‘I’ve got a great idea,’ he said. ‘A bit of a treat for us today.’
‘What are you on about, Charlie?’ said Sheena, with that scornful little laugh of hers.
He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and jingled them in front of her eyes.
‘There’s a property I’m handling. We’ve just put it on the market this week. But the owners have moved out already and it’s standing empty.’
‘So?’
‘Well, when I say “empty”, I just mean no one’s living there. The vendors have bought a villa in France and they’re fitting it out locally. So they’ve left most of their furniture in place in the old house. It’ll go into storage eventually of course, or get sold off. But it’s easier for us to market a furnished property than an empty shell, you see.’
‘Why are you talking about furniture?’
‘Furniture. You know …’ Dean winked. ‘Beds, for example.’
‘Oh. Where is it?’
‘Right here in Wirksworth. Green Hill.’
‘Isn’t that a bit close, Charlie? You always told me we had to be careful.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ he said.
Dean smiled as he pulled into the entrance to the Wirksworth Industrial Centre to do a U-turn. It was exhilarating, this living dangerously. It made him feel really alive, gave him a buzz that he never experienced in any other way. Certainly not in his job at Williamson Hart. These days he spent all his time dealing with frustrated vendors who couldn’t find a buyer, and time-wasting buyers who wanted a property dirt cheap. Why not make use of the opportunities of the job when they came up? He’d heard of people doing this before with empty properties. He was pretty sure one of the senior partners, Gerry Hart, had done it in the past. So where was the harm?
‘Is it a nice house?’ asked Sheena. As if that mattered.
‘Oh, you’ll love it,’ he said.
19
Diane Fry stared at Ralph Edge, wondering why he was laughing so hard at the idea of his friend Glen Turner getting killed. And what did he mean by ‘over and over again’?
Edge just laughed even more when he saw her expression.
‘Team building,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘We were taking part in a team building exercise at the weekend. They took us to a place up in the north of the county. It’s an enormous site, with all kinds of activities, and we stayed there the whole two days. Motivational talks, orienteering, lots of role playing. Even blind driving. You know the sort of thing.’
Fry did. Except for … ‘Blind driving?’
‘You don’t know how that works? Well, they put two of you in a car, and the driver is blindfolded.’
‘What’s the point of that?’
‘The idea is that if you’re the one driving you’ve got to have complete trust in your navigator. If you’re acting as navigator, you have to be able to communicate clearly. It’s a metaphor for a good relationship in the workplace. Or something like that.’
Fry recognised the slightly jaded tone of someone who’d taken part in too many team building exercises, been sent on too many personal development courses. She’d heard the same tone in police locker rooms.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Irvine. ‘I know that place. Did you go paintballing too?’
‘Of course we did. They have a massive paintballing set-up. About a dozen different arenas. A paintballing session is always part of these things. You’re working as a team under pressure, focusing your efforts on achieving a collective goal. And getting to splatter your boss with paint at the same time. It’s brilliant.’
‘And Glen Turner took part in this?’
‘Everyone has to join in. In fact, we were on the same team. Green team, the claims adjusters. Glen was completely useless, of course. He got shot to bits by the red team. Some of those women in Sales are merciless. I bet he was sore for days afterwards.’ Edge began to laugh again, then coughed to a halt. ‘Well, I mean…’
‘Yes. He was only sore for a couple of days. And then he died.’
Diane Fry looked at Nathan Baird. He appeared to be shocked, even outraged – which pleased her more than it should have.
‘We need a list of the claims that Glen Turner was working on,’ she repeated.
‘You’re … you’re suggesting one of our policyholders might have been responsible for Glen’s death?’ said Baird.
‘I’m sure you get plenty of dissatisfied customers, don’t you, sir?’
‘Well, of course. It’s in the nature of our business.’
‘People who believe they’ve lost out on quite a large amount of money they were expecting to receive on an insurance policy?’