REGINALD HILL
KILLING THE LAWYERS

A Joe Sixsmith novel

COPYRIGHT

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Previously published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997

Copyright © Reginald Hill 1997

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

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 e-books.

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: 9780007334803

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007397679

Version: 2015-07-27

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

Keep Reading

About Reginald Hill

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

1

Christmas.

Season of d.i.y. divorce and marital mayhem.

Meaning that while cop cars and meat wagons are ding donging merrily down Luton High, a PI can get festive and know he’s not missing much business.

Especially a PI like Joe Sixsmith who doesn’t have much business to miss.

December 28th, Joe called in at his office. Didn’t anticipate a queue of clients but what were the alternatives? More force-feeding at Auntie Mirabelle’s, more unforced boozing down the Glit, or joining the other lost souls cruising the Palladian Shopping Mall in search of bargains they didn’t want in sales that had opened in Advent.

There were no turtle doves or partridges waiting for him, only a single typewritten envelope and a sodden cat-litter tray. Whitey must’ve taken a valedictory leak as Joe waited for him on the landing on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was memory of this peccadillo which had kept the cat firmly pinned in front of Mirabelle’s fire, but more likely it was just his insatiable appetite for cold turkey.

‘Thanks a bundle,’ said Joe as he emptied the clogged grit and damp tabloid into a plastic carrier and dumped it on the landing for later transfer to the bin below. Swilling the tray out in his tiny washroom, he noticed that the uric acid had produced a kind of stencil through the newspaper on to the beige plastic bottom. At various levels there must have been a colour photo of Prince Charles, a Page Three girl, and some guys firing guns in one of the world’s chronic wars. The resultant blurred image, framed in broken sentences, lay there like a drunk’s philosophy at closing time, and as difficult to get rid of. Cold water wouldn’t budge it.

‘Shoot,’ said Joe. ‘Could get done for lèse majesté, I suppose, but long as Whitey don’t mind, who else is going to notice?’

He gave the tray a good shake and balanced it to dry on the curtain rail over the window he’d opened to air the room.

Turning up his collar against the draught, he checked his answer machine. His own voice said, ‘Hello, this is me talking to me. Hello.’ He’d bought it off his taxi-driving friend Merv Golightly, who claimed to have accepted it in lieu of a fare. After a week of no messages Joe had got suspicious and rung himself. It made him feel both shamed and saddened that clearly the machine worked better than he did.

Now he turned to his mail. The single envelope had the title PENTHOUSE ASSURANCE printed across the flap and he tore it open with crossed fingers, which wasn’t easy.

A cheque fell out.

Usually the sight of a cheque had Joe beaming like a toy-store Santa, but the figures on this one creased his good-natured face with disbelief. He turned to the accompanying letter.

Dear Mr Sixsmith,

Thank you for your communication of December 14th, the contents of which have been noted. There being no material alteration to the facts of the case, however, I have great pleasure in enclosing our cheque for one hundred and twenty-five pounds (£125.00) in full and final settlement of your motor claim.

Yours sincerely,

Imogen Airey (Mrs)

(Senior Inspector – Claims Dept – Penthouse Assurance)

‘We’ll see about that!’ said Joe.

Thrusting the letter into his donkey-jacket pocket, he headed out of the office.

Halfway down the stairs he heard his phone ringing. It rang four times before the answer machine clicked in. He hesitated. 28th was the Fourth Day of Christmas. (Or was it the Third? He never knew where to start counting.) Anyway, his superstitious mind was telling him these could be the Four Golden Rings from the carol, heralding the case which was going to make him rich and famous. Or more likely it was Aunt Mirabelle telling him the table was set for tea, and where the shoot was he?

Whoever, there was no time to go back. His business was urgent, it was coming up to five, and this time of year maybe even the Bullpat Square Law Centre kept conventional hours.

As he resumed his descent he realized he was wheezing like a punctured steam organ. Even going downstairs knackers me, he thought. Sixsmith, you got to get yourself in shape!

His car was parked out of sight round the corner. He tried to keep it out of sight as he approached but it wasn’t easy. It yelled to be looked at and three months’ possession hadn’t dimmed the shock.

It was a Magic Mini from the psychedelic sixties, still wearing its body paint of pink and purple poppies with weary pride. Clashing desperately with the floral colours was the legend in pillar-box red along both doors ANOTHER RAM RAY LOAN CAR.

At least after many hours of Sixsmith tender loving care, the engine now burst into instant life and the clutch no longer whined like a heavy-metal guitar.

It was already dark and the bright lights of downtown Luton struck sparks off the slushy sidewalks, while high in the sky the Clint Eastwood inflatable over Dirty Harry’s bucked in the gusting wind, now aiming its fluorescent Magnum at the glassy heart of the civic tower, now drawing a bead on the swollen gut of a jumbo as it lumbered with its cargo of suntanned vacationists towards the line of festal light on Luton Airport.

Even through his anger, Joe felt the familiar pang of affection and pride. This was his town. And he was going to leave it better than he found it.

Just leaving it should do the trick, said a deflating voice.

He glanced towards the passenger seat, but Whitey, who usually got blamed for such cynical telepathy, wasn’t there.

OK, so I’m talking to myself now. And I know better than to take myself too seriously. But there’s folk in this town got to learn to take me serious enough!

Armed with this thought, he parked his car on a double yellow in front of Bullpat Square Law Centre and strode into the building.

He saw at once he needn’t have worried about the time. Christmas might jerk the daily bread out of the mouths of gumshoes and hitmen. It did nothing to remove the bitter cup from the lips of the deprived and the depressed.

For a moment his resolution wavered and he might have headed for the comfort of the Glit if Butcher’s door hadn’t opened that second to let out a black woman with two small children.

Ignoring both the young man at the reception desk and the people crowding the wall benches, he walked straight in.

From behind a pile of files and beneath a miasma of smoke a small woman in her thirties glared at him and said, ‘Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse.’

‘Butcher, I need a lawyer. Read this.’

He handed her the letter. She read it, at the same time lighting another thin black cheroot from the butt end of the one she’d just finished.

‘Don’t you ever think of your unborn children?’ he asked, wafting the smoke away.

‘When would I have time for unborn children?’ she asked. ‘This looks fine to me. Generous almost. That heap of yours couldn’t have been worth more.’

‘That heap was a 1962 Morris Oxford which I had restored to a better than pristine condition. Also it was part of my livelihood. I need a car.’

‘You’ve got a car. I’ve seen it.’

‘Then you know what I mean. I’m a PI. I follow people. I sit outside their houses and keep watch. In that thing, I might as well be beating a drum and shouting, Hey there, folks, you’re being tailed by Joe Sixsmith!’

‘At least it’s free,’ she said. ‘It’s a Ram Ray loan car, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, sure. The work I’ve done on it to make it fit to drive would have cost you four figures if one of Ram’s ham-handed mechanics had done it. And besides, only reason he made the loan is he’s anticipating I’m going to get enough money to pay him to repair the Oxford or replace it with one of them Indian jobs he’s importing. Now what happened was …’

‘OK, OK, Sixsmith,’ she said, waving her cheroot impatiently. ‘I don’t want details. I just want to know why you imagine I can help you?’

‘I need a lawyer,’ he said. ‘And you’re my lawyer.’

‘Now that’s where you’re making your mistake,’ she said. ‘Way back, when Robco Engineering made you redundant and tried to stiff you for your severance money, then I was your lawyer. And OK, from time to time, as your persistence in maintaining this pretence that you’re a PI has dropped you in the mire, I’ve given a helping hand. But that was out of, God help me, mere charity and pity for a dumb creature. Now, all those folk out there who have come to me with serious life-threatening problems which I should be dealing with this very moment, I am their lawyer. But I am not your lawyer, Sixsmith. And even if I was, I don’t do motor insurance!’

She thrust the letter back at him. He took it and let his eyes drift up to a poster on the wall behind her. It read:

SHAKESPEARE SAID

Kill All The Lawyers!

Except, of course, us.

We’re here for your protection, not our profit.

IF YOU KNOW YOU’RE RIGHT,

WE KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!

Pointing, he said, ‘I don’t see where it says, excepting Joe Sixsmith.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Butcher. ‘Don’t go weepie on me. Look, I’m really no good for you, what you need is a specialist. There’s this guy I know … he owes me a sort of favour …’

She smiled rather grimly. Joe guessed that in lawyer-speak, a sort of favour meant you knew something to put the black on a guy.

‘You mind stepping outside a moment, Joe. I don’t like witnesses to extortion.’

He went out. Expectant eyes focused on him. He smiled guiltily. The door opened and he slipped back in.

‘Heard of Poll-Pott?’ she said.

‘Butcher, I’m not going to Cambodia.’

‘Ho ho. Pollinger, Potter, Naysmith, Montaigne and Iles,’ she said.

‘That Poll-Pott,’ he said. ‘With those posh offices in Oldmaid Row?’

‘That’s them, except when they charge like they do, they don’t have offices, they have chambers.’

‘Sort of chamber poll-pot,’ said Joe, who was often stimulated to wit by Butcher’s presence.

‘Je-sus. Anyway, Peter Potter and I used to be sort of buddies way back, before he became too rich to afford me. He specializes in insurance cases.’

‘And he’ll look into mine?’

‘Not so much look into as glance at. He’ll give you five minutes to tell your tale of woe then he’ll spare five seconds to tell you whether you’ve got a hope in hell. You want more, you’ll have to make an appointment and start paying by the parsec for his professional services. Sorry, that’s the best I can do, and even that has cost me dear.’

‘It’s great,’ Joe assured her. ‘When do I see him?’

‘In the next half hour. After that, don’t bother.’

‘What’s he doing?’ said Joe, looking at his watch which said quarter past five. ‘Jetting off to Bermuda for his hols?’

‘Don’t kick a gift horse in the teeth, Sixsmith. Pete Potter may be self-seeking, hedonistic, and fascist, but he makes the big insurance companies reach for their bulletproof vests. You can be round there in five minutes if you step smartly.’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Joe. ‘The policy’s back in my flat.’

‘Oh God. Why do I bother? And why are you still cluttering up my workspace? Don’t step smartly, run like hell!’

Joe ran like hell.

2

Even running like hell and driving like Jehu couldn’t get Joe back to his flat and out to Oldmaid Row much before a quarter to six.

Still, he thought, if the guy’s as good as Butcher cracks him up to be, couple of minutes should be plenty to confirm I’ve got a cast-iron case.

He rehearsed it as he kerb-crawled the elegant Regency terrace looking for the chambers.

Back in the autumn, his car had nose-dived through a cattle grid and been bombed by rubble from a ruinous gate arch. Ram Ray had produced an estimate for repairs running into a couple of thousand. ‘No sweat,’ the Penthouse assessor had said. ‘Cause of accident, faulty cattle grid. The estate owner pays.’ But when it turned out that the ownership of the estate was in dispute and that the current occupier was about to start a long prison sentence, the tune changed. This was when Mrs Airey, the senior claims inspector, appeared. She came to look at the remains of the car, sucked in her breath sharply, said it was clearly a write-off and if Joe cared to submit his own estimate of value with supporting documentation, it would be taken into account. Joe made his submission. Penthouse made their offer, Joe thought it was a misprint. He pointed out that his car was close to vintage status. They suggested it missed by a good thirty years and pointed out that the same model was still being manufactured in India. In fact, if they took the price of a new one from Ram Ray and projected twenty-five years depreciation, the value came to something less than one hundred. So the argument swayed for a good three months till finally Penthouse ended it with their cheque and Joe was desperate enough to admit he needed a lawyer.

It wasn’t that he had anything against lawyers, except that they were slow, pompous, patronizing and extortionate. Nothing personal, just what everybody knew. And he saw nothing in Oldmaid Row to disabuse him. It was described in The Lost Traveller’s Guide, the best-selling series describing places you were unlikely to visit on purpose, with a rare lyricism.

‘But now after a long trudge through a desert of architectural dysplasia, the traveller sees before him an oasis of style, proportion and elegance which he may at first take for mere mirage. Here behind a small but perfectly formed park, bosky with healthy limes, runs a Regency terrace so right in every degree that one wonders if some Golden Horde of Lutonian reivers has not rampaged westwards and returned dragging part of Bath amongst its booty. Rest here a while and rebuild your strength for the struggles still to come …’

No one lived here any more, though royal-blue plaques alongside several doors signalled that some of Luton’s brightest and best had once dwelt within. Now it was the best and brightest of the town’s businesses that located here. The rentals were astronomical but the letterhead alone was worth a thirty per cent hype of any normal professional fee.

The firm of Poll-Pott occupied the last house on the left, which in olden times had nursed the muse of Simeon Littlehorn, Poet, ‘The Luton Warbler’. Though not much known beyond his native heath, his ‘Ode on the Death of Alderman Isengard Who Fell Out of a Hot Air Balloon on the 17th of July 1843’ is the shibboleth of all claiming to be native-born Lutonians. As Joe looked at the plaque he could no more keep the opening lines out of his mind than an Englishman can refrain from saying, ‘Sorry,’ when asked to pass the salt.

Oh Isengard whose winged word,

High borne aloft on fiery breath,

E’er raised the hearts of all who heard,

Can such as thou plunge down to death?

As he mused, a BMW pulled up behind the Mini. A woman got out, looked at the poppied paintwork in horror, then advanced to the door and punched in a code which opened it.

As the door closed behind her, Joe jumped forward and blocked it with his foot.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, though in fact he only got as far as ‘Exc …’ before the woman whirled round, jabbed her fingers in his throat, seized his right wrist in both hands, pulled him towards her, then stepped aside and swept his legs from beneath him so that his own momentum sent him crashing to the ground. A knee then rammed between his shoulder blades and his head was dragged back by the hair just high enough for her forearm to slide beneath his chin and crush up against his Adam’s apple.

‘Try to move and I snap your windpipe,’ she said.

Joe tried to croak his understanding, found nothing came out, so tried to telepath it instead.

‘OK, let’s get the police,’ she said.

The hand holding his hair let go, then the arm beneath his chin moved away. He risked a glance round and saw it was no relenting on her part which had brought this relief but the need of both hands to use a mobile phone.

At sight of his head movement she stopped dialling and raised the instrument like a club.

‘I told you, don’t move!’ she yelled. ‘You want your head ripped off?’

She could do it too, Joe guessed. He’d recently started on a martial arts evening class and if he’d learned nothing else after four lessons, he knew that Mr Takeushi, his elderly Japanese instructor, could fillet him and lay him out to dry without breaking sweat. This woman was clearly Black Belt or beyond.

He tried the croak again, this time managed, ‘… Potter …’

She’d resumed dialling. Now she paused once more.

Encouraged, he gasped, ‘… Mr Potter … appointment …’

‘You’re here to see Peter?’ She didn’t sound persuaded. Balding black PIs wearing ex-Luton-works-department donkey jackets and driving antediluvian Minis clearly didn’t figure large among Potter’s clients.

‘… Butcher sent … Bullpat Square …’

‘Butcher? You’re one of Butcher’s?’

A look of distaste touched her face, but at least it was edging out the look of incredulity. Butcher might be to Luton legal circles what Cerberus was to Crufts, but you couldn’t ignore her.

Joe nodded vigorously. The movement eased the pain in his neck and he repeated it.

‘Go on like that,’ she said, ‘and you’ll end up on the back sill of a car.’

But at least she removed her knee from his spine. He pushed himself upright, trying to look as if only old-fashioned courtesy had prevented him from defending himself, but a certain weakness round the knees which sent him swaying for support from the reception counter undermined the act.

The woman, who was youngish, good-looking in a glossy-mag kind of way and wearing a short fur coat which he hoped was imitation but wouldn’t have bet on it, was regarding him assessingly rather than anxiously as she enquired, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so,’ he said.

‘Good. You could have caused a serious misunderstanding, forcing your way in like that. Perhaps next time you’ll ring the bell and wait till someone admits you.’

She had to be a lawyer, thought Sixsmith, admiring the way she was already rehearsing her defence against a possible assault charge. He looked around for the file he’d been carrying. The woman spotted it first and scooped it up, allowing the cardboard cover to fall open and give her a glimpse of the contents. The sight of his motor policy seemed to convince her finally of his bona fides.

‘Here,’ she said, handing it to him. ‘You’ll find Mr Potter’s office on the second floor. You are sure he’s here, are you?’

‘Yes. Butcher rang him,’ said Joe.

She frowned as if puzzled by her colleague’s presence, or maybe just his accessibility.

Joe headed for the staircase he could see at the end of the foyer. The woman unlocking a door marked Sandra Iles, called after him, ‘There’s a lift.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Joe nonchalantly. If he couldn’t sue her for a million, he could at least demonstrate that her assault had been a gnat bite.

He ran lightly up the first flight, but as soon as he turned out of sight on a half landing, he halted and drew in great gasps of air which did nothing for his bruised ribs. Also his nose felt like it might be broken from when it had hit the floor. He touched it gingerly but it didn’t fall off.

Recovered slightly, he made his way sedately up the remaining stairs.

The second floor was unlit but enough light filtered up from below to let him see the names on the doors. Victor Montaigne … Felix Naysmith … Darby Pollinger … Peter Potter … all the male partners up at the top with the sole female down below … Legal machismo? Or maybe Iles specialized in assault cases and her clients had access problems.

Such idle thoughts occupied his mind as he raised his hand to knock at Potter’s door, but before his fist could make contact the door was wrenched open by a huge muscular man whose face registered such anger that Joe leapt back, fearful of provoking yet another attack from yet another pugnacious lawyer.

‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded this fearsome figure.

‘Mr Potter, I’m Joe Sixsmith, Butcher rang you, it’s about my car claim, I’m sorry I’m late but I had to go home to get my documentation, and then I got talking with Miss Iles downstairs and the time just flew …’

It came out in a defensive torrent, reinforced by the file which he thrust in front of him.

The man who, on closer examination and as the anger faded from his face, proved to be only about six-one and not much broader than an orang-outang, said, ‘Sixsmith, you say? From Butcher? And you’ve been downstairs with Miss Iles?’

‘That’s right. Look, I know you said I should be here by quarter to six but it’s only …’

He glanced at his watch and saw that the interlude with old Black Belt down below had shrunk his couple of minutes to a couple of seconds.

‘… well, anyway I’d be very grateful if you could just take a quick look …’

He put on what Beryl Boddington called his baby-seal look which she averred might make him irresistible to mummy seals but did nothing for staff nurses who had to be up for the early shift.

Happily, large lawyers didn’t seem to be so adamant.

‘All right,’ said Potter. ‘A quick look then I’m off.’

Joe followed him into the room which was smallish and contained a desk with a typewriter, a few filing cabinets and an old-fashioned coat stand. The lawyer took the file and began to leaf through its contents. Joe, perspiring freely from his recent exertions, took off his donkey jacket, to get the benefit later, and began to hang it on the stand.

‘No need to strip off,’ said Potter irritably. ‘This won’t take long. You’ve wrecked your car, right?’

‘It got wrecked …’

‘And it’s a write-off?’

‘So they say but …’

‘And it was an old banger, made in the sixties? And they’re offering you one twenty-five? Grab it, you’ve got a bargain.’

He glared at Joe as though challenging him to demur.

Joe thought, glad I’m not paying this guy else I’d want a refund! He opened his mouth to voice this thought when a telephone started ringing. The man looked over his shoulder, looked back at Joe, snapped, ‘Wait here!’, stood up and went through a door behind him. It was dark through there, but Joe got a sense of a much larger room. Or chamber! The bastard’s kept me in his typist’s office, thought Joe indignantly.

He heard Potter on the phone, his voice still loud and bad tempered enough to be clearly audible.

‘Felix, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Yes, that’s right. It’s urgent. Something’s come up. Can you get back for a meeting tomorrow? Good. Midday would be fine. Hang on a moment, will you?’

Potter came back into the outer office.

‘You still here?’ he said. ‘I’ve told you, you haven’t got a case. Now if you don’t mind, I’m busy.’

He rammed the contract back into its file and thrust it at Joe, using it as a weapon to force him to the door.

Joe said, ‘Hey, man, no need to get so heavy …’

‘Just go away,’ snarled Potter. ‘The days are past when you could wreck your old banger and get paid for a Jag XJ.’

Joe was out in the corridor now. He wasn’t a man to raise his voice but some things needed to be heard.

‘One thing to get straight,’ he said forcefully. ‘This ain’t no old banger we’re talking about. This is a vintage Oxford with an engine so sweet it could sing in the Philharmonic Choir.’

‘And pigs could fly!’ sneered Potter. ‘Good night!’

He closed the door. Joe turned away, paused, turned back, and flung it open again.

Potter re-entering his chamber, turned with a look of such fury that Joe almost fled. But some things are more precious than mere self-preservation.

‘I may not have a case,’ he said. ‘But I do have a coat, and you’re not having that off my back.’

So saying, he seized his donkey jacket and swept it down off the coat stand. Unfortunately for the gesture, the collar caught on the point of the hook and as he dragged it loose, the whole stand came toppling over.

Joe’s evasive backward leap took him out into the corridor once more as the stand hit the floor with a tremendous crash. It seemed like a good sound to exit on and pulling his coat round his shoulders he went down the stairs like Batman.

Black Belt was standing in the doorway of her office.

She said, ‘What the hell’s going on up there?’

Joe said, ‘Not much. Whoever said “Kill all the lawyers” just about got it right!’

It was a bold thing to say to someone whose earlier response to much smaller provocation was still jangling through his nerve ends. So he didn’t pause for an answer but headed straight out into the street where the sight of the Magic Mini brought his indignation back to boiling point.

‘Old banger!’ he yelled up at the blank-eyed building. ‘Now this is an old banger. You lawyers can’t tell tit from tat!’

His anger took him down to the Glit, the famous Luton pub dedicated to the living legend of Gary Glitter, superstar, where he poured Guinness down his gullet and his woes into the ear of Merv Golightly. Merv, old workmate, fellow redundant, and reconstructed taxi driver, said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ in tones of sepulchral sympathy at all the right moments, but his body language, which was as articulate as his six and a half foot length, seemed to have a different script.

‘So what you been up to that’s so interesting, Merv?’ said Joe, slightly hurt to find he was boring his friend. ‘How’s the publicity campaign? I ain’t been swamped by enquiries yet.’

It was a pretty mild retaliatory gibe, but it seemed to hit the button. Merv’s face screwed up in a rictus of anticipated pain and he said, ‘Well, yeah, something to tell you there, Joe.’

‘Hey, Joe, how’re you doing? You look tired, doesn’t he look tired, guys?’

‘Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? All that hard work he’s been doing, but he loves his work, don’t you, Joe?’

‘Yeah, night and day he stays on the job. Night and day!’

The enigmatic greetings from a group of regulars who’d just come in set the whole bar laughing. Joe grinned too and waved his glass, though he couldn’t for the life of him see what was so funny.

‘About the hand-outs,’ said Merv.

Merv regarded himself as a kind of sleeping partner in Joe’s PI business, and as he was Joe’s oldest friend, and as he had sometimes been positively helpful and as he didn’t want pay, Joe was happy to go along with this.

Just before Christmas Joe had been bewailing the slowness of business and Merv, a man of sudden enthusiasms, had said, ‘Yeah, it’s all this goodwill but that won’t last. Holiday over and it’s back to basics. You want to be ready, Joe. You want to be sure your name comes up first when folks find they need a gumshoe. You want to advertise!’

‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll take a ten-minute spot in the middle of The Bill.’

‘Start small, build big,’ said Merv. ‘Printed hand-outs are the thing.’

‘Couldn’t afford more than three, handwritten,’ said Joe.

‘No sweat. I got this friend, Molly, whose daughter works with some printing firm …’

‘You going out with a woman old enough to have a working daughter?’ interrupted Joe mockingly. ‘You’ll be into grannies next.’

‘She was a child bride,’ retorted Merv. ‘Anyway, I’ve been checking out the cost of putting out fliers advertising the cab, and Molly says Dorrie – that’s the daughter – can get these hand-outs done real pro standard, cost next to nothing, materials only. And I got to thinking, sheet of paper’s got two sides, why not let my friend Joe in on this unique marketing opportunity? Ten quid your share, call it fifteen for cash. What do you say?’

‘I say, what about distribution?’ said Joe, interested despite himself.

‘I go all over in my cab. Few here, few there, push ’em through letter boxes, pin ’em on walls, word’ll spread like smallpox. Let’s work out the wording. Direct message, that’s the name of the game.’

The direct message he’d come up with was:

IN TROUBLE? NEED HELP?

JOE SIXSMITH’S THE MAN

ON THE JOB NIGHT AND DAY

NOTHING TOO SMALL OR TOO BIG

FOR THE JOE SIXSMITH TOUCH.

GOT TROUBLE?

GET SIXSMITH!

Ring, write or call:

SIXSMITH INVESTIGATIONS INC

Top Floor, Peck House, Robespierre Place

(Tel: 28296371)

Couldn’t do any harm, thought Joe. Also, he was touched to see Merv so enthusiastic, motivated by nothing more than friendship. So he’d agreed.

Why was he suddenly wishing he hadn’t?

‘What’s wrong, Merv?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. Well, not much. In fact you’d hardly notice it.’

He dug in his pocket and produced a pale-pink hand-out. He’d been lying. Joe noticed it at once. In fact, it leapt from the page and hit you in the eye.

Every time the name SIXSMITH occurred it was spelled SEXWITH.

‘It was Dorrie’s fault, that’s Molly’s daughter,’ said Merv defensively. ‘She must have misread it from my script and it seems she’s a bit dyspeptic …’

‘You gave her the thing handwritten?’ said Joe incredulously. ‘Shoot, Merv, you know your scrawl makes prescriptions look like road signs. And don’t you mean dyslexic?’

‘That too. And she should’ve checked,’ protested Merv.

‘Yeah, yeah, I bet you made sure she got your name right,’ said Joe, turning the sheet over to look at the advert for Merv’s FAB CAB with his home and mobile numbers. ‘So tell me the bad news. How many copies of this foul-up did you distribute?’

‘Hardly any. And soon as I spotted it I started collecting them back in. Honestly, Joe, if half a dozen people saw it, that’s the limit.’

‘Hey, Merv, watch him or he’ll be giving you that special touch,’ said Dick Hull, the Glit’s owner, as he arrived behind the bar.

‘Yeah, half a dozen, and they all just happen to be in here,’ said Joe.

‘Pay them no heed. Joe, I really have been pulling these things back in and sticking them on the fire. Won’t be any left very soon, I promise you.’

He sounded so genuinely contrite, Joe found his anger ebbing. Confession’s all right for Catholics, said Aunt Mirabelle. It’s putting things right that saves your soul.

His mollification was completed when Merv offered to refund him the fifteen quid he’d contributed to expenses.

‘That’s OK, it was a good idea,’ he said. ‘But in future I’ll stick to word of mouth. And let’s not leave any of these things lying around, OK?’

He picked up the hand-out lying on the bar, thrust it into his pocket, finished his drink and left the bar. This had not turned out to be one of his better days. Best thing to do was pick up Whitey from Mirabelle’s then head for home and see if he could find an old feel-good movie on the box to restore his faith in a benevolent deity. Failing that, he could carry on improving himself professionally by reading Beryl Boddington’s Christmas present. Not So Private Eye, the life story of Endo Venera, the famous Mafia soldier turned gumshoe, as told to some Pulitzer-winning journalist. Beryl’s purpose had, he guessed, been satirical, but Joe was finding the book fascinating and full of pointers.

He took a deep breath of the cold night air. Promised to be a hard frost. Which reminded him he hadn’t closed his office window when he rushed out in his foolish eagerness to get legal advice. Like a man with piles sitting on a red-hot stove for relief. Best head back there to shut it. Way things were working out today, someone would be up the drainpipe and in through the window to help himself to the electric kettle and the answer machine. Probably had been already.

But no, they were both still there, with the machine registering that one call … Four Golden Rings … fat chance!

It was a woman’s voice. Young, nicely spoken, probably black, but with so much cross-dressing these days, it was hard to say. Kids picked their accents like they picked their clothes, to fit the fashion.

She said, ‘Hi, Mr Sixsmith. Like to see you sometime, have to talk about a problem I got. Look, I’ll pass this way early tomorrow, look in just on the off chance. But before nine. If not, I’ll ring again. OK? By the way, the name’s Jones. Miss Jones. OK?’

Way she said Jones had a bit of a giggle in it. Could this be a wind-up by one of the Glit jokers? He played it again, listened carefully. No, definitely Sixsmith not Sexwith. So where was the joke? Get him into the office before nine? Ha ha, really funny.

The phone rang. He grabbed it but didn’t say anything. If this was some joker, let them make the first move.

‘Sixsmith, is that you?’

The voice was female but this time he recognized it.

‘Butcher, is that you?’ he echoed.

She wasn’t in the mood for joking. Her voice was urgent.

‘Listen, you went to see Peter Potter, did you?’

‘That’s right,’ he said, his sense of grievance welling up. ‘And he’s a lot further gone than you imagine.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sounded alarmed.

‘You just got him down as a self-seeking fascist, if I remember you right. I’d say he was an A1 dickhead with all the charm and good manners of a wire worm!’

‘You didn’t get on?’

‘No, we didn’t.’

‘So what happened?’

‘What happened? He told me I’d got no case and should think myself lucky to be getting one twenty-five. I told him he should think himself lucky still to be chewing on a full set of teeth.’

‘Sixsmith, you didn’t?’

‘No, I’m just being macho after the event,’ he confessed. ‘Why? Has he been complaining? What does he say I said?’

‘Nothing. What happened then?’

‘Well, I left, didn’t I? Nothing more to be said and he looked the type who was capable of billing me by the millisec.’

‘And he was all right when you left?’

‘Yes, of course, he was fine … Butcher what’s going on?’

‘Listen, Joe, I’ve just had the police here. They came to ask if I’d sent a small balding black man round to see Potter. I said I needed to know why they were asking before I answered. They said that Potter had been attacked in his office and they needed the said small balding black man to help with enquiries.’

‘What? Shoot, Butcher, this is crazy. All they got to do is ask Potter. He’ll tell them I never laid a hand on him.’

‘They can’t do that, Joe. He’s dead. Pete Potter’s dead.’

Joe sat and looked at the phone as if hoping it would burst into laughter and tell him it was OK, this was just the new British Telecom dial-a-joke service.

He could hear footsteps running up the stairs.

‘Joe, I’m sorry, I had to give them your name. They’ll be round to see you any minute …’

The door burst open and three uniformed policemen spilled into the room.

‘With you in a moment, gents,’ said Joe Sixsmith. ‘Butcher, I think I need a lawyer.’

3

The policemen of Luton have a tradition of liberal thought running back to the Middle Ages when the sheriff’s charge to the constables of the watch contained the clause, ‘Nor shall it be taken as mitigation of rudely laying thy hands on a citizen and breaking his head, to say that thou mistook him for a Son of Harpenden. But against such as are known by certain signs to be Sons of Harpenden, whose depravations and depredations are notorious amongst sober Christian folk, then lay on amain!’

Joe in his teens had got himself classed as a Son of Harpenden by wilfully provoking the police in three respects: one, by being young; two, by being black; three, by being working class.

As the passing years gradually diluted the first of these provocations, Joe found the police magnanimously tolerant of his steadfast refusal to do anything about the other two, and eventually, safely pinned down as an industrial wage-slave, he looked set to pass the remainder of his life in that state of armed truce which a Martian on a day trip to England could mistake for integration.

Then he had turned PI.

This to some cops was a provocation stronger even than youth.

And to make matters worse, Joe had the gift of the truly innocent of stumbling into situations which, like a bishop in a bathhouse, required some explanation.

Fortunately his matching serendipity had enabled him to come up with a couple of results which Detective Superintendent Woodbine had managed to transfer to his own record sheet. Therefore it was with reasonable equanimity that Joe accepted the beat boys’ kind invitation to come down to the station and help with enquiries.

Nor did his heart sink more than a couple of ribs when the interview-room door opened and Detective Sergeant Chivers came in. Chivers was not a fan.

He was not so far gone in his dislike that he’d frame Joe, but he didn’t bother to hide his pleasure at finding him already in the frame.

Joe said, ‘Hi, Sarge. Nice to see you.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Well, I know it can’t be all that serious,’ said Joe confidently. ‘Else Willie would be turning the handle himself.’

The familiar reference to Superintendent Woodbine was by way of reminder to the sergeant that he was handling delicate goods, but Chivers looked unfazed.

‘Super’s sunning himself in Morocco for a week, thought you’d have known that, being such chums,’ he sneered.

Joe’s heart dropped like an overripe plum and lay exposed, waiting to be trodden on.

‘And the DCI?’ he asked.

‘In bed with flu. And the DI’s got himself snowbound up a Cairngorm. So that leaves nobody in the place but you and me, Joe.’

‘I know the song. Maybe I should wait for my brief,’ said Joe.

‘You want to be banged up till morning that’s your privilege,’ said Chivers.

Shoot, thought Joe. One of the uniforms must’ve earwigged his conversation with Butcher; not hard, as Joe’s indignation had made him echo much of what the little lawyer had said.

‘Tomorrow morning!’ he yelled. ‘You can’t do anything till tomorrow morning? Butcher, we’re not talking car-insurance claims any more.’

‘I know, Joe, and I’m sorry. But there’s this dinner in Cambridge, and I’m the main speaker, and I’m planning to stay over …’

‘Oh well, if you’re planning to stay over, don’t you worry yourself about me!’ said Joe.

‘Hopefully, you haven’t done anything to worry about,’ said Butcher. ‘Just tell Woodbine the truth. He knows which side his bread’s buttered on. You’ll probably be in bed before I am.’

‘Not from what I hear about them dirty dons,’ said Joe.

‘Don’t get cheeky. I’ll call you soon as I can, OK?’

‘I get it. Don’t ring us, we’ll ring you. What happened to kill the other lawyers, then call us?’

Not the cleverest of things to say. And he’d already said it, or something like it, earlier this evening, as he was soon to be reminded.

‘Nose looks sore, Joe,’ said Chivers sympathetically. Joe didn’t like it. Cops were like hospital nurses. The more helpless you were, the sooner they started treating you like you were five and backward.

‘It’s fine,’ said Joe, though his nose was twingeing like it knew it was being talked about. ‘Listen, is it true Potter’s dead?’

‘Surprise you, does it? Well, these things happen, Joe. It’s not like on the movies. Fight starts. You go in there chopping and twisting, next thing someone’s seriously hurt. Or worse. Specially when you’ve had the training.’

‘Training? What the shoot does that mean?’

‘It means one of my boys going into the sports centre for Mr Takeushi’s advanced class saw you coming away from the beginners’ session.’

‘And that makes me a killer?’

‘Shows you’ve got the inclination maybe.’

‘Yeah? And what does the advance class show about your boy? That he wants to be a mass murderer? It’s self-defence, that’s all. The whole philosophy is nonviolent.’

Mr Takeushi would be pleased to know that his words if not his techniques had made some impression.

‘Nonviolent, eh? So why were you shooting your mouth off about killing lawyers, Joe?’

‘Figure of speech,’ said Joe. ‘It’s from Shakespeare.’

‘Shakespeare?’ said Chivers in mock admiration. ‘Didn’t know you had such classy tastes, Joe. Now which play would that be in? Macbeth where the king gets killed? Or Othello where the black guy kills his wife? Or Hamlet maybe where everybody kills everybody else? Lots of killing in Shakespeare. Turns you on, does it?’

‘When does this get official, Sarge?’ asked Joe. ‘I mean, I’ve come here voluntarily to make a statement and as it sounds like a serious matter, I thought you’d have been wanting to hear it while it’s still fresh.’

He waited to see if Chivers would suggest his presence wasn’t voluntary. He could see the man was tempted, but while he might be a fascist he wasn’t a fool and in the end all he said was, ‘We appreciate your cooperation, Mr Sixsmith. Let’s get the tape running, shall we?’

Joe told it like it had happened. Chivers probed his story for a bit then, with the unconcealed reluctance of a man leaving the warm pub where he wants to be for the cold night air which he doesn’t fancy, he began asking questions based on the possibility that Joe could be telling the truth.

‘Did you see anyone else in the building but Ms Iles and Mr Potter?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see or hear anything which might have suggested there was someone else in the building?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Come on, Sixsmith. A footstep, a creaking board, an open door. Anything.’

‘Like I say, I don’t recollect anything. But I’ll work on it.’

‘What about outside? When you arrived and when you left, did you see anyone hanging around? Or anyone at all?’

‘No. The Row was empty. No one walking. No cars parked. Except mine and Ms Iles’s. It was six o’clock in Christmas week. All them businesses would be shut for the duration.’

‘What about the park?’

Joe thought.

‘Didn’t see anyone,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t really looking.’

‘So there could have been someone in the park?’

‘Could have been King Kong up a tree, but I didn’t see him,’ said Joe.

‘What about lights? What lights were on in the building?’

‘When I arrived, none that I could see. But there wouldn’t be. Mr Potter’s room looks out on the back.’

‘How do you know that?’ demanded Chivers. ‘You told me you never got into his room, only as far as his secretary’s office.’

‘I didn’t. But I know which way I’m facing.’

‘Always?’

‘Usually.’

‘Not a Muslim, are you?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Could be a useful talent for a Muslim.’

Joe glanced towards the tape and coughed gently.

‘Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for your cooperation, Mr Sixsmith. We may need to talk to you again and meanwhile if anything comes to mind that you think might help us, please get in touch. Interview ends at 20.15 hours.’

He switched the recorder off and sat glowering at Joe.

‘You’re a waste of my time and everyone’s space, Sixsmith,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sod off out of here?’

‘Hey, if you’re going to get personal, let’s have the recorder back on,’ said Joe. ‘Making jokes about Muslims just gets you killed, but being rude to witnesses may get you sued. What’s your beef anyway, Sarge? I told you all I know. Don’t want me making stuff up, do you?’

‘No, don’t want that,’ said Chivers, relaxing a little. ‘Just wanted a bit of a pointer but I suppose that was too much to hope for.’

Suddenly Joe got it. When Woodbine had been made up to superintendent, his detective inspector had become acting DCI, but Chivers hadn’t moved up to acting inspector. Instead, a new young high flier had been appointed. But Scottish snow, African sun, and Asian flu had united to leave the sergeant temporarily in charge of the shop. A good quick result in a murder case would do him no harm at all and at the very least be a satisfying two fingers to his sceptical superiors.

He said, ‘I’m doing my best, Sarge. You know that.’

He saw the man tremble on the brink of another insult then pull himself back, maybe recalling that Willie Woodbine had done OK by giving Joe his head.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘I meant it when I said, any little pointer.’

Happy to extend the phoney peace, Joe racked his brain for an idea.

‘There was the phone call,’ he said. ‘Someone called Felix. Listen, if you dialled 1471, you’d probably get his number …’

He saw from Chivers’s face this was mutton to the Falklands.

‘Felix Naysmith. One of the partners. Number was his holiday cottage in Lincolnshire. We rang back, but they must have gone out for the evening. No sweat. Unless Potter was actually attacked while he was on the phone, which doesn’t seem likely, there’s not much chance of Naysmith being able to help. It’s those who were on the spot I’m interested in.’

Grinding his teeth significantly, Joe said, ‘Like Ms Iles, you mean?’

‘Ms Iles has been very helpful,’ said Chivers, implying compared with some people. ‘First off, she told us she heard a din upstairs and went to her door in time to see you flouncing out, yelling about killing lawyers.’

‘I explained that.’

‘Yeah, like you explained about forcing your way into the building, scaring the pants off the poor woman.’

‘Come on, Sarge. Did she really say that?’

‘No,’ admitted Chivers reluctantly. ‘Just the opposite. What she did say was that after you left she went back into her own room, leaving the door open so she’d see Potter when he came down. Fifteen minutes later when he hadn’t shown and she was ready to leave, she rang his office. When he didn’t reply she got worried.’

‘Isn’t there some other way out of the building?’ interrupted Joe.

‘How do you know that?’ demanded Chivers, suspicion re-entering quick enough to show it hadn’t retreated far.

‘Because them houses were built for monied folk to live in with maids and cooks and backstairs and tradesmen’s entrances,’ said Joe.

‘That your deduction of the month, Sixsmith?’ sneered Chivers. ‘OK, there’s still a backstairs and a rear entrance from the back yard. Takes you out into Ligover Lane.’

‘So why was she worried when Potter could just have gone out the back way which, if his car wasn’t parked out front, seems the most likely explanation?’

‘She had a feeling something was wrong,’ said Chivers.

‘Sort of feminine intuition?’ offered Joe.

‘No. Sort of feeling anyone might get when an aggressive little black man bursts in, rushes upstairs, starts throwing furniture about, and storms out shouting stuff about killing people,’ said Chivers.

‘Yeah, well, we’ve been through all that, Sarge,’ said Joe. ‘So what’s she do now?’

‘She goes upstairs, goes into Potter’s room, and finds him lying by his desk, dead as a doornail.’

‘And how’d he die?’

‘Neck broken. No sign of a struggle. One quick professional twist. That’s what really got you off the hook, Sixsmith.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because I got my Black Belt boy to check with Mr Takeushi who told him, wrapped up in Oriental politeness, of course, that after six lessons you still couldn’t punch your way out of a paper bag, let alone inflict damage on a fully grown man with all his limbs and senses about him. So now, sod off, Sixsmith, and let me get on with some real detection!’

4

Joe woke up next morning knowing exactly who had killed Peter Potter.

Or at least having a vague idea who might possibly, all else being equal, have had something to do with his death.

It was hard experience had taught Joe to approach his certainties with this degree of caution. He’d seen so much solid ground dissolve beneath his feet he could have freelanced as an oil drill. But as he worked his way through the Full British Breakfast, which was his patriotic way of starting each new day, he could detect no flaws in his logic.

He went through it again.

He had left Potter alive and well though in a lousy temper.

Twenty minutes later he was dead, his neck broken by someone who knew how to do that sort of thing.

The only other person definitely in the building was Sandra Iles, who had claimed to be expert in the neck-breaking arts and had given Joe himself a fair example of her skills.

She had found herself with a great opportunity of offing Potter with a short-odds prime suspect all laid on. Or maybe she had killed the guy on the spur of the moment and got the idea of fingering the pathetic little black man later. Didn’t matter. Nor did motive. They were business colleagues which, like marriage, is notoriously a relationship in which incentives to murder are offered daily.

So why look further?

The only trouble was, if he could think of it, almost certainly Chivers had thought of it too.

He rang the station to check.

Chivers wasn’t in yet, he’d had a late night, yawned DC Dylan Doberley unsympathetically.

‘So how’s it going, Dildo?’ asked Joe. Doberley was a friend, or at least a fellow member of the Boyling Corner Choir where he atoned for being a materialistic, lecherous, C of E dropout by possessing a natural basso profundo.

‘Slowly,’ said Doberley. ‘Word is, there’s a thaw in the Cairngorms, the DCI’s wife is more irritating than his flu, and the Super’s holiday firm’s gone bust, so poor old Chivers’s dreams of glory are fading pretty damn fast.’

‘Nothing then? No arrests, no suspects?’ enquired Joe.

‘Only you. I’d go into hiding, he’s getting really desperate.’

‘Thanks, Dildo. I may do that. See you at choir practice.’

Joe put the phone down and said, ‘You hear that, Whitey? Time running out for poor old Chivers, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t grab a slice of that glory.’

Whitey, who had grabbed a slice of fried bread, chewed sneeringly.

‘Just you wait and see,’ said Joe.

Wait and see what? was the question which the cat or any sentient being might legitimately have asked, but Joe was able to postpone essaying an answer by his awareness that while glory might exalt the ego, it took paying customers to feed the flesh. Miss Jones was probably a wind-up, but he couldn’t afford to neglect the chance she was for real.

He arrived in Robespierre Place at eight forty-five, parked the Magic Mini round the corner, and walked back to Peck House with Whitey slouching at his heels, disconsolate to discover they weren’t about to launch another assault on Mirabelle’s prize turkey.

Peck House, named for Alderman Peck who had conducted himself as chairman of the council’s planning committee and as chief shareholder in the firm which got the contract to develop this and many other sites with an aplomb which didn’t desert him during his later appearances in the dock, was a nineteen sixties that-was-the-future-that-was building, only saved from the high-rise demolition boom of the eighties by the fact that the Alderman’s luck ran out shortly after the third floor. Hastily capped and redirected from residential to office use on the grounds that, while in five years it probably wouldn’t be fit for even the most desperate of council tenants – the kind of businesses driven to seek a base in Robespierre Place couldn’t afford to be so finicky – it loured disdainfully at the stolid Victorian terrace opposite like a misunderstood romantic hero.

Its frowning exterior was reflected on the face of a man lurking in the doorway, though any claims he had to be romantic were well hidden. About five and a half feet tall, and almost as much across the shoulders, he might have got close to six feet if God had given him the usual proportion of neck. Perhaps the material saved here had gone into the formation of his ears which were large, pasty-grey, and wrinkled, reminding Joe of something he’d seen in a packet down the Chinese supermarket.

He was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. Perhaps, thought Joe, who always tried to look on the bright side, he was a British heavyweight out on a training run who’d stopped for a rest and a smoke.

Why was the bright side always fantasy?

The man was blocking his path. Purposefully.

‘Sixsmith?’ he growled or rather shrilled, in a surprisingly high voice which was nonetheless menacing.

‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘It’s not Miss Jones, is it?’

To his surprise, instead of breaking him in two, the man said, ‘Just Jones. Inside.’

Taking this as instruction rather than analysis, Joe pushed open the door and stepped in. He glanced round to see if the man was following but he remained on the step glaring down at Whitey who returned the glare with interest.

‘It’s OK,’ said Joe. ‘He’s with me.’

Despite a slight weakness round the knees, he ignored the lift and headed for the stairs. Whitey never used the lift on the grounds that his life was far too valuable to entrust to a piece of machinery installed by Alderman Peck. Joe, no great lover of exercise, usually thought it a risk worth taking, but the fear of being followed into that rickety tin box by that slab of flesh and bone on the doorstep sent him heading for the stairway.

But his fears were groundless. The street door closed and the man remained outside.

His relief only lasted to the final half landing. Whitey as usual had nimbled ahead of him, but as Joe turned the final bend he saw the cat had halted in his I’m-going-to-get-me-a-wildebeest crouch.

Oh shoot, thought Joe. There’s someone else up here.

He thought of a discreet retreat, but memory of what stood on his doorstep plus shame that he should be revealed as scareder than a cat combined to move him onward and upward. But pride did not inhibit him from calling, ‘Hello. Someone up there?’

‘Mr Sixsmith? Is that you?’

The voice was if anything pitched lower than the neckless monster’s, but undeniably and very pleasingly female. A figure advanced from the shadows of the landing.

‘Miss Jones?’ said Joe.

‘Sort of,’ said the woman.

She too was wearing a baggy tracksuit, but with the hood up. Now with a little shake of the head she tossed it back to reveal a face he just had time to start to recognize before Whitey made his move. From a standing start he got up to maximum knots in a couple of strides, then leapt up at the woman’s long throat.

‘Whitey!’ yelled Joe in alarm.

But it was too late. The cat hit the woman in the chest, caught his claws in the tracksuit top, relaxed into her cradling arms and lay there, looking up, four paws in the air, purring like a chocolate-box kitten.

It was quite revolting, like Boris Karloff playing Little Lord Fauntleroy.

‘Now aren’t you a beauty then?’ she said, nuzzling her nose against his head.

And Joe said, ‘He thinks so. And aren’t you Zak Oto, the runner?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you coming up or do you interview all your clients on the stairs?’

In the office, seated on the chair which didn’t fall to pieces if you leaned back too hard, Zak Oto said, ‘Sorry about the Miss Jones thing on the answerphone, but I couldn’t be certain who’d hear the message. Thing is, Mr Sixsmith, I’m being threatened and I need someone to take care of it.’

She flashed him the multi-megawatt smile which made her as big a hit on billboards and screen as her legs did on the track. She was already the Bloo-Joo girl and word had it that Nymphette were after her to front up their new range of popular sports clothing. Even dressed in a baggy tracksuit she looked a million dollars, which was probably a lot less than she was going to be worth.

Joe was making a production number of looking round his office.

‘Something up, Mr Sixsmith?’ she asked.

‘Just checking there’s no one here but me and my cat. Which of us did you see for the job, Miss Oto?’

She gave him the smile again, perfect white teeth gleaming in a face so black she made Joe feel like a crypto Caucasian.

‘Hey, you do jokes too like a real PI.’

‘I am a real PI,’ said Joe. ‘What I’m not is a minder. I’m ten pounds over my recommended weight which I can’t punch anyway, and though I’m growing through my hair, I’m short for my size. You’d be better off with Whitey here. Compared with me he’s a fighting machine.’

The fighting machine snuggled up against the athlete’s bosom and purred complacently. Joe didn’t blame him. In the same position he guessed he’d be feeling pretty complacent too.

She said, ‘Perhaps if you just listen to me a moment, Mr Sixsmith?’

‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘Long as you understand, you may be tipped for a world record next season, but if some guy came after us both with a meat cleaver and bad attitude, you’d be looking at my heels.’

Now she laughed out loud. It was a real pleasure making her laugh. It came out dark and creamy like draught Guinness and set up a turbulence beneath the tracksuit upon which Whitey bobbed with undisguised sensuality.

‘Must try that some day,’ she said. ‘But seriously, Mr Sixsmith, I’m not here looking for a minder. I’ve got all the minder I need. You probably saw him downstairs.’

‘No neck and ears like Chinese mushrooms?’

‘That’s him. He really is called Jones. Starbright Jones.’

‘Starbright? You’re joking?’

‘You think that’s funny, you’d better keep it to yourself,’ she said. ‘He’s Welsh and doesn’t care to be laughed at.’

‘Sorry,’ said Joe, who knew all about racial sensibilities. ‘So if you’ve got Mr Jones, what are you doing here?’

‘Trying to tell you what I’m doing here,’ she said with an irritation which didn’t make her any the less attractive. ‘Starbright’s fine for fighting off trouble if and when it happens. What I really want is someone who’ll take care of the ifs and the whens. Someone who’ll stop it happening.’

She paused. Joe nodded encouragingly though he didn’t much care if she went on talking or not. Miss Poetry in Motion the papers called her, but even in repose a man could spend his time less poetically than just staring at her. From her earliest appearances on the track she’d been the pride of Luton, a pride not dinted when last autumn, after equalling the British 800 metres record, instead of starting an art foundation course at South Beds Institute, she had accepted a sports scholarship in the Fine Arts Faculty of Vane University, Virginia. Word from over the water was that her American coach wanted her to move up to the mile and 1500 metres, and was forecasting she would be rewriting the record books in the next couple of seasons. Locals would have the chance to make their own assessment on New Year’s Day at the grand opening of the new Luton Pleasure Dome. With its art gallery, theatre, olympic-size swimming pool, go-kart track, climbing wall, cinema, skating rink and sports hall, the Plezz, as it was known, had carved a huge chunk out of both the green belt and the council’s budget. But with the town’s own golden girl not only performing the official opening, but also running in an invitation 1000 metres on the indoor track it would take a very bold environmental or economic protester to attempt disruption.

Joe realized the girl hadn’t just paused, she was waiting for him to ask an intelligent PI-type question.

He said, ‘Miss Oto …’

‘Call me Zak,’ she said. ‘And I’ll call you Joe. OK?’

Zak. Funny name, but he didn’t need to ask where it came from. The papers had told him her real name was Joan, but when she started running almost as soon as she started walking, her athletics-mad father had started referring to her proudly as ‘my Zatopek’ which her childish tongue had rendered as Zak.

‘OK. Zak, this being threatened you mentioned, is this just a general feeling you have or something specific?’

She said. ‘You worried I may just be another neurotic woman, Joe?’

‘Just encouraging you to tell me what you’re doing here, Zak,’ he said.

‘I’m trying. OK, you know I’m running at the Plezz New Year’s Day?’

‘Does Rudolf know it’s Christmas?’ said Joe.

She didn’t smile but went on, ‘Boxing Day, I got a call. It was sort of a husky voice, maybe a woman trying to sound like a man, or could’ve been a man trying to sound like a woman …’

‘What did it say?’ urged Joe.

‘It said, wasn’t Christmas a wonderful time with everyone trying to help everybody else out, and this was why she was ringing – let’s call it her, OK? – because some friends of hers wanted to do me a great big favour, and they’d expect nothing in return except a very little favour from me. Well, by now I was beginning to think I’d got myself a weirdo. They come crawling out once your name gets in the papers, you know.’

‘So why’d you keep on talking?’ asked Joe.

‘I got curious, I guess. Besides she didn’t sound threatening. Just the opposite, nice and concerned. She said she’d heard about the Nymphette deal – you know about that?’

‘I saw something in the papers,’ said Joe. ‘Tell me.’

‘It’s just something my agent’s setting up. Nymphette do perfume and cosmetics, but now they’re branching out into a range of casual and sportswear and they want me to be front girl for them. Wear the scent and model the clothes.’

‘I look forward to the commercial,’ said Joe gallantly. ‘So what did your caller have to say about this?’

‘Just that she hoped nothing would happen to stop me clinching the deal. Like I say, she sounded really nice. Even when she told me the little favour her friends wanted, it came over so reasonable sounding, I had to ask her to say it twice.’

‘So what was it?’ asked Joe.

‘She said her friends would be very grateful if I didn’t win the race on New Year’s Day.’

‘Shoot,’ said Joe. ‘Some little favour! So what was the big favour she was going to do in return?’

‘She said that her friends would let me have the rest of my career and my family the rest of their lives,’ said Zak Oto.

Joe shook his head sadly. It would have been nice to work for and with Zak, but he knew a no-no when he saw one.

He said, ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but this is one for the cops. It’s probably nothing, just some nutter, but go to the police anyway, just to be safe. Get them poking around and if there is anything serious behind all this, the people concerned will soon get the message the Law’s after them …’

‘She said not to tell anybody.’

‘She would, wouldn’t she? But you’re telling me, so that shows you’ve got enough sense not to be intimidated. Naturally I’m flattered I’m the first but all the same …’

‘You’re not the first,’ she said. ‘I told Jim Hardiman. Used to be my coach. Now he’s the sports director at the Plezz.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said to forget it. A nutter. I should train hard and not talk to strangers and let Starbright take care of anyone who got persistent.’

‘Sounds good advice. Why aren’t you taking it?’

‘Yesterday morning I got these notes.’

She handed him two postcards. They both had reproductions of cat paintings on them, one of two kittens watching a snail, the other of a whole family of cats playing with an empty birdcage. He turned them over. No stamps, though one did have a sort of damp mark in the stamp square as if someone had stuck something there. They both had messages printed in red ballpoint.

REMEMBER, YOU’VE GOT FANS EVERYWHERE

and

WHEN WE SAY EVERYWHERE THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE MEAN

‘These don’t change things much,’ said Joe, all professional reassurance.

‘Yes, they do,’ said Zak. ‘The first one I found in my locker at the Plezz. Which was locked. The second I found on my pillow when I woke up yesterday morning. I think these people are telling me they can go anywhere, do anything. Like cats.’

‘You don’t seem so scared of cats,’ said Joe, looking enviously at Whitey.

‘No, but if he was three times as big as me I’d be scared,’ said Zak.

‘Fair enough,’ said Joe. ‘So why exactly have you come to me?’

‘Because it’s the twenty-ninth, which leaves three days till the race. Seems to me my best chance is for someone to find out what’s going on in those three days.’

‘You’re probably right. But the people with the best chance of doing that are the cops.’

‘Definitely no,’ she said with an authority belying her years. ‘They work for the Law. I want someone working for me.’

This seemed an odd way of putting it but Joe didn’t beat his brain trying to figure out what she meant.

He said, ‘Suppose, as is likely, I can’t find anything out in three days?’

‘Then I find out about it myself on the track,’ she said slowly.

‘That’s crazy! If you’re that worried, why not pull a muscle, catch a cold or something?’

‘The voice told me, don’t think of scratching. I’ve got to run and lose or else all favours are off. Joe, it’s not just me that’s been threatened. I can hire muscle like Starbright to give me some degree of protection. But someone who can get close enough to leave these notes the way they did isn’t going to have any problem targeting my family.’

‘Turning up with me in tow could tip these people you’ve been talking.’

‘Hell, you not that famous, are you?’ she smiled. ‘I’ll say you’re some old friend’s old uncle who’s lost his job and I felt so sorry for you, I’ve taken you on as temporary bagman.’

‘That why you chose me, I’d fit the part so well?’ said Joe unresentingly.

‘No. Positive recommendation,’ she said, standing up and putting Whitey on the desk despite his plaintive protest. ‘Tell me, Joe, that pic up there, who’s it by?’

Surprised, because the only picture in his office was the photo of a recovery truck on the free calendar advertising Ram Ray’s garage, Joe followed her gaze. She was looking at Whitey’s tray still perched on the curtain rail above the window.

‘Sorry, I just stuck it up there to dry …’ he began apologizing.

‘You mean you did it yourself? Joe, that’s really great. Do you exhibit?’

‘No! Look, it was just sort of an accident …’

‘Joe, don’t put yourself down. We’ve had a couple of seminars on the Creative Accident this semester and what comes out of it is that all art is a form of accident, or maybe none of it is, which comes to much the same thing. Will you sell it to me?’

‘No!’

It came out a bit explosively and the girl (Joe knew better than to call girls girls these days, but they couldn’t put him in jail for thinking it!) looked so tearfully taken aback that Joe’s soft heart ruled his soft head and he heard himself saying, ‘What I mean is, you want it, you take it. Gift from me. And Whitey.’

Give credit where it’s due was a Mirabelle motto.

‘Well, thank you, Joe,’ she said, clearly overwhelmed. ‘And thank you too, Whitey.’

She picked up the cat from the desk and gave him a big hug.

Story of my life, thought Joe. I do the deals, he gets the profit.

‘Joe,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to run. Literally. You will take my case, won’t you?’

‘I’ll take a look at it,’ he said. ‘But listen, you haven’t heard my rates …’

‘Charge me top dollar, Joe,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m going to be a millionaire, haven’t you read the papers? I’ll be at the Plezz most of the morning. Come and see me there about twelve thirty. OK?’

And she was gone, clutching her tray like a championship trophy.

Joe looked down at the cat postcards she’d left on the desk.

‘Well, I guess I’m hired, Whitey,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know whether to be glad or not. This one could be a real problem.’

And the cat looked at him with an expression which said, the only real problem you’ve got is you’ve just given away my toilet tray, and what the shoot do you intend doing about that?

5

Despite the fact that it was still only nine o’clock, breakfast felt a long way away.

Joe popped round the corner to Mr Palamides’s hardware shop where he bought a new litter tray in puce plastic. He foresaw trouble with the colour but it was all Mr P had.

‘OK, it does shout at you,’ he said to Whitey. ‘But have you seen the new gents at the Glit?’

The cat refused to be comforted so Joe left him sulking in the bottom drawer of his desk and went off in search of food.

A bacon sarnie and a mug of tea at MacFrys produced an association-of-ideas timeslip, reminding him of his conclusion, tested at breakfast, that Sandra Iles was Number One Suspect for the Potter killing.

It didn’t feel quite such an odds-on certainty now, but he didn’t doubt that Willie Woodbine on his return home would want to know if she’d been thoroughly checked out, and if Chivers wasn’t bright enough to do it, Joe had no inhibitions about doing himself a bit of good and the sergeant a bit of harm by demonstrating he at least had been on the ball.

The precise nature of this demonstration he had yet to work out. One thing was certain. Anything that came close to confrontation in a secluded spot was definitely out. Citizen’s arrest sounded easy when you said it fast, but it wasn’t a concept most Lutonians took kindly to, and he’d already had experience of getting on the wrong side of Ms Iles.

He doubted she’d be at work today. The chambers on Oldmaid Row would be crawling with cops and in any case, hadn’t she told Chivers she’d just called in to collect some case notes to study at home over the rest of the holiday? Probably a way of making some poor sod pay for her time even when she was lying around watching old movies on the box.

He drove to the post office, checked the telephone directory. There were three S. Iles, but one was a greengrocer and another lived on the Hermsprong Estate where rats hardly dared to go, let alone lawyers. The third address looked promising. 7 Coach Mews. This was all that remained to mark the site of one of Luton’s great coaching inns which had gone into rapid decline with the coming of the railway. The coming of the motor car had taken much longer to displace the horse totally in the town’s conservative affection and the stable complex had survived the demolition of the old inn by a good fifty years. Finally it too had become ruinous till a smart seventies developer had bought up the site, kept the old cobbled yard and as much of the facade as wasn’t on the point of collapse, and constructed eight town houses which had tripled in price by the height of the eighties boom. They had suffered the universal dip since then but were still only within reach of the town’s fattest cats, like accountants, pornographers, and lawyers.

He drove round there and smiled smugly when he saw the BMW parked in the cobbled yard. So far so good. But where next?

He recalled a story he’d heard read on the radio where some guy had gone around telling people in high places he knew their secret, then watched their reaction. It had been a pretty funny story, but maybe it had a serious side.

He guessed she was in the house, what with the car outside and the curtains still drawn. There was a phone box a little way down the street. He went into it and dialled the Iles number.

It rang a few times then an answer machine clicked in.

He put on the approximation of an Irish accent he used when singing ‘Danny Boy’ and said, ‘We know it was you that did it. See you soon.’

Then he returned to the car which he’d parked with a good view of the entrance to the mews. He was well out of the sightline of anyone in Number 7 but if she did emerge in the BMW, looking guilty, it was going to be a delicate task following her in this mobile wallpaper ad. Half an hour later he was starting to feel that this wasn’t a problem he was going to have to face. He went back to the phone box and rang again. Still the answer machine. He pressed the rest and redialled, repeating the process several times. Surely even a lawyer couldn’t be sleeping this soundly? He strolled to the mews entrance and glanced up at Number 7. The curtains were still drawn.

This is stupid, he thought. I mean, no one’s paying me to do this. Head back to the office, Sixsmith, and have a kip till it’s time to go see the lovely Zak down the Plezz and start earning some real money.

But even as his sensible mind hesitated, his traitor feet were carrying him to the door of Number 7 and his foolish finger was prodding the bell.

Nothing happened. He rang again, leaning his ear to the wood to check the bell was actually ringing. It was. And the door moved slightly under pressure from his ear.

He pushed it with his hand and it swung slowly open.

There was a noise to his right. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that an elderly gent of military mien had emerged from Number 6 and was regarding him with a curiosity this side of suspicion, but only just. Fixing his gaze firmly on the doorway, Joe let his mouth spread in a big smile and cried, ‘Well, hello there! Nice to see you again,’ and stepped inside.

Now why do I do these things? he asked himself helplessly. See a clever move and make it quick, is the way to lose at chequers, as Aunt Mirabelle always said after luring him forward with sacrifice, then triple-hopping his pieces.

But he’d done it anyway. Closing the door behind him so that Number 6 couldn’t peer in, he peeped through a small curtained window and saw the old soldier still standing there like he was on sentry duty. Best thing to do was wait a couple of minutes, then exit boldly, shouting, Thank you and goodbye! If the sound of his entry hadn’t roused the drowsy Ms Iles, then he could afford to exit with a bang!

But his awkward mind was asking, why hadn’t the legal lady been roused? Phone ringing, door opening, strange voice downstairs … Maybe she’d been so affected by what happened to Potter she’d knocked herself out with a pint of gin? Maybe … He decided to abandon maybes, knowing from experience how soon you ran out of the comfortable zones and got down to the scarys.

It was simpler to try and wake her, then run like hell at the first sound of movement.

He advanced to the foot of the stairs and called, ‘Ms Iles? You up there?’

No reply. I am definitely not going up those stairs, thought Joe.

Not any more than two or three, anyway.

But four or five never seems much more than two or three, and in no time at all he found himself where he had no intention of being, on the landing.

‘Ms Iles?’ he called again, thinking that if she came out of the bathroom now stark naked, she probably knew enough law dating back to the Middle Ages to get him broiled on a gridiron.

He moved slowly forward towards an open door. It led into a bedroom. She was in there. He could see her. She was naked.

‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.

Maybe she’d got so pie-eyed she couldn’t make it under the duvet. Maybe …

There he went with his maybes again when all the time he knew from the angle of her head to her body that maybes were right out of fashion.

To his long list of folk he’d got wrong he added Sandra Iles. Unless she’d been so ridden with guilt, she’d managed to break her own neck.

He went closer to make absolutely sure. Her nakedness embarrassed him and it would have been easy to imagine accusation in those staring eyes. But there was only death. He touched her face, mouthing, ‘Sorry.’ Cold. Dead for hours. He ran his gaze round the room. No clues leapt up and hit him in the eye. And why the shoot should he be looking for clues anyway? No one was paying him to do a job here.

Still, like Endo Venera said, one way or another a PI was always on the job. No harm then in a few mental notes.

The bed was big enough for two but there was only one central pillow and that had a single indentation in it. Looked like she’d gone to bed then been disturbed. No sign of a nightgown. Either she slept raw or it had been taken. No obvious sign of rape. Her legs weren’t splayed and there were no scratches or bruising that he could see. No sign of struggle either. Everything neat and tidy. The clothes she’d been wearing last night were arranged on hangers and hooked over the edge of the wardrobe door.

On top of the wardrobe he could see the edge of what looked like a black metal box.

According to Endo Venera, two things a good PI never missed the chance of looking into were an open bar or a closed black metal box.

He tried to reach it, couldn’t. He picked up the stool in front of the dressing table. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but in for a penny, in for a pound, it’s nose that makes the world go round.

Even standing on the stool only got his head level with the top of the wardrobe. He wrapped his handkerchief round his right hand, reached up, fumbled till he found a handle, and lifted the box down.

It was eighteen inches by nine, the kind of portable strongbox you can buy in any legal stationer’s. There was a key in the lock. He turned it and lifted the lid.

‘Shoot,’ he said.

No telltale legal documents here, just photos, the kind of pictorial biography to be found in nearly everyone’s desk or attic. Sandra Iles (presumably) as baby, as infant, as (now recognizably) schoolgirl; on holiday, in cap and gown, in (bringing a reminiscent twinge to his neck) a judogi fastened with a black belt. Other people, presumably family and friends, appeared on some of the snaps but no one Joe knew till he hit a group photo taken on the steps of Number 1 Oldmaid Row.

There were five of them, Iles and four men. Joe recognized the burly figure of Peter Potter. The other three – a distinguished elderly man with silvery hair, a slight dark man with a sardonic white-toothed smile showing through an eruption of black beard, and a big blond Aryan in his early thirties – were presumably Pollinger, Naysmith and Montaigne, though not necessarily in that order.

Two down, three to go. The thought popped uninvited into his mind.

Then the doorbell rang, making him drop other people’s worries and several photographs.

He went to the curtained window and without touching peered through a tiny crack.

On the cobbles below stood a police car. Alongside it, looking up at the house and listening with polite boredom to the expostulations of the military man, was a pair of uniformed cops.

Joe glanced at his watch. Dickhead! I went in, found her dead, and was about to raise the alarm when the police arrived wasn’t going to sound so convincing now fifteen minutes had elapsed. It was going to sound even worse if they caught him in the bedroom, going through the dead woman’s things.

Hastily he scooped up the spilled pics, dropped them back in the box, locked it, clambered on the stool, replaced the box on the wardrobe, jumped down, replaced the stool before the dressing table, and headed for the door.

One last glance round to make sure he hadn’t left any traces of his illegal search. And he had. The group photo of the Poll-Pott team had fluttered half under the bed. He picked it up. The doorbell rang again and a voice started shouting urgently through the letter box. No time to put it back. He shoved it into his pocket and sprinted downstairs just in time to open the front door before they smashed in the glass panel with a truncheon.

‘Hey, that’s timing,’ said Joe. ‘I was just going to ring you.’ But he could see they didn’t believe him.

6

It took the police doctor’s confirmation that Sandra Iles had been dead between twelve and fifteen hours to move Sergeant Chivers away from the pious hope that Joe had been caught in the act. But it didn’t move him far.

‘OK, so maybe you were just revisiting the scene of your crime,’ said Chivers. ‘Let’s concentrate on what you were doing between say seven and ten last night. And if you were sitting at home watching the telly, the courts don’t accept alibi evidence from cats!’

‘Shoot,’ said Joe. ‘Then I’m in real trouble, ’cos my witnesses are a lot less reliable than Whitey.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It means that for most of the time, I was here being questioned by you, Sarge. Remember?’

Chivers closed his eyes in silent pain.

‘And when you were done with me, I went straight round to the Glit to wash the taste out of my mouth,’ said Joe, pressing his advantage.

‘The lowlife that drink there are anyone’s for a pint,’ said Chivers without real conviction.

‘I’ll tell Councillor Baxendale you said that, shall I? We got there the same time, and it’s true, I bought him a pint.’

Dickie Baxendale was chair of the council’s police liaison committee.

Chivers said, ‘Just tell me again what you were doing at Number 7, Coach Mews.’

Joe told him again, or rather told him the revised version which was that, being keen to assure Ms Iles of his innocence in the matter of Potter’s death, and not trusting the police to set the record straight (a good authenticating point this) he had decided to call on her personally.

‘Mr Dorken said you spoke to someone before you went in.’

Mr Dorken, the ‘military gent’, had turned out to be a retired fashion designer. Just showed how wrong you could be.

‘That was a bit of play-acting,’ admitted Joe, who knew the value of a plum of truth in a pudding of lies. ‘The door opened by itself and I got worried ’cos Mr Dorken was watching me suspiciously. Sorry.’

‘It’s stupid enough to be true,’ admitted Chivers reluctantly.

DC Doberley called him out of the room for a moment. When he returned he said, ‘Come across any Welshmen recently, Sixsmith?’

Joe thought of Starbright Jones, decided against mentioning him, and said, ‘Can’t think of any. Why?’

‘There’s an odd message on Ms Iles’s answerphone. Funny accent, could be Welsh.’

Pride almost made Joe protest, but sense prevailed.

He said, ‘Everybody sounds funny on tape. Can I go now, Sarge? I’ve got an appointment. For a job. In sport.’

‘Oh yes? Who with? Head scout down the football club?’ Chivers sneered.

And Joe couldn’t resist replying, ‘No. It’s Zak Oto down the Plezz. Got your ticket for the opening, have you, Sarge?’

To the faithful, the Plezz with its great silver sports dome from which radiated all the other support and activity buildings in broad and tree-flanked avenues, was Luton’s Taj Mahal. Literally, according to some who claimed that every local mobster who’d gone missing in the past decade had been consigned to the depths of its concrete foundations. Metaphorically there was certainly blood on its bricks. Since the idea first got floated in the overreaching eighties, fortunes had been made and lost, reputations inflated and burst, both locally and nationally. At times the government had pointed to it proudly as the very model of partnership between public money and private enterprise, at others it had provided a gleeful opposition with yet more ammo to hurl across the floor of the House. But once under way, like a juggernaut it had rolled on: and though the complexion of the local council had fluctuated in tune with the times, and work had sometimes slowed almost to a standstill, no one had had the nerve to pull the plug altogether and make Luton and its folly the mockery of the civilized world.

So now, ten years on, it was finished, and though Joe had generally been of the party who thought the whole idea was crazy, now as he drove along the main avenue, with that phlegmatic pragmatism which makes Lutonians such great survivors, he felt a glow of proprietorial pride.

He was a bit late, partly Chivers’s fault, partly Whitey’s. He’d rushed back to rescue the cat from the office and found him full of indignation at having been left so long. Also of pee because he was clearly going to have nothing to do with his new puce tray, so they’d had to stop at the first flowerbed as they reached the Plezz complex and despite the evident urgency, it had taken the cat the usual ten minutes of careful exploration with many false starts to find the piece of earth precisely suited to his purpose.

Being late didn’t matter, however, as he clearly wasn’t expected.

‘I’m here to see Zak Oto,’ said Joe to the armed guard. In fact he wasn’t armed, but he looked as if this was just because he’d left his Kalashnikov in his ARV as he felt like tearing intruders limb from limb today.

‘You and a thousand others,’ he said. ‘Piss off.’

‘She’s expecting me,’ said Joe.

‘She’d be wise to have an abortion then,’ said the guard.

‘Hey, man, why so rude?’ asked Joe. ‘OK, you’ve got a job to do, but maybe you should remember who’s paying you and do it politely.’

‘Sorry,’ said the guard. ‘Piss off, sir!’

Joe regarded him almost admiringly. Dick Hull, manager of the Glit where they liked their humour subtle, should book this guy for Show Nite.

Meanwhile he stood there, like the big dog they’d told him about at school, guarding the entrance to hell, though why anyone should have wanted to get into hell Joe had never quite grasped. But the way to get round him was toss him something to eat.

Trouble was, Joe couldn’t think of anything this guy might have an appetite for except maybe his head.

‘Joe Sixsmith? Is that you?’

A burly balding man in a tracksuit had come out of the door leading into the depths of the Dome. He was smiling at Joe.

‘Yeah, this is me,’ admitted Joe.

‘Thought it was. Don’t recognize me, do you?’

In fact the man’s creased and weather-beaten face did look familiar. But there was a sense of a thinner, younger face peering out of fortyish flesh which was more, though differently, familiar.

‘Jim Hardiman,’ said the man. ‘We were at school together.’

It was the nose that finally did it.

‘You mean Hooter Hardiman?’ said Joe.

A shadow touched the smile like a crow floating across the sun.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Long time no see, eh?’

But in fact Joe had seen Hardiman several times both in the local paper and on the telly since he had come to prominence, first as Zak’s trainer, then as sports director of the Plezz. He felt ashamed as a PI that he’d never made the connection between the grown man, Jim, and the schoolboy, Hooter. His excuse was that the nose which had stood out like a chilli on a cheesecake at fifteen had been absorbed and assimilated by forty. Also the boy had been a class above him and they’d never had much more contact than the usual ritual bullying a schoolboy heavy feels it necessary to dish out to whoever gets in his way in order to encourage the others.

But now it was best-years-of-our-lives time.

‘Heard a lot about you recently, Joe, and often meant to look you up. Have a chat about the good old times we had together.’

Would take all of ten seconds, thought Joe.

He said, ‘That would be great, Hoo … er, Jim. But I’m here to see Zak just now. Any idea where she is?’

‘Zak? She expecting you?’

‘That’s right, Mr Hardiman. Ms Oto told me to look out for him.’

This was the gung-ho guard unexpectedly coming to his support.

Joe said, ‘You knew that, why all this guard-dog crud?’

‘Thought you were just a pushy fan, didn’t I? Ms Oto didn’t tell me you’d look like … how you look.’

A diplomat already, thought Joe.

Hardiman said, Thanks, Dave. Come on, Joe. Let me show you the way.’

He set off into the Dome with Joe following. The place was full of workmen.

‘You going to be ready on time?’ said Joe, gingerly edging past WET PAINT signs.

‘No sweat,’ said Hardiman. ‘Gilding the lily is all. Time for a quick word.’

It wasn’t a question. As he uttered the words he opened a door marked DIRECTOR OF PHYSICAL RECREATION, a title rather larger than the office he ushered Joe into. There were lots of files and correspondence in evidence, but all neatly stacked. To Joe, who could create chaos out of two sheets of paper and an empty desk, it looked like the workplace of a busy but well-ordered man.

‘Have a pew,’ said Hardiman, ‘and tell me what this is all about.’

‘Can’t do that, Hoo … er, Jim,’ said Joe. ‘Private business.’

‘So you’re here professionally?’

So it wasn’t Hooter who suggested me, thought Joe as he shrugged noncommittally.

‘OK. But I need to know if this is anything to do with that stupid business about that phone call.’

Another shrug. It was pretty good this shrugging business. Saved a man a lot of tripping over his tongue.

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Listen, Joe, I appreciate you got a duty of confidentiality, but I’ve got duties too, and anything to do with the New Year meeting is my business. Zak told me about the call, I told her it was the price of fame, some nutter, ignore it. I thought I got through. What’s happened? There been more?’

Joe varied the shrug with a little hand movement, sort of French, he felt.

‘OK, so there’s been more. Listen, Joe, I’ve got to know this. Is Zak seriously thinking about scratching because of this crap?’

There didn’t seem any harm in saying, ‘No, I don’t think scratching’s an option,’ till he’d said it, after which he realized it implied agreement with all that had gone before. But shoot, not even a Frenchman could shrug forever.

‘Thank God for that. But if she’s so worried, why hire you? Why not talk to me again, or go to the police?’

Back to the shrug.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ said Hardiman after a moment’s pause for thought. ‘The girl’s worried someone close to her may be involved. And if that’s right, if it’s someone in her family, Zak wouldn’t want that to get public. She’s a loyal girl.’

Wasn’t so loyal to you, thought Joe.

He said, ‘Why should she think someone in her family could be out to harm her? Thought she was the apple of their eye.’

‘I take it you haven’t met her sister?’ said Hardiman. ‘Zak might be the apple of her parents’ eyes, but she’s the pip up sister Mary’s nose.’

With a mental sigh, Joe abandoned all shrugs and pretence. This sounded too important to miss.

He said, ‘What’s the set-up? Young sister having all the talent, getting all the attention?’

‘Half right,’ said Hardiman. ‘But Mary was talented too, very talented. Squash was her game, and she was good. I’ve known her a long time. She used to work out at the gym where I took my athletes for weight training. From thirteen, fourteen on she had just one idea in her mind. She was going to be the world’s Number One Woman, and nothing was going to get in her way. And I think she might have made it too if it hadn’t been for the accident.’

‘Hey, I think I remember something of that in the Bugle,’ said Joe. ‘Car smash, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right. She was driving her parents to see Zak run. They were shaken and bruised, nothing more, but Mary got her knee mangled. End of hopes.’

Joe said, ‘You tell that story like there’s a lot more to it, Jim.’

‘Sensitive soul, aren’t you?’ said Hardiman. ‘Listen, I’m into confidentiality too. Was a time when Zak used to tell me everything. There are things I figure you ought to know because of this situation you’ve got yourself into. But I don’t want Zak knowing it comes from me, you understand me, Joe?’

Back to the playground, Hooter’s voice soft, but his eyes oh so hard and menacing.

‘Just tell me what you want to tell me, Jim,’ said Joe mildly.

Hardiman looked like this wasn’t the cued response, then said, ‘OK. Way I got it from Zak was that in her parents’ eyes she was the star who needed cosseting, Mary was the toughie could look after herself. Easy to see why. Mary was completely single minded, didn’t care what kind of impression she made. While Zak, well, you’ve met her. Can’t help liking her, can you?’

‘No,’ agreed Joe. ‘So what happened?’

‘OK, this night, Mary was late picking up her parents – her dad’s car was in dock, which was why she was doing the driving. Reason she was late was she’d been playing in a club competition and the woman she beat was the Great Britain Number 2, and there’d been a journalist there who’d wanted to interview her afterwards. None of her family there though. So she’d got home full of this, only to be yelled at ’cos she was late taking them to see Zak run. Henry, that’s her dad, was nagging away at her, can’t you go faster, that sort of thing. So she jumped a light. Which was when it happened. And when Zak got to see her in hospital, first thing she said was, now you’ll be satisfied, last time I’ll have an excuse being late for seeing you run. Laying it all on Zak.’

‘How’d Zak take it?’

‘Like the trooper she is. When Mary got out of hospital it was Zak kept her up to scratch with her physio. I think Mary would have been happy to walk with a stick the rest of her life so’s no one would forget. As it was she seemed set to laze around at home looking miserable till Zak got her a job with her agent.’

‘That’s this guy Endor, isn’t it? Read about him too. Local isn’t he?’

‘Not really. Flash house out near Biggleswade, but he’s a professional Cockney, on the make, on the up,’ said Hardiman without much sign of affection.

Blames him for Zak going to the States and changing trainers? wondered Joe.

‘But, to be fair, he seems to be doing OK by the girl,’ Hardiman went on, as if realizing he’d let his feelings show. ‘He spotted Zak was going to need an agent before she’d got around to thinking of it for herself. But she’s no fool. Once she heard his proposal, she sat down and re-evaluated things. I think she signed up on a short-term contract, and part of the deal was that Endor gave Mary a job without it looking like a fix.’

‘Must’ve been pretty obvious,’ said Joe. ‘And some folk might think it was rubbing Mary’s nose in it, putting her where she’d see the figures clicking up every day telling her how well her sister was doing.’

His aim was to provoke and it worked.

‘That shows you know dick about Zak,’ snarled Hardiman.

‘While you know her inside out?’

‘I know her better than most. You’ve got to get close to someone you’re training. Sometimes you can get too close.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Young kids are vulnerable. They find a friendly ear to pour things into which, a couple of years later as they grow up, they wish maybe they hadn’t. So then they look for a reason to split.’

‘Thought you and Zak parted by mutual consent ’cos she wanted to go stateside and you wanted to take this job at the Plezz?’

‘I was talking in general, Joe, not about me and Zak,’ said Hardiman coldly. ‘Listen, Joe, you tread carefully here, right? Last thing I want is some family row blowing up in the Plezz, so save your dramatic revelations till Zak’s on her way back to the States.’

‘Should’ve thought the last thing you wanted was Zak coming last,’ said Joe.

Hardiman shook his head and sighed deeply.

‘Joe,’ he said. ‘The Grand Opening isn’t about Zak, it’s about the Plezz. After it’s over, then the real work begins, and it doesn’t matter if during the course of the ceremonies the mayor gets fighting drunk, the visiting dignitaries all fall into the pool, or Zak Oto gets run into the track by a no-name from nowhere. In fact if one or all of those happen, we’d probably get much more publicity than if everything goes to plan. This time next week, the mayor will be sober, the dignitaries dry, and Zak long gone to sunny Virginia. And all of us back here will be settling down to the long hard struggle to make this place pay.’

He paused and Joe digested the speech.

‘So you’re not bothered about Zak?’ he said finally.

‘Of course I’m bothered about Zak!’ said Hardiman indignantly. ‘I put years into that girl, the important years. I’m looking forward to a good decade of watching her tear up the record books, and all the while I’ll be thinking, it was me who got you started, girl! And I’ll tell you one thing, Joe. Doesn’t matter what some nutter might be saying, once Zak gets out on that track, she’ll run to win. She doesn’t know any other way. I guarantee that, ’cos it was me that put it there!’

Good speech, thought Joe. But when you’re watching her winning Olympic Gold, won’t you be thinking, it should be me there at trackside, me she’s running up to with the big thank-you hug for all to see on worldwide telly?

He recalled vaguely that last summer when Zak had announced she was definitely heading west, some of the tabloids had tried to whip rumours of an acrimonious parting into a full-blown row. Both of the notional participants, however, had been at pains to play things down. Zak, looking so lovely you’d have believed it if she’d told you she could fly, had talked about her gratitude to Jim and his total support for her decision that the American option was best for her, both personally and athletically. And Hardiman had completed the smother job by announcing that he was taking up the post of sports director at the Plezz. ‘With Zak’s talent, coaching her was a full-time commitment and I was never going to be able to combine it with getting things off the ground at the Pleasure Dome,’ he’d said, cleverly suggesting that if any dumping had been done, he was the dumpster.

‘Now let’s see if I can find Zak for you. I think she’ll be in the café with the others.’

‘Others?’

‘Didn’t she say? Her agent, her Yank trainer, and of course big sister are all here.’

He made them all sound like a gang of freeloading hangers-on.

‘So what exactly happens on New Year’s Day?’ asked Joe as they set off walking once more.

‘Well, there’s an official opening of the stadium, flashing lights, boys and girls dancing, that sort of thing, followed by the competition, with Zak’s race as the highlight, of course. Then in the evening there’s a civic reception in the art gallery to inaugurate the other facilities, Zak will be asked to unveil a plaque, everyone will get noisily pissed, and the ratepayers will foot the bill. The luminaries of Luton are fighting for invites. If you don’t have a ticket, you’re dead.’

‘I’m dead,’ said Joe.

Hardiman laughed and pushed open a door which led into a self-serve café, gaily decorated in the bistro style and tiered down to a plate-glass wall which let every table have a view of the track below. There was no food on offer yet, but on the serving counter a coffee machine bubbled away.

‘Won’t this be the place to eat though?’ said Hardiman proudly. ‘Gobbling up your grub, while down there they’re gobbling up world records.’

‘Pretty optimistic, aren’t you?’ said Joe.

‘We’ve got the fastest boards and the most generous indoor bends in Europe,’ boasted Hardiman. ‘They’ll soon catch on, anyone after a world record, Luton’s the only place to be. There’s Zak down there.’

Joe had already spotted the girl sitting at a table on the lowest tier with three people, two men and a woman. These three were drinking coffee. Zak was sucking on a bottle of her beloved Bloo-Joo which she removed from her mouth and waved as they approached.

‘Hi, Joe,’ she said. ‘Glad you could make it. You guys, this is Joe I was telling you about. Joe, meet my sister Mary, my agent Doug Endor, and my coach, Abe Schoenfeld.’

Schoenfeld was late twenties, athletic of build and glistening with what looked like spray-on health. He said, ‘Hi, Joe,’ in a Clint Eastwood accent. Endor, who was about thirty, tall, craggily handsome, and wearing an eat-your-heart-out-paupers mohair suit, offered his hand and said, ‘Glad to know you, Joe.’ Sister Mary didn’t even look at him. She was shorter than Joe and muscularly built. He tried to see a resemblance to Zak and couldn’t.

‘Grab a seat, Joe,’ said Zak.

He sat. Hardiman said, ‘Catch you later, Joe,’ and walked away.

Sulking because he hadn’t been asked to stay? Or maybe you didn’t invite directors to sit in their own sports centres.

‘So tell me, Joe, what’s your line?’ said Abe Schoenfeld.

Joe glanced uneasily at Zak. She’d intro’d him as Joe I was telling you about. Presumably she’d given the agreed story about taking pity on the out-of-work uncle of an old friend. But what work was he out of?

Zak said, ‘Abe means, what’s your physical thing, Joe. He reckons everyone is some sort of athlete, even if it’s only second-hand.’

‘Like watching, you mean?’ said Joe. ‘I’ve got a season ticket for the Town.’

‘That’s soccer, right? You play?’

‘Used to kick a ball around when I was at school.’

‘But not now? Nothing else? Tennis? Maybe not. Rock climbing? Swimming?’

‘Go to a judo class,’ he said.

‘Knew there was something,’ said Schoenfeld. ‘You can always tell the guys who haven’t dropped right through. You should do weights. Right body shape, good shoulders, heavy legs.’

‘You’re right about the legs,’ said Joe. ‘Feel heavier every time I go upstairs.’

‘Abe is always looking for new talent,’ laughed Zak. ‘OK, you guys, I’m going to show Joe around, let him know what he’s going to be doing.’

She stood up. Joe followed suit. So did Mary.

Endor said, ‘Mary, doll, spare a mo? Couple of fings I need to talk over.’

Professional Cockney, Hardiman had said. Sounded real enough to Joe.

‘I’ll be back in the office next week,’ said Mary coldly. ‘Just now I’m on vacation, remember?’

She walked away with the faintest hint of a limp.

‘Mary works for your agent, does she?’ asked Joe as he followed Zak out of the restaurant area.

‘That’s right. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ said Joe, surprised by the sharpness of her tone, ‘She don’t look very happy.’

‘Well, that’s her business, wouldn’t you say?’ said Zak coldly.

Joe took a deep breath. One of the early maxims in the so far very slim Joe Sixsmith Book of Advice to Would-be Detectives was, if you’re going to quarrel with your client, get it over with before the bill mounts up.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s my business if I’m going to work for you. I need to be able to ask you anything I like and get a straight answer.’

There it was. She was frowning. She was a nice kid but seeing her with her entourage had underlined that she was also, if not yet a queen, certainly a princess getting used to the deference of her own court.

Could be it was off-with-his-head time.

Instead she suddenly smiled and said, ‘OK. You do the press-ups or you change your coach. Right?’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Joe. ‘Talking of which, you did change your coach last summer. Or rather by going to America you cut off your connection with Hardiman. Any hard feelings?’

Always best to get all versions of a story.

‘You’ve been reading the wrong papers, Joe,’ she said. ‘No, it was pretty painless, the right move for both of us at the right time.’

‘Well, that was handy,’ said Joe.

‘Things sometimes work like that,’ said Zak, with all the confidence of one who hadn’t yet received too many half bricks in the neck from life. ‘If we hadn’t stayed good friends, you don’t think I’d be here now? When Jim heard I was coming home for Christmas, it was him got the idea of boosting the official opening of the Plezz by having an athletics meeting with me running an exhibition. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else.’

‘How did Abe react?’

‘No problem. He reckoned I’d be ready for a real tester about now.’

‘So this is a real race? Not just an exhibition run?’ Thinking, it would be a lot easier for you to ‘lose’ in a real race.

‘It’s a real race. Lots of top trackers who wouldn’t mind showing me their bums. Abe wouldn’t have come across if he didn’t think he was needed.’

‘He’s staying with you?’

‘No way,’ she laughed. ‘We’re all full up at home, and I try not to track my business into the house anyway. No, Abe’s very comfortable at the Kimberley.’

Joe whistled. ‘With their prices, I should hope he is.’

The Kimberley was one of Luton’s top hotels.

‘He says it’s OK,’ said Zak, coming to a halt and opening a door marked Women’s Locker Room. ‘Come on in. I’ve got the place to myself at the moment. This here’s my locker.’

‘Oh yes. Great. Nice locker.’

‘Where I found the second note,’ she said gently.

He examined it carefully because that’s what she seemed to expect him to do.

‘No sign of forcing,’ he said professionally.

‘No. I checked. What about fingerprints.’

‘Left the powder in the office,’ he said. Then, recalling another of his maxims, don’t get smart with the clients, he added, ‘What I mean is, no point. Key in, turn, pull open with the key, drop the note inside, push, turn, remove key, and you’re away without laying a finger on the door. Anyone else using the Dome before it officially opens?’

‘I know the Spartans, that’s my old club, have been using the track evenings for training to help it settle. Plus there’s the workmen putting finishing touches. Plus people using other bits of the Plezz could easily stroll in here. Shouldn’t you concentrate on who’s got access to the spare keys? Can’t be too many of them.’

Oh dear, thought Joe. Like a good princess, she wasn’t going to be shy about telling the help what they ought to be working at.

He said, ‘Got your key handy?’

She passed it over. Joe moved along the wall of metal lockers. They came in blocks of eight. Zak’s was second from the left. He counted two in the next block and inserted the key. The door opened. He did the same with the next block:

‘This way the manufacturers only need eight variations on locks and keys instead of an infinity,’ he explained.

‘But it’s lousy security!’ she protested angrily.

‘Saves ratepayers’ money,’ said Joe with civic sternness. ‘As for security, your crook’s got to work it out first.’

‘You worked it out,’ she said not unadmiringly.

‘That’s my job,’ he said modestly, not thinking it worthwhile to reveal that the lockers at Robco Engineering where he’d worked nearly twenty years had suffered from the same deficiency which he’d worked out after ten.

‘So that means there’s my key, and the duplicate key and the master key plus the keys for every second locker in every block in every changing room in the complex?’

‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘The note that landed on your pillow is a better bet.’

‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.

‘Because,’ he said patiently, ‘getting into a house is a lot harder than getting into a changing room. Who else was in the house that night?’

She said, ‘Mum, dad, Eddie, my kid brother, and Mary.’

‘Oh yes. You were telling me about your sister but we got diverted.’

Polite way of putting it.

She looked ready to renew her objections to answering questions about her family, then she took a deep breath and said, ‘Mary’s four years older than me. When I was a kid, I hung around her all the time. Must have driven her mad but she never showed it. When I got into junior athletics she was really supportive, took me along to her gym to work out, came and shouted for me when I was running.’

‘She was into sport too?’ asked Joe.

‘Oh yes. She’s got a great eye. Squash was her thing. She won lots of junior trophies and her first season when she moved up to senior level, she got to the national semis. She was going places.’

‘But?’

‘But two years ago she was in a car accident. Her knee got busted pretty bad. They put it together again fine, but not so they felt it would stand up to the strain of training for and playing top-level squash. Otherwise though it’s completely normal.’

‘I thought she had a bit of a limp.’

‘Oh yes. No physical reason according to the doctors, but it comes on from time to time.’

Especially when you’re around? wondered Joe. But he thought it better to leave it for now.

‘She start working for Endor before he became your agent or after?’ he asked.

‘Oh, after, I think,’ she said vaguely. ‘She’s doing really well.’

‘Yeah? Take you over on her own account eventually?’

‘Could be. Main thing is she’s off work now till the New Year so it’s great we can spend time together.’

‘That’s right. Family’s important,’ said Joe. ‘Any chance I can take a look at your house?’

Take a look at the rest of your family, he meant.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to finish my day’s schedule here. Why don’t you come back about four, pick me and my gear up and drive me home? That way you’ll look like you’re working for your living.’

‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘By the way, what’s happened to Starbright?’

‘Missing him already, are you?’ grinned Zak. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll be around.’

He was. First person Joe saw as he walked away from the locker room was the cuboid Celt.

‘Hi there,’ said Joe. ‘Thought you were supposed to be a minder?’

‘Thought you were supposed to be a detective,’ sneered Starbright in his high-pitched voice. ‘Saw you arrive. Didn’t report straight to Miss Oto though, did you? Had a long chat with Hardiman first.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Joe, for some reason feeling as defensive as a preacher spotted going into a cathouse. ‘Turns out he’s an old schoolfriend.’

‘Very cosy,’ said the Welshman. ‘Share a cell, did you?’

Joe was getting a bit tired of this.

‘I’m a PI,’ he said. ‘I do my job by talking to people. Thought you did yours by sticking close to whoever you’re being paid to look after. What if there’d been a mad axeman in the locker room?’

‘Had you to look after her in there, didn’t she?’ said Starbright. ‘It’s a mad axeman you’re expecting then?’

How much does he know about what’s going on? wondered Joe. Maybe as official minder he should be brought up to speed, but that was Zak’s call.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘What she tells you is her business, OK? But believe me, my business has got nothing to do with your business. Breaking bones, I mean.’

‘You amaze me,’ said Starbright.

Zak had come out of the locker room and was walking away from them down the corridor. Even from the back she looked beautiful. Starbright went after her. Even in retreat he looked menacing.

Funny the way the Lord doled out his gifts, thought Joe Sixsmith a touch enviously.

But not enough for it to touch his tranquillity more than the moment it took to turn and start towards the car park, which, though he did not know he’d got it, was perhaps a greater gift than either menace or beauty.

7

Back in the car, Whitey was still in a deep sulk, manifested by lying on his back on the passenger seat, breathing shallowly and twitching intermittently in the hope of persuading some bleeding-heart passer-by to ring the RSPCA. Joe’s return signalled failure, so he opted for deep sleep. But when the car stopped and Joe got out, the cat leapt to full awakeness, a single sniff telling him they were at Ram Ray’s Garage, and Ram was always good for certain little Indian sweetmeats Whitey was very partial to.

‘Good morning, Joe. Car still running well, I see. That engine sounds sweet as a temple bell. Make me a fair offer and it’s yours for keeps.’

Ram Ray was six foot tall, with silky black moustaches, melting brown eyes, and a sales patter which could sell veal-burgers to a vegan. Particularly a female vegan.

‘Fair offer would be you giving me the car plus a monkey for the work I’ve done on it,’ said Joe.

‘Always the merry quip,’ said Ram, leading the way into the office where Eloise, his nubile secretary, switched her radio off and the kettle on. Whitey, recognizing the source of good things, rubbed himself against her legs, purring like a Daimler. Not a bad life being a cat, thought Joe. Zak’s bosom, Eloise’s legs – he’d be purring too. Or more likely, have a heart attack.

‘So, Joe, what’s new?’ asked Ram. ‘Heard from Penthouse yet?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ said Joe. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

He’d been tempted to let the bad news keep till the New Year, but whatever he felt about the Magic Mini, letting him have it on extended rent-free loan had been an act of kindness which deserved honest dealing.

He showed Ram the letter.

‘I’m going to fight,’ he said. ‘But it means no money for the Morris for a long time, maybe never.’

‘Don’t let it worry you, Joe,’ said Ram. ‘You have a good lawyer, I hope? You need a specialist to deal with these bastards.’

Joe thought of Peter Potter.

‘It’s in hand,’ he said. ‘So it’s OK to hang on to the Mini?’

‘My pleasure,’ said Ram.

‘And what about a respray …?’

‘Please, Joe. Not again. It has a value over and above its trade price. Those are original stencils. It is a piece of genuine sixties memorabilia. One of the exhibitions they are planning for the new gallery at the Plezz is concerned with the psychedelic era and already I am getting some interested enquiries.’

‘I get interested enquiries all the time,’ said Joe. ‘Like where did I get such a big box of chocolates? Or can I have three iced lollies, please?’

‘You see?’ said Ram, pleased. ‘People notice. A Ram Ray loan car. Excellent for business.’

This was the fatal flaw in Ram Ray’s otherwise amiable character. If it was excellent for business, he would have tattoed his name on his own grandmother.

Joe didn’t bother repeating his old plea that being the cynosure of attention in motion or at rest was far from excellent for his business, but turned to accept a cup of tea from Eloise, who, with a herald’s instinct for precedence, had seen to Whitey’s needs first.

Like the Mini, the tea was rather too flowery for Joe’s taste and he was ready for an antidote mugful of basic Luton leaf by the time he got back to his office.

He hefted the kettle to make sure there was water in it then kick-started the skirting-board switch with his toe.

Next moment he found himself sitting against the wall at the far side of the room. He had no idea how he’d got there, though from the ache in his back it must have been at sufficient speed to cause a substantial collision. His right hand was still clutching the Bakelite handle of his electric kettle, though the kettle itself was no longer attached. Through the blanket ache covering his back, a small pinpoint of sharper more localized pain was shining which he finally traced to his little finger. With difficulty he opened his hand to release the handle and saw that the end of his little finger was burned.

‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.

Reassured by the sound, Whitey emerged, saucer-eyed, from the refuge of his drawer.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ said Joe. ‘Help me up.’

After plunging his finger into cold water then plastering it with ointment from his biscuit-tin first-aid kit and devising a makeshift finger stall with some insulation tape, he opened a can of medicinal Guinness. Then he set to work. In the mechanical field his detective skills were excellent and it didn’t take him long to track the trouble to the switch in the ruined kettle. The internal connections had worked loose so that when he switched the power on the whole of the kettle became live. If it hadn’t had a Bakelite handle … if more than the tip of his little finger had been touching the metal … if he hadn’t been wearing thick-soled trainers …

If, if, if … word was only good for testing things that could happen, not frightening your mind with things that might have happened. He fixed the blown fuses, dumped the ruined kettle and made a note to buy himself another. A detective could get by without most things, but not the wherewithal to brew tea.

The phone rang.

He picked it up gingerly as though afraid it too might hurl him across the room.

‘Sixsmith? Is that you? What the hell have you been doing?’

‘Butcher, how was Cambridge? You get to stroke the college eight?’

It was a joke which had had to be explained to him when he first heard it in a speech made by the Labour candidate at the last election, as had the subsequent debate as to whether the fact that the Labour candidate was a woman and the Tory opponent she’d been mocking was a homophobic father of six made it politically correct.

‘Shut up, Sixsmith. Is it true? I get back to hear that not only is Peter Potter dead, but Sandra Iles too.’

‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘But it’s nothing to do …’

‘Nothing ever is,’ she said with a hurtful sarcasm. ‘Look, you get yourself round here right away and bring me up to date with what’s going on, OK?’

Joe glanced at his watch. He should be on his way to the Plezz to pick up Zak. He still felt a bit groggy, but a man couldn’t let a little thing like near electrocution get between him and his only paying customer.

Besides, it was something of a pleasure to be able to say, ‘Sorry, can’t fit you in just now, Butcher. Why don’t I drop by later? Between six and seven, say?’

He put the phone down on her cry of outrage.

Traffic was heavy and he was a few minutes late getting to the Plezz. Zak was waiting for him impatiently.

‘Come on, Joe. I say four, I mean four.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s the sales …’

‘Wish I had time to go shopping,’ she said. ‘Grab my bag. Might as well make it look good, huh?’

Joe picked up her sports bag and staggered. What the shoot did she have in here? Weights? He saw Starbright’s tramline lips twitch in a saturnine smile but he had his revenge a moment later as they approached the Mini.

‘If I’d known you were coming I’d’ve got a roof rack,’ said Joe.

But his tiny triumph was immediately subsumed in amazement as he heard Zak cry, ‘Joe, is this yours? This is just the most fabulous thing I ever saw. A real sixties icon.’

‘You like it?’ he said.

‘I love it!’

Perhaps Ram Ray had been right, he thought. Perhaps it’s just us old Philistines who miss the beauty of clapped-out cars and piss-printed cat trays!

‘Bit different from your limo,’ he said as they watched Starbright struggle into the back seat.

‘What limo’s that?’ she said, surprised. ‘Mary drove us here in her Metro and Dad sometimes lets me borrow his Cavalier.’

A bothersome girl. Just when you had her pinned down as spoilt princess she turned back to Luton lass.

He got in the car and drove her home.

Home turned out to be a pleasant detached house on a seventies development in Grandison, one of the smarter suburbs on the far side of town from Rasselas where Joe lived.

‘Nice,’ said Joe as they pulled into the short driveway.

‘Dad worked hard,’ she said a touch defensively.

‘Hey, no one thinks the worse of you because you weren’t deprived as well as being beautiful and talented,’ he said.

He got out of the car and looked up at the house. A bright yellow box under the eaves proclaimed it was alarmed and there was a heat-sensitive floodlight which had lit up as they arrived. He checked the front door as they went in. Solid with deadlocks. A quick glance as he entered the living room told him the windows here and presumably all over the house were double glazed with individual locks.

Zak’s mother was smaller than Zak but with the same graceful carriage and fine bones. Joe, who was introduced as Joe who’s helping us out, she greeted with a grave courtesy. Starbright she ignored.

The room was warm and friendly with big chunky armchairs, bright paintings (the brightest signed Zak) on the pale emulsioned walls, and a spangled Christmas tree in the deep bay.

‘Lovely house you’ve got, Mrs Oto,’ said Joe. He meant it, but Zak took it as a hint that he was keen to do his tour of inspection and said, ‘Let me show you around, Joe,’ and led him out.

‘Nice lady, your ma,’ he said as they went into the kitchen. ‘You give her the poor-relative-of-an-old-friend story?’

‘Sure. Why not? You do the disguise so good, I don’t think she’s going to see through it,’ she said, giving him a smile which took any sting out of the remark.

But the thought stayed in his mind that if Mrs Oto in any way resembled his Auntie Mirabelle, who had a herald’s knowledge of all his old friends and their family trees, it wasn’t a story that would hold for long.

The door from the kitchen into the back garden was the same sturdy design as at the front. Window likewise. He stepped outside into the gloom and a security light lit up immediately showing him a stone-flagged patio, a square of level lawn bordered by neatly raked flowerbeds enclosed by a six-foot pine-slat fence. Joe walked slowly round the lawn. No sign that any of the flowerbeds had been trodden on recently.

Shoot, he thought. Why is it whenever I do all the proper detective things, I get nowhere. Maybe the secret lay in the later chapters of Not So Private Eye.

He went back into the kitchen and said, ‘Upstairs.’ That came out real LA laconic, he thought, pleased.

There were four bedrooms. Zak’s, like an archaeological dig, showed a record of her history through all its layers. Nothing had been discarded. Dolls, teddy bears, children’s books, games, puzzles, ornaments, all were crowded in here. On the walls you could trace both the progress of her taste in pop-group posters and her own artistic development, through junior-school finger paintings to the sketches, watercolours and acrylics of her teens. Every inch of space was covered, not excluding the ceiling which looked like a patchwork quilt. But nowhere was there any sign of her link with top-class athletics.

‘You sleep with your window open?’ asked Joe.

‘Couple of inches, but I always screw the handle down.’

Joe checked. Supple burglar might get his hand in and turn the screw. He opened the window wide and looked out. No handy drainpipe. They’d have needed a ladder up from the patio.

‘Father got a ladder?’ he asked.

‘Sure. But it’s in the garage, which is kept locked.’

Mary’s room was at the other end of the scale, completely tidy with the bed made up with hospital corners, and hardly a thing there to tell you this wasn’t a hotel.

He checked the window.

Zak said, ‘Mary always closes it before she gets into bed. She reckons the night air is bad for her.’

The master bedroom looked out on the front. As Joe stood there a car pulled into the drive and a man got out and looked up at him.

‘It’s Dad,’ said Zak, waving. ‘Best go down and say hello.’

‘Hang on. We’re not done,’ said Joe sternly. ‘This one?’

‘That’s Eddie’s. My kid brother. Shouldn’t bother about him, he’s more or less retired from direct human contact. If it’s not on the Internet, it’s not worth messing with.’

Joe opened the door. A boy of about eleven or twelve was sitting in front of a computer which had a screen so packed with data that even at this distance it made Joe’s head whirl.

‘Hi, Eddie, this is Joe,’ said Zak.

The boy didn’t look round but ran his fingers over the keyboard. The screen blanked then filled with the word HELLO!

‘That’s the most you’ll get,’ said Zak, pulling Joe away. ‘Unless he decides you’re electronically interesting. He hardly acknowledged me when I got back, then Christmas morning among my prezzies I found a print-out with details of my last drug test plus those of every other top-flight woman I was likely to come up against.’

‘Is that useful?’ said Joe.

‘No, but it’s amazing,’ said Zak.

As they came down the stairs, Joe heard a man’s voice saying, ‘So what’s he doing in my bedroom?’

Zak ran lightly into the lounge and said, ‘Hi, Dad. My fault. I was showing Joe the house and we were just admiring the view.’

‘Of the houses opposite, you mean? Strange tastes you’ve got, girl.’

Henry Oto was a tall athletically built man with a square determined face. Zak had got his height and her mother’s looks. Her sister had got her mother’s size and her father’s looks. You never know how the genes are going to come at you, thought Joe.

He knew from the papers that Oto was a senior prison officer at the Stocks, Luton’s main jail. Remember, no escape jokes.

He said, ‘Hi, Mr Oto. I’m helping Zak out, fetching and carrying, you know.’

Oto said, ‘Fetching and carrying what?’

Joe shrugged and looked to Zak for help. Clearly her father lacked her mother’s courteous acceptance of the vagaries of her daughter’s new lifestyle. That’s what came of associating with criminals.

Zak said, ‘You don’t want your finely tuned daughter straining her back picking up her holdall, do you?’

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