Clean Break (26 page)

I got off at the next stop and walked cautiously past the alley where I'd left the Merc. It was still there, and no one seemed to be watching it. I doubled back behind the houses and came up the alley from the far end. I crept into the car, not even slamming the door shut until I had the engine running. Then I shot out on to the main road and headed up the valley, away from Casa Nico and the Villa San Pietro, my foot hard on the accelerator, my eyes on the rear-view mirror. As I joined the autostrada, I wondered how long Gianni would stake out the
pensione
. It was worth the loss of my overnight bag not to have him on my tail.

Nigel Mansell couldn't have got to Milan airport faster than I did that day. I dumped the car with the local Hertz agent and headed for the terminal. I'd just missed a flight to Brussels, but there was one to Amsterdam an hour later. If I could only stay awake, I could pick up Bill's Saab in Antwerp, catch the night ferry from Zeebrugge and be home the following morning some time. Frankly, I couldn't wait to feel British soil under my feet.

I had half an hour to kill in the international departure lounge. I thought I'd better give Shelley a ring before she decided tracking me down was a job for Interpol. She answered on the first ring, and I could hear relief in her voice. I knew then it must be bad, since Shelley never lets on that anything's beyond her competence.

“Thank God it's you,” she said. “Where are you? You've got to get back here. There's been another death.”

I nearly dropped the phone. My first thought was, how the hell had Shelley found out about Nicholas Turner? Her voice cut through my panic. “Kate? Are you still there? I said there's been another death involving KerrSter.” This time round, I heard the whole sentence.

“Oh fuck,” I groaned.

“Where
are
you? Trevor Kerr is reading me the riot act every ten minutes. I've managed to stall him so far, but if you don't speak to him soon, he's threatening to sack us and go to the press saying the reason for the second death is your dereliction of duty,” Shelley continued, her voice betraying an agitation I'd never heard from her before.

“I'm at Milan airport. On the way to Amsterdam,
en route
for Antwerp. I'll have to leave Bill's car in Belgium and get a flight straight back to the UK. When did this happen?”

“This morning. An office cleaner. They found her dead beside a new drum of KerrSter. It looks like another case of cyanide poisoning, according to Alexis. Incidentally, she wants to talk to you too.”

I glanced over at the gate. They hadn't started boarding us yet. “Is Kerr still in his office?”

“He was five minutes ago,” Shelley said. “He's had the Merseyside police all over his factory this afternoon.”

“I'll call him and stall him,” I said. “I'm sorry you've had all this shit to deal with on your own. If it's any consolation, this trip's been a nightmare. I've already had one close encounter with death today. I'm not sure if I'm up to another one.”

“You're all right?” Shelley demanded anxiously.

“I wouldn't pitch it that high. I'm in one piece, which is more than I can say for Turner.”

“Oh my God,” she said, sounding stricken.

“Look, it's OK. Let me talk to Kerr. I'll call you from Amsterdam. There's a flight gets in to Manchester about half-seven tonight. See if you can get me a seat on it. I don't care if it's business class, club class or standing in the toilet, just get me on it.”

“Will do. I'll hang on here till I hear from you,” she promised. “For God's sake, be careful.”

It was a bit late for me to take heed of that warning. I took a deep breath, bracing myself for battle, and rang Trevor Kerr. Not even my powers of imagination had prepared me for his onslaught. For two straight minutes he ranted at me, with a string of obscenities that would have won him admiration on the football terraces but didn't do a lot for me. I made a mental note to bump that surliness surcharge up to ten percent. When he paused to regroup for a second outpouring, I cut in decisively. “I'm sorry you've had a difficult day, but you're not the only one,” I said grimly. “I have been pursuing my inquiries into your problem as fast as I can. I've made a lot of progress, but I needed a crucial piece of information that I've not been able to get hold of yet. Now, I'm meeting someone in an hour's time who can tell me what I need to know,” I continued, raising my voice to cut through his crap.

“Bullshit!” he hollered like a bear with its leg in a gin. “You've been doing fuck all. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you this fucking minute.”

“Because if you do, some other private eye with half my talent is going to have to start from square one because you'll have to sue me to get one single scrap of the information I've already uncovered.”

That silenced him for all often seconds. “I'll tell the police you're withholding information,” he blustered.

“Tell them. Inspector Jackson knows me well enough to realize that shoving me in a cell won't make a blind bit of difference to what I have to say for myself.”

“You can't treat me like this,” he howled, the ultimate spoilt bully.

“If you want us to discuss this like reasonable adults, you can meet me this evening in the bar of the Hilton at the airport at eight o'clock,” I said. “Otherwise, I'm taking my bat and ball home, Mr. Kerr.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my fellow passengers disappearing through the gate. “It's up to you,” I said, replacing the phone.

The flight to Amsterdam seemed never ending. I stared gloomily out of the window, feeling more guilty than a Catholic in bed with a married man. My meddling had cost Nicholas Turner his life. Meddling I'd done while I should have been nailing down my suspicions about the product-tampering racket. If I'd done that job properly, the culprits would be answering Inspector Jackson's questions now and maybe the woman who had died would still be alive. I should never have taken Trevor Kerr's case on when I was in the middle of another demanding investigation. But I had to be smart, prove to the world that I was twice as good as any reasonable private investigator needed to be. I'd been trying to show Bill that I was more than capable of being left to run the agency single-handed. All I'd done so far was get two people killed.

Not only that, but I'd fractured my relationship with Richard, perhaps beyond repair this time. All because I was determined to be the big shot, doing things my way. I began to wonder why I was bothering to go back. On my present form, the only people I'd be keeping satisfied were the undertakers. I had the best part of nine grand in my bag, a car waiting at Antwerp. In all my working life, I've never been closer to running away.

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. Halloran'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 post mortem 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 few 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 Kerrchem. 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 Della 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?” 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,” Della 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.

Della 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.”

Della 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 to cook 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, Della,” 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, Della. 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 scrapbooks. We drove across to the Hilton in blissful silence, and I left Della 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.”