Free Kick Back by Val McDermid Page A

not my brain. I like to make sure it stays that way. Some people call me nosy. I prefer to think of it as a healthy curiosity. What are you, anyway? Some kind of bailiff? And don’t give me that stuff about being a representative of the conservatory company. You’re far too smart for that. Besides, there’s obviously been something very odd going on there. You’re not just following up who you’ve sold conservatories to.”
    I could have carried on bluffing, but I couldn’t see the point. Diane deserved some kind of quid pro quo. “I’m a private investigator,’ I said. ‘My partner and I investigate white-collar crime.”
    â€œAnd this is the case of the missing conservatories, eh? Wonderful! You have made my week, Kate Brannigan.”
    As I drove off towards Trafford Park, I began to suspect that Diane Shipley might just have made mine.
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    Brian Chalmers of PharmAce was less than thrilled when I told him the results of my work both inside and outside his factory and
warehouse. He was furious with himself for employing a senior lab technician whose loyalty lay to his bank account rather than his boss. Unfortunately, because of my cock-up with the surveillance film, he didn’t have any evidence other than my word, which wasn’t enough for him to drag the guy into his office and fire him on the spot. So, since he had to take his anger out on someone, I got the lab technician’s kicking. And because the client is always right (at least while he’s actually in the room) I had to bite the bullet and stand on for the bollocking.
    I let him rant for a good ten minutes, then offered to repeat the surveillance exercise over the weekend at a reduced rate. That took the wind out of his sails, as it was meant to. Unfortunately, as I left Chalmers’ office, I passed one of the technicians I had dealt with during my short spell working undercover at PharmAce but, although he looked at me as if he ought to know me, he passed by without greeting me. Looked like I’d been lucky. The phenomenon of not recognizing people out of context had worked in my favor. After all, what would a temporary stock clerk be doing in the managing director’s office, all suited up?
    It was just before three when I pulled up outside the Thai boxing gym. My head felt like it was full of cogs and wheels all spinning out of sync, trying to assimilate everything that Diane Shipley had told me and make it fit what I’d been told at the other houses. None of it really made any sense so far. I know from bitter experience that when my mind is churning and fizzing, there’s nothing better than some hard physical exercise. Which for me these days means Thai kick-boxing.
    It started off as purely utilitarian. My friend Dennis the burglar pointed out to me that I needed self-defense skills. He wasn’t so much thinking about the job I do as the neighborhood where I live. He persuaded me to come along to the club where his adored teenage daughter is the junior champion. When I saw the outside of the building, a horrible, breeze-block construction like an overgrown Scout hut, I was deeply unimpressed. But inside, it’s clean, warm and well-lit. And the women’s coach, Karen, is a former world champion who gave up serious competition to have a family. One of the wildest sights in our club is watching her three-year-old
toddling round the ring throwing kicks at people twice his size, and causing them a lot of grief.
    I was in luck, for Karen was in the tiny cubicle she calls an office, desperate for an excuse to avoid doing the paperwork. She was in luck too, for I was so bagged off at the verbal beating I’d had from Brian Chalmers that I gave her the most challenging work-out I’d ever managed.
    Left to their own devices, the tumblers in my brain started to slot into place. By the time we’d finished trading blows, I knew where I had to look next on the trail of the