Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

“No problem. I want to get these people as badly as you do. Probably more so. Then we can all get back to the business of doing what we do best.”

Speaking of which, I finally got down to doing something about Trevor Kerr’s case. I felt guilty for ignoring the material he’d sent me, but the art theft case was far more absorbing. I felt it was something I could get to the bottom of single-handed, unlike the Kerrchem case. I found myself inclined to agree with Jackson. This was a case for the cops, if only because they had the staffing resources to cover all the bases that it would take me weeks to get round. Then the little voice in my head kicked in with the real reason. “You can’t stand Trevor Kerr, so you don’t want to put yourself out for him. And you’re desperate to impress that Michael Haroun.”

“Bollocks,” I muttered out loud, seizing the sheets of fax paper with fresh energy. Someone-the indomitable Sheila, I suspected-had conveniently included the job titles as well as the names and addresses of those made redundant. I reckoned I could exclude anyone who worked on the factory floor or in the warehouse. They would have neither the chemical know-how nor the access to sales and distribution information that would allow them to pull a sabotage scheme as complex as this. That left thirty-seven people in clerical, managerial and scientific posts who had all been given what looked like a tin handshake to quit their jobs at Kerrchem.

By nine, I felt like the phone was welded to my ear. I was using a labor-market research pitch, which seemed to be working reasonably well. I claimed to be working for the EC Regional Rind, doing research to see what sort of skills were not being catered to by current job vacancies. I told my victims that I was calling people who had been made redundant over the previous year to discover whether they had found alternative employment. A depressingly low number of Kerrchem’s junked staff fell into that category, and they were mostly low-grade clerical staff. Not one of the ten middle managers had found new jobs, and to a man they were bitter as hell about it. Of the chemists, two out of the three lab technicians were working in less skilled but better-paid jobs. The four research lab staff who had been laid off were bound by their contracts and the terms of their redundancies not to work for direct competitors. One had taken a job as an analyst on a North Sea oil rig, two of the other three were kicking their heels and hating it and one was no longer at the address the company had for him. It looked like I had no shortage of suspects.

I stood up and stretched. Richard still hadn’t come home, so there was nothing to divert me from work. There was nothing more I could do with the Kerrchem stuff tonight, but I wasn’t quite stalled on the other investigation. The sensible part of me knew I should go to bed and catch up on last night’s missed sleep, but I’d had enough of being sensible for one week. I went through to the kitchen, cut open the other half of the ciabatta and loaded it with mozzarella, taramasalata and some sundried tomatoes. I wrapped it in clingfilm, and took a small bottle of mineral water out of the fridge. Fifteen minutes later, I was cruising down the M62, singing along cheerfully to a new compilation of Dusty Springfield’s greatest hits that I’d found lying around in Richard’s half of the conservatory. Never mind the mascara, check out that voice.

I was in Leeds before ten, navigating my way through the subterranean tunnels of the inner ring road, emerging into daylight somewhere near the white monolith of the university. The roads were quiet out through Headingley, but every now and again, a beam of light split the night from on high as the police helicopter quartered the skies, trying to protect the homes of the more prosperous residents from the attentions of the burglars. Burglary has reached epidemic proportions in Leeds these days; I know someone whose house was turned over seven times in six months. Every time they came home with a new stereo, so did the burglars. Now their house is more secure than Armley jail and their insurance premiums are nearly as much as the mortgage.

I slowed as I approached the Weetwood roundabout, scanning houses for their numbers. Six seventy-nine A looked like it might be one of an arcade of shops, so I parked and stretched my legs. I can’t say I was surprised to find there was no 679A. There was a 679, though, a small newsagent’s squeezed between a bakery and a hairdresser. I walked round the back of the shops, checking to see if the flats above had entrances at the rear. A couple did, but 679 wasn’t one of them. I walked back to the car, with plenty to think about. Whoever Dennis’s fence was, he was determined to cover his tracks. Using an accommodation address for his phone bills was about as careful as you could get without actually being sectioned for paranoia.

I decided to check out the directors’ addresses while I was in the city, but I held out little hope of finding any of them at home. James Connery’s alleged residence was nearest, back in Headingley proper. It was number thirty-nine in a street of ten houses. On to Chapel Allerton, where Sean Bond apparently lived in a hostel for the visually handicapped. Penny Cash was even worse off. According to Companies House, she was living on a piece of waste ground in Burmantofts. I doubled back through the city center, passing the new Health Ministry building up on Quarry Hill, spotlit to look like a set from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Apparently, the place contains a full-sized swimming pool, Jacuzzi and multigym. Nice to know our hard-earned taxes are being spent on the health of the nation, isn’t it?

It was nearly midnight when I got home. Richard’s car was parked outside, though I didn’t need that clue to know he was home as soon as I touched the front door. It was vibrating with the pulse of the bass coming through the bricks from next door. As I shoved my key in the lock, I could feel exhaustion flow through me, settling in a painful knot at the base of my skull.

I walked through the house to the conservatory. Richard’s patio doors were open, revealing half a dozen bodies in varying states of consciousness draped over the furniture. Techno dance music drilled through my head like a tribe of termites who have just discovered a log cabin. The man himself was nowhere to be seen. I picked a path to the kitchen, where I found him taking a tray of spring rolls out of the oven. “Hi,” he said. His eyes were as stoned as the woman taken in adultery.

“Any chance of the volume coming down? I need some sleep,” I said.

“That’s cool,” he said, a lazy smile spreading across his face. “Want some company?”

“You’ve already got some.”

“They can be out of here in ten minutes,” he said. “Then I’m all yours.”

He was as good as his word. Eleven minutes later, he crawled into my blissfully silent bed. Unfortunately, I’m not into necrophilia.

THE BUCKLE GOT TO THE OFFICE BEFORE I DID, WHICH GAVE Shelley something to puzzle over. I arrived to find her using it as a paperweight. “Okay,” she said. “I give in.”

I don’t often find myself one up on Shelley, so I decided to drag it out a bit. “If you can guess, I’ll buy lunch,” I said.

“What makes you think you’re going to have time for lunch?” she asked sweetly. “Besides, I told you yesterday, I don’t do imagination. You want me to learn how, you’re going to have to pay me a lot more.”

I should know better. The woman is the mother of two teenagers. What chance do I have? “It’s a replica of an Anglo-Saxon ceremonial belt buckle,” I said. “Also known as a honey pot.” Mustering what was left of my dignity, I scooped up the buckle and marched through to my office.