The Last Honest Car in Town

How it begins

The taxi charged nothing until Irene Shaw lied.

She had disconnected the battery, removed the engine cover and checked the meter twice. It should not have charged anything at all.

'Perfectly ordinary restoration,' she told the customer on the telephone.

The meter clicked to six pounds.

Irene stopped speaking.

In the workshop doorway, Vincent Cole held a paper cup of tea and looked as though he had expected this for years.

'I said don't bring it back.'

'You said don't sell it to the collector.'

'Same thing, eventually.'

She ended the call. The meter returned to zero.

Outside, the last rain of the afternoon ran through an oil stain in the yard. Irene had restored cars with forged histories and genuine rust. She trusted rust. It rarely pretended to improve the future.

Vincent put down the tea. He had driven the taxi for nineteen years before parking it in a lock-up and paying rent on the silence.

'Try something true,' he said.

'I need the money.'

Nothing happened.

'Try something else.'

'I always need the money.'

The meter remained still.

Vincent nodded toward the telephone. 'The collector doesn't.'

Irene looked at the deposit receipt. The buyer had described himself as a transport enthusiast. His office address belonged to a claims company she had seen advertised on bus shelters.

She sat in the driver's seat. The worn wheel fitted her hands too comfortably.

'Can it tell who's lying?'

'It tells you what a lie costs. People do the rest badly.'

He showed her an old fare book. Beside several journeys, somebody had written large sums that no city ride could have earned. One journey ended at a closed factory whose compensation dispute still appeared in the local paper.

Irene watched the meter's blank face. A machine that seemed honest could become the most useful fraud in town if somebody owned the right to explain it.