PI Kate Brannigan Series Books 1-3: Dead Beat, Kick Back, Crack Down. Val McDermid

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СКАЧАТЬ clearing it up in a matter of days. What we hadn’t grasped was the scale of the operation. Getting to grips with it had worn me into the ground. However, in the last couple of days, I’d started to feel that warm glow of excitement in the pit of my stomach that always tells me I’m getting close. I had found the factory where the schneid watches were being produced, I knew the names of the two men who were wholesaling the merchandise, and who their main middle men were. All I had to do was establish the pattern of their movements and then we could hand over to our clients. I suspected that some time in the next couple of weeks, the men I had been following would be on the receiving end of a very unwelcome visit from the cops and Trading Standards officials. Which would ultimately mean a substantial reward for Mortensen and Brannigan, on top of our already substantial fee.

      Because it was all going so well, I had promised myself a well-deserved and much-needed early night after I had followed Jack ‘Billy’ Smart, my number one suspect, back to his Gothic three-storey house in a quiet, tree-lined suburban street that evening at six. He’d walked in with a couple of bottles of Moët and an armful of videos from the shop round the corner, and I figured he was all set for a kiss and a cuddle in front of the television with his girlfriend. Come to that, I could have kissed him myself. Now I could go home, have a quick shower, send a cab out for a takeaway from nearby Chinatown and watch the soaps. Then I’d have a face pack and luxuriate in a long, slow bath and beauty routine. It’s not that I’m obsessive about personal hygiene, by the way, just that I’ve always felt that showers are for getting rid of the dirt, while baths are for serious pleasures like reading the adventure game reviews in computer magazines and fantasizing about the computer I’ll upgrade to when Mortensen and Brannigan’s ship comes in. With luck, Richard would be out on the town so I could perform my ablutions in total peace, accompanied only by a long cool drink.

      Well, I’d been right about one thing at least. Richard was certainly going out on the town. What I hadn’t bargained for was being there with him. So much for my plans. I knew I was no match for Richard tonight. I was just too tired to win the argument. Besides, deep down, I knew I didn’t have a leg to stand on. He’d bitten the bullet and got suited up to escort me to an obligatory dinner party the week before. After subjecting him to an evening with a bunch of insurance executives and their wives, spinach pancakes and all, I owed him. And I suspected he knew it. But just because it was my turn to suffer didn’t mean I had to cave in without a whinge.

      As I vigorously rubbed shampoo into my unruly auburn hair, a blast of cold air hit my spine. I turned, knowing exactly what I’d see. Richard’s face smiled nervously at me through the open door of the shower cubicle. ‘Hi, Brannigan,’ he greeted me. ‘Getting ready for a big night out? I knew you wouldn’t forget.’ He must have registered the snarl on my face, for he quickly added, ‘I’ll see you in the living room when you’re finished,’ and hastily shut the door.

      ‘Get back in here,’ I yelled after him, but he sensibly ignored me. It’s at moments like this I just don’t understand why I broke all the rules of a lifetime and allowed this man to invade my personal space.

      I should have known better. It had all started so inauspiciously. I’d been tailing a young systems engineer whose employer suspected him of selling information to a rival. I’d followed him to the Hacienda Club, breeding ground for so many of the bands that have turned Manchester into the creative centre of the nineties music industry. I’d only been there a couple of times previously because being jammed shoulder to shoulder with a sweating mass of bodies in a room where conversation is impossible and the simple act of breathing gets you stoned isn’t my idea of the perfect way to spend what little free time I get. I have to confess I’m much happier playing interactive adventure games with my computer.

      Anyway, I was trying to look unobtrusive in the Hassy – not an easy task when you’re that crucial five years older than most of the clientele – when this guy appeared at my shoulder and tried to buy me a drink. I liked the look of him. For a start, he was old enough to have started shaving. He had twinkling hazel eyes behind a pair of large tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a very cute smile, but I was working and I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off my little systems man in case he made his contact right before my eyes. But The Cute Smile didn’t want to take no for an answer, so it was something of a relief when my target headed for the exit.

      I had no time for goodbyes. I shot off after him, squeezing through the press of bodies like a sweaty eel. By the time I made it on to the street, I could see his tail lights glowing red as he started his car. I cursed aloud as I ran round the corner to where I’d parked and leapt behind the wheel. I slammed the car into gear and shot out of my parking place. As I tore round the corner, a customized Volkswagen Beetle convertible reversed out of a side alley. I had nowhere to go except into the nearside door. There was a crunching of metal as I wrestled my wheel round in a bid to save my Nova from complete disaster.

      It was all over in seconds. I climbed out of the car, furious with this dickhead who hadn’t bothered to check before he reversed out into a main street. Whoever he was, he’d not only lost me my surveillance target but had also wrecked my car. I strode round to the driver’s door of the Beetle in a towering rage, ready to drag the pillock out on to the street and send him home with his nuts in a paper bag. I mean, driving like that, it had to be a man, didn’t it?

      Peering out at me like a very shaken little boy was The Cute Smile. Before I could find the words to tell him what I thought of his brainless driving, he smiled disarmingly up at me. ‘If you wanted my name and phone number that badly, all you had to do was ask,’ he said innocently.

      For some strange reason, I didn’t kill him. I laughed. That was my first mistake. Now, nine months later, Richard was my lover next door, a funny, gentle divorcé with a five-year-old son in London. I’d at least managed to hang on to enough of my common sense not to let him move in with me. By chance, the bungalow next to mine had come on the market, and I’d explained to Richard that that was as close as he was going to get to living with me, so he snapped it up.

      He’d wanted to knock a connecting door between the two, but I’d informed him that it was a load-bearing wall and besides, we’d never manage to sell either house like that. Because I’m the practical one in this relationship, he believed me. Instead, I came up with the idea of linking the houses via a huge conservatory built on the back of our living rooms, with access to both houses through patio doors. Erecting a partition wall to separate the two halves would be a simple matter if we ever move. And we both reserve the right to lock our doors. Well, I do. Apart from anything else, it gives me time to clear up after Richard has been reducing the neat order of my home to chaos. And it means he can sit carousing with his rock buddies till dawn without me stomping through to the living room in the small hours looking like a refugee from the Addams family, chuddering sourly about some of us having to go to work in the morning.

      Right now, as I savagely towelled my hair and smoothed moisturizer into my tired skin, I cursed my susceptibility. Somehow he always manages to dig himself out of his latest pit with the same cute smile, a bunch of roses and a joke. It shouldn’t work, not on a bright, streetwise hard case like me, but to my infinite shame, it does. At least I’ve managed to impress upon him that there are house rules in any relationship. To break the rules knowingly once is forgivable. Twice means me changing the locks at three in the morning and Richard finding his favourite records thrown out of my living room window on to the lawn once I’ve made sure it’s raining. It usually is in Manchester.

      At first, he reacted as if my behaviour were certifiable. Now, he’s come to accept that life is much sweeter if he sticks to the rules. He’s still a long way from perfect. For example, being colour-blind, he’s got a tendency to bring home little gifts like a scarlet vase that clashes hideously with my sage green, peach and magnolia decor. Or black sweatshirts promoting bands I’ve never heard of because black’s fashionable, in spite of the fact that I’ve told him a dozen times that black makes me look like a candidate for the terminal ward. Now, I simply banish them to his home and thank СКАЧАТЬ