Free Clean Break by Val McDermid

smiled. “There’s a crucial difference. I was acting in my client’s best interests by setting the cat among the pigeons with Alexis’s story. I didn’t breach my client’s confidentiality, and I didn’t tell Alexis anything that wasn’t already in the public domain. She just
put the bits together. However, if Henry acted on your colleague’s suggestion and I leaked that to the press, it would seriously damage his business. And I don’t do that to the people who pay my mortgage. Trust me, Michael. It won’t go any further.”
    The arrival of the waitress gave him a moment’s breathing space. She removed the debris. “So this would be strictly off the record?”
    â€œInformation only,” I agreed.
    The waitress returned with a cheerful smile and two huge plates. I stared down at mine, where enough rabbit to account for half the population of Watership Down sat in a pool of creamy sauce. “ Nouvelle cuisine obviously passed this place by,” I said faintly.
    â€œI suspect we Mancunians are too canny to pay half a week’s wages for a sliver of meat surrounded by three baby carrots, two mangetouts, one baby sweetcorn and an artistically carved radish,” he said wryly.
    â€œAnd is it that Mancunian canniness that underlies your assessor’s underhand suggestion?” I asked innocently.
    â€œNothing regional about it,” Michael said. “You have to have a degree in bloody-minded caution before you get the job.”
    â€œSo you think it’s OK to ask your clients to hang fakes on the wall?”
    â€œIt’s a very effective safety precaution,” he said carefully.
    â€œThat’s what your assessor told Henry. He said you’d be prepared not to increase his premium by the equivalent of the gross national product of a small African nation if he had copies made of his remaining masterpieces and hung them on the walls instead of the real thing,” I said conversationally.
    â€œThat’s about the size of it,” Michael admitted. At least he had the decency to look uncomfortable about it.
    â€œAnd is this a general policy these days?”
    Slicing up his vegetables gave Michael an excuse for not meeting my eyes. “Quite a few of our clients have opted for it as a solution to their security problems,” he said. “It makes sense, Kate. We agreed this morning that there isn’t a security system that can’t be breached. If having a guard physically on site twentyfour hours a day isn’t practical because of the expense or because the policyholder doesn’t want that sort of presence in
what is, after all, his home, then it avoids sky-high premiums.”
    â€œIt’s not just about money, though,” I protested. “It’s like Henry says. He knows those paintings. He’s lived with them most of his life. You get a buzz from the real thing that a fake just doesn’t provide.”
    â€œNot one member of the public has noticed the substitutions,” Michael said.
    â€œMaybe not so far,” I conceded. “But according to my understanding, the trouble with fakes is that they don’t stand the test of time.” Thanking Shelley silently for my art tutorial that afternoon, I launched myself into my spiel. “Look at Van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers. At the time, all the experts were convinced they were the real thing. But you look at them now, and they wouldn’t even fool a philistine like me. The difference between schneid and kosher is that fakes date, but the really great paintings don’t. They’re timeless.”
    He frowned. “Even if you’re right, which I don’t concede for a moment, that’s not a bridge that our clients will have to cross for a long time yet.”
    I wasn’t about to give up that easily. “Even so, don’t you think it’s a bit of a con to pull on the public? A bit of a swizz to spend