Clean Break

21

SOME MORNINGS YOU WAKE UP READY TO TAKE ON THE WORLD, feeling invincible, immortal and potentially omniscient. This wasn’t one of them. I’d set Richard’s Star Trek alarm clock for seven, which meant I’d had a straight eight hours sleep before Captain James T. Kirk intoned, “Landing party to Enterprise, beam us up, Scotty,” but I was in no mood to boldly go. I felt rested, but the hangover you get from guilt is infinitely worse than the one that comes from drink.

I dragged myself next door, called a cab and dived into the shower. I dressed in the last clean pair of jeans, a dark blue shirt and the new navy blazer, and managed half a cup of instant before the taxi pulled up outside. I picked up Shelley’s Rover from Bill’s garage, making a mental note to ring Hertz in Antwerp and ask them to hang on to Bill’s car till I could get back over to pick it up. I was parked at the end of Alder Way by eight.

For once, I didn’t have long to wait. At ten past, Sandra Bates left the house with a tall, skinny bloke in overalls. She passed me without a glance in her little Vauxhall Corsa. Clearly her feminism didn’t extend to boycotting products that indulge in blatantly sexist advertising. The man I took to be Simon Morley followed in a two-year-old Escort. I slipped into the traffic a couple of cars behind him.

When we reached Kingsway, he turned left, heading away from the city center. I had no trouble staying in touch with him as we drove down the dual carriageway. We went out through Cheadle, past Heald Green and on into Handforth. He turned left in the center of the village, out past the station. We drove through a housing estate, then, just as we reached open country, he turned right. A couple of hundred yards down the road, there was a turning on the right, leading to a small industrial estate. I pulled up and watched as he parked outside a unit that wasn’t much bigger than a double garage.

As he disappeared inside, I cruised into the estate and parked farther down the road, outside a company that made garden sheds. Just after nine, a battered Transit van pulled up behind Morley’s car. The two lads in overalls who got out looked as if they should still be in school. You know you’re getting old when even the villains start looking young. I gave it another ten minutes, then I grabbed my clipboard and the bag containing the video camera and headed for the unmarked warehouse.

I knocked on the door and marched straight in. At one end of the room were a couple of tall vats with taps on the bottom of them. On a platform behind them, one of the lads was emptying the contents of a white plastic five-gallon drum into a vat. The other lad was halfway down the room, pushing a trolley that held gallon drums identical to the ones Kerrchem used for KerrSter. Simon Morley had his back to me, doing something at a bench on the far wall. Compared to the high-tech world of Kerrchem, this was a medieval alchemist’s cell.

The lad pushing the trolley looked over at me, and called, “Can I help you, love?”

At the sound of his voice, Simon Morley whirled round, consternation written all over his face. “Who are you?” he demanded, crossing the room toward me.

“Is this Qualcraft?” I asked, casually swinging my bag through a gentle arc, hoping the video was getting the full flavor of the premises. “Only, there’s no name on the door, and I’ve got an order for Qualcraft, and I can’t seem to find them.”

By now, Simon Morley was feet away from me. He looked like the classroom swot twenty years on, gangling limbs, acne scars and glasses that were constantly slipping down his sharp nose. “You’ve come to the wrong place,” he said nervously. “This isn’t Qualcraft.”

If I hadn’t stepped backwards, he’d have trodden on my trainers. “Sorry,” I said. “You don’t know where Qualcraft is, do you?”

“No,” he said.

I smiled. “Sorry to have bothered you.” I carried on backing out the door. Morley closed it firmly behind me, and I heard a key turn in the lock.

I pressed my ear to the door and heard him say, “How many times have I told you to keep the door locked?” He said something more, but he was obviously moving back to his workbench, since I couldn’t make out the words.

Back at the car, I checked the video on playback. The picture was slightly hazy, but the vats and the gallon drums were clearly discernible, along with a nice clear shot of Simon Morley’s face. I set the video camera up on the dashboard and waited. I rang Shelley and filled her in on what had happened to me in Italy and told her to call me as soon as she heard from Richard. “Don’t worry if you get diverted to the message service,” I added. “I’m trying to avoid the cops, so I won’t actually be answering the phone.” Wonderful thing, technology. If I don’t want to take calls on my mobile, I can divert them to an answering machine. Then, when I want to pick the messages up, I simply dial a number and it plays them over to me.

By eleven, I’d had messages from Delia, Mellor from the Art Squad, a Superintendent from the Drugs Squad, Alexis and Michael Haroun. I didn’t feel like talking to any of them, but I made myself ring Michael. I still had a client, after all, something I’d kind of lost sight of as I’d chased across Europe. And Henry needed insurance. If I could convince Michael Haroun that the art thieves’ racket was over for the time being, maybe he’d be a little more flexible about Henry’s premium.

Michael was in a meeting, but I made an appointment with his secretary for three o’clock. I figured I’d be through here by then. Next, I took out my microcassette recorder and dictated a full report on the KerrSter scam. I’d drop it off with Shelley on my way to meet Michael so I could hand the client a copy this evening. I’d also be dropping off a copy with Inspector Jackson, just so Clever Trevor couldn’t go taking the law into his own hands.

There was movement at the warehouse just after noon. I hit the record button on the video and taped Simon Morley and the two lads loading up the van with pallets of schneid KerrSter. Simon went back indoors with one of the lads, and the van took off. I followed at a discreet distance. I needn’t have bothered. If I’d just driven straight to Filbert Brown’s Manchester HQ, I’d have been able to film them arriving just as easily.

I was astonished at their sheer cheek. Two people had died because of their crazy product tampering, yet they were still milking the racket for all it was worth. The more I thought about it, the more disturbing I found that. Simon Morley might well be crazy enough to carry on putting people’s lives at risk in his vendetta against Kerrchem. But Sandra Bates hadn’t struck me as a woman who would go along with random murder. I know people do ridiculous things for love, but I couldn’t get the scenario into a credible shape at all.

But if Sandra Bates and Simon Morley weren’t bumping people off, who was? It went beyond the bounds of credibility to imagine two lots of blackmailing saboteurs. I know coincidences do happen, but this wasn’t one I could buy into. I closed my eyes and groaned. All this time and effort and I had a horrible feeling I wasn’t any nearer the killer than I had been at the start.

Michael looked delighted to see me, greeting me with an unprofessional kiss on the lips. The tingle factor was still firing on all four cylinders, I noted as I moved away and sat demurely on the opposite side of the table from him. “You’ve been keeping a very low profile,” he complained jocularly. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Your secretary keeps telling me you’re unavailable. I was beginning to think you’d gone off me.”

“She wasn’t bullshitting,” I said. “I genuinely have been unavailable. I’ve been out of the country. The good news is that you’re not going to have any more trouble from this particular gang of art thieves.”

He leaned forward, his eyes surprised and interested. “Really? They’ve been arrested?”

“Let’s just say the market’s collapsed,” I replied. “Take it from me, the racket’s over and done with. So you can safely reinsure Henry Naismith’s property. They won’t be back for a second bite of the cherry.”

Michael ran a hand through his dark hair and shook his head. “This is incredible. What on earth have you been up to? It all sounds very unorthodox.”

“That’s a word,” I said.

“You’re going to have to tell me more than that,” Michael said, his face and voice equally determined. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. But I have to explain myself to higher powers, and they’re not going to be overly impressed if I tell them I’ve taken a particular course of action on the say-so of a private eye who isn’t even our employee.”

I was growing bored with this story already, and I was still going to have to repeat it more times than the sole survivor of an air crash. “Look, I can’t go into great detail. I’ve still got a lot of talking to do to the police, and there are going to be arrests to come. The bare bones go like this. I got a tip-off from a good source as to who was fencing the goods. I tracked him back to an international criminal consortium who have been using artworks as payment in kind for drugs. The fence is out of the game for good, and the police will be closing in on the rest of the syndicate. Without a guaranteed market, the thieves won’t be doing any more robberies. I promise you, Michael, it’s all over.”

He looked up from the pad where he’d been taking notes. “You’re sure? You don’t think the fence is going to start up again once everything quiets down?”

I closed my eyes briefly. “Not unless you believe in communications from beyond the grave,” I said.

Michael’s mouth opened as he stared at me with new eyes. “He’s dead?” His voice was incredulous.

“Very.”

“You didn’t…? It wasn’t…?” A flicker of fear showed in his eyes.

I snorted with ironic laughter. “Please,” I said. “I didn’t kill him, Michael, I only set him up. And my payoff was getting to discover the body.”

He looked faintly queasy. I can’t say I blamed him. “Is there any chance of recovering any of the stolen paintings?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I shouldn’t think so. I’m afraid you’re going to have to bite the bullet and cough up. But like I said, you won’t be having any repeat business from this team.”

“What can I say?” He spread his hands. “I’m impressed. Look, I can’t make any promises at this stage, but I’d be interested in working with you in future. On a more official basis.”

“Fine by me. Anything you need sorting, give us a call and we’ll talk.” Normally, I’d have been punching the air in jubilation at landing a client as major as Fortissimus. Today, all I could muster was a moment’s satisfaction. Fortissimus had been too expensive an acquisition.

I got to my feet. “And on a personal note,” Michael added, his eyes crinkling in a smile, “when can I see you again?”

“Tomorrow night?” I suggested. “Meet me in the bar at the Cornerhouse at half past seven?”

“Fine. See you then.”

I sketched a wave and moved toward the door. He bounded to his feet and caught up with me on the threshold. He tried to put his arms round me in hug, but I backed off. “Not in business hours,” I said defensively. “If we’re going to work together, we need some ground rules. Rule one, no messing about on the company’s time.”

His mouth turned down ruefully. “Sorry. You’re absolutely right. See you tomorrow. Stay lucky.”

I stopped off at the Cigar Store Cafe for a bite to eat and a cappuccino, then went back to the office to pick up the Kerrchem reports from Shelley. “Nice work,” she remarked as she handed me two neatly bound copies.

“Yeah,” I said, my lack of conviction obvious.

“So what’s the problem?”

I told her my reservations about Sandra Bates and her boyfriend. At the end of my tale, Shelley nodded sympathetically. “I see what you mean,” she said. “Are you going to front them up and see what they’ve got to say for themselves?”

“I hadn’t planned on it,” I said. “I was just going to hand over the reports to Trevor Kerr and the cops and let them get on with it. I can’t pretend murder isn’t police business, can I?”

“No, but if they’re not the killers, maybe you should go and talk to them. They might have some useful ideas as to who actually is doing the killing.”

She was right, of course. Before I blew their lives out of the water, I should at least talk to Sandra Bates and Simon Morley. “What if they leg it?” I protested weakly.

“If you drop off the reports with Kerr and Jackson and go straight round there, they won’t have time to leg it, will they? This isn’t a lead that Jackson’s going to sit on till morning, is it?”

Half an hour later, I was walking up the path of 37 Alder Way. I’d sent Kerr’s copy of the report round by motorbike courier, and I’d left Jackson’s copy with his sergeant. I estimated I probably had a maximum of half an hour before the police came knocking.

Sandra Bates opened the door. Her first reaction was bemused bewilderment; then, clearly remembering what I’d been asking about, she tried to close the door. I stepped forward, shoving my shoulder between the door and the jamb. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Too slow, Sandra,” I said. “An innocent woman would have spoken sooner. We need to talk.”

“You’re not a student,” she accused me, eyes narrowing.

“Correct.” I handed her one of my business cards. “I’m Kate Brannigan. I’m working for Kerrchem, and we need to talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” she said desperately, her voice rising.

From inside the house, Simon Morley’s voice joined in. “What’s going on, Sandra?”

“Go away” she said to me, shoving the door harder.

“Sandra, would you rather talk to me about industrial sabotage or to the police about murder?” I replied, leaning back against the door. “You’ve got ten seconds to decide. I know all about the scam. There’s no hiding place.”

Simon’s tall figure loomed behind Sandra in the hall. “What’s… Wait a minute, you were at the factory this morning.” He looked down at Sandra. “What the hell’s going on?”

“She’s a private detective,” Sandra spat out.

“Simon, we need to talk,” I said, struggling to maintain a responsible facade with my shoulder jammed painfully between two bits of wood. “I know about the fake KerrSter, I’ve got videos of your factory and your delivery run this morning, I know exactly how Sandra’s working the fiddle at her end. You’re already in the frame for product tampering and attempted blackmail. Do you really want two counts of murder adding to the list?”

“Let her in,” Simon said dully. Sandra looked up pleadingly at him, but he simply nodded. “Do it, love,” he said.

I followed them into a living room that came straight from Laura Ashley without any intervening application of taste. I chose an armchair upholstered in a mimsy floral chintz, and they sat down together on a matching sofa. Sandra’s hand crept out and clutched Simon’s. “There’s no way you can wriggle out of the scam,” I said brutally. “But I don’t think murder was on the agenda.”

“I haven’t killed anybody,” Simon said defiantly, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“It doesn’t look that way,” I said.

“Look, I admit I wanted to get my own back on Kerrchem,” he said.

“The golden handcuffs?” I asked.

He nodded. “That was bad enough, but then I found out they were refusing to give me a proper reference.”

I frowned. Nobody at Kerrchem had indicated that anyone had left under a cloud. “Why?” I said.

“It was my department head, Keith Murray. He screwed up on a research project I was working on with him and it ended up costing the company about twenty grand in wasted time and materials. It was just before the redundancies were going to be announced and everybody was twitchy about their jobs, and he blamed me for the cock-up. Now, because of that, personnel say I can’t have a good reference. So I’ve ended up totally shafted. Never mind waiting six months, I’ll be waiting six years before anybody gives me a responsible research job again. Kerrchem owes me.” The words spilled out angrily, tumbling out in the rush of a normally reticent man who’s had enough.

“So you decided to take it out in blackmail?”

“Why not?” he asked defiantly.

“Apart from the fact that it’s illegal, no reason at all,” I said tartly. “What about the two people who died?”

“That’s got nothing to do with us,” Sandra butted in. “You’ve got to believe us!” She looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

“She’s right,” Simon said, patting Sandra’s knee with his free hand. “The papers said they’d died from cyanide poisoning, that’s right, isn’t it?” I nodded. “Well, then,” he said. “All the stuff I’ve been using is over-the-counter chemicals, mostly ones Sandra’s picked up through work. I’ve got no access to cyanide. I’ve got none in the warehouse or here. You can search all you like, but you can’t tie us in to any cyanide. Look, all we wanted was to get some money out of Trevor Kerr. Why would we kill people if that was what we were trying to do? It’d be daft. You pay off somebody who’s wrecking your commercial operation, you do it quiet so the opposition don’t get to hear about it, you don’t go to the police. You don’t pay off murderers. You can’t hide murder.”

“What about the note? The one that came after the first death? That implied there would be more if Kerrchem didn’t pay up,” I said.

This time, Sandra did start crying. “I said we shouldn’t have sent that one,” she sobbed, pulling her hand away from Simon and punching ineffectually at his chest.

Gently, Simon gripped her wrists, then pulled her into a tight hug. “You were right, I’m sorry,” he told her. Then he turned back to me. “I thought if we pretended to be more ruthless than we were, Kerr might cough up. It was stupid, I see that now. But he got me so mad when he just ignored the first note and nobody seemed to notice what we were doing. I had to make him pay attention.“

“So if you’re not doing the killings, who is?” I demanded, finally getting round to the reason why I’d put myself through another harrowing encounter.

I was too late. Before Simon could answer, the doorbell rang, followed by a tattoo of knocking. “Police, open up,” I heard someone shout from the other side of the door. I thought about making a run for it through the back door, but the way my luck had been been running lately, I’d probably have been savaged by a police dog.

The pair on the sofa had the wide-eyed look of rabbits transfixed by car headlights. By the time they got it together to let the cops in, their front door was going to be matchwood. With a sigh, I got to my feet and prepared for another jolly chat with Detective Inspector Cliff Jackson.