Val McDermid - Dead Beat

She offered me a cup of tea, but I declined and waited patiently while she unfastened the two locks on the balcony door. Maybe she'd been watching too much television and really believed in Spiderman.

The balcony was perfect. I opened my case and took out a 400mm lens. I twisted it into my Nikon body and leaned the heavy assembly on the balcony rail. I looked through the viewfinder. Perfect. Now I could see exactly how it had been done. I started shooting, then, to prove the gods were really smiling on me, Gary Smart appeared in shot. I kept my finger on the trigger and let the motor drive do the work.

An hour later, I was surveying the results with a feeling of deep satisfaction. I marched through to Bill with a sheaf of prints and dumped them on his desk.

'Elementary, my dear Mortensen,' I announced.

Bill tore himself away from his screen and picked up the pictures. He thumbed through them with a puzzled frown, then, as he reached the ones with Gary, he laughed out loud.

'Bang to rights, Kate,' he chuckled. 'Tony Redfern will be kicking some arses tonight.' He picked up the phone and said, 'Shelley, can you get me Tony Redfern, please.' He covered the mouthpiece and said, 'Well done, Kate. After I've put Tony in the picture, I'm going round to see Clive and tell him myself. I can't wait to see the grief on his face… Hello, Tony? Bill Mortensen.

'Kate's just walked through the door with your answer.' I knew Tony would be squirming at the glee in Bill's voice. 'Listen to this for a scam. The Smarts' warehouse is the middle one of three, right? They all have pitched roofs, right? And all three back on to Fastfit. Which has a flat roof behind a parapet so you can't see it from the street. Still with me? The gear comes out of the window in the gable end of the warehouse, on to the Fastfit roof, down to the Fastfit loading bay then over the hills and far away… Yes, Kate has it all on film. They've been moving gear back in today. They must have spotted your surveillance team and shifted everything out in advance of the raid. And of course, you wouldn't be moving on them again till you saw something going in. And long before you did, you'd lose interest.'

Nothing like making someone's day. I headed back for Colcutt hoping that someone would make mine.

By the time I got to Colcutt, the buzz of tracking the Smarts' scam had worn off and my stomach seemed to think it was time for something a little more substantial than black coffee. I headed for the kitchen, planning to take some of my wages in kind. On the way, I noticed that the rehearsal room was taped up with police seals. I wondered how long it would be before Jett felt like making music again.

I poked around in the kitchen, checking out the fridge, the freezer and the cupboards. I opened a can of Heinz tomato soup, the ultimate comfort food, emptied it into a bowl and put it in the microwave. I'd only managed to get a couple of spoonfuls down when the door leading into the stable yard opened and Micky walked in, shaking the drops of rain off his waxed jacket. It was the first time I've ever seen anyone with arms so long their wrists actually stuck out of the sleeves of a Barbour.

He nodded at me and headed for the kettle, pulling off a tweed cap which had left a circular impression on his thin blond-streaked brown hair. The effect was quite bizarre. 'Bloody awful weather,' he complained, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth bobbing up and down like a conductor's baton.

'You're not wrong. You wouldn't have caught me out in it unless I'd been working,' I fished. He didn't rise. All I got for my pains was a grunt that fitted well with his simian features. I tried again. 'Have you got a minute? I need to ask you some questions.'

Micky sighed deeply and tossed his cigarette end into the sink. 'It's doing my head in, this business. Questions, questions, questions. And Plod all over the sodding place. All I want to do is get on with my job. Some of us have got deadlines to meet,' he grumbled.

'Inconsiderate of Moira, really,' I replied. 'But the sooner you answer my questions, the sooner it'll all be sorted,' I added with a confidence I didn't feel.

'Might as well get it over and done with,' he muttered irritably, tossing a teabag into a mug and swirling it around viciously with a teaspoon. He removed his jacket and threw it over a chair, then brought his tea over to the table. He perched on the edge of a chair and immediately lit another cigarette which he continuously dabbed nervously at his lips. Apart from the cigarette, he looked just like those chimps they dress up for the PG Tips adverts. I half-expected him to answer my questions in Donald Sinden's fruity tones.

'I need to know your movements around the time of Moira's death,' I said bluntly.

T didn't make any,' he replied belligerently, his fingers beating a silent tattoo on the side of the mug. I gave him the benefit of my quizzical look. I couldn't do words because I had a mouthful of soup. T was in the studio all evening,' he finally volunteered.

'Doing what, exactly?' I pursued.

'Doing what I do, exactly. Jett and Moira had been in earlier, around eight, listening to what we'd been working on that afternoon. Moira was full of bright ideas about the mixing, and some synth effects she wanted me to lay down. I was fiddling around with a couple of tracks, trying various things. I wanted to have a selection of versions for them to hear the next day. Time passes fast when you've got your head down.' Micky took a swig of tea and sniffed loudly as the steam hit his cold nose. It was far from incontrovertible evidence of what Gloria had suggested and Neil had confirmed.

Even the cloud of smoke slowly filling the kitchen couldn't put me off my soup. I finished it, and the sound of my spoon scraping on the bottom of the bowl made him wince. 'I understand Moira had pretty firm ideas on what she wanted the album to be like,' I remarked.

He crushed out his cigarette, swallowed some more tea, sniffed again, blew his nose on a large, paisley patterned handkerchief and lit another cigarette before he answered. 'She was a royal pain,' Micky informed me. 'Let's try it this way, no, maybe not, let's go back to what you wanted to do in the first place,' he mimicked with cruel accuracy. 'She'd been out of the game too long to have a bloody clue what she was talking about.'

'Doesn't sound like you're too sorry that she's dead,' I said.

The look of astonishment that crossed his face came as a genuine surprise to me.

'Of course I'm bloody sorry,' he shouted. 'She was a bloody great songwriter. Just because she couldn't do my job doesn't mean I didn't respect the way she did hers. She might have been bloody difficult to work with, but at least she gave you something you could get your teeth into in the first place.' He subsided as quickly as he'd erupted and slouched even deeper in the chair. 'For fuck's sake,' he muttered.

'I'm sorry,' I said, meaning it. 'Did anyone else come down to the studio while you were there?'

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, screwing up his eyes in concentration. 'Kevin came in. I've been trying to remember if it was once or twice, but I'm not sure. He wanted to hear how it was going, but I wasn't really in the mood. I was into the music, you know? I didn't have a lot left over for small talk.'

'Screws your memory up, doesn't it?' I said sympathetically.

'What d'you mean?'

'Charlie. Destroys the short-term memory.'

'I don't know what you're on about,' came the reflex answer.

'Coke. And I don't mean the brown fizzy stuff. It's OK, Micky, I'm not a copper's nark. I don't give a shit what you do to yourself. Everybody's got the right to go to hell in the handcart of their choice. I'm just concerned about finding out what happened to Moira. And if you were out of your box, your evidence on Kevin's movements isn't worth a damn,' I informed him, aware even as I spoke how bloody sanctimonious I sounded. At least I'd managed to restrain myself from dishing out the standard Brannigan antidrugs sermon.