'Except that they'll still have conservatories attached to their houses. They won't have been up all night once a month dismantling a conservatory and loading it into a van so that Jack McCafferty can spirit it away and sell it on to some unsuspecting punter who thinks they're getting a real bargain! I'm telling you Jack, it's time to pull out!'

'Calm down,' he urged her. 'There's no hurry. It'll take them months to sort this mess out. Look, this one's in the home stretch. We can go and see a mortgage broker tomorrow and blag our way into a remortgage on this place, no bother. Where are we up to with the other two?'

'Just let me check. You know I don't trust myself to keep it all in my head,' she said accusingly. I heard the sound of briefcase locks snapping open and the rustle of paper. '10 Cherry Tree Way, Warrington. You've done the credit check, I've got the new bank account set up, I've taken off the mail redirect, and I've got the mortgage account details. 31 Lark Rise, Davenport. All we've got on that is the credit check. I cancelled the mail redirect yesterday.' I really had got a result tonight. The two addresses Liz has just read out were identical with the ones Rachel Lieberman had already given me.

'So can we speed them up? Bring them in ahead of schedule?' Jack asked.

'We can try to speed things up at our end. But if we're going to have to find outside mortgagers to finance the remortgages, that's almost certainly going to slow the process down,' Liz said. I could hear the worry in her voice, in spite of the tinny quality of the bug's relay.

'Don't worry,” Jack soothed. 'It's all going to be OK.'

Not if I had anything to do with it, it wasn't.

21

Bank managers or traffic wardens. It's got to be a close run thing which we hate the most. I mean, if you got the chance to embarrass someone on prime time TV, would you choose the bank manager who refused your overdraft or the traffic warden who ticketed your car while you nipped into Marks amp; Spencer for a butty? I only had to talk to the guy in charge of Ted Barlow's finances to know that he deserved the worst that Jeremy Beadle could do.

To begin with, he wouldn't even talk to me, not even to arrange an appointment. 'Client confidentiality,' he explained superciliously. I told him through clenched teeth that I probably knew more about his client's current problems than he did, since I was employed by said client. I restrained myself from mentioning that Mortensen and Brannigan had standards of confidentiality and service that were a damn sight higher than his. We don't sell our customer list to junk mail financial services outfits; we don't indulge ourselves on the old boys' network to blackball people whose faces don't fit; and, strangely enough, we actually work the hours that suit our clients rather than ourselves.

But Mr. Leonard Prudhoe wasn't having any. Finally, I had to give up. There was only one way I was going to get to see this guy. I rang Ted and asked him to set the meeting up. 'Have you sorted it all out?' he asked. 'Do you know what's been going on?'

'Pretty much,' I said. 'But whatever you do, don't so much as hint to anyone, and I mean anyone, that anything's changed.' I explained that he'd have to set up a meeting with Prudhoe so we could get the whole thing sorted out. Then, if you come to the office beforehand, I'll fill you in first.'

'Can't you tell me now? I'm on pins,” he said.

'I've got a couple of loose ends to tie up, Ted. But if you can fix up to see Prudhoe this afternoon, I should be able to give you chapter and verse then. OK?'

The relief in his voice was heartwarming. 'I can't tell you how pleased I am, Miss Brannigan. You've no idea what it's been like, wondering if I was going to lose everything I've worked for. You've just got no idea,' he burbled on.

I might not have, but I had a shrewd idea who did. When I managed to disentangle myself from his effusive thanks, I wandered through to the outer office. Shelley's fingers were flying over the keyboard as she worked her way through the proposals Bill had put together for our Channel Islands clients. 'Ted's little problem,' I said. 'I'm just nipping out for a couple of hours to tie up the last loose ends. He should be ringing back to let me know when we're seeing his bank manager. Give me a bell on the mobile when you know.'

She gave me one of her looks. The ones I suspect she reserves for her kids when she thinks they're trying to dodge out without finishing their homework. 'You mean it?' she asked.

'Brownie's honour,' I said. 'Would I lie to you about something so close to your heart? Are you familiar with the works of Rudyard Kipling?'

She looked at me as if I was out to lunch and not coming back for a long time. 'Wasn't he the one who went on about the white man's burden?' she said suspiciously.

The same. Knew all about keeping the yellow and brown chappies in their places. However, he was not entirely a waste of oxygen. He also wrote the private eye's charter:

I keep six honest serving men

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

'Well, as far as Ted's case is concerned, I know the what, the why, the when, the where and the who. I know most of the how, and after I've paid a little visit to one of my contacts, I expect to know the lot.' I smiled sweetly as I shrugged into my coat and headed for the door. 'Bye, Shelley.'

'You worry me, Brannigan, you really do,” floated after me as I ran downstairs. The day had not been wasted.

Rachel Lieberman was doing front of house at DKL Estates when I walked through the door. The suit she was wearing looked as if it was worth about the same as the deposit on any one of her first-time-buyer properties. I pretended to study the houses for sale while she made appointments for a potential buyer to view a couple. Five minutes later, the grateful house-hunter went on his merry way with a handful of particulars, leaving Rachel and me facing each other across the desk. 'Lost your young man?' I asked.

'His mother says he's got a bug. I think it may have more to do with the fact that United won last night,' she said.

'You just can't get the help these days,' I commiserated.

You can say that again. Anyway, what can I do for you? Still hunting for your mysterious con artists?'

I'd already decided that whoever was supplying Jack McCafferty and Liz with the information they needed, it wasn't Rachel Lieberman. I hadn't made that decision purely on women's intuition. I reckoned she'd have found a way politely to show me the door if she'd been involved. So I smiled and said, 'Nearly at the end of the road. I was hoping you could help me out with a couple of loose ends.'

'Fire away,” she said. You've got me quite intrigued. My son was enthralled when I told him I was helping a private eye with her inquiries. So I owe you some co-operation. It's not easy for a mother to impress a ten-year-old, you know.'

o you store all the details of your rented properties on your computer?'

'It all goes in there, whether it's for rental or for sale,” she said.

'So how does the Warrington office get your data, and vice versa?'

'I don't mean to be rude, but how well do you understand computers?' she asked.

I grinned. 'If you left me alone with yours for half an hour, I could probably figure it out for myself,” I said. I was almost certainly exaggerating, but she wasn't to know. Now, if I had Bill with me, he'd definitely be in there before I'd had time to brew a pot of coffee.

“I’ll save you the bother,' she replied. Twice a day, at one and again at five, I access the Warrington office computer via a modem. The software identifies any new files, or files that have been modified since the machines last conversed. Then it exports those files from my machine and imports the ones from the Warrington computer. The system also warns me in the unusual event of the same file having been modified by both offices.'