bit of pressure on the others, and I’d say one of them might cave in and leave. You should find something to keep you going, and I’ll watch the space for you.’

  Tom was still deflated from his experience that morning. ‘Not too much out there when you start to look; all the Brit places just use English managers and loads of part-timers, students and stuff, no real salesmen at all.’

  Walter agreed. ‘That’s how it’s going in that game. They throw bodies at it in busy times and then send them home if it’s quiet. Not like it used to be.’

  They sat in silence for a while, and then Walter had a thought.

  ‘You could always go and work for your dad. The building business is getting busy and I’m sure he has plenty of room for an extra man.’

  Tom laughed. ‘Can you really see me working on a site? Anyway you know we don’t get on; we haven’t spoken since I left home.’

  ‘I know that, but isn’t it about time you mended a few fences in that department? You were young and foolish then, you’re older and wiser now.’

  ‘No, we’ll continue to agree to disagree. Anyway he has plenty of help from Michael, mister fancy college boy.’

  ‘Ok, sorry for sticking my nose in your business.’

  ‘That’s all right, no offence. I just don’t want to have any dealings with my old man or my brother. The old boy would just love me to come crawling back looking for a job, and I can just imagine Michael smirking if I arrived home like a loser. No, I don’t think that’s on at all.’

  ‘You’re not a loser Tom; this kind of shit happens to the best of us, so stop putting yourself down. You’re a very capable young fellow and you were doing well in Miltons. This was just a bit of bad luck and you’ll rise above it no problem. Just give it a week or two.’

  ‘Not much sign of a lot of work out there though.’

  ‘There’s always something. Did you ever think of selling cars? I was in City Auto today to see Kevin, the fellow that owns the place. Thinking of getting a new car. He was asking me if I wanted a job, heard Milton’s was gone. Told him I was fixed up. Good bloke Kevin, Welsh fellow but he’s here years, bit hooky but all right really.’

  Tom perked up. ‘I might drop in to him on Monday. I used to sell cars for a while a few years ago, when it was harder. You had to tell some serious porkies then, a lot of the cars were dodgy enough. Not like now, they’re all fairly reliable.’

  ‘Tell him you were talking to me. I play golf with him on Sunday mornings usually, there’s six of us that play together on and off, know them for years. I’ll mention it to him Sunday if you like.’

  Tom raised his pint. ‘Here’s to a life after Milton. Maybe he did us a favour; maybe we’ll make our fortunes in cars and real estate.’

  Walter smiled sadly. ‘Or maybe not, but we’ll give it a good try anyway, son.’

  Tom tapped on the door of the portocabin; City Auto didn’t spend a fortune on facilities, stock had priority around here. Kevin stood up and gave him a welcome handshake.

  ‘Walter tells me you are the best around, apart from himself of course. So do you think you can sell cars?’

  Tom immediately felt that he was meeting a fellow salesman, someone who liked to sell.

  ‘Not a problem. Did it before, can do it again. If you can sell washing machines to some of the old bitches around here, you can sell a few cars to the local young lads.’

  Kevin laughed. ‘It’s not that easy, but if you’re a good enough salesman to start with, I can make you a car expert in a few hours. Just a matter of sounding like you know what you’re talking about, whether you do or not.’

  Tom was enjoying the exchange. ‘Same as washing machines so.’

  Kevin slid a thick book across the desk. ‘That’s the bible, every make, every model, every year. You need to know it by heart where it refers to any car in the yard, no point in looking it up when you are in the middle of a sale. You need it in your head.’

  He pointed to the yard and the serried ranks of cars. ‘Let’s go for a bit of a walk, see what you know. If you’re as sharp as I hear you are, you’ll pick it all up fast.’

  They strolled around the gravelled area where the cars were lined up for sale, each with the price displayed in big vinyl letters in the windscreen. The front row had roof banners that had the usual clichéd descriptions, car-of-the-week, reduced-for-quick-sale, low-mileage.

  Tom had seen it all before. ‘Everything is negotiable I suppose?’

  Kevin laughed. ‘Of course, but only top prices get top commissions. If you want to give away my money, it will cost you.’

  Tom thought it might be time to talk about earnings. ‘How much of my wages would be commission then?’

  Kevin looked surprised. ‘Didn’t Walter tell you? All of it. We don’t do basic here, you’ll be self employed; if you don’t sell anything, you don’t earn anything. I’m not running a fucking charity. That’s fair enough isn’t it?’

  It wasn’t what Tom was expecting.

  ‘
On the other hand, you can make some serious money of you’re as good as I hear you are. I’ll pay a hundred and fifty a car for full price, a hundred for the coded price, and unless you want to pay me money you won’t sell below that.’

  Tom was dubious. ‘Doesn’t sound like a lot. I expected a basic to be honest, you know, for being here to keep the place open when it’s quiet and all that.’

  Kevin was showing some impatience. ‘Look, that’s how I do business; it’s not up for discussion. But look, the last guy was making five hundred a day some days. Still would be if he could keep out of the pub and the bookies. I expect you to be here when you’re supposed to be here.’

  ‘Five hundred a day? Is there that amount of business in it?’

  ‘It’s up to you. If you can really sell, you know, be ruthless about it, this is the place to make serious money, a lot more than Maurice Milton could ever pay you. I’ll pay you in cash every Friday, or every day if you want. The taxman will never know how much you got, and I won’t leave you short either. Have we a deal?’

  Tom looked him in the eye; this might be good. He held out his hand. ‘Deal.’

  Tom was surprised at how easy it was. He had worked part time in a used car lot about eight years earlier, when he left school, but his experience in the intervening years had fine tuned his selling skills and given him the ability to close sales where he would have been less confident in the past. It wasn’t exactly easy money, but he found that if he kept his concentration and stayed focussed, he could make a very good living. Maybe old Milton had done him a favour by closing down.

  Sometimes he wondered about what he was doing. If he stopped to think, looked back on the day and ran the sales through his mind, it could get inside his head a bit more than he would have liked. Some of the punters were really thick, they knew nothing about cars and it was easy to sell them some really slow movers at high prices. Some of them were smart enough, knew their stuff, and he tended to steer them to the better models. The easiest ones were the guys that talked as if they knew all about cars, but really knew very little; these were the ones that could be milked for the highest prices and the best commission. Still, apart from these occasional doubts, Tom was making some decent money and he was very satisfied with the way things were working out.

  Kevin was happy too; his new salesman was letting very few buyers leave the yard without a car and he was managing to shift the rubbish along with the better stuff. The previous guy had tended to steer buyers away from the duds, but Tom had a lot less scruples when there was a commission to be earned. If Kevin was paying an extra few quid on a particular slow mover, Tom would have it shifted before the end of the day.

  They stood at the back of the yard watching the driver unload the latest crop from the big transporter. Kevin bought in bulk from trade suppliers and from leasing companies, the five and six year old models that the main dealers didn’t want on their forecourts. Every so often he took a big batch of cars from the car rental firms, as long as they were registered to an anonymous company and didn’t have a record of being hired to tourists. These were big profit earners, they described them as one-owner cars and Willie cleaned them up well in the big shed at the back of the yard.

  ‘Who sent me that piece of shit?’ Kevin couldn’t conceal his disgust at the bright yellow Volkswagen that was rolling off the top deck of the truck.

  Tom could barely hold back the laughter. ‘It kinda stands out all right.’

  ‘Looks like a fucking builder’s jacket. Get it round the back and out of sight before anyone sees it, we’ll be a laughing stock.’

  ‘I wonder does it glow in the dark?’ The more Kevin got annoyed, the more Tom could see the funny side.

  ‘There’s yellow and there’s yellow, but that’s the worst colour car I ever saw in my life. Fucking diarrhoea yellow. It’s like the back of a shagging ambulance, nobody will buy that thing.’

  Tom looked inside the car when it was parked up. ‘It’s not in bad shape though, really low miles and very clean.’

  Kevin was sarcastic. ‘Would you buy a car that colour? Who would be interested in that thing? I’ll kill McGuire for dumping that on me.’

  ‘Maybe we might find a colour-blind customer for it.’

  ‘Let’s see you sell it, smartass. Let’s see how good you are, an extra hundred if you shift it by Friday.’

  They went through the rest of the cars. Kevin was in a bad humour from the fluorescent yellow VW, and the rest of the load didn’t help his mood either.

  ‘Ah Jesus, look at the clocks on these wrecks.’

  Tom looked at the car in question, the Toyota had nearly a hundred thousand miles on the odometer. ‘Looks clean though, should go back all right.’

  Kevin cheered a bit, but he still wasn’t happy. ‘Myles has to be paid his cut for clocking it though; all comes out of the profit. I’m getting sick of McGuire short-changing me.’

  He stomped back to the office and slammed the door. Tom took out his phone and called Myles.

  ‘Can you call over this evening and adjust a few for us?’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Nearly all today’s batch, about ten, all high numbers but look good otherwise. We need them done tonight though before customers see them tomorrow.’

  Tom made two cups of coffee and left one of them down in front of Kevin. ‘Myles is on his way.’

  ‘Thanks boyo. Can you do something for me on the way in tomorrow? I need a letter dropped off at the test centre, ask for Roger Hall and wait for an envelope from him and bring it back. It’s some paperwork that they didn’t have for me last week.’

  Myles arrived just as they were turning off the lights.

  Kevin waved his arms at him. ‘For God’s sake, don’t leave that fucking Jeep out front, someone will see it. Bring it round the back quick.’

  Myles drove around and into the shed. Tom shook his head. ‘For such a smart fellow with his computers and all, he hasn’t much savvy. Why does he have to have his name written on the Jeep?’

  The offending vehicle had a bright sign on each side that told the world that it was owned by ‘Myles Back’, a play on the owner’s name and the nature of his business. The smaller print advised that he was in the business of recalibrating speedometers, a legitimate business need when a garage replaced a broken speedometer with a new one and the mileage had to be brought up to the correct level on the new instrument. While he might get the occasional job of that nature, Myles made most of his money by ‘clocking’ cars for unscrupulous dealers.

  Kevin sighed resignedly ‘he’s a bit thick that way, but he comes when we want him and he’s cheaper than the others by a long shot.’

  Myles looked at the yellow car in astonishment. ‘It’ll take more than a bit of clocking to make that one sell. Where did you get that thing?’

  Tom motioned to him to shut up; Kevin was in a bad enough humour without upsetting him further, but Myles kept rubbing salt in the wound. ‘You could put a ‘Follow Me’ sign on it and sell it to the airport; they could take it out on really foggy days.’

  Kevin retreated to the office and slammed the door.

  Myles was still laughing at his own joke. ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘Don’t mention the war. He’s not too happy with today’s batch, and that thing just added insult to injury. Let’s make a few home improvements, cheer him up a bit.’

  ‘That’s one ugly car, mustn’t be a standard colour, I never saw one in that yellow before.’

  ‘It was one of two specials for that radio station that started up and only lasted a few months, do you remember, Mellow Yellow FM, played a lot of oldies?’

  ‘Oh yeah, crappy music, no wonder they folded.’

  One by one, they drove the cars into the shed and closed the doors. Tom popped the bonnet on each car and Myles connected the lead from his laptop to the service port and made a few quick adjustments on the keyboard. In an hour all the cars were a lot more saleable.

  Myles closed h
is laptop and packed it away in the case.

  ‘Is that the lot, Tom?’

  ‘That’s all, I’ll just finish putting on the new rubbers on the clutch and brake pedals and then we’re done. We’re going for a few beers, do you want to come?’

  ‘No, I’ll pass on that, see you next week.’

  Tom and Kevin retired to the Willows for a well-earned pint. Walter was sitting at the bar; they motioned him to join them at the corner table.

  ‘You were right about this lad.’ Kevin clapped Tom on the back.

  Walter smiled. ‘Told you he could sell, nearly as good as me, maybe better for your game.’

  ‘Sand to Arabs, coal to Polacks.’ Kevin was back to his old self.

  Walter had heard a bit of news. ‘I hear you weren’t the only one to be screwed by Maurice Milton.’

  Tom was surprised. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘He never paid the guarantee money over to the insurance company, not for the last year or so, put it all in his pocket and said nothing. He must have been planning to make an exit for longer than we thought.’

  ‘I had that old bugger figured all wrong.’ Tom was shocked that the old man had turned out to be such a crook.

  Walter had more. ‘That’s not the half of it. None of the suppliers were paid for the stuff that we sold from the warehouse. We were selling stolen property for the last couple of weeks.’

  Kevin swallowed the last of his pint and got up to leave. ‘All this talk of dishonesty is upsetting me, I’m heading home. Don’t forget the letter in the morning.’

  Tom tapped his jacket pocket. ‘I have it here, see you about ten o’clock.’

  Tom looked at the envelope on the breakfast table; it was addressed to Roger Hall and marked ‘private’ in large letters. Why would Kevin be sending private letters to the clerk in the test centre, he wondered, and why the insistence on delivering it by hand to Roger Hall?

  He snapped on the kettle for another cup of tea, turning the letter over and over in his hand. Finally his curiosity got the better of him and he slit the envelope open; he could always put the letter in a fresh envelope and reseal it, Roger would never know.