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  Two months later, Cassandra’s character perished in a tragic accident when the extension her husband was building to their terraced

  Alexis skirted the one-way system and cut round the back of the magistrates’ court. Modern concrete boxes and grimy red brick terraced shops were mixed higgledy-piggledy along almost every street, a seemingly random and grotesque assortment that filled me with the desire to construct a cage in the middle of it and make the town planners live there for a week among the chip papers blowing in the wind and the empty soft-drink cans rattling along the gutters. I tried to ignore the depressing townscape and asked, “So how come you know her so well? What’s she got to do with the crime beat?”

  “I interviewed her a couple of times for features when she was still playing Margie Grimshaw in Northerners. We got on really well. Then after the dust settled and she set up Trances, I gave her a call and asked if we could do a piece about the shop. She wasn’t keen, but I let her have copy approval, and she liked what I wrote. Now, we do lunch about once a month. She’s got such a different grapevine from any of my other contacts. It’s amazing what she picks up,” Alexis said, parking in a quiet side street of terraced houses. It could have been the set for Northerners.

  “And she passes stuff on to you, does she?” I asked.

  “I suspect she’s highly selective. I know that after what happened to her, she’s desperately protective of other people in the same boat. But if she can help, she will.”

  I followed Alexis round the corner into one of those streets that isn’t quite part of the town center, but would like to think it is. I glanced in the window as we entered. The only clue that Trances was any different from a hundred other boutiques was the prominent sign that said, “We specialize in large sizes. Shoes up to size 12.” The door itself provided the warning for the uninitiated.

  I followed Alexis in. The shop was large, and had an indefinable air of seediness. The décor was cream and pink, the pink tending slightly too far to the candy floss end of the spectrum. The dresses and suits that were suspended from racks that ran the full length of the shop had the cumulative effect of being over the top, both in style and color. I suspect that the seediness came from the glass cases that lined the wall behind the counter. They contained the kind of prostheses and lingerie I remembered only too well from Martin Cheetham’s secret collection. In one corner, there was a rack of magazines. Without examining them too closely, the ones that weren’t copies of Cassandra’s magazine Trances had that combination of garishness and coyness on the cover that marks soft porn.

  The person behind the counter was also clearly a client. The size of the hands and the Adam’s apple were the giveaways. Apart from that, it would have been hard to tell. The make-up was a little on the heavy side, but I could think of plenty of pubs in the area where that wouldn’t even earn a second glance. “Is Cassie in?” Alexis asked.

  The assistant gave a slight frown, sizing us up and clearly wondering if we were tourists. “Are you a friend of Miss Cliff, madam?” she asked.

  “Would you tell her Alexis would like a word, if she’s got a few minutes?” Alexis said, responding in the same slightly camp vein. I hoped the conversation with Cassie wasn’t going to run along those lines. I can do pompous, I can do threatening, I can even do “OK, yah,” but the one style I can’t keep up without exploding into giggles is high camp.

  The assistant picked up a phone and pressed an intercom button. “Cassandra? I have a lady with me called Alexis who would like a moment of your time, if it’s convenient,” she said. Then she nodded. “I’ll tell her. Bye for now,” she added. She replaced the handset and said decorously, “Miss Cliff will see you now. If you’d care to take the door at the back of the shop and follow the stairs …”

  “It’s all right, I know the way,” Alexis said, heading past the clothes racks. “Thanks for your help.”

  Cassandra Cliff’s office looked like something out of Interiors. It could have been a blueprint for the career woman who wants to remind people that as well as being successful she is still feminine. The office furniture—a row of filing cabinets, a low coffee table and two desks, one complete with Apple Mac—was limed ash, stained gray. A pair of gray leather two-seater sofas occupied one corner. The carpet was a dusty pink, a color echoed in the Austrian blinds that softened the lines of the room. The walls were decorated with black-and-white stills of the set and stars of Northerners . A tall vase of burgundy carnations provided a vivid splash of color. The overall effect was stylish and relaxed, the two adjectives that sprang into my mind when I first met Cassandra Cliff.

  She wore a linen suit with a straight skirt and no lapels. It was the color of an egg yolk. Her mandarin-collared blouse was a bright, clear sapphire blue. I know it sounds hideous, but on her it was glorious. Her ash blonde hair was cut short but full on top, shaped, gelled and lacquered till it resembled something out of the Museum of Modern Art. The make-up was the kind of discreet job that looks completely natural.

  As Alexis introduced us, Cassie caught me studying her and the corners of her mouth twitched in a knowing smile. I could feel my ears going red, and I returned her smile sheepishly. “I know,” she said. “You can’t help it. You have to ask yourself, ‘If I didn’t know, would I have guessed?’ Everyone does it, Kate, don’t feel embarrassed about it.”

  Completely disarmed, I allowed myself to be settled on one of the sofas with Alexis while Cassie ordered coffee then sat down opposite us, crossing a pair of elegant legs that certain women of my acquaintance would cheerfully have killed for. “So,” Cassie said. “A private investigator and a crime reporter. It can’t be me you’re after. The jackals that Alexis hangs out with left me not so much as a vertebra in my cupboard, never mind a skeleton. So, I ask myself, who?”

  “Does the name Martin Cheetham mean anything to you?” Alexis asked.

  Cassie uncrossed her legs then recrossed them in the opposite direction. “In what context?” she said.

  “In a business context. Your business, not his.”

  Cassie shrugged elegantly. “Not everyone who uses our services likes to be known by their real name. You could say that their real name is what they’re trying to escape from.”

  “He died yesterday,” Alexis said bluntly.

  Before Cassie could respond, a teenage girl came in with coffee. At least, I’m pretty certain it was a girl. The process of pouring our coffee gave Cassie plenty of time to recover from the news. “How did he die?” she asked. In spite of her conversational tone, for the first time since we’d arrived she looked wary.

  “He was wearing women’s clothing and hanging from the banister in his home. The police think it was an accident,” Alexis said. I was content to sit back. Cassie was her contact, and she knew how to play her.

  “Do I take it that you don’t agree with them?” Cassie asked, moving her glance from one to the other of us.

  “Oh, I think they’re probably right. It’s just that he ripped me off to the tune of five grand a few weeks ago, and I’m trying to get it back. Which means trying to untangle what he was up to, and who with,” Alexis said determinedly.

  “Five thousand pounds? My God, Alexis, no wonder you’re working with Kate.” Cassie smiled, then sighed. “Yes, I knew Martin Cheetham. He bought a lot of stuff from Trances, and he was a regular at our monthly Readers’ Socials. Martina, he called himself. Not terribly original. And before you ask, I don’t think he had any particular friends among the group. Certainly, I don’t know of anyone he saw socially between meetings. He wasn’t someone who appeared to find it easy to open up. A lot of men really blossom when they’re cross-dressing, as if they’ve suddenly become themselves. Martina wasn’t like that. It was almost as if it was an obsession that he had to indulge rather than a release. Does that make any sense to you?”

  I nodded. “It fits the picture I have in my mind, certainly. Tell me, was he a particularly effective woman? I mean, without wishing to be offensive, some men are neve
r going to look like

  “Thank you,” Cassie said. “Martina was actually superb. He had a lot of natural advantages—he wasn’t particularly tall, he had small hands and feet, quite fine bones and good skin. But the real clincher was his clothes. He could get into a standard size sixteen, and he didn’t seem to care how much he spent on clothes. In fact …” Cassie got up and went over to one of the filing cabinets. She returned a moment later with a photograph album.

  She started flicking through the pages. “I’m sure he’s on a couple of these. I took a couple of rolls of film at the Christmas Social.” She stopped at a photograph of a couple of women leaning against a bar, laughing. “There, on the left. That’s Martina.”

  I studied the picture and realized where I’d seen Martina Cheetham before.

  Chapter 20

  I sat in the Ford Fiesta listening to Coronation Street on headphones. Mary Wright had returned to the house I was bugging, her appetite for soap opera unabated. The mysterious Brian was still nowhere to be seen or heard, however. Perhaps he didn’t exist. At least his absence freed me from having to listen to domestic chitchat, which meant I could concentrate on trying to crack the password that would let me into Martin Cheetham’s secret directory.

  Alexis had been as puzzled as me when I revealed where I’d seen Martin Cheetham in his drag before. The photograph had jogged my memory as the distorted face of the corpse could never have done. But there was no mistaking it. The elegant woman who’d been looking at cheap terraced houses in DKL Estates was Martin Cheetham. No wonder he’d taken off like a bat out of hell at the sight of me. Whatever their little game was, he must have thought I was on to him, which also explained why he’d gone into panic mode when I paid my second visit to his office. If I’d needed proof that Cheetham and Lomax were up to something a lot more significant than the land fiddle, I had it now. The only question was, what?

  As the familiar theme music from Coronation Street died away, a Vauxhall Cavalier drove slowly past me and pulled up outside my target. When I saw Ted’s favorite salesman was driving it, I couldn’t help myself. I punched the air and shouted, “Yo!” just like some zitty adolescent watching the American football on Channel 4. Luckily, Jack McCafferty wasn’t interested in anything other than the house where he intended to sell a state-of-the-art Colonial Conservatory. I’d been right! The pattern was working out, just as I’d anticipated.

  What I hadn’t expected was Jack’s passenger. Unfolding himself

  The two men marched up the path. As Jack’s hand reached out for the bell, I experienced the strange sensation of hearing it ring in my ears. The television was abruptly turned off, just as I was getting interested in the latest episode in the steamy series of instant coffee adverts. Unfortunately, because there was a wall between the bug and the door, all I could hear of the doorstep exchange was the murmur of voices, but it became clear as the three of them entered the living room.

  “What a delightful room!” I heard Jack exclaim.

  “Isn’t it?” Ted echoed, with as much conviction as a famous actress endorsing the rejuvenating powers of a brand of soap.

  “We like it,” the woman’s voice said.

  “Well, Mrs. Wright, if I might introduce ourselves to you, my name is Jack McCafferty and I’m the chief sales executive of Colonial Conservatories, which is why your telephone inquiry about our range was passed on to me. And you are very privileged tonight to have with you my colleague Ted Barlow, who is the managing director of our company. Ted likes to take a personal interest in selected customers, so he can keep his finger on the pulse of what you, the public, actually want from a conservatory, so that Colonial Conservatories can maintain its position as a market leader in the field.” It flowed virtually without a pause. In spite of myself, I was impressed. I could picture Ted standing there, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, failing dismally in his attempt to look like a Colossus of Commerce.

  “I see,” said Mary Wright. “Won’t you sit down, gentlemen?”

  As soon as his backside hit the chair, Jack was off and running, his pitch fluent and flawless as he sucked Mary Wright into the purchase of a conservatory she didn’t need at a price she couldn’t afford for a house that wasn’t hers. Every now and again, he sought a response from her, and she chimed in as obediently as the triangle player in the orchestra counting the bars till the next tinkling note. They established that her husband was working abroad, what kind of conservatory she favored, her monthly incomings and outgoings. Jack conducted the whole exposition as if it were a symphony.

  Eventually, Ted was dispatched out the back with a tape measure and notebook. That was when it really got interesting. “Slight problem,” Jack said in a low voice. “Ted’s having aggravation with the bank.”

  “You mean, because of us?” Mary Wright asked.

  “Probably. Anyway, bottom line is, I can’t get a finance deal through the usual channels. We’re going to have to arrange the finance ourselves, but that shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve got the names of a couple of brokerages where they don’t ask too many questions. The only thing we’ll lose out on is the finance company kick back to me, but we’ll just have to live with that. I’m only warning you, because the close will be a bit different. OK?” he said, as laid back as if he was asking for a second cup of tea.

  “Sure, I’ll busk it. But listen, Jack, if the bank’s being difficult, maybe we should pack it in before it starts getting dangerous,” the woman said.

  “Look, Liz, there’s no way they could trace it back to us. We’ve covered our tracks perfectly. I agree, we should quit while we’re ahead. But we’ve already got the next two up and running. Let’s see them through, then we’ll take a break, OK? Go off to the sun and spend some of the loot?” Jack said reassuringly. If I’d have been her, I’d probably have fallen for it too. He had the real salesman’s voice, all honey and reassurance. If he’d become a surgeon, he’d have had sacks of mail every Christmas from adoring patients.

  “OK. Are you coming back here tonight?” she asked.

  “How could I stay away?” he parried.

  “Then we’ll talk about it later.” Whatever else she was going to say was cut off by the return of Ted.

  “If you’ll just give me a minute with the old pocket calculator, I’ll give you a price on the unit you’d decided on,” Ted said. The presumptive close.

  The price Ted quoted made my eyes cross. Of course, Liz/Mary didn’t turn a hair. “I see,” she said.

  “Normally, we could offer you our own financial package, sponsored by one of the major clearing banks,” Jack said. “Unfortunately, we at Colonial Conservatories are the victims of our own success, and we have surpassed our target figures for this quarter. As a result, the finance company aren’t in a position to supply any more cash to our customers, because of course they have limits themselves and, unlike us, they have people looking over their shoulders to make sure they don’t exceed those limits. But what I would suggest is that you consult a mortgage broker and arrange to remortgage for an amount that will cover the installation of your conservatory,” he added persuasively. “It’s the most effective way of utilizing the equity you have tied up in your home.”

  “What about a second mortgage? Wouldn’t that do just as well?” Liz/Mary asked.

  Ted cleared his throat. “I think you’ll find, Mrs. Wright, that most lenders prefer a remortgage, especially bearing in mind that our house prices up here in the North West have started dropping a tad. You see, if there were to be any problems in the future and the house had to be sold, sometimes it happens that there isn’t enough money left in the pot for the lender of the second mortgage after the first lender has been paid off, if you see what I mean. And then the holder of the second charge doesn’t have any way of getting his money back, if you follow me. And lenders are very keen on knowing they could get their cash back if push comes to shove, so they mostly prefer you to get a remortgage that pays off the first mortgage and leaves you with a few bob l
eft over.” I couldn’t see Ted getting a job presenting The Money Program, but he’d put it clearly enough. What a pity he’d wasted it on a pair of crooks who’d forgotten more than he ever knew about property loans and how to exploit them.

  “So what happens now?” the woman asked.

  “Well, you have to talk to a mortgage broker and arrange this remortgage. And of course, if you need any advice filling in the forms, don’t hesitate to call me. I could fill these things in in my sleep. Then, as soon as you get confirmation of the remortgage, let us know and we’ll have your conservatory installed within the week,” Jack said confidently.

  “As quickly as that? Oh, that’s wonderful! It’ll be in when my husband comes home for Christmas,” she exclaimed. Shame, really. She could have been earning an honest living treading the boards.

  “No problem,” Jack said.

  Ten minutes later, Jack and Ted were walking back to the car, slapping each other on the back. Poor sod, I thought. I wasn’t relishing the revelation that the person responsible for the wrecking of his business was his good buddy Jack. The whole thing had taken just over an hour. I reckoned that in a dozen of those hours spread over the last year, Liz and Jack must have cleared the best part of half a million quid. It was gobsmacking. The most gobsmacking thing about it was how simple it all was. I still had a few loose ends to tie up, but I had a pretty clear picture now of how they had scammed their way to a fortune.

  Since Jack had promised he’d be back later, I decided to stay put. It was a freezing cold night, frost forming on the roofs of the parked cars, and my feet were like ice. I knew I couldn’t endure a couple more hours of that, so I nipped back to the van, swapped my thin-soled court shoes for a pair of thick sports socks and my Reeboks. The feeling returned to my feet almost as soon as I tied my laces. Wonderful invention, trainers. The only problem comes when you go striding into an important business meeting, done up to the nines in your best suit, then you look down and realize that instead of your chic Italian shoes, you’re still wearing the Reeboks you drove there in. I know, I was that soldier.