Kick Back Page 15

  The next directory I tried was called WORK.L. When I attempted to access it, nothing happened. I tried again and nothing happened. I tried one or two other ways of getting into the directory, but there was clearly some kind of access block on it. Desperately, I searched Cheetham’s drawers again, looking for a single word scribbled somewhere that might be a password for the directory, but without success. I knew that, given time, Bill or I could hack our way into the hidden files of the locked directory, but time was the one thing I wasn’t sure I had.

  What the hell? I’d taken so many chances already, what was one more? Closing the door on the latch behind me, I left Cheetham’s office and returned to the van. I unlocked the security box welded to the floor and took out our office laptop PC. It’s a portable machine, more compatible with its desktop equivalents than any married couple I know. It can store the equivalent of sixty novels. I walked back into the Corn Exchange with the fat briefcase, trying hard to look nonchalant, and returned undetected to Cheetham’s office by some miracle.

  Amongst the resident software on our portable’s hard disc was a program that could have been designed for situations like this. It’s a special file transfer kit that is used to move data at high speed between portables and desktop machines. I uncoiled the lead that would form the physical link between the two machines and plugged it in at both ends. I switched on my machine and booted up the software.

  The program sends over a highly sophisticated communications program, which is then used to “steal” the files from the target machine. The big advantage of using these kits is that you leave no

  There were just a couple of things I had to do first. I picked up the phone and dialled my favorite Chinese restaurant for a takeaway. Then I called Greater Manchester Police’s switchboard. I calmly told the operator who answered that there was a dead body at 27 Tamarind Grove, and hung up.

  The traffic had begun to clear, and I picked up my Chinese fifteen minutes later. I’d just parked the van on the drive of my bungalow when I remembered I hadn’t checked the tapes from the surveillance. I had two choices. Either I could go indoors and eat my Chinese, preferably with Richard, then, once I’d got all comfy and relaxed, I could schlep all the way over to Stockport and do the business. Or I could go now, and hope that there was nothing that would require my presence there all night. Being what Richard would describe as a boring old fart, I decided to finish the day’s work before I settled down. Besides, my bruises were aching, and I knew that if I sank into the comfort of my own sofa, I might never get up again unless it was to crawl into a hot bath.

  The drive to Stockport was the Chinese aroma torture. There’s nothing worse than the smell of hot and sour soup and salt and pepper ribs when nothing’s stayed in your stomach since breakfast and you can’t have them. What made it even more frustrating was that there was no one home in my nice little staked-out semi. And, according to my bug, no one had been home either. The phone had rung another couple of times, and that was the sum total of my illegal surveillance.

  When I finally got home, the offer of a share in my Chinese distracted Richard from a pirate radio bhangra station he’d been listening to in the course of duty. Sometimes I think his job’s even worse than mine. I brought him up to date with my adventures, which added a spice to dinner that even the Chinese had never thought of.

  “So he topped himself, then? Or was it one of those sleazy deaths by sexual misadventure?” he asked, doing his impersonation of a tabloid journo as he poked through the char siu pork to get at the bean sprouts below.

  “It looks like it. But I don’t think he did,” I said.

  “Why’s that, Supersleuth?”

  “A collection of little things that individually are insignificant, but taken together make me feel very uneasy,” I replied.

  “Want to run it past me? See if it’s just your imagination?” Richard offered. I knew he really meant: because you’re too well brought up to talk with your mouth full, that means there will be more for me. I gave in gracefully, because he was quite right, I did want to check that my suspicions had some genuine foundation.

  “OK,” I said. “Point one. I take Nell to be Martin Cheetham’s girlfriend, judging by the body language on the two occasions I saw them together. She was in the house for about twenty minutes, thirty max, before Lomax arrived. Now if she and Cheetham were getting it on together, that might explain why he was in his drag. But if they were busy having a little loving, what was going down with Lomax and the files?”

  “Maybe he just sneaked in and helped himself,” Richard suggested.

  “No, he didn’t have a key. Someone let him in, but I couldn’t see who. I’m convinced Lomax cleared the files out, without Cheetham’s co-operation.”

  “Why?” Richard asked.

  “Because if Cheetham had simply been trying to get incriminating evidence off the premises, he’d only have dumped discs with data on. He wouldn’t have ditched the discs with the software programs, because he’d have known enough to realize that a computer with no discs at all is a hell of a lot more suspicious than one with only software and no data,” I explained. Richard nodded in agreement.

  “Also, the bedding was clean. It had been changed since the last time the bed had been slept in or bonked on. And there was no bedding in the linen basket or the washing machine or the tumble dryer either. So where are the dirty sheets? Now if Cheetham and

  “Maybe he’s got a cleaner who comes in and takes his washing home with her,” Richard suggested, sharing his own fantasy.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. The linen basket in the bedroom had dirty clothes in it. Then there’s another point about the computers. Whoever cleared out the office safe and took the discs from there, it wasn’t Cheetham himself.”

  “What makes you say that?” Richard asked. “I mean, if he was starting to get a bit unnerved by you poking around, wouldn’t he try to get rid of anything incriminating?”

  “You’d think so. But it was his computer. Whoever did the clearing up of evidence, it was someone who didn’t understand that the discs were just the back-up copies of whatever was on the hard disc. They didn’t understand about the hard disc, because they left the data on it.”

  Richard shook his head. “I don’t know, Brannigan. It’s all a bit thin. I mean, ever since you solved Moira’s murder back in the spring, you keep seeing suspicious deaths everywhere. Look at the way you got all wound up about that client who died after he changed his will, and it turned out he’d had a heart condition for years, nothing iffy about it.”

  “But this is suspicious, even you’ve got to admit that,” I protested.

  “I could give you an explanation that would cover the facts,” Richard said, helping himself to the last of the prawn wontons.

  “Go on then,” I challenged, convinced I could unravel any theory his twisted mind could come up with.

  Richard swallowed his mouthful, leaned back in his seat and polished his glasses in a parody of the learned academics who pontificate on TV. “OK. He’s had this showdown with you then

  I nodded, reluctantly. Certainly, Cheetham had had enough time alone in the house for that scenario to be feasible. “OK,” I sighed.

  “So what would your reaction be if you arrived at your boyfriend’s house to find him hanging dead from the banisters in a frock? Especially if you knew he was into some hooky business that was going to come on top now he’s popped his clogs? Remember, for all you know, the lovely lady could be right up to her eyeballs in his little schemes. You’d want to cover your back, wouldn’t you?” He gave me that smile of his, the one that got me in this mess in the first place.

  “You would indeed,” I conceded.

  “So Lomax turns up like a bat out of hell and the pair of them clear out everything that might be remotely connected to Cheetham’s little rackets. Lomax takes off with all the incriminating documents and what’s-her-name …?” He gave me an inquiring look.

  “Nell,” I prompted him. />
  “Yeah, Little Nell, how could I forget?”

  “This is no time for obscene rugby songs,” I said.

  “Wrong sport, Brannigan. You’ll Never Walk Alone is more my speed than The Ball of Kirriemuir. Anyway, as you so correctly pointed out, any fool knows these days that forensic science could place Little Nell not just at the scene of the crime but in the bed if they’d bonked in it since the last time the sheets were changed. She does nothing more than take off the dirty linen so she can wash it in private. Meanwhile, Lomax goes down Cheetham’s office and clears out the safe and has it away on his toes with the

  I thought about it for a moment, then I jumped to my feet. “Hold everything,” I said on my way through to my spare room, which doubles as study and computer room. I pulled out a book on forensic medicine written for the popular market that Richard had bought me for my birthday as a kind of joke. I ran my finger down the index and turned to the section on body temperature. “Got it!” I shouted. Richard appeared in the doorway, looking crestfallen. I pointed to the relevant sentence, “‘The rule of thumb applied by pathologists is that a clothed body will cool in air at between two and five degrees Fahrenheit per hour,’ it says here,” I said. “And, when I touched him, he was the same temperature as I was, near as dammit. No way was he between four and ten degrees colder than me, which he should have been if he’d died when you suggested.”

  Richard took the book from me and read the relevant section. As usual, the journalist in him took over and he found all sorts of fascinating things he simply had to read about. Leaving him to it, I started to clear up the debris of dinner. I’d just dumped the tinfoil containers in the bin when he reappeared, brandishing the book with a look of pure triumph.

  “You should have kept reading,” he said sanctimoniously. “That way, you wouldn’t have given me half a tale. Look,” he added, pointing to a paragraph on the following page.

  “‘Typically, death by asphyxiation raises the body temperature. This must be taken into account in estimates of the time of death, and is known to have caused confusion in some historical cases.’” I read. “Bollocks,” I said. “OK, you win,” I sighed. “I’m letting my imagination run away with me.”

  “So you accept my theory?” Richard asked, a look of total disbelief on his face.

  “I guess so,” I admitted.

  “There’s one good thing about it,” he said. “I mean, I know I’ve just deprived you of all the excitement of chasing a murderer, but look on the bright side. It puts Alexis in the clear.”

  “I never thought for a moment she wasn’t in the clear,” I lied frostily.

  “Course you didn’t,” Richard said, with a broad wink. “Anyway, now I’ve saved you all the work of a murder hunt, do I get a reward?”

  I checked my body out for bruises and stiffness. I was beginning to heal, no doubt about it. I leaned into Richard’s warmth and murmured, “Your place or mine?”

  Chapter 19

  The bulging eyes stared fixedly at me, the blue lips twitching some message I could neither hear nor read. I moved back, but the face kept following me. I shouted at it, and the sound of my voice woke me up with the kind of staring-eyed shock that sets the adrenaline racing through the veins. The clock said six, Richard was lying on his stomach, breathing not quite heavily enough to be called snoring, and I was wide awake with Martin Cheetham’s face accusing me.

  Even if he hadn’t been murdered, Nell and Lomax had behaved unforgivably, always supposing there was anyone still around to forgive them. Nell’s actions in particular sickened me. I know I couldn’t behave like that if someone I’d been lovers with was hanging dead in the hall. There must have been a lot at stake for Nell and Lomax to have had the nerve to carry off their cover-up and, although the voice of reason said it was none of my business, I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

  Since I was awake anyway, I decided to do something useful. I slipped out of Richard’s bed and cut through the conservatory to my house. A steaming shower banished the morning stiffness that still lingered in my muscles, and a strong cup of coffee kick-started my brain. I chose a pair of bottle green trousers and a matching sweater to go under the russet padded silk blouson that I’d picked up for a song on Strangeways market.

  It was a quarter to seven when I parked outside Alexis’s house. As I’d expected, her car was still in the drive. I knew her routine of old. Up at six, in the bath with a pot of coffee, the phone and her notebook at five past. Morning calls to the cops, then out of the bath at half past. Then toast and the tabloids. I estimated she’d be this morning.

  I looked through the kitchen window as I knocked on the door. Alexis dropped her toast at the sound of the knock. I waved and grinned at her. With a look of resignation, she opened the door.

  “I have a question for you,” I announced.

  “Come in, why don’t you?” Alexis said as I walked across the kitchen and switched the kettle on.

  “When you left Tamarind Grove yesterday afternoon, did you already know that Martin Cheetham was dead?” I asked conversationally, spooning coffee into a mug.

  Alexis’s face froze momentarily. Always pale, she seemed to go sheet white. “How the hell did you know about that?” she asked intensely. If she used that tone of voice professionally, she’d get all sorts of confessions she wasn’t looking for.

  “I don’t suppose you remember a red Little Rascal van that you nearly drove into, but that was me. I remember it particularly because for a brief moment, I wondered what Bill would say if I wrote off a second company vehicle inside a week,” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit.

  “I might have known,” Alexis sighed. “If you’re brewing up, I’ll have another cup.”

  I made the coffees and said, “I’m listening.”

  Alexis lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags before she spoke. I sometimes think it must be lovely to have an instant trank permanently to hand. Then I think about my lungs.

  “I’d had a couple of drinks at lunchtime. I wasn’t pissed, just a bit belligerent. So I bought a can of spray paint. I was going to spray some rude graffiti on Cheetham’s house,” she said, looking as embarrassed as she must have felt. “Anyway, I got there and there was his car in the drive. I thought about spraying ‘You dirty rat’ on the bonnet, then I realized if he was home I might as well give him a piece of my mind. So I rang the doorbell. There was no reply, so I looked through the letter box. And I saw these feet, legs, just dangling there.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said with feeling, remembering my own experience.

  “So I took off like a bat out of hell,” Alexis said, dropping her head so that her haystack of unruly black hair hid her face.

  “You didn’t phone the cops?” I asked.

  “How could I? I didn’t have any legit reason for being there. I didn’t even know who the body was. And I couldn’t have done it anonymously, could I? Half the cops in Manchester know who it is on the phone the minute I open my gob.” She was right. Anyone who’d ever spoken to Alexis would remember that smoky Liverpudlian voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have rung you about it last night. I was just too wiped out. So, when did you realize it was Cheetham?”

  “When I did my calls this morning. They told me about it as a routine non-suspicious death. If he hadn’t been a solicitor, I doubt they’d even have mentioned it. It made my stomach turn over, I can tell you.”

  “Any details?” I asked.

  “Not a lot. Unattributed, I got that he was wearing women’s clothing and playing bondage games. According to the DI at the scene, he had a proper little torture chamber in his wardrobe. They reckon he died some time yesterday afternoon. He didn’t have any form for sexual offenses. Not so much as a caution. He’s not even on their list of people they know get up to naughties in their spare time. They don’t think there was anyone else involved, and they’re not treating it as a suspicious death. They don’t even think it was suicide, just an ac
cident. All I can say is thank God he didn’t have nosy neighbors, or else the lads might be asking me what exactly I was doing kicking his door in yesterday afternoon.” Alexis managed a faint smile. “Especially if they knew I had a private eye working on how to recover the five grand he helped to con me out of.”

  “You weren’t the only person who was there yesterday,” I said, and went on to fill her in on the events of the afternoon. “I was convinced they’d killed him,” I added. “But Richard persuaded me that I was just seeing dragons in the flames.”

  “So what happens now?” Alexis asked.

  “Well, theoretically, we could just ignore the whole thing, and I

  “You don’t really think he’d get away with that, do you?” Alexis demanded, lighting up another cigarette.

  “I don’t honestly know,” I admitted. “Personally, I think there’s been a lot more going down between Lomax and Cheetham than we know about. And if there’s any proof of a connection other than the fact that I know I’ve seen them together, it could be buried in the other stuff. So I want to keep digging.”

  Alexis nodded. “So how can I help?”

  There are parts of Greater Manchester where it wouldn’t be too big a shock to encounter a shop catering for the needs of transsexuals and transvestites. A back street in Oldham isn’t one of them. I find it hard to imagine anyone in Oldham doing anything more sexually radical than the missionary position, which only goes to show what a limited imagination I have. The locals clearly didn’t have a problem with Trances, since there was nothing discreet about the shopfront, sandwiched rather unfortunately as it was between a butcher’s and a junk shop.

  On the way over, Alexis had told me about the shop and its owner. Cassandra Cliff had endured a brief spell of notoriety in the gutter press a few years previously when some muck-raking journo had discovered that the actress who was one of the regulars in the country’s favorite soap opera was in fact a male-to-female transsexual. In the flurry of “Sex Swap Soap Star” stories that followed, it emerged that Cassandra, previously Kevin, had been living as a woman for a dozen years, and that no one among cast or production team had a clue that she wasn’t biologically of the same gender as the gossipy chip-shop owner she played. Of course, the production company of Northerners denied that the uncovering of Cassandra’s secret would make any difference whatsoever to their attitude to her.