Clean Break by Val McDermid Read Free Book Online

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that. If I’d really been from the HSE, the lack of courtesy would have had me sharpening my knives for Trevor Kerr’s well-cushioned ribs. I waited for the secretary to withdraw, then I said, “Have you recalled the rest of the batch?”
    He nodded impatiently. “Of course. We got on to all the wholesalers, and we’ve placed an ad in the national press as well as the trade. We’ve already had a load of stuff back, and there’s more due in today.”
    â€œGood,” I said. “I’ll want to see that, as well as the dispatch paperwork relating to that batch. I take it that won’t be a problem?”
    â€œNo problem. I’ll get Sheila to sort it out for you.” He made a note on a pad on his desk. “Next?”
    â€œDo you use cyanide in any of your processes?”
    â€œNo way,” he said belligerently. “It has industrial uses, but mainly in the plastics industry and electroplating. There’s nothing we produce that we’d need it for.”
    â€œOK. Going back to the original blackmail note. Did it include any instructions about the amount of money they were after, or how you were to contact them?”
    He took a cigar out of a humidor the size of a small greenhouse and rolled it between his fingers. “They didn’t put a figure on it, no. There was a phone number, and the note said it was the number of one of the public phones at Piccadilly Station. I was supposed to be there at nine o’clock on the Friday night. I didn’t go, of course.”
    â€œPity you didn’t call us then,” I said.
    â€œI told you, I thought it was a crank. Some nutter trying to wind me up. No way was I going to give him the satisfaction.”
    â€œOr her,” I added. “The thing that bothers me, Mr. Kerr, is that killing people is a pretty extreme thing for a blackmailer to do. The usual analysis of blackmailers is that they are on the cowardly side. The crimes they commit are at arm’s-length, and usually don’t put life at risk. I would have expected the blackmailer in this case to have done something a lot more low key, certainly initially. You know, dumped caustic soda in washing-up liquid, that sort of thing.”
    â€œMaybe they didn’t intend to kill anybody, just to give people a
nasty turn,” he said. He lit the cigar, exhaling a cloud of smoke that gave me a nasty turn so early in the day.
    I shrugged. “In that case, cyanide’s a strange choice. The fatal dose is pretty small. Also, you couldn’t just stick it in the drum and wait for someone to open it up. There must have been some kind of device rigged up inside it. To produce the lethal gas, cyanide pellets need to react with something else. So they’d have had to be released into the liquid somehow. That’s a lot of trouble to go to when you could achieve an unpleasant warning with dozens of other chemical mixtures. If it was me, I’d have filled a few drums either with something that smelled disgusting, or something that would destroy surfaces rather than clean them, just to persuade you that they were capable of making your life hell. Then, I’d have followed it up with a second note saying something like: ‘Next time, it’ll be cyanide.’ ”
    â€œSo maybe we’re dealing with a complete nutter,” he said bitterly. “Great.”
    â€œOr maybe it’s someone who wants to destroy you rather than blackmail you,” I said simply.
    Kerr took his cigar out of his mouth, which remained in a perfect “O.” Finally, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    â€œIt’s something you should consider. In relation to both your professional and your personal life.” He was having a lot of trouble getting his head round the idea, I could see. If he’d been a bit nicer to me, I’d have been gentler. But I figure you shouldn’t dish it out unless you can take