Val McDermid - Kickback

'OK. I can see you've got problems. Let me know when you've got the time to sit down and put it all together. And give me your mobile number so I can reach you if I need some background,” she said. I added my number to the sheet of paper and thrust it at her as I rushed off. I know that technically there was no desperate hurry for me to link up with Alexis, but if I hadn't got my adrenalin going, I might never have managed to drag myself back down the traffic-choked A6 and across that switchback road over the hills to Buxton. The locals must have amazing wrists.

I was back behind the wheel of the Fiesta. I'd got a taxi to drop me off there that morning, since there was no need to keep up my surveillance now. I swung round via the office to pick up the laptop with Cheetham's files, and a couple of my legal textbooks. I still hadn't had the chance to plough through the files, so I had no idea what twisted little schemes the dead lawyer had been up to. But I had a shrewd suspicion that they might need a bit more knowledge of the ins and outs of conveyancing than I had in my head. Better to have it at my fingertips instead.

It was nearly five by the time I overtook the last quarry wagon and dropped down the hill into Buxton. I cruised past Lomax's yard and clocked Alexis in her car. I had to admit I couldn't have picked a better spot myself. She was tucked in between two parked cars, with an uninterrupted view through the windows of the car in front to Lomax's yard. I parked round the corner and walked back.

I climbed into the Peugeot, shoving a pile of newspapers and sandwich wrappers on to the floor. 'Better be careful the bin men don't come round and claim you,' I said. 'Any action?'

Alexis shook her head. There are two vans. The one that Lomax drives and an identical one. The other one's been in and out a couple of times, but he hasn't shifted.'

“Unless of course he's lying in the back of the other van disguised as a bag of cement,' I pointed out. Alexis looked crestfallen. Oh great, now I felt even more guilty. 'Don't worry, it's not likely. He doesn't know anyone's watching him. Cheetham's death has been written off as an accident. As far as he knows, he's perfectly safe. Now, you can sod off home and let me earn a living instead of taking the bread out of my mouth,” I added.

'Don't you want me to hang on? In case he makes a run for it?' she asked, almost wistfully.

'Go home, have a cuddle with Chris. If he was planning to disappear over a distant horizon tonight, he wouldn't be sitting around in his yard. He'd be twitching in the queue at the passport office,' I said sensibly. Judging by the scowl on Alexis's face, she likes sensible about as much as I do.

She sighed, one of those straight-from-the-heart jobs. 'OK,' she said. 'But I don't want this guy to get away.'

I opened the car door. 'Don't forget, there's the small matter of proof,' I said. 'Now Cheetham's dead, Lomax can claim he did nothing dishonest. T.R. Harris is a business name, no more, no less. He just showed prospective buyers the land. He had no idea who bought it or when. Now, you and I know different, but I'd like to be in a position to prove it.'

Alexis groaned. 'All I want is a lever to get our money back, Kate. I don't care if he comes out of it all smelling of roses.'

'I hear and obey, oh lord,' I said, getting out of the car. “Now shift this wheelie bin and let the dog see the rabbit.'

She waved as she drove away and I slipped the Fiesta into the space she'd left. I flipped open the laptop and accessed the WORK.L directory. The files were sorted into two directories. One was called DUPLICAT, the other RV. The files in RV each related to a house purchase. In some cases, the house had been sold about five months later, always at a substantial profit. I was about to check out the addresses in my A-Z when a white Transit van appeared in the gateway of Lomax's yard. My target was at the wheel. Fast as I could, I closed the laptop and dumped it on the passenger seat.

Don't let anyone tell you being a private eye is a glamorous way to earn a living. I followed Lomax from his yard to his house. Then I sat in the car for two hours, plodding wearily through Martin Cheetham's files. The houses in RV were all in the seedier areas south and east of Manchester city centre -Gorton, Longsight, Levenshulme. The kind of terraced streets where you can buy run-down property cheap, tart it up and make a modest killing. Or at least, you could do until the bottom started to drop out of the North West property market a few months ago. Looking at these files, it seemed that Lomax and Cheetham had been doing this on a pretty substantial scale. I did a quick mental calculation and reckoned they'd turned over getting on for two million quid in the previous year. Since my mental arithmetic is on a par with my quantum mechanics, I decided I'd got it wrong and scribbled the sums out in my notebook. I got the same answer.

Suddenly we were in a whole new ball game. I wasn't looking at a pair of small time operators chiselling a few grand on a dodgy land deal. I was looking at big money. They could have cleared as much as three-quarters of a million in the last year. But they must have had a substantial pot to buy the houses in the first place. Where the hell had the seed money come from to generate that kind of business?

While I'd been doing my sums, the last of the light had faded. I began to feel pretty exposed, which in turn made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I couldn't help remembering that less than a week ago someone had wanted to warn me off something so badly they'd taken the risk of killing me. If they were still around, I made a hell of a target, sitting all by myself in a car.

The answer to my fear was just behind me. I was parked on the opposite side of the street to Brian Lomax's house, about thirty yards further up the hill, outside a substantial Victorian pile with a Bed and Breakfast sign swinging slightly in the chilly wind. I collected a small overnight holdall from the boot, stuffed the law books into it and walked up the short drive.

I'd have taken the landlady on as an investigator any day. By the time I'd paid for a night in advance and she'd left me alone in my spotless little room, I felt like I'd had a bright light shining in my eyes for days. Never mind grace under pressure; there should be a private investigators' Oscar for lies under pressure. At least I was in a suit, which made it easier to be convincing about my imaginary role as a commercial solicitor acting for a local client who was interested in buying property in Manchester to expand his business. She'd gone for the lie, agog at my close-lipped refusal to breach client confidentiality. I was half-convinced that come the morning, she'd be tailing me just for the hell of picking up some juicy local gossip.

My room was, as requested, at the front of the house, and on the second floor, which gave me a better view of Brian Lomax's house than I'd had from the car. Glad to get out of tights and heels, I changed into the leggings, sweatshirt and Reeboks that had been relegated to the emergency overnight kit and settled down in the dark to keep watch. I passed the time dictating my client reports for PharmAce and Ted Barlow. That would take Shelley's mind off romance for a couple of hours.

Nell arrived home about half past six, parking her GTi in the garage. It was gone nine before I saw some more action. Lomax appeared round the side of the house, walking along his drive. He turned right and started towards town. I was out of the room and down the stairs a hell of a lot more quickly than I'd have been able to manage just a couple of days before. If Mortensen and Brannigan ever take on an assistant, I think we're going to have to stipulate 'must be quick healer' on the job description.

He was still in sight as I ran out of the guest house, trying to look like a jogger nipping out for her evening run. At the traffic lights, he turned left, walking up the hill towards the market place. I reached the corner in time to see him entering a pub. Wonderful. I didn't even have a jacket on, and I couldn't follow him into the pub because he knew only too well who I was. Furious, I walked right up to the pub and peered through the stained-glass door. Through a blue haze, I saw Lomax at the bar, talking and laughing with a group of other men, all around the same age. By the looks of it, he was having his regular Thursday night down his local with the lads, rather than meeting a business contact. That much was a relief. I stepped back and had a look round. Across the street, on the opposite corner, there was a fish and chip shop that advertised an upstairs dining room. I had nothing left to lose.