Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

Dennis stood on the doorstep, grinning cheerily. I wanted to smack him, but good sense prevailed over desire. It seemed to have been doing that a lot lately. “Hiya. Debbie says you’ve got something for me,” he greeted me, leaning forward to kiss my cheek.

I backed off, letting him teeter. “Something to show you,” I corrected him, marching through into my living room. Without waiting for him to sit down, I smacked the tape into the video, turned on the TV and pressed play. I kept my back to him while the robbery replayed itself before our eyes. As the two burglars disappeared from sight, I switched off the TV and turned to face him.

Dennis’s expression revealed nothing. I might as well have shown him a blank screen for all the reaction I was getting. “Nice one, Dennis,” I said bitterly. “Thanks for marking my card.”

He thrust his hands into the trouser pockets of his immaculate pearl gray double-breasted suit. “What did you expect me to do? Put my hand up when you told me what you was looking into?” he said quietly.

“Never mind what I expected,” I said. “What you did do has dropped me right in it.”

Dennis frowned. “What is this?” he demanded angrily. “You know the kind of thing I do for a living. I’m not some snow-white straight man. I’m a thief, Kate, a fucking criminal. I steal things, I have people over, I pull seams. How else do you think I put food in my kids’ mouths and clothes on their backs? It’s not like I’ve been keeping it a big fucking secret, is it?” “No, but…”

“What’s wrong? You’re quick enough to come to me for help because I can go places and get people to talk that you can’t. You think I could do that if I wasn’t as bent as the bastards you chase? What is it, Kate? You can’t handle the fact that one of your mates is a crook now you’re faced with the evidence?” I found myself subsiding onto a sofa. He was right, of course. I’ve always known in the abstract that Dennis was a villain, but I’d never had to confront it directly. “I thought you weren’t doing this kind of thing anymore,” I said weakly. “You always said you wouldn’t do stuff that would get you a long stretch again.”

Dennis threw himself on to the sofa opposite me. A grim smile flashed across his face. “That was the plan. Then everything came on top, like I told you. Kate, I could get five for that. My kids shouldn’t have to suffer because I’m a villain, should they? I don’t want my kids not being able to go to university because their old man’s inside and there’s no money. I don’t want my family living in some bed-and-breakfast doss-house because the mortgage hasn’t been paid and the house has been repoed. Now, the only way I know to make sure that doesn’t happen is to salt away some insurance money. And the only way I know to get money is robbing.”

“So you’ve been doing these art robberies,” I said. “That’s right. Listen, if I’d have known that you’d done the security on Birchfield Place, I wouldn’t have gone near the gaff. You’re my mate, I don’t want to embarrass you.”

I shook my head, “If I recognized you, Dennis, chances are someone else might, especially if they put the tape on the box.” He sighed. “So do what you have to do, Kate.” He met my eyes, not in a challenge, but in a kind of agreement.

“You don’t think I’m going to shop you, do you?” I blurted out indignantly.

“It’s your job,” he said simply.

I shook my head. “No it’s not. My job is to get my client’s property back. It’s the police that arrest villains, not me.”

“You’ve turned people over to the dibble before,” Dennis pointed out. “You got principles, you should stick to them. It’s okay, Kate, I won’t hold it against you. It’s an occupational hazard. You work with asbestos, sometimes you get lung cancer. You go robbing for a living, sometimes you get a nicking. There’s nothing personal in it.”

“Will you get it into your thick head that I am not going to grass you up?” I said belligerently. “The only thing I’m interested in is getting Henry Naismith’s Monet back. Anyway, you’re only a small fish. If I want anybody, I want the whale.”

Dennis’s lips tightened to a thin line. “Okay, I hear you,” he said grimly. I didn’t expect him to fall to his knees in gratitude. Nobody likes being placed under the kind of obligation I’d just laid on him.

“So cough,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “It’s not that simple,” he said, taking his time over pulling out his cigarettes and lighting up. “I haven’t got it anymore.”

“That was quick,” I said, disappointed. From what Dennis had told me about his previous exploits in the field of executive burglary, it often takes some time to shift the proceeds, fences being notoriously twitchy about taking responsibility for stolen goods that are still so hot they risk meltdown.

Dennis leaned back in his seat, unbuttoning his jacket. “A ready market. That’s one of the reasons I got into this in the first place. See, what happened was when I realized this court case wasn’t going to go away, I put the word out that I was looking for a nice little earner. A couple of weeks later, I get a call from this bloke I know in Leeds. I fenced a couple of choice antique items with him in the old days when I was pursuing my former career. Anyway, he says he’s heard about my bit of bother, and he’s got a contact for me. He gives me this mobile phone number, and tells me to ring this bloke.

“So I ring the number and mention my contact’s name and this bloke says to me he’s in the market for serious art. He says he has a client for topflight gear, flat fee of ten grand a pop for pieces agreed in advance. I go, how do I know I can trust you, and he goes, ‘you don’t part with the gear till you see the color of my money.’ I go, how does it work, and he goes, ‘you decide on something you think you can get away with, and you ring me and ask me if I want it. I ring you back the next day with a yes or a no.’ ”

“So you embark on your new career as art robber,” I said. “Simple, really.”

“You wouldn’t be so sarcastic if you knew what a nause it is shifting stuff like that on the open market,” Dennis said with feeling.

“How did you know what to go for? And where to go for it?” I demanded. I’d never had Dennis pegged as a paid-up member of the National Trust.

“My mate Frankie came out a while back,” he said. I didn’t think he meant that Frankie had revealed he was a raging queen. “He’s been doing an eight stretch for armed robbery, and he did an Open University degree while he was inside. He did a couple of courses in history of art. He reckoned it would come in useful on the outside,” he added dryly.

“I don’t think that’s quite what the government had in mind when they set up the OU,” I said.

Dennis grinned. “Get an education, get on in life. Anyway, we spent a couple of months schlepping round these country houses, sussing out what was where, what was worth nicking and what the security was like. Pathetic, most of it.”

I had a sudden thought. “Dennis, these robberies have been going on for nine months now. You only got nicked a few weeks ago. You didn’t start doing this for insurance money, you started doing this out of sheer badness,“ I accused him.

He shrugged, looking slightly shamefaced. “So I lied. I’m sorry, Kate, I can’t change the habit of a lifetime. This was just too good to miss. And watertight. We don’t touch places with security guards so nobody gets hurt or upset. We’re in and out so fast there’s no way we’re going to get caught.”

“I caught you,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but you’re a special case,” Dennis said. “Besides, the CCTV wasn’t there when we cased the place. They must have only just put it in.”