Free Kick Back by Val McDermid

drink four months before. “And did she tell you anything about herself?”
    â€œYes and no. She told me her name, and I remarked on the
coincidence. She said yes, she had noticed when she exchanged contracts to buy the house that she had the same name as the vendors, but she’d got used to that kind of coincidence with a name like Brown. I was a little surprised, because I had no idea that Rowena and Derek had actually sold the house.”
    I had that feeling you get when you walk into a theater halfway through the first act of a new play. What she was saying made perfect sense, but it was meaningless unless you’d seen the first twenty minutes. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to run that past me a little more slowly. I mean, surely you realized they’d sold the house when they stopped living there and a new person moved in?”
    It was her turn to give me the baffled look. “But Derek and Ro haven’t lived in the house for four years. Derek is an engineer in the oil industry, and he was away two weeks in four, so Ro and I got to be really good friends. Then, four years ago, Derek was offered a five-year contract in Mexico with a company house thrown in. So they decided to rent out their house over here on a series of short-term lets. When Rachel moved in, I thought she was just another tenant till she told me otherwise.”
    â€œBut surely you must have realized the house was up for sale? I mean, even if there wasn’t an estate agent’s board up, you can’t have missed them showing people round,” I remarked.
    â€œFunny you should say that. It’s exactly what I thought. But Rachel told me that she’d seen it advertised in the Evening Chronicle , and that she’d viewed it the next day. Perhaps I was out shopping, or she came after dark one evening when I wasn’t working. Anyway, I saw no reason to doubt what she was telling me. Why lie about it, for heaven’s sake? It’s not as if renting a house is shameful!” A laugh bubbled up in Diane’s throat.
    â€œWas she on her own, or was she living with someone?” I asked.
    â€œShe had a boyfriend. But he was never there unless she was. And he wasn’t always there even if she was. I tended to see him leave, rather than arrive, but a couple of times, I saw him pay off a taxi around eleven o’clock at night.”
    â€œDid he leave with Rachel in the mornings?” I couldn’t see how this all fitted together, but I was determined to make the most of a co-operative witness.

    Diane didn’t even pause for thought. “They left together. That’s why I don’t have any drawings of him. She was always between me and him, and he always got in the passenger side of the car, so I never really got a clear view of him. He was stylish, though. Even at a distance I could see he dressed well. He even wore a Panama hat on sunny mornings. Can you believe it, a Panama hat in Urmston?”
    Like cordon bleu in a motorway service station, it was a hard one to get my head round. “So tell me about the conservatory.”
    This time she did take a moment to think. “It must have been towards the end of July,” she said slowly but without hesitation. “I was away on holiday from the first to the fifteenth of August. The conservatory went up a couple of days before I left. Then, when I came back from Italy, they’d all gone. The conservatory, Rachel Brown and her boyfriend. Six weeks ago, a new batch of tenants arrived. But I still don’t know if Rachel has let the house, or indeed if Rachel ever bought it in the first place. All I know is that the chaps in there now rented it through the same agency that Derek and Ro used, DKL Estates. They’ve got an office in Stretford, but I think their head office is in Warrington.”
    I was impressed. “You’re very well informed,” I said.
    â€œIt’s my legs that don’t work,