Kick Back (19 page)

I acknowledged them both with a nod and walked past them to his office. I didn't hear what the woman murmured in his ear after
I passed, but I heard him say, “It's all right, Nell. Look, I'll see you this afternoon, OK?”

“It had better be,” I thought I caught as she swept off without so much as a smile for the secretary. You can tell a lot about people by the way they treat other people's office staff.

I waited for Cheetham to return to his chair. I could see the effort it was taking for him to sit still. “How can I help you?” he asked.

“I just thought I'd drop by and give you a progress report,” I said. “Our builder friend, T. R. Harris, seems not to exist. And neither does the solicitor whom you appear to have corresponded with.” I knew this for certain, since I'd checked out the list of qualified briefs in the Solicitors' Diary.

Cheetham just sat and stared at me, those liquid dark eyes slightly narrowed. “I don't understand,” he said, rather too late.

“Well, it seems as if Harris used a false name, and made up a non-existent solicitor for the purpose of conning your clients out of their money. It was lucky that Miss Appleby happened to discover the land had already been sold, otherwise they'd all have lost a lot more money,” I tried. If he was straight, he'd be at great pains to point out to me that they couldn't have lost another shilling, since he, their diligent solicitor, would have discovered from the Land Registry that the land in question had already been sold, or was at least the subject of other inquiries.

He said none of that. What he did say was how sorry he was that it had happened, but now I seemed to have cleared it all up, it was obvious that he had been taken for a ride as much as his clients.

“Except that, unlike you, they're all out of pocket to the tune of five thousand pounds each,” I observed mildly. He didn't even blush.

Cheetham got to his feet and said, “I appreciate you letting me know all this.”

“They might even have to take the matter to the Law Society. They have indemnity insurance to cover this sort of negligence and malpractice, don't they?”

“But I haven't been negligent,” he protested weakly. “I told you before, the searches came back clear. And the letters from Harris's solicitor assured me that although he'd had other inquiries, no one
else was in a position to pursue a possible purchase at that point in time. How was I to know the letters were fakes?”

“It's a pity you solicitors always have to put everything in writing,” said. “Just one phone call to the so-called Mr. Graves' office would have stopped this business stone dead.”

“What do you mean?” he asked hesitantly.

“The number on the letterhead is the number of a pay phone in a pub in Ramsbottom. But I suppose you didn't know that either,” I said.

He sat down again in a hurry. “Of course I didn't,” he said. He was as convincing as a cabinet minister.

“There was one other thing,” I said. I'd rattled his cage. Now it was time for a bluff. “When I was here the other day, I saw a guy come into your office after me. I had some other business in the building, and when I left, I saw him getting into his van. Some company called Renovations, or something like that? Looked a bit like your friend from Buxton, which, of course, is why I thought
he
was a builder.”

Cheetham's eyes widened, though he kept the rest of his face under control. Clearly, he was one of those people whose eyes really are the windows of the soul. “What about him?” he asked nervously.

“Well, my boyfriend and I have just bought an old house out in Heaton Chapel, and it needs a lot of work doing, and I noticed the van had a Stockport number on the side. I wondered if they specialized in that kind of job and, if they did, maybe you could give me their number? I tried
Yellow Pages
, but I couldn't find them,” I said.

Cheetham's mouth opened and closed. “I … er…I don't think they'd be what you're looking for,” he gabbled. “No, not for your problem at all. Old barns, that's what they do. Conversions, that sort of thing. Sorry, I … er … Sorry.”

Satisfied that I'd put the cat among the pigeons, as well as establishing Cheetham's guilt firmly in my own mind, I gave him a regretful smile and said, “Oh well, when we do buy ourselves an old barn, I'll know where to come. Thanks for your time, Mr. Cheetham.”

An hour later, I was lurking behind a fruit and veg stall in the indoor market at Stockport. The bright autumn sunlight poured in through the high windows of this recently restored cathedral to commerce. It illuminated a fascinating scene. Across the crowded aisles of the market, in a little café, Martin Cheetham was in earnest conversation with none other than Brian Lomax, alias T. R. Harris.

Now I knew all I needed to know. All that remained was some proof.

I bought a couple of Russet apples and half a pound of grapes from the fruit and veg stall to keep my mouth occupied while I watched Cheetham and Lomax talk. Cheetham appeared to be both worried and angry, while Lomax seemed not so much tense as impatient. Cheetham was doing most of the talking, with Lomax nodding or shaking his head in response as he munched his way through a couple of barm cakes and a bowl of chips. Eventually, Lomax wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaned across the table and spoke earnestly to Cheetham.

There are times when I wish I'd learned to lip read. Or to predict the future. That way, I'd have been able to plant a radio mike under the table in advance. As it was, I was stuck in my less than blissful ignorance. All I could do was keep on Martin Cheetham's tail as he left the café and pushed his way through the shopping crowds back to the supermarket car park where he'd left his black BMW. A black BMW which I'd last seen parked outside Brian Lomax's house on Saturday night.

It wasn't hard to keep tabs on him. He drove back to Manchester like a man who's preoccupied with something other than the road and traffic conditions. Expecting him to go straight back to his office, I hung back a little as we neared the city center, and that's when I almost lost him. At the bottom of Fennel Street, instead of turning left towards the Blackfriars car park where he'd been parked that morning, he turned right. I was three cars behind him, and I barely made it to the junction in time to see him turn left by the railway arches, heading for the East Lancs road. “Oh, shit,” I groaned, stamping on the accelerator and skidding across four lanes of traffic in his wake. The Little Rascal really
wasn't my vehicle of choice for a car chase. I only hoped the cacophony of horns wouldn't penetrate Cheetham's apparent reverie.

He wasn't in sight when I got to the next set of lights. I had to gamble that he'd gone straight on, out past Salford Cathedral and the university, past the museum with its matchstick men Lowrys, as reproduced on a thousand middle-class walls. I stayed in the middle lane, on the alert for a glimpse of his gleaming black bodywork. I was beginning to sweat by the time I passed the grimy monolith of Salford Tech. It looked like I'd lost him. But I stuck with it, and two miles down the East Lancs I spotted him up ahead, turning left at the next lights.

By the time I hit the lights, they'd just turned red, something I chose to ignore, to the horror of the woman whose Volvo I cut across as I swept round the corner. I gave her a cheery wave, then put my foot down. I picked Cheetham up a quarter of a mile down the road. He turned right, then second left into Tamarind Grove, a quiet street of between-the-wars semis, not unlike Alexis and Chris's. The BMW swung into the drive of a trim example of the type about halfway down on the left.

I drew up sharply in the little red van, keeping my engine running in case he was merely dropping something off or picking someone up. Cheetham got out of the car, locking it carefully behind him and setting the alarm, then let himself in the front door with a key. I drove slowly past the house and parked. I stationed myself by the rear door, keeping watch through the one-way glass of the window. I wasn't even sure why I was doing it. This had started off as a search for hard evidence of what Cheetham and Lomax had done to my friends. But I couldn't help feeling there was a lot more going on. What was Renew-Vations up to that sent Cheetham running down the road like a scalded cat to front up his partner in crime? And what was happening now? I have the kind of natural curiosity that hates to give in till the last stone is turned over and the last creepy-crawly firmly ground into the dirt. I kept coming back to the thought that whatever was going down here, Cheetham was the key. He knew I was poking my nose into his business. And Cheetham's partner in crime drove a white Transit
van. Admittedly, the van in his drive at the weekend had been unscathed, but I figured it was a strong possibility that his business ran to more than one van.

If there's a more boring job than staking out someone who's enjoying the comforts of their own home, I've yet to discover it. To relieve the monotony, I used my new toy to call the Central Reference Library and asked them to check the electoral roll for this address. Cheetham was the only person listed. Then I rang Richard to tell him my new number. This week, his answering machine featured him rapping over a hectic backing track, “Hi, it's Richard here, sorry, but I'm out, leave your name and number and I'll give you a shout.” At least it was an improvement on the throaty, sensuous one he'd had running the month before. I mean, you don't expect to find yourself in the middle of a dirty phone call when it's you who's done the dialling, do you?

Then I settled down to listen to the play on Radio 4. Inevitably, five minutes before the denouement, things started happening. A white convertible Golf GTi pulled up outside Cheetham's house. A brown court shoe appeared round the driver's door, followed by an elegant leg. The woman Cheetham had called Nell emerged, wearing a Burberry. Her choice of car came as no surprise, though I've never understood the fascination the Golf convertible holds for supposedly classy women. It looks like a pram to me, especially with the top down.

Nell followed Cheetham's path to the door, and also let herself in with a key. Then, about twenty minutes later, a white Transit van turned into the street and parked a couple of doors away from Cheetham's house. Lomax got out, wearing a set of overalls like a garage mechanic, a knitted cap covering his wavy brown hair. He didn't give my van a second glance as he marched straight up to Cheetham's front door and pressed the bell. He only had moments to wait before the door opened to admit him. From where I was parked, I couldn't actually see who opened the door, but I assumed it was Cheetham.

I thought about sneaking round the back of the house to see if there was any way of hearing or seeing what was going on, but it was way too risky to be anything other than one of those
tantalizing fantasies. So I waited. The plot was thickening, and I was powerless to do anything about it.

I phoned the office, on the off-chance that Bill would have some emergency that required me to abandon my boring vigil. No such luck. So I baited Shelley about Ted Barlow. “Has he asked you out, then?”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said huffily. “He's just a client. Why should he ask me out?”

“You'll never make a detective if you're that unobservant,” I teased. “So are you seeing him again? Apart from in reception?”

“He's coming round about a conservatory,” she admitted.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “Terrific! You be careful now, Shelley. This could be the most expensive date you've ever had. I mean, they don't come cheap, these conservatories. You could just ask him to Sunday dinner, you know, you don't actually have to let him sell you enough glass to double glaze the town hall.”

“Do you realize your feeble attempts to wind me up are costing the firm 25p a minute? Get off the phone, Kate, unless you've got something useful to say,” Shelley said firmly. “Oh, and by the way, the garage rang to say your Nova is definitely a write-off. I've phoned the insurance company and the assessor's coming to look at it tomorrow.”

For some reason, the thought of a new car didn't excite me as much as it should have done. I thanked Shelley, pressed the “end” button on the phone and settled down gloomily to watch Cheetham's house. About an hour after he arrived, Lomax appeared on the doorstep, struggling with a large cardboard box which appeared to be full of document wallets and loose papers. He loaded them into his van, then drove off. I decided it was more important, or at least more interesting, to follow Lomax and the papers than to continue watching the outside of a house.

I waited till he rounded the corner before I set off in pursuit. The height of his van made it easy for me to keep him in sight as he threaded his way through the afternoon traffic. We headed down through Swinton and cut across to Eccles. Lomax turned into a street of down-at-heel terraced houses and stopped in front of one whose ground floor windows were boarded up. Lomax unlocked
the door, then returned for the bulky box. He slammed the door behind him and left me sitting watching the outside of a different house.

I gave it half an hour then decided I wasn't getting anywhere. I decided to swing round via Cheetham's house to see if anything was happening, then head back to my other stake-out to see if the tapes were running with anything interesting. As I turned into the street that Cheetham's road led off, I nearly collided with a Peugeot in too much of a hurry. To my astonishment, I realized as I passed that it was Alexis. Unaccustomed to seeing me driving the van instead of my usual car, she obviously hadn't noticed the driver she'd nearly hit was me. I hoped she hadn't been round at Cheetham's house, giving him a piece of her mind. That was the last thing I needed right now.