LITMIR.BIZ

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on the newsdesk kill it. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I want to know why Richard’s supposed to be dead.’

      ‘It’s a long and complicated story,’ I started in a last attempt to lose her interest.

      Alexis grinned and blew a long stream of smoke down her nostrils. Puff the Magic Dragon would have signed up for a training course on the spot. ‘Great,’ she enthused. ‘My favourite kind.’

      ‘The client’s a firm of monumental masons,’ I said. ‘They’re the biggest provider of stone memorials in South Manchester. They came to us because they’ve been getting a string of complaints from people saying they’ve paid for gravestones that haven’t turned up.’

      ‘Somebody’s been nicking gravestones?’

      ‘Worse than that,’ I said, meaning it. Far as I was concerned, I was dealing with total scumbags on this one. ‘My clients are the incidental victims of a really nasty scam. From what I’ve managed to find out so far, there are at least two people involved, a man and a woman. They turn up on the doorsteps of the recently bereaved and claim to be representing my client’s firm. They produce these business cards which have the name of my clients, complete with address and phone number, all absolutely kosher. The only thing wrong with them is that the names on the cards are completely unknown to my client. They’re not using the names of his staff. But this pair are smart. They always come in the evening, out of business hours, so anyone who’s a bit suspicious can’t ring my client’s office and check up on them. And they come single-handed. Nothing heavy. Where it’s a woman who’s died, it’s the woman who shows up. Where it’s a man, it’s the bloke.’

      ‘So what’s the pitch?’ Alexis asked.

      ‘They do the tea-and-sympathy routine, then they explain that they’re adopting the new practice of visiting people in their homes because it’s a more personal approach to choosing an appropriate memorial. Then they go into a special-offer routine, just like they were selling double glazing or something. You know the sort of thing—unique opportunity, special shipment of Italian marble or Aberdeen granite, you could be one of the people we use for testimonial purposes, limited period offer.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Alexis groaned. ‘And if they don’t sign up tonight, they’ve lost the opportunity, am I right, or am I right?’

      ‘You’re right. So these poor sods whose lives are already in bits because they’ve just lost their partner or husband or wife, or mother or father, or son or daughter get done up like a kipper just so some smart bastard can go out and buy another designer suit or a mobile bloody phone,’ I said angrily. I know all the rules about never letting yourself get emotionally involved with the jobs, but there are times when staying cool and disinterested would be the mark of inhumanity rather than good sense. This was one of them.

      Alexis lit another cigarette, shaking her head. ‘Pure gobshites,’ she said in disgust. ‘Twenty-four-carat shysters. So they take the cash and disappear into the night, leaving your clients to pick up the pieces when the headstone remains a ghostly presence?’

      ‘Something like that. They really are a pair of unscrupulous bastards. I’ve been interviewing some of the people who have been had over, and a couple of them have told me the woman has actually driven them to holes in the wall to get money for a cash deposit.’ I shook my head, remembering the faces of the victims again. They showed a procession of emotions, each more painful to watch than the last. There was grief revisited in the setting of the scene for me, then anger as they recalled how they’d been stung, then a mixture of shame and resentment that they’d fallen for it. ‘And there’s no point in me telling them that in their shoes even a streetwise old cynic like me would probably have fallen for it. Because I probably would have done, that’s the worst of it,’ I added bitterly.

      ‘Grief gets you like that,’ Alexis agreed. ‘The last thing you’re expecting is to be taken for a ride. Look at how many families end up not speaking to each other for years because someone has done something outrageous in the immediate aftermath of death, when everyone’s staggering round feeling like their brain’s in the food processor along with their emotions. After my Uncle Jos’s second wife Theresa wore my gran’s fur coat to the old dear’s funeral, she might as well have been dead too. My dad wouldn’t even let my mum send them a Christmas card for about ten years. Until Uncle Jos got cancer himself, poor sod.’

      ‘Yeah, well, us knowing these people haven’t been particularly gullible doesn’t make it any easier for them. The only thing that might help them would be for me to nail the bastards responsible.’

      ‘What about the bizzies? Haven’t they reported it to them?’

      I shrugged. ‘Only one or two of them. Most of them left it at phoning my client. It’s pride, isn’t it? People don’t want everybody thinking they can’t cope just because they’ve lost somebody. Especially if they’re getting on a bit. So all Officer Dibble has to go on is a few isolated incidents.’ I didn’t need to tell a crime correspondent that it wasn’t something that was going to assume a high priority for a police force struggling to deal with an epidemic of crack and guns that seemed to claim fresh victims every week in spite of an alleged truce between the gangs.

      Alexis gave a cynical smile. ‘Not exactly the kind of glamorous case the CID’s glory boys are dying to take on, either. The only way they’d have started to take proper notice would have been if some journo like me had stumbled across the story and given it some headlines. Then they’d have had to get their finger out.’

      ‘Too late for that now,’ I said firmly.

      ‘Toerags,’ Alexis said. ‘So you’ve put Richard’s death notice in to try and flush them out?’

      ‘Seemed like the only way to get a fix on them,’ I said. ‘It’s clear from what the victims have said that they operate by using the deaths column. Richard’s out of town on the road with some band, so I thought I’d get it done and dusted while he’s not around to object to having his name taken in vain. If everything goes according to plan, someone should be here within the next half-hour.’

      ‘Nice thinking,’ Alexis said approvingly. ‘Hope it works. So why didn’t you use Bill’s name and address? He’s still in Australia, isn’t he?’

      I shook my head. ‘I would have done, except he was flying in this afternoon.’ Bill Mortensen, the senior partner of Mortensen and Brannigan, Private Investigators and Security Consultants, had been in Australia for the last three weeks, his second trip Down Under in the past six months, an occurrence that was starting to feel a lot like double trouble to me. ‘He’ll be using his house as a jet-lag recovery zone. So that left Richard. Sorry you had a wasted journey of condolence. And I’m sorry if it upset you,’ I added.

      ‘You’re all right. I don’t think I really believed he was dead, you know? I figured it must be some sick puppy’s idea of a joke, on account of I couldn’t work out how come you hadn’t told me he’d kicked it. If you see what I mean. Anyway, it wasn’t a wasted journey. I was coming round anyway. There’s something I wanted to tell you.’

      For some reason, Alexis had suddenly stopped meeting my eye. She was looking vaguely round the room, as if Richard’s walls were the source of all inspiration. Then she dragged her eyes away from the no longer brilliant white emulsion and started rootling round in a handbag so vast it makes mine look like an evening purse. ‘So tell me,’ I said impatiently after a silence long enough for Alexis to unearth a fresh packet of cigarettes, unwrap them and light one.

      ‘It’s Chris,’ she exhaled ominously. More silence. Chris, Alexis’s partner, is an architect in a community practice. It feels like they’ve been together longer than Mickey and Minnie. The pair of them had just finished building their dream home beyond the borders of civilization as we know it, part of a self-build scheme. And now Alexis was using the tone of voice that BBC announcers adopt when a member of the Royal family has died or separated from a spouse.

      ‘What about Chris?’ I asked nervously.

      Alexis

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