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.”
Delia 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 cooking 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, Delia,” 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, Delia. 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 scrap-books. We drove across to the Hilton in blissful silence, and I left Delia 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.”
“Somebody is making fake KerrSter. They’re releasing it on to the market via a little scam they’ve got going with one of the major wholesale chains. I know how the scam works and I know who’s pulling it. The only thing I don’t yet know is where they’re manufacturing the stuff,” I said in an exhausted monotone. I just didn’t have the energy to let Trevor Kerr wind me up.
His red face turned purple. “Who is it? Who’s doing this to me?” he shouted, leaning forward and banging the table with his fist. Several distant drinkers turned toward us, curious. The Hilton’s bar isn’t a place that’s used to raised voices that early in the evening.
“It’s a former employee, who clearly wasn’t too impressed with the golden handcuffs you slapped on him,” I said.
“I want a name,” he demanded, his voice lower but his expression no less menacing. “And an address. I’m going to break every bone in his fucking body when I get my hands on him.”
I shook my head, weary of his incontinent anger. “No way.”
“What the hell do you think I’m paying you for, girl? Give me the name and address!”
“Mr. Kerr, shut up and listen to me.” I’d reached the end of my rope and I suspect it showed. Kerr fell back in his seat as if I’d hit him. “A client hires me to do a job, and I do that job. Sometimes I come up against things that make people want to take the law into their own hands. Part of my job is stopping them. If I give you that name and address, and you go round there and give this bloke a good seeing-to, you won’t thank me tomorrow when you’re in a police cell and he’s sitting in his hospital bed free and clear because there isn’t a shred of tangible evidence to tie him to the fake KerrSter or these killings. Sure, he’ll have a sticky couple of hours down the nick, but unless we find where this stuff is being made and connect him directly to it, all we have is a chain of circumstantial evidence.” Kerr opened his mouth to speak, but I waved a finger at him and carried on. “And I have to tell you that because of the way I’ve collected some of that circumstantial evidence, we’re not going to be able to produce it to the police. We can tell them where to look, but we can’t show them all we’ve got. We need the factory. I’m not keeping the name from you out of bloody-mindedness. I’m doing the job you paid me for, and I intend to finish it before somebody else dies. Do you have a problem with any of that?“ I challenged him.
“Your name will be mud in this town,” he blustered.
“For what? Keeping my client out of jail? Mr. Kerr, if I ever get the faintest whiff that you have bad-mouthed me to a living soul, our solicitors will slap a writ on you so fast it’ll make your eyes water. If you want this case cleared up, and your good name restored, you’ll give me till this time tomorrow to come up with the final piece of evidence that we need to hand this mess over to the police.”
Before he could answer, the barman appeared at his shoulder. “Excuse me? Miss Brannigan?”
“That’s me,” I said wearily.
“Phone call for you. You can take it at the bar.”
Thank you, Delia. Without a word to Kerr, I got up and went to the phone. “Time to go,” Delia said.
“I’ll be right with you.” I replaced the phone and returned to the table. “I have to go now,” I said. “Frankly, Mr. Kerr, there are plenty more productive things for me to be doing than talking to you. I’ll be in touch.”
Delia was as good as her word. While I soaked in a bath laced with refreshing essential oils, a cold drink sweating on the side, she knocked together a chicken-and-spinach curry from the contents of the freezer. Wrapped in my cuddly toweling dressing gown, I curled up in a corner of one of my sofas and tucked in. I hadn’t been able to face food on the flight, and as soon as the first forkful hit my mouth, I realized I was absolutely ravenous. As we ate, I gave Delia the rundown on the case. “And so I sent you the stuff from the safe,” I ended up.
Delia nodded. “I’ve been through it, as far as I could get with an Italian dictionary. What’s your conclusion?”
“Drugs,” I said. “They’re swapping art for drugs. Those number and letter combinations-20CC, 34H, 50,OOOE. I make that twenty kilos crack cocaine, thirty-four kilos heroin, fifty thousand tabs of Ecstasy. Once you’ve taken a painting out of its frame, it’s a lot more portable than the cash equivalent, and a lot easier to smuggle. It’s costing them next to nothing to acquire the stolen art, and it’s got a sizable black market value, so they can swap it for a much greater value in drugs than they’ve initially laid out to have it stolen.”
Delia nodded. “I think you’re right. Kate, you know I’m going to have to pass all this on to other teams, don’t you? It’s not my field.”
I sighed. “I know. And somebody’s going to have to liaise with the Italians so they can send someone to pick up Nicholas Turner’s body. But I can’t handle going through all this with some skeptical stranger tonight.”
“Of course you can’t. And before you talk to any other coppers, you need to have Ruth with you. They’re going to put a lot of pressure on you to come up with the original source that put you onto Turner in the first place. I’ve got a shrewd idea who that might be, but I don’t see any need to pass my suspicions on.”
I smiled gratefully. She was right about Ruth. I’d broken the law too many times in the previous couple of days to be prepared to talk to the police without a solicitor. And my buddy Ruth Hunter is the best criminal solicitor in Manchester. “Thanks, Delia,” I said. “Can you start the ball rolling tomorrow? I warn you now that I’m not going to be available for questioning till the day after. I’ve got something else to chase that I can’t ignore.”
Delia looked doubtful. “I don’t know if they’ll want to wait that long.”
“They’ll have to. Watch my lips. I’m not going to be available. I won’t be in the office, I won’t be here, I won’t be answering my mobile.”
Delia grinned. “I hear you. I’ll leave a message on the machine.” She gave me the copper’s once-over look. “You need to sleep, Kate. Speak to me tomorrow, okay?”
After Delia had gone, I went next door. Neither Richard’s car nor Shelley’s was outside, not surprising if he’d chosen to drive back. He might have made tonight’s ferry out of Rotterdam, or he might have decided to take the long way home. I was still furious with him, but something inside me didn’t want it to end here. I climbed into his bed, drinking in the smell of him from his pillows.