CLEAN BREAK
Val McDermid

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995

Copyright © Val McDermid 1995

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover photographs © Stephen Mulcahey / Trevillion Images (woman, background), © Shutterstock.com (sky)

Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008344924

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2019 ISBN: 9780007327553

Version: 2019-10-15

Praise for Val McDermid

‘The queen of crime is still at the top of her game’

INDEPENDENT

‘No one can tell a story like she can’

DAILY EXPRESS

‘One of today’s most accomplished crime writers’

LITERARY REVIEW

‘McDermid remains unrivalled’

OBSERVER

‘Incredibly suspenseful’

SUNDAY MIRROR

‘This is crime writing of the very highest order’

THE TIMES

‘A gripping page-turner’

METRO

‘A terrific read’

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Dedication

To Chelsea fans everywhere,

in deepest sympathy;

God knows, you need something to

cheer you up.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Val McDermid

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By Val McDermid

About the Publisher

1

I don’t know much about art, but I know what I don’t like. I don’t like paintings that go walkabout after I’ve set up the security system. I especially don’t like them when I’ve packed my business partner off to the Antipodes for two months with the calm assurance that I can handle things while he’s gone.

The painting in question was a small Monet. When I say small, I mean in size, not in value. It would barely cover the hole my lover Richard punched in the wall of his living room in a moment of drunken ecstasy when Eric Cantona clinched the double for Manchester United, but it was worth a good dozen times as much as both our adjoining bungalows put together. Which, incidentally, they never will be. The painting depicted an apple tree in blossom and not a lot else. You could tell it was an apple tree; according to our office manager Shelley, that’s because it was painted quite early on in Monet’s career, before his eyesight began to go and his whole world started to look like an Impressionist painting. Imagine, a whole artistic movement emanating from one bloke’s duff eyesight. Amazing what you can learn from the Open University. Shelley started a degree course last year, and what she doesn’t know about the history of art I’m certainly not qualified to uncover. It’s not one of the course options in Teach Yourself Private Dicking.

The Monet in question, called, imaginatively enough, Apple Tree in Blossom, belonged to Henry Naismith, Lord of the Manor of Birchfield with Polver. Henry to his friends, and, thanks to John Major’s classless society, to mere tradespeople like me. There were no airs and graces with Henry, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hide his thoughts and feelings behind his charming façade. That’s how I knew it was serious when I picked up the phone to his perfect vowels that September morning. ‘Kate? Henry Naismith,’ he started. I leaned back in my chair, expecting the usual cheery chat about his recent exploits before we got down to the nuts and bolts. Not today. ‘Can you come over to the house?’ he asked.

I straightened up. This sounded like the kind of start to a Monday morning that makes me wish I’d stayed in bed. ‘When did you have in mind, Henry?’

‘As soon as you can. We ah … we had a burglary in the night and a chap from the police is popping round for more details. He’ll want to know things about the security system that I probably won’t be able to answer, and I’d be awfully grateful if you could take a run over.’ All this barely pausing for breath, never mind giving me the opportunity to ask questions.

I didn’t have to check the diary to know that I had nothing more pressing than routine inquiries into the whereabouts of a company chairman whose directors were rather eager to ask him some questions about the balance sheet. ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘What’s missing?’ I prayed it was going to be the TV and the video.

No such luck. There was silence on the end of the phone. I thought I could hear Henry drawing in a deep breath. ‘The Monet,’ he said tersely.

My stomach clenched. Birchfield Place was the first security system I’d designed and watched installed. My partner Bill Mortensen is the security expert, and he’d checked my work, but it was still down to me. ‘I’m leaving now,’ I said.

I drove out through the southern suburbs to the motorway on automatic pilot. Even the inevitable, ubiquitous roadworks didn’t impinge. I was too busy reviewing Mortensen and Brannigan’s involvement with Henry Naismith. When I’d seen his original appointment in the office diary, I’d thought Shelley was at the wind-up, especially since I’d been having one of my periodic antimonarchy rants only the day before, triggered by the heir to the throne asserting that what was wrong with the country was not enough Shakespeare and smacking of small children. Once I realized the appointment was for real, I’d expected some chinless wonder with the sort of inbred stupidity that’s only found among the aristocracy and the population of isolated mountain villages. I couldn’t have been more wrong, on both counts.

Henry Naismith was in his late twenties, built like an Australian lifeguard with the blonde hair to match and with more than enough chin to provide a boxer with a target. According to Who’s Who, his only listed recreations were sailing and ocean yacht racing, something I could have guessed for myself the first time I saw him. He had sailor’s eyes, always looking beyond me to some distant horizon only he could see. His face was burnished a ruddy brown by wind and sun, apart from the white creases round those dark blue eyes. He’d been educated at Marlborough and New College, Oxford. Even though I’d grown up there, I didn’t think his city of dreaming spires and mine of car factories would give us much in common to reminisce about. He had the same clipped accent as Prince Charles, but in spite of that and everything else, I liked him. I liked anybody who was prepared to get off their backsides and graft. And Henry could graft, no messing. Anyone who tells you yacht racing is a holiday doesn’t know an anchor from a wanker.

The newspaper archive database that we use had coloured in the outline. Henry had inherited his title, a black and white Tudor manor house in Cheshire, a clutch of valuable paintings and not a lot of readies a couple of years before when his parents had been caught in an avalanche in some chic Alpine resort. Henry had been sailing in the Caribbean at the time. Life’s a bitch, and then you marry one. Only Henry hadn’t. Married, that is. He was right up there in the gossip columnists’ lists of eligible bachelors. Maybe not in the top twenty, on account of the lack of dosh, but the good looks and the tasty gaff put him in the running nevertheless.

Henry had come to us precisely because of the serious deficiencies in the cashflow area. Because his father hadn’t anticipated dying at the age of forty-seven, he hadn’t got round to the sort of arrangements the landed gentry usually make to avoid the Exchequer getting their mitts on the widow’s mite. Having done his sums, Henry realized the only way he was going to be able to hang on to the house and the art collection and still spend half the year at the helm of a racing yacht was to bite the bullet and open Birchfield Place to the day-trippers.

The great British public are notoriously sticky-fingered on the stately home circuit. You wouldn’t think it to look at the coach-loads of little old ladies that roll up on bank holidays, but they’ll walk off with anything that isn’t actually nailed down, and one or two things that are. This makes insurance companies even more twitchy than usual when it comes to providing cover, which in turn makes the security business a nice little earner for private investigation agencies like us. These days, security makes up about a quarter of our annual turnover, which is why Bill and I had decided I needed to learn that side of the business.

It’s impossible to make any building impregnable, unless you brick up the doors and windows, which makes it hard to get a decent light to do your petit point. The best you can do is make it obvious that you’ve made it as hard as possible to get in, so the prospective burglar goes away discouraged and turns over the next manor down the road. To make sure I got it right, as well as picking Bill’s brains I’d consulted my old friend Dennis, himself a recovering burglar. ‘You know the one deterrent, Brannigan?’ Dennis had demanded.

‘Heat-seeking thermonuclear missiles?’ I’d hazarded.

‘A dog. You get a big Alsatian, give him the run of the place and your professional thief doesn’t want to know. When I was at it, there wasn’t an alarm system in the world that I wouldn’t have a pop at. But dogs? Forget it.’

Unfortunately, clients aren’t too keen on having Rottweilers running around on their priceless Oriental carpets. They’re too worried about finding dog hairs – or worse – on the Hepplewhite. So Birchfield Place had relied, like most stately homes, on a state-of-the-art mix of hard-wired detectors on doors and windows, passive infrared detectors at all key points and pressure-activated alert pads in front of any items of significance. Given the fail-safes I’d put in place, I couldn’t for the life of me see how anyone could have got through my system undetected without setting off enough bells to drive Quasimodo completely round the twist.

I turned off the motorway and headed into the depths of the leafy Cheshire stockbroker, soap star and football player belt. As usual, I almost missed the gap in the tall hedgerow that marked the end of Birchfield Place’s drive. The trippers’ entrance was round the back, but I had no intention of parking in a field half a mile from the house. I yanked the wheel round just in time and turned on to a narrow ribbon of road curling between fields where placid sheep didn’t even glance up from their chewing as I passed. I always feel slightly edgy out in the country; I don’t know the names of anything and very quickly develop anxiety about where my next meal is coming from. Give me an urban landscape where no sensible sheep would think for even a fleeting moment it might safely graze. The field gave way to thick coppices of assorted trees that looked like they’d been on the planet longer than my Granny Brannigan. Then, suddenly, the drive took a sharp right-hand bend and I shot out of the trees to a full frontal view of Birchfield Place.

Built by some distant Naismith who had done some unmentionable service to his monarch, the house looked as if it should be on a postcard or a jigsaw. The passage of time had skewed its black beams and white panels just enough to make sure no self-respecting building society would grant you a mortgage on it. It never looked real to me.

I pulled up beside an anonymous Ford which I assumed belonged to the police on account of the radio. A peacock screamed in the distance, more shattering to my composure than any amount of midnight sirens. I only knew it was a peacock because Henry had told me the first time one had made me jump out of my skin. Before I could reach out for the ancient bell-pull, the door swung open and Henry smiled apologetically at me. ‘I really appreciate this, Kate,’ he said.

‘All part of the service,’ I said reassuringly. ‘The police here?’

‘An Inspector Mellor from the Art Squad,’ Henry said as he led the way across the inner courtyard to the Great Hall, where the Impressionist paintings hung incongruously. ‘He doesn’t say much.’

We passed through the Hall Porch, whose solid oak door looked like it had taken a few blows from a heavy sledge-hammer. At the door of the Great Hall, I put out a hand to delay Henry. ‘So what exactly happened?’

Henry rubbed his jaw. ‘The alarm woke me. Just before three, according to the clock. I checked the main panel. It said Hall Porch, Great Hall door, Great Hall and pressure pads. I phoned the police to confirm it wasn’t a false alarm, and ran downstairs. When I got to the hall, there was nobody in sight and the Monet was gone. They must have been in and out again in less than five minutes.’ He sighed. ‘They obviously knew what they were looking for.’

‘Didn’t the beeper on the courtyard security lights waken you?’ I asked, puzzled.

Henry looked sheepish. ‘I turned the beeper off. We’ve been having a bit of a problem with foxes, and I got fed up with being wakened up night after night.’ I said nothing. I hoped the look on my face said it for me. ‘I know, I know,’ Henry said. ‘I don’t think Inspector Mellor’s overly impressed either. Shall we?’

I followed him into the hall. It was a surprisingly bright room for the period. It was two storeys high, with a whitewashed vaulted roof and gallery for Blondel unplugged. The wall that gave on to the inner courtyard had a couple of feet of wood panelling above floor level, then it was hundreds of tiny leaded panes of glass to a height of about eight feet. The outer wall’s panelling was about four feet high before it gave way to more windows. I didn’t envy the window cleaner. At the far end was a raised dais where Henry’s distant ancestors had sat and lorded it over the plebs and railed against the iniquities of the window tax. It was around the dais that the paintings hung. A tall, thin man was stooped like a crane over the space where the Monet used to be. As we entered, he turned towards us and fixed me with a glum stare.

Henry performed the introductions while Inspector Mellor and I weighed each other up. He looked more patrician than Henry, with a high forehead over a beaky nose and a small, cupid’s bow mouth. At his request, I ran him through the security arrangements. He nodded noncommittally as he listened, then said, ‘Not a lot more you could have done, short of having CCTV.’

‘Professional job, yeah?’ I said.

‘No doubt about it. They obviously chose their target, cased the place thoroughly, then did a quick in and out. No identifiable forensic traces, according to my colleagues who turned up after the event.’ Mellor looked as depressed as I felt.

‘Does it put you in mind of anyone in particular?’ I asked.

Mellor shrugged. ‘I’ve seen jobs like this, but we haven’t managed an arrest on any of them yet.’

Henry closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Is there any chance of getting my Monet back?’ he asked wearily.

‘If I’m honest, sir, not a lot. Thieves like this only take what they’ve already got a market for,’ Mellor said. ‘Sooner or later, we’ll get a lucky break and we’ll nail them. It could be on this case. What I’d like to do is send a couple of my lads over when your staff are next in. These thieves will have been round the house more than once. It’s just possible one of your attendants noticed repeat visitors.’

‘They’ll be in at half past nine on Thursday,’ Henry said. ‘The house is closed to the public on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, excepting bank holidays.’

Mellor turned away and spent a few minutes studying the Boudin, the Renoir and the two Pissarros that flanked the space where the Monet had been. ‘Personally,’ he said softly, ‘I’d have gone for the Boudin.’

Not me. The Monet would have looked much better with my colour scheme. But maybe Inspector Mellor’s living room was blue-based rather than green, cream and peach. While Henry escorted Mellor off the premises, I mooched around the hall, wondering what to do next. Mellor’s plan to interrogate the staff had disposed of the only idea I had for pursuing any kind of investigation. I slumped in the attendant’s chair by the door and stared down the hall at the wires sticking out of the ancient panelling where the Monet had been attached to the alarm system and the wall. Inspiration failed to strike; but then, nothing does in this country any more.

When Henry came back, I forced myself upright and said brightly, ‘Well, Henry, Mellor didn’t sound too optimistic about what the forces of law and order can achieve. Looks like it’s down to me to get your Monet back.’

Henry tugged at the lobe of his ear and looked uncomfortable. ‘Is there much point, Kate?’ he asked. ‘I mean, if the specialists don’t know where to start looking, how can you expect to succeed?’

‘People have a tendency to tell me things they don’t necessarily want to share with the police. And that includes insurance companies. I also have more unorthodox sources of information. I’m sure I can develop leads the police will never encounter.’ It was all true. Well, all except the last sentence.

‘I don’t know, Kate. These are professional thieves. Looking at the state of the porch door, they’re clearly quite comfortable with a considerable degree of violence. I’m not sure I’m entirely happy about you pursuing them,’ he said dubiously.

‘Henry, I might only be five foot three, but I can look after myself,’ I said, trying not to think about the last occasion where I’d told the men in my life the same damn lie. The scar on my head was just a distant twinge when I brushed my hair now, but the scar inside went a lot deeper. I hadn’t exactly lost my bottle; I’d just acquired an overdose of wariness.

‘Besides,’ I carried on, seeing his look of frank disbelief, ‘you’re entitled to the first thirty hours of my time for free, according to your contract.’

‘Ah. Yes. Of course.’ His reserve was nailed firmly in place again, the eyes locked on the middle distance.

‘Apart from anything else, me nosing around will convince your insurance company that you’re not trying it on,’ I added.

His eyes narrowed, like a man who’s seen a bloody great wave heading straight for his bows. ‘Why should they think that?’ he said sharply.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time somebody’s set up their own burglary for the insurance,’ I said. ‘It happens all the time round where I live.’ A frown flickered across Henry’s face. ‘There’s nothing you want to tell me, Henry, is there?’ I added apprehensively.

‘There’s no earthly reason why I should arrange this,’ he said stiffly. ‘The police and the insurance company are welcome to check the books. We’re making a profit here. House admissions are up on last year, the gift shop has increased its turnover by twenty-five per cent and the Great Hall is booked for banquets almost every Saturday between now and February. The only thing I’m concerned about is that I’m due to leave for Australia in three weeks and I’d like the matter resolved by then.’

‘I’d better get weaving, in that case,’ I said mildly.

I drove back to Manchester with a lot on my mind. I don’t like secrets. It’s one of the reasons I became a private eye in the first place. I especially don’t like them when they’re ones my client is keeping from me.

2

The atrium of Fortissimus Insurance told me all I needed to know about where Henry’s massive premiums were going. The company had relocated in Manchester from the City, doubtless tempted by the wodges of cash being handed out by various inner city initiative programmes. They’d opted for a site five minutes’ walk down Oxford Road from the rather less palatial offices of Mortensen and Brannigan. Handy, we’d thought, if they ever needed any freelance investigating, though if they had done, it hadn’t been our door they’d come knocking on. They probably preferred firms with the same steel-and-glass taste in interior decor, and prices to match.

Like a lot of new office complexes in Manchester, Fortissimus had smacked a brand new modern building behind a grandiose Victorian façade. In their case, they’d acquired the front of what had been a rather grand hotel, its marble and granite buffed to a shine more sparkling than its native century had ever seen. The entrance hall retained some of the original character, but the glassed-in atrium beyond the security desk was one hundred per cent fin de quite another siècle. The pair of receptionists had clearly absorbed their customer care course. Their grooming was immaculate, their smiles would have made a crocodile proud, and the mid-Atlantic twang in their ‘Good morning, how may I help you?’ stopped short of making my ears bleed. Needless to say, they were as misleading as the building’s façade. After I’d given them my card, asked for Michael Haroun and told them his department, I still had to kick my heels for ten minutes while they ran their debriefing on the weekend’s romantic encounters, rang Mr Haroun, filled out a visitor’s pass and told me Mr Haroun would be waiting for me at the lift.

I emerged on the fifth floor to find they’d been economical with the truth. There was no Mr Haroun, and no one behind the desk marked ‘Claims Inquiries’ either. Before I could decide which direction to head in, a door down the hallway opened and someone backed out, saying, ‘And I want to compare those other cases. Karen, dig out the files, there’s a love.’

He swivelled round on the balls of his feet and déjà vu swept over me. Confused, I just stood and stared as he walked towards me. When he got closer, he held out his hand and said, ‘Ms Brannigan? Michael Haroun.’

For a moment, I was speechless and paralysed. I must have been gawping like a starving goldfish, for he frowned and said, ‘You are Ms Brannigan?’ Then, suspicion appeared in his liquid sloe eyes. ‘What’s the matter? Am I not what you expected? I can assure you, I am head of the claims division.’

Power returned to my muscles and I hurriedly reached out and shook his hand. ‘Sorry,’ I stammered. ‘Yes, I … Sorry, you’re the spitting image of … somebody,’ I stumbled on. ‘I was just taken aback, that’s all.’

He gave me a look that told me he’d already decided I was either a racist pig or I didn’t have all my chairs at home. His smile was strained as he said, ‘I didn’t realize I had a doppelgänger. Shall we go through to my office and talk?’

Wordlessly, I nodded and followed his broad shoulders back down the hall. He moved like a man who played a lot of sport. It wasn’t hard to imagine him in the same role as I’d first seen his likeness.

When I was about fourteen, we’d gone on a school trip to the British Museum. I’d been so engrossed in the Rosetta Stone, I’d got separated from the rest of the group and wandered round for ages looking for them. That’s how I stumbled on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. As soon as I saw them, I understood for the first time in my life that it wasn’t entirely bullshit when critics said that great art speaks directly to us. These enormous carvings of the lion hunt didn’t so much speak as resonate inside my chest like the bass note of an organ. I fell in love with the archers and the charioteers, their shoulder-length hair curled as tight as poodle fur, their profiles keen as sparrowhawks. I must have spent an hour there that day. Every time I went to London on shopping trips after that, I always found an excuse to slip away from my mates as they trawled Oxford Street so I could nip to the museum for a quick tryst with King Ashurbanipal. If Aslan had come along and breathed life into the carving of the Assyrian king, he would have walked off the wall looking just like Michael Haroun, his glowing skin the colour of perfect roast potatoes. OK, so he’d swapped the tunic for a Paul Smith shirt, Italian silk tie and chinos, but you don’t make much progress up the corporate ladder wearing a mini-skirt unless you’re a woman. Just one look at Michael Haroun and I was an adoring adolescent all over again, Richard a distant memory.

I followed Haroun meekly into his office. The opulence of the atrium hadn’t quite made it this high. The furniture was functional rather than designed to impress. At least he overlooked the recently renovated Rochdale Canal (European funding), though the view of the Canal Café must have been a depressing reminder of the rest of the world enjoying itself while he was working. We settled down on the L-shaped sofa at right angles to each other, my adolescent urge to jump on him held in check by the low coffee table between us. Haroun dumped the file he’d been carrying on the table. ‘I hear good things about your agency, Ms Brannigan,’ he said. From his tone, I gathered he couldn’t quite square what he’d heard with my moonstruck gaze.

I forced myself to get a grip and remember I was twice the age of that romantic teenager. ‘You’ve obviously been talking to the clients who haven’t been burgled,’ I said in something approaching my normal voice.

‘No security system is burglar-proof,’ he said gloomily.

‘But some are better than others. And ours are better than most.’

‘That’s certainly how it looked when we first agreed the premium. It’s one of the factors we consider when we set the rate. That and how high-risk the area is.’

‘You don’t have to tell me. My postcode is M13,’ I complained.

He pulled a face and sucked his breath in sharply, the way plumbers are trained to do when they look at your central heating system. ‘And I thought you security consultants made a good living.’

‘It’s not all a hellhole,’ I said sharply.

He held his hands up and grinned. I felt the years slide away again and struggled to stay in the present. ‘Henry Naismith called to say you’d be coming in. He faxed me a preliminary claim,’ he said.

‘I’m investigating the theft on Henry’s behalf, and he thought it might be helpful if we had a chat,’ I said briskly.

‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘Of course, one of our staff investigators will also be looking into it, but I see no reason why we can’t talk to you as well. Can you run it past me?’

I went through everything I’d learned from Henry and Inspector Mellor. Haroun took notes. ‘Just as a matter of interest,’ I finished up, ‘Inspector Mellor mentioned they’d had other burglaries with a similar style. Were any of them insured with you?’

Haroun nodded. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Off the top of my head, I’d say three others in the last nine months. And that’s where we have a problem.’

‘We as in you and me, or we as in Fortissimus?’

‘We as in Mr Naismith and Fortissimus.’

‘Does that mean you’re not going to tell me about it?’

Haroun stared down at the file. ‘Client confidentiality. You should understand that.’

‘I wouldn’t be here if Henry didn’t trust me. Why don’t you give him a call and confirm that you can tell me anything you would tell him? That way, I get it from the horse’s mouth rather than via Chinese whispers.’

His straight brows twitched. ‘Even if he agreed, it wouldn’t be fair of me to have the conversation with you before I have it with him.’

‘So get Henry over. I don’t mind waiting.’ As long as I can keep looking at you, I added mentally.

Haroun inclined his head, conceding. ‘I’ll call him,’ he said.

He was gone for the best part of ten minutes. Instead of fishing a computer magazine out of my shoulder bag, or dictating a report into my microcassette recorder, I daydreamed. What about is nobody’s business but mine.

When Haroun came back, he looked serious. ‘I’ve explained the situation to Mr Naismith, and he was quite insistent that I should discuss the ramifications with you.’

I was too well brought up to say, ‘I told you so,’ but according to Richard I’ve cornered the market in smug smiles. I hoped I wasn’t displaying one of them right then. ‘So, tell me about it,’ I said, locking eyes.

Haroun held my gaze for a long few seconds before turning back to his file. ‘As I said, we’ve had other incidents very similar to this. These thefts have all been from similar properties – medium-sized period properties that are open to the public. In each case, the thieves have broken in as near to the target as they could get. In a couple of cases, they’ve smashed through a window, but in a property like Birchfield Place, that obviously wasn’t appropriate. They ignore the alarms, go straight to the object they’re after, whip it off the wall or out of its case and get out. We estimate the longest they’ve been inside a property is five minutes. In most cases, that’s barely enough time to alert the police or the security guards, never mind get anyone to the site.’

‘Very professional,’ I commented. ‘And?’

‘We’re very unhappy about it. It’s costing us a lot of money. Normally, we’d simply have to bite the bullet and increase premiums accordingly.’

‘I hear the sound of a “but” straining at the leash,’ I said.

‘You have very acute hearing, Ms Brannigan.’

‘Kate,’ I smiled.

‘Well, Kate,’ he said, echoing the smile, ‘here comes the “but”. The first of our clients to be robbed in this way was targeted again three months later. Following that, my bosses took a policy decision that in future, after stately homes had been robbed once, we would refuse to reinsure unless and until their security was increased to an acceptable level.’

He might have looked like an ancient Assyrian, but Michael Haroun sounded exactly like a twentieth-century insurance man. We won’t make a drama out of a crisis; we’ll make a full-scale tragic grand opera. Pay your spiralling premiums for ten years good as gold, and then when you really need us, we’ll be gone like thieves in the night. Nothing like it for killing adolescent fantasies stone dead. ‘And what exactly is your definition of “an acceptable level”?’ I asked, hoping he was receiving the cold sarcasm I was sending.

‘Obviously, it varies from case to case.’

‘In Henry’s case then?’

Haroun shrugged. ‘I’d have to get one of our assessors out there to make an accurate judgement.’

‘Go on, stick your neck out. I know that comes as easy to an insurance man as it does to an ostrich, but give it a go.’ I kept my voice light with an effort. This was my security system he was damning.

He scowled, obviously needled. ‘Based on past experience, I would suggest a security guard on a 24-hour basis in the rooms where the most valuable items are sited.’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You really believe in getting shut of clients who have the temerity to get robbed, don’t you?’

‘On the contrary. We want to ensure that neither we nor our clients are exposed to unacceptable losses,’ he said defensively.

‘The cost of that kind of security could make the difference between profit and loss to an operation the size of Henry’s. You must know that.’

Haroun spread his hands out and shrugged. ‘He can always put up the admission charges if it’s that crucial to the economics of running the place.’

‘So you’re saying that as of now Birchfield Place is uninsured?’

‘No, no, you misunderstand me. But we will retain a portion of the payout on the stolen property until the security levels are rendered acceptable. Kate, we do care about our clients, but we have a business to run too, you must see that.’ His eyes pleaded, and my fury melted. This was bad for my business, so I forced myself to my feet.

‘We’ll keep in touch,’ I said.

‘I’d like that,’ he said, getting to his feet and nailing me with the sincerity in his voice.

As we walked back to the lift, my brain checked in again. ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘How come I haven’t been reading about these raids in the papers?’

Haroun smiled the thin smile of a lizard. ‘We like to keep things like this as low profile as possible,’ he said. ‘It does our clients’ business no good at all if the public gain the impression that the choicest exhibits in their collections are no longer there. The thefts have been quite widely scattered, and the policy has been only to release the information to local press, and even then to keep it very low key. You know the sort of thing: “Thieves broke in to Bloggs Manor last night, but were disturbed before they could remove the Manor’s priceless collection of bottle tops.”’

‘You just omit to mention that they had it away on their toes with the Constable,’ I said cynically.

‘Something like that,’ he agreed. The lift pinged and I stepped inside as the doors opened. ‘Nice talking to you, Kate.’

‘We must do it again some time,’ I said before the doors cut him off from me. The day was looking up. Not only had I met Michael Haroun, but I knew where to go next.

I’m convinced that the security staff at the Manchester Evening Chronicle think I work there. Maybe it’s because I know the door combination. Or maybe it’s because I’m in and out of the building with a confident wave several times a week. Either way, it’s handy to be able to stroll in and out at will. Their canteen is cheap and cheerful, a convenient place to refuel when I’m at the opposite end of town from the office. That day, though, I wasn’t after a bacon butty and a mug of tea. My target was Alexis Lee, the Chronicle’s crime correspondent and my best buddy.

I walked briskly down the newsroom, no one paying any attention. I could probably walk off with the entire computer network before anyone would notice or try to stop me. Mind you, if I’d laid a finger on the newsdesk TV, I’d have been lynched before I’d got five yards.

I knew Alexis was at her desk. I couldn’t actually see her through the wall of luxuriant foliage that surrounds her corner of the office. But the spiral of smoke climbing towards the air-conditioning vent was a clear indicator that she was there. When they installed the computer terminals at the Chronicle, the management tried to make the newsroom a no-smoking zone. The policy lasted about five minutes. Separating journalists from nicotine is about as easy as separating a philandering government minister from his job.

I stuck my head round the screen of variegated green stuff. Alexis was leaning back in her seat, feet propped up on the rim of her wastepaper bin, dabbing her cigarette vaguely at her mouth as she frowned at her terminal. I checked out her anarchic black hair. Its degree of chaos is a fairly accurate barometer of her stress levels. The more uptight she gets, the more she runs her hands through it. Today, it looked like I could risk interrupting her without getting a rich gobful of Scouse abuse.

‘I thought they paid you to work,’ I said, moving through the gap in the leaves into her jungle cubbyhole.

She swung round and grinned. ‘All right, KB?’ she rasped in her whisky-and-cigarettes voice.

‘I think I’m in love, but apart from that, I’m fine.’ I pulled up the other chair.

Alexis snorted and went into Marlene Dietrich growl. ‘Falling in love again, never wanted to,’ she groaned. ‘Though I’m ninety-two, I can’t help it. I’ve told you before, it’s about time you got shut of the wimp.’ She and Richard maintain this pretence of hostility. He’s always giving her a bad time for being a siren chaser, and she pretends to despise him for devoting his life to the trivia of rock journalism. But underneath, I know there’s a lot of affection and respect.

‘Who said anything about Richard?’ I asked innocently.

‘And there’s me thinking you two were getting things sorted out between you,’ she sighed. ‘So who’s the lucky man? I mean, I’m assuming that you haven’t seen the light, and it is a fella.’

‘His name’s Michael Haroun. But don’t worry, it’s only lust. It’ll pass as soon as I have a cold shower.’

‘So what does he do, this sex object?’

I pulled a face. ‘You’re going to laugh,’ I said.

‘Probably,’ Alexis agreed. ‘So you might as well get it over with.’

‘He’s in insurance.’

I’d been right. She did laugh, a deep, throaty guffaw that shook the leaves. I half expected an Amazonian parrot to fly out from among the undergrowth and join in. ‘You really know how to pick them, don’t you?’ Alexis wheezed.

‘You don’t pick sex objects, they just happen,’ I said frostily. ‘Anyway, nothing’s going to happen, so it’s all academic anyway. Things between me and Richard might have seen better days, but it’s nothing we can’t fix.’

‘So you don’t want me to call Chris and get her to build a brick wall across the conservatory?’

Alexis’s girlfriend Chris is the architect who designed the conservatory that runs along the back of the two houses Richard and I live in, linking them yet allowing us our own space. It had been the perfect solution for two people who want to be together but whose lifestyles are about as compatible as Burton and Taylor. ‘Restrain yourself, Alexis. I’m not about to let my hormones club my brain into submission.’

‘Is that it, then? You come in here, interrupting the creative process, just to tell me nothing’s happening?’

‘No, I only gave you the gossip so you wouldn’t complain that I was only here to exploit you,’ I said.

Alexis blew out a cloud of smoke and a sigh. ‘All right, what do you want to know?’

‘Is that any way to speak to a valued contact who’s brought you a story?’ I asked innocently.

Alexis tipped forward in her seat and crushed out her cigarette in an already brimming ashtray. ‘Why do I have the feeling that this is the kind of gift that takes more assembling than an Airfix kit?’

3

I left Alexis to hassle the police of six counties in search of the story we both knew was lurking somewhere and headed back to Mortensen and Brannigan. Shelley was busy on the phone, so I went straight through to my office. I stopped in my tracks on the threshold. I heard Shelley finish her call and swung round to glare at her. ‘What exactly is that?’ I demanded.

She didn’t look up from the note she was writing. ‘What does it look like? It’s a weeping fig.’

‘It’s fake,’ I said through gritted teeth.

‘Silk,’ she corrected me absently.

‘And that makes it OK?’

Shelley finally looked up. ‘Every six weeks you buy a healthy, thriving, living plant. Five weeks later, it looks like locust heaven. The weeping fig will have paid for itself within six months, and even you can’t kill a silk plant,’ she said in matter-of-fact tones that made my fingers itch to get round her throat.

‘If I wanted a schneid plant, I’d have bought one,’ I said.

‘You sound …’

‘“Like one of my kids”,’ I finished, mimicking her calm voice. ‘You don’t understand, do you? It’s the challenge. One day, I’m going to find a plant that runs riot for me.’

‘By which time the planet will be a desert,’ Shelley said, tossing her head so that the beads she had plaited into her hair jangled like a bag of marbles.

I didn’t dignify that with a reply. I simply marched into my office, picked up the weeping fig and dropped it next to her desk. ‘You like it so much, you live with it,’ I said, stomping back to my office. If she was going to treat me like one of her teenage kids, I might as well enjoy the tantrum. I pulled the brownish remains of the asparagus fern out of the bin and defiantly dumped it on the windowsill.

Before I could do anything more, my phone rang. ‘What now?’ I barked at Shelley.

‘Call for you. A gentleman who refuses to give his name.’

‘Did you tell him we don’t do matrimonials?’

‘Of course I did. I’m not the one who’s premenstrual.’

I bit back a snarl as Shelley put the call through. ‘Kate Brannigan,’ I said. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I need your help, Ms Brannigan. It’s an extremely confidential matter. Brian Chalmers from PharmAce recommended you.’

‘We’re noted for our client confidentiality,’ I reeled off. ‘As you doubtless know if you’ve spoken to Brian. But I do need to know who I’m talking to.’

There was a moment’s hesitation, long enough for me to hear sufficient background noise to realize my caller was speaking from a bar. ‘My name’s Trevor Kerr. I think the company I run is being blackmailed, and I need to talk to you about it.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Why don’t I come round to your office this afternoon and have a chat about it?’

‘Christ, no,’ Kerr said, clearly alarmed. ‘The last thing I want is for the blackmailers to find out I’m talking to a private detective.’

One of the ones that watches too many movies. That was all I needed to make my day. ‘No problem. You come to me.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You see, I think they’re watching me.’

Just when you thought it was safe to pick up the phone … ‘I know how disturbing threats can be when you’re not accustomed to being on the receiving end,’ I tried. ‘Perhaps we could meet on neutral ground. Say in the lounge of the Midland?’

The reassuring tone hadn’t worked. ‘No,’ Kerr said urgently. ‘Not in public. It’s got to look completely normal. Have you got a boyfriend, Ms Brannigan?’

I should have put the phone down then and there, I realized four hours later as I tried to explain to Richard that a crumpled cream linen suit might be fine for going on the razz with Mick Hucknall, but there was no way it would help him to pass as a member of the Round Table. ‘Bloody hell, Brannigan,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m old enough to dress myself.’

I ignored him and raked through his wardrobe, coming up with a fairly sober double-breasted Italian suit in dark navy. ‘This is more like it,’ I said.

Richard scowled. ‘I only wear that to funerals.’

I threw it on the bed. ‘Not true. You wore it to your cousin’s wedding.’

‘You forgotten her husband already? Anyway, I don’t see why you’re making me get dressed up like a tailor’s dummy. After the last time I helped you out, you swore you’d never let me near your work again,’ he whinged as he shrugged out of the linen jacket.

‘Believe me, if Bill wasn’t out of the country, I wouldn’t be asking you,’ I said grimly. ‘Besides, not even you can turn a Round Table treasure hunt and potluck supper into a life-threatening situation.’

Richard froze. ‘That’s a bit below the belt, Brannigan,’ he said bitterly.

‘Yeah, well, I’m going next door to find something suitably naff in my own wardrobe. Come through when you’re ready.’

I walked down Richard’s hall and cut through his living room to the conservatory. Back in my own house, I allowed myself a few moments of deep breathing to regain my equilibrium. A few months before, I had enlisted Richard’s help in what should have been a straightforward case of car fraud. Only, as they say in all the worst police dramas, it all went pear-shaped. Spectacularly so. Richard ended up behind bars, his life in jeopardy, and I nearly got myself killed tracking down the real villains. As if that hadn’t been enough, I’d also been landed with looking after his eight-year-old son Davy. And me with the maternal instincts of a Liquorice Allsort.

The physical scars had healed pretty quickly, but the real damage was to our relationship. You’d think he’d have been grateful that I sorted everything out. Instead, he’d been distant, sarcastic and out a lot. It hadn’t been grim all the time, of course. If it had been, I’d have knocked it on the head weeks earlier. We still managed to have fun together, and sometimes for nearly a week things would be just like they used to be; lots of laughs, a few nights out, communal Chinese takeaways and spectacular sex. Then the clouds would descend, usually when I was up to the eyeballs in some demanding job.

This was the first time since our run-in with the drug warlords that I’d asked Richard to do anything connected with work. I’d argued with Trevor Kerr that there must be a less complicated way for us to meet, but Clever Trevor was convinced that he was right to take precautions. I nearly asked him why he was hiring a dog and still barking himself, but I bit my tongue. Business hadn’t been so great lately that I could afford to antagonize new clients before they were actually signed up.

With a sigh, I walked into my own bedroom and considered the options. Richard says I don’t have a wardrobe, just a collection of disguises. Looking at the array of clothes in front of me, I was tempted to agree with him. I pulled out a simple tailored dress in rough russet silk with a matching bolero jacket. I’d bought it while I’d been bodyguarding a Hollywood actress who was over here for a week to record an episode in a Granada drama series. She’d taken one look at the little black number I’d turned up in on the first evening and silently written me a cheque for five hundred pounds to go and buy ‘something a little more chic, hon’. I’m not proud; I took the money and shopped. Alexis and I hadn’t had so much fun in years.

I stepped into the dress and reached round to zip it up. Richard got there before me. He leaned forward and kissed me behind the ear. I turned to gooseflesh and shivered. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Bad day. Let’s go and see how the other half lives.’

The address Trevor Kerr had given me was in Whitefield, a suburb of mostly semis just beyond the perennial roadworks on the M62. It’s an area that’s largely a colony of the upwardly mobile but not strictly Orthodox Jews who make up a significant proportion of Manchester’s population. Beyond the streets of identical between-the-wars semis lay our destination, one of a handful of architect-designed developments where the serious money has gravitated. My plumber got the contract for one of them, and he told me about a conversation with one of his customers. My plumber thought the architect had made a mistake, because the plans showed plumbing for four dishwashers – two in the kitchen and two in the utility room. When he queried it, the customer looked at him as if he was thick as a yard of four-by-two and said, ‘We keep kosher and we entertain a lot.’ There’s nothing you can say to that.

The house I’d been directed to looked more Frankenstein than Frank Lloyd Wright. It had more turrets and crenellations than Windsor Castle, all in bright red Accrington brick. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to be potless,’ Richard remarked as we parked. It had a triple garage and hard-standing for half a dozen cars, but tonight was clearly party night. Richard’s hot pink Volkswagen Beetle convertible looked as out of place as Cinderella at a minute past midnight. When the hostess opened the door, I smiled. ‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘We’re with Trevor Kerr,’ I added.

The frosting on her immaculate coiffure spilled over on to the hostess’s smile. ‘Do come in,’ she said.

The man who’d been hovering in the hall behind her stepped forward and said, ‘I’m Trevor Kerr.’ He signalled with his eyebrows towards the stairs and we followed him up into a den that looked like it had been bought clock, stock and panel from a country house. The only incongruity was the computer and fax machine smack in the middle of the desk. ‘We won’t be disturbed here,’ he said. ‘It’ll be at least half an hour before the host distributes the clues and we move off. Perhaps your friend would like to go downstairs and help himself to the buffet?’

I could hear Richard’s hackles rising. ‘Mr Barclay is a valued associate of Mortensen and Brannigan. Anything you say is safe with him,’ I said stiffly. I dreaded to think how many people Richard could upset at a Round Table potluck buffet.

‘That’s right,’ he drawled. ‘I’m not just scenery.’

Kerr looked uncomfortable but he wasn’t really in a position to argue. As he settled himself in an armchair, we studied each other. Not even a hand-stitched suit could hide a body gone ruinously to seed. I was tempted to offer some fashion advice, but I didn’t think he’d welcome the news that this year bellies are being worn inside the trousers. He couldn’t have been much more than forty, but his eyes would have been the envy of any self-respecting bloodhound and his jowls would have set a bulldog a-quiver. The only attractive feature the man possessed was a head of thick, wavy brown hair with a faint silvering at the temples.

‘Well, Mr Kerr?’ I said.

He cleared his throat and said, ‘I run Kerrchem. You probably haven’t heard of us, but we’re quite a large concern. We’ve got a big plant out at Farnworth. We manufacture industrial cleaning materials, and we do one or two domestic products for supermarket own-brands. We pride ourselves on being a family business. Anyway, about a month ago, I got a letter in the post at home. As far as I can remember, it said I could avoid Kerrchem ending up with the same reputation as Tylenol for a very modest sum of money.’

‘Product tampering,’ Richard said sagely.

Kerr nodded. ‘That’s what I took it to mean.’

‘You said: “as far as I can remember”,’ I remarked. ‘Does that mean you haven’t got the note?’

Kerr scowled. ‘That’s right. I thought it was some crank. It looked ridiculous, all those letters cut out of a newspaper and Sellotaped down. I binned it. You can’t blame me for that,’ he whined.

‘No one’s blaming you, Mr Kerr. It’s just a pity you didn’t keep the note. Has something happened since then to make you think they were serious?’

Kerr looked away and pulled a fat cigar from his inside pocket. As he went through the performance of lighting it, Richard leaned forward in his seat. ‘A man has died since then, hasn’t he, Mr Kerr?’ I was impressed. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but I was impressed.

A plume of acrid blue smoke obscured Kerr’s eyes as he said, ‘Technically, yes. But there’s no evidence that there’s any connection.’

‘A man dies after opening a sealed container of your products, you’ve had a blackmail note and you don’t believe there’s a connection?’ Richard asked, with only mild incredulity.

I could see mischief dancing behind his glasses, so I thought I’d better head this off at the pass. Any minute now, Richard would decide to start enjoying himself, completely oblivious to the fact that not everyone has the blithe disregard for human life that characterizes journalists. ‘Suppose you give me your version of events, Mr Kerr?’

He puffed on the cigar and I tried not to cough. ‘Like I said, I thought this note was some crank. Then, last week, we had a phone call from the police. They said a publican had dropped down dead at work. It seemed he’d just opened a fresh container of KerrSter. That’s a universal cleanser that we produce. One of our biggest sellers to the trade. Anyway, according to the postmortem, this man had died from breathing in cyanide, which is ridiculous, because cyanide doesn’t go anywhere near the KerrSter process. Nobody at our place could work out how him dying could have had anything to do with the KerrSter,’ he said defensively. ‘We weren’t looking forward to the inquest, I’ll be honest, but we didn’t see how we could be held to blame.’

‘And?’ I prompted him.

Kerr shifted in his seat, moving his weight from one buttock to the other in a movement I hadn’t seen since Dumbo. ‘I swear I never connected it with the note I’d had. It’d completely slipped my mind. And then this morning, this came.’ His pudgy hand slid into his inside pocket again and emerged with a folded sheet of paper. He held it out towards me.

‘Has anyone apart from you touched this?’ I asked, not reaching for it.

He shook his head. ‘No. It came to the house, just like the other one.’

‘Put it down on the desk,’ I said, raking in my bag for a pen and my Swiss Army knife. I took the eyebrow tweezers out of their compartment on the knife and gingerly unfolded the note. It was a sheet from a glue-top A4 pad, hole-punched, narrow feint and margin. Across it, in straggling newsprint letters Sellotaped down, I read, ‘Bet you wish you’d done what you were told. We’ll be in touch. No cops. We’re watching you.’ The letters were a mixture of upper and lower case, and I recognized the familiar fonts of the Manchester Evening Chronicle. Well, that narrowed it down to a few million bodies.

I looked up and sighed. ‘On the face of it, it looks like your correspondent carried out his threat. Why haven’t you taken this to the police, Mr Kerr? Murder and blackmail, that’s what they’re there for.’

Kerr looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t think they’d believe me,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Look at it from their point of view. My company’s products have been implicated in a major tampering scandal. A man’s dead. Can you imagine how much it’s going to cost me to get out from under the lawsuits that are going to be flying around? There’s nothing to show I didn’t cobble this together myself to try and get off the hook. I bet mine are the only fingerprints on that note, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the police aren’t going to waste their time hunting for industrial saboteurs they won’t even believe exist. Anyway, the note says “No cops”.’

‘So you want me to find your saboteurs for you?’ I asked resignedly.

‘Can you?’ Kerr asked eagerly.

I shrugged. ‘I can try.’

Before we could discuss it further, there was a knock at the door and our hostess’s head appeared. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Trevor, but we’re about to distribute the treasure-hunt clues, and I know you’d hate to start at a disadvantage.’ She didn’t invite us to join in, I noticed. Clearly my suit didn’t come up to scratch.

‘Be right with you, Charmian,’ Trevor said, hauling himself out of his chair. ‘My office, half past eight tomorrow morning?’ he asked.

I had a lot more questions for Trevor Kerr, but they could wait. ‘I thought you were worried about me coming to the office?’ I reminded him.

He barely paused on his way out the door. ‘I’ll tell my secretary you’re from the Health and Safety Executive,’ he said. ‘Those nosey bastards are always poking around where they’re not wanted.’

I shook my head in despair as he departed. Some clients are like that. Before you’ve agreed to work for them, they’re practically on their knees. Soon as you come on board, they treat you like something nasty on their Gucci loafers. ‘And I thought heavy metal bands were arseholes,’ Richard mused.

‘They are,’ I said. ‘And while we’re on the subject, how come you knew about the KerrSter death?’

Richard winked and produced one of those smiles that got me tangled up with him in the first place. ‘Not much point in having the Chronicle delivered if you don’t bother reading it, is there?’ he asked sweetly.

‘Some of us have more important things to do than laze around smoking joints and reading the papers,’ I snarled.

Richard pretended to look huffed. At least, I think he was pretending. ‘Oh well, if that’s the way things are, you won’t be wanting me to take you to dinner, will you?’ he said airily.

‘Try me,’ I said. There are few things in life that don’t look better after aromatic crispy duck. How was I to know Trevor Kerr would be one of them?

4

As I waited for the security guard in charge of the barrier at Kerrchem’s car park to check that I wasn’t some devious industrial spy trying to sneak in to steal their secrets, I stared across at the sprawling factory, its red brick smudged black by years of industrial pollution. Somewhere inside there I’d find the end of the ball of string that would unravel to reveal a killer.

Eventually, he let me in and directed me to the administration offices. Trevor Kerr’s secretary was already at her desk when I walked in at twenty-five past eight. Unfortunately, her boss wasn’t. I introduced myself. ‘Mr Kerr’s expecting me,’ I added.

She’d clearly been hired for her efficiency rather than her charm. ‘Health and Safety Executive,’ she said in the same tone of voice I’d have used for the VAT inspector. ‘Take a seat. Mr Kerr will be here soon.’ She returned to her word processor, attacking the keys with the ferocity of someone playing Mortal Kombat.

I looked around. Neither of the two chairs looked as if it had been chosen for comfort. The only available reading material was some trade journal that I wouldn’t have picked up even on a twelve-hour flight with a Sylvester Stallone film as the in-flight movie. ‘Maybe I could make a start on the documents I need to see?’ I said. ‘To save wasting time.’

‘Only Mr Kerr can authorize the release of company information to a third party,’ she said coldly. ‘He knows you’re coming. I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting for long.’

I wished I shared her conviction. I tried to make myself comfortable and used the time to review the limited information I’d gleaned so far. After Richard and I had stuffed ourselves in a small Chinese restaurant in Whitefield, where we’d both felt seriously overdressed, I’d sat down with the previous weeks’ papers and brought myself up to speed. Richard, meanwhile, had changed and gone off to some dive in Longsight to hear a local techno band who’d just landed a record deal. Frankly, I felt I’d got the best end of the bargain.

On my way through the stuttering early rush-hour traffic, I’d stopped by the office to fax my local friendly financial services expert. I needed some background on Trevor Kerr and his company, and if there was dirt to be dug, Josh Gilbert was the man. Josh and I have an arrangement: he supplies me with financial information and I buy him expensive dinners. The fact that Josh wouldn’t know a scruple if it took him out to the Savoy is fine by me; I don’t have to think about that, just reap the rewards.

The financial data would fill one gap in my knowledge. I hoped it would be more comprehensive than the newspaper accounts. When Joey Morton died, the media responded with ghoulish swiftness. For once, there were no government scandals to divert them, and all the papers had given the Stockport publican’s death a good show. At first, I couldn’t figure out how I’d missed the hue and cry, till I remembered that on the day in question I’d been out all day tracking down a key defence witness for Ruth Hunter, my favourite criminal solicitor. I’d barely had time for a sandwich on the hoof, never mind a browse through the dailies.

Joey Morton was thirty-eight, a former Third Division footballer turned publican. He and his wife Marina ran the Cob and Pen pub on the banks of the infant Mersey. Joey had gone down to the cellar to clean the beer pipes, taking a new container of KerrSter. Joey was proud of his real ale, and he never let anyone else near the cellarage. When he hadn’t reappeared by opening time, Marina had sent one of the bar staff down to fetch him. The barman found his boss in a crumpled heap on the floor, the KerrSter sitting open beside him. The police had revealed that the postmortem indicated Joey had died as a result of inhaling hydrogen cyanide gas.

The pathologist’s job had been made easier by the barman, who reported he’d smelt bitter almonds as soon as he’d entered the cramped cellar. Kerrchem had immediately denied that their product could possibly have caused the death, and the police had informed a waiting world that they were treating Joey’s death as suspicious. Since then, the story seemed to have died, as always happens when there’s a dearth of shocking revelations.

It didn’t seem likely that Joey Morton could have died as a result of some ghastly error inside the Kerrchem factory. The obvious conclusion was industrial sabotage. The key questions were when and by whom. Was it an inside job? Was it a disgruntled former employee? Was it an outsider looking for blackmail money? Or was it a rival trying to annex Trevor Kerr’s market? Killing people seemed a bit extreme, but as I know from bitter experience, the trouble with hiring outside help to do your dirty work is that things often get dangerously out of hand.

It was ten to nine when Trevor Kerr barged in. His eyes looked like the only treasure he’d found the night before had been in the bottom of a bottle. ‘You Miss Brannigan, then?’ he greeted me. If he was harbouring dreams of an acting career, I could only hope that Kerrchem wasn’t going to fold. I followed him into his office, catching an unappealing whiff of Scotch revisited blended with Polo before we moved into the aroma of stale cigars and lemon furniture polish. Clearly, the Spartan motif didn’t extend beyond the outer office. Trevor Kerr had spared no expense to make his office comfortable. That is, if you find gentlemen’s clubs comfortable. Leather wing armchairs surrounded a low table buffed to a mirror sheen. Trevor’s desk was repro, but what it lacked in class, it made up for in size. All they’d need to stage the world snooker championships on it would be a bit of green baize. That and clear the clutter. The walls were hung with old golfing prints. If his bulk was anything to go by, golf was something Trevor Kerr honoured more in the breach than the observance.

He dumped his briefcase by the desk and settled in behind it. I chose the armchair nearest him. I figured if I waited till I was invited, I’d be past my sell-by date. ‘So, what do you need from me?’ he demanded.

Before I could reply, the secretary came in with a steaming mug of coffee. The mug said ‘World’s Greatest Bullshitter’. I wasn’t about to disagree. I wouldn’t have minded a cup myself, but clearly the hired help around Kerrchem wasn’t deemed worthy of that. If I’d really been from the HSE, the lack of courtesy would have had me sharpening my knives for Trevor Kerr’s well-cushioned ribs. I waited for the secretary to withdraw, then I said, ‘Have you recalled the rest of the batch?’

He nodded impatiently. ‘Of course. We got on to all the wholesalers, and we’ve placed an ad in the national press as well as the trade. We’ve already had a load of stuff back, and there’s more due in today.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ll want to see that, as well as the dispatch paperwork relating to that batch. I take it that won’t be a problem?’

‘No problem. I’ll get Sheila to sort it out for you.’ He made a note on a pad on his desk. ‘Next?’

‘Do you use cyanide in any of your processes?’

‘No way,’ he said belligerently. ‘It has industrial uses, but mainly in the plastics industry and electroplating. There’s nothing we produce that we’d need it for.’

‘OK. Going back to the original blackmail note. Did it include any instructions about the amount of money they were after, or how you were to contact them?’

He took a cigar out of a humidor the size of a small greenhouse and rolled it between his fingers. ‘They didn’t put a figure on it, no. There was a phone number, and the note said it was the number of one of the public phones at Piccadilly Station. I was supposed to be there at nine o’clock on the Friday night. I didn’t go, of course.’

‘Pity you didn’t call us then,’ I said.

‘I told you, I thought it was a crank. Some nutter trying to wind me up. No way was I going to give him the satisfaction.’

‘Or her,’ I added. ‘The thing that bothers me, Mr Kerr, is that killing people is a pretty extreme thing for a blackmailer to do. The usual analysis of blackmailers is that they are on the cowardly side. The crimes they commit are at arm’s-length, and usually don’t put life at risk. I would have expected the blackmailer in this case to have done something a lot more low key, certainly initially. You know, dumped caustic soda in washing-up liquid, that sort of thing.’

‘Maybe they didn’t intend to kill anybody, just to give people a nasty turn,’ he said. He lit the cigar, exhaling a cloud of smoke that gave me a nasty turn so early in the day.

I shrugged. ‘In that case, cyanide’s a strange choice. The fatal dose is pretty small. Also, you couldn’t just stick it in the drum and wait for someone to open it up. There must have been some kind of device rigged up inside it. To produce the lethal gas, cyanide pellets need to react with something else. So they’d have had to be released into the liquid somehow. That’s a lot of trouble to go to when you could achieve an unpleasant warning with dozens of other chemical mixtures. If it was me, I’d have filled a few drums either with something that smelled disgusting, or something that would destroy surfaces rather than clean them, just to persuade you that they were capable of making your life hell. Then, I’d have followed it up with a second note saying something like: “Next time, it’ll be cyanide.”’

‘So maybe we’re dealing with a complete nutter,’ he said bitterly. ‘Great.’

‘Or maybe it’s someone who wants to destroy you rather than blackmail you,’ I said simply.

Kerr took his cigar out of his mouth, which remained in a perfect ‘O’. Finally, he said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘It’s something you should consider. In relation to both your professional and your personal life.’ He was having a lot of trouble getting his head round the idea, I could see. If he’d been a bit nicer to me, I’d have been gentler. But I figure you shouldn’t dish it out unless you can take it. ‘What about business rivals? Is anybody snapping at your heels? Is anybody going under because you’ve brought out new products or developed new sales strategies?’

‘You don’t murder people in business,’ he protested. ‘Not in my line of business, you don’t.’

‘Murder might not have been what was planned,’ I told him flatly. ‘If they wanted to sabotage you and stay at arm’s-length, they might have hired someone to do the dirty. And they in turn might have hired someone else. And somewhere along the line, the Chinese whispers took over. So is there any other firm that might have a particular reason for wanting Kerrchem to go down the tubes?’

He frowned. ‘The last few years have been tough, there’s no denying that. Firms go bust, so there’s not as much industrial cleaning to be done. Businesses cut their cleaners down from five days to three, so the commercial cleaners cut back on their purchases. We’ve kept our heads above water, but it’s been a struggle. We’ve had a couple of rounds of redundancies, we’ve been a bit slower bringing in some new processes, and we’ve had to market ourselves more aggressively, but that’s the story across the industry. One of our main competitors went bust about nine months ago, but that wasn’t because we were squeezing them. It was more because they were based in Basingstoke and they had higher labour costs than us. I haven’t heard that anybody else is on the edge, and it’s a small world. To be honest, we’re one of the smaller fishes. Most of our rivals are big multinationals. If they wanted to take us out, they’d come to the family and make us an offer we couldn’t refuse.’

That disposed of the easy option. Time to move on. ‘Has anybody left under a cloud? Any unfair dismissal claims pending?’

He shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. As far as I know, and believe me, I would know, the only people who have gone are the ones we cleared out under the redundancy deals. I suppose some of them might have been a bit disgruntled, but if any of them had made any threats, I would have heard about it. Like I said, we pride ourselves on being a family firm, and the department head and production foremen all know not to keep problems to themselves.’

We were going nowhere fast, which only left the sticky bit. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Mr Kerr, but I have to ask these things. You’ve said that Kerrchem is a family firm. Is there any possibility that another member of the family wants to discredit you? To make it look like the company’s not safe in your hands?’

Suddenly I was looking at Trevor Kerr’s future. Written all over his scarlet face was the not-so-distant early warning of the heart attack that was lurking in his silted arteries. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he roared, ‘Bollocks. Pure, absolute bollocks.’

‘Think about it,’ I said, smiling sweetly. That’ll teach him to deprive me of a caffeine fix. ‘The other thing is more personal, I’m afraid. Are you married, Mr Kerr?’

‘’Course I am. Three children.’ He jerked his thumb towards a photograph frame on the desk. I leaned forward and turned it round. Standard studio shot of a woman groomed to within an inch of her life, two sulky-looking boys with their father’s features, and a girl who’d had the dental work but still looked disturbingly like a rabbit. ‘Been married to the same woman for sixteen years.’

‘So there’re no ex-wives or ex-girlfriends lurking around with an axe to grind?’ I asked.

His eyes drifted away from mine to a point elsewhere on the far wall. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said abruptly. Then, in an effort to win me round, he gave a bark of laughter and said, ‘Bloody hell, Kate, it’s me that hired you, not the wife.’

So now I knew he had, or had had, a mistress. That was the long shot I’d have to keep in the back of my mind. Before I could explore this avenue further, the intercom on his desk buzzed. He pressed a button and said, ‘What is it, Sheila?’

‘Reg Unsworth is here, Mr Kerr. He says he needs to talk to you.’

‘I’m in a meeting, Sheila,’ he said irritably.

There were muffled sounds of conversation, then Sheila said, ‘He says it’s urgent, Mr Kerr. He says you’ll want to know immediately. It’s to do with the recalled product, he says.’

‘Why didn’t you say so? Send him in.’

A burly man in a brown warehouseman’s coat with a head bald as a boiled egg and approximately the same shape walked in. ‘Sorry to bother you, Mr Kerr. It’s about the KerrSter recall.’

‘Well, Reg, spit it out,’ Kerr said impatiently.

Unsworth gave me a worried look. ‘It’s a bit confidential, like.’

‘It’s all right. Miss Brannigan here’s from the Health and Safety Executive. She’s here to help us sort this mess out.’

Unsworth still looked uncertain. ‘I checked the records before the returns started coming in. We sent out a total of four hundred and eighty-three gallon containers with the same batch number as the one that there was the problem with. Only … so far, we’ve had six hundred and twenty-seven back.’

5

Kerr looked gobsmacked. ‘You must have made a mistake,’ he blustered.

‘I double-checked,’ Unsworth said. His jaw set in a line as obstinate as his boss’s. ‘Then I went back down to production and checked again. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve had back one hundred and forty-four containers more than we sent out. And that’s not even taking into account the one that the dead man opened, or ones that have already been used, or people who haven’t even heard about the recall yet.’

‘There’s got to be some mistake,’ Kerr repeated. ‘What about the batch coding machine? Has anybody checked that it’s working OK?’

‘I checked with the line foreman myself,’ Unsworth said. ‘They’ve had no problems with it, and I’ve seen quality control’s sheets. There’s no two ways about it. We only sent out four hundred and eighty-three. There’s a gross of gallon drums of KerrSter that we can’t account for sitting in the loading bay. Come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me,’ he added in an aggrieved tone.

‘Let’s do just that,’ Kerr said, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Come on, Miss Brannigan. Come and see how the workers earn a living.’

I followed Kerr out of the room. Unsworth hung back, holding the door open and falling in beside me as we strode down the covered walkway that linked the administration offices with the factory. ‘It’s a real mystery,’ he offered.

I had my own ideas about what was going on, but for the time being I decided to keep them to myself. ‘The drums that have been returned,’ I said, ‘are they all sealed, or have some of them already been opened?’

‘Some of them have been started on,’ he said. ‘The batch went out into the warehouse the Tuesday before last. They’ll probably have started taking it out on the Thursday or Friday, going by our normal stockpile levels, so there’s been plenty of time for people to use them.’

‘And no one else has reported any adverse effect?’

Unsworth looked uncomfortable. ‘Not as such,’ he said.

Kerr half turned to catch my reply. ‘But?’ I asked.

Unsworth glanced at Kerr, who nodded impatiently. ‘Well, a couple of the wholesalers and one or two of the reps had already had containers from that batch returned,’ Unsworth admitted.

‘Do you know why that was?’ I asked.

‘Customers complained the goods weren’t up to us usual standard,’ he said grudgingly.

‘What sort of complaints?’ Kerr demanded indignantly. ‘Why wasn’t I told about this?’

‘It’s only just come to light, Mr Kerr. They said the KerrSter wasn’t right. One of them claimed it had stripped the finish off the flooring in his office toilets.’

Kerr snorted. ‘He should tell his bloody workforce to stick with Boddingtons. They’ll have been pissing that foreign lager all over the bloody tiles.’

‘Have you had the chance to analyse any of the containers that have come back?’ I butted in.

Unsworth nodded. ‘The lads in the lab worked through the night on samples from some of the drums. There wasn’t a trace of cyanide in any of them.’

Kerr shouldered open a pair of double doors. As I caught one on the backswing, the smell hit me. It was a curious amalgam of pine, lemon, and soap suds, but pervaded throughout with sharp chemical smells that bit my nose and throat. It was a bit like driving past the chemical works at Ellesmere Port with one of those ersatz air fresheners in the car. The ones that make you feel that a rotting polecat under the driver’s seat would be preferable. Right after the smell came the noise of machinery, overlaid with the bubbling and gurgling of liquid. Kerr climbed a flight of narrow iron stairs, and I followed him along a high-level walkway that travelled the length of the factory floor. It was unpleasantly humid. I felt like a damp wash that’s just been dumped in the tumble dryer.

Beneath us, vats seethed, nozzles squirted liquid into plastic containers, and surprisingly few people moved around. ‘Not many bodies,’ I said loudly over my shoulder to Unsworth.

‘Computer controlled,’ he said succinctly.

Another avenue to pursue. If the sabotage was internal, perhaps the culprit was simply sending the wrong instructions to the plant. I’d thought this was going to be a straightforward case of industrial sabotage, but my head was beginning to hurt with the permutations it was throwing up.

A couple of hundred yards along the walkway, we descended and cut through a heavy door into a warehouse. Now I know how the Finns feel when they walk into the snow from the sauna. I could feel my pores snapping shut in shock. Here, the air smelled of oil and diesel. The only sound came from fork-lift trucks shunting pallets on and off shelves. ‘This is the warehouse,’ Kerr said. I’d never have worked that one out all by myself. ‘The full containers go through from the factory to packing, where the machines label them, stamp them with batch numbers and seal-wrap them in dozens. Then they come through here on conveyor belts and they’re shelved or loaded.’ He turned to Unsworth. ‘Where have you stacked the recalls?’

Before Unsworth could reply, my mobile started ringing. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, moving away a few yards and pulling the phone out. ‘Kate Brannigan,’ I announced.

‘Tell me,’ an amused voice said. ‘Is Alexis Lee a real person, or is it just your pen name?’

I recognized the voice at once. I moved further away from Kerr’s curious stare and turned my back so he couldn’t see that my ears had gone bright red. ‘She’s real all right, Mr Haroun,’ I said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, I think it had better be Michael. Otherwise I’d start to suspect you were being unfriendly. I’ve just been handed the early edition of the Evening Chronicle.’

‘And what does it say?’

‘Do you really need me to tell you?’ he asked, still sounding amused.

‘I forgot to bring my crystal ball with me. If you want to hang on, I’ll see if I can find a chicken to disembowel so I can check out the entrails.’

He laughed. It was a sound I could easily get used to. ‘It’d be a lot simpler to pop into a newsagent.’

‘You’re not going to tell me?’

‘Oh no, I’d hate to spoil the surprise. Tell me, Kate … Do you fancy dinner some evening?’

‘Michael, it may not look like it, but I fancy dinner every evening.’ I couldn’t believe myself – I’d read better lines than that in teenage romances.

Bless him, he laughed again. I like a man who doesn’t seize on the first sign of weakness. ‘Are you free this evening?’

I pretended to think. Let’s face it, I’d have turned down Mel Gibson, Sean Bean, Lynford Christie and Daniel Day-Lewis for dinner with Michael Haroun. I didn’t pretend for too long, in case he lost interest. ‘I can be. As long as it’s after seven.’

‘Great. Shall I pick you up?’

That was a harder decision. I didn’t want to let myself forget that this was a business dinner. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to give Richard something to think about. I gave Michael the address and we agreed on half past seven. Unlike everybody on TV who uses a mobile phone, I hit the ‘end’ button with a flourish, then turned back to a scowling Trevor Kerr.

‘Sorry about that,’ I lied. ‘Somebody I’ve been trying to get hold of on another investigation. Now, Mr Unsworth, you were going to show us these recalled containers.’

The next half-hour was one of the more boring ones in my life, made doubly so by the fact that I was itching to get my hands on the Chronicle. I finally escaped at half past eleven, leaving Trevor Kerr with the suggestion that his chemists should analyse the contents of a random sample of the containers. Only this time, they wouldn’t just be looking for cyanide. They’d be checking to see whether the KerrSter in the drums was the real thing. Or something quite different and a whole lot nastier.

By the third newsagent’s, I’d confirmed what I’d always suspected about Farnworth. It’s a depressing little dump that civilization forgot. Nobody had the Chronicle. They wouldn’t have it till some time in the afternoon. They all looked deeply offended and incredulous when I explained that no, the Bolton Evening News just wouldn’t be the same. I had to possess my soul in patience till I hit the East Lancs. Road. I sat on a garage forecourt reading the results of Alexis’s research. She’d done me proud.

CULTURAL HERITAGE VANISHES

A series of spectacular robberies has been hushed up by police and stately home owners.

Now fears are growing that a gang of professional thieves are stripping Britain of valuable artworks that form a key part of the nation’s heritage. Among the stolen pieces are paintings by French Impressionists Monet and Cézanne, and a bronze bust by the Italian Baroque master Bernini. Also missing is a collection of Elizabethan miniature paintings by Nicholas Hilliard. Together, the thieves’ haul is estimated at nearly £10 million.

The cover-up campaign was a joint decision made by several police forces and the owners of the stately homes in question. Police did not want publicity because they were following up leads and did not want the thieves to know that they had realized one gang was behind the thefts.

And the owners were reluctant to admit the jewels of their collections had gone missing in case public attendance figures at their homes dropped off as a result.

Some owners have even resorted to hanging replicas of the missing masterpieces in a bid to fool the public.

The latest victim of the audacious robbers is the owner of a Cheshire manor house. Police have refused to reveal his identity, but will only say that a nineteenth-century French painting has been stolen.

The cheeky thieves have adopted the techniques of the pair who caused outrage at the Lillehammer Olympics when they stole Edward Munch’s The Scream.

They break in through the nearest door or window, go straight to the one item they have selected and make their getaway. Often they are in the house or gallery for no more than a minute.

A police source said last night, ‘There’s no doubt that we are dealing with professionals who may well steal to order. There are obviously a limited number of outlets for their loot, and we are making inquiries in the art world.’

One of the robbed aristos, who was only prepared to talk anonymously, said, ‘It’s not just the heritage of this country that is at stake. It’s our businesses. We employ a lot of people and if the public stop coming because our most famous exhibits have gone, it will have repercussions.

‘We do our best to maintain tight security, but you can never keep the professional out.’

There was some more whingeing in the same vein, but nothing startling. Call me nit-picking, but I’ve never understood how the art of several European cultures has come to be a key part of our British heritage, unless it symbolizes the brigand spirit that made the Empire great. That aside, I reckoned Alexis’s story would achieve what I hoped for. With a bit of luck, the nationals would pick the story up the next morning, and the jungle drums would start beating. Soon it would be time for a chat with my friend Dennis. If he ever decides to go completely straight, he could make a living as a journalist. I’ve never known anybody absorb or disseminate so much criminal intelligence. I’m just grateful some of it comes my way when I need it.

For the time being, I headed back to the office, stopping to pick up a couple of pizzas on the way. I knew Shelley would be waiting behind the door with a pile of paperwork that would cause more concussion than a rolling pin. At least a pizza offering might reduce the aggro to a minimum.

I was halfway through the painful process of signing cheques when Josh arrived. I pretended astonishment. ‘Josh!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s between the hours of one and three and you’re not in a restaurant! What’s happened? Has the stock market collapsed?’

His sharp blue eyes crinkled in the smile that he’s practised to maximize his resemblance to Robert Redford. Frankly, I’m surprised the light brown hair hasn’t been bleached to perfect it, since Josh is a man whose energies are devoted to only two things – making lots of money and women. His track record with the latter is dismal; luckily he’s a lot more successful with the former, which is how he’s ended up as the senior partner of one of the city’s most successful master brokerages. Shelley developed a theory about Josh and women after she did her A level psychology. She reckons that behind the confident façade there lurks a well of low self-esteem. So when it comes to women, his subconscious decides that any woman with half a brain and a shred of personality wouldn’t spend more than five minutes with him. The logical extension of that is that any woman who sticks around for more than six weeks must by definition be a boring bimbo, and thus he shouldn’t be seen dead with her.

Me, I think he just likes having fun. He swears he plans to retire when he turns forty, and that’s early enough to think about settling down. I like him because he’s always treated me as an equal, never as a potential conquest. I’m glad about that; I’d hate to lose my fast track into the bowels of the financial world. Believe me, the Nikkei Index doesn’t burp without Josh knowing exactly what it had for dinner.

Josh flicked an imaginary speck of dust off one of the clients’ chairs and sat down, crossing his elegantly suited legs. ‘Things are changing in the big bad world of money, you know,’ he said. ‘The days of the three-hour lunch are over. Except when it’s you that’s buying, of course.’ He tossed a file on to my desk.

‘You’ve stopped doing lunch?’ I waited for the world to stop turning.

‘Today, I had a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich in the office of one of my principal clients. Washed down with a rather piquant sparkling mineral water from the Welsh valleys. An interesting diversification from coal mining, don’t you think?’

I picked up the file. ‘Kerrchem?’

‘The same. Want the gossip since I’m here?’

I gave him my best suspicious frown. ‘Is this going to cost me?’

He pouted. ‘Maybe an extra glass of XO?’

‘It’s worth it,’ I decided. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘OK. Kerrchem is a family firm. Started in 1934 by Josiah Kerr, the grandfather of the present chairman, chief executive and managing director Trevor Kerr. They made soap. They were no Lever Brothers, though they’ve always provided a reasonable living for the family. Trevor’s father Hartley was a clever chap, by all accounts, had a chemistry degree, and he made certain they spent enough on R & D to keep ahead of the game. He moved them into the industrial cleaning market.’ All this off the top of his head. One of the secrets of Josh’s success is a virtually photographic memory for facts and figures. Figures of the balance sheet variety, that is.

‘Hartley Kerr was an only child,’ he continued. ‘He had three kids: Trevor, Margaret and Elizabeth. Trevor, although the youngest, owns forty-nine per cent of the shares, Margaret and Elizabeth own twenty per cent each. The remaining eleven per cent is held by Hartley Kerr’s widow, Elaine Kerr. Elaine is in her early seventies, in full possession of her marbles, lives in Bermuda, and takes little part in things except for voting against Trevor at every opportunity. Trevor’s sons are still at school, but he has three nephews who work at Kerrchem. John Hardy works in R & D, his brother Paul is in accounts and Margaret’s son Will Tomasiuk is in sales. Trevor is by all accounts a complete and utter shit, but against all the odds, he appears to run the company well. Never been a history of industrial problems. Financially and fiscally all seems above board. Frankly, Kate, if Kerrchem were going public, they’re exactly the kind of company I’d advise you to put your money in if you wanted to keep it unspectacularly safe. Before people started dying, that is.’

‘I suppose that rules out an insurance job, then. Is everybody in the family happy with Trevor’s stewardship? No young bucks snapping at his heels?’

Josh shook his head. ‘That’s not the word on the exchange floor. The old lady only votes against Trevor because she thinks he’s not a patch on his old man and she wants to make a point. And the nephews have all learned the business from the bottom up, but they’re climbing the greasy pole at an impressive rate. So, no, that kite won’t fly, Kate.’ He glanced at a watch so slim it looked anorexic and uncrossed his legs.

‘You’re a star, Josh. I owe you a meal.’

‘Fix up a date with Julia, would you? I don’t have my diary with me.’ He stood up and I came round the desk to swap kisses on both cheeks. I watched five hundred pounds worth of immaculate tailoring walk out the door. Not even that amount of dosh to spend on clothes could make me spend my days talking about pension funds and unit trusts.

On the other hand, all it took to get me salivating at the thought of an evening’s conversation about insurance was a profile from an ancient carving. Maybe I wasn’t such a smart cookie after all.

6

I’d almost forgotten there are restaurants that don’t serve dim sum. For as long as I’ve known Richard, he’s maintained that if you don’t use chopsticks on it, it ain’t food. And Josh has recently taken to extracting his payment in kind in Manchester’s clutch of excellent Thai restaurants. I’m not sure if that’s down to the food or the subservient waitresses. Either way, I’d entirely lost touch with anything that didn’t come out of a wok. Which made Michael Haroun a refreshing change in more ways than one.

He’d arrived promptly at twenty-nine minutes past seven. I’d grown so used to Richard’s flexible idea of time that I was still applying eye pencil when the doorbell rang. I nearly poked my eye out in shock, and had to answer the door with a tissue covering the damage. Eat your heart out, Cindy Crawford. Michael lounged against the door frame, looking drop-dead gorgeous in blue jeans, navy silk blouson and an off-white collarless linen shirt that sure as hell hadn’t come from Marks and Spencer. My stomach churned, and I don’t think it was hunger. ‘Long John Silver, I presume,’ he said.

‘Watch it, or I’ll set the parrot on you,’ I replied, stepping back and waving him in.

He shrugged away from the door and followed me down the hall. I gestured towards the living room and said, ‘Give me a minute.’

Back in the bathroom, I repaired the damage and surveyed myself in the full-length mirror. Navy linen trousers, russet knitted silk T-shirt, navy silk tweed jacket. I looked like I’d taken a bit of trouble, without actually departing from the businesslike image. Michael wasn’t to know this was my newest, smartest outfit. Besides, I’d told Richard my evening engagement was a business meeting, and I wasn’t entirely ready for him to get any other ideas if he saw me leave.

I rubbed a smudge of gel over my fingers and thrust them through my hair, which I’d kept fairly short since I was shorn without consultation earlier in the year. My right eye still looked a bit red, but this was as good as it was going to get. A quick squirt of Richard’s Eternity by Calvin Klein and I was ready.

I walked down the hall and stood in the doorway. Michael obviously hadn’t heard me. He was deep in a computer gaming magazine. Bonus points for the boy. I cleared my throat. ‘Ready when you are,’ I said.

He looked up and smiled appreciatively. ‘I don’t want to sound disablist,’ he said, ‘but I have to admit I prefer the two-eyed look.’ He closed the magazine and stood up. ‘Shall we go?’

He drove a top-of-the-range Citroën. ‘Company car?’ I asked, looking forward to the prospect of being driven for a change.

‘Yeah, but they let me choose. I’ve always had a soft spot for Citroe¨ n. I think the DS was one of the most beautiful cars ever built,’ he said as he did a neat three-point turn to get out of the parking area outside my bungalow. ‘My father always used to drive one.’

That told me Michael Haroun hadn’t grown up on a council estate with the arse hanging out of his trousers. ‘Lucky you,’ I said with feeling. ‘My dad works for Rover, so my childhood was spent in the back of a Mini. That’s how I ended up only five foot three. The British equivalent of binding the feet.’

Michael laughed as he hit a button on the CD player and Bonnie Raitt filled the car. Richard would have giggled helplessly at something so middle of the road. Me, I was just glad of something that didn’t feature crashing guitars or that insistent zippy beat that sounds just like a fly hitting an incinerator. We turned out of the small ‘single professionals’ development where I live and into the council estate. To my surprise, instead of heading down Upper Brook Street towards town, he turned left. As we headed down Stockport Road, my heart sank. I prayed this wasn’t going to be one of those twenty-mile drives to some pretentious bistro in the sticks with compulsory spinach pancakes and only one choice of vodka.

‘You into computer games, then?’ I asked. Time to check out just how much I had in common with this breathtaking profile.

‘I have a 486 multi-media system in my spare room. Does that answer the question?’

‘It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts,’ I replied. As soon as I’d spoken, I wished I was on a five-second delay loop, like radio phone-ins.

He grinned and listed his current favourites. We were still arguing the relative merits of submarine simulations when he pulled up outside a snooker supplies shop in an unpromising part of Stockport Road. A short walk down the pavement brought us to That Café, an unpretentious restaurant done out in Thirties style. I’d heard plenty of good reports about it, but I’d never quite made it across the door before. The locale had put me off for one thing. Call me fussy, but I like to be sure that my car’s still going to be waiting for me after I’ve finished dinner.

The interior looked like flea market meets Irish country pub, but the menu had me salivating. The waitress, dressed in jeans, a Deacon Blue T-shirt, big fuck-off Doc Marten boots and a long white French waiter’s apron, showed us to a quiet corner table next to a blazing fire. OK, they only had one vodka, but at least it wasn’t some locally distilled garbage with a phoney Russian name.

As our starters arrived, I said ruefully, ‘I wish finding Henry Naismith’s Monet was as easy as a computer game.’

‘Yeah. At least with games, there’s always a bulletin board you can access for hints. I suppose you’re out on your own with this,’ Michael said.

‘Not entirely on my own,’ I corrected him. ‘I do have one or two contacts.’

He swallowed his mouthful of food and looked slightly pained. ‘Is that why you agreed to have dinner with me?’ he asked.

‘Only partly.’

‘What was the other part?’ he asked, obviously fishing.

‘I enjoy a good scoff, and I like interesting conversation with it.’ I was back in control of myself, the adolescent firmly stuffed back into the box marked ‘not wanted on voyage’.

‘And you thought I’d be an interesting conversationalist, did you?’

‘Bound to be,’ I said sweetly. ‘You’re an insurance man, and right now insurance claims are one of my principal interests.’

We ate in silence for a few moments, then he said, ‘I take it you were behind the story in the Chronicle?’

I shrugged. ‘I like to stir the pot. That way, the scum rises to the surface.’

‘You certainly stirred things around our office,’ Michael said drily.

‘The people have a right to know,’ I said, self-righteously quoting Alexis.

‘Cheers,’ Michael said, clinking his glass against mine. ‘Here’s to a profitable relationship.’

‘Oh, you mean Fortissimus are going to hire Mortensen and Brannigan?’ I asked innocently.

He grinned again. ‘I think I’ll pass on that one. I simply meant that with luck, you might track down Henry Naismith’s Monet.’

‘Speaking of which,’ I said, ‘I spoke to Henry this afternoon. He says your assessor was there this afternoon.’

‘That’s right,’ Michael said cagily.

‘Henry says your man put a very interesting suggestion to him. Purely in confidence. Now, would that be the kind of confidence you’re already privy to?’

Michael carefully placed his fork and knife together on the plate and mopped his lips with the napkin. ‘It might be,’ he said cautiously. ‘But if it were, I wouldn’t be inclined to discuss it with someone who has a hotline to the front page of the Chronicle.’

‘Not even if I promised it would go no further?’

‘You expect me to believe that after today’s performance?’ he demanded.

I smiled. ‘There’s a crucial difference. I was acting in my client’s best interests by setting the cat among the pigeons with Alexis’s story. I didn’t breach my client’s confidentiality, and I didn’t tell Alexis anything that wasn’t already in the public domain. She just put the bits together. However, if Henry acted on your colleague’s suggestion and I leaked that to the press, it would seriously damage his business. And I don’t do that to the people who pay my mortgage. Trust me, Michael. It won’t go any further.’

The arrival of the waitress gave him a moment’s breathing space. She removed the debris. ‘So this would be strictly off the record?’

‘Information only,’ I agreed.

The waitress returned with a cheerful smile and two huge plates. I stared down at mine, where enough rabbit to account for half the population of Watership Down sat in a pool of creamy sauce. ‘Nouvelle cuisine obviously passed this place by,’ I said faintly.

‘I suspect we Mancunians are too canny to pay half a week’s wages for a sliver of meat surrounded by three baby carrots, two mangetouts, one baby sweetcorn and an artistically carved radish,’ he said wryly.

‘And is it that Mancunian canniness that underlies your assessor’s underhand suggestion?’ I asked innocently.

‘Nothing regional about it,’ Michael said. ‘You have to have a degree in bloody-minded caution before you get the job.’

‘So you think it’s OK to ask your clients to hang fakes on the wall?’

‘It’s a very effective safety precaution,’ he said carefully.

‘That’s what your assessor told Henry. He said you’d be prepared not to increase his premium by the equivalent of the gross national product of a small African nation if he had copies made of his remaining masterpieces and hung them on the walls instead of the real thing,’ I said conversationally.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ Michael admitted. At least he had the decency to look uncomfortable about it.

‘And is this a general policy these days?’

Slicing up his vegetables gave Michael an excuse for not meeting my eyes. ‘Quite a few of our clients have opted for it as a solution to their security problems,’ he said. ‘It makes sense, Kate. We agreed this morning that there isn’t a security system that can’t be breached. If having a guard physically on site twenty-four hours a day isn’t practical because of the expense or because the policyholder doesn’t want that sort of presence in what is, after all, his home, then it avoids sky-high premiums.’

‘It’s not just about money, though,’ I protested. ‘It’s like Henry says. He knows those paintings. He’s lived with them most of his life. You get a buzz from the real thing that a fake just doesn’t provide.’

‘Not one member of the public has noticed the substitutions,’ Michael said.

‘Maybe not so far,’ I conceded. ‘But according to my understanding, the trouble with fakes is that they don’t stand the test of time.’ Thanking Shelley silently for my art tutorial that afternoon, I launched myself into my spiel. ‘Look at Van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers. At the time, all the experts were convinced they were the real thing. But you look at them now, and they wouldn’t even fool a philistine like me. The difference between schneid and kosher is that fakes date, but the really great paintings don’t. They’re timeless.’

He frowned. ‘Even if you’re right, which I don’t concede for a moment, that’s not a bridge that our clients will have to cross for a long time yet.’

I wasn’t about to give up that easily. ‘Even so, don’t you think it’s a bit of a con to pull on the public? A bit of a swizz to spend your bank holiday Monday in a traffic jam just so you can ogle a Constable that’s more phoney than a plastic Rolex? Aren’t you in danger of breaching the Trades Descriptions Act?’ I asked.

‘Our clients may be,’ Michael said carelessly. ‘We’re not.’

The brazen effrontery of it gobsmacked me. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ I said. ‘You work in a business that must spend hundreds of thousands a year trying to catch its customers out in fraud, and yet you’re happily suggesting to another bunch of clients that they go off and commit a fraud?’

‘That’s not how we see it,’ he said stiffly. ‘Besides, it works,’ he said. ‘In at least two cases that I know about personally, customers who have been burgled have only lost copies. Surely that proves it’s worthwhile.’

In spite of the blazing fire, I felt a chill on the back of my neck. Only a man with no personal knowledge of the strung-out world of crime could have made that pronouncement with such self-satisfaction. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the scene when an overwrought burglar turns up at his fence’s gaff with something he thinks is an old master, only to be told it’s Rembrandt by numbers. Scenario number one is that the burglar thinks the fence is trying to have him over so he takes the appropriate steps. Scenario number two is that the fence thinks the burglar is trying to have him over, and takes the appropriate steps. Either way, somebody ends up in casualty. And that’s looking on the bright side. Doubtless law-abiding citizens like Michael think they’ve got what they deserve, but even villains have wives and kids who don’t want to spend their spare time visiting hospital beds or graves.

My silence clearly spelled out defeat to Michael, since he leaned over and squeezed my hand. ‘Trust me, Kate. Our way, everybody’s happy,’ he said.

I pretended to push my chair back and look frantically for the door. ‘I’m out of here,’ I said. ‘Soon as an insurance man says “trust me”, you know you should be in the next county.’

He grinned. ‘I promise I’ll never try to sell you insurance.’

‘OK. But I won’t promise I’ll never try to pitch you into using Mortensen and Brannigan.’

‘Speaking of which, how did you get into the private eye business?’ Michael said.

I couldn’t decide whether it was an attempt to change the subject or a deliberate shift away from the professional towards the personal. Either way, I was happy to go along with him. I didn’t think I was going to get any more useful information out of him, and I only had to look across the table to remember that when I’d agreed to this dinner, my motives hadn’t been entirely selfless. By the time we’d moved on to coffee and Armagnac, he knew all about my aborted law degree, abandoned after two years because the part-time job I’d got doing bread-and-butter process serving for Bill Mortensen was a damn sight more interesting than the finer points of jurisprudence.

‘So tell me about your most interesting case,’ he coaxed me.

‘Maybe later,’ I said. ‘It’s your turn now. How did you get into insurance?’

‘It’s the family business,’ he said, looking faintly embarrassed.

‘So you followed in Daddy’s footsteps,’ I said. I felt disappointed. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly. Maybe I expected him to live up to that profile with a suitably buccaneering past.

‘Eventually,’ he said. ‘I read Arabic at university, then I worked for the BBC World Service for a while. But the money was dire and there were no prospects. My father had the sense to see that sales had never interested me, but he persuaded me to take a shot at working in claims.’ Michael raised his shoulders and held out his hands in an expressive shrug. ‘What can I say? I really enjoy it.’

All of a sudden, I remembered one of the key reasons I like being with Richard. He lives an interesting life: music journalist, football fan and Sunday morning player, part-time father. I was sure if I hung around with Michael Haroun, I’d learn a lot of invaluable stuff. But not even the most brilliant raconteur can make insurance interesting for ever. With Richard, no two days are the same. With Michael, I suspected variety might not be the spice of life.

Now I’d established that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with the man, I felt a sense of release. I could take what I needed from the encounter, and that would be that. My life wasn’t about to be turned on its head because I’d fallen in love with a profile when I was fourteen.

With that comforting thought in the front of my mind, I had no hesitation about inviting him back for more coffee. The fact that I’d forgotten to mention Richard to him somehow didn’t seem too important at the time.

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