Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

It was Dennis who got me into Thai boxing. He believes all women should have self-defense skills, and when he discovered I’d been relying on nothing more than charm and a reasonable turn of speed, he’d dragged me down to the gym. His daughter’s been a finalist in the national championships for the last three years running, and he lets her beat me up on a regular basis, just to remind me that there are people out there who could cause me serious damage. As if I needed reminding after some of the shit I’ve been through in recent years.

Now he’s out of major-league villainy and into “a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of ducking and diving,” Dennis has taken to using the gym as his corporate headquarters. I don’t suppose the management mind. All the locals know Dennis’s draconian views on drugs, so his presence keeps the gym clear of steroid abuse. And there are never any fights outside the ring. He’s not known in South Manchester as Dennis the Menace for nothing.

I checked out a couple of black lads working the heavy bags at the far end of the room. They were too far away to overhear. “Your backside will start looking like Richard’s car if you carry on like that,” I said, smiling over the top of his paper.

“At last, someone worth sparring with,” Dennis said, bouncing to his feet. “How’s it hanging, kid?”

“By a fingernail,” I said, bending over to start my warm-up exercises. “What do you know?” I glanced over at Dennis, who was mirroring my movements.

He looked glum. “Tell you the truth, Kate, I’m in the shit,” he said.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Remember that nice little earner I told you about awhile back? My crime prevention scheme?”

How could I forget? Dennis’s latest scam involved parting villains from large wads of money by persuading them they were buying a truckload of stolen merchandise from him. Dennis would show them a sample of the goods (bought or shoplifted from one of the dozens of wholesalers down at Strangeways) and arrange a handover the following day in a motorway service area. Only, once the punters had swapped their stash for the keys to the alleged wagonload and Dennis’s car was a distant puff of exhaust, the crooks would discover that the keys he’d handed them didn’t open a single truck on the lorry park. Crime prevention? Well, if Dennis was taking their money off them, they wouldn’t be inciting anyone else to steal something for them to buy, now would they?

“Somebody catch up with you?” I gasped between sit-ups.

“Worse than that,” he said gloomily. “I set up a meet at An-derton Services on the Sixty-one. Ten grand for a wagon of Levis. Everything’s going sweet as a Sunday morning shag when it all comes on top. All of a sudden, there’s more fuzz than you get on crowd control at a United-City match. I legged it over the footbridge and dived into the ladies’ toilet. Sat there for two hours. I went back over just in time to see the cops loading my Audi on to a tow truck. I couldn’t fucking believe it, could I?” Dennis grunted as he did a handful of squat thrusts.

“Somebody tip them off about you?” I asked, fastening a body protector over my front.

“You kidding me? This wasn’t regular Old Bill, this was the Drugs Squad. They’d only been staking the place out because they’d had a tip a big crack deal was going down. They see somebody handing over a wad of cash, and they jump to the wrong conclusion.”

“So what’s happening?” I asked, pulling the ropes apart and climbing into the ring.

Dennis followed me and we began to circle each other cautiously. “They lifted my punter and accused him of being a drug baron.” He snorted. “That dick couldn’t deal a hand of poker, never mind a key of crack. Anyway, he’s so desperate to get out of the shit he’s drowning in that he coughs the lot. Next morning, they’re round my house mob-handed. The wife was mortified.”

“They charging you?” I asked, swinging a swift kick in toward Dennis’s knee.

He sidestepped and twisted round, catching me over the right hip. “Got to, haven’t they? Otherwise, they come away from their big stakeout empty-handed. Theft, and obtaining by deception.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to. Dennis might have been clean as far as the law is concerned for half a dozen years now, but with his record, he was looking at doing time. I feinted left and pivoted on the ball of my foot to bring my right leg up in a fast arc that caught Dennis in the ribs.

“Nice one, Kate,” he wheezed as he bounced back off the ropes.

“Bit of luck, your punters might decide it would be bad for their reputations if they weigh in as witnesses when it comes to court.” It wasn’t much consolation but it was all I could think of.

“Never mind their reputation, it wouldn’t be too good for their health,” he said darkly. “Anyway, I’ve got one or two things on the boil. Just a bit of insurance just in case I do go down. Make sure Debbie and the kids don’t go without if I’m away.”

I didn’t ask what kind of insurance. I know better. We worked out in silence for a while. I was upset at the thought of only seeing Dennis with a visiting order for the next couple of years, but there was nothing I could do to help him out, and he knew that as well as I did. Even though we have more attitudes in common than seems likely on the surface, there are areas of each other’s lives we take care to avoid. Mostly, they’re to do with knowledge that either of us would feel uncomfortable about keeping to ourselves. I don’t tell him when I’m about to drop people in it that he knows, and he doesn’t tell me about things I’d feel impelled to pass on to the cops.

After fifteen minutes of dodging each other round the ring, we were both sweating. I lost concentration for a moment, which was all it took. Next thing I knew, I was on my back staring at the strip lights.

“Sloppy,” Dennis remarked.

I scrambled up to find him leaning on the ropes. I could have knocked the wind out of him with one kick. Or maybe not. I’ve come into contact with that rock-hard diaphragm before. “Got a lot on my mind,” I said.

“Anything I can help with?” he asked. Typical Dennis. Didn’t matter how much crap of his own he had to sort out, he was still determined to stay in the buddy role.

“Maybe,” I said, slipping between the ropes and heading for the neat stack of scruffy towels on a shelf.

Dennis followed me, and we sat companionably on a bench while we talked. I gave him a brief outline of the Kerrchem case. “You know anybody who’s doing schneid cleaning fluid?” I ended up.

He shook his head. “I don’t know anybody that stupid,” he said scornfully. “There’s not nearly enough margin in it, is there? And it’s bulky. Costs you a lot to shift it round, and you can’t exactly set up a street-corner pitch with it, can you? There was a team from Liverpool tried schneid washing powder a couple of years back. They’d done a raid on a chemical firm, nicked one of their vans to do the getaway. There were a couple of drums of chemicals in the back, and they decided not to waste it, so they printed up some boxes and flogged it on the markets. Nasty stuff. Took the skin off your fingers if you tried handwashing. Mind you, there weren’t any of them ‘difficult’ stains left. That’s because there wasn’t a lot of clothes left.”

“So you don’t reckon it’s any of the usual faces?”

Dennis shook his head. “Like I said, you’d have to be stupid to go for that when there’s plenty of hooky gear around with bigger profits and a lot less risk. I reckon you’re looking closer to home on this one. This is a grudge match.”

“An ex-employee? A competitor?” Even though it’s a long way removed from his world, it’s always worth bouncing ideas off Dennis.