by Val McDermid
There was a crash. “You just went too far, little sister,” Lomax hissed.
The sounds of struggle intensified. Suddenly afraid, I whipped the earphone out and hit the floor running. I tore down the stairs, out of the front door and across the street, willing my stiff muscles to drive me forward. Up the drive, round the side of the house, the blood pounding in my ears, Lomax’s voice echoing in my head.
As I rounded the corner of the house, I saw a long conservatory. Beyond it, I could see the kitchen. In an instant I took in the scene.
I tried the door, but it was locked. Urgently, I scanned the UPVC door frame, estimating the weak point. Then I positioned myself and aimed a kick with my full weight behind it. The force of the blow cracked the frame, and had the added benefit of stopping Brian Lomax. I took a deep breath, trying to block out the pain that had jarred every bone in my body, and concentrated all of my body’s energies into my leg and foot. The second kick jerked the door out of the frame, leaving it swinging inwards.
My momentum carried me forward into the conservatory. Lomax had abandoned Nell and was coming for me. He was bigger, heavier, stronger and fitter. I knew I’d only get one chance. I balanced myself and twisted round so I was side on to him. I feinted on one foot, then as he dived towards me, I brought the other foot round in a fast, short arc. The crack of bone as his femur snapped was sickeningly loud. He crashed to the floor like a felled tree. His scream of pain made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Hanging in space over Barton Bridge wasn’t a whole lot of fun either,” I said as I stepped over him towards Nell.
“Bitch,” he gasped.
I could hardly bring myself to talk to him, but, mindful that the tape was still running, I said, “You brought it on yourself. You got greedy. You didn’t have to kill Martin Cheetham.”
“What’s it to you? He was a no-mark. I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I heard him say as I stooped over the slumped body of his sister.
I felt her neck for a pulse. There was a faint fluttering beneath my fingers. Gently, I raised her body and eased her to the floor. I loosened her blouse, then put my ear to her mouth. Her breathing was weak and ragged, but it was still coming. “You’ll be pleased to hear she’s still alive,” I said.
“Bitch,” he repeated.
I stood up and moved to the phone. I was beginning to feel Homes and Gardens.
“You’d better make it the police,” I said. “And throw in a couple of ambulances for good measure.”
Chapter 25
I pulled up in a side street in Bolton. “What are we doing here, Brannigan?” Richard asked.
I got out of the car, and he followed. “After that Chinese in Buxton, I thought we deserved something a bit special,” I said, turning the corner and pulling one of the double doors open. Richard followed me down a flight of stairs and into a marble foyer with a fountain filled with koi carp. “They do a ten-course Imperial Banquet,” I told him as we walked into the restaurant proper.
His face lit up. His eyes even twinkled. I doubt I’d have got that strong a response if I’d jumped on one of the tables and stripped off. I gave the waiter my name and we followed obediently to a table shut off from the main body of diners by tall lacquered screens. By the table, as ordered, was an ice bucket filled with Chinese beer and a bottle of Apollinaris mineral water for me.
“Times like this, I’m tempted to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse,” Richard said as the waiter opened a beer.
“I don’t do ‘married,’” I reminded him. “Married is for mugs, masochists and mothers. None of which I am.”
“Yet,” he said.
I scowled. “Do you want to eat this meal or wear it?”
Richard held his hands up, palms towards me. “Sorry!”
The dim sum arrived, and we both observed the requisite awed appreciation. Five seconds later, we attacked.
Through a mouthful of char siu bau, Richard said, “So fill me in on the details. All I know is that these days, the best place to find you Friday nights is talking to a copper.”
The poor sod had finally reached me on my mobile some time after ten. I’d been sitting in an interview room at Buxton police
I’d finally got home in the small hours, posted the “Do Not Disturb on Pain of Castration” notice on my bedroom door and slept till mid-afternoon. By then, of course, Richard was at the match. Sometimes it’s like being married anyway.
“Cutting a long and boring story short,” I said, “when I put all the computer files together, the picture emerged. You have to remember that Martin Cheetham was an expert in arranging the sale and purchase of houses. What happened was that when he acted for the buyers of a property, he just omitted to forward all the paperwork to the Land Registry.”
“Sweetheart, you might as well be talking Mandarin,” Richard said. “Let’s have it from the top. Mortgage fraud for beginners.”
I sighed. “This is how to get two mortgages on one property. Mr. and Mrs. X buy a house. They go to Martin Cheetham, solicitor. The mortgage is arranged and granted. Then Cheetham should send the paperwork to the Land Registry, who issue what’s called a charge certificate, which shows that there is a mortgage outstanding on the property, and who carries the mortgage.
“But Cheetham used to delay a few weeks before he sent the documentation off to the Land Registry. He would then apply for a second repayment mortgage with another lender, as if it had never been bought by Mr. and Mrs. X. According to Nell, who couldn’t stop talking once her throat started working again, she used to front up with Cheetham at the mortgage interviews and pretend to be his wife. As the first charge certificate hasn’t been issued yet, there is therefore no official record of it when the lender checks it out with the Land Registry, so there’s no problem and the mortgage is granted. You with me so far?”
Richard nodded. “I think so.”
I scoffed a couple of prawn wontons and some tiny spring rolls before all the dim sum disappeared down Richard’s throat. A more suspicious soul than me might wonder why it is I always seem to
“That second lot of paperwork never goes anywhere,” I said. “It sits in a safe in Cheetham’s office. It would take the building society at least a year even to notice that they hadn’t received the appropriate charge certificate, never mind do anything about it. Cheetham and Lomax have meanwhile got a (say) £100,000 check, because the building society paid the money to Cheetham on behalf of the second, fictitious buyers. As long as the mortgage installments were made each month, there’d be no problem. No one would be any the wiser for at least a year. Multiply that by ten and a completely uncreditworthy person has a million.”
“Shit,” Richard breathed.
“Now, you can go for a short-term fraud and do a runner with the money, in which case you have the police looking for you. Or you can do what Cheetham and Lomax had been doing very successfully until a few months ago. What they did with the money was buy up derelict property. Lomax would send in his laborers and do it up, and then they’d sell at a huge profit, thus laundering the money as well. They could have carried on with this indefinitely if the bottom hadn’t dropped out of the housing market, since they were paying off the bent mortgages within a year of taking them out.”
“You mean, before the lender noticed they hadn’t got this charge certificate for the loan, Cheetham paid all the money back?” Richard asked.
“Correct. And in the meantime, he and Lomax had made about fifty percent profit with the capital. It’s a victimless crime. The lenders lose nothing; they don’t even know anything dodgy’s happened.”
Richard laughed. “That’s brilliant! And hey, they even did their own conveyancing, so they didn’t have to fork out those exorbitant lawyer’s fees. So why did it all come on top?”
“Like I said, the bottom dropped out of the market. Property stopped moving. They were lumbered with houses they couldn’t sell. That’s why they tried that hooky land scheme that caught A
lexis and Chris. They were getting desperate for cash flow. So
“Shit,” Richard said again. “That is serious money, Brannigan. Why didn’t you finish your law degree?”
I ignored him and concentrated on the aromatic crispy duck that had just arrived, piling shredded duck and spring onion on to a pancake covered in plum sauce. Some things are too important to be distracted from.
“So why did they kill Cheetham? I mean, everything seems to have been going OK. Why get rid of the only guy who knew how to work the scam?”
I fiddled with my food. “According to Nell, that was my fault.” “How’d she work that one out, then? Doesn’t sound like she’s got a degree in logic,” Richard said.
“Cheetham panicked when I started sniffing around,” I explained. “Then when he was tarted up in his drag in DKL Estates and I turned up, he was convinced I was on to their major scam. So he told Lomax to warn me off. Apparently, he meant just that. Lomax or one of his laborers was supposed to threaten me in a dark alley. Instead, Lomax must have picked me up outside DKL, then followed me over to Ted’s factory, and then, on the way home, he got a bit carried away, and tried to run me off Barton Bridge. He must have completely freaked out when I turned up the very next day on his home turf. Especially since he was actually with Cheetham.”
“So why kill Cheetham? Why not just finish the job they’d started on you?” he asked.
“Thank you, Richard. You don’t have to sound quite so eager. The reason I’m still here is that they didn’t know how much I knew, or how many people knew what I knew. But the Lomaxes figured
“And I thought my ex-wife was a bitch. Jesus. What kind of a woman does that to her lover?”
“One who’s more in love with money than she is with him, I guess,” I said. “They thought they’d got rid of all the evidence. But neither of them knew anything about computers. They thought all the data was on the floppies.”
“And will Alexis get her money back?”
“She’ll probably have to take Brian Lomax to court. But at least she knows where he’s going to be for the foreseeable future. She won’t have any trouble filing the papers. Her money should be safe as houses.”
About the Author
Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and is a graduate of Oxford University. She worked as a journalist for 16 years, the final three as Northern Bureau Chief of a major Sunday newspaper. She quit journalism in 1991 to write full-time. Since her first novel was published in 1987, she has written a further 19 and one non-fiction book.
Val’s books are international bestsellers and have won many awards. These include the Gold Dagger for The Mermaids Singing, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anthony, the Dilys, the Barry and the Macavity for A Place of Execution, the Sherlock and the Barry for The Distant Echo and the Grand Prix des Romans d’Aventure for Star Struck. She was the first writer to be presented with the Icon of Scotland award at Tartan Day in New York. Her short stories have twice been nominated for Dagger awards and she edited a short story anthology, Endangered Species, for Arts Council England. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages and her series featuring Tony Hill and Carol Jordan has been adapted for the award-winning TV series, Wire in the Blood, which has been transmitted in almost 30 countries. She is also a regular contributor to BBC radio and founder of the Harrogate International Crime Writing Festival.
Val lives with her son and her partner in the North of England.
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