Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

“What about the note? The one that came after the first death? That implied there would be more if Kerrchem didn’t pay up,” I said.

This time, Sandra did start crying. “I said we shouldn’t have sent that one,” she sobbed, pulling her hand away from Simon and punching ineffectually at his chest.

Gently, Simon gripped her wrists, then pulled her into a tight hug. “You were right, I’m sorry,” he told her. Then he turned back to me. “I thought if we pretended to be more ruthless than we were, Kerr might cough up. It was stupid, I see that now. But he got me so mad when he just ignored the first note and nobody seemed to notice what we were doing. I had to make him pay attention.“

“So if you’re not doing the killings, who is?” I demanded, finally getting round to the reason why I’d put myself through another harrowing encounter.

I was too late. Before Simon could answer, the doorbell rang, followed by a tattoo of knocking. “Police, open up,” I heard someone shout from the other side of the door. I thought about making a run for it through the back door, but the way my luck had been been running lately, I’d probably have been savaged by a police dog.

The pair on the sofa had the wide-eyed look of rabbits transfixed by car headlights. By the time they got it together to let the cops in, their front door was going to be matchwood. With a sigh, I got to my feet and prepared for another jolly chat with Detective Inspector Cliff Jackson.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH JACKSON REMINDED ME OF THE OLD radical slogan; help the police, beat yourself up. After listening to the usual rant about obstructing the police, withholding evidence and interfering with witnesses, I needed a drink. I was only a couple of miles away from the Cob and Pen, the pub where Joey Morton had breathed his last, which clinched the decision.

If they’d gone into mourning over the death of my host, it hadn’t been a prolonged period of grief. It was pub quiz night, and the place was packed. In the gaps between the packed bodies, I got the impression of a bar that had been done out in the brewery version of traditional country house: dark William Morris-style wallpaper, hunting prints and bookshelves containing all those 1930s bestsellers that no one has read since 1941, not even in hospital outpatients’ queues. No chance of anyone nicking them, that was for sure.

I bought myself a vodka and grapefruit juice and retreated into the farthest corner from the epicenter of the quiz. I squeezed on the end of a banquette, ignored by the other four people surrounding the nearby table. They were much too involved in arguing about the identity of the first Welsh footballer to play in the Italian league. There was no chance of engaging any of the bar staff in a bit of gossip, not even lubricated with the odd tenner. They were too busy pulling pints and popping the caps off bottles of Bud. I sipped my drink and waited for an interval in the incessant trivia questions. Eventually, they announced a fifteen-minute break.

The foursome round my table sat back in their seats. “John Charles,” I said. They looked blankly at me. “The first Welshman to play in Italy. John Charles.” Amazing the junk that invades your brain cells when you live with a football fan.

“Really?” the lad with the pen and the answer sheet said.

“Truly.”

The one who’d been rooting for Charles against the other three grinned and clapped me on the back. “Told you so,” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to get off. But thanks all the same. I’m surprised you didn’t all know the answer. I’d have thought anybody who was a regular in Joey Morton’s pub would have been shit-hot on all the football questions.”

They all looked momentarily embarrassed, as if they’d caught me swearing in front of their mothers. “Did you know Joey, then?” the pen pusher said.

“We met a couple of times. My fella’s a journalist. Bad business.”

“You’re not kidding,” another said with feeling. “Now, if you’d said it was Mrs. M. that took a bread knife to him, I wouldn’t have been half as surprised. But dying like that, a casual bystander in somebody else’s war, that’s seriously bad news.”

“You thought his wife had done it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light and joky.

They all snorted with laughter. “Gail? get real,” Penpusher said scornfully. “Like Tez said, if it had been a bread-knife job, nobody would have been surprised. Them two fighting behind the bar’s the nearest thing you used to get to cabaret in here.

But rigging up a drum of cleaning stuff with cyanide? Nah, Gail’s too thick.“

“When Gail writes the daily specials up on the board, there’s more spelling mistakes than there are hot dinners,” another added. “She probably thinks cyanide’s a perfume by Elizabeth Taylor.”

“Must have been a hell of a shock, then. I guess it hit her hard,” I said.

The one I’d backed up gestured over his shoulder with his thumb toward the bar. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

I looked across. “Which one’s Gail? I never met her, just Joey.”

“The bottle blonde with the cleavage,” Penpusher said.

I didn’t have to ask for more details. Gail Morton’s tumbled blond mane looked as natural as candy floss, and the bra under her tight V-necked T-shirt didn’t so much lift and separate as point and aim. As I looked, she served a customer with a laugh that revealed perfect teeth and healthy tonsils. “A bit of a merry widow,” I remarked.

“Widow’s weeds up until the funeral, then back to normal.”

I began to wonder if my eager inquiries down the line of industrial sabotage had shunted Jackson off the right track. After all, it’s one of the great truisms that when wives or husbands die of unnatural causes, the prime suspect is the spouse. I was going to have to eat more than my usual portion of humble pie with Jackson if Gail Morton turned out to be Joey’s killer. But that didn’t explain why Mary Halloran had died. Time to go and pick some more brains.

I made my excuses and left. I headed east out of Stockport, and soon I was on the edge of the Pennine moors. About a mile before I hit Charlesworth village, I turned right on to a narrow road whose blacktop had been laid so recently it still gleamed in my headlights. The road climbed round the side of a hill and emerged in what had originally been a quarry. In the huge horseshoe carved out of the side of the hill stood ten beautiful stone houses, each individually designed by Chris.

For as long as I’d known them, Chris and Alexis had cherished the dream of building their own home, designed by Chris to their own specifications. They’d joined a self-build scheme a few years back, and, after a few hiccups, the dream had finally become a reality. Chris had swapped her architectural skills for things like plumbing, bricklaying, carpentry and wiring, while Alexis had served as everybody’s unskilled laborer. The site was perfect for people who get off on a spectacular view, looking out through a gap in the Pennines to the Cheshire plain. There isn’t a pub within three miles, the nearest decent restaurant is ten miles away, and if you run out of milk at half past nine at night, you’re drinking black coffee. Me, I’d rather live in a luggage locker at Piccadilly Station.

The house wasn’t quite ready to be inhabited yet. A small matter of connection to the main gas, electricity, telephone and sewage systems. So for the time being, Alexis and Chris were living in an ugly little caravan parked in their drive. It must have been a bit like going out for dinner to the best restaurant in town with your jaw wired up.

The light was on in their van, so I knocked. Chris opened the door in her dressing gown, blond hair in a damp, tousled halo round her head. Seeing me, a broad grin split her face. “Kate!” she exclaimed, then made a point of leaning out and scanning the area beyond me. “And you made it without a team of native bearers and Sherpa guides.”