Free Clean Break by Val McDermid Page A

your bank holiday Monday in a traffic jam just so you can ogle a Constable that’s more phony than a plastic Rolex? Aren’t you in danger of breaching the Trades Descriptions Act?” I asked.
    â€œOur clients may be,” Michael said carelessly. “We’re not.”
    The brazen effrontery of it gobsmacked me. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” I said. “You work in a business that must spend hundreds of thousands a year trying to catch its customers out in fraud, and yet you’re happily suggesting to another bunch of clients that they go off and commit a fraud?”
    â€œThat’s not how we see it,” he said stiffly. “Besides, it works,” he said. “In at least two cases that I know about personally, customers who have been burgled have only lost copies. Surely that proves it’s worthwhile.”
    In spite of the blazing fire, I felt a chill on the back of my neck. Only a man with no personal knowledge of the strung-out world of crime could have made that pronouncement with such
self-satisfaction. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the scene when an overwrought burglar turns up at his fence’s gaff with something he thinks is an old master, only to be told it’s Rembrandt by numbers. Scenario number one is that the burglar thinks the fence is trying to have him over so he takes the appropriate steps. Scenario number two is that the fence thinks the burglar is trying to have him over, and takes the appropriate steps. Either way, somebody ends up in casualty. And that’s looking on the bright side. Doubtless law-abiding citizens like Michael think they’ve got what they deserve, but even villains have wives and kids who don’t want to spend their spare time visiting hospital beds or graves.
    My silence clearly spelled out defeat to Michael, since he leaned over and squeezed my hand. “Trust me, Kate. Our way, everybody’s happy,” he said.
    I pretended to push my chair back and look frantically for the door. “I’m out of here,” I said. “Soon as an insurance man says ‘trust me,’ you know you should be in the next county.”
    He grinned. “I promise I’ll never try to sell you insurance.”
    â€œOK. But I won’t promise I’ll never try to pitch you into using Mortensen and Brannigan.”
    â€œSpeaking of which, how did you get into the private eye business?” Michael said.
    I couldn’t decide whether it was an attempt to change the subject or a deliberate shift away from the professional towards the personal. Either way, I was happy to go along with him. I didn’t think I was going to get any more useful information out of him, and I only had to look across the table to remember that when I’d agreed to this dinner, my motives hadn’t been entirely selfless. By the time we’d moved on to coffee and Armagnac, he knew all about my aborted law degree, abandoned after two years because the part-time job I’d got doing bread-and-butter process serving for Bill Mortensen was a damn sight more interesting than the finer points of jurisprudence.
    â€œSo tell me about your most interesting case,” he coaxed me.
    â€œMaybe later,” I said. “It’s your turn now. How did you get into insurance?”

    â€œIt’s the family business,” he said, looking faintly embarrassed.
    â€œSo you followed in Daddy’s footsteps,” I said. I felt disappointed. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly. Maybe I expected him to live up to that profile with a suitably buccaneering past.
    â€œEventually,” he said. “I read Arabic at university, then I worked for the BBC World Service for a while. But the money was dire and there were no prospects. My father had the sense to see that sales had never interested me, but he persuaded me to take a shot at working in claims.” Michael raised his