Val McDermid - Kickback

'Nell,' I prompted him.

“Yeah, Little Nell, how could I forget?'

This is no time for obscene rugby songs,' I said.

'Wrong sport, Brannigan. You'll Never Walk Alone is more my speed than The Ball of Kirriemuir. Anyway, as you so correctly pointed out, any fool knows these days that forensic science could place Little Nell not just at the scene of the crime but in the bed if they'd bonked in it since the last time the sheets were changed. She does nothing more than take off the dirty linen so she can wash it in private. Meanwhile, Lomax goes down Cheetham's office and clears out the safe and has it away on his toes with the computer discs in the office. Pick the holes in that.” he ended triumphantly.

I thought about it for a moment, then I jumped to my feet. 'Hold everything,' I said on my way through to my spare room, which doubles as study and computer room. I pulled out a book on forensic medicine written for the popular market that Richard had bought me for my birthday as a kind of joke. I ran my finger down the index and turned to the section on body temperature. 'Got it!' I shouted. Richard appeared in the doorway, looking crestfallen. I pointed to the relevant sentence, "The rule of thumb applied by pathologists is that a clothed body will cool in air at between two and five degrees Fahrenheit per hour", it says here,' I said. 'And, when I touched him, he was the same temperature as I was, near as dammit. No way was he between four and ten degrees colder than me, which he should have been if he'd died when you suggested.'

Richard took the book from me and read the relevant section. As usual, the journalist in him took over and he found all sorts of fascinating things he simply had to read about. Leaving him to it, I started to clear up the debris of dinner. I'd just dumped the tinfoil containers in the bin when he reappeared, brandishing the book with a look of pure triumph.

'You should have kept reading,' he said sanctimoniously. That way, you wouldn't have given me half a tale. Look,' he added, pointing to a paragraph on the following page.

"Typically, death by asphyxiation raises the body temperature. This must be taken into account in estimates of the time of death, and is known to have caused confusion in some historical cases,'" I read. 'Bollocks,' I said. 'OK, you win,' I sighed. 'I'm letting my imagination run away with me.'

'So you accept my theory?' Richard asked, a look of total disbelief on his face.

'I guess so,' I admitted.

There's one good thing about it,' he said. 'I mean, I know I've just deprived you of all the excitement of chasing a murderer, but look on the bright side. It puts Alexis in the clear.'

'I never thought for a moment she wasn't in the clear,' I lied frostily.

'Course you didn't,' Richard said, with a broad wink. 'Anyway, now I've saved you all the work of a murder hunt, do I get a reward?'

I checked my body out for bruises and stiffness. I was beginning to heal, no doubt about it. I leaned into Richard's warmth and murmured, 'Your place or mine?'

The bulging eyes stared fixedly at me, the blue lips twitching some message I could neither hear nor read. I moved back, but the face kept following me. I shouted at it, and the sound of my voice woke me up with the kind of staring-eyed shock that sets the adrenalin racing through the veins. The clock said six, Richard was lying on his stomach, breathing not quite heavily enough to be called snoring, and I was wide awake with Martin Cheetham's face accusing me.

Even if he hadn't been murdered, Nell and Lomax had behaved unforgivably, always supposing there was anyone still around to forgive them. Nell's actions in particular sickened me. I know I couldn't behave like that if someone I'd been lovers with was hanging dead in the hall. There must have been a lot at stake for Nell and Lomax to have had the nerve to carry off their cover-up and, although the voice of reason said it was none of my business, I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Since I was awake anyway, I decided to do something useful. I slipped out of Richard's bed and cut through the conservatory to my house. A steaming shower banished the morning stiffness that still lingered in my muscles, and a strong cup of coffee kick-started my brain. I chose a pair of bottle green trousers and a matching sweater to go under the russet padded silk blouson that I'd picked up for a song on Strangeways market.

It was a quarter to seven when I parked outside Alexis's house. As I'd expected, her car was still in the drive. I knew her routine of old. Up at six, in the bath with a pot of coffee, the phone and her notebook at five past. Morning calls to the cops, then out of the bath at half past. Then toast and the tabloids. I estimated she'd be finishing her second slice of toast about now. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be in the office at seven this morning.

I looked through the kitchen window as I knocked on the door. Alexis dropped her toast at the sound of the knock. I waved and grinned at her. With a look of resignation, she opened the door.

'I have a question for you,' I announced.

'Come in, why don't you?' Alexis said as I walked across the kitchen and switched the kettle on.

'When you left Tamarind Grove yesterday afternoon, did you already know that Martin Cheetham was dead?' I asked conversationally, spooning coffee into a mug.

Alexis's face froze momentarily. Always pale, she seemed to go sheet white. 'How the hell did you know about that?' she asked intensely. If she used that tone of voice professionally, she'd get all sorts of confessions she wasn't looking for.

'I don't suppose you remember a red Little Rascal van that you nearly drove into, but that was me. I remember it particularly because for a brief moment, I wondered what Bill would say if I wrote off a second company vehicle inside a week,' I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit.

'I might have known,' Alexis sighed. 'If you're brewing up, I'll have another cup.'

I made the coffees and said, 'I'm listening.'

Alexis lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags before she spoke. I sometimes think it must be lovely to have an instant trank permanently to hand. Then I think about my lungs.

'I'd had a couple of drinks at lunchtime. I wasn't pissed, just a bit belligerent. So I bought a can of spray paint. I was going to spray some rude graffiti on Cheetham's house,' she said, looking as embarrassed as she must have felt. 'Anyway, I got there and there was his car in the drive. I thought about spraying "You dirty rat" on the bonnet, then I realized if he was home I might as well give him a piece of my mind. So I rang the doorbell. There was no reply, so I looked through the letter box. And I saw these feet, legs, just dangling there.'

'Tell me about it,' I said with feeling, remembering my own experience.

'So I took off like a bat out of hell,” Alexis said, dropping her head so that her haystack of unruly black hair hid her face.

“You didn't phone the cops?' I asked.

'How could I? I didn't have any legit reason for being there. I didn't even know who the body was. And I couldn't have done it anonymously, could I? Half the cops in Manchester know who it is on the phone the minute I open my gob.' She was right. Anyone who'd ever spoken to Alexis would remember that smoky Liverpudlian voice.

'I'm sorry,” I said. 'I should have rung you about it last night. I was just too wiped out. So, when did you realize it was Cheetham?'

'When I did my calls this morning. They told me about it as a routine non-suspicious death. If he hadn't been a solicitor, I doubt they'd even have mentioned it. It made my stomach turn over, I can tell you.'

'Any details?' I asked.

'Not a lot. Unattributed, I got that he was wearing women's clothing and playing bondage games. According to the DI at the scene, he had a proper little torture chamber in his wardrobe. They reckon he died sometime yesterday afternoon. He didn't have any form for sexual offences. Not so much as a caution. He's not even on their list of people they know get up to naughties in their spare time. They don't think there was anyone else involved, and they're not treating it as a suspicious death. They don't even think it was suicide, just an accident. All I can say is thank God he didn't have nosy neighbours, or else the lads might be asking me what exactly I was doing kicking his door in yesterday afternoon.' Alexis managed a faint smile. 'Especially if they knew I had a private eye working on how to recover the five grand he helped to con me out of.'