‘Miss Hunter never said anything about expecting a trainee,’ the distorted voice said.
‘She’s probably given up on me. I was supposed to meet her twenty minutes ago. Please, can you let me through? I’ll be in enough trouble just for being so late. If she thinks I haven’t showed up at all, my life won’t be worth living. I’ve already had the “clients rely on us for their liberty, Ms Robinson’ lecture once this week!’
I’d struck the right chord. The door buzzed and I pushed it open. I stepped inside and pushed open the barred gate. The custody sergeant grinned at me from behind his desk. ‘I’m glad I’m not in your shoes,’ he said. ‘She can be a real tartar, your boss. I had a teacher like her once. Miss Gibson. Mind you, she got me through O Level French, which was no mean feat.’
He asked my name, and I claimed to be Kate Robinson. He made a note on the custody record, then led me down a well-lit corridor. I took care not to trip over the cracked vinyl floor tiles whose edges were starting to curl. It was hard to tell what colour they’d started out; I couldn’t believe someone had actually chosen battleship grey mottled with khaki and bile green. Halfway along the corridor, he paused outside a door marked ‘Interview 2’ and knocked, opening the door before he got a reply. ‘Your trainee’s here, Miss Hunter,’ he announced, stepping back to usher me in.
Like a true professional, Ruth didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Thank you,’ she said grimly. Typically, it was Richard who nearly gave the show away. His whole face lit up in that familiar smile that still sends my hormones into chaos.
He got as far as, ‘What are you –’ before Ruth interrupted.
‘I hope you don’t mind, Mr Barclay, but my colleague is a trainee who is supposed to be learning the tricks of the trade,’ she said loudly. ‘I’d like her to sit in on our consultation, unless you have any objections?’
‘N-no,’ Richard stammered, looking bewildered.
I stepped into the room and the sergeant closed the door firmly behind me.
Simultaneously, Richard said, ‘I don’t understand,’ and Ruth growled softly, ‘I should walk out of here right now and leave you to it.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t not. It’s too important. But look on the bright side; if I can blag my way into the secure interview room of a police station, aren’t you glad you’ve got me on the team?’ I added an apologetic smile.
Before Ruth could find an answer for that particular bit of cheek, Richard said plaintively, ‘But I don’t understand what you’re doing here, Brannigan.’
‘I’m here because you need help, Richard. I know you spend most of your time on another planet, but here on earth, it’s considered to be a pretty serious offence to drive around in a stolen car with enough crack to get half Manchester out of their heads,’ I told him.
‘Look, I know it sounds like I’m in deep shit. But it’s not like that.’ He ran a hand through his hair and frowned. ‘I keep trying to tell everybody. It wasn’t a stolen car. It was our car. The one we bought in Bolton on Tuesday.’
Before I could pick the bones out of that, Ruth interrupted. ‘Let’s just hold everything right there. Kate, you are here on sufferance. I, on the other hand, am here because Richard asked me to be. I’ve got a job to do and I intend to do it, in spite of your interference. So let me ask my questions, and then if there’s anything we haven’t covered, you can have your turn.’
It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an instruction. I knew what I’d done was bang out of order. I’d taken a big risk on the strength of my friendship with Ruth, and I didn’t want to risk damaging those bonds any further. Besides, I like watching people who are really good at what they do. ‘That’s absolutely fine with me,’ I said.
‘You mean she really isn’t meant to be here?’ Richard asked, his grin irrepressible even in the face of Ruth’s frown.
‘If you weren’t facing such serious charges, I’d have bounced her out of the door. It didn’t seem like a good time to generate even more suspicion on the part of the police. Now, Richard, let’s get to it. I don’t have all night.’ Ruth picked up her pencil and started to write. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. What happened tonight?’
Richard looked uncertain. ‘Well, the beginning isn’t tonight. I mean, depending on what you mean, the beginning’s either Tuesday night or three weeks ago.’
It was my turn to grin. I didn’t envy Ruth her task. I love him dearly, but the only time Richard can tell a story in a straight line from beginning to end is when he’s sat in front of a word processor with the prospect of a nice little earner at the end of the day.
Ruth squeezed the bridge of her nose. ‘Maybe you could give me the short version, and I’ll stop you when I don’t understand something.’
‘It’s this job Kate’s got on. I’ve been helping her out with it. We have to buy these cars, you see, and then we give them back to the car company.’ Richard paused hopefully.
Ruth’s grey eyes swivelled round and fixed on me. ‘Perhaps you’d like to elaborate … ?’
I nodded. ‘My clients are the finance arm of the Leo Motor Company. They suspect some dealerships of committing fraud. It’s our job to provide them with evidence, so Richard and I have been posing as a married couple, buying cars with money supplied by Leo, who then take the cars back from us,’ I said.
‘Thanks. So, you’ve been buying these cars. What happened on Tuesday night?’ she asked.
‘We’d picked up this really ace motor, the Gemini turbo super coupé,’ Richard said enthusiastically. ‘Anyway, I had to go into town, and I decided to treat myself and drive the coupé, since we’d only got it for a day or two. Then when I came out of the club, the car was gone. So I came home and reported it stolen to the police.’
Ruth looked up from her pad. ‘Did they send anyone round?’
‘Yeah, a copper came round about an hour later and I gave him all the details,’ Richard said.
‘And I informed my client first thing on Wednesday morning, if that’s any help,’ I added.
This time Ruth didn’t scowl at me. She just made another note and said, ‘So what happened next?’
Richard took off his glasses and stared up at the ceiling. A line appeared between his brows as he focused his memory. ‘I went into town about nine tonight. I had to meet a couple of women in the Paradise Factory. They’re the singers in a jazz fusion band, and they’ve just signed their first record deal. I’m doing a piece on them for one of the glossies. It was too noisy in the Factory to hear ourselves talk, so we left and went round to Manto’s.’ Trust Richard to spend his evening in the trendiest café bar in the North West. Looking at his outfit, I was surprised the style police had let him in. ‘We stayed till closing time,’ he went on. ‘The girls were going on to the Hacienda, but I didn’t fancy it, so I went off to get my car. I’d parked it off Portland Street, and I was walking past the gardens on Sackville Street when I saw the car.’ He put his glasses back on and looked expectantly at Ruth.
‘Which car, Richard?’ Ruth asked patiently.
‘The coupé,’ he said, in the injured tones of someone who thinks they’ve already made themselves abundantly clear. Poor misguided soul.
‘You saw the car that you had reported stolen in the early hours of Wednesday morning?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Only, I wasn’t sure right away