Knowing Clive’s weakness for anything reeking of snobbery, I said, “I’m doing a job for the Nottingham Group.”
“Should I know the name?” he asked snottily.
“Probably not, Clive. It’s a consortium of the landed gentry, headed by Lord Ballantrae of Dumdivie. Art thefts. Very hush-hush. I’m very close to Mr. Big, and this is a ploy to smoke him out.” I pulled the bug out of my pocket. “What I need is for one of your craftsmen to incorporate this in the piece. Preferably on the outside. I’d thought under one of the stones.” I handed the bug and the buckle to Clive, who already had his loupe out.
He took a few minutes to scrutinize the buckle, heavy enough to make a useful weapon, especially if it was attached to a belt. “Nice piece of work,” he commented. “If you hadn’t told me it was a fake, I’d have had my work cut out to spot it.” Praise indeed, coming from Clive. He unscrewed the loupe from his eye socket and said, “It’ll take a few hours. And it will cost.”
“Now, there’s a surprise,” I said. “Just send us an invoice. Give me a bell when it’s ready.” I turned to go back through the shop, but Clive gripped my elbow and steered me farther into the nether regions.
“Easier if you pop out the back door,” he said. Half a minute later, I was in the street. I reckoned I deserved a cappuccino made by someone other than me, so I decided to take the scenic route back to the office. For a brief moment, I toyed with the idea of ringing Michael Haroun and suggesting he play truant for half an hour, but I told myself severely that it wouldn’t help my pursuit of the art thieves to involve the insurers at this stage. They’d only start muttering about doing things by the book and informing the police. I smacked my hormones firmly on the wrist and drove the length of Deans-gate to the Atlas Cafe, where they claim to make the best coffee outside Italy. I wasn’t going to argue. I dumped the car on a yellow line down by the canal basin and walked back up to the chic glass-and-wood interior. I sat by the window, sipping the kind of cappuccino that acts like intravenous caffeine and pulled the Kerrchem papers out of my bag. Time for a file review.
I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. All I knew was that I wanted to find something, anything that would legitimately allow me to postpone or short-circuit the tedious process of doing background checks into all of the redundant staff that I hadn’t been able to eliminate on the phone. On the second read-through, I found exactly what I was looking for.
Joey Morton’s supply of KerrSter came from the local branch of a national chain of trade wholesalers, Filbert Brown. His wife couldn’t remember which of them had actually made the trip to the cash-and-carry when the fatal drum of KerrSter had been bought, but there was no doubt that that was the original source of the tainted cleanser.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a place to start. One of the dozens of pieces of normally useless information cluttering up my dustbin brain was the fact that Filbert Brown were a Manchester-based company. I knew this because I passed their head office and flagship cash-and-carry every time I drove from my house to North Manchester. Suddenly energized, I abandoned the hedonism of the Atlas and trotted back down the steps to the car.
It didn’t take long to skirt the city center. It took longer to get through to the customers’ car park at Filbert Brown. They occupied an old factory building just off Great Ancoats Street. The area was in the middle of that chaotic upheaval known as urban renewal. East Manchester is supposedly coming up in the world; home of the new Commonwealth Games stadium, spiffy new housing developments and sports facilities. Oh, and roads, of course. Lots of them. Virgin territory for the traffic cones and temporary traffic lights that have become an epidemic on the roads of the North West. My political friends reckon it’s the government’s revenge because most of us up here didn’t vote for them.
Considering it was the middle of the morning, when all of us small business people are supposed to have our noses firmly to the grindstone, Filbert Brown was surprisingly busy. I walked in without challenge and found myself in a glorified warehouse. It reminded me of those cheap and cheerless back-to-basics supermarkets that we’ve imported from Europe in recent years. Anyone who did their shopping in Netto or Aldi would have been right at home in Filbert Brown. Me, I always find it incredibly cheap to shop there-they never stock anything I’d want to buy. The same went for Filbert Brown. I know Richard thinks I have an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness, but even I couldn’t get turned on by cases of dishwasher powder, drums of worktop bactericide and cartons of paper towels. I was clearly in a minority, judging by the number of people who were happily filling up their trolleys.
I wandered up and down the aisles for a few minutes, getting a feel for the place. One of the things that struck me was how prominent KerrSter was among the cleansers. It occupied the whole width of a shelf at eye level, the key position in shifting merchandise. Compared with the other Kerrchem products, which seemed to be doing just about okay compared with their competitors, KerrSter was king of the castle.
What I needed now was a pretext. Thoughtfully, I wandered back to the car. I always keep a fold-over clipboard in the boot for those occasions when I need to pretend to be a market researcher. You’d be amazed at what people will tell you if you’ve got a clipboard. I gave my clothes the once-over. I was wearing tan jodhpur-style leggings, a cream linen collarless shirt and a chocolate brown jacket with a mandarin collar. The jacket was too smart for the pitch, so I folded it up and left it in the boot. In the shirt and leggings, I could just about pass. Freeze, maybe, but pass.
I walked briskly into Filbert Brown and strode up to the customer service counter. I say counter, but it was more of a hole in the wall. Customers here clearly weren’t encouraged to complain. The woman behind the counter looked as if she’d been hired because of her resemblance to a bulldog. “Yes?” she demanded, jowls quivering.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said brightly. “I’m doing an M.B.A. at Manchester Business School and I’m doing some research into sales and marketing. I wonder if I could perhaps have a word with your stock controller?” “You got an appointment?” “I’m afraid not.”
She looked triumphant. “You’d need an appointment.” I looked disappointed. “It’s a bit of an emergency. I had arranged to see someone at one of the big do-it-yourself stores, but she’s come down with a bug and she had to cancel and I really need to get the initial research done this week. It won’t take more than half an hour. Can’t you just ring through and see if it would be possible for me to see someone?”
“We’re a bit busy just now,” she said. “We” was inaccurate; “they” would have been nearer the mark, judging by the queues at the tills.
“Please?” I tried for the about-to-burst-into-tears look.
She cast her eyes heavenwards. “It’s a waste of time, you know.”
“If they’re busy, I could make an appointment for later,” I said firmly.
With a deep sigh, she picked up the phone, consulted a list taped to the wall of her booth and dialed a number. “Sandra? It’s Maureen at customer services. There’s a student says she here wants to talk to you… Some project or other…” She looked me up and down disparagingly. Then her eyebrows shot up. “You will?” she said incredulously. “All right, I’ll tell her.” She dropped the phone as if it had bitten her and said, “Miss Bates will be with you in a moment.”
I leaned against the wall and waited. A couple of minutes passed, then a woman approached through the checkouts. Her outfit was in the same colors as the rest of the staff, but where they wore red-and-cream overalls, she wore a red skirt and a blouse in the red-and-cream material. She smiled as she approached, which explained why she’d never get the job in customer services. “I’m Sandra Bates,” she greeted me. “How can I help you?”