Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

This time Dennis’s mobile was switched on. “I want you to set up a meet for me with your man,” I said. “Tell him you’ll vouch for me, and that I’ve got something really special for him.”

“I’m not sure if he’ll go for it,” Dennis tried. “Like I told you, we have to wait for a yes or a no before we lift stuff. He’s very picky, and he likes to be in control.”

“Tell him there’s only two in the world. I’ve got one and the British Museum’s got the other one. Tell him it’s from the collection at High Hammer-ton Hall. And it’s gold. He should be able to work it out himself from that. Believe me, Dennis, he’ll want this.”

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “But I’m coming with you on the meet.”

“No you’re not,” I told him firmly. “You’re in enough trouble as it is. This is not going to be heavy, Dennis. I can handle one man in a car park. You should know, you train me.”

“I still think you’re crazy, chasing this,” he said. “Your client’s going to be better off with the insurance company’s readies in his bank account than he is with a poxy picture on the wall.”

“Call it professional pride.”

“Call it pigheadedness,” he said. “I’ll get back to you.”

I went through to Bill’s office and opened the cupboard where we keep our stock of technological wizardry. I found what I was looking for in a cardboard box at the back of the top shelf. It’s not something we use very often, reeking as it does of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but given that Dennis’s fence seemed to be an aficionado of James Bond, it seemed entirely appropriate to use a directional bug. If that conjures up images of chunky metal boxes stuck to the bottom of cars, forget it. Thanks to modern miniaturization technology, the bugs we’ve got are about the size of an indigestion tablet. The transmission batteries last about a week, and allow the bug to send a signal to a base unit. The range is about fifteen kilometers, provided large mountains don’t get in the way, and the screen gives a readout of direction and distance. Perfect for tracking the buckle back to source, so long as that the fence was going to get rid of it sharpish.

Next stop Clive Abercrombie, with a brief detour via the terraced streets of Whalley Range to stuff Gizmo’s used tenners through his letter box. When I got to the shop, Clive was hovering behind a counter, ostentatiously leaving the waiting on to the lesser mortals he employs to be polite to the rich. When I walked in, he shot forward and had me through the door to the back of the shop so fast my feet didn’t even leave tracks in the shag pile. Obviously, he doesn’t want proles like me hanging around making the place look like Ratners. “In a hurry, Clive?” I asked innocently.

“I thought you would be. You usually are,” he replied acidly. “Now, what was it you wanted?”

I took the buckle out of my handbag. In spite of himself, Clive drew his breath in sharply. “Where did you get that?” he demanded, extending one finger to point dramatically at the twinkling gold lump.

“Don’t worry, my life of crime runs to solving it, not committing it,” I soothed. “It’s not the real thing. It’s a copy.”

If anything, he looked even more disturbed. “Why are you walking around with it in your handbagl” he demanded, giving Lady Bracknell a run for her money.

Knowing Clive’s weakness for anything reeking of snobbery, I said, “I’m doing a job for the Nottingham Group.”

“Should I know the name?” he asked snottily.

“Probably not, Clive. It’s a consortium of the landed gentry, headed by Lord Ballantrae of Dumdivie. Art thefts. Very hush-hush. I’m very close to Mr. Big, and this is a ploy to smoke him out.” I pulled the bug out of my pocket. “What I need is for one of your craftsmen to incorporate this in the piece. Preferably on the outside. I’d thought under one of the stones.” I handed the bug and the buckle to Clive, who already had his loupe out.

He took a few minutes to scrutinize the buckle, heavy enough to make a useful weapon, especially if it was attached to a belt. “Nice piece of work,” he commented. “If you hadn’t told me it was a fake, I’d have had my work cut out to spot it.” Praise indeed, coming from Clive. He unscrewed the loupe from his eye socket and said, “It’ll take a few hours. And it will cost.”

“Now, there’s a surprise,” I said. “Just send us an invoice. Give me a bell when it’s ready.” I turned to go back through the shop, but Clive gripped my elbow and steered me farther into the nether regions.

“Easier if you pop out the back door,” he said. Half a minute later, I was in the street. I reckoned I deserved a cappuccino made by someone other than me, so I decided to take the scenic route back to the office. For a brief moment, I toyed with the idea of ringing Michael Haroun and suggesting he play truant for half an hour, but I told myself severely that it wouldn’t help my pursuit of the art thieves to involve the insurers at this stage. They’d only start muttering about doing things by the book and informing the police. I smacked my hormones firmly on the wrist and drove the length of Deans-gate to the Atlas Cafe, where they claim to make the best coffee outside Italy. I wasn’t going to argue. I dumped the car on a yellow line down by the canal basin and walked back up to the chic glass-and-wood interior. I sat by the window, sipping the kind of cappuccino that acts like intravenous caffeine and pulled the Kerrchem papers out of my bag. Time for a file review.

I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. All I knew was that I wanted to find something, anything that would legitimately allow me to postpone or short-circuit the tedious process of doing background checks into all of the redundant staff that I hadn’t been able to eliminate on the phone. On the second read-through, I found exactly what I was looking for.

Joey Morton’s supply of KerrSter came from the local branch of a national chain of trade wholesalers, Filbert Brown. His wife couldn’t remember which of them had actually made the trip to the cash-and-carry when the fatal drum of KerrSter had been bought, but there was no doubt that that was the original source of the tainted cleanser.

It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a place to start. One of the dozens of pieces of normally useless information cluttering up my dustbin brain was the fact that Filbert Brown were a Manchester-based company. I knew this because I passed their head office and flagship cash-and-carry every time I drove from my house to North Manchester. Suddenly energized, I abandoned the hedonism of the Atlas and trotted back down the steps to the car.

It didn’t take long to skirt the city center. It took longer to get through to the customers’ car park at Filbert Brown. They occupied an old factory building just off Great Ancoats Street. The area was in the middle of that chaotic upheaval known as urban renewal. East Manchester is supposedly coming up in the world; home of the new Commonwealth Games stadium, spiffy new housing developments and sports facilities. Oh, and roads, of course. Lots of them. Virgin territory for the traffic cones and temporary traffic lights that have become an epidemic on the roads of the North West. My political friends reckon it’s the government’s revenge because most of us up here didn’t vote for them.

Considering it was the middle of the morning, when all of us small business people are supposed to have our noses firmly to the grindstone, Filbert Brown was surprisingly busy. I walked in without challenge and found myself in a glorified warehouse. It reminded me of those cheap and cheerless back-to-basics supermarkets that we’ve imported from Europe in recent years. Anyone who did their shopping in Netto or Aldi would have been right at home in Filbert Brown. Me, I always find it incredibly cheap to shop there-they never stock anything I’d want to buy. The same went for Filbert Brown. I know Richard thinks I have an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness, but even I couldn’t get turned on by cases of dishwasher powder, drums of worktop bactericide and cartons of paper towels. I was clearly in a minority, judging by the number of people who were happily filling up their trolleys.