Autographs In The Rain Part 40

He tried to put her at her ease at once. 'I'm grateful you could see me so quickly,' he said. 'It's nothing to do with you, really; I'm trying to trace a customer of yours.' He reached into his jacket and took out the printout of the Steed email.

This was sent on November the ninth through Hotmail, from this location. The User-id is "John Steed", but that mailbox hasn't been used since. I'm hoping that you can recall something about him that will help us trace him.'

Paula Egremont frowned. 'Is this nuisance mail?' she asked.

'You could say that.'

'Let me look at my diary.' She walked over to the till counter and took out a book from a ledge underneath. 'November nine, you said?'

'That's right; a Thursday.'

She opened the desk diary and turned over page after page until she round that date. Her lips moved unconsciously as she read. 'Yes!' she said, at last, with evident satisfaction. T do remember him. I had a visit from acoffee rep. that day; he had supplied me with some poor quality stuff and we had a row about it.

'While we were having it, the only other person in the place was my only Internet customer of the day. A young man, in his twenties; cleanshaven, wearing jeans, Timberland boots, or something of that ilk, and a heavy donkey type jacket.'

'You know him?'

She shook her head. 'Never seen him before or since. But the truth is I don't have all that many Net customers, so I tend to remember them fairly easily.'

'Can you tell me anything else about him?'

'He had a pale complexion, and he wore rimless gla.s.ses; could have been Gucci. We didn't say much to each other though. He came in, asked for a coffee, pointed at the machine and I switched it on. I'd just given him his coffee, when that d.a.m.n rep. came in. By the time I'd finished complaining to him, he was signing off.

'He finished his coffee, paid and left.' She smiled, apologetically. That's all I can tell you, I'm afraid... apart, oh yes, I nearly forgot, apart from the hat. He was wearing a black hat.'I.

174.50.Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk grumbled quietly to himself as he drove down the country road. Dan Pringle was a good guy to work for most of the time but when he felt under pressure he tended to share it around.

When he started to indulge in creative thinking, anything could happen; his bright idea of keeping Mercy Alvarez' Country Fresh Trout under secret video surveillance was a prime example.

It was fine in theory, cost-effective policing that did a job without tying up teams of detectives round the clock, but in practice some poor b.u.g.g.e.r still had to go and change the tape every so often; first thing in the morning too, to lessen the chances of his being spotted. Of course, secrecy being the watchword, and Dan being too new in the division to know whom he could trust completely, that poor b.u.g.g.e.r just had to be Jack McGurk.

The sergeant had mixed feelings about his transfer to the Borders; it would mean a move south, away from the city. Even now he was living through the week in a furnished police flat in Newtown St Boswells. On the other hand Dan Pringle had more or less promised him that if he did the job for three years he would swing him a quick promotion to inspector.

That was a distant prospect, though, as he stopped beside the fence which bounded the woods in which the video cameras were hidden in a camouflaged box. He could approach through the trees without any danger of being seen from the farm, and the road was so isolated that he could leave without attracting any other attention.

The downside was that at daybreak the forest was still dark, and the trees were dripping wet. He took his rubber boots from the well of the pa.s.senger seat and pulled them on, then slipped into his Barbour, slapping the deep pockets to make sure that he was carrying the fresh tapes and fully charged batteries.

He made his way through the woods; it was Thursday morning and he was making the trip for the third time, so even in the gloom he knew the way fairly well. It had taken him half an hour to find the box on his firstmorning, and he had only just managed to avoid being spotted by the manager as she made her first round of the tanks.

The box opened from the back; he slipped the cameras out, one by one, exchanged the tapes, then finally replaced the depleted batteries. Finally, his job done, he risked a look across the clearing.

McGurk would have crept away had he not noticed the door; Kath Adey's cottage lay open to the morning chill, yet there was no sign of her. Quickly he glanced around the compound. The Suzuki jeep which he had seen on his first visit, and which he had a.s.sumed was hers was still there, parked beside one of the sheds. He listened; there was no sound but the beat of the pumps, and the steady splashing of the circulating water.

And then he looked at the tanks. Maybe the fish were asleep, for there were no signs of trout breaking the surface, no signs offish snapping at the food, insect or artificial, which he had noticed there before. Yet there was something, something much bigger than any trout, something in the tank nearest the cottage, something floating face down.

'Oh s.h.i.t,' Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk muttered as he forgot all about secrecy, breaking his cover to rush across the clearing, rubber boots flapping awkwardly as he ran.176.51.For many years, Andrew John had worn a beard. Although it had disappeared shortly after the arrival of its first grey hairs, Andy Martin imagined it in place still, as he took a seat in the banker's small office in a depressing concrete building in the Gra.s.smarket. John was a good friend and occasional golf partner of Bob Skinner and had proved invaluable to him over the years, as a sounding board in the business sector.

'Sorry to drag you in here so early, Andy,' he began. 'But I'm only paying flying visits to my office this week. That's one of the bad things about the commercial side of our business.' He gave a quick, bright laugh, and glanced around the small dull room. 'Or maybe it's one of the good things.

'I spend more time in my customers' offices than I do in my own.'

'I used to be able to say the same,' said the Head of CID. 'Now I'm scratching around for excuses to get out of the office. I found one the other day, though,' he continued. That's what brought me here.

'I had occasion to pay a visit to a trout farm near Coldstream . . .'

'Oh,' exclaimed Andrew John, rolling his eyes at the detective and leaning back in his chair. 'Country Fresh? The Welly-boot Contessa?'

'Apart from the fact that Contessas are Italian, not Spanish, that's the very lady.'

'What's she been up to?'

Martin held up his hands, palms outwards. 'Nothing. Nothing at all, honest. I went to see her because we've had a couple of major thefts from fish farms in that area. They both lost all their stock; had it hoovered up into container trucks through big suction hoses.

'In both cases their security was c.r.a.p. My guys visited her after the second theft and saw that hers is too. She was a bit off-hand when they told her she should improve it, so I went down to give her a slightly heavier message.

'She told me she'd have to speak to you before she did anything, so IAUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.thought I'd have a quiet word with you too. We're about to recommend to the insurers that they get very tough with farmers who use their policies as alternatives to crime prevention provisions; I thought you should be aware of that when she asks you for spending approval, or an increased facility or whatever.'

'Thanks Andy,' said the banker. 'I appreciate that. Within these four walls, it won't make my decision any easier, though. I'm as exposed to that lady already as I want to be; to that whole sector in fact.'

Martin looked at him in surprise. 'Why's that?'

'Ach, most of these places are penny operations. There's so much fanned salmon on the market now, either raised here or dumped by the Norwegians, that it's depressing the price of trout. I used to have half a dozen trout farmers as clients; most of them estate owners who saw it as a way of making some extra money,

'Now I've got only two; Mercy Alvarez and one other. The other one's all right for now, because he's worked out that the only way to profitability is to add value to the stuff before you let it out the farm gate, by processing on site. Mercy, though, she just raises it quick and sells it quick, so she's dancing around the break-even line all the time. That's no use to me; I want to lend to businesses that are going to expand and become more substantial bank customers in the future.

'In that respect, fish farms are second last on my wish list.'

'What's last?' asked the detective, amused.

'Football clubs. They soak up tons of borrowing but how do you foreclose on them?'

'You don't; you sponsor them.'

'Ah, in an ideal world you only sponsor them, never lend. Let some other b.u.g.g.e.r do that!'

'So ... has Mercy been in touch with you since Monday?'

'No. But I've been away from the office, remember.' He leaned across his desk and flicked through a pile of yellow message slips. 'Yes, there's a note here asking me to call her this morning.'

'When you do get in touch with her, what'll you say?'

'Ach, I don't know. What's the damage likely to be?'

'I can't say for sure, but I can tell you it won't be any more than next year's insurance premium, if she doesn't install

He broke off as his mobile rang. He took it from his pocket, excusing himself as he answered.

I.