Clean Break

by Val McDermid

  “Not really,” I said. “Me and Richard have had a major falling out. We parted company in Italy a couple of days ago, and I’ve not heard from him since. I’m just not sure if we can fix it this time.”

  I could hardly bear the love and concern on their faces. Chris pulled free from Alexis and leaned over to hug me. “He’ll be back,” she said with more confidence than I felt.

  “Yeah, but will he be back with a bricklayer to build a wall across the conservatory?” I asked bitterly.

  “If Richard needed a brickie, he’d have to ask you where to find one,” Alexis said. “You don’t get rid of him that easy, girl.”

  “He’s obviously not very happy,” I told them. “He said he’s pissed off with everybody treating him like he’s a pillock.”

  “Maybe he should stop behaving like one, then,” Alexis said. “Ever since he got himself arrested, he’s been walking around like a dog waiting for the next kick. Wait till he comes back, girl, I’ll take him out for a drink and put him right.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. That was one encounter I’d pay for a video of. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about my troubles,” I said briskly. “I’ve got too much to do trying to put right all the cockups I’ve made this week to worry about Richard. Did he have any dodgy contacts, this Joey Morton?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. He hung out with one or two moody people, but that was probably for the so-called glamour as much as anything. He was probably into a few bits and pieces on the side, but he wasn’t a player.”

  So I wasn’t looking for some gangster that Joey had doublecrossed on a deal over stolen Scotch. “What’s the score with this Mary Halloran?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been over there myself, but I’ve still gorra few good contacts in Liverpool,” she said, becoming more Scouse by the syllable. “This Mary Halloran, she was a real grafter. The only out-of-the-way thing about her was that her staff actually liked her. They said she was a great boss, good payer, dead fair. According to them, she lived for her kids and her old man, Desmond. Our Desmond is apparently devastated. My mate Mo went round to try for a talk for the Post, but the guy was too distraught. She said he just burst into tears, then one of the relatives did the Rottweiler and saw her off.”

  “This Desmond. Has he got a job?”

  “He’s got his own business too. Not as successful as Mary’s by all accounts, but he does OK. He’s a photographer. Does portraits mainly. Dead artistic, according to Mo. Specializes in unusual printing techniques and special effects stuff. Not your weddings and babies type. Charges about five hundred a shot, apparently. God knows where he gets clients. The only pictures I’ve ever seen

  “And no connection between the Hallorans and the Mortons?”

  “Nothing that’s come up so far. The only thing they’ve got in common, except for the way they died, is that they’ve left their surviving partners a lot better off than they were before. Mo says the girls that worked for Mary Halloran reckoned she was well insured. Had to be. If anything happened to her, the business was bound to suffer a bit, because Mary was one of those who had to take charge of everything herself.”

  “Maybe they did a Strangers on a Train,” Chris volunteered. “You know, I’ll do your murder, you do mine.” We both looked at her, gobsmacked. “It was only a suggestion,” she said defensively.

  “The only point in doing something like that is when the murder method’s one where having an alibi puts you in the clear. Like a shooting or a stabbing,” Alexis finally said. “A delayed-action thing like this, there wouldn’t be any point.”

  “Nice idea, though,” I mused. Suddenly, a huge yawn crept up on me and shook me by the scruff of my neck. “Oh God,” I groaned. “I’m going to have to go, girls. If my overdraft was as big as my sleep deficit, the bailiffs would be kicking my door down.”

  I leaned over and hugged the pair of them. “You never know,” Chris said. “He might be there when you get home.”

  It’s just as well Chris is such a good architect. She’d never make a living as a fortune teller.

  Chapter 23

  The answering machine was flashing like a sex offender. I played back the long chain of messages against my better judgement. I’d had enough coppers on the line to staff my very own Tactical Aid Group minibus. But the one message I really wanted wasn’t there. I hated myself for letting Richard’s childish behavior get to me, but that didn’t make it any easier to escape. I ignored the rest of the messages and crashed out in my own bed. Deep down, I knew the Mafia weren’t after me. Sleeping in Richard’s bed the night before had been nothing but a self-indulgence I wasn’t about to allow myself again.

  I woke up just after eight, my head muzzy with the novel experience of a proper night’s sleep. The phone was ringing already, but I had no problem ignoring it. I took a long, leisurely bath, deciding on my plans for the day. I’d told Della I’d be prepared to talk to the Art Squad and the Drugs Squad, but I had other ideas now. A few hours’ delay wasn’t going to make a whole lot of difference to their investigation, and I was determined to press on with my inquiries into the KerrSter murders as fast as I could. The last thing I wanted was another head to head with Cliff Jackson, and the best way to avoid that was to move as fast as I could while he was still working out what to do with Sandra Bates and Simon Morley.

  After breakfast, I filled the washing machine with the first load of dirty clothes. Glancing out of the kitchen window, I noticed an unfamiliar car parked in one of the residents’ bays. I didn’t have to be Manchester’s answer to Nancy Drew to work out that an unmarked saloon with a radio aerial and two men in it was a police car. The only thing left to wonder was which squad it belonged to. I wasn’t about to pop over and ask a policeman.

  I pulled the blonde wig out of its bag and arranged it on my head, adding the granny glasses with the clear lenses and a pair of stilettos to give me a bit of extra height. Then I nipped through the conservatory into Richard’s house and out his front door. The two bobbies gave me a cursory glance, but they were waiting for a petite redhead from next door. That told me Della wasn’t responsible, even indirectly, for their presence; she’d have told them about the conservatory. Which left Jackson.

  Of course, the car was in the clear, since I was still driving Shelley’s Rover. She’d tried the previous afternoon to persuade me to swap it for Richard’s Beetle, but I played the card of professional necessity and managed to hang on to hers for the time being. I headed out of town towards Stockport and got to the Cob and Pen while the cleaners were still doing their thing. The bar stank of stale tobacco and sour beer, somehow more noticeable when the place was empty. “I’m looking for Mrs. Morton,” I told one of them.

  “You from the papers?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m representing Kerrchem, the company who manufacture the cleanser Mr. Morton was using when he died.” Nothing like a bit of economy with the truth. Let them think I was here to talk about the compensation if they wanted.

  The woman pursed her lips. “You’d better go on up, then. It’s going to cost your lot plenty, killing Joey like that.” She gestured towards a door marked “Private.”

  I smiled my thanks and opened the door on to a flight of stairs. The door at the top had a Yale, but when I tapped gently and turned the handle, it opened. “Hello?” I called.

  From a doorway on my left, I could hear a voice say, “Hang on,” then the clatter of a phone being put down on a table. Gail Morton stuck her head through the doorway and said sharply, “Who are you? What are you doing up here?”

  “The cleaners sent me up,” I said. “My name’s Kate Brannigan. I’m a private investigator working for Kerrchem.”

  She frowned and cast a worried glance back through the doorway. “You’d better come through, then.” She moved back smartly into the room ahead of me and swiftly picked up the phone, swivelling so she could keep an eye on me. “I’ll call you

  All my instincts told me that phone call was more than s
ome routine condolence. Something was going on. Maybe it was nothing to do with anything, but my instincts have served me too well in the past to ignore them. I wanted to know just who she’d been talking to who needed to know a private eye was on the premises. “Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “Hope it wasn’t an important call.”

  “You’d better sit down,” she said, ignoring the invitation I’d dangled in front of her.

  The room was as much of a cliché as Gail Morton herself. Dralon three-piece suite, green onyx and gilt coffee table and side tables, complete with matching ashtrays, cigarette box and table lighter. Naff lithographs in pastel shades of women who looked like they’d escaped from the pages of those true-romance graphic novels. The room was dominated by a wide-screen TV, complete with satellite decoder. I chose the chair furthest away from Gail.

  She moved away from the telephone table and sat down opposite me. She leaned forward to take a cigarette from the box on the table, her deep-cut blouse opening to reveal the tanned swell of her breasts. Philip Marlowe would have been entranced. Me, I felt faintly repelled. “So what have you come here for?” she asked. “Have they sent you to make me an offer?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “Kerrchem hired me to try to find out who tampered with their product.”

  She gave a short bark of laughter. “Trying to crawl out from under, are they? Well, they’re not going to succeed. My lawyer says by the time we’re finished with your bosses, they’ll be lucky to have a pot to piss in.”

  “I leave that sort of thing to the lawyers,” I said mildly. “They’re the only ones who can guarantee walking away rich after tragedies like this.” I thought I’d better remind her of her role as grieving widow.

  “You’re not kidding,” she said, dragging deep on her cigarette.

  “I’ve got one or two questions you might be able to help me with. First off, can you remember who actually bought the KerrSter?”

  “It could have been me or Joey,” she said. “We used to do the cash-and-carry run turn and turn about. KerrSter was one of the things that was always on the list, and we usually had a spare drum in the cupboard.”

  “Who made the last trip?”

  “That was Joey,” she said positively. Given when the affected batch had gone out, that meant Joey had purchased the fatal drum.

  “Where are your cleaning materials kept?” I asked.

  “In a cupboard in the pub kitchen.”

  “Is it locked?”

  She looked at me scornfully. “Of course it’s not. There’s always spills and stuff in a pub. The staff need to be able to clean them up as and when they happen, not leave them for the cleaners.”

  “So anybody who works in the pub would have access?”

  “That’s right,” she said confidently. “That’s what I told the police.”

  “What about private visitors, friends or business associates? Would they be able to get to the cupboard?”

  “Why would they want to? Do your friends come round your office and start nosing about in the cleaner’s cupboard?” she asked aggressively.

  “But in theory they could?”

  “It’d be a bit obvious. When people come to visit, they don’t usually swan around the pub kitchen on their own. You must know some really funny people. Besides, how would they know Joey was going to open that particular container?”

  Before I could ask my next question, a voice from the stairwell shouted, “Gail? There’s a delivery down here you need to sign for.”

  Gail sighed and crushed out her cigarette. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  As soon as she left the room, I was on my feet. I wouldn’t be getting a second chance to check out what had set my antennae twitching. I took my tape recorder out of my bag and pressed the record button, then I picked up the phone and put the machine’s in-built mike next to the earpiece. Then I hit last number redial. The phone clicked swiftly through the numbers, then connected. A phone rang out. I let it ring a dozen times, then broke the connection and gently replaced the phone.

  I heard steps on the stairs and threw myself back into my chair. When Gail entered the room, I was sitting demurely flicking through the pages of the TV Times. “Sorted?” I asked politely.

  “I hate paperwork,” she said. “But then, so did Joey, so we’ve got a little woman that comes in every week to keep the books straight.”

  “Did your husband have any enemies?” I asked. Eat your heart out, Miss Marple.

  “There were plenty of people Joey would happily have seen dead, most of them football managers. But people tended to like him. That was his big trouble. He was desperate to be liked. He’d never stand up for himself and make the bosses treat him properly. He just rolled over,” she said, years of bitterness spilling into her voice. “I told him, you’ve got to show them who’s in charge, but would he listen? Would he hell as like. Same with the brewery. I’d been on at him for ages to talk to them about our contract, but he just fobbed me off. Well, they’ll know a difference now it’s me they’ve got to deal with,” she added vigorously. Knowing the corporate claws of brewery chains, I thought Gail Morton was in for a nasty surprise.

  “So, no enemies, no one who wanted him dead?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she told me. “You should be looking for somebody at that factory who has it in for their bosses. Joey just got unlucky.”

  “You benefit from his death,” I commented.

  Her eyes narrowed. “It’s time you were on your way,” she said. “I’m not sitting here listening to that crap in my own living room. Go on, get out of it.”

  I can take a hint.

  • • •

  When I walked into the office, Shelley had a look on her face I’d never seen before. After a couple of minutes of awkward conversation, I worked out what it was. The shifty eyes, the nervous mouth. She was feeling guilty about something. “OK,” I said heavily, perching on the corner of her desk. “Give. What’s eating you? Is it having to lie to the police about where I am?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said sniffily. “Anyway, I’m black. Isn’t lying to the cops supposed to be congenital?”

  “Something’s bothering you, Shell.”

  “Nothing is bothering me. By the way, if you want your coupé back, it’s on a meter round the corner. I wouldn’t mind having my Rover back.” She couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Has he been here?” Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my voice cool.

  “No. He came round the house about eight o’clock this morning. I asked him to talk to you, but you’re too good a teacher. That man of yours has really learned how to ignore. I was going to phone you, but he was gone by then, so it wouldn’t have been a whole lot of use.”

  “Did he say where he was going?” There was a pain in my stomach which was nothing to do with what I’d had for breakfast.

  “I asked him, but he said he wasn’t sure what he was doing. He told me to tell you not to waste your time looking for him.”

  I looked away, blinking back tears. “Fine,” I said unsteadily. “Though why he should think I can spare the time to chase him …”

  Shelley reached out and gripped my hand. “He’s hurting in his pride, Kate. It’s going to take him a bit of time, that’s all.”

  I cleared my throat. “Sure. I should give a shit.” I walked through to my office. “If anybody wants me, I’m not here, OK?”

  I closed the door and sat down with the tape recorder. I’d recorded the number dialling on high speed, and now I played it back on the lower speed setting so I could more easily count the clicks. Given the way my luck had been running lately, the call I’d interrupted had probably been made to Gail, and all I was going to end up with was the number of her dentist.

  I wrote the numbers down on a sheet of paper. Unless Gail made a round trip of eighty miles every time she wanted her teeth fixed, it looked like I’d struck gold. The number I’d recorded from her telephone was a Liverpool number. On an impulse, I
marched through to Bill’s office, where the phone books live, and picked out a three-year-old Liverpool directory. I looked up Halloran. There it was. Desmond J. Halloran, an address in Childwall. The number didn’t match.

  “It ain’t over till it’s over,” I said grimly, picking up the phone and calling Talking Pages. I asked for portrait photographers in Liverpool. The second number she gave me matched the number on the sheet of paper. DJH Portraits. I didn’t think Ladbrokes would be offering me odds on those initials not standing for Desmond J. Halloran.

  I shut myself back in my office and rang Paul Kingsley, a commercial photographer who occasionally does jobs for us when Bill and I are overstretched or we need pictures taking in conditions that neither of us feels competent to handle. Paul’s always delighted to hear from us. I suspect he read too many Batman comics when he was a lad. I got him on his mobile. “I need your help,” I told him.

  “Great,” he said enthusiastically. “What’s the job?”

  “I want to check out a photographer in Liverpool. I need to know how his business is doing. Is he making money? Is he on the skids? That kind of thing. Do you know anybody who could color in the picture?”

  “That’s all you want?” He sounded disappointed. It was worrying. This is man whose assignments for us have included spending a Saturday night in an industrial rubbish bin, and standing for three days in the rain in the middle of a shrubbery. In his shoes, I’d have been delirious with joy at the news that his latest task for Mortensen and Brannigan involved nothing more hazardous to the health than picking up a phone.

  “That’s all I want,” I confirmed. “Only I want it yesterday. DJH Portraits, that’s the firm.”

  “Consider it done,” he said.

  My next call was to Alexis. “All right?” she greeted me. “Has dickhead turned up?” I told her about Shelley’s encounter with

  “Strangely enough, I’m seeing him for dinner,” I told her.

  “Nice one. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”