Dead Beat and Kick Back by Val McDermid

Author:Val McDermid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

14

I sat in the back of a bright yellow van, headphones clamped to my ears. My friend Dennis sat next to me, looking for inspiration in the pages of an Elmore Leonard. To anyone wandering along this Stockport cul-de-sac, it looked like a British Telecom van. The inside would have completely confounded them. Instead of racks of tools, spare parts and cable, there were a couple of leather car seats, the kind you get in top-of-the-range Volvos or Mercs, and a table, all bolted to the floor. There was a portable colour TV and a video fixed to the top of a fridge. There was also a hatch in the floor. The van belongs to Sammy, one of Dennis’s mates. I don’t want to know what he uses it for on a regular basis. I know for sure it isn’t anything to do with telecommunications.

Dennis O’Brien and I have been friends now for years. I know he’s a criminal, and he knows I put criminals out of business. But in spite of, or maybe because of, that we’ve each got a lot of respect for the other. I respect him because in his own way he’s a highly skilled craftsman who sticks rigidly to his own rules and values. They might not be the same as mine, but who’s to say mine are any better? After all, this society that puts burglars behind bars is the same society that helps the really big bandits like Robert Maxwell thrive.

I owe Dennis a lot. My martial arts skills, my knowledge of lock-picking, and the part of Mortensen and Brannigan’s income that depends on being able to think like a burglar so you can construct a security system that will defeat the real thing. He likes having me around because he thinks I’m a good role model for his teenage daughter. There’s no accounting for tastes.

After I got back from the Land Registry, I’d rung Dennis on his mobile phone. It’s a fascinating thing, the mobile phone. In London, when one starts ringing in a pub, chances are it’s someone in the City on the receiving end. In Manchester, it’s a bob to a gold clock it’s a villain. It’s a mystery to me how they get past the creditworthiness checks that the airtime companies run. Now I think about it, they’ve probably got their very own airtime company, Criminal Communications, or Funny Phones, just for bad lads. With absolutely no directory enquiries service.

Anyway, I caught Dennis at a good time, so I invited him to find Sammy and help me out. I didn’t even have to mention money before he agreed. He’s nice like that, is Dennis. Unlike me, he doesn’t think a friend in need is a pain in the arse. Which is why I was sitting in a fake Telecom van while Sammy was planting Mortensen and Brannigan’s bugs in the three-bedroomed semi that Brian and Mary Wright were renting through DKL Estates.

Normally, when we use surveillance equipment, we place it ourselves.

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