“You’re not a student,” she accused me, eyes narrowing.

“Correct.” I handed her one of my business cards. “I’m Kate Brannigan. I’m working for Kerrchem, and we need to talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” she said desperately, her voice rising.

From inside the house, Simon Morley’s voice joined in. “What’s going on, Sandra?”

“Go away” she said to me, shoving the door harder.

“Sandra, would you rather talk to me about industrial sabotage or to the police about murder?” I replied, leaning back against the door. “You’ve got ten seconds to decide. I know all about the scam. There’s no hiding place.”

Simon’s tall figure loomed behind Sandra in the hall. “What’s… Wait a minute, you were at the factory this morning.” He looked down at Sandra. “What the hell’s going on?”

“She’s a private detective,” Sandra spat out.

“Simon, we need to talk,” I said, struggling to maintain a responsible facade with my shoulder jammed painfully between two bits of wood. “I know about the fake KerrSter, I’ve got videos of your factory and your delivery run this morning, I know exactly how Sandra’s working the fiddle at her end. You’re already in the frame for product tampering and attempted blackmail. Do you really want two counts of murder adding to the list?”

“Let her in,” Simon said dully. Sandra looked up pleadingly at him, but he simply nodded. “Do it, love,” he said.

I followed them into a living room that came straight from Laura Ashley without any intervening application of taste. I chose an armchair upholstered in a mimsy floral chintz, and they sat down together on a matching sofa. Sandra’s hand crept out and clutched Simon’s. “There’s no way you can wriggle out of the scam,” I said brutally. “But I don’t think murder was on the agenda.”

“I haven’t killed anybody,” Simon said defiantly, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“It doesn’t look that way,” I said.

“Look, I admit I wanted to get my own back on Kerrchem,” he said.

“The golden handcuffs?” I asked.

He nodded. “That was bad enough, but then I found out they were refusing to give me a proper reference.”

I frowned. Nobody at Kerrchem had indicated that anyone had left under a cloud. “Why?” I said.

“It was my department head, Keith Murray. He screwed up on a research project I was working on with him and it ended up costing the company about twenty grand in wasted time and materials. It was just before the redundancies were going to be announced and everybody was twitchy about their jobs, and he blamed me for the cock-up. Now, because of that, personnel say I can’t have a good reference. So I’ve ended up totally shafted. Never mind waiting six months, I’ll be waiting six years before anybody gives me a responsible research job again. Kerrchem owes me.” The words spilled out angrily, tumbling out in the rush of a normally reticent man who’s had enough.

“So you decided to take it out in blackmail?”

“Why not?” he asked defiantly.

“Apart from the fact that it’s illegal, no reason at all,” I said tartly. “What about the two people who died?”

“That’s got nothing to do with us,” Sandra butted in. “You’ve got to believe us!” She looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

“She’s right,” Simon said, patting Sandra’s knee with his free hand. “The papers said they’d died from cyanide poisoning, that’s right, isn’t it?” I nodded. “Well, then,” he said. “All the stuff I’ve been using is over-the-counter chemicals, mostly ones Sandra’s picked up through work. I’ve got no access to cyanide. I’ve got none in the warehouse or here. You can search all you like, but you can’t tie us in to any cyanide. Look, all we wanted was to get some money out of Trevor Kerr. Why would we kill people if that was what we were trying to do? It’d be daft. You pay off somebody who’s wrecking your commercial operation, you do it quiet so the opposition don’t get to hear about it, you don’t go to the police. You don’t pay off murderers. You can’t hide murder.”

“What about the note? The one that came after the first death? That implied there would be more if Kerrchem didn’t pay up,” I said.

This time, Sandra did start crying. “I said we shouldn’t have sent that one,” she sobbed, pulling her hand away from Simon and punching ineffectually at his chest.

Gently, Simon gripped her wrists, then pulled her into a tight hug. “You were right, I’m sorry,” he told her. Then he turned back to me. “I thought if we pretended to be more ruthless than we were, Kerr might cough up. It was stupid, I see that now. But he got me so mad when he just ignored the first note and nobody seemed to notice what we were doing. I had to make him pay attention.“

“So if you’re not doing the killings, who is?” I demanded, finally getting round to the reason why I’d put myself through another harrowing encounter.

I was too late. Before Simon could answer, the doorbell rang, followed by a tattoo of knocking. “Police, open up,” I heard someone shout from the other side of the door. I thought about making a run for it through the back door, but the way my luck had been been running lately, I’d probably have been savaged by a police dog.

The pair on the sofa had the wide-eyed look of rabbits transfixed by car headlights. By the time they got it together to let the cops in, their front door was going to be matchwood. With a sigh, I got to my feet and prepared for another jolly chat with Detective Inspector Cliff Jackson.

22

MY ENCOUNTER WITH JACKSON REMINDED ME OF THE OLD radical slogan; help the police, beat yourself up. After listening to the usual rant about obstructing the police, withholding evidence and interfering with witnesses, I needed a drink. I was only a couple of miles away from the Cob and Pen, the pub where Joey Morton had breathed his last, which clinched the decision.

If they’d gone into mourning over the death of my host, it hadn’t been a prolonged period of grief. It was pub quiz night, and the place was packed. In the gaps between the packed bodies, I got the impression of a bar that had been done out in the brewery version of traditional country house: dark William Morris-style wallpaper, hunting prints and bookshelves containing all those 1930s bestsellers that no one has read since 1941, not even in hospital outpatients’ queues. No chance of anyone nicking them, that was for sure.

I bought myself a vodka and grapefruit juice and retreated into the farthest corner from the epicenter of the quiz. I squeezed on the end of a banquette, ignored by the other four people surrounding the nearby table. They were much too involved in arguing about the identity of the first Welsh footballer to play in the Italian league. There was no chance of engaging any of the bar staff in a bit of gossip, not even lubricated with the odd tenner. They were too busy pulling pints and popping the caps off bottles of Bud. I sipped my drink and waited for an interval in the incessant trivia questions. Eventually, they announced a fifteen-minute break.

The foursome round my table sat back in their seats. “John Charles,” I said. They looked blankly at me. “The first Welshman to play in Italy. John Charles.” Amazing the junk that invades your brain cells when you live with a football fan.

“Really?” the lad with the pen and the answer sheet said.

“Truly.”

The one who’d been rooting for Charles against the other three grinned and clapped me on the back. “Told you so,” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to get off. But thanks all the same. I’m surprised you didn’t all know the answer. I’d have thought anybody who was a regular in Joey Morton’s pub would have been shit-hot on all the football questions.”

They all looked momentarily embarrassed, as if they’d caught me swearing in front of their mothers. “Did you know Joey, then?” the pen pusher said.