Dead Beat (10 page)

My hands were slippery with nervous sweat, so I wiped them

This time, the lock slipped back and the door opened. I hurried into the room and closed the door behind me, flipping up the catch to double-lock it. I leaned against the door and found myself panting. I forced myself to breathe normally and took stock of my surroundings. First, I examined the filing cabinets. I soon found a drawer marked “Clients. O-R.” It was locked.

Fortunately, the Seagull Project didn’t just hand out charity. It had clearly been on the receiving end as far as the elderly filing cabinets were concerned. With new cabinets, you actually have to pick the locks. But with ones of this vintage, I could forget about the set of lock-picks I’d bought from Dennis. I inched the cabinet away from the wall and pushed the top, tipping it back. Cautiously, keeping it in place, I crouched down and slipped my hand underneath. I groped around till I found the lock bar and pushed it upwards. The sound of the bar releasing the locked drawers was sweet to my ears. I carefully let the cabinet down and pushed it back into place. It had taken me nearly five minutes. I flicked hastily through the files and found a cardboard folder marked “Pollock, M.” I pulled it out. It was worryingly slim and when I opened it I discovered why. It contained only one sheet of paper. My heart sank as I read it. “Moira Pollock. File transferred to computer 16th February.”

I swore under my breath and turned to the computer. The perfect end to a perfect day. I switched it on and sat down. As I’d expected, it wanted a password. I tried Seagull. No luck. Then Andrew. It’s amazing how many people are stupid enough to use their own names as security passwords. Andy wasn’t one of them. I thought hard. My next try had to be right. Like copy-protected

Then it came to me. I crossed my fingers, said a swift prayer to the gods of the New Age and typed in JONATHAN. “Thank you, Richard Bach,” I said softly as the menu appeared before me.

Once I was into the program, it didn’t take me long to find Moira’s records. I didn’t have time to plow through them all then and there, but realizing I might have to steal some data from the computer, I’d taken the precaution of bringing a couple of blank floppies with me. I quickly made two copies of the file to be on the safe side, pocketed the discs and switched off the computer. So much for the Data Protection Act. I checked my watch and saw that it was nearly ten past eight. Time to get a move on.

At the door, I paused and listened. It seemed quiet, so I carefully released the lock catch and opened the door. I stepped into the hall with a sigh of relief and pulled the door to behind me. The noise of the lock snapping home sounded like a thunderclap. I didn’t wait to see if that’s how it sounded to anyone else. I raced down the hall and out of the front door. I didn’t stop running till I got to the car.

I didn’t like leaving the Seagull Project minus their new volunteer. But at least I’d managed to avoid the collective meeting. Besides, I figured that now she’d flown the nest, Moira might need my help more than them.

I arrived home just as Richard was leaving. When he saw me, his face lit up in my favorite cute smile and he leapt across the low fence that separates our front gardens. He pulled me into his arms in a comforting hug. Until I tried to relax into him, I hadn’t realized how tense I still was after my burglary at Seagull.

“Hey, Brannigan!” he exclaimed. “I’d given you up for dead. Come on, get your glad rags on and we’ll go and paint the town.”

It was a tempting offer. I didn’t keep the full range of software at home that we have in the office, and I knew that I couldn’t read the disc I’d copied at the Seagull Project with what I had on my machine. I certainly couldn’t face going into the office this late.

I took a quick shower and blissfully pulled on a pair of clean toffee-colored silk trousers that were my bargain of the year—a tenner in a reject shop. I added a cream camisole and a linen jacket, and half an hour after I got home, I was climbing into the passenger seat of Richard’s hot pink Beetle convertible. I wriggled uncomfortably, then pulled out a handful of scrunched up papers from under me and tossed them on to the rest of the detritus in the back seat.

“This car’s a health hazard,” I grumbled as I kicked Diet Coke cans, old newspapers and cigarette packets aside in a bid to find some floor space for my feet.

“It’s my office,” he replied, as if that was some kind of reason for driving round in a dustbin.

“You leave it sitting around with the top down, and somebody’s going to come along and mistake it for a skip. You’ll come out one morning to find a mattress and a pile of builder’s rubble in it,” I teased him, only half-joking.

Luckily for my eardrums, Richard was having a night off, so we avoided anywhere with live music. We ended up dancing the night away at one of the city’s more intimate clubs. Afterwards, we went for a late Chinese, so it was after three when we finally crawled into bed, hungry for one thing only. And I don’t mean sex.

   I woke around noon to the electronic music of a computer game, and found Richard sitting naked in front of the screen playing Tetris. It’s a game that sounds simple, but isn’t. The object is to build a solid wall out of a random succession of differently shaped colored bricks. Sounds boring, but the game has outsold every other computer game ever invented. Richard, like half the high-powered traders in the City, is addicted to it. Unlike the City superstars, however, Tetris is about Richard’s limit when it comes to computers.

I pried him away from the screen not with the temptations of my body but with the offer of a pub lunch. He got up eagerly and went off to his house to have a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. What I had omitted to mention was that this was to be a working lunch. A couple of weeks ago, I had followed one of Billy Smart’s customers to a pub on the outskirts of Manchester. I wanted to take a look and see what was going on there. But a woman on her own would be both conspicuous and a target for the kind of assholes who think that a woman alone is desperate for their company. What better camouflage in a trendy young people’s fun pub than Richard?

We took my car, partly on environmental health grounds and partly so that Richard could have a drink. It took about twenty minutes to drive out to the pub in Worsley, a large 1950s tavern with a bowling green and a beer garden that ran down to the canal. The car park told me all I needed to know. Every car had its string of posers’ initials—GTI, XR3i, Turbo. I felt like a second-class citizen with a mere SR. Inside was no better. The interior had been completely revamped according to the chapter of the brewery

I was out of luck. The barman who shimmied up to serve us looked more like a cruiserweight. While Richard ordered the drinks, I took a good look around. The pub was busy for a lunchtime. “Plenty of Traceys,” Richard commented as he glanced round.

He wasn’t wrong. The women looked as if collectively they might just scrape together enough neurons for a synapse. The men looked as if they desperately wanted to be taken for readers of
GQ
magazine. One day, I’m going to find a pub where I feel equally comfortable with the staff, the decor, the clientele and the menu. I rate the chances of that as high as coming home to find Richard doing the spring-cleaning.

Richard handed me my orange juice and soda and I steered him over to a crowded corner of the lounge where I’d spotted my man. I’d briefed Richard on the way so he was happy to oblige. We sat down a few yards away at a table that gave me a good view of what my target was up to. He was sitting at a table with a bunch of eager young men and women around him. There was nothing particularly discreet about his operation. For a start, he was wearing a bright green Sergio Tacchini shell suit. In front of him on the table were half a dozen watches. I could identify the fake Rolexes and Guccis from that distance. Within minutes, all of them had been bought. He appeared to be charging fifty pounds a time, and getting it without a quibble. But he didn’t seem to be passing them off as the real thing. Realistically, though, anyone trying that routine would have to be a lot more discreet, dealing one on one to make it look like an exclusive.

Another half dozen watches appeared from Billy’s contact’s pockets, and most of them vanished as quickly as the others. He shuffled the remaining two back into his jacket then burrowed under the table. He surfaced with three cellophane packets containing shell suits. Surprise surprise. The suit he was wearing was a schneid.

“Sometimes this job is a pain in the arse,” I muttered to Richard.

He looked surprised. “Did I hear right?” he asked in tones of wonderment. “Did I hear you say you were less than one hundred percent thrilled with your life in crime?”

“Piss off,” I quipped wittily. “Just look at those shell suits! They’re the business. If this wasn’t a surveillance operation, I’d be over there right now buying those suits. Take a look at the colors!” I couldn’t take my eyes off two of the suits, one gold, one teal blue. I just knew I’d look wonderful in those colors.

Richard got to his feet. “Poor old Brannigan,” he teased. “But I’m not working.” He moved towards the neighboring table.

“Richard!” I wailed. A couple of heads turned and I lowered my voice to a piercing whisper. “Don’t you dare!”

He shrugged. “Who’s to know? Anybody asks you, I bought them for you as a present. You didn’t have to know they were copies, did you?”

“That’s not the point,” I hissed. “I
do
know. Sit down right now before you blow me out of the water.”

Richard reluctantly did as I asked him. His face had sulk written all over it. “I thought you wanted one,” he muttered.

“Of course I do. I also want a Cartier tank watch, but I can’t afford the real thing. I dare say if Dennis had offered me a copy before I got involved in this assignment, I’d have bought it. But this job changes things. I’m sorry, Richard, I know you were trying to please me. And if you want one for yourself, I won’t mind.”

Richard shook his head. “You and your bloody morals,” he commented darkly.

“Oh, come on! Who was it who read me a lecture a couple of months ago about how immoral it is to make tapes of my albums for my friends when it means taking the bread out of the mouths of poor, starving rock stars like Jett?” I reminded him.

He grinned. “OK, Brannigan, you win. Now, have you seen enough, or do I have to spend the whole day in this dump?”

I glanced over at the next table. The man had got to his feet, empty-handed, and was heading over towards the door, followed by most of his audience. I guessed the rest of his stock was in his car outside. “I’m nearly done,” I told him. “Let’s just

We trailed behind at a discreet distance, and I managed to get a good look as we passed. The boot was full of shell suits in a wide choice of colors, but there were no rolls of watches that I could see. Nevertheless, it had been worth the trip, I pointed out as I drove Richard home. And there was a bonus too. If we pulled off the watches job, we might well be able to interest Sergio Tacchini in doing something similar for them. I’d been surprised to see the suits. I knew that schneid designer clothing was big business, but it was the first time I’d come across it connected, however tangentially, to the Smarts’ business. I said as much to Richard.

“There’s a lot of it about,” he said, to my surprise. “I’ve seen all sorts of stuff on sale at gigs in the clubs. Anyway, I’m glad it worked out. Always happy to oblige the Sam Spade of Chorlton-on-Medlock.”

Poor sod, I thought. In reality, we live in Ardwick, one of those addresses that makes insurance companies blench. But Richard still believes the propaganda that the property developers came up with to convince us that we were moving somewhere select. “Ardwick,” I corrected him absently. He ignored me and asked what my plans were for the afternoon. “Work, I’m afraid. And this evening too, probably. Why?”

“Just wondered,” he said, too innocently for my liking.

“Tell, Barclay. Or else I’ll tidy your study,” I threatened.

“Oh no, not that!” he pleaded. “It’s just that I’ve got the chance of a ticket for this afternoon’s match at Old Trafford. But if you were free, I was going to suggest we went to the movies.”

The scale of the sacrifice made me realize he really does love me. I pulled up at the lights and impulsively leaned across to kiss him. “Greater love has no man,” I remarked as I drove off.

“So will you drop me at that pub opposite the ground? I said I’d meet the lads there if I could make it,” he asked.

How could I refuse?

   Moira’s file made fascinating reading. The first interesting nugget came under the heading of “Referral.” The entry read, “Brought in by unidentified black male, who made donation of £500 and

Moira had apparently reached the point in her addiction where she realized that she wasn’t going to have too many more last chances to kick the smack and change her life. As a result, she’d been a model patient. She had opted to go down the hardest road, kicking the drug with minimal maintenance doses of methadone. After her cold turkey, she had been extremely co-operative, joining in willingly with group therapy and responding well in personal counselling. After a four-week stay at the project, she had signed herself out, but had continued to turn up for her therapy appointments.

The sting in the tail for me came at the very end. Instead of going to the halfway house after her initial intensive treatment, she had moved in with a woman called Maggie Rossiter. The notes on the file said that Maggie Rossiter was a social worker with Leeds City Council and a volunteer worker at the Seagull Project.

That was unusual enough to raise my eyebrows. But a separate report by Seagull’s full-time psychiatrist was even more revealing. According to Dr. Briggs, Maggie and Moira had formed a highly charged emotional attachment while Moira was still at Seagull. Following her discharge, they had become lovers and were now living together as a couple. In the doctor’s opinion, this relationship was a significant contributory factor in Moira’s commitment to staying off heroin.