quarterly VAT return. “Kate,” she said grimly. “Just the person I wanted to see.” She waved a small bundle of crumpled receipts at me. “I know it’s really unreasonable of me, but do you suppose you could enlighten me as to what precisely these bills are for? Only, by my calculations we’re due a VAT inspection some time within the next six months, and I don’t think they’re going to be thrilled by your idea of keeping records. ‘Miscellaneous petty cash’ isn’t good enough, you know.”
I groaned. “Can’t you just make it up?” I wheedled, picking up the top receipt. “This is from the electrical wholesalers; just call it batteries or lightbulbs or cassette tapes. Use your imagination. We don’t often let you do that,” I added with a smile.
Shelley curled her lip. “I don’t have an imagination. I’ve never found it necessary. You’re not leaving here till you’ve told me what’s what. And if you make it up, I can blame you when the VAT inspector doesn’t believe me.”
It didn’t take me as long as I feared. Imagination is not something I’ve ever lacked. What I couldn’t remember, I invented. There wasn’t a VAT person in the land who’d dare question what I needed thirty-five meters of speaker wire for. Having mollified the real boss at Mortensen and Brannigan, I grabbed my fax and headed out the door before she could think of something else that would keep me from my work.
In the short interval that I’d been out, both Gizmo and Ballantrae had been back to me. The name and address attached to the phone didn’t fill me with confidence. Cradaco International, 679A Otley Road, Leeds. On an impulse, I grabbed the phone and rang Josh’s office. The man himself was in a meeting, but Julia, his personal assistant, was free. I pitched her into hitting the database right away and finding out whatever details Cradaco International had filed at Companies House. I hung on while she looked. Now that everything’s on line, information it used to take days to dig out of dusty files is available at the touch of a fingertip.
She didn’t keep me waiting long. “Kate? As you thought, it’s an off-the-shelf company. Share capital of one pound. Managing director James Connery. Company secretary Sean Bond. Uh-oh. Does something smell a bit fishy to you, Kate?”
I groaned. “Any other directors?”
“Have a guess?”
“Miss Moneypenny? M?” I said resignedly.
“Nearly. Miss Penny Cash.”
I sighed. “You’d better give me the addresses, just in case.” I copied down three addresses in Leeds. At least they were all in the same city. One trip would check out the directors and the company. “You’re a pal, Julia,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. You could do me a small favor in return,” she said.
“Try me.”
“Could you ask Richard if there’s any chance he could get me a bootleg tape of the Streisand Wembley concerts?” she asked.
I’d never have put cut-glass upper-middle-class Julia down as a Streisand fan, but there’s no accounting for taste. “It’s a bit off his beat, but I’ll see what I can do,” I promised.
Time to get back to Ballantrae. He answered on the first ring. “I think I’ve got the very thing for you,” he said. “How does an Anglo-Saxon belt buckle sound?”
“Useful if you’ve got an Anglo-Saxon belt,” I said.
He chuckled. “It’s a ceremonial buckle, worn by chieftains and buried with them. It’s about five inches by two inches. The original is made of solid gold, chased with Celtic designs and studded with semiprecious stones. There are only two known to be in existence. One’s in the British Museum, the other’s in a private collection in High Hammerton Hall, near Whitby.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said. “Have you spoken to the owner?”
“I have. He’s been displaying a replica for the last five months, but I’ve managed to persuade him to lend it to you. We were at school together,” he added in explanation.
“What’s it made of?” I asked.
“The replica’s made of lead and plastic, with a thin coating of gold leaf. He says it would fool someone who wasn’t an expert, even close up. He says if you sit the two of them side by side, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said. “When can I get it?”
“He’s sending it to you by overnight courier. It will be at your office by ten tomorrow morning.”
“Lord Ballantrae, you are a star,” I said, meaning it. So much for the inbred stupidity of the aristocracy. This guy was more on the ball than ninety-five percent of the people I have to deal with.
“No problem. I want to get these people as badly as you do. Probably more so. Then we can all get back to the business of doing what we do best.”
Speaking of which, I finally got down to doing something about Trevor Kerr’s case. I felt guilty for ignoring the material he’d sent me, but the art theft case was far more absorbing. I felt it was something I could get to the bottom of single-handed, unlike the Kerrchem case. I found myself inclined to agree with Jackson. This was a case for the cops, if only because they had the staffing resources to cover all the bases that it would take me weeks to get round. Then the little voice in my head kicked in with the real reason. “You can’t stand Trevor Kerr, so you don’t want to put yourself out for him. And you’re desperate to impress that Michael Haroun.”
“Bollocks,” I muttered out loud, seizing the sheets of fax paper with fresh energy. Someone-the indomitable Sheila, I suspected-had conveniently included the job titles as well as the names and addresses of those made redundant. I reckoned I could exclude anyone who worked on the factory floor or in the warehouse. They would have neither the chemical know-how nor the access to sales and distribution information that would allow them to pull a sabotage scheme as complex as this. That left thirty-seven people in clerical, managerial and scientific posts who had all been given what looked like a tin handshake to quit their jobs at Kerrchem.
By nine, I felt like the phone was welded to my ear. I was using a labor-market research pitch, which seemed to be working reasonably well. I claimed to be working for the EC Regional Rind, doing research to see what sort of skills were not being catered to by current job vacancies. I told my victims that I was calling people who had been made redundant over the previous year to discover whether they had found alternative employment. A depressingly low number of Kerrchem’s junked staff fell into that category, and they were mostly low-grade clerical staff. Not one of the ten middle managers had found new jobs, and to a man they were bitter as hell about it. Of the chemists, two out of the three lab technicians were working in less skilled but better-paid jobs. The four research lab staff who had been laid off were bound by their contracts and the terms of their redundancies not to work for direct competitors. One had taken a job as an analyst on a North Sea oil rig, two of the other three were kicking their heels and hating it and one was no longer at the address the company had for him. It looked like I had no shortage of suspects.
I stood up and stretched. Richard still hadn’t come home, so there was nothing to divert me from work. There was nothing more I could do with the Kerrchem stuff tonight, but I wasn’t quite stalled on the other investigation. The sensible part of me knew I should go to bed and catch up on last night’s missed sleep, but I’d had enough of being sensible for one week. I went through to the kitchen, cut open the other half of the ciabatta and loaded it with mozzarella, taramasalata and some sundried tomatoes. I wrapped it in clingfilm, and took a small bottle of mineral water out of the fridge. Fifteen minutes later, I was cruising down the M62, singing along cheerfully to a new compilation of Dusty Springfield’s greatest hits that I’d found lying around in Richard’s half of the conservatory. Never mind the mascara, check out that voice.
I was in Leeds before ten, navigating my way through the subterranean tunnels of the inner ring road, emerging into daylight somewhere near the white monolith of the university. The roads were quiet out through Headingley, but every now and again, a beam of light split the night from on high as the police helicopter quartered the skies, trying to protect the homes of the more prosperous residents from the attentions of the burglars. Burglary has reached epidemic proportions in Leeds these days; I know someone whose house was turned over seven times in six months. Every time they came home with a new stereo, so did the burglars. Now their house is more secure than Armley jail and their insurance premiums are nearly as much as the mortgage.
I slowed as I approached the Weetwood roundabout, scanning houses for their numbers. Six seventy-nine A looked like it might be one of an arcade of shops, so I parked and stretched my legs. I can’t say I was surprised to find there was no 679A. There was a 679, though, a small newsagent’s squeezed between a bakery and a
