Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

When it came to the crunch, I couldn’t do it. Call it duty, call it stubbornness, call it pure bloody-mindedness. Whatever it was, it propelled me off that plane and over to the check-in desk for the flight to Manchester. Shelley had come up trumps. I was booked on a seat in business class. I had ten minutes to give her a quick ring and tell her I was meeting Kerr at the airport hotel. Slightly reassured, she told me again to take care. She was warning the wrong person.

They had that evening’s Chronicle on the plane. cleaner’s mystery death hit me like a stab in the guts. Even though she’d died in Liverpool, Mary Halloran had made the front page in Manchester because of the KerrSter connection and because it gave the paper the chance to rehash the Joey Morton story. Feeling accused by every word, especially since they came under the byline of Alexis Lee, I read on. Mrs. Halloran, forty-three, a mother of two (Oh God, another two kids I’d deprived of a parent…), had started her own commercial cleaning firm after she was made redundant by the city council. The business had grown into a real money-spinner, but Mrs. Halloran liked to keep her hand in on the office floor, presumably to stay in touch with her roots. She had a regular stint three mornings a week in a local solicitor’s office, where she started work at half past five. Normally, she worked with another woman, but her partner had been off sick that week. Mrs. Hal-loran’s body had been found outside the cleaning cupboard on the first floor by one of the solicitors who had come in just after seven to catch up on some work. She was slumped on the floor beside an open but full container of KerrSter. The police had revealed that the postmortem indicated Mrs. Halloran had died as a result of inhaling hydrogen cyanide gas.

The pathologist must have been quick off the mark, I thought. Not to mention in possession of a nasty, suspicious mind. After Joey Morton’s death I’d checked my reference shelves, which had confirmed what I’d already thought- death by cyanide’s a real pig to diagnose. It happens almost instantaneously, and there’s not much to see on the pathologist’s slab. Maybe a trace of frothing round the mouth, possibly a tow irregular pink patches on the skin like you get with people who suck too long on their car exhausts. If you get the body open quickly, there might be a faint trace of the smell of bitter almonds in the mouth, chest and abdominal cavity. But if you don’t get your samples pdq, you’re knackered because the cyanide metamorphoses into sulphocyanides, which you’d expect to find there anyway. The only reason they’d picked up on it right away in Joey’s case was that the barman who discovered his body noticed the smell and happened to be a keen reader of detective fiction.

The Merseyside police were being pretty cautious, and there was a stonewalling quote from Jackson, but reading between the lines, you could see they were talking to each other already. Trevor Kerr was on the record as saying he was confident that there was no problem with the products leaving his factory and he was sure that any investigation would completely vindicate Kerrehem. Never one to miss the chance for a bit of speculation, Alexis had flown the kite of industrial sabotage, but she had no quotes to back her up. No wonder she wanted to talk to me. I wondered if Trevor Kerr had told her I was working for him as part of his attempt to get out from under.

By the time the plane landed, I could have done with a couple of lines of speed. I’d had a stressful couple of days with almost no sleep, and the coffee I’d been mainlining in the air was starting to give me the jitters rather than simply keeping me awake. I was just in the mood for Trevor Kerr.

I reclaimed my bags by ten to eight and pushed them through customs on a trolley like a sleepwalker. Halfway down the customs hall, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a voice say, “Step this way, madam.” I looked up blearily at the customs officer, inches away from tears. The last thing I needed right now was to explain my bizarre assortment of possessions, ranging from a box of maps to a wad of cash and a radio receiver.

“What’s going on,” I asked.

“Just follow me, please,” he said, leaving me no choice. We walked across the hall to a door on the far side. I was aware of several curious stares from my fellow passengers. The customs man showed me into a small office and closed the door behind me. Leaning against the wall, exhaling a mouthful of smoke, stood Detective Chief Inspector Delia Prentice, a wry smile on her lips. Her chestnut hair was loose, hanging round her face in a shining fall. Her green eyes were clear, her skin glowing. She’d clearly had more than two hours sleep in the last thirty-six. I hated her.

“You look like you had a rough flight,” she said.

“The flight was fine,” I told her, slumping into one of the room’s plastic bucket chairs. “It’s just the last two days that have been hell.”

“Anything to do with the collected works that was waiting on my desk this morning 1?” she asked.

I groaned. “More than somewhat. I realize it won’t have made a word of sense to you, but I needed to send it somewhere safe.”

“Come on,” Delia said, shrugging away from the wall. “I’ll drive you home and we’ll talk.”

“I’m meeting a client at the Hilton,” I said, glancing at my watch. “Two minutes from now. On a totally unrelated matter,” I added.

Delia looked concerned. “You sure you’re up to that?”

I laughed affectionately. “The copper in you never quite goes off duty, does it? I’m in a fit state for you to give me the third degree, but let me near a client? Oh no, I’m far too knackered for that.”

Delia gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. “I can’t imagine that your client’s planning to run you a hot bath laden with stimulating essential oils or cooking you a meal while you luxuriate with a stiff Stoly and grapefruit juice. And if he is, maybe I should call Richard and let him know the competition’s hotting up.”

My head fell into my hands. “Not one of your better ideas, Delia,” I sighed.

“Oh God, you’ve not been checking out the insurance man’s endowments, have you?” she giggled.

“Thank you, Alexis,” I said, getting wearily to my feet. “And thank you for your confidence in me, Delia. Come on, then. You can give me a lift over to the Hilton so I can talk to the client. Then you can take me home and I’ll tell you all about it.”

One of the good things about having the cops meet you at the airport is that they get to park right outside the door without the traffic wardens turning their windscreens into scrap-books. We drove across to the Hilton in blissful silence, and I left Delia in reception with strict instructions to get me out of there in no more than ten minutes.

Trevor Kerr was planted in an armchair in the corner with a brandy glass in front of him. I sat down opposite him. He didn’t offer me a drink. “So what have you got to say for yourself? ” he demanded by way of greeting. “I’ve had a hell of a day thanks to your incompetence. The police have turned my bloody factory upside down, questioning everybody. God knows what today’s production figures will be like.”

“Somebody is making fake KerrSter. They’re releasing it on to the market via a little scam they’ve got going with one of the major wholesale chains. I know how the scam works and I know who’s pulling it. The only thing I don’t yet know is where they’re manufacturing the stuff,” I said in an exhausted monotone. I just didn’t have the energy to let Trevor Kerr wind me up.

His red face turned purple. “Who is it? Who’s doing this to me?” he shouted, leaning forward and banging the table with his fist. Several distant drinkers turned toward us, curious. The Hilton’s bar isn’t a place that’s used to raised voices that early in the evening.