Chance

Chance by Chris Green

Travis Fly is looking for a car when he sees the Chrysler Vamp advertised on the Autoz website. He had not realised that Chrysler made such a model. Good name but it sounds unlikely. Honest John doesn’t mention it, and Travis has not seen one like it before. He is intrigued. For a car on a 2017 plate, it seems to be remarkably cheap. He is strapped for cash right now so he is keen to check it out.

Micky Moon of Moon Motors tells him the Vamp is on a Special because Chrysler has stopped manufacturing for the UK. There’s nothing wrong with the car, it’s a fine motor. Low mileage too. Just 25000 on the clock Guaranteed. And with a two litre engine that’s like new. Full service history. Well, apart from a year or so, but that was down to the pandemic.

Travis looks it over. It has chunky lines, an odd-shaped grill and a dent or two, but, to his surprise, he likes it. He knocks Micky down a monkey and drives off in it. Although it is sluggish in the low gears, it has a top speed of 130, which comes in handy as Travis discovers he is being tailed everywhere by a mean-looking dude in a grey Tiguan. Each time he leaves the house, he finds the Tiguan parked along the street, ready to give chase. On a long run, he finds the Vamp can easily lose the Tiguan. But there are likely to be speeding violation notices in the post, and the Tiguan is always back waiting the next day.

How, Travis wants to know, can he possibly be connected to the mean-looking dude? He has no involvement with the criminal underworld. The Flys are an upstanding, law-abiding family, apart from Ronnie Fly who is in Broadmoor. But that’s another story. None of the family has any contact with Ronnie.

So who is this interloper in the Tiguan? Travis remembers Eddy Christ in The Goat and Bicycle telling him that VW Tiguans are the car of choice for private detectives because they are so inconspicuous. Particularly grey ones. Even the TV P.I. Billy Hats has one. But what has he, Travis Fly, done to warrant being followed by a sleuth? There is no longer any hint of marital upheaval. Since their separation, he and Maria have been getting along famously, and she stays over once or twice a month, probably more often if they have something special lined up. They have a better sex life than when they were together. This private dick can’t have anything to do with Maria.

Mistaken identity, then? Quite likely, but so far as he can recall he’s never been mistaken for anyone before. Certainly not anyone that matters. He’s the type that blends into his surroundings. Or might the attention have something to do with the motor? Something perhaps to do with its odd lack of provenance. Might the Vamp have a chequered past? A history as a gangland vehicle? But if it’s something to do with the motor, wouldn’t there have been some kind of intervention? Some statement of malicious intent by the driver of the car? Or some warning from the godfather crime boss about what the fellow in the car might do if he doesn’t cooperate? A demand or ultimatum of some kind would surely have arrived by now. But even if the mean-looking dude is just going to tail him and make no contact or come up with demands is, this in itself, intimidating. Travis needs to take the initiative.

He steels himself and paces towards the parked Tiguan. As he gets close, the car drives off. Travis finds it is back again later in time to catch him coming out of the house. With greater determination, he tries but with the same result. The car leaves once more. And again later.

Since Storm Aisling wrecked the marina back in November and saw off his cabin cruiser Maria Elena, Gary Nero has been waiting for his insurance company to settle. He is itching to get back on the water, but there has been one setback or another on his claim. Prudential Marine has been stalling, and due to his uncertain financial history, Gary has been unable to secure a loan to get him back afloat. Unable to get out to sea, he has been able to go about business. With his affairs in abeyance, Contessa seems less attracted to him. She doesn’t even take his calls now. Had she become too used to the luxury lifestyle aboard the Maria Elena? The jollies to faraway places with strange sounding names that were on the itinerary. Double whammy, no maritime commerce, no Contessa. With time on his hands, Gary has been growing herbs and spices and learning to play the duduk. Meanwhile, he has an appointment in Tangier but has no way of getting there.

It seems uncanny, but everywhere Gary goes, the same guy in a grey VW Tiguan is somewhere nearby. Here he is again, behind the wheel of the Tiguan, sun shade down, pretending to read a tabloid, in the car park of The Bucket of Frogs, a pub Gary does not normally frequent.

‘Any idea who that mean-looking dude in the grey Tiguan parked outside is?’ he asks Kermit, the barman. Kermit? Possibly a nickname, he thinks.

‘He was there earlier,’ Kermit says. ‘I think he must be waiting for someone.’

‘He appears to be following me around,’ Gary says. ‘I’m going out to find out what he wants.’

As he makes his way to the Tiguan, it drives off. The same happens at the marine radio supplies warehouse. The same sighting of the grey VW, the same hard stare from the driver from behind his tabloid, the same quick getaway on the first sign of his approach, the same frustration. And again later at Emma Jayne Sauna and Massage, the driver’s tabloid shield now discarded in favour of a more appropriate Men’s Health magazine.

Natasha Darling buys the VW Tiguan that her friend Jamie recommended from Robin Steel’s Motors and almost right away she is surprised just how many other Tiguans there are on the road, particularly quartz grey ones like hers. Each time she leaves her car and wherever she leaves it, when she returns to it, there always seem to be two other grey Tiguans parked nearby. While Natasha is not a conspiracy theorist, she is not especially good at remembering registration numbers, but she feels that these are the same two. Furthermore, there always seems to be someone sitting in the driver’s seat of each of them, hiding behind a newspaper. Nor does it explain why, wherever she goes, there’s a grey Tiguan three cars back in traffic which disappears when she parks. but is always there when she returns to her car. She is spooked. Something bad is happening. She mentions her concern to Megan at Got to Get You into My Chair, where she has her hair styled.

Megan tells her that she too has just bought a Tiguan, but hers is blue. But this, she says, illustrates just how common this model is. Her friend Chloe has one too. Hers is grey. Everybody has a Tiguan she says, so it’s probably not worth reading too much into the multiple sightings.

‘I know you’re trying to put my mind at rest,’ Meg, Natasha says. ‘But I still don’t like it. There’s something sinister going on.’

Travis Fly has never met Gary Nero and neither of them has ever met Natasha Darling. Nor do any of them live near each other or even in the same part of the country. Travis, Gary and Natasha don’t share the same interests and have nothing in common. So to find all three parking their cars next to each other in the car park at Miles Highman Communications (MHC) in Swindon, Wiltshire at the same time would appear to be a remarkable coincidence. One of which they are blissfully unaware.

You may remember Miles Highman as the entrepreneur who employed the likes of Wet Blanket Ron to market his startup, PurplePhones, Since those early days, Miles has expanded his operation out of all recognition. Miles Highman Communications is rapidly becoming a global name in telecommunications. The rise has been so swift that MHC has not yet acquired prestigious premises to complement it. The car park at his Swindon base is cramped and apart from Miles’ purple Porsche and Travis’s black Chrysler Vamp, all the other cars parked there are grey. So when the surplus Tiguans begin to arrive, although they can’t hep but blend in, it is difficult for them to keep their distance from Travis, Gary and Natasha’s vehicles. As the puzzled trio scan the car park, the newcomers’ newspapers are raised to shield their faces from their prying eyes. Perhaps they are reading about the corruption in high office or maybe today’s top story about the celebrity paedophile has caught their eye. But news changes dramatically from day to day. Tomorrow there will be a very different story on the front pages.

Passenger jet routes over the south of England are frequently revised. This is something that happens to take account of the passing of the seasons and long-range weather forecasts. It is a routine operation. In aviation, nothing must be left to chance. But the flight path of the Boeing 787 from Bristol to Sharm El Sheikh was changed only minutes before take-off. Whether this might have had something to do with how it comes to plummet into a business park outside Swindon causing hundreds of fatalities both aboard the aircraft and on the ground is being investigated. Already the incident is being described as one of the biggest disasters in the history of civilian flight. A zillion to one chance against this happening. It might not on the scale of 9/11 perhaps, but probably one that will be speculated on for decades to come.

Human error is the biggest cause of plane crashes, but not when the planes are a long distance from take-off or landing. Pilots aren’t usually phased by large banks of cloud, but sometimes unpredicted weather conditions can play havoc with the sophisticated telemetry on board. However, back up systems are in place should this happen. But clearly something brought the plane down, and for whatever reasons the flight crew were unable to prevent it. AI Bulletin claims that a plane’s controls can be operated remotely and from great distances. Whether or not this is an exaggeration, in one way or another, terrorist activity is likely to be responsible for the dramatic plunge into the Wiltshire landscape.

A majority of mysteries remain unsolved, and the conclusions drawn about the others are more often than not contested. Maybe that’s the way it should be. Enigma is after all the essence of a mystery. There’s no point in a mystery being easy to work out. As a result, you never know what to believe. Or what’s waiting around the corner. It’s all down to chance. There’s a cloud, some say, in every silver lining. Others approach the unknown with greater enthusiasm but still have no idea where it’s heading. In between, somewhere, there’s mutual agreement on one piece of the puzzle. Expect the unexpected, always.

But if you live in the UK, take comfort that there’s one thing you can rely on. One thing you can be sure of. Wherever you are, you’ll find a Tiguan nearby. Have a look out of the window! …… Is it a grey one?

Copyright © Chris Green, 2023: All rights reserved