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that, just reap the rewards.
    The financial data would fill one gap in my knowledge. I hoped it would be more comprehensive than the newspaper accounts. When Joey Morton died, the media responded with ghoulish swiftness. For once, there were no government scandals to divert them, and all the papers had given the Stockport publican’s death a good show. At first, I couldn’t figure out how I’d missed the hue and cry, till I remembered that on the day in question I’d been out all day tracking down a key defense witness for Ruth Hunter, my favorite criminal solicitor. I’d barely had time for a sandwich on the hoof, never mind a browse through the dailies.
    Joey Morton was thirty-eight, a former Third Division footballer turned publican. He and his wife Marina ran the Cob and Pen pub on the banks of the infant Mersey. Joey had gone down to the cellar to clean the beer pipes, taking a new container of KerrSter. Joey was proud of his real ale, and he never let anyone else near the cellarage. When he hadn’t reappeared by opening time, Marina had sent one of the bar staff down to fetch him. The barman found his boss in a crumpled heap on the floor, the KerrSter sitting open beside him. The police had revealed that the post-mortem indicated Joey had died as a result of inhaling hydrogen cyanide gas.
    The pathologist’s job had been made easier by the barman, who reported he’d smelt bitter almonds as soon as he’d entered the cramped cellar. Kerrchem had immediately denied that their product could possibly have caused the death, and the police had
informed a waiting world that they were treating Joey’s death as suspicious. Since then, the story seemed to have died, as always happens when there’s a dearth of shocking revelations.
    It didn’t seem likely that Joey Morton could have died as a result of some ghastly error inside the Kerrchem factory. The obvious conclusion was industrial sabotage. The key questions were when and by whom. Was it an inside job? Was it a disgruntled former employee? Was it an outsider looking for blackmail money? Or was it a rival trying to annex Trevor Kerr’s market? Killing people seemed a bit extreme, but as I know from bitter experience, the trouble with hiring outside help to do your dirty work is that things often get dangerously out of hand.
    It was ten to nine when Trevor Kerr barged in. His eyes looked like the only treasure he’d found the night before had been in the bottom of a bottle. “You Miss Brannigan, then?” he greeted me. If he was harboring dreams of an acting career, I could only hope that Kerrchem wasn’t going to fold. I followed him into his office, catching an unappealing whiff of Scotch revisited blended with Polo before we moved into the aroma of stale cigars and lemon furniture polish. Clearly, the spartan motif didn’t extend beyond the outer office. Trevor Kerr had spared no expense to make his office comfortable. That is, if you find gentlemen’s clubs comfortable. Leather wing armchairs surrounded a low table buffed to a mirror sheen. Trevor’s desk was repro, but what it lacked in class, it made up for in size. All they’d need to stage the world snooker championships on it would be a bit of green baize. That and clear the clutter. The walls were hung with old golfing prints. If his bulk was anything to go by, golf was something Trevor Kerr honored more in the breach than the observance.
    He dumped his briefcase by the desk and settled in behind it. I chose the armchair nearest him. I figured if I waited till I was invited, I’d be past my sell-by date. “So, what do you need from me?” he demanded.
    Before I could reply, the secretary came in with a steaming mug of coffee. The mug said “World’s Greatest Bullshitter.” I wasn’t about to disagree. I wouldn’t have minded a cup myself, but clearly the hired help around Kerrchem wasn’t deemed worthy