Kick Back

by Val McDermid

  Left to her own devices, Liz was clearly lost without the box. We caught the tail-end of the nine o’clock news, the weather (the usual tidings of comfort and joy; freezing fog in the Midlands, ground frost in the north, rain tomorrow), then a dire American mini-series started. I wished I could change channels. Instead, I

  I’d tried all the obvious ones. Martin, Martina, Cheetham, Tamarind, Lomax, Nell, Harris, scam, land, deeds, titles, secret, locked, private, drag, Dietrich, Bassey, Garland, Marilyn, password. No joy. I was running out of inspiration when my phone rang. “Hello?” I said.

  “Kate? Alexis.” As if she needed to tell me. “Listen, I had a brainwave.”

  My heart sank. “What?” I asked.

  “I remembered that the Sunday Star’s got a reporter called Gerry Carter who lives in Buxton. Now, I’ve never actually met the guy, on account of the Sundays don’t usually hang out with the pack, but I dug his number out of a mate of his and gave him a call, hack to hack.”

  I was interested now I realized her brainwave didn’t involve me in anything illegal or life-threatening. “And did he have anything useful to say?”

  “He knows Brian Lomax. In fact, he lives about five houses down from Lomax.” Alexis paused to let that sink in.

  “And?” I asked.

  “I think I know who the mystery woman is.”

  “Alexis, you already have one hundred percent of my attention. Stop tantalizing me as if I was a bloody-minded news editor. Cough it!” I demanded, frustrated.

  “Right. You remember we saw two names on the electoral roll? And we assumed the other one was his wife? Well, it’s not. According to Gerry, Lomax’s wife left him a couple of years ago. In his words, ‘Once she’d installed flounced Austrian blinds at every window and redecorated the place from top to bottom, there was nothing else for her to do. So she shagged Lomax’s brickie and ran off to some Greek island with him.’ Unquote.” Alexis chuckled. “Where presumably she is complaining about the shortage of windows to clothe in frilly chintz, always assuming Laura Ashley’s opened a branch on Lesbos. Anyway, once the pair of them had done their disappearing act, Lomax’s sister moved in with him, on

  “Carry on, I’m fascinated,” I said.

  “D’you remember the second name on the electoral roll?”

  “Not off the top of my head,” I confessed. Embarrassing, isn’t it? The short-term memory’s going already, and me only twenty-seven.

  “Eleanor. And what’s Nell short for?”

  “Lomax’s sister,” I breathed. “Of course. Which would explain how they met in the first place. It would even explain why Martin Cheetham needed more money. She’s an expensive-looking woman; I can’t see her settling for suburbia with a fortnight on the Costa Brava once a year. This business of hers—did your mate say what it was?”

  “He did. She owns one of those small, select boutiques where the assistants sneer at you if you’re more than a size eight and you’ve got less than five hundred pounds to spend. It’s in the main shopping arcade, apparently. Called Enchantments, would you believe?”

  “I would. Great work, Alexis. If they ever get round to firing you, I’m sure Mortensen and Brannigan could put the odd day’s work your way,” I said.

  “So what now?” she demanded.

  I sighed. “Can you leave it with me? I know that doesn’t sound very helpful, but something I’ve been working on for a week now is about to come on top. With a bit of luck, I’ll have it all wrapped up by tomorrow afternoon, and I promise that as soon as I’m clear I’ll follow this up. How’s that?”

  “I suppose it’ll have to do,” Alexis said. “It’s OK, Kate, I knew you were tight for time when I asked you to take this on. I can’t start complaining now. You get to it when you can, and I’ll try to be patient.”

  That I really wanted to see. We chatted for a few minutes about the stories Alexis was currently working on, then she signed off for the night. I turned my attention back to the computer. At least Alexis had given me a couple of fresh ideas. I typed in ELEANOR,

  I’d only just started working through the files when the Cavalier returned. Jack drove straight into the garage, and closed the door behind him. I turned up the volume control, and a couple of minutes later he and Liz were doing the kind of kissing, fondling and greeting that brings a blush to the cheeks of even the most hard-nosed private eye. Unless, of course, you’re the kind who gets off on aural sex.

  However, it soon became clear that Jack and Liz had different things on their minds. While he seemed intent on making the earth move, she was more concerned about where the next fifty grand was coming from. “Jack, cut it out, wait a minute, I want to talk to you,” she said. And all the rest. Eventually, it sounded like she broke free from the clinch, judging by the fact that her voice was noticeably fainter than his. “Listen, we need to talk about this finance problem. What’s gone wrong?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. All I know is that when I came into work tonight, Ted told me to stop writing finance proposals. He said the finance company were having problems processing applications, and that there was a temporary block on new business. But he was about as convincing as the Labour Party manifesto. I think what’s really happened is that they’ve had enough of defaulting remortgages,” he said, his tone so casual I had to remind myself he was the man behind the problem. The man who faced at least a couple of years behind the picket fence of an open prison if he was ever nailed.

  Liz wasn’t anything like as cool. “We’re going to have to stop this, Jack. The bank won’t just leave it at that. They’ll call the Fraud Squad in, we’ll go to prison!” she whined.

  “No we won’t. Look, when we started this, we knew it couldn’t last forever. We always knew that one day, the finance company would notice that too many of Ted Barlow’s conservatory customers were defaulting on their mortgages, and we’d have to pull out,” he said reasonably. “I just didn’t think they’d go straight to the bank before they warned Ted.”

  “I always said we should spread the risk and go to outside

  “We went through that at the time,” Jack said patiently. “And the reasons for doing it my way haven’t changed. For one, we’re not involving anybody else. It’s just you, me and a form that goes to a finance company who knew Colonial were a sound firm. For two, it’s faster, because we never had to trail round mortgage brokers and building societies trying to find a lender, and run the risk of being spotted by somebody that knows me. And for three, I’ve been raking in commissions on the kick backs from the finance company, which has earned us a fair few quid on top of what the scam has made us. And doing it my way is why we’re still safe, even though Ted’s bank’s put the shaft into him. There’s no obvious pattern, that’s the thing. Don’t forget, we’re in the middle of a recession. There’ll be real mortgage defaulters in there as well as the ones we’ve pulled,” he said reassuringly. It was really frustrating not being able to see their faces and body language.

  “Except that they’ll still have conservatories attached to their houses. They won’t have been up all night once a month dismantling a conservatory and loading it into a van so that Jack McCafferty can spirit it away and sell it on to some unsuspecting punter who thinks they’re getting a real bargain! I’m telling you, Jack, it’s time to pull out!”

  “Calm down,” he urged her. “There’s no hurry. It’ll take them months to sort this mess out. Look, this one’s in the home stretch. We can go and see a mortgage broker tomorrow and blag our way into a remortgage on this place, no bother. Where are we up to with the other two?”

  “Just let me check. You know I don’t trust myself to keep it all in my head,” she said accusingly. I heard the sound of briefcase locks snapping open and the rustle of paper. “10 Cherry Tree Way, Warrington. You’ve done the credit check, I’ve got the new bank account set up, I’ve taken off the mail redirect, and I’ve got the mortgage account details. 31 Lark Rise, Davenport. All we’ve got on that is the credit check. I cancelled the ma
il redirect yesterday.” I really had got a result tonight. The two addresses Liz had just read

  “So can we speed them up? Bring them in ahead of schedule?” Jack asked.

  “We can try to speed things up at our end. But if we’re going to have to find outside mortgagers to finance the remortgages, that’s almost certainly going to slow the process down,” Liz said. I could hear the worry in her voice, in spite of the tinny quality of the bug’s relay.

  “Don’t worry,” Jack soothed. “It’s all going to be OK.”

  Not if I had anything to do with it, it wasn’t.

  Chapter 21

  Bank managers or traffic wardens. It’s got to be a close-run thing which we hate the most. I mean, if you got the chance to embarrass someone on prime-time TV, would you choose the bank manager who refused your overdraft or the traffic warden who ticketed your car while you nipped into Marks & Spencer for a butty? I only had to talk to the guy in charge of Ted Barlow’s finances to know that he deserved the worst that Jeremy Beadle could do.

  To begin with, he wouldn’t even talk to me, not even to arrange an appointment. “Client confidentiality,” he explained superciliously. I told him through clenched teeth that I probably knew more about his client’s current problems than he did, since I was employed by said client. I restrained myself from mentioning that Mortensen and Brannigan had standards of confidentiality and service that were a damn sight higher than his. We don’t sell our customer list to junk mail financial services outfits; we don’t indulge ourselves on the old boys’ network to blackball people whose faces don’t fit; and, strangely enough, we actually work the hours that suit our clients rather than ourselves.

  But Mr. Leonard Prudhoe wasn’t having any. Finally, I had to give up. There was only one way I was going to get to see this guy. I rang Ted and asked him to set the meeting up. “Have you sorted it all out?” he asked. “Do you know what’s been going on?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “But whatever you do, don’t so much as hint to anyone, and I mean anyone, that anything’s changed.” I explained that he’d have to set up a meeting with Prudhoe so we could get the whole thing sorted out. “Then, if you come to the office beforehand, I’ll fill you in first.”

  “Can’t you tell me now? I’m on pins,” he said.

  “I’ve got a couple of loose ends to tie up, Ted. But if you can fix up to see Prudhoe this afternoon, I should be able to give you chapter and verse then. OK?”

  The relief in his voice was heartwarming. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am, Miss Brannigan. You’ve no idea what it’s been like, wondering if I was going to lose everything I’ve worked for. You’ve just got no idea,” he burbled on.

  I might not have, but I had a shrewd idea who did. When I managed to disentangle myself from his effusive thanks, I wandered through to the outer office. Shelley’s fingers were flying over the keyboard as she worked her way through the proposals Bill had put together for our Channel Islands clients. “Ted’s little problem,” I said. “I’m just nipping out for a couple of hours to tie up the last loose ends. He should be ringing back to let me know when we’re seeing his bank manager. Give me a bell on the mobile when you know.”

  She gave me one of her looks. The ones I suspect she reserves for her kids when she thinks they’re trying to dodge out without finishing their homework. “You mean it?” she asked.

  “Brownie’s honor,” I said. “Would I lie to you about something so close to your heart? Are you familiar with the works of Rudyard Kipling?”

  She looked at me as if I was out to lunch and not coming back for a long time. “Wasn’t he the one who went on about the white man’s burden?” she said suspiciously.

  “The same. Knew all about keeping the yellow and brown chappies in their places. However, he was not entirely a waste of oxygen. He also wrote the private eye’s charter:

  I keep six honest serving men

  (They taught me all I knew)

  Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who.

  “Well, as far as Ted’s case is concerned, I know the what, the why, the when, the where and the who. I know most of the how,

  “You worry me, Brannigan, you really do,” floated after me as I ran downstairs. The day had not been wasted.

  Rachel Lieberman was doing front of house at DKL Estates when I walked through the door. The suit she was wearing looked as if it was worth about the same as the deposit on any one of her first-time-buyer properties. I pretended to study the houses for sale while she made appointments for a potential buyer to view a couple. Five minutes later, the grateful house-hunter went on his merry way with a handful of particulars, leaving Rachel and me facing each other across the desk. “Lost your young man?” I asked.

  “His mother says he’s got a bug. I think it may have more to do with the fact that United won last night,” she said.

  “You just can’t get the help these days,” I commiserated.

  “You can say that again. Anyway, what can I do for you? Still hunting for your mysterious con artists?”

  I’d already decided that whoever was supplying Jack McCafferty and Liz with the information they needed, it wasn’t Rachel Lieberman. I hadn’t made that decision purely on women’s intuition. I reckoned she’d have found a way politely to show me the door if she’d been involved. So I smiled and said, “Nearly at the end of the road. I was hoping you could help me out with a couple of loose ends.”

  “Fire away,” she said. “You’ve got me quite intrigued. My son was enthralled when I told him I was helping a private eye with her inquiries. So I owe you some co-operation. It’s not easy for a mother to impress a ten-year-old, you know.”

  “Do you store all the details of your rented properties on your computer?”

  “It all goes in there, whether it’s for rental or for sale,” she said.

  “So how does the Warrington office get your data, and vice versa?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but how well do you understand computers?” she asked.

  I grinned. “If you left me alone with yours for half an hour, I

  “I’ll save you the bother,” she replied. “Twice a day, at one and again at five, I access the Warrington office computer via a modem. The software identifies any new files, or files that have been modified since the machines last conversed. Then it exports those files from my machine and imports the ones from the Warrington computer. The system also warns me in the unusual event of the same file having been modified by both offices.”

  “Sounds like a nifty bit of programming,” I said.

  “Our software was written by my brother-in-law, so he had to make sure it does what it’s supposed to, or I’d make his life hell,” Rachel said. I could imagine. One of the things I learned in law school was, never cross a Jewish princess.

  “Now for the hard question,” I said.

  “I can guess. Who has access to the computers?” she asked. I nodded. “Is this really necessary?” I nodded again. “And I suppose you won’t be satisfied if I tell you that they’re only accessible to members of my staff?” I began to feel like I was following the bouncing ball.

  “You want names, do you?” she said.

  “Photographs would be even better,” I said.

  Her eyebrows arched, then she snorted with laughter. “Have you ever considered a career in estate agency? With cheek like yours, you could stand in the middle of a decaying slum with rising damp, dry rot and subsidence and persuade the clients that the property has unique potential that only they are capable of exploiting.”

  “Kind of you, but I prefer catching crooks to becoming one,” I said.

  “It’s flattery that’s supposed to get results, not insults,” she retorted. “All the same, would you mind terribly keeping an eye on the shop while I attempt to meet your demands?”

  I even went so far as to sit behind the desk while Rachel disappeared into the back office. I suppose she could have been

&nb
sp; Rachel handed me the bundle of snaps. They’d celebrated in one of the Greek tavernas, and the pictures had obviously been put back in reverse order, for the first few showed one of those organized riots that the Greeks, like the Scots, call dancing. There was no one that I recognized. I carried on. Then, on the seventh photograph, shot from the opposite end of the table, there she was. Small, neat features, sharp chin, face wider across the red eyes. Just like Diane Shipley’s sketch, except that her natural hair was dark blonde, cut short in a feathered, elfin style. I pointed to the woman. “Who’s that?”

  Rachel’s face seemed to close down on me. “Why? What makes you ask?”

  “I don’t think you want me to answer that,” I said gently. “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Liz Lawrence. She works two afternoons a week in our Warrington office. She has done for nearly three years. I think you must be making a mistake, Miss Brannigan. She’s … she’s a nice woman. She works hard,” Rachel insisted.

  I sighed. Sometimes this job makes me feel like the bad fairy who tells children there’s no Santa Claus. The worst of it was that I had another sackload of disillusion to dump on someone before the day was over.

  Ted’s suit was having yet another outing. When I got back to the office, he was perched on the edge of Shelley’s desk, looking as cheerfu3l as a bloodhound whose quarry has just disappeared into the river. “And you know what garages are,” I heard him say as I came in. “They don’t know when they’ll have either van back on the road.”