Crack Down. Val McDermid

was only halfway through my first glass of Australian fizz (as good a reason as any for awarding the Olympics to Sydney) when Clive appeared at my elbow with a strange man and a sickly grin. ‘Kate,’ he greeted me. ‘What a lovely surprise.’

      I was on my guard straight away. Clive and I have never been buddies, probably because I can’t bring myself to be anything more than professionally polite to social climbers. So when the Edmund Hillary of the Cheshire set accosted me so joyously, I knew at once we were in the realms of hidden agendas. I smiled politely, shook his hand, counted my fingers and said, ‘Nice to see you too, Clive.’

      ‘Kate, can I introduce my brother-in-law, Andrew Broderick? Andrew, this is Kate Brannigan, who’s a partner in Manchester’s best security company. Kate, Andrew’s the MD and CEO of ALF.’ I must have looked blank, for Clive added hurriedly, ‘You know, Kate. Accredited Leo Finance. Leo Motor Company’s credit arm.’

      ‘Thanks, Tonto,’ I said.

      Clive looked baffled, but Andrew Broderick laughed. ‘If I’m the loan arranger, you must be Tonto. Old joke,’ he explained. Clive still didn’t get it. Broderick and I shook hands and weighed each other up. He wasn’t a lot taller than my five feet and three inches, but Andrew Broderick looked like a man who’d learned how to fight his battles in a rugby scrum rather than a boardroom. It was just as well he could afford to have his suits hand-stitched to measure; he’d never have found that chest measurement off the peg. His nose had been broken more than once and his ears were as close to being a pair as Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But his shrewd grey eyes missed nothing. I felt his ten-second assessment of me had probably covered all the salient points.

      We started off innocuously enough, discussing the Games. Then, casually enough, he asked what I drove in the course of business. I found myself telling him all about Bill’s new Saab convertible, the workhorse Little Rascal van we use for surveillance, and the nearly fatal accident that had robbed me of the Nova. I was mildly surprised. I don’t normally talk to strangers.

      ‘No Leos?’ he asked with a quirky smile.

      ‘No Leos,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m open to persuasion.’

      Broderick took my elbow, smiled dismissively at Clive and gently steered me into a quiet corner behind the buffet. ‘I have a problem,’ he said. ‘It needs a specialist, and I’m told that your organization could fit my spec. Interested?’

      Call me a slut, but when it comes to business, I’m always open to offers. ‘I’m interested,’ I said. ‘Will it keep, or do you want to thrash it out now?’

      It turned out that patience wasn’t Andrew Broderick’s long suit. Within five minutes, we were in the lounge of the Ramada, with drinks on their way. ‘How much do you know about car financing?’ he asked.

      ‘They always end up costing more than you think,’ I said ruefully.

      ‘That much, eh?’ he said. ‘OK. Let me explain. My company, ALF, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Leo Motor Company. Our job is to provide loans for people who want to buy Leo cars and haven’t got enough cash. But Leo dealerships aren’t obliged to channel all their customers through us, so we have to find ways to make ourselves sexy to the dealerships. One of the ways we do this is to offer them soft loans.’

      I nodded, with him so far. ‘And these low-interest loans are for what, exactly?’

      ‘Dealerships have to pay up front when they take delivery of a car from Leo. ALF gives them a soft loan to cover the wholesale cost of the car for ninety days. After that, the interest rate rises weekly. When the car is sold, the soft loan is supposed to be paid off. That’s in the contract.

      ‘But if a dealership arranges loans for the Leos it sells via a different finance company, neither ALF nor Leo is aware that the car’s been sold. The dealer can smack the money in a high-interest account for the remains of the ninety days and earn himself a tidy sum in interest before the loan has to be paid off.’ The drinks arrived, as if on cue, giving me a few moments to digest what he’d said.

      I tipped the bottle of grapefruit juice into my vodka, and swirled the ice cubes round in the glass to mix the drink. ‘And you obviously hate this because you’re cutting your own margins to supply the low-interest loans, but you’re getting no benefit in return.’

      Broderick nodded, taking a hefty swallow of his spritzer. ‘Leo aren’t crazy about it either because it skews their market share figures, particularly in high turnover months like August,’ he added.

      ‘So where do I come in?’ I asked.

      ‘I’ve come up with an alternative distribution system,’ he said simply. Now, all I know about the car business is what I’ve learned from my dad, an assembly line foreman with Rover in Oxford. But even that little is enough for me to realize that what Andrew Broderick had just said was on a par with the Prime Minister announcing he was going to abolish the Civil Service.

      I swallowed hard. ‘We don’t do bodyguard jobs,’ I said.

      He laughed, which was the first time I’d doubted his sanity. ‘It’s so simple,’ he said. ‘Instead of having to fill their showrooms with cars they’re then under pressure to sell asap, dealers would carry only one sample of the model. The customer would specify colour, engine size, petrol or diesel, optional extras, etc. The order would then be faxed to one of several regional holding centres where the specific model would be assembled from Leo’s stock.’

      ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. Leo are fighting it tooth and nail because it involves them in initial expenditure of more than threepence ha’penny,’ I said resignedly.

      ‘And that’s where you come in, Ms Brannigan. I want to prove to Leo that my system would be of ultimate financial benefit to both of us. Now, if I can prove that at least one of our bigger chains of dealerships is committing this particular fraud, then I can maybe start to get it through Leo’s corporate skulls that a helluva lot of cash that should be in our business is being siphoned off. And then maybe, just maybe, they’ll accept that a revamped distribution service is worth every penny.’

      Which is how Richard and I came to be playing happy newly-weds round the car showrooms of England. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Three weeks into the job, it still seemed like a good idea. Which only goes to show how wrong even I can be.

       2

      The following afternoon, I was in my office, putting the finishing touches to a routine report on a fraudulent personal accident claim I’d been investigating on behalf of a local insurance company. As I reached the end, I glanced at my watch. Twenty-five to three. Surprise, surprise, Richard was late. I saved the file to disc, then switched off my computer. I took the disc through to the outer office, where Shelley Carmichael was filling in a stationery supplies order form. If good office management got you on to the Honours List, Shelley would be up there with a life peerage. It’s a toss-up who I treat with more respect – Shelley or the local pub’s Rottweiler.

      She glanced up as I came through. ‘Late again, is he?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘Want me to give him an alarm call?’

      ‘I don’t think he’s in,’ I said. ‘He mumbled something this morning about going to a bistro in Oldham where they do live rockabilly at lunch time. It sounded so improbable it has to be true. Did you check if today’s draft has come through?’

      Shelley nodded. Silly question, really. ‘It’s at the King Street branch,’ she said.

      ‘I’ll pop out and get it now,’ I said. ‘If Boy Wonder shows up, tell him to wait for me. None of that “I’ll just pop out to the Corner House for ten minutes to have a look at their new exhibition” routine.’

      I gave the lift a miss and ran downstairs. It helps me maintain the illusion of fitness. As I walked briskly up Oxford Street, I felt at peace with the world. It was a bright, sunny day, though the temperature was