VAL McDERMID

Blue Genes

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996

Copyright © Val McDermid 1996

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006498315

Ebook Edition © MAY 2009 ISBN: 9780007327577

Version: 2016-09-21

For Fairy, Lesley and all the other lesbian mothers who prove that moulds are there to be broken. And for Robyn and Andrew and Jack

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

1

The day Richard’s death announcement appeared in the Manchester Evening Chronicle, I knew I couldn’t postpone clearing up the mess any longer. But there was something I had to do first. I stood in the doorway of the living room of the man who’d been my lover for three years, Polaroid in hand, surveying the chaos. Slowly, I swept the camera lens round the room, carefully recording every detail of the shambles, section by section. This was one time I wasn’t prepared to rely on memory. Richard might be gone, but that didn’t mean I was going to take any unnecessary risks. Private eyes who do that have as much chance of collecting their pensions as a Robert Maxwell employee.

Once I had a complete chronicle of exactly how things had been left in the room that was a mirror image of my own bungalow next door, I started my mammoth task. First, I sorted things into piles: books, magazines, CDs, tapes, promo videos, the detritus of a rock journalist’s life. Then I arranged them. Books, alphabetically, on the shelf unit. CDs ditto. The tapes I stacked in the storage unit Richard had bought for the purpose one Sunday when I’d managed to drag him round Ikea, the 1990s equivalent of buying an engagement ring. I’d even put the cabinet together for him, but he’d never got into the habit of using it, preferring the haphazard stacks and heaps strewn all over the floor. I buried the surge of emotion that came with the memory and carried on doggedly. The magazines I shoved out of sight in the conservatory that runs along the back of both our houses, linking them together more firmly than we’d ever been prepared to do in any formal sense with our lives. I leaned against the wall and looked around the room. When people say, ‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,’ how come we never really believe we’ll be the ones left clutching the sticky end? I sighed and forced myself on. I emptied ashtrays of the roaches left from Richard’s joints, gathered together pens and pencils and stuffed them into the sawn-off Sapporo beer can he’d used for the purpose for as long as I’d known him. I picked up the assorted notepads, sheets of scrap paper and envelopes where he’d scribbled down vital phone numbers and quotes, careful not to render them any more disordered than they were already, and took them through to the room he used as his office when it wasn’t occupied by his nine-year-old son Davy on one of his regular visits. I dumped them on the desk on top of a remarkably similar-looking pile already there.

Back in the living room, I was amazed by the effect. It almost looked like a room I could sit comfortably in. Cleared of the usual junk, it was possible to see the pattern on the elderly Moroccan rug that covered most of the floor and the sofas could for once accommodate the five people they were designed for. I realized for the first time that the coffee table had a central panel of glass. I’d been trying for ages to get him to put the room into something approaching a civilized state, but he’d always resisted me. Even though I’d finally got my own way, I can’t say it made me happy. But then, I couldn’t get out of my mind the reason behind what I was doing here, and what lay ahead. The announcement of Richard’s death was only the beginning of a chain of events that would be a hell of a lot more testing than tidying a room.

I thought about brushing the rug, but I figured that was probably gilding the lily, the kind of activity that people found a little bizarre after the death of a lover. And bizarre was not the impression I wanted to give. I went back through to my house and changed from the sweat pants and T-shirt I’d worn to do the cleaning into something more appropriate for a grieving relict. A charcoal wool wraparound skirt from the French Connection sale and a black lamb’s-wool turtleneck I’d chosen for the one and only reason that it made me look like death. There are times in a private eye’s working life when looking like she’s about to keel over is an image preferable to that of Wonder Woman on whizz.

I was about to close the conservatory door behind me as I returned to Richard’s house when his doorbell belted out an inappropriate blast of the guitar riff from Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’. ‘Shit,’ I muttered. No matter how careful you are, there’s always something you forget. I couldn’t remember what the other choices were on Richard’s ‘Twenty Great Rock Riffs’ doorbell, but I was sure there must be something more fitting than Clapton’s wailing guitar. Maybe something from the Smiths, I thought vaguely as I tried to compose my face into a suitable expression for a woman who’s just lost her partner. Just how was I supposed to look, I found a second to wonder. What’s the well-bereft woman wearing on her face this season? You can’t even go for the mascara tracks down the cheeks in these days of lash tints.

I took a deep breath, hoped for the best and opened the door. The crime correspondent of the Manchester Evening Chronicle stood on the step, her black hair even more like an explosion in a wig factory than usual. ‘Kate,’ my best friend Alexis said, stepping forward and pulling me into a hug. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she added, a catch in her voice. She moved back to look at me, tears in her eyes. So much for the hard-bitten newshound. ‘Why didn’t you call us? When I saw it in the paper…Kate, what the hell happened?’

I looked past her. All quiet in the street outside. I put my arm round her shoulders and firmly drew her inside, closing the door behind her. ‘Nothing. Richard’s fine,’ I said, leading the way down the hall.

‘Do what?’ Alexis demanded, stopping and frowning at me. ‘If he’s fine, how come I just read he’s dead in tonight’s paper? And if he’s fine, how come you’re doing the “Baby’s in Black” number when you know that’s the one colour that makes you look like the Bride of Frankenstein?’

‘If you’d let me get a word in edgeways, I’ll explain,’ I said, going through to the living room. ‘Take my word for it, Richard is absolutely OK.’

Alexis stopped dead on the threshold, taking in the pristine tidiness of the room. ‘Oh no, he’s not,’ she said, suspicion running through her heavy Scouse accent like the stripe in the toothpaste. ‘He’s not fine if he’s left his living room looking like this. At the very least, he’s having a nervous breakdown. What the hell’s going on here, KB?’

‘I can’t believe you read the death notices,’ I said, throwing myself down on the nearest sofa.

‘I don’t normally,’ Alexis admitted, subsiding on the sofa opposite me. ‘I was down Moss Side nick waiting for a statement from the duty inspector about a little bit of aggravation involving an Uzi and a dead Rottweiler, and they were taking so long about it I’d read everything else in the paper except the ads for the dinner dances. And it’s just as well I did. What’s going on? If he’s not dead, who’s he upset enough to get heavy-metal hassle like this?’ She stabbed the paper she carried with a nicotine-stained index finger.

‘It was me who put the announcement in,’ I said.

‘That’s one way of telling him it’s over,’ Alexis interrupted before I could continue. ‘I thought you two had got things sorted?’

‘We have,’ I said through clenched teeth. Ironing out the problems in my relationship with Richard would have taken the entire staff of an industrial laundry a month. It had taken us rather longer.

‘So what’s going on?’ Alexis demanded belligerently. ‘What’s so important that you have to give everybody a heart attack thinking me laddo’s popped his clogs?’

‘Can’t you resist the journalistic exaggeration for once?’ I sighed. ‘You know and I know that nobody under sixty routinely reads the deaths column. I had to use a real name and address, and I figured with Richard out of town till the end of the week, nobody’s going to be any the wiser if I used his,’ I explained. ‘And he won’t be, unless you tell him.’

‘That depends on whether you tell me what this is all in aid of,’ Alexis said cunningly, her outrage at having wasted her sympathy a distant memory now she had the scent of a possible story in her nostrils. ‘I mean, I think he’s going to notice something’s going on,’ she added, sweeping an eloquent arm through the air. ‘I don’t think he knows that carpet has a pattern.’

‘I took Polaroids before I started,’ I told her. ‘When I’m finished, I’ll put it back the way it was before. He won’t notice a thing.’

‘He will when I show him the cutting,’ Alexis countered. ‘Spill, KB. What’re you playing at? What’s with the grieving widow number?’ She leaned back and lit a cigarette. So much for my clean ashtrays.

‘Can’t tell you,’ I said sweetly. ‘Client confidentiality.’

‘Bollocks,’ Alexis scoffed. ‘It’s me you’re talking to, KB, not the bizzies. Come on, give. Or else the first thing Richard sees when he comes home is…’

I closed my eyes and muttered an old gypsy curse under my breath. It’s not that I speak Romany; it’s just that I’ve refused to buy lucky white heather once too often. Believe me, I know exactly what those old gypsies say. I weighed up my options. I could always call her bluff and hope she wouldn’t tell Richard, on the basis that the two of them maintain this pretence of despising each other’s area of professional expertise and extend that into the personal arena at every possible opportunity. On the other hand, the prospect of explaining to Richard that I was responsible for the report of his death didn’t appeal either. I gave in. ‘It’s got to be off the record, then,’ I said ungraciously.

‘Why?’ Alexis demanded.

‘Because with a bit of luck it will be sub judice in a day or two. And if you blow it before then, the bad guys will be out of town on the next train and we’ll never nail them.’

‘Anybody ever tell you you’ve got melodramatic tendencies, KB?’ Alexis asked with a grin.

‘A bit rich, coming from a woman who started today’s story with, “Undercover police swooped on a top drug dealer’s love nest in a dawn raid this morning,” when we both know that all that happened was a couple of guys from the Drugs Squad turned over some two-bit dealer’s girlfriend’s bedsit,’ I commented.

‘Yeah, well, you gotta give it a bit of topspin or the boy racers on the newsdesk kill it. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I want to know why Richard’s supposed to be dead.’

‘It’s a long and complicated story,’ I started in a last attempt to lose her interest.

Alexis grinned and blew a long stream of smoke down her nostrils. Puff the Magic Dragon would have signed up for a training course on the spot. ‘Great,’ she enthused. ‘My favourite kind.’

‘The client’s a firm of monumental masons,’ I said. ‘They’re the biggest provider of stone memorials in South Manchester. They came to us because they’ve been getting a string of complaints from people saying they’ve paid for gravestones that haven’t turned up.’

‘Somebody’s been nicking gravestones?’

‘Worse than that,’ I said, meaning it. Far as I was concerned, I was dealing with total scumbags on this one. ‘My clients are the incidental victims of a really nasty scam. From what I’ve managed to find out so far, there are at least two people involved, a man and a woman. They turn up on the doorsteps of the recently bereaved and claim to be representing my client’s firm. They produce these business cards which have the name of my clients, complete with address and phone number, all absolutely kosher. The only thing wrong with them is that the names on the cards are completely unknown to my client. They’re not using the names of his staff. But this pair are smart. They always come in the evening, out of business hours, so anyone who’s a bit suspicious can’t ring my client’s office and check up on them. And they come single-handed. Nothing heavy. Where it’s a woman who’s died, it’s the woman who shows up. Where it’s a man, it’s the bloke.’

‘So what’s the pitch?’ Alexis asked.

‘They do the tea-and-sympathy routine, then they explain that they’re adopting the new practice of visiting people in their homes because it’s a more personal approach to choosing an appropriate memorial. Then they go into a special-offer routine, just like they were selling double glazing or something. You know the sort of thing—unique opportunity, special shipment of Italian marble or Aberdeen granite, you could be one of the people we use for testimonial purposes, limited period offer.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Alexis groaned. ‘And if they don’t sign up tonight, they’ve lost the opportunity, am I right, or am I right?’

‘You’re right. So these poor sods whose lives are already in bits because they’ve just lost their partner or husband or wife, or mother or father, or son or daughter get done up like a kipper just so some smart bastard can go out and buy another designer suit or a mobile bloody phone,’ I said angrily. I know all the rules about never letting yourself get emotionally involved with the jobs, but there are times when staying cool and disinterested would be the mark of inhumanity rather than good sense. This was one of them.

Alexis lit another cigarette, shaking her head. ‘Pure gobshites,’ she said in disgust. ‘Twenty-four-carat shysters. So they take the cash and disappear into the night, leaving your clients to pick up the pieces when the headstone remains a ghostly presence?’

‘Something like that. They really are a pair of unscrupulous bastards. I’ve been interviewing some of the people who have been had over, and a couple of them have told me the woman has actually driven them to holes in the wall to get money for a cash deposit.’ I shook my head, remembering the faces of the victims again. They showed a procession of emotions, each more painful to watch than the last. There was grief revisited in the setting of the scene for me, then anger as they recalled how they’d been stung, then a mixture of shame and resentment that they’d fallen for it. ‘And there’s no point in me telling them that in their shoes even a streetwise old cynic like me would probably have fallen for it. Because I probably would have done, that’s the worst of it,’ I added bitterly.

‘Grief gets you like that,’ Alexis agreed. ‘The last thing you’re expecting is to be taken for a ride. Look at how many families end up not speaking to each other for years because someone has done something outrageous in the immediate aftermath of death, when everyone’s staggering round feeling like their brain’s in the food processor along with their emotions. After my Uncle Jos’s second wife Theresa wore my gran’s fur coat to the old dear’s funeral, she might as well have been dead too. My dad wouldn’t even let my mum send them a Christmas card for about ten years. Until Uncle Jos got cancer himself, poor sod.’

‘Yeah, well, us knowing these people haven’t been particularly gullible doesn’t make it any easier for them. The only thing that might help them would be for me to nail the bastards responsible.’

‘What about the bizzies? Haven’t they reported it to them?’

I shrugged. ‘Only one or two of them. Most of them left it at phoning my client. It’s pride, isn’t it? People don’t want everybody thinking they can’t cope just because they’ve lost somebody. Especially if they’re getting on a bit. So all Officer Dibble has to go on is a few isolated incidents.’ I didn’t need to tell a crime correspondent that it wasn’t something that was going to assume a high priority for a police force struggling to deal with an epidemic of crack and guns that seemed to claim fresh victims every week in spite of an alleged truce between the gangs.

Alexis gave a cynical smile. ‘Not exactly the kind of glamorous case the CID’s glory boys are dying to take on, either. The only way they’d have started to take proper notice would have been if some journo like me had stumbled across the story and given it some headlines. Then they’d have had to get their finger out.’

‘Too late for that now,’ I said firmly.

‘Toerags,’ Alexis said. ‘So you’ve put Richard’s death notice in to try and flush them out?’

‘Seemed like the only way to get a fix on them,’ I said. ‘It’s clear from what the victims have said that they operate by using the deaths column. Richard’s out of town on the road with some band, so I thought I’d get it done and dusted while he’s not around to object to having his name taken in vain. If everything goes according to plan, someone should be here within the next half-hour.’

‘Nice thinking,’ Alexis said approvingly. ‘Hope it works. So why didn’t you use Bill’s name and address? He’s still in Australia, isn’t he?’

I shook my head. ‘I would have done, except he was flying in this afternoon.’ Bill Mortensen, the senior partner of Mortensen and Brannigan, Private Investigators and Security Consultants, had been in Australia for the last three weeks, his second trip Down Under in the past six months, an occurrence that was starting to feel a lot like double trouble to me. ‘He’ll be using his house as a jet-lag recovery zone. So that left Richard. Sorry you had a wasted journey of condolence. And I’m sorry if it upset you,’ I added.

‘You’re all right. I don’t think I really believed he was dead, you know? I figured it must be some sick puppy’s idea of a joke, on account of I couldn’t work out how come you hadn’t told me he’d kicked it. If you see what I mean. Anyway, it wasn’t a wasted journey. I was coming round anyway. There’s something I wanted to tell you.’

For some reason, Alexis had suddenly stopped meeting my eye. She was looking vaguely round the room, as if Richard’s walls were the source of all inspiration. Then she dragged her eyes away from the no longer brilliant white emulsion and started rootling round in a handbag so vast it makes mine look like an evening purse. ‘So tell me,’ I said impatiently after a silence long enough for Alexis to unearth a fresh packet of cigarettes, unwrap them and light one.

‘It’s Chris,’ she exhaled ominously. More silence. Chris, Alexis’s partner, is an architect in a community practice. It feels like they’ve been together longer than Mickey and Minnie. The pair of them had just finished building their dream home beyond the borders of civilization as we know it, part of a self-build scheme. And now Alexis was using the tone of voice that BBC announcers adopt when a member of the Royal family has died or separated from a spouse.

‘What about Chris?’ I asked nervously.

Alexis ran a hand through her hair then looked up at me from under her eyebrows. ‘She’s pregnant.’

Before I could say anything, the doorbell blasted out the riff from ‘Layla’ again.

2

I looked at her and she looked at me. What I saw was genuine happiness accompanied by a faint flicker of apprehension. What Alexis saw, I suspect, was every piece of dental work I’ve ever had done. Before I could get my vocal cords unjammed Alexis was on her feet and heading for the conservatory. ‘That’ll be your scam merchant. I’d better leg it,’ she said. ‘I’ll let myself out through your house. Give me a bell later,’ she added to her slipstream.

Feeling stunned enough to resemble someone whose entire family has been wiped out by a freak accident, I walked to the front door in a bewildered daze. The guy on the other side of it looked like a high-class undertaker’s apprentice. Dark suit, white shirt that gleamed in the streetlights like an advert for soap powder, plain dark tie. Even his hair was a gleaming black that matched his shoeshine. The only incongruity was that instead of a graveyard pallor, his skin had the kind of light tan most of us can’t afford in April. ‘Mrs Barclay?’ he asked, his voice deep and dignified.

‘That’s right,’ I said, trying for tremulous.

A hand snaked into his top pocket and came out with a business card. ‘Will Allen, Mrs Barclay. I’m very sorry for your loss,’ he said, not yet offering the card.

‘Are you a friend of Richard’s? Someone he works—worked—with?’

‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Barclay. I didn’t have the good fortune to know your late husband. No, I’m with Greenhalgh and Edwards.’ He handed the card over with a small flourish. ‘I wonder if I might have a quiet word with you?’

I looked at the card. I recognized it right away as one of the ones that come out of machines at the motorway-service areas. The ones on the M6 at Hilton Park are the best; they’ve got really smart textured card. Drop three quid in the slot, choose a logo, type in the text and you get sixty instant business cards. No questions asked. One of the great mysteries of the universe is how villains catch on to the potential of new technology way ahead of the straight community. While most punters were still eyeing the business card machines warily on their way to the toilets, the bad guys were queuing up to arm themselves with bullshit IDs. This particular piece of fiction told me Will Allen was Senior Bereavement Consultant with Greenhalgh and Edwards, Monumental Masons, The Garth, Cheadle Hulme. ‘You’d better come in,’ I said tonelessly and stepped back to let him pass me. As I closed the door, I noticed Alexis emerging from my house with a cheery wave in my direction.

Allen was moving tentatively towards the living room, the one open door off the hallway. I’d drawn the line at cleaning the whole house. ‘Come on through,’ I said, ushering him in and pointing him at the sofa Alexis had just vacated. He sat down, carefully hitching up his trousers at the knees. In the light, the charcoal grey suit looked more like Jasper Conran than Marks and Spencer; ripping off widows was clearly a profitable business.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see me, Mrs Barclay,’ Allen said, concern dripping from his warm voice. He was clean cut and clean shaven, with a disturbing resemblance to John Cusack at his most disarming. ‘Was your husband’s death very sudden?’ he asked, his eyebrows wrinkling in concern.

‘Car accident,’ I said, gulping back a sob. Hard work, acting. Almost convinces you Kevin Costner earns every dollar of the millions he gets for a movie.

‘Tragic,’ he intoned. ‘To lose him in his prime. Tragic.’ Much more of this and I wasn’t going to be acting. I was going to be weeping for real. And not from sorrow.

I made a point of looking at his business card again. ‘I don’t understand, Mr Allen. What is it you’re here about?’

‘My company is in the business of providing high quality memorials for loved ones who pass away. The quality element is especially important for someone like yourself, losing a loved one so young. You’ll want to be certain that whatever you choose to remember him by will more than stand the test of time.’ His solemn smile was close to passing the sincerity test. If I really was a grief-stricken widow, I’d have been half in love with him by now.

‘But the undertaker said he’d get that all sorted out for me,’ I said, going for the sensible-but-confused line.

‘Traditionally, we have relied on funeral directors to refer people on to us, but we’ve found that this doesn’t really lead to a satisfactory conclusion,’ Allen said confidentially. ‘When you’re making the arrangements for a funeral, there are so many different matters to consider. It’s hard under those circumstances to give a memorial the undivided attention it deserves.’

I nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ I said wearily. ‘It all starts to blur into one after a while.’

‘And that’s exactly why we decided that a radical rethink was needed. A memorial is something that lasts, and it’s important for those of us left behind that it symbolizes the love and respect we have for the person we have lost. We at Greenhalgh and Edwards feel that the crucial issue here is that you make the decision about how to commemorate your dear husband in the peace of your own home, uncluttered by thoughts of the various elements that will make up the funeral.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘It sounds sensible, I suppose.’

‘We think so. Tell me, Mrs Barclay, have you opted for interment or cremation?’

‘Not cremation,’ I said very firmly. ‘A proper burial, that’s what Richard would have wanted.’ But only after he was actually dead, I added mentally.

He snapped open the locks on the slim black briefcase he’d placed next to him on the sofa. ‘An excellent choice, if I may say so, Mrs Barclay. It’s important to have a place where you can mourn properly, a focus for the communication I’m sure you’ll feel between yourself and Mr Barclay for a long time to come. Now, because we’re still in the trial period of this new way of communicating with our customers, we are able to offer our high quality memorials at a significant discount of twenty per cent less than the prices quoted on our behalf by funeral directors. So that means you get much better value for your money; a memorial that previously might have seemed out of your price range suddenly becomes affordable. Because, of course, we all want the very best for our loved ones,’ he added, his voice oozing sympathy.

I bit back the overwhelming desire to rip his testicles off and have them nickel-plated as a memorial to his crass opportunism and nodded weakly. ‘I suppose,’ I said.

‘I wonder if I might take this opportunity to show you our range?’ The briefcase was as open as the expression on his face. How could I refuse?

‘I don’t know…’

‘There’s absolutely no obligation, though obviously it would be in your best interests to go down the road that offers you the best value for money.’ He was on his feet and across the room to sit next to me in one fluid movement, a display file from his briefcase in his hand as if by magic. Sleight of hand like his, he could have been the new David Copperfield if he’d gone straight.

He flipped the book open in front of me. I stared at a modest granite slab, letters stuck on it like Letraset rather than incised in the stone. ‘This is the most basic model we offer,’ he said. ‘But even that is finest Scottish granite, quarried by traditional methods and hand-finished by our own craftsmen.’ He quoted a price that made my daily rate seem like buttons. He placed the file on my lap.

‘Is that with or without the discount?’ I asked.

‘We always quote prices without discount, Mrs Barclay. So you’re looking at a price that is twenty per cent less than that. And if you want to go ahead and you’re prepared to pay a cash deposit plus cheque for the full amount tonight, I am authorized to offer you a further five per cent discount, making a total of one quarter less than the quoted price.’ His hand had moved to cover mine, gently patting it.

That was when the front door crashed open. ‘Careful with that bag, it’s got the hot and sour soup in it,’ I heard a familiar voice shout. I closed my eyes momentarily. Now I knew how Mary Magdalene felt on Easter Sunday.

‘Kate? You in here?’ Richard’s voice beat him into the room by a couple of seconds. He arrived in the doorway clutching a fragrant plastic carrier bag, a smoking spliff in his other hand. He looked around his living room incredulously. ‘What the hell’s going on? What have you done to the place?’

He stepped into the room, followed by a pair of burly neopunks, each with a familiar Chinese takeaway carrier bag. It was the only remotely normal thing about them. Each wore heavy black work boots laced halfway up their calves, ragged black leggings and heavy tartan knee-length kilts. Above the waist, they had black granddad shirts with strategic rips held together by kilt pins and Celtic brooches. Across their chests, each had a diagonal tartan sash of the kind worn on television on Hogmanay by the dancers on those terrible ethnic fantasias the Scottish TV companies broadcast to warm the cockles of their exiles’ hearts and make the rest of us throw up into our champagne. The one on Richard’s left had bright red hair left long and floppy on top. The sides of his head were stubbled. The other had a permed, rainbow striped Mohican. Each was big enough to merit his own postcode. They looked like Rob Roy dressed by Vivienne Westwood. Will Allen goggled at the three of them, aghast.

Richard dropped the bag of Chinese food and his jaw as the transformation to the room really sank in. ‘Jesus, Brannigan, I turn my back for five minutes and you trash the place. And who the hell are you?’ he demanded, glowering at Allen.

Allen reassembled his face into something approaching a smile. ‘I’m Will Allen. From Greenhalgh and Edwards, the monumental masons. About Mr Barclay’s memorial?’

Richard frowned. ‘Mr Barclay’s memorial? You mean, as in gravestone?’

Allen nodded. ‘That’s not the term we prefer to use, but yes, as in gravestone.’

‘Mr Richard Barclay, would that be?’

‘That’s right.’

Richard shook his head in disbelief. He stuck his hand into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a press card with his photograph on it. He thrust it towards Allen. ‘Do I look dead to you?’

Allen was on his feet, his folder pulled out of my grasp. He threw it into the briefcase, grabbed it and shouldered past Richard and the two Celtic warriors. ‘Ah shit,’ I swore, jumping to my feet and pushing through the doorway in Allen’s wake.

‘Come back here, Brannigan, you’ve got some explaining to do,’ I heard Richard yell as I reached the door. Allen was sprinting down the path towards the car-parking area. I didn’t have my car keys on me; the last thing I’d anticipated was a chase. But Allen was my only lead and he was getting away. I had to do something. I ran down the path after him, glad that the only respectable pair of black shoes in my wardrobe had been flat pumps. As he approached a silver Mazda saloon, the lights flashed and I heard the doors unlock. Allen jumped into the car. The engine started first time. Another one of the joys of modern technology that makes life simpler for the bad guys. He reversed in a scream of tyres and engine, threw the car into a three-point turn and swept out of the cul-de-sac where I live. Anyone seeing him burn rubber as he swung on to the main drag would only mark him down as one of the local car thieves being a little indiscreet.

Dispirited, I sighed and walked back to the house. I’d got the number of his car, but I had a funny feeling that wasn’t going to take me a whole lot further forward. These people were too professional for that. At least I had the whole thing on tape, I reminded myself. I stopped in my tracks. Oh no, I didn’t. In the confusion of Alexis’s visit and the fallout from her shock announcement, I’d forgotten to switch on the radio mikes I’d planted in Richard’s living room. The whole operation was a bust.

Not only that, but I was going to have to deal with an irate and very much alive Richard, who was by now standing on his doorstep, arms folded, face scowling. Swallowing a sigh, I walked towards him. If I’d been wearing heels, I’d have been dragging them. ‘I know you think being on the road with a neo-punk band is a fate worse than death, but it doesn’t actually call for a tombstone,’ Richard said sarcastically as I approached.

‘It was work,’ I said wearily.

‘Am I supposed to be grateful for that? There’s a man in my living room—at least, I thought it was my living room, but looking at it, I’m not so sure any more. Maybe I walked into the wrong house by mistake? Anyway, there’s some smooth bastard in my living room, sitting on my settee discussing my gravestone with my so-called girlfriend—’

‘Partner,’ I interjected. ‘Twenty-nine, remember? Not a girl any more.’

He ignored me and steamrollered on. ‘Presumably because I’m supposedly dead. And I’m supposed to be calm and laid back about it because it was work?’ he yelled.

‘Are you going to let me in, or shall I sell tickets?’ I asked calmly, gesturing over my shoulder with my thumb at the rest of the close. I didn’t have to look to know that half a dozen windows would be occupied by now. TV drama’s been so dire lately that the locals have taken up competitive Neighbourhood Watching.

‘Let you in? Why? Are we expecting the undertaker next? Coffin due to be delivered, is it?’ Richard demanded, thrusting his head forward so we were practically nose to nose. I could smell the sweetness of the marijuana on his breath, see the specks of gold in his hazel eyes. Good technique for dealing with anger, focusing on small details of your environment.

I pushed him in the chest. Not hard, just enough to make him back off. ‘I’ll explain inside,’ I said, lips tight against my teeth.

‘Well, big fat hairy deal,’ Richard muttered, turning on his heel and pushing past the two neopunks who were leaning against the wall behind him, desperately trying to pretend they were far too cool to be interested in the war raging around them.

I followed him back into the living room and returned to my seat. Richard sat opposite me, the coffee table between us. He started emptying the contents of the three carrier bags on to the table. ‘You’ll find bowls and chopsticks in the kitchen,’ he said to his giant Gaelic gargoyles. ‘First on the right down the hall. That’s if she hasn’t emptied it as well.’ The redhead left in search of eating implements. ‘This had better be good, Brannigan,’ Richard added threateningly.

‘It smells good,’ I said brightly. ‘Yang Sing, is it?’

‘Never mind the bloody Chinese!’ I waited for the jolt while the world stopped turning. Never mind the bloody Chinese? From the man who thinks it’s not food if it doesn’t have soy sauce in it? ‘What was that creep doing here?’ Richard persisted.

‘Pitching me into a gravestone,’ I said as the redhead returned and dumped bowls, chopsticks and serving spoons in front of us. I grabbed a carton of hot and sour soup and a spoon.

‘I realized that. But why here? And why my gravestone?’ Richard almost howled.

The punk with the Mohican exchanged apprehensive looks with his mate. The redhead nodded. ‘Look,’ the Mohican said. ‘This mebbe isnae a good time for this, Richard, know what ah mean, but?’ The Glasgow accent was so strong you could have built a bridge with it and known it would outlast the civilization that spawned it. Once I’d deciphered his sentiment, I couldn’t help agreeing with him.

‘We could come back another time, by the way,’ the redhead chipped in, accent matching. Like aural bookends.

‘Never mind coming back, you’re here now,’ Richard said. ‘Get stuck in. She loves an audience, don’t you, Brannigan?’ He piled his bowl with fried noodles and beansprouts, added some chunks of aromatic stuffed duck and balanced a couple of prawn wontons on top, then leaned back in his seat to munch. ‘So why am I dead?’

He always does it to me. As soon as there’s the remotest chance of me getting my fair share of a Chinese takeaway, Richard asks the kind of questions that require long and complicated answers. He knows perfectly well that my mother has rendered me incapable of speaking with my mouth full. Some injunctions you can rebel against; others are in the grain. Between mouthfuls of hot and sour soup so powerful it steam-cleaned my sinuses, I filled him in on the scam.

Then, Richard being too busy with his chopsticks to comment, I went on the offensive. ‘And it would all have gone off perfectly if you hadn’t come blundering through the door and blowing my cover sky-high. Two days early, I might point out. You’re supposed to be in Milton Keynes with some band that sounds like it was chosen at random from the Neanderthal’s dictionary of grunts. What was it? Blurt? Grope? Fart?’

‘Prole,’ Richard mumbled through the Singapore vermicelli. He swallowed. ‘But we’re not talking about me coming back early to my own house. We’re talking about this mess,’ he said, waving his chopsticks in the air.

‘It’s cleaner and tidier than it’s ever been,’ I said firmly.

‘Bad news, but,’ the Mohican muttered. ‘Hey, missus, have you thought about getting your chakras balanced? Your energy flow’s well blocked in your third.’

‘Shut up, Lice. Not everybody’s into being enlightened and that,’ the redhead said, giving him a dig in the side that would have left most people with three cracked ribs. Lice only grunted.

‘You still haven’t said why you came home early,’ I pointed out.

‘It was two things really. Though looking at what I’ve come home to, I don’t know why I bothered about one of them,’ Richard said, as if that were some kind of explanation.

‘Do I have to guess? Animal, vegetable or mineral?’

‘I’d got all the material I needed for the pieces I’ve got lined up on Prole, and then I bumped into the lads here. Boys, meet Kate Brannigan, who, in spite of appearances to the contrary, is a private investigator. Kate, meet Dan Druff, front man with Glasgow’s top nouveau punk band, Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns.’ The redhead nodded gravely and sketched a salute with his chopsticks. ‘And Lice, the band’s drummer.’ Lice looked up from his bowl and nodded. I found a moment to wonder if their guitar players were called Al O’Pecia and Nits.

‘Delighted to make your acquaintance,’ I said. ‘Richard, pleased though I am to be sharing my evening with Dan and Lice, why exactly have you brought them home?’ My subtlety, good manners and discretion had passed their sell-by date. Besides, Dan and Lice didn’t look like the kind who’d notice anyone being offensive until the half-bricks started swinging.

‘My good deed for the year,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘They need a private eye, and I’ve never seen you turn down a case.’

‘A paying case,’ I muttered.

‘We’ll pay you,’ Dan said.

‘Something,’ Lice added ominously.

‘For your trouble,’ Dan added, even more ominously.

‘Why do you need a private eye?’ I asked. It wouldn’t be the first time Richard’s dropped me in it, and this time I was determined that if I agreed, it was going to be an informed decision.

‘Somebody’s trying to see us off,’ Dan said bluntly.

‘You mean…?’ I asked.

‘How plain do you need it?’ Lice demanded. ‘They’re trying to wipe us off the map. Finish us. Render us history. Consign us to our next karmic state.’

There didn’t seem to be two ways of taking Lice’s words. I was hooked, no question.

3

This was definitely a lot more interesting than rehashing the cockup of my gravestone inquiries. There would be plenty of time for me to beat myself up about that later. Dealing with the seriously menaced, even if they were barely comprehensible Glaswegian musicians, has always seemed a better way of passing the time than contemplating my failures. ‘You’ve had death threats?’ I asked.

Lice looked at Dan, shaking his head pityingly. Dan looked at Richard, his eyebrows steepling in a demand for help. ‘Not as such,’ Richard explained. ‘When Lice talks about being wiped out, he means metaphorically.’

‘That’s right,’ Lice confirmed. ‘Poetic licence and that.’ My interest was dropping faster than a gun barrel faced with Clint Eastwood.

‘Somebody’s out to get us professionally is what we’re trying to say,’ Dan butted in. ‘We’re getting stuffed tighter than a red pudding.’

‘What’s a red pudding?’ Richard demanded. I was glad about that; we private eyes never like to display our ignorance.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Lice groaned.

‘What do you expect from a country where the fish and chip shops only sell fish and chips?’ Dan said. ‘It’s like a sausage only it’s red and it’s got oatmeal in it and you deep-fry it, OK? In batter,’ he added for the benefit of us Sassenachs.

I wasn’t about to ask any more. I still hadn’t recovered from the shock of asking for a pizza in a Scottish chip shop. I’d watched in horrified amazement as the fryer expertly folded it in half and dumped it in the deep fat. No, I didn’t eat it. I fed it to the seagulls and watched them plummet into the waves afterwards, their ability to defeat gravity wiped out in one meal. ‘So this metaphorical, poetically licensed professional stitch-up consists of what, exactly?’

‘Essentially, the boys are being sabotaged,’ Richard said.

‘Every time we’re doing a gig around the town, some bastard covers all our posters up,’ Dan said. ‘Somebody’s been phoning the promoters and telling them not to sell any more tickets for our gigs because they’re already sold out. And then we get to a gig and there’s hardly any genuine fans there.’

‘But there’s always a busload of Nazis on super lager that tear the place to bits and close the gig down,’ Lice kicked in bitterly. ‘Now we’ve been barred from half the decent venues in the north and we’re getting tarred with the same brush as they fascist bastards that are wrecking our gigs. The punters are starting to mutter that if these guys follow us around from place to place, it must be because there’s something in our music that appeals to brainless racists.’

‘And actually, the boys’ lyrics are quite the opposite of that.’ Richard with the truly crucial information as usual. ‘Even the most PC of your friends would be hard pressed to take offence.’

‘The only PC friend I’ve got is the one next door with the Pentium processor,’ I snapped. To my surprise, Dan and Lice guffawed.

‘Nice one,’ Dan said. ‘Anyway, last night put the tin lid on it. We were doing this gig in Bedford, and while we were inside watching the usual wrecking crew smashing the place up, some total toerag torched our Transit.’

‘Have you talked to the police about this?’ I said. Silly me. The boys scowled and shook their heads. Richard cast his eyes heavenward and sighed deeply. I tried again. ‘This sounds like a campaign of systematic harassment to me. They’ve got the resources to pursue something like that properly. And they’re free,’ I added.

‘I thought you said she knew her arse from a hole in the ground?’ Lice demanded of Richard. ‘“Have you talked to the police about this,”’ he mimicked cruelly. The last time I felt that mimsy I was nine years old and forced to wear my cousin’s cast-off party frock in lemon nylon with blue roses, complete with crackling petticoat, to my best friend’s birthday party. ‘For fuck’s sake, look at us. If we walked into the local nick, they’d arrest us. If we told them we were being harassed, they’d piss themselves laughing. I don’t think that’s the answer, missus.’

Dan picked up the last salt and pepper rib and stood up. ‘Come on, Lice,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to embarrass the woman. Richard, I know you meant well, but hey, your missus obviously isnae up to it. You know what they’re like, women today. They cannae bring themselves to admit there are things that are way beyond them.’

That did it. Through clenched teeth, I said, ‘I am nobody’s missus and I am more than capable of sorting out any of the assorted scumbags that have doubtless got their own very good reasons for having it in for Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns. You want this sorting, I’ll sort it. No messing.’

When I saw the smile of complicity that flashed between Richard and Dan, I nearly decked the pair of them with the flying sweep kick I’d been perfecting down the Thai boxing gym. But there’s no point in petulance once you’ve been well and truly had over. ‘I think that little routine makes us quits,’ I told Richard. He grinned. ‘I’m going to need a lot more details.’

Dan sat down again. ‘It all started with the flyposting,’ he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. I had the feeling it was going to be a long story.

It was just after midnight when Dan and Lice left Richard and me staring across the coffee table at each other. It had taken a while to get the whole story, what with Lice’s digressions into the relationship between rock music and politics, with particular reference to right-wing racists and the oppression of the Scots. The one clear thread in their story that seemed impossible to deny was that someone was definitely out to get them. Any single incident in the Scabby Heided Bairns’s catalogue of disaster could have been explained away, but not the accumulation of cockups that had characterized the last few weeks in the band’s career.

They’d moved down to Manchester, supposedly the alternative music capital of the UK, from their native Glasgow in a bid to climb on to the next rung of the ladder that would lead them to becoming the Bay City Rollers of the nineties. Now, the boys were days away from throwing in the towel and heading north again. Bewildered that they could have made so serious an enemy so quickly, they wanted me to find out who was behind the campaign. Then, I suspected, it would be a matter of summoning their friends and having the Tartan Army march on some poor unsuspecting Manchester villain. I wasn’t entirely sure whose side I was on here.

‘You are going to sort it out for them?’ Richard asked.

I shrugged. ‘If they’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.’

‘This isn’t just about money. You owe me, Brannigan, and these lads are kicking. They deserve a break.’

‘So give them a good write-up in all those magazines you contribute to,’ I told him.

‘They need more than that. They need word of mouth, a following. Without that, they’re not exactly an attractive proposition to a record company.’

‘It would take more fans than Elvis to make Dan Druff and his team attractive to me,’ I muttered. ‘And besides, I don’t owe you. It was you and your merry men who screwed up my job earlier tonight, if you remember.’

Richard looked astonished, his big tortoiseshell glasses slipping down his nose faster than Eddie the Eagle on a ski jump. ‘And what about this place?’ he wailed, waving his arm at the neat and tidy room.

‘Out of the goodness of my heart, I’m not going to demand the ten quid an hour that good industrial cleaners get,’ I said sweetly, getting up and tossing the empty tinfoil containers into plastic bags.

‘What about killing me off?’ he demanded, his voice rising like a Bee Gee. ‘How do you think I felt, coming home to find my partner sitting discussing my gravestone with a complete stranger? And while we’re on the subject, I hope you weren’t going to settle for some cheap crap,’ he added indignantly.

I finished what I was doing and moved across to the sofa. ‘Richard, behave,’ I said, slipping my legs over his, straddling him.

‘It’s not very nice, being dead,’ he muttered as my mouth descended on his.

Eventually, I moved my lips along his jaw, tongue flickering against the angle of the bone. ‘Maybe not,’ I said softly, tickling his ear. ‘But isn’t resurrection fun?’

Richard barely stirred when I left his bed next morning just after seven. I scribbled, ‘Gone 2 work, C U 2night?’ on a Post-It note and stuck it on the forearm that was flung out across the pillow. I used to write messages straight on to his arm with a felt-tip pen until he complained it ruined his street cred to have ‘Buy milk’ stencilled indelibly across his wrist. Nothing if not sensitive to people’s needs, I switched to Post-Its.

Back in my own home, I stood under the shower, taking my first opportunity to consider Alexis’s ballistic missile. I knew that having a baby had climbed to the top of her and Chris’s partnership agenda now that they had put the finishing touches to their house on the edge of the Pennines, but somehow I hadn’t realized parenthood was quite so imminent a project. I’d had this mental picture Of it being something that would rumble on for ages before anything actually happened, given that it’s such a complicated business for lesbian couples to arrange.

First they’ve got to decide whether they want an anonymous donor, in which case their baby could end up having the same father as half the children of lesbians in the Greater Manchester area, with all the potential horrors that lines up for the future.

But if they decide to go for a donor they know, they’ve got to be careful that everyone agrees in advance what his relationship to the child is going to be. Then they’ve got to wait while he has two AIDS tests with a gap of at least six months in between. Finally, they’ve got to juggle things so that sperm and womb are in the same place at the optimum moment. According to Alexis, it’s not like a straight couple where the woman can take her temperature every five minutes till the time is right then seize her bloke by the appropriate body part and demand sex. So I’d been banking on a breathing space to get used to the idea of Chris and Alexis as parents.

I’ve never been smitten with the maternal urge, which means I always feel a bit bemused when my friends get sandbagged by their hormones and turn from perfectly normal women into monomaniacs desperate to pass their genes on to a waiting world. Maybe it’s because my biological clock has still got a way to go before anything in my universe starts turning pumpkin-shaped. Or maybe, as Richard suggests when he’s in sentimental father mode, it’s because I’m a cold-hearted bastard with all the emotional warmth of Robocop. Either way, I didn’t want a child and I never knew if I was saying the right thing to those who did.

Selfishly, my first thought was for the difference it was going to make to my life. Alexis is my best friend. We go shopping for clothes together. We play seriously competitive and acrimonious Scrabble games together. When Chris and Richard aren’t there to complain about the results, we concoct exotic and bizarre snacks (oatcakes with French mayonnaise and strawberry jam; green banana, coconut and chicken curry…) and wash them down with copious amounts of good vodka. We pick each other’s brains and exploit each other’s contacts. Most of all, we’re there for each other when it counts.

As the hot water cascaded over me, I felt like I was already in mourning for the friendship. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. Alexis would have responsibilities. When Chris’s commitments as a partner in a firm of community architects took her out of town, Alexis would be shackled without time off for good behaviour. Instead of hanging out with me after work, she’d be rushing home for bath time and nursery tea. Her conversation would shrink to the latest exploits of the incredible child. And it would be incredible, no two ways about it. They always are. There would be endless photographs to pore over. Instead of calling me to say, ‘Get down here, girl, I’ve just found a fabulous silk shirt in your size in Kendal’s sale,’ Alexis would be putting the child on the phone to say, ‘Wo, gay,’ and claiming it as ‘Hello, Kate’. Worst of all, I had this horrible suspicion I was going to become Auntie Kate. Even Richard’s son Davy has never tried to do that to me.

I rinsed the last of the shampoo out of my auburn hair and stepped out of the shower. At least I didn’t have to live under the same roof as it, I thought as I towelled my head. Besides, I told myself, nothing healthy stays the same. Friendships change and grow, they shift their emphases and sometimes they even die. ‘Everything must change,’ I said out loud. Then I noticed a grey hair. So much for healthy change.

I brushed my hair into the neat bob I’ve opted for recently. Time to get my brain into gear. I knew where I needed to go next on Dan and Lice’s problem, but that was a source that might take a little time and a lot of deviousness to tap. More straightforward was a visit to the dark side of the moon.

Gizmo is one of my silver linings. The cloud was a Telecom engineer that I’d had a brief fling with. He’d caught me at one of those weak moments when you kid yourself into believing a nice smile and cute bum are a reasonable basis for a meaningful relationship. After all, if it’s a good enough principle for most of the male population…His lectures on telephone technology had been mildly interesting the first time round. After a month of them, there wasn’t a court in the land that would have convicted me of anything other than self-defence if I’d succumbed to the temptation of burying a meat cleaver in his skull. But he had introduced me to Gizmo, which gave me something good to remember him by.

If Judy Garland was born in a trunk, Gizmo was born in an anorak. In spite of having the soul of a nerd, he had too much attitude for the passivity of train spotting. So he became a computer whizz. That was back in the steam age of computers, when the most powerful of machines took so long to scroll to the end of a ten-page document that you could go off and drip a pot of filter coffee without missing a thing. When 99.99% of the population still thought bulletin boards were things you found on office walls, Gizmo was on line to people all over the world. The teenagers who invented phone phreaking and hacking into the Pentagon were close personal friends of his. He’d never met them, you understand, just spent his nights typing his end of conversations with them and like-minded nutters all over the planet.

When the FBI started arresting hackers and phreakers on the grounds that America has never known what to do with nonconformists, and the British police started to take an interest, Gizmo decided it was time to stop playing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and come out into the sunlit uplands. So he started working for Telecom. And he manages to keep his face straight when he tells people that he’s a computer systems manager there. Which is another way of saying he actually gets paid to keep abreast of all the information technology that allows him to remain king of the darkside hackers. Gizmo’s like Bruce Wayne in reverse. When darkness falls on Gotham City, instead of donning mask and cape and taking on the bad guys, Gizmo goes on line and becomes one of the growing army who see cyberspace as the ultimate subversive, anarchic community. And Telecom still haven’t noticed that their northern systems manager is a renegade. It’s no wonder none of Gizmo’s friends have Telecom shares.

If I had to pick one thing that demonstrates the key difference between the UK and the USA, it would be their attitudes to information. Americans get everything unless there’s a damn good reason why not. Brits get nothing unless a High Court judge and an Act of Parliament have said there’s a damn good reason why we should. And private eyes are just like ordinary citizens in that respect. We don’t have any privileges. What we have are sources. They fall into two groups: the ones who are motivated by money and the ones who are driven by principle. Gizmo’s belief that information is born free but everywhere is in chains has saved my clients a small fortune. Police records, driver and vehicle licensing information, credit ratings: they’re all there at his fingertips and, for a small donation to Gizmo’s Hardware Upgrade Fund, at mine. The only information he won’t pass on to me is anything relating to BT phone bills or numbers. That would be a breach of confidence. Or something equally arbitrary. We all have to draw the line somewhere.

I draw it at passing Gizmo’s info on to clients. I use him either when I’ve hit a dead end or I know he can get something a lot faster than I can by official routes, which means the client saves money. I know I can be trusted not to abuse that information. I can’t say the same about the people who hire me, so I don’t tell them. I’ve had people waving wads of dosh under my nose for an ex-directory phone number or the address that goes with a car licence plate. Call me a control freak, but I won’t do that kind of work. I know there are agencies who do, but that doesn’t keep me awake at night. The only conscience I can afford to worry about is my own.

Gizmo had recently moved from a bedsit in the busiest red-light street in Whalley Range to a two-bedroomed flat above a shop in Levenshulme, a stretch of bandit country grouped around Stockport Road. The shop sells reconditioned vacuum cleaners. If you’ve ever wondered where Hoovers go when they die, this is the place. I’ve never seen a customer enter or leave the place, though there’s so much grime on the windows they could be running live sex shows in there and nobody would be any the wiser. And Gizmo reckons he’s moved up in the world.

I was going against the traffic flow on the busy arterial road, so it didn’t take me long to drive the short distance to Levenshulme and find a parking space on a side street of red-brick terraces. I pressed the bell and waited, contemplating a front door so coated with inner-city pollution that it was no longer possible to tell what colour it had originally been. The only clean part of the door was the glass on the spyhole. After about thirty seconds, I pressed the bell again. This time, there was a thunder of clattering feet, a brief pause and then the door opened a cautious couple of inches. ‘Kate,’ Gizmo said, showing no inclination to invite me in. His skin looked grey in the harsh morning light, his eyes red-rimmed like a laboratory white rat.

‘All right, Giz?’

‘No, since you ask.’ He rubbed a hand along his stubbled jaw and scratched behind one ear with the knuckle of his index finger.

‘What’s the problem? Trouble with the Dibble?’

His lips twisted in the kind of smile dogs give before they remove your liver without benefit of anaesthetic. ‘No way. I’m always well ahead of the woodentops. No, this is serious. I’ve got the bullet.’

‘From Telecom?’

‘Who else?’

I was taken aback. The only thing I could think of was that someone had got wise to Gizmo’s extra-curricular activities. ‘They catch you with your hand in somebody’s digital traffic?’

‘Get real,’ he said indignantly. ‘Staff cuts. The section head doesn’t like the fact that I know more than anybody else in the section, including him. So it’s good night Vienna, Gizmo.’

‘You’ll get another job,’ I said. I would have found it easier to convince myself if I hadn’t been looking at him as I spoke. As well as the red-rimmed eyes and the stubble, a prospective employer had to contend with a haircut that looked like Edward Scissorhands on a bad hair day, and a dress sense that would embarrass a jumble sale.

‘I’m too old.’

‘How old?’

‘Thirty-two,’ he mumbled with a suspicious scowl, as if he thought I was going to laugh. I didn’t have enough years on him for that.

‘You’re winding me up,’ I said.

‘The guys who do the hiring are in their forties and scared shitless that they’re going to get the tin handshake any day now, and they know nothing about computer systems except that someone told them it’s a young man’s game. If you’re over twenty-five, twenty-seven if you’ve got a PhD, they won’t even look at your CV. Believe me, Kate, I’m too old.’

‘What a bummer,’ I said, meaning it.

‘Yeah, well. Shit happens. But it’s nicer when it happens to somebody else. So what did you come round for? Last orders before I have to put my rates up?’

I handed him the piece of paper where I’d noted Will Allen’s licence plate. ‘The name and address that goes with the car.’

He didn’t even look at it. He just said, ‘Some time this afternoon,’ then started to close the door.

‘Hey, Giz?’ He paused. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. He nodded and shut the door.

I walked back towards the street where I’d parked the zippy Rover 216 that Mortensen and Brannigan had bought for me a couple of months before. Until then, I’d been driving a top-of-the-range sports coupé that we’d taken in part payment for a long and complicated car-finance fraud case, but I’d known in my heart of hearts it was far too conspicuous a set of wheels for the kind of work I do. Given how much I enjoy driving, it had been a wrench to part with it, but I’d learned to love the Rover. Especially after my mate Handbrake had done something double wicked to the engine which made it nippier than any of its German siblings from BMW.

As I rounded the corner, I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was a spray of glittering glass chunks like hundreds of tiny mosaic tiles all over the pavement by the driver’s door of the Rover. The car was twenty yards from the main road, it was half past eight in the morning and I’d been gone less than ten minutes, but someone had had it away on their toes with my stereo.

4

It took me an hour and a half round at Handbrake’s backstreet garage to get a new window and stereo cassette. I knew the window had come from a scrapyard, but it would have been bad manners to ask about the origins of the cassette. I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if my own deck had arrived in the bike pannier of one of the young lads who supply Handbrake with spare parts as an alternative to drug-running round Moss Side, but it clearly wasn’t my lucky day and I had to settle for a less sophisticated machine. While that might increase the shelf life of my new driver’s-door window, it wouldn’t improve the quality of my life in Manchester’s orbital motorway traffic jams, so I wasn’t in the best of moods when I finally staggered through the door of the office just after ten.

I knew at once that something was badly wrong. Shelley, our office manager, made no comment about my lateness. In all the years I’ve been working with her, she’d never before missed the opportunity to whip me into line like one of her two teenage kids. I’d once found her son Donovan, a six-foot three-inch basketball player, engineering student and occasional rapper with a local band, having to give up a weekend to paint my office because he hadn’t come home till four in the morning. After that, I’d always had a good excuse for being late into work. But this morning, she scarcely glanced up from her screen when I walked in. ‘Bill’s in,’ was all she said.

Worrying. ‘Already? I thought he only flew in yesterday afternoon?’

Shelley’s lips pursed. ‘That’s right,’ she said stiffly. ‘He said to tell you he needs a word,’ she added, gesturing with her head towards the closed door of my partner’s office. Even more worrying. Shelley is Bill’s biggest fan. Normally when he returns from one of his foreign security consultancy trips, we all sit around in the outside office and schmooze the morning away over coffee, catching up. Bill’s a friendly soul; I’d never known him to hide behind a closed door unless he needed absolute peace and quiet to work out some thorny computer problem.

I tapped on the door but didn’t wait for an answer before I opened it and walked in on the sort of scene that would have been more appropriate in the new Dancehouse a few doors down Oxford Road. Bill Mortensen, a bearded blond giant of a man, was standing behind his desk, leaning over a dark woman whose body was curved back under his in an arc that would have had my spine screaming for mercy. One of Bill’s bunch-of-bananas hands supported the small of her back, the other her shoulders. Unlike the ballet, however, their lips were welded together. I cleared my throat.

Bill jumped, his mouth leaving the woman’s with a nauseating smack as he straightened and half turned, releasing his grip on the woman. Just as well her arms were wrapped round his neck or she’d have been on the fast track to quadriplegia. ‘Kate,’ Bill gasped. His face did a double act, the mouth smiling, the eyes panicking.

‘Welcome back, Bill. I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning,’ I said calmly, closing the door behind me and making for my usual perch on the table that runs along one wall.

Bill stuttered something about wanting to see me while the woman disentangled herself from him. She was a good six inches taller than my five feet and three inches. Strike one. Her hair was as dark as Bill’s was blond, cut in the sort of spiky urchin cut I’d recently abandoned when even I’d noticed it was getting a bit passé. On her, it looked terrific. Strike two. Her skin was burnished bronze, an impossible dream for those of us with the skin that matches auburn hair. Strike three. I didn’t have the faintest idea who Bill’s latest companion was, but I hated her already. She grinned and moved towards me, hand stuck out in front of her with all the enthusiasm of an extrovert teenager who hasn’t been put down yet. ‘Kate, it’s great to meet you,’ she announced in an Australian accent that made Crocodile Dundee sound like a BBC newsreader. ‘Bill’s told me so much about you, I feel like I know you already.’ I tentatively put out a hand which she gripped fervently and pumped up and down. ‘I just know we’re going to be mates,’ she added, clapping her other hand on my shoulder.

I looked past her at Bill, my eyebrows raised. He moved towards us and the woman released my hand to slip hers into his. ‘Kate,’ he finally said. ‘This is Sheila.’ His eyes warned me not to laugh.

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ I said. ‘You met in Australia.’

Sheila roared with laughter. I could feel her excessive response thrusting me into the role of repressed English-woman. ‘God, Kate, he was right about your sense of humour,’ she said. I forced my lips into what I seemed to remember was a smile. ‘Hey, Bill, you better tell her the news.’

Bill stood chewing his beard for a moment, then said, ‘Sheila and I are getting married.’

To say I was gobsmacked would be like saying Tom Hanks can act a bit. It’s not that Bill doesn’t like women. He does. Lots of them. He also likes variety. As a serial monogamist, he makes Casanova and Don Juan look like absolute beginners. But he’d always been choosy about who he hung out with. While he preferred his girlfriends good-looking, brains and ambition had always been just as high on his agenda. So while Sheila might appear more of a bimbo than anyone I’d ever seen Bill with, I wasn’t about to make a snap judgement on the basis of what I’d seen so far. ‘Congratulations,’ I managed without tripping over too many of the syllables.

‘Thanks; Kate,’ Sheila said warmly. ‘It’s big of you to be generous about losing your partner.’

I looked at Bill. He looked like he’d swallowed an ice cube. ‘I thought that in these situations one said something like, “Not so much losing a partner as gaining a secretary,”’ I said ominously. ‘I have this feeling that there’s something you haven’t got round to telling me yet, William.’

‘Sheila, Kate and I need to have boring business talks. Why don’t you get Shelley to point you in the direction of all the best clothes shops? You can come back at lunch time and we’ll all go to the Brasserie?’ Bill said desperately, one eye on the toe I was tapping on the floor.

‘No problems, Billy boy,’ Sheila said, planting a kiss smack on his lips. On her way past me, she sketched a wave. ‘Can’t wait to get to know you better, Kate.’

When the door closed behind her, there was a long silence. ‘“Why don’t you get Shelley to point you in the direction of the clothes shops?”’ I mimicked as cruelly as I could manage.

‘She owns three dress shops in Sydney,’ Bill said mildly. I might have known. That explained the tailored black dress she’d almost been wearing.

‘This is not a good way to start the day, Bill,’ I said. ‘What does she mean, I’ll be losing a partner? Is she the pathologically jealous type who doesn’t want her man working alongside another woman? Is Shelley getting the bum’s rush from Waltzing Matilda too?’

Bill threw himself into his chair and sighed. ‘Sheila knows I was dreading this conversation, and she said what she did to force me into having it,’ he explained. ‘Kate, this is it. Sheila’s the one I want.’

‘Let’s face it, Bill, you’ve run enough consumer tests to make an informed decision,’ I said bitterly. I wanted to be happy for him. I would have been happy for him if it hadn’t been for the stab of fear that Sheila’s words had triggered in me.

He looked me in the eye and smiled. ‘True. Which means that now I’ve found her, I don’t want to let her go. Marriage seems like the sensible option.’ He looked away. ‘And that means either Sheila moves over here or I move to Australia.’

Silence. I knew what was coming but I didn’t see why I should let him off the hook. I leaned back against the wall and folded my arms across my chest. Bill the Bear was turning from teddy to grizzly before my eyes, and I didn’t like the transformation. Finally, a few sighs later, Bill said, ‘Me moving is the logical step. My work’s more portable than hers. The jobs I’ve already been doing in Australia have given me some good contacts, while she has none in the rag trade over here. Besides, the weather’s nicer. And the wine.’ He tried a pleading, little-boy-lost smile on me.

It didn’t play. ‘So what happens to Mortensen and Brannigan?’ I demanded, my voice surprising even me with its harshness.

Bill picked up the curly Sherlock Holmes pipe he occasionally smokes when he’s stuck on a problem, and started fiddling with it. ‘I’m sorry, Kate, but I’m going to have to sell my share of the partnership. The problem I’ve got is that I need to realize the capital I’ve got tied up in the business so I can start again in Sydney.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ I said. ‘You think you can just sell us to the highest bidder? Your parents own half the farmland in Cheshire. Can’t you get them to stake you?’

Bill scowled. ‘Of course I bloody can’t,’ he growled. ‘You didn’t go cap in hand to your father when you wanted to become a partner. You funded it yourself. Besides, life’s not exactly a bed of roses in cattle farming right now. I doubt they’ve got the cash to throw around.’

‘Fine,’ I said angrily. ‘So who have you sold out to?’

Bill looked shocked. ‘I haven’t sold to anyone,’ he protested. ‘How could you think I’d go behind your back like that?’

I shrugged. ‘Everything else seems to have been cut and dried without consulting me. Why should that be any different?’

‘Didn’t you bother reading the partnership agreement when we drew it up? Paragraph sixteen. If either of us wants to sell our share of the business, we have to offer first refusal to the other partner. And if the remaining partner doesn’t want to buy, they have the power of veto over the sale to any third party on any reasonable ground.’

‘“The final decision as to the reasonableness or otherwise of that ground to be taken by the partners in consultation with any employees of the firm,”’ I quoted from memory. I’d written most of the agreement; it wasn’t surprising I knew by heart what the key parts of it said. ‘It’s academic, Bill. You know I can’t afford to buy you out. And you also know damn well that I’m far too fond of you to stand in the way of what you want. So pick your buyer.’

I jumped to my feet and wrenched the door open. ‘I’m out of here,’ I said, hoping the disgust and anger I felt was as vivid to him as it was to me. Sometimes, the only things that make you feel good are the same ones that worked when you were five. Yes, I slammed the door.

I sat staring into the froth of a cappuccino in the Cigar Store café. The waitress was having an animated conversation with a couple of her friends drinking espressos in the corner, but apart from them, I had the place to myself. It wasn’t hard to tune out their gossip and focus on the implications of what Bill had said. I couldn’t believe what he planned to do to me. It undercut everything I thought I knew about Bill. It made me feel that my judgement wasn’t worth a bag of used cat litter. The man had been my friend before he became my business partner. I’d started my career process-serving for him as a way of eking out my student grant because the hours and the cash were better than bar work. I’d toiled with him or for him ever since I’d jacked in my law degree after the second year, when I realized I could never spend my working days in the company of wolves and settled for the blond bear instead.

There was no way I could afford to buy him out. The deal we’d done when I’d become a partner had been simple enough. Bill had had the business valued, and I’d worked out I could afford to buy thirty-five per cent. I’d borrowed the money on a short-term loan from the bank and paid it back over four years. I’d managed that by paying the bank every penny I earned over and above my previous salary, including my annual profit shares. I’d only finished paying the loan off three months previously, thanks in part to a windfall that couldn’t be explained either to another living soul or to the taxman without risking the knowledge getting back to the organized criminals who had inadvertently made me the gift. It had been a struggle to meet the payments on the loan, and I had no intention of standing under the kind of trees that deliver such dangerous windfalls ever again.

I had to face it. There was no way I could raise the cash to buy out Bill’s sixty-five per cent at the prices of four years ago, never mind what the agency would now be worth, given the new clients we’d both brought in since then. I was going to be the victim of anyone who decided a two-thirds share in a profitable detective agency was a good investment.

A second cup clattered on to the table in front of me. Startled, I looked up and found myself staring into Shelley’s amber eyes. ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ she said, tossing her mac over a chair and sitting down opposite me. Her face looked like one of those carved African ceremonial masks, all polished planes and immobility, especially now she’d abandoned the beads she used to wear plaited in her hair and moved on to neat cornrows. I couldn’t tell from looking at her if she’d come to sympathize or to tell me off for my tantrum and plead Bill’s case.

‘And we thought Lincoln freed the slaves,’ I said bitterly. ‘How do you feel about being bought and sold?’

‘It’s not as bad for me as it is for you,’ Shelley said. ‘I don’t like the new boss, I just walk out the door and get me another job. But you’re tied to whoever Bill sells his share to, am I right?’

‘As usual. Back on the chain gang, Shell, that’s what I am. Like Chrissie Hynde says, circumstance beyond our control.’

Shelley’s eyebrows flickered. ‘Doesn’t have to be that way, does it?’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘This behaviour from Bill is not what we’re used to.’

‘Of course it’s bloody not,’ I interrupted petulantly. ‘It’s this Sheila, isn’t it? Like the man said, when you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. And there’s no doubting which part of Bill’s anatomy Sheila’s got a grip on.’

‘Doesn’t matter who’s behind it, the end result is the same,’ Shelley pointed out. ‘Bottom line is, Bill is not behaving like your friend, and in my book that absolves you from behaving like his friend.’

‘And?’

‘You own thirty-five per cent of the business, don’t you?’

I nodded. ‘Free and clear.’

‘So you put your share on the market. Either as an independent entity, or as part of the whole package.’

I frowned. ‘But that would devalue the business quite a lot. It’s a different kettle of fish buying into an established agency where one of the partners is staying on to maintain the existing clients and another thing altogether to go for something that’s nothing more really than a name and a bunch of office equipment.’

‘My point exactly,’ Shelley said.

‘But I’d lose a lot of the money I’ve put in,’ I said.

‘But Bill would stand to lose a hell of a lot more,’ Shelley said. ‘And he needs the cash a lot more than you do right now. What it would do is buy you a bit of time and a lot of say-so on the deal. It gives you a bargaining chip.’

Slowly, I nodded. ‘Shelley, you are one mean mother,’ I said, admiration in my voice. ‘And I thought Bill was your blue-eyed boy.’

Shelley’s lips tightened. I noticed that between her nose and mouth, a couple of creases were graduating to lines. ‘Listen, Kate, when I was growing up, I saw a lot of women doing the “my kids, right or wrong” routine with teachers, with cops. And I see their kids now, running drugs, living behind bars. I’ve seen the funerals when another one gets shot in some stupid gang war. I don’t like the end result of blind loyalty. Bill has been my friend and my boss a long time, but he’s behaving like an arsehole to us both, and that’s how he deserves to be treated.’

I admired her cold determination to get the best result for both of us. I just didn’t know if I could carry it through as ruthlessly as Shelley would doubtless demand. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell him I want to sell too.’

Shelley smiled. ‘I bet you feel better already,’ she said shrewdly. She wasn’t wrong. ‘So, haven’t you got any work to do?’

I told her about the previous evening’s adventures, and, predictably enough, she had a good laugh at my expense. ‘So now I need to see Dennis,’ I finished up. ‘Richard might know all there is to know about the music side of the rock business, but when it comes to the criminal side, he thinks seedy is something you listen to on your stereo. Whereas Dennis might not know his Ice T from his Enya, but he could figure out where to make a bent earner in the “Hallelujah Chorus”.’ The only problem was, as I didn’t have to remind Shelley, my friend and sometime mentor Dennis wasn’t quite as accessible as normal, Her Majesty the Queen being unreasonably fussy about keeping her guests to herself.

When I met Dennis, like so many people in their late thirties, he’d just gone through a major career change. After a stretch in prison, he’d given up his previous job as a professional and highly successful burglar to the rich and famous and taken up the more demanding but less dangerous occupation of ‘a bit of ducking and diving’ on the fringes of the law. Which included, on occasion, a bit of consultancy work for Mortensen and Brannigan. Thanks to Dennis, I’d learned how to pick locks, defeat alarm systems and ransack filing cabinets without leaving a trace.

Unfortunately, a little enterprise of Dennis’s aimed at separating criminals from their cash flow had turned sour when he’d inadvertently arranged one of his handovers in the middle of a Drugs Squad surveillance. Instead of grabbing a couple of major-league traffickers and one of those cocaine hauls that get mentioned in the news, the cops ended up with a small-time villain and the kind of nothing case that barely makes three paragraphs in the local paper. Inevitably, Dennis paid the price of their pique, seeing his scam blown sufficiently out of proportion in court to land him with an eighteen-month sentence. Some might say he got off lightly, given his CV and what else I happened to know he’d been up to lately, but speaking as someone who would go quietly mad serving an eighteen-day sentence, I wouldn’t be one of them.

‘When can you get in to see him?’ Shelley asked.

Good question. I didn’t have a Visiting Order nor any immediate prospect of getting one. Once upon a time, I’d have rung up and pretended to be a legal executive from his firm of solicitors and asked for an appointment the next day. But security had grown tighter recently. Too many prisoners had been going walkabout from jails that weren’t supposed to be open prisons. Now, when you booked a brief’s appointment at Strangeways, they took the details then rang back the firm you allegedly represented to confirm the name of the person attending and to give them a code consisting of two letters and four numbers. Without the code, you couldn’t get in. ‘I thought about asking Ruth to let me pose as one of her legal execs,’ I said.

Shelley snorted. ‘After the last time? I don’t think so!’

The last time I’d pretended to be one of Ruth Hunter’s junior employees it had strained our friendship so severely it had to wear a truss for months afterwards. Shelley was right. Ruth wasn’t going to play.

‘I don’t mean to teach you to suck eggs,’ Shelley said without a trace of humility or apology. ‘And I know this goes against the grain. But had you thought about doing it the straight way?’

5

I pivoted on the ball of my right foot, bending the knee as I straightened my left leg, using the momentum to drive me forward and round in a quarter-circle. The well-muscled leg whistled past me, just grazing the hip that moments before had been right in its path. I grunted with effort as I sidestepped and jabbed a short kick at the knee of my assailant.

I was too slow. Next thing I knew, my right leg was swept from under me and I was lying on my back, lungs screaming for anything to replace the air that had been slammed out of them. Christie O’Brien stood above me, grinning. ‘You’re slowing down,’ she observed with the casual cruelty of adolescence. Of course I was slow compared to her; she was, after all, a former British under-fourteen championship finalist. But Christie—Christine until she discovered fashion and lads—was above all her father’s daughter. She’d learned at an early age that nothing succeeds like kicking them when they’re down.

One of the other things I’d learned thanks to Dennis was Thai kick boxing, a sport he insisted every woman should know. The theory goes, a woman as small as I am is never going to beat a guy in a fair fight, so the key to personal safety is to land one good kick either in the shins or the gonads. Then it’s ‘legs, don’t let me down’ time. Kick boxing teaches you how to land the kick and keeps you fit enough to leg it afterwards.

When he’d been sent down, Dennis had asked me to keep an eye on Christie. She’d inherited her mother’s gleaming blonde hair and wide blue eyes, but her brains had come from a father who knew only too well the damage a teenage girl can wreak when the only adult around to keep an eye on things has a generous spirit and fewer brain cells than the average goldfish. Because she’d always been accustomed to seeing me around the gym, Christie had either failed to notice or decided not to resent the fact that I’d been spending a lot more time with her recently.

She filled me in on the latest school dramas of who was hanging out with whom and why as we showered next to each other—our club’s strictly breeze block. You want cubicles, go somewhere else and pay four times as much to join. By the time we were towelling ourselves dry, I’d managed to swing the conversation round to Dennis. ‘You told your dad about this Jason, then,’ I asked her casually. She’d mentioned the lad’s name once too often.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she said. ‘Tell him about somebody he can’t check out for himself and have the heavy mob kicking Jason’s door in for a reference? No way. When he comes out’ll be well soon enough.’

‘When you seeing him next?’ I asked.

‘Mum’s got a VO for Thursday afternoon. I’m supposed to be going with her, but I’ve got cross-country trials and I don’t want to miss them,’ she grumbled as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head. ‘Dad wouldn’t mind. He’ll be the one giving me a go-along if I miss getting on the team. But Mum gets really depressed going to Strangeways on her own, so I feel like I’ve got to go with her.’

‘I could go instead of you,’ I suggested.

Christie’s face lit up. ‘Would you? You don’t mind? I’m warning you, it’s a three-hankie job coming home.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see your dad. I miss him.’

Christie sighed and stared at her trainers. ‘Me too.’ She looked up at me, her eyes candid. ‘I’m really angry with him, you know? After he came out last time, he promised me he’d never do anything that would get him banged up again.’

I leaned over and gave her a hug. ‘He knows he’s let you down. It’s hard, recognizing that your dad’s not perfect, but he’s just like the rest of us. He needs you to forgive him, Christie.’

‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell Mum you’ll pick her up dinner time Thursday, then.’ She got to her feet and stuffed her sweaty sports clothes into one of the counterfeit Head holdalls Dennis had been turning out the previous spring. ‘See ya, Kate,’ she said on her way out the door.

Knowing I was doing her a favour made me feel less like the exploitation queen of South Manchester. But not a lot less. So much for doing it the straight way.

When I emerged from the gym, I decided to swing round by Gizmo’s to see if he’d got anywhere with my earlier request. If the old axiom, ‘If I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here,’ didn’t exist, they’d have to invent it for the journey from Sale to Levenshulme in mid-morning traffic. I knew before I started it was going to be hell on wheels, but for once, I didn’t care. Me, reluctant to face Bill?

I crawled along in second while Cyndi Lauper reminded me that girls just wanna have fun. I growled at the cassette deck and swapped Cyndi for Tanita Tikaram’s more gloomy take on the world. I knew exactly what she meant when she accused someone of making the whole world cry. I sat in the queue of traffic at the lights where Wilbraham Road meets Oxford Road in the heart of undergraduate city, watching them going about their student lives, backpacked and badly barbered. I couldn’t believe it when the fashion world created a whole industry round grunge as if it was something that had just happened. The rest of us knew it wasn’t anything new: students have been wearing layers against the cold, and workmen’s heavy-duty checked shirts for cheapness, ever since I was a student a dozen years ago. Shaking my head, I glanced at the wall alongside the car. Plastered along it were posters for bands appearing at the local clubs. Some of the venues I recognized from razzing with Richard; others I knew nothing about. I hadn’t realized quite how many live music venues there were in the city these days. I looked more closely at the posters, noticing one that had peeled away on the top right corner. Underneath, I could see, in large red letters, ‘UFF’. It looked like Dan and Lice hadn’t been making it up as they went along.

The impatient horn of the suit in the company car behind me dragged my attention away from the posters and back to the road. After the lights, the traffic eased up, and I actually managed to get into fourth gear before I reached Gizmo’s. This time, I reckoned it would be cheaper to take my chances with the traffic wardens than the locals, so I left the car illegally parked on the main drag. Judging by the other drivers doing the same thing, the wardens were about as fond of hanging out in Levenshulme as I was. I hit the hole in the wall for some cash for Gizmo, then I crossed the road and rang his bell.

Gizmo frowned when he saw me. ‘Didn’t you get the e-mail?’ he asked.

‘I’ve not been back to the office,’ I said, holding a tightly rolled wad of notes towards him. ‘Do I take it you’ve had some joy?’

‘Yeah. You better come in,’ he said reluctantly, delicately removing the cash from my hand and slipping it into the watch pocket of a pair of grey flannels that looked as if they’d first drawn breath around the time of the Great War. ‘Somebody dressed as smart as you on the pavement around here looks well suspicious to the local plod. I mean, you’re obviously not a native, are you?’ he added as I followed him up the narrow stairs, the soles of my shoes sticking to the elderly cord carpet. It was the first time he’d let me past his front door, and frankly, I wasn’t surprised.

I followed Gizmo into the front room of the flat. It was a dislocating experience. Instead of the dingy grime and chipped paint of the stairway, I was in a spotlessly clean room. New woodblock flooring, matt grey walls, no curtains, double-glazed windows. A leather sofa. Two desks with computer monitors, one a Mac, one a PC. A long table with an assortment of old computers—an Atari, a Spectrum, an Amiga, an Amstrad PCW and an ancient Pet. A couple of modems, a flat-bed scanner, a hand-held scanner, a couple of printers and a shelf stacked with software boxes. There was no fabric anywhere in the room. Even the chair in front of the PC monitor was upholstered in leather. Gizmo might look like Pigpen, but the environment he’d created for his beloved computers was as near to the perfect dust-free room as he could get.

‘Nice one,’ I said.

He thrust his hands into the pockets of a woollen waistcoat most bag ladies would be ashamed to own and said, ‘Got to look after them, haven’t you? I’ve had that Pet since 1980, and it still runs like a dream.’

‘Strange dreams you have, Giz,’ I commented as he hit some keys on his PC and located the information I’d asked for. Within seconds, a sheet of paper was spitting out of one of the laser printers. I picked up the paper and read, ‘Sell Phones, 1 Beaumaris Road, Higher Crumpsall, Manchester.’ There was a phone number too. I raised an eyebrow. ‘That it?’

‘All I could get,’ he said.

‘No names?’

‘No names. They’re not listed at Companies House. They sound like they’re into mobies. I suppose if you wanted to go to the trouble and expense’—stressing the last word heavily—‘I could do a trawl through the mobile phone service providers and see if this lot are among their customers. But—’

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ I said. Breaking the law too many times on any given job is tempting fate. ‘Once is sufficient,’ I added. ‘Anything more would be vulgar.’

‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ Gizmo said pointedly, staring past my shoulder at the door. I took the hint. Find what you’re good at and stick to it, that’s what I say.

Beaumaris Road was a red-brick back street running parallel to the main drag of Cheetham Hill Road. Unsurprisingly, number one was on the corner. Sell Phones occupied what had obviously once been a corner shop, though it had been tarted up since it had last sold pints of milk at all hours and grossly inflated prices. I parked further down the street and pulled on a floppy green velvet cap and a pair of granny specs with clear glass to complete the transformation from desolate widow to total stranger. They didn’t really go with my Levis and beige blazer, but fashion’s so eclectic these days that you can mix anything if you don’t mind looking like a borderline care-in-the-community case or a social worker.

I walked back to the corner, noting the heavy grilles over the window of Sell Phones. I paused and looked through to an interior that was all grey carpet, white walls and display cabinets of mobile phones. A good-looking black guy was leaning languidly against a display cabinet, head cocked, listening to a woman who was clearly telling the kind of lengthy tale that involves a lot of body language and lines like, ‘So she goes, “You didn’t!” and I go, “I did. No messing.” And she looks at me gone out and she goes, “You never!”’ She was a couple of inches taller than me, but slimmer through the shoulders and hips. Her hair was a glossy black bob, her eyes dark, her skin pale, her cheekbones Slavic, scarlet lips reminding me irresistibly of Cruella De Vil. She looked like a Pole crossed with a racehorse. She was too engrossed in her tale to notice me, and the black guy was too busy looking exquisite in a suit that screamed, ‘Ciao, bambino.’

I peered more closely through the glass and there, at the back of the shop, sitting behind a desk, head lowered as he took notes of the phone call he was engrossed in, was Will Allen in all his glory. I might not know his real name, but at least now I knew where he worked. I carried on round the corner and there, in the back alley behind the shop, was the Mazda I’d last seen parked outside my house the night before. At last something was working out today.

Now for the boring bit. I figured Will Allen wouldn’t be going anywhere for the next hour or two, but that didn’t mean I could wander off and amble back later in the hope he’d still be around. I reckoned it was probably safe to nip round the corner to the McDonald’s on Cheetham Hill Road and stock up with some doughnuts and coffee to make me feel like an authentic private eye as I staked out Sell Phones, but that was as far away as I wanted to get.

I moved my Rover on to the street that ran at right angles to Beaumaris Road and the alley so that I had a good view of the end of Allen’s car bonnet, though it meant losing sight of the front of the shop. I slid into the passenger seat to make it look like I was waiting for someone and took off the cap. I kept the glasses in place, though. I slouched in my seat and brooded on Bill’s perfidy. I sipped my coffee very slowly, just enough to keep me alert, not enough to make me want to pee. By the time I saw some action, the coffee was cold and so was I.

The nose of the silver Mazda slipped out of the alleyway and turned left towards Cheetham Hill Road. Just on five, with traffic tight as haemoglobin in the bloodstream. Born lucky, that’s me. I scrambled across the gear stick and started the engine, easing out into the road behind the car. As we waited to turn left at the busy main road, I had the chance to see who was in the car. Allen was driving, but there was also someone in the passenger seat. She conveniently reached over into the back seat for something, and I identified the woman who had been in Sell Phones talking to the Emporio Armani mannequin. I wondered if she was the other half of the scam, the woman who went out to chat up the widowers. They don’t call me a detective for nothing.

The Mazda slid into a gap in the traffic heading into Manchester. I didn’t. By the time I squeezed out into a space that wasn’t really there, the Mazda was three cars ahead and I was the target of a car-horn voluntary. I gave the kind of cheery wave that makes me crazy when arseholes do it to me and smartly switched lanes in the hope that I’d be less visible to my target. The traffic was so slow down Cheetham Hill that I was able to stay in touch, as well as check out the furniture stores for bargains. But then, just as we hit the straight, he peeled off left down North Street. I was in the right-hand lane and I couldn’t get across, but I figured he must be heading down Red Bank to cut through the back doubles down to Ancoats and on to South Manchester. If I didn’t catch him before Red Bank swept under the railway viaduct, he’d be anywhere in a maze of back streets and gone forever.

I swung the nose of the Rover over to the left, which pissed off the driver of the Porsche I’d just cut up. At least now the day wasn’t a complete waste. I squeezed round the corner of Derby Street and hammered it for the junction that would sweep me down Red Bank. I cornered on a prayer that nothing was coming up the hill and screamed down the steep incline.

There was no silver Mazda in sight. I sat fuming at the junction for a moment, then slowly swung the car round and back up the hill. There was always the chance that they’d stopped off at one of the dozens of small-time wholesalers and middlemen whose tatty warehouses and storefronts occupy the streets of Strangeways. Maybe they were buying some jewellery or a fur coat with their ill-gotten gains. I gave it ten minutes, cruising every street and alley between Red Bank and Cheetham Hill Road. Then I accepted they were gone. I’d lost them.

I’d had enough for one day. Come to that, I’d had enough for the whole week. So I switched off my mobile, wearily slotted myself back into the thick of the traffic and drove home. Plan A was to run a hot bath lavishly laced with essential oils, Cowboy Junkies on the stereo, the pile of computer magazines I’d been ignoring for the last month and the biggest Stoly and grapefruit juice in the world on the side. Plan B involved Richard, if he was around.

I walked through my front door and down the hall, shedding layers like some sixties starlet, then started running the bath. I wrapped myself in my bathrobe which had been hanging strategically over a radiator, and headed for the freezer. I’d just gripped the neck of the vodka bottle when the doorbell rang. I considered ignoring it, but curiosity won. Story of my life. So I dumped the bottle and headed for the door.

They say it’s not over till the fat lady sings. Alexis is far from fat, and from her expression I guessed singing wasn’t on the agenda. Seeing the stricken look on her face, I kissed Plan A goodbye and prepared for the worst.

6

‘Chris?’ I asked, stepping back to let Alexis in.

She looked dumbly back at me, frowning, as if trying to call to mind why I should be concerned about her partner.

‘Has something happened to Chris?’ I tried. ‘The baby?’

Alexis shook her head. ‘Chris is all right,’ she said impatiently, as if I’d asked the kind of stupid question TV reporters pose to disaster victims. She pushed past me and walked like an automaton into the living room, where she subsided onto a sofa with the slack-limbed collapse of a marionette.

I left her staring blankly at the floor and turned off the bath taps. By the time I came back with two stiff drinks, she was smoking with the desperate concentration of an addict on the edge of cold turkey. ‘What’s happened, Alexis?’ I said softly, sitting down beside her.

‘She’s dead,’ she said. I wasn’t entirely surprised that somebody she knew was. I couldn’t imagine anything else that would destroy the composure of a hard-bitten crime reporter like this.

‘Who is?’

Alexis pulled a scrunched up copy of the Yorkshire Post out of her handbag. I knew it was one of the out-of-town papers that the Chronicle subscribed to. ‘I was going through the regionals, looking to see if anybody had any decent crime feature ideas,’ Alexis said bleakly as she spread the YP out on the table. DOCTOR DIES IN RAID, I read in the top right-hand section of the front page. Under the headline was a photograph of a dark-haired woman with strong features and a wide, smiling mouth. I read the first paragraph.

Consultant gynaecologist Sarah Blackstone was fatally stabbed last night when she disturbed an intruder in her Headingley home.

‘You knew her?’ I asked.

‘That’s the doctor who worked with us on Christine’s pregnancy.’

It was a strange way of expressing it, but I let it pass. Alexis clearly wasn’t in command of herself, never mind the English language. ‘I’m so sorry, Alexis,’ I said inadequately.

‘Never mind being sorry. I want you working,’ she said abruptly. She crushed out her cigarette, lit another and swallowed half her vodka and Diet Coke. ‘Kate, there’s something going on here. That’s definitely the woman we dealt with. But she wasn’t a consultant in Leeds called Sarah Blackstone. She had consulting rooms here in Manchester and her name was Helen Maitland.’

There are days when I’m overwhelmed with the conviction that somebody’s stolen my perfectly nice life and left me with this pile of shit to deal with. Right then, I was inches away from calling the cops and demanding they track down the robber. After the day I’d had, I just wasn’t in the mood for chapter one of an Agatha Christie mystery. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘I mean, newspaper photographs…’

Alexis snorted. ‘Look at her. She’s not got a face that blends into the background, has she? Of course it’s Helen Maitland.’

I shrugged. ‘So she uses an assumed name when she’s treating lesbians. Maybe she just doesn’t want the notoriety of being the dykes’ baby doctor.’

‘It’s more than that, KB,’ Alexis insisted, swallowing smoke as if her life depended on it. ‘She’s got a prescription pad and she writes prescriptions in the name of Helen Maitland. We’ve not had any trouble getting them filled, and it’s not like it was a one-off, believe me. There’s been plenty. Which also makes me worried, because if the bizzies figure out that Sarah Blackstone and Helen Maitland are the same person, and they try and track down her patients, all they’ve got to do is start asking around the local chemists. And there we are, right in the middle of the frame.’

All of which was true, but I couldn’t see why Alexis was getting so wound up. I knew the rules on human fertility treatment were pretty strict, but as far as I was aware, it wasn’t a crime yet to give lesbians artificial insemination, though if the Tories started to get really hysterical about losing the next election, I could see it might have its attractions as a possible vote winner. ‘Alexis,’ I said gently. ‘Why exactly is that a problem?’

She looked blankly at me. ‘Because they’ll take the baby off us,’ she said in a tone of voice I recognized as the one I used to explain to Richard why you can’t wash your jeans in the dishwasher.

‘I think you might be overreacting,’ I said cautiously, aware that I wasn’t wearing protective clothing. ‘This is a straightforward case, Alexis,’ I continued, skimming the story. ‘Burglar gets disturbed, struggle, burglar panics, pulls a blade and lashes out. Tragic waste of talented test-tube baby doctor.’ I looked up. ‘The cops aren’t going to be interviewing her Leeds patients, never mind trying to trace people she treated in a different city under a different name.’

‘Maybe so, but maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye,’ Alexis said stubbornly. ‘I’ve been doing the crime beat long enough to know that the Old Bill only tell you what they want you to know. It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a whole other investigation going on beneath the surface.’ She finished her drink and her cigarette, for some reason avoiding my eye.

I had a strong feeling that I didn’t know what the real story was here. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to know what it was that could disconcert my normally stable best buddy as much as this, but I knew I couldn’t dodge the issue. ‘What’s really going on here, Alexis?’ I asked.

She ran both hands through her wild tangle of black hair and looked up at me, her face worried and frightened, her eyes as hollow as a politician’s promises. ‘Any chance of another drink?’

I fetched her another Stoly and Diet Coke, this one more than a little weaker than the last. If she was going to swallow them like water, I didn’t want her passing out before she’d explained why she was in such a state about the death of a woman with whom she’d had nothing more than a professional relationship. I slid the drink across the table to her, and when she reached out for it, I covered her hand with mine. ‘Tell me,’ I said.

Alexis tightened her lips and shook her head. ‘We haven’t told another living soul,’ she said, reaching for another cigarette. I hoped she wasn’t smoking like this around Chris or the baby was going to need nicotine patches to get through its first twenty-four hours.

‘You said a minute ago you wanted me working on this. If I don’t know what’s going on, there’s not a lot I can do,’ I reminded her.

Alexis lifted her eyes and gazed into mine. ‘This has got to stay between us,’ she said, her voice a plea I’d never heard from her before. ‘I mean it, KB. Nobody gets to hear this one. Not Della, not Ruth, not even Richard. Nobody.’

‘That serious, eh?’ I said, trying to lighten the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.

‘Yeah, that serious,’ Alexis said, not noticeably lightened.

‘You know you can trust me.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ she admitted after a pause. The hand that wasn’t hanging on to the cigarette swept through her hair again. ‘I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to tell you.’

I leaned back against the sofa, trying to look as relaxed and unshockable as I could. ‘Alexis, I’m bombproof. Whatever it is, I’ve heard it before. Or something very like it.’

Her mouth twisted in a strange, inward smile. ‘Not like this, KB, I promise you. This is one hundred per cent one-off.’ Alexis sat up straight, squaring her shoulders. I saw she’d made the decision to reveal what was eating her. ‘This baby that Chris is carrying—it’s ours.’ She looked expectantly at me.

I didn’t want to believe what I was afraid she was trying to tell me. So I smiled and said, ‘Hey, that’s a really healthy attitude, acting like you’ve really got a stake in it.’

‘I’m not talking attitude, KB. I’m talking reality.’ She sighed. ‘I’m talking making a baby from two women.’

The trouble with modern life is that there isn’t any etiquette any more. Things change so much and so fast that even if Emily Post were still around, she wouldn’t be able to devise a set of protocols that stay abreast of tortured human relationships. If Alexis had dropped her bombshell in my mother’s day, I could have said, ‘That’s nice, dear. Now, do you like your milk in first?’ In my Granny Brannigan’s day, I could have crossed myself vigorously and sent for the priest. But in the face of the encroaching millennium, all I could do was gape and say, ‘What?’

‘I’m not making this up, you know,’ Alexis said defensively. ‘It’s possible. It’s not even very difficult. It’s just very illegal.’

‘I’m having a bit of trouble with this,’ I stammered. ‘How do you mean, it’s possible? Are we talking cloning here, or what?’

‘Nothing so high tech. Look, all you need to make a baby are a womb, an egg and something to fertilize it with.’

‘Which traditionally has been sperm,’ I remarked drily.

‘Which traditionally has been sperm,’ Alexis agreed. ‘But all you actually need is a collision of chromosomes. You get one from each side of the exchange. Women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y. With me so far?’

‘I might not have A level biology, but I do know the basics,’ I said.

‘Right. So you’ll know that if it’s the man’s Y chromosome that links up with the woman’s X chromosome, you get a little baby boy. And if it’s his X chromosome that does the business, you get a girl. So everybody knew that you could make babies out of two X chromosomes. Only they didn’t shout too much about it, did they? Because if they did more than mention it in passing, like, it wouldn’t take a lot of working out to understand that if all you need for baby girls is a pair of X chromosomes from two different sources, you wouldn’t need men.’

‘You’re telling me that after twenty-five years of feminist theory, scientists have only just noticed that?’ I couldn’t keep the irony out of my voice.

‘No, they’ve always known it. But certain kinds of experiments are against the law. That includes almost anything involving human embryos. Unless, of course, it’s aimed at letting men who produce crap sperm make babies. So although loads of people knew that theoretically it was possible to make babies from two women, nobody could officially do any research on it, so the technology that would make it possible science instead of fantasy just wasn’t happening.’ The journalist was in control now, and Alexis paused for effect. She couldn’t help herself.

‘So what happened to change that?’ I asked, responding to my cue.

‘There was a load of research done which showed that men didn’t react well to having their wives inseminated with donor sperm. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t feel connected to the kids and more often than not, families were breaking up because the men didn’t feel like they were proper families. Given that more men are having problems with their sperm production than ever before, the pressure was really on for doctors to find a way of helping inadequate sperm to make babies. A couple of years ago, they came up with a really thin needle that could be inserted right into the very nucleus of an egg so that they could deliver a single sperm right to the place where it would count.’

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