Half Broken Things by Morag Joss Page A

had he been so stupid? Grabbing and running off with the alabaster effigies had been bad enough, but with the van in this state! There was another terminal-sounding cough from under the bonnet and Michael held his breath. He was so tense that his head pounded, and although he was staring through the windscreen he was not giving enough attention to the road. A white car swung angrily past him and cut in front with a blast of its horn. It must have been sitting on his tail for miles. The bloody van! On the way here he had been so busy feeling like Jeff Stevenson coping with a dodgy alternator or gearbox or whatever that he had not stopped to think about the van’s next journey; it fell a little short of Criminal Mastermind standard for the getaway vehicle to be on its last legs. He was sweating now, and still barely seven miles from the bloody church. If that vicar had decided to get in his car and come looking for him, Michael could be in trouble. He tried to weigh up calmly the chances of the vicar taking such direct action against the more conventional ringing for the police and waiting at the church for their arrival. But all his practical calculations were fading in importance. The more comforting thought of going to bed and staying there (should he ever reach home) was tugging at him, a wanton and persistent desire for oblivion that Michael dreaded, but which his mind was now embracing like an old, disgraceful, but already forgiven friend.
    He fought the desire, and two thoughts surfaced. The first was that the van would never make it back to Bath, and the second was that it would be safer to get it off the road than to have it break down, in full view of any passing vicars, at the side of the road. Michael roused himself, and a couple of miles farther on steered the van into the forecourt of a petrol station and garage. He drove in under the canopied petrol pumps, past ranks of second-hand cars for sale, and parked at the far end next to some sheds, where a couple of lads in boiler suits were working on cars. Just in time, Michael remembered who he was for the purposes of getting the van fixed, and bounced out of the driver’s seat with an attempt at Jeff Stevenson’s smile on his face.
    He was not sure that the young man in overalls with the strange curtain haircut really understood what a curate was, not even after he had explained it to him, and pleaded that he had to get the van back on the road at once because he had ‘things to deliver to some elderly people’. (It was not much of a story but there was no time to embellish.) What the curtain-haired mechanic did know, and was telling Michael, was that no way could they sort it today.
    â€˜No, way, booked solid with MOTs and Terry’s behind anyway,’ he said, motioning with his head towards a pair of legs poking out from under a car. ‘Booked up solid. We don’t do emergencies. You’d be better getting it home and sorting it there, mate,’ he added.
    Michael smiled at the bad news, as he imagined a curate would, and could not help feeling mildly scandalised at such a lack of respect for the clergy. He wished he were wearing a dog collar. Over the youth’s shoulder he watched a pregnant woman get out of a car that had just parked on the forecourt. She stood by the open passenger door and followed with her eyes as her husband, or boyfriend more like, slammed the driver’s door and stalked off to the garage shop. She looked uncomfortable, unhappy in her clothes and slightly ashamed, and Michael, only half listening to the mechanic, understood with a stab of recognition that she felt these things whether she was pregnant or not. He must have been staring, for she seemed to have caught his eye and now, to his horror, she was waddling over to him. He turned his attention back to the mechanic.
    â€˜Number’s in the shop if you wanna call them,’ the mechanic said, turning to go. He added over his shoulder,