Blood Substitute by Margaret Duffy Page A

further but then paused, sniffing the air. He caught my eye and jerked his head back in the direction we had come.
    â€˜What is it?’ I hissed but he shook his head and did not reply.
    Back by the accounts office he stopped to look at a plaque on the wall, the usual legal requirement of company name, head office address and so forth. It looked new and was smaller than its predecessor, an unpainted strip of wall all the way around it. Then, wordlessly, we retraced our footsteps until we were outside in the street.
    â€˜The head office was listed at an address in Walthamsden,’ I said. ‘That’s peculiar. Wasn’t that where Reece said that London hoodlum who might be a relative of the man running the gang down here was supposed to hang out?’
    â€˜And someone was privately smoking cannabis somewhere in their own private Fort Knox,’ Patrick said. ‘Even more peculiar. Shall we come back and have a proper look round tonight?’
    â€˜You no longer have MI5
carte blanche
,’ I reminded him, not for the first time. ‘You can’t just break into places you think might be iffy.’
    This appeared to go in one ear and out of the other. ‘There was a security camera right at the end of that corridor but we were probably too far away for our faces to be recognizable,’ he said and then turned to me with a gleam in his eye. ‘When you think about it the shop might have been acquired as a vehicle for money-laundering. What was behind all those locked doors? Stolen property?’
    â€˜And Mr Tall Man was sitting in an office somewhere down that corridor gloating over his loot? I thought I was supposed to be the one with the vivid imagination.’
    Patrick merely smiled and, when we were back outside, set off at speed down a narrow lane that separated the shop from the building next door. Grimly, I ran to catch up with him.
    There were the usual clutches of fire hydrants, emergency exits, a staff entrance manned by a security man, another wide, dark opening into what I guessed was an underground car park with steel-barred gates across it and, at the far end, a large goods-inwards and outward delivery area fronting partly on to a wider lane that served as access.
    Patrick paused, crossed the side road and looked about. ‘There’s nowhere we could watch the entrances and exits from without creating suspicion. No, damn it, let’s leave, I’ve just spotted more cameras.’
    â€˜D’you really think the store might be part of a criminal set-up?’
    â€˜You have to ask yourself how such a dreadful establishment survives without some kind of underhand activity taking place. Do they sell stolen goods? The business rates must be sky-high here so if you only tend to sell three cups of tea and a fly-swatter most days …’ He broke off with a shrug. ‘No, perhaps I have caught it from you. If there was anything going on here surely the local CID would have sniffed it out by now.’
    We had fruitlessly spent most of the morning at the city centre police station talking to anyone and everyone who might have something interesting to say about the store. We had heard only comments along the lines of ‘it was a wonder the place still survived’ and how nothing had been done to improve it by the new owners.
    I was thinking that the business of not having such a free rein was going to be a real hindrance to this new career when Patrick suddenly removed his leather jacket, thrust it at me and, with a quiet request to stay where I was and keep my eyes open, set off again back in the direction of the main road. Just before he turned the corner there was a transformation into someone else, a stooped, twisted man with downturned head and heavy limp, hands waving around like crabs’ claws.
    Ye gods, anything could happen now;
anything.
    Approximately twenty seconds later the fire alarm within the store went off; bells and a wailing siren,