Power Games by Judith Cutler Read Free Book Online Page B

worked steadily through the piles of paperwork avalanching over her desk when the phone rang. Another person working over the holiday: Patrick Duncan. He was in strictly professional mode – no one could have guessed he was a fizzled-out ex.
    â€˜You’re still on that warehouse fire case?’ he asked, with no preamble.
    â€˜â€œStill”? Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?’
    â€˜Come on, Kate, you know what rumours are like in this business … Anyway, if you are, I thought you’d like to know your stiff was a woman.’
    â€˜Jesus Christ.’ That the blackened flesh – once a woman like her.
    â€˜Are you still there? … It’s the pelvis that gave it away, of course.’
    She must pull herself together. ‘Of course. Anything else about – about her?’
    â€˜I’d say not young. And the teeth were in pretty poor nick. Fits in with the Fire Service view that she was a dosser. Bag-woman. Meths drinker. Whatever. Kate – are you OK?’
    She tried for a laugh. ‘It’s just that even in this job you get an attack of “but for the grace of God”.’
    â€˜You mean your drinking? Kate, you’re over that now,’ he said forcefully. ‘You can even drink socially.’
    â€˜I know. It’s just that—’ She pulled herself together. No point in saying she’d really seen herself simply as a woman, like the corpse. She and Patrick weren’t yet back on those terms. ‘Well, at least we’ve something more to go on, now. Colin won’t just be asking vague questions about missing men of the road – he can be much more specific.’
    â€˜Is he getting any co-operation?’
    â€˜Not a lot. If you give up society I suppose the last person you want to talk to is a copper.’
    â€˜Find someone who doesn’t look like a copper, then.’
    â€˜Funny you should say that, Patrick – I might just have someone in mind.’

Chapter Six
    Sue Rowley was working at her desk when Kate popped in to see her. She looked up, interested, like a bird, brown head on one side, ready to dart at any crumb of the arson case that Kate might have missed. ‘What do you think about fraud as a motive?’
    She flicked a glance at her watch as she spoke. Like Kate, Sue’d opted to work on the Bank Holiday, and seemed, like Kate, to be regretting it.
    Kate couldn’t very well match the gesture, but knew it must be some time after six. ‘Claiming for contents they don’t have? None of the firms I’ve spoken to had their goods over-insured. Not according to the assessors, anyway. And we’ve got different insurers for each of the firms that have been torched. All of them tell me that the claim seems entirely reasonable given the nature of the business. Businesses, that is – they’re all in different lines of country. No individual assessor smells any sort of rat.’
    Sue made a note. ‘What about the premises? Were they over-insured?’
    â€˜On the contrary. One firm, in fact – the one involved in the most recent blaze – is likely to lose a lot of money. They can’t afford to pull down the wreckage and rebuild on the same site. They’d have to go somewhere cheaper, if they can find anywhere, that is.’
    â€˜Oh, there are plenty of vacant warehouses around. More’s the pity,’ Rowley reflected.
    â€˜The Selly Oak firm – now they admit they were paying an extraordinarily low rent – old, rather tatty premises, they were. I want to get on to the Health and Safety people about them – just in case they’d been warned to make expensive improvements and had chickened out. But that wouldn’t apply to the other premises. The trouble is, Gaffer, there’s nothing consistent in any of the premises – except the modus operandi. This silly business of someone scrambling on a possibly fragile and