Clean Break

by Val McDermid

  It was ten to nine when Trevor Kerr barged in. His eyes looked like the only treasure he’d found the night before had been in the bottom of a bottle. “You Miss Brannigan, then?” he greeted me. If he was harboring dreams of an acting career, I could only hope that Kerrchem wasn’t going to fold. I followed him into his office, catching an unappealing whiff of Scotch revisited blended with Polo before we moved into the aroma of stale cigars and lemon furniture polish. Clearly, the spartan motif didn’t extend beyond the outer office. Trevor Kerr had spared no expense to make his office comfortable. That is, if you find gentlemen’s clubs comfortable. Leather wing armchairs surrounded a low table buffed to a mirror sheen. Trevor’s desk was repro, but what it lacked in class, it made up for in size. All they’d need to stage the world snooker championships on it would be a bit of green baize. That and clear the clutter. The walls were hung with old golfing prints. If his bulk was anything to go by, golf was something Trevor Kerr honored more in the breach than the observance.

  He dumped his briefcase by the desk and settled in behind it. I chose the armchair nearest him. I figured if I waited till I was invited, I’d be past my sell-by date. “So, what do you need from me?” he demanded.

  Before I could reply, the secretary came in with a steaming mug of coffee. The mug said “World’s Greatest Bullshitter.” I wasn’t about to disagree. I wouldn’t have minded a cup myself, but clearly the hired help around Kerrchem wasn’t deemed worthy of

  He nodded impatiently. “Of course. We got on to all the wholesalers, and we’ve placed an ad in the national press as well as the trade. We’ve already had a load of stuff back, and there’s more due in today.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll want to see that, as well as the dispatch paperwork relating to that batch. I take it that won’t be a problem?”

  “No problem. I’ll get Sheila to sort it out for you.” He made a note on a pad on his desk. “Next?”

  “Do you use cyanide in any of your processes?”

  “No way,” he said belligerently. “It has industrial uses, but mainly in the plastics industry and electroplating. There’s nothing we produce that we’d need it for.”

  “OK. Going back to the original blackmail note. Did it include any instructions about the amount of money they were after, or how you were to contact them?”

  He took a cigar out of a humidor the size of a small greenhouse and rolled it between his fingers. “They didn’t put a figure on it, no. There was a phone number, and the note said it was the number of one of the public phones at Piccadilly Station. I was supposed to be there at nine o’clock on the Friday night. I didn’t go, of course.”

  “Pity you didn’t call us then,” I said.

  “I told you, I thought it was a crank. Some nutter trying to wind me up. No way was I going to give him the satisfaction.”

  “Or her,” I added. “The thing that bothers me, Mr. Kerr, is that killing people is a pretty extreme thing for a blackmailer to do. The usual analysis of blackmailers is that they are on the cowardly side. The crimes they commit are at arm’s-length, and usually don’t put life at risk. I would have expected the blackmailer in this case to have done something a lot more low key, certainly initially. You know, dumped caustic soda in washing-up liquid, that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe they didn’t intend to kill anybody, just to give people a

  I shrugged. “In that case, cyanide’s a strange choice. The fatal dose is pretty small. Also, you couldn’t just stick it in the drum and wait for someone to open it up. There must have been some kind of device rigged up inside it. To produce the lethal gas, cyanide pellets need to react with something else. So they’d have had to be released into the liquid somehow. That’s a lot of trouble to go to when you could achieve an unpleasant warning with dozens of other chemical mixtures. If it was me, I’d have filled a few drums either with something that smelled disgusting, or something that would destroy surfaces rather than clean them, just to persuade you that they were capable of making your life hell. Then, I’d have followed it up with a second note saying something like: ‘Next time, it’ll be cyanide.’ ”

  “So maybe we’re dealing with a complete nutter,” he said bitterly. “Great.”

  “Or maybe it’s someone who wants to destroy you rather than blackmail you,” I said simply.

  Kerr took his cigar out of his mouth, which remained in a perfect “O.” Finally, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “It’s something you should consider. In relation to both your professional and your personal life.” He was having a lot of trouble getting his head round the idea, I could see. If he’d been a bit nicer to me, I’d have been gentler. But I figure you shouldn’t dish it out unless you can take it. “What about business rivals? Is anybody snapping at your heels? Is anybody going under because you’ve brought out new products or developed new sales strategies?”

  “You don’t murder people in business,” he protested. “Not in my line of business, you don’t.”

  “Murder might not have been what was planned,” I told him flatly. “If they wanted to sabotage you and stay at arm’s-length, they might have hired someone to do the dirty. And they in turn might have hired someone else. And somewhere along the line, the Chinese whispers took over. So is there any other firm that might have a particular reason for wanting Kerrchem to go down the tubes?”

  He frowned. “The last few years have been tough, there’s no denying that. Firms go bust, so there’s not as much industrial cleaning to be done. Businesses cut their cleaners down from five days to three, so the commercial cleaners cut back on their purchases. We’ve kept our heads above water, but it’s been a struggle. We’ve had a couple of rounds of redundancies, we’ve been a bit slower bringing in some new processes, and we’ve had to market ourselves more aggressively, but that’s the story across the industry. One of our main competitors went bust about nine months ago, but that wasn’t because we were squeezing them. It was more because they were based in Basingstoke and they had higher labor costs than us. I haven’t heard that anybody else is on the edge, and it’s a small world. To be honest, we’re one of the smaller fishes. Most of our rivals are big multinationals. If they wanted to take us out, they’d come to the family and make us an offer we couldn’t refuse.”

  That disposed of the easy option. Time to move on. “Has anybody left under a cloud? Any unfair dismissal claims pending?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I know of. As far as I know, and believe me, I would know, the only people who have gone are the ones we cleared out under the redundancy deals. I suppose some of them might have been a bit disgruntled, but if any of them had made any threats, I would have heard about it. Like I said, we pride ourselves on being a family firm, and the department head and production foremen all know not to keep problems to themselves.”

  We were going nowhere fast, which only left the sticky bit. “OK,” I said. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Mr. Kerr, but I have to ask these things. You’ve said that Kerrchem is a family firm. Is there any possibility that another member of the family wants to discredit you? To make it look like the company’s not safe in your hands?”

  Suddenly I was looking at Trevor Kerr’s future. Written all over his scarlet face was the not-so-distant early warning of the heart attack that was lurking in his silted arteries. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he roared, “Bollocks. Pure, absolute bollocks.”

  “Think about it,” I said, smiling sweetly. That’ll teach him to

  “ ’Course I am. Three children.” He jerked his thumb towards a photograph frame on the desk. I leaned forward and turned it round. Standard studio shot of a woman groomed to within an inch of her life, two sulky-looking boys with their father’s features, and a girl who’d had the dental work but still looked disturbingly like a rabbit. “Been married to the same woman for sixteen years.”

  “So there’re no ex-wives or ex-girlfriends lurking around with an ax to grind?”
I asked.

  His eyes drifted away from mine to a point elsewhere on the far wall. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said abruptly. Then, in an effort to win me round, he gave a bark of laughter and said, “Bloody hell, Kate, it’s me that hired you, not the wife.”

  So now I knew he had, or had had, a mistress. That was the long shot I’d have to keep in the back of my mind. Before I could explore this avenue further, the intercom on his desk buzzed. He pressed a button and said, “What is it, Sheila?”

  “Reg Unsworth is here, Mr. Kerr. He says he needs to talk to you.”

  “I’m in a meeting, Sheila,” he said irritably.

  There were muffled sounds of conversation, then Sheila said, “He says it’s urgent, Mr. Kerr. He says you’ll want to know immediately. It’s to do with the recalled product, he says.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Send him in.”

  A burly man in a brown warehouseman’s coat with a head bald as a boiled egg and approximately the same shape walked in. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Kerr. It’s about the KerrSter recall.”

  “Well, Reg, spit it out,” Kerr said impatiently.

  Unsworth gave me a worried look. “It’s a bit confidential, like.”

  “It’s all right. Miss Brannigan here’s from the Health and Safety Executive. She’s here to help us sort this mess out.”

  Unsworth still looked uncertain. “I checked the records before the returns started coming in. We sent out a total of four hundred and eighty-three gallon containers with the same batch number as the one that there was the problem with. Only … so far, we’ve had six hundred and twenty-seven back.”

  Chapter 5

  Kerr looked gobsmacked. “You must have made a mistake,” he blustered.

  “I double-checked,” Unsworth said. His jaw set in a line as obstinate as his boss’s. “Then I went back down to production and checked again. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve had back one hundred and forty-four containers more than we sent out. And that’s not even taking into account the one that the dead man opened, or ones that have already been used, or people who haven’t even heard about the recall yet.”

  “There’s got to be some mistake,” Kerr repeated. “What about the batch coding machine? Has anybody checked that it’s working OK?”

  “I checked with the line foreman myself,” Unsworth said. “They’ve had no problems with it, and I’ve seen quality control’s sheets. There’s no two ways about it. We only sent out four hundred and eighty-three. There’s a gross of gallon drums of KerrSter that we can’t account for sitting in the loading bay. Come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me,” he added in an aggrieved tone.

  “Let’s do just that,” Kerr said, heaving himself to his feet. “Come on, Miss Brannigan. Come and see how the workers earn a living.”

  I followed Kerr out of the room. Unsworth hung back, holding the door open and falling in beside me as we strode down the covered walkway that linked the administration offices with the factory. “It’s a real mystery,” he offered.

  I had my own ideas about what was going on, but for the time being I decided to keep them to myself. “The drums that have been

  “Some of them have been started on,” he said. “The batch went out into the warehouse the Tuesday before last. They’ll probably have started taking it out on the Thursday or Friday, going by our normal stockpile levels, so there’s been plenty of time for people to use them.”

  “And no one else has reported any adverse effect?”

  Unsworth looked uncomfortable. “Not as such,” he said.

  Kerr half turned to catch my reply. “But?” I asked.

  Unsworth glanced at Kerr, who nodded impatiently. “Well, a couple of the wholesalers and one or two of the reps had already had containers from that batch returned,” Unsworth admitted.

  “Do you know why that was?” I asked.

  “Customers complained the goods weren’t up to us usual standard,” he said grudgingly.

  “What sort of complaints?” Kerr demanded indignantly. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

  “It’s only just come to light, Mr. Kerr. They said the KerrSter wasn’t right. One of them claimed it had stripped the finish off the flooring in his office toilets.”

  Kerr snorted. “He should tell his bloody workforce to stick with Boddingtons. They’ll have been pissing that foreign lager all over the bloody tiles.”

  “Have you had the chance to analyze any of the containers that have come back?” I butted in.

  Unsworth nodded. “The lads in the lab worked through the night on samples from some of the drums. There wasn’t a trace of cyanide in any of them.”

  Kerr shouldered open a pair of double doors. As I caught one on the backswing, the smell hit me. It was a curious amalgam of pine, lemon, and soap suds, but pervaded throughout with sharp chemical smells that bit my nose and throat. It was a bit like driving past the chemical works at Ellesmere Port with one of those ersatz air fresheners in the car. The ones that make you feel that a rotting polecat under the driver’s seat would be preferable.

  Beneath us, vats seethed, nozzles squirted liquid into plastic containers, and surprisingly few people moved around. “Not many bodies,” I said loudly over my shoulder to Unsworth.

  “Computer controlled,” he said succinctly.

  Another avenue to pursue. If the sabotage was internal, perhaps the culprit was simply sending the wrong instructions to the plant. I’d thought this was going to be a straightforward case of industrial sabotage, but my head was beginning to hurt with the permutations it was throwing up.

  A couple of hundred yards along the walkway, we descended and cut through a heavy door into a warehouse. Now I know how the Finns feel when they walk into the snow from the sauna. I could feel my pores snapping shut in shock. Here, the air smelled of oil and diesel. The only sound came from fork-lift trucks shunting pallets on and off shelves. “This is the warehouse,” Kerr said. I’d never have worked that one out all by myself. “The full containers go through from the factory to packing, where the machines label them, stamp them with batch numbers and seal-wrap them in dozens. Then they come through here on conveyor belts and they’re shelved or loaded.” He turned to Unsworth. “Where have you stacked the recalls?”

  Before Unsworth could reply, my mobile started ringing. “Excuse me,” I said, moving away a few yards and pulling the phone out. “Kate Brannigan,” I announced.

  “Tell me,” an amused voice said. “Is Alexis Lee a real person, or is it just your pen name?”

  I recognized the voice at once. I moved further away from Kerr’s curious stare and turned my back so he couldn’t see that my ears had gone bright red. “She’s real all right, Mr. Haroun,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I think it had better be Michael. Otherwise I’d start to Evening Chronicle.”

  “And what does it say?”

  “Do you really need me to tell you?” he asked, still sounding amused.

  “I forgot to bring my crystal ball with me. If you want to hang on, I’ll see if I can find a chicken to disembowel so I can check out the entrails.”

  He laughed. It was a sound I could easily get used to. “It’d be a lot simpler to pop into a newsagent.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “Oh no, I’d hate to spoil the surprise. Tell me, Kate … Do you fancy dinner some evening?”

  “Michael, it may not look like it, but I fancy dinner every evening.” I couldn’t believe myself—I’d read better lines than that in teenage romances.

  Bless him, he laughed again. I like a man who doesn’t seize on the first sign of weakness. “Are you free this evening?”

  I pretended to think. Let’s face it, I’d have turned down Mel Gibson, Sean Bean, Lynford Christie and Daniel Day-Lewis for dinner with Michael Haroun. I didn’t pretend for too long, in case he lost interest. “I can be. As long as it’s after seven.”

  “Great. Shall I pick you up?”

  T
hat was a harder decision. I didn’t want to let myself forget that this was a business dinner. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to give Richard something to think about. I gave Michael the address and we agreed on half past seven. Unlike everybody on TV who uses a mobile phone, I hit the “end” button with a flourish, then turned back to a scowling Trevor Kerr.

  “Sorry about that,” I lied. “Somebody I’ve been trying to get hold of on another investigation. Now, Mr. Unsworth, you were going to show us these recalled containers.”

  The next half-hour was one of the more boring ones in my life, made doubly so by the fact that I was itching to get my hands on the Chronicle. I finally escaped at half past eleven, leaving Trevor Kerr with the suggestion that his chemists should analyze the contents of a random sample of the containers. Only this time, they

  By the third newsagent’s, I’d confirmed what I’d always suspected about Farnworth. It’s a depressing little dump that civilization forgot. Nobody had the Chronicle. They wouldn’t have it till some time in the afternoon. They all looked deeply offended and incredulous when I explained that no, the Bolton Evening News just wouldn’t be the same. I had to possess my soul in patience till I hit the East Lancs. Road. I sat on a garage forecourt reading the results of Alexis’s research. She’d done me proud.

  CULTURAL HERITAGE VANISHES

  A series of spectacular robberies has been hushed up by police and stately home owners.

  Now fears are growing that a gang of professional thieves are stripping Britain of valuable artworks that form a key part of the nation’s heritage. Among the stolen pieces are paintings by French Impressionists Monet and Cézanne, and a bronze bust by the Italian Baroque master Bernini. Also missing is a collection of Elizabethan miniature paintings by Nicholas Hilliard. Together, the thieves’ haul is estimated at nearly £10 million.