Crooked Herring Read Online Free Page B

you’ll find within a five-mile radius of any prosperous cathedral city. Its concrete exterior blended well with the warehouses and carpet showrooms that were its immediate neighbours. I chose from the hundred or so empty spaces in the car park, slotting my silver Volvo neatly between the white lines, close to one of the other three cars that were already there. Then I picked my way round the puddles and found the only unlocked door into the building.
    At three o’clock on a winter’s afternoon, the interior was dark and echoing. It succeeded in being both cold and stuffy. The walls were painted a matt black that probably did not feature at all in the Farrow & Ball colour chart and that seemed to close in on you as you watched. A vast and complex array of lighting equipment, which at the moment produced no light at all, was suspended from the black ceiling. A large stage was flanked with massive speakers and topped with turntables that currently did not turn and amplifiers that had nothing to amplify. It was the people and the noise that made this a venue worth coming to. At the moment it was an empty box, awaiting nightfall, when punters would take advantage of the £8 wristband deal and perhaps the offer of four Jägerbombs (whatever they were) for £9.95. The only action on the dance floor was an old guy in brown overalls pushing a broom in a leisurely manner. Nothing suggested that I was welcome. My footsteps echoed accusingly as I crossed the floor.
    Of course, I was going to be out of place here at any time of the night or day. The club’s website showed a packed room with nobody over the age of twenty-five. At the time when I might have found an establishment of this sort interesting, none of its existing clientele would have even been born.
    The assistant manager, once summoned by the man with the broom, looked as though he had qualified only recently as an adult. His chin sprouted fluffy ginger hair that might have been meant as a beard. He shook his head. ‘They left hours ago,’ he said.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘If you’re looking for your son or daughter – we kicked the last of them out at around nine o’clock this morning. Our staff have to get some sleep too.’
    ‘I’m not looking for one of my children. Actually I don’t have any children and almost certainly never will have, but that’s beside the point.’
    ‘How can I help you, then? We’re not serving drinks at the moment.’
    I’d pondered on the journey here exactly what I was going to claim to be. I could simply say that my friend thought that he might have murdered somebody shortly after leaving the club, but there are times when the truth, however straightforward, simply has the wrong sort of feel to it.
    ‘I’m a private detective,’ I said.
    He gave me a resigned nod of the head. I got the impression that the arrival of private detectives on the premises was more or less normal. Not welcome exactly, but not exactly unprecedented.
    ‘My client runs a business in Portsmouth,’ I said. ‘He thinks his head of finance may not be playing absolutely straight with him – that he’s passing confidential information to a rival. We have information that he met up with somebody from the rival firm here on New Year’s Eve.’
    ‘Could be. I’m not sure how I can help.’
    ‘Do you recognise either of these faces?’
    I passed him two author publicity photos, downloaded from their respective websites. Neither really looked like a typical head of finance, but Crispin Vynall, in his leather jacket and sunglasses, might have passed on a good day for a bent head of finance. Henry wasn’t wearing a bow tie but he still had about him the air of somebody who had recently escaped from an Ealing comedy. Allowed access to the petty cash, he would have hot-footed it to Le Touquet with the nearest chorus girl. They would, I realised, have appeared to the average onlooker as a slightly odd couple, for all that they wrote pretty similar types of