STAR STRUCK
Val McDermid

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998

Copyright © Val McDermid 1998

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Val McDermid 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

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

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

Source ISBN: 9780008344948

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2019 ISBN: 9780007327584

Version: 2019-10-16

Praise for Val McDermid

‘The queen of crime is still at the top of her game’

INDEPENDENT

‘No one can tell a story like she can’

DAILY EXPRESS

‘One of today’s most accomplished crime writers’

LITERARY REVIEW

‘McDermid remains unrivalled’

OBSERVER

‘Incredibly suspenseful’

SUNDAY MIRROR

‘This is crime writing of the very highest order’

THE TIMES

‘A gripping page-turner’

METRO

‘A terrific read’

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Dedication

For Tessa and Peps, the Scylebert Twins

(aka Margaret & Nicky)

Thanks for all the laughter – we’ll

never feel the same about Isa.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Val McDermid

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By Val McDermid

About the Publisher

Prologue

Extract from the computer database of Dorothea Dawson, Seer to the Stars

Written in the Stars for Kate Brannigan, private investigator.

Born Oxford, UK, 4th September 1966.

* Sun in Virgo in the Fifth House

* Moon in Taurus in the Twelfth House

* Mercury in Virgo in the Fifth House

* Venus in Leo in the Fourth House

* Mars in Leo in the Fourth House

* Jupiter in Cancer in the Third House

* Saturn retrograde in Pisces in the Eleventh House

* Uranus in Virgo in the Fifth House

* Neptune in Scorpio in the Sixth House

* Pluto in Virgo in the Fifth House

* Chiron in Pisces in the Eleventh House

* Ascendant Sign: Gemini

1

SUN IN VIRGO IN THE 5TH HOUSE

On the positive side, can be ingenious, verbally skilled, diplomatic, tidy, methodical, discerning and dutiful. The negatives are fussiness, a critical manner, an obsessive attention to detail and a lack of self-confidence that can disguise itself as arrogance. In the 5th House, it indicates a player of games.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

My client was about to get a resounding smack in the mouth. I watched helplessly from the other side of the street. My adrenaline was pumping, but there was no way I could have made it to her side in time. That’s the trouble with bodyguarding jobs. Even if you surround the client with a phalanx of Rutger Hauer clones and Jean Van Damme wannabes in bulletproof vests, the moment always comes when they’re vulnerable. And guess who always gets the blame? That’s why, when people come looking for a minder, the house rule at Brannigan & Co: Investigations & Security states, ‘We don’t do that.’

But Christmas was coming and the goose was anorexic. Business had been as slow as a Post Office queue and even staff as unorthodox as mine expect to be paid on time. Besides, I deserved a festive bonus myself. Eating, for example. So I’d sent my better judgement on an early Yuletide break and agreed to take on a client who’d turned out to be more accident prone than Coco the Clown.

For once, it wasn’t my fault that the client was in the front line. I’d had no say in what was happening out there on the street. If I’d wanted to stop it, I couldn’t have. So, absolved from action for once, I stood with my hands in my pockets and watched Carla Hardcastle’s arm swing round in a fearsome arc to deliver a cracking wallop that wiped the complacent smirk off Brenda Barrowclough’s self-satisfied face. I sucked my breath in sharply.

‘And cut,’ the director said. ‘Very nice, girls, but I’d like it one more time. Gloria, loved that smug little smile, but can you lose it at the point where you realize she’s actually going to thump you? And let us see some outrage?’

My client gave a forbearing smile that was about as sincere as a beggar asking for tea money. ‘Whatever you say, Helen, chuck,’ she rasped in the voice that thrilled the nation three times a week as we shovelled down our microwave dinners in front of Manchester’s principal contribution to the world of soap. Then she turned to me with an exaggerated wink and called, ‘You’re all right, chuck, it’s only make believe.’

Everyone turned to stare at me. I managed to grin while clenching my teeth. It’s a talent that comes in very handy in the private-eye business. It’s having to deal with unscrupulous idiots that does it. And that’s just the clients.

‘That’s my bodyguard,’ Gloria Kendal – alias Brenda Barrowclough – announced to the entire cast and crew of Northerners.

‘We’d all worked out it wasn’t your body double,’ the actress playing Carla said, apparently as sour in life as the character she played in the human drama that had wowed British audiences for the best part of twenty years.

‘Let’s hope you only get attacked by midgets,’ Teddy Edwards added. He’d once been a stand-up comedian on the working men’s club circuit, but he’d clearly been playing Gloria’s screen husband for so long that he’d lost any comic talent he’d ever possessed. I might only be five feet three in my socks, but I wouldn’t have needed to use too many of my Thai-boxing skills to bring a lump of lard like him to his knees. I gave him the hard stare and I’m petty enough to admit I enjoyed it when he cleared his throat and looked away.

‘All right, settle down,’ the director called. ‘Places, please, and let’s take it again from the top of the scene.’

‘Can we have a bit of hush back there?’ someone else added. I wondered what his job title was and how long I’d have to hang around the TV studios before I worked out who did what in a hierarchy that included best boys, gaffers and too many gofers to count. I figured I’d probably have long enough, the way things were going. There was a lot of time for idle reflection in this job. When Gloria was filming, silence was the rule. I couldn’t ask questions, eavesdrop or burgle in pursuit of the information I needed to close the case. All there was for me to do was lean against the wall and watch. There was nothing remotely glamorous about witnessing the seventh take of a scene that was a long way from Shakespeare to start with. As jobs went, minding the queen of the nation’s soaps was about as exotic as watching rain slide down a window.

It hadn’t started out that way. When Gloria had swanned into our office, I’d known straight off it wasn’t going to be a routine case. At Brannigan & Co, the private investigation firm that I run, we cover a wide spectrum of work. Previously, when I’d been in partnership with Bill Mortensen, we’d mostly investigated white-collar fraud, computer security, industrial espionage and sabotage, with a bit of miscellaneous meddling that friends occasionally dropped in our laps. Now Bill had moved to Australia, I’d had to cast my net wider to survive. I’d clawed back some process-serving from a handful of law firms, added ‘surveillance’ to the letterheading and canvassed insurance companies for work exposing fraudulent claims. Even so, Gloria Kendal’s arrival in our front office signalled something well out of the ordinary.

Not that I’d recognized her straight away. Neither had Shelley, the office administrator, and she’s got the X-ray vision of every mother of teenagers. My first thought when Gloria had swept through the door on a wave of Estée Lauder’s White Linen was that she was a domestic violence victim. I couldn’t think of another reason for the wide-brimmed hat and the wraparound sunglasses on a wet December afternoon in Manchester.

I’d been looking over Shelley’s shoulder at some information she’d downloaded from Companies House when the woman had pushed open the door and paused, dramatically framed against the hallway. She waited long enough for us to look up and register the expensive swagger of her mac and the quality of the kelly-green silk suit underneath, then she took three measured steps into the room on low-heeled pumps that precisely matched the suit. I don’t know about Shelley, but I suspect my astonishment showed.

There was an air of expectancy in the woman’s pose. Shelley’s, ‘Can I help you?’ did nothing to diminish it.

The woman smiled, parting perfectly painted lips the colour of tinned black cherries. ‘I hope you can, chuck,’ she said, and her secret was out.

‘Gloria Kendal,’ I said.

‘Brenda Barrowclough,’ Shelley said simultaneously.

Gloria chuckled. ‘You’re both right, girls. But we’ll just let that be our little secret, eh?’ I nodded blankly. The only way her identity was ever going to stay secret was if she kept her mouth shut. It was clear from three short sentences that the voice that had made Brenda Barrowclough the darling of impressionists the length and breadth of the comedy circuit wasn’t something Gloria took on and cast off as readily as her character’s trademark bottle-blonde beehive wig. Gloria really did talk in broad North Manchester with the gravelly growl of a bulldozer in low gear.

‘How can I help you, Ms Kendal?’ I asked, remembering my manners and stepping out from behind the reception desk. She might not be a CEO in a grey suit, but she clearly had enough in the bank to make sure we all had a very happy Christmas.

‘Call me Gloria, chuck. In fact, call me anything except Brenda.’ After twenty years of TV viewing, the raucous laugh was as familiar as my best friend’s. ‘I’m looking for Brannigan,’ she said.

‘You found her,’ I said, holding out my hand.

Gloria dropped a limp bunch of fingers into mine and withdrew before I could squeeze them – the professional sign of someone who had to shake too many hands in a year. ‘I thought you’d be a bloke,’ she said. For once, it wasn’t a complaint, merely an observation. ‘Well, that makes things a lot easier. I were wondering what we’d do if Brannigan and Co didn’t have women detectives. Is there some place we can go and talk?’

‘My office?’ I gestured towards the open door.

‘Grand,’ Gloria said, sweeping past me and fluttering her fingers in farewell to Shelley.

We exchanged a look. ‘Rather you than me,’ Shelley muttered.

By the time I closed the door behind me, Gloria was settled into one corner of the sofa I use for informal client meetings. She’d taken off her hat and tossed it casually on the low table in front of her. Her own hair was a subtle ash-blonde cut in a gamine Audrey Hepburn style. Somehow it managed not to look ridiculous on a woman who had to be nudging sixty. She had the clear skin of a much younger woman, but none of the Barbie-doll tightness that goes with the overenthusiastic face-lift. As I sat down opposite her, she took off the sunglasses and familiar grey eyes crinkled in a smile. ‘I know it’s ridiculous, but even though people stare at the bins, they don’t recognize Brenda behind them. They just think it’s some daft rich bitch with delusions of grandeur.’

‘Living a normal life must be tough,’ I said.

‘You’re not kidding, chuck. They see you three times a week in their living room, and they think you’re a member of the family. You let on who you are and next thing you know they’re telling you all about their hernia operation and the state of their veins. It’s a nightmare.’ She shrugged out of her coat, opened her handbag and took out a packet of those long skinny brown cigarettes that look like cinnamon sticks, and a gold Dunhill lighter. She looked around, eyebrows raised.

Stifling a sigh, I got up and removed the saucer from under the Christmas cactus. I’d only bought it two days before but already the buds that had promised pretty cascades of flowers were predictably starting to litter the windowsill. Me and plants go together like North and South Korea. I tipped the water from the saucer into the bin and placed it on the table in front of Gloria. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s the best I can do.’

She smiled. ‘I used to work in a cat food factory. I’ve put my fags out in a lot worse, believe me.’

I preferred not to think about it. ‘Well, Gloria, how can I help you?’

‘I need a bodyguard.’

My eyebrows rose. ‘We don’t normally …’

‘These aren’t normal circumstances,’ she said sharply. ‘I don’t want some thick as pigshit bodybuilder trailing round after me. I want somebody with a brain, somebody that can figure out what the heck’s going on. Somebody that won’t attract attention. Half my life I spend with the bloody press snapping round my ankles and the last thing I need is stories that I’ve splashed out on a hired gun. That’s why I wanted a woman.’

‘You said, “somebody that can figure out what the heck’s going on”,’ I said, focusing on the need I probably could do something useful about. ‘What seems to be the problem?’

‘I’ve been getting threatening letters,’ she said. ‘Now, that’s nothing new. Brenda Barrowclough is not a woman who minces her words, and there are a lot of folk out there as can’t tell the difference between Northerners and the real world. You’d be too young to remember, but when I was first widowed in the series, back about fifteen years ago, I was snowed under with letters of condolence. People actually sent wreaths for the funeral, addressed to fifteen, Sebastopol Grove. The Post Office is used to it now, they just deliver direct to the studios, but back then the poor florists didn’t know what to do. We had letters from cancer charities saying donations had been made to their funds in memory of Harry – that was my screen husband’s name. Whenever characters move out, we get letters from punters wondering what the asking price is for the house. So whenever Brenda does owt controversial, I get hate mail.’

I dredged my memory for recent tabloid headlines. ‘Hasn’t there been some storyline about abortion? Sorry, I don’t get the chance to watch much TV.’

‘You’re all right, chuck. Me neither. You know Brenda’s granddaughter, Debbie?’

‘The one who’s lived with Brenda since she was about ten? After her mum got shot in the Post Office raid?’

‘You used to be a fan, then?’

‘I still watch when I can. Which was a lot more back when Debbie was ten than it is now.’

‘Well, what’s happened is that Brenda’s found out that Debbie’s had an abortion. Now, Brenda had a real down on Debbie’s boyfriend because he was black, so the audience would have expected her to support Debbie rather than have a mixed-race grandson. But Brenda’s only gone mental about the right to life and thrown Debbie out on her ear, hasn’t she? So me and Sarah Anne Kelly who plays Debbie were expecting a right slagging off.’

‘And that’s what’s happened?’

Gloria shook her head, leaving a ribbon of smoke drifting level with her mouth. ‘Sort of,’ she said, confusing me. ‘What happens is the studio goes through our post, weeding out the really nasty letters so we don’t get upset. Only, of course, you ask, don’t you? I mean, you want to know if there’s any real nutters out there looking for you.’

‘And the studio told you there was?’

‘No, chuck. It weren’t the studio. The letters I’m worried about are the ones coming to the house.’

Now I was really confused. ‘You mean, your real house? Where you actually live?’

‘Exactly. Now, I mean, it’s not a state secret, where I live. But unless you’re actually a neighbour or one of the reptiles of the press, you’d have to go to a bit of trouble to find out. The phone’s ex-directory, of course. And all the official stuff like electricity bills and the voters’ roll don’t come under Gloria Kendal. They come under my real name.’

‘Which is?’

‘Doreen Satterthwaite.’ She narrowed her eyes. I didn’t think it was because the smoke was getting into them. I struggled to keep my face straight. Then Gloria grinned. ‘Bloody awful, isn’t it? Do you wonder I chose Gloria Kendal?’

‘In your shoes, I’d have done exactly the same thing,’ I told her. I wasn’t lying. ‘So these threatening letters are coming directly to the house?’

‘Not just to my house. My daughter’s had one too. And they’re different to the usual.’ She opened her handbag again. I wondered at a life where it mattered to have suit, shoes and handbag in identical shades. I couldn’t help my mind slithering into speculation about her underwear. Did her coordination extend that far?

Gloria produced a sheet of paper. She started to pass it to me, then paused. I could have taken it from her, but it was an awkward reach, so I waited. ‘Usually, letters like this, they’re semi-literate. They’re ignorant. I mean, I might have left school when I were fifteen, but I know the difference between a dot and a comma. Most of the nutters that write me letters wouldn’t know a paragraph if they woke up next to one. They can’t spell, and they’ve got a tendency to write in green ink or felt-tip pens. Some of them, I don’t think they’re allowed sharp objects where they live,’ she added. I’ve noticed how actors and audiences often hold each other in mutual contempt. It looked like Gloria didn’t have a whole lot of respect for the people who paid for the roof over her head.

Now she passed the letter across. It was plain A4 bond, the text printed unidentifiably on a laser printer. ‘Doreen Satterthwaite, it’s time you paid for what you’ve done. You deserve to endure the same suffering you’ve been responsible for. I know where you live. I know where your daughter Sandra and her husband Keith live. I know your granddaughter Joanna goes to Gorse Mill School. I know they worship at St Andrew’s Church and have a caravan on Anglesey. I know you drive a scarlet Saab convertible. I know you, you bitch. And soon you’re going to be dead. But there’ll be no quick getaway for you. First, you’re going to suffer.’ She was right. The letter sounded disturbingly in control.

‘Any idea what the letter writer is referring to?’ I asked, not really expecting an honest answer.

Gloria shrugged. ‘Who the heck knows? I’m no plaster saint, but I can’t think of anybody I’ve done a really bad turn to. Apart from my ex, and I doubt he could manage a letter to me that didn’t include the words, “you effing bitch”. He certainly can’t manage a conversation without it. And besides, he wouldn’t threaten our Sandra or Joanna. No way.’ I took her response for genuine perplexity, then reminded myself how she made her living.

‘Have there been many of them?’

‘This is the third. Plus the one that went to Sandra. That were about the sins of the mother. To be honest, the first couple I just binned. I thought they were somebody at the wind-up.’ Suddenly, Gloria looked away. She fumbled another cigarette from the packet and this time, the hand that lit it shook.

‘Something happened to change your mind?’

‘My car tyres were slashed. All four of them. Inside the NPTV compound. And there was a note stuck under the windscreen wipers. “Next time your wardrobe? Or you?” And before you ask, I haven’t got the note. It’d been raining. It just fell to bits in my hand.’

‘That’s serious business,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be talking to the police?’ I hated to lose a potential client, but it would have verged on criminal negligence not to point out that this might be one for Officer Dibble.

Gloria fiddled with her cigarette. ‘I told the management about it. And John Turpin, he’s the Administration and Production Coordinator, he persuaded me not to go to the cops.’

‘Why not? I’d have thought the management would have been desperate to make sure nothing happened to their stars.’

Gloria’s lip curled in a cynical sneer. ‘It were nowt to do with my safety and everything to do with bad publicity. Plus, who’d want to come and work at NPTV if they found out the security was so crap that somebody could walk into the company compound and get away with that? Anyway, Turpin promised me an internal inquiry, so I decided to go along with him.’

‘But now you’re here.’ It’s observational skills like this that got me where I am today.

She flashed a quick up-and-under glance at me, an appraisal that contained more than a hint of fear held under tight control. ‘You’re going to think I’m daft.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t see you as the daft type, Gloria.’ Well, it was only a white lie. Daft enough to spend the equivalent of a week’s payroll for Brannigan & Co on a matching outfit, but probably not daft when it came to a realistic assessment of personal danger. Mind you, neither was Ronald Reagan and look what happened to him.

‘You know Dorothea Dawson?’ Gloria asked, eyeing me out of the corner of her eye.

‘“The Seer to the Stars”?’ I asked incredulously. ‘The one who does the horoscopes in TV Viewer? The one who’s always on the telly? “A horse born under the sign of Aries will win the Derby”?’ I intoned in a cheap impersonation of Dorothea Dawson’s sepulchral groan.

‘Don’t mock,’ she cautioned me, wagging a finger. ‘She’s a brilliant clairvoyant, you know. Dorothea comes into the studios once a week. She’s the personal astrologer to half the cast. She really has a gift.’

I bet she had. Gifts from all the stars of Northerners. ‘And Dorothea said something about these letters?’

‘I took this letter in with me to my last consultation with her. I asked her what she could sense from it. She does that as well as the straight clairvoyance. She’s done it for me before now, and she’s never been wrong.’ In spite of her acting skills, anxiety was surfacing in Gloria’s voice.

‘And what did she say?’

Gloria drew so hard on her cigarette that I could hear the burning tobacco crackle. As she exhaled she said, ‘She held the envelope and shivered. She said the letter meant death. Dorothea said death was in the room with us.’

2

SUN TRINE MOON

Creative thinking resolves difficult circumstances; she will tackle difficulties with bold resolution. The subject feels at home wherever she is, but can be blind to the real extent of problems. She will not always notice if her marriage is falling apart; she doesn’t always nip problems in the bud.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

Anybody gullible enough to fall for the doom and gloom dished out by professional con merchants like astrologers certainly wasn’t going to have a problem with my expense sheets. Money for old rope, I reckoned. By Gloria’s own admission, hate mail was as much part of the routine in her line of work as travelling everywhere with stacks of postcard-sized photographs to autograph for the punters. OK, the tyre slashing was definitely more serious, but that might be unconnected to the letters, an isolated act of vindictiveness. It was only because the Seer to the Stars had thrown a wobbler that this poison pen outbreak had been blown up to life-threatening proportions. ‘Does she often sense impending death when she does predictions for people?’ I asked, trying not to snigger.

Gloria shook her head vigorously. ‘I’ve never heard of anybody else getting a prediction like that.’

‘And have you told other people in the cast about it?’

‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you go on about.’

Not unless you liked being laughed at, I reckoned. On the other hand, it might mean that the death prediction was one of Dorothea Dawson’s regular routines for putting the frighteners on her clients and making them more dependent on her. Especially the older ones. Let’s face it, there can’t be that many public figures Gloria’s age who go through more than a couple of months without knowing somebody who’s died or dying. Gloria might have been catapulted into panic by her astrologer, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything more than a stunt by Dorothea Dawson. Minding Gloria sounded like a major earner with no risk attached. Just what the bank manager ordered. I said a small prayer of thanks to Dorothea Dawson and told Gloria that for her, I’d be happy to make an exception to company policy. In fact, I would take personal responsibility for her safety.

The news seemed to cheer her up. ‘Right then, we’d better be off,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette and gathering her mac around her shoulders.

‘We’d better be off?’ I echoed.

She glanced at her watch, a chunky gold item with chips of diamond that glittered like a broken windscreen in a streetlight. ‘Depends where you live, I suppose. Only, if I’m opening a theme pub in Blackburn at eight and we’ve both got to get changed and grab a bite to eat, we’ll be cutting it a bit fine if we don’t get a move on.’

‘A theme pub in Blackburn,’ I said faintly.

‘That’s right, chuck. I’m under contract to the brewery. It’s straightforward enough. I turn up, tell a few jokes, sing a couple of songs to backing tapes, sign a couple of hundred autographs and off.’ As she spoke, she was setting her hat at a rakish angle and replacing her sunglasses. As she made for the door, I dived behind the desk and swept my palmtop computer and my moby into my shoulder bag. I only caught up with her because she’d stopped to sign a glossy colour photograph of herself disguised as Brenda Barrowclough for Shelley.

Something terrible had happened to the toughest office manager in Manchester. Imagine Cruella De Vil transformed into one of those cuddly Dalmatian puppies, only more so. It was like watching Ben Nevis grovel. ‘And could you sign one, “for Ted”?’ she begged. I wished I had closed-circuit TV cameras covering the office. A video of this would keep Shelley off my back for months.

‘No problem, there you go,’ Gloria said, signing the card with a flourish. ‘You right, Kate?’

I grabbed my coat and shrugged into it as I followed Gloria into the hall. She glanced both ways and down the stairwell before she set off. ‘The last thing I need is somebody clocking me coming out of your office,’ she said, trotting down the stairs at a fair pace. At the front door I turned right automatically, heading for my car. Gloria followed me into the private car park.

‘This sign says, “Employees of DVS Systems only. Unauthorized users will be clamped,”’ she pointed out.

‘It’s all right,’ I said in a tone that I hoped would end the conversation. I didn’t want to explain to Gloria that I’d got so fed up with the desperate state of car parking in my part of town that I’d checked out which office car parks were seldom full. I’d used the macro lens on the camera to take a photograph of a DVS Systems parking pass through somebody else’s windscreen and made myself a passable forgery. I’d been parking on their lot for six months with no trouble, but it wasn’t something I was exactly proud of. Besides, it never does to let the clients know about the little sins. It only makes them nervous.

Gloria stopped expectantly next to a very large black saloon with tinted windows. I shook my head and she pulled a rueful smile. I pointed the remote at my dark-blue Rover and it cheeped its usual greeting at me. ‘Sorry it’s not a limo,’ I said to Gloria as we piled in. ‘I need to be invisible most of the time.’ I didn’t feel the need to mention that the engine under the bonnet was very different from the unit the manufacturer had installed. I had enough horsepower under my bonnet to stage my own rodeo. If anybody was stalking Gloria, I could blow them off inside the first five miles.

I drove home, which took less than five minutes even in early rush-hour traffic. I love living so close to the city centre, but the area’s become more dodgy in the last year. I’d have moved if I hadn’t had to commit every spare penny to the business. I’d been the junior partner in Mortensen & Brannigan, and when Bill Mortensen had decided to sell up and move to Australia, I’d thought my career prospects were in the toilet. I couldn’t afford to buy him out but I was damned if some stranger was going to end up with the lion’s share of a business I’d worked so hard to build. It had taken a lot of creative thinking and a shedload of debt to get Brannigan & Co off the ground. Now I had a sleeping partner in the Cayman Islands and a deal to buy out his share of the business piecemeal as and when I could afford it, so it would be a long time before I could consider heading for the southern suburbs where all my sensible friends had moved.

Besides, the domestic arrangements were perfect. My lover Richard, a freelance rock journalist, owned the bungalow next door to mine, linked by a long conservatory that ran along the back of both properties. We had all the advantages of living together and none of the disadvantages. I didn’t have to put up with his mess or his music-business cronies; he didn’t have to deal with my girls’ nights in or my addiction to very long baths.

Richard’s car, a hot-pink Volkswagen Beetle convertible, was in its slot, which, at this time of day, probably meant he was home. There might be other showbiz journos with him, so I played safe and asked Gloria to wait in the car. I was back inside ten minutes, wearing a bottle-green crushed-velvet cocktail dress under a dark-navy dupion-silk matador jacket. OTT for Blackburn, I know, but there hadn’t been a lot of choice. If I didn’t get to the dry cleaner soon, I’d be going to work in my dressing gown.

Gloria lived in Saddleworth, the expensively rural cluster of villages that hugs the edges of the Yorkshire moors on the eastern fringe of Greater Manchester. The hills are still green and rolling there, but on the skyline the dark humps of the moors lower unpleasantly, even on the sunniest of days. This is the wilderness that ate up the bodies of the child victims of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. I can never drive through this brooding landscape without remembering the Moors Murders. Living on the doorstep would give me nightmares. It didn’t seem to bother Gloria. But why would it? It didn’t impinge either on her or on Brenda Barrowclough, and the half-hour drive out to Saddleworth was long enough for me to realize these were the only criteria that mattered to her. I’d heard it said that actors are like children in their unconscious self-absorption. Now I was seeing the proof.

In the December dark, Saddleworth looked like a Christmas card, early fairy lights twinkling against a light dusting of snow. I wished I’d listened to the weather forecast; the roads out here can be closed by drifts when there hasn’t been so much as a flake on my roof. Yet another argument against country living. Gloria directed me down the valley in a gentle spiral to Greenfield. We turned off the main street into a narrow passage between two high walls. I hoped I wouldn’t meet something coming the other way in a hurry. About a hundred yards in, the passage ended in two tall wrought-iron gates. Gloria fumbled with something in her handbag and the gates swung open.

I edged forward slowly, completely gobsmacked. I appeared to have driven into the set of a BBC period drama. I was in a large cobbled courtyard, surrounded on three sides by handsome two-storey buildings in weatherworn gritstone. Even my untrained eye can spot early Industrial Revolution, and this was a prime example. ‘Wow,’ I said.

‘It were built as offices for the mill,’ Gloria said, pointing me towards a pair of double doors in the long left-hand side of the square. ‘Leave the car in front of my garage for now. Then the mill became a cat food factory. Sound familiar?’

‘The factory where you used to work?’

‘Got it in one.’ She opened the car door and I followed her across the courtyard. The door she stopped at was solid oak, the lock a sensible mortise. As we went in, a burglar alarm klaxoned its warning. While Gloria turned it off, I walked across the wide room that ran the whole depth of the building. Through the tall window, I could see light glinting off water. The house backed on to the canal. Suddenly life looked better. This house was about as impregnable as they come. Unless Gloria’s letter writer had the Venetian skill of climbing a ladder from a boat, I was going to be able to sleep in my own bed at night rather than across the threshold of Gloria’s bedroom.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

‘Especially when your living room used to be the cashier’s office where you picked up your wages every week smelling of offal,’ Gloria said ironically.

I turned back to look round the room. Wall uplighters gave a soft glow to burnished beams and the exposed stone of the three outer walls. The furnishings looked like a job lot from John Lewis, all pastel-figured damask and mahogany. The pictures on the wall were big watercolour landscapes of the Yorkshire moorland and the expanse of stripped floorboards was broken up by thick pile Chinese rugs. There was nothing to quarrel with, but nothing that spoke of individual taste, unlike Gloria’s clothes. ‘You live here alone?’ I asked.

‘Thank God,’ she said with feeling, opening a walk-in cupboard and hanging up her coat.

‘Anyone else have keys?’

‘Only my daughter.’ Gloria emerged and pointed to a door in the far wall. ‘The kitchen’s through there. There’s a freezer full of ready meals. Do you want to grab a couple and stick them in the microwave while I’m getting changed?’ Without waiting for an answer, she started up the open-plan staircase that climbed to the upper floor.

The kitchen was almost as big as the living room. One end was laid out as a dining area, with a long refectory table and a collection of unmatched antique farm kitchen chairs complete with patchwork cushions. The other end was an efficiently arranged working kitchen, dominated by an enormous freestanding fridge-freezer. The freezer was stacked from top to bottom with meals from Marks and Spencer. Maybe country living could be tolerable after all, I thought. All you needed to get through the winter was a big enough freezer and an endless supply of computer games. I chose a couple of pasta dishes and followed the instructions on the pack. By the time they were thawed and reheated, Gloria was back, dressed for action in a shocking-pink swirl of sequins. All it needed was the Brenda Barrowclough beehive to define camp kitsch better than any drag queen could have.

‘Amazing,’ I said faintly, scooping chicken and pasta into bowls.

‘Bloody awful, you mean,’ Gloria said, sitting down in a flounce of candyfloss. ‘But the punters are paying for Brenda, not me.’ She attacked her pasta like an extra from Oliver Twist. She finished while I was barely halfway through. ‘Right,’ she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I’ll be five minutes putting on me slap and the wig. The dishwasher’s under the sink.’

With anyone else, I’d have started to resent being ordered around. But I was beginning to get the hang of Gloria. She wasn’t bossy as such. She was just supremely organized and blissfully convinced that her way was the best way. Life would inevitably be smoother for those around her who recognized this and went along with it unquestioningly. For now, I was prepared to settle for the quiet life. Later, it might be different, but I’d deal with that when later rolled round. Meanwhile, I loaded the dishwasher then went outside and started the car.

The drive to Blackburn was the last sane part of the evening. Gloria handed me a faxed set of directions then demanded that I didn’t mither her with problems so she could get her head straight. I loaded an appropriate CD into the car stereo and drove to the ambient chill of Dreamfish while she reclined her seat and closed her eyes. I pulled up outside the pub three-quarters of an hour later, ten minutes before she was due to sparkle. She opened her eyes, groaned softly and said, ‘It’s a bit repetitive, that music. Have you got no Frank Sinatra?’ I tried to disguise my sense of impending doom. I failed. Gloria roared with raucous laughter and said, ‘I were only winding you up. I can’t bloody stand Sinatra. Typical man, I did it my own bloody-minded way. This modern stuff’s much better.’

I left Gloria in the car while I did a brief reconnaissance of the venue. I had this vague notion of trying to spot any suspicious characters. I had more chance of hitting the Sahara on a wet Wednesday. Inside the pub, it was mayhem on a leash. Lads with bad haircuts and football shirts jostled giggling groups of girls dressed in what the high-street chain stores had persuaded them was fashion. Mostly they looked like they’d had a collision with their mothers’ cast-offs from the seventies. I couldn’t think of another reason for wearing Crimplene. The Lightning Seeds were revealing that football was coming home at a volume that made my fillings hurt. Provincial didn’t begin to describe it. It was so different from the city-centre scene I began to wonder if we could have slipped through a black hole and ended up in the Andromeda galaxy. What a waste of a good frock.

The special opening night offer of two drinks for the price of one had already scored a clutch of casualties and the rest of the partygoers looked like they were hellbent on the same fate. I ducked back out and collected Gloria. ‘I’ll try to stay as close to you as I can,’ I told her. ‘It’s a madhouse in there.’

She paused on the threshold, took a swift look round the room and said, ‘You’ve obviously led a very sheltered life.’ As she spoke, someone spotted her. The cry rippled across the room and within seconds the youth of Blackburn were cheering and bellowing a ragged chorus of the theme song from Northerners. And then we were plunged into the throbbing embrace of the crowd.

I gave up trying to keep Gloria from the assassin’s knife after about twenty seconds when I realized that if I came between her and her public, I was the more likely candidate for a stiletto in the ribs. I wriggled backwards through the crowd and found a vantage point on the raised dais where the DJ was looking as cool as any man can who works for the local building society during the day. I was scanning the crowd automatically, looking for behaviour that didn’t fit in. Easier said than done, given the level of drunken revelry around me. But from what I could see of the people crammed into the Frog and Scrannage, the natives were definitely friendly, at least as far as Gloria/Brenda was concerned.

I watched my client, impressed with her energy and her professionalism. She crossed the room slower than a stoned three-toed sloth, with a word and an autograph for everyone who managed to squeeze alongside. She didn’t even seem to be sweating, the only cool person in the biggest sauna in the North West. When she finally made it to the dais, there was no shortage of hands to help her up. She turned momentarily and swiftly handed the DJ a cassette tape. ‘Any time you like, chuck. Just let it run.’

The lad slotted it into his music deck and the opening bars of the Northerners theme crashed out over the PA, the audience swaying along. The music faded down and Gloria went straight into what was clearly a well-polished routine. Half a dozen jokes with a local spin, a clutch of anecdotes about her fellow cast members then, right on cue, the music swelled up under her and she belted out a segued medley of ‘I Will Survive’, ‘No More Tears’, ‘Roll With It’ and ‘No Regrets’.

You had to be there.

The crowd was baying for more. They got it. ‘The Power of Love’ blasted our eardrums into the middle of next week. Then we were out of there. The car park was so cold and quiet I’d have been tempted to linger if I hadn’t had the client to consider. Instead I ran to the car and brought it round to the doorway, where she was signing the last few autographs. ‘Keep watching the show,’ she urged them as she climbed into the car.

As soon as we were out of the car park, she pulled off the wig with a noisy sigh. ‘What did you think?’

‘Anybody who seriously wanted to damage you could easily get close enough. Getting away might be harder,’ I said, half my attention on negotiating a brutal one-way system that could commit us to Chorley or Preston or some other fate worse than death if I didn’t keep my wits about me.

‘No, not that,’ Gloria said impatiently. ‘Never mind that. How was I? Did they love it?’

It was gone midnight by the time I’d deposited Gloria behind bolted doors and locked gates and driven back through the empty impoverished streets of the city’s eastern fringes. Nothing much was moving except the litter in the wind. I felt a faint nagging throb in my sinuses, thanks to the assault of cigarette smoke, loud music and flashing lights I’d endured in the pub. I’d recently turned thirty; maybe some fundamental alteration had happened in my brain which meant my body could no longer tolerate all the things that spelled ‘a good night out’ to the denizens of Blackburn’s latest fun pub. Perhaps there were hidden benefits in aging after all.

I yawned as I turned out of the council estate into the enclave of private housing where I occasionally manage a full night’s sleep. Tonight wouldn’t be one; Gloria had to be at the studios by nine thirty, so she wanted me at her place by eight thirty. I’d gritted my teeth, thought about the hourly rate and smiled.

I staggered up the path, slithering slightly on the frosted cobbles, already imagining the sensuous bliss of slipping under a winter-weight feather-and-down duvet. As soon as I opened the door, the dream shattered. Even from the hallway I could see the glow of light from the conservatory. I could hear moody saxophone music and the mutter of voices. That they were in the conservatory rather than Richard’s living room meant that whoever he was talking to was there for me.

My bag slid to the floor as my shoulders drooped. I walked through to the living room and took in the scene through the patio doors. Beer bottles, a plume of smoke from a joint, two male bodies sprawled across the wicker.

Just what I’d always wanted at the end of a working day. A pair of criminals in the conservatory.

3

VENUS SQUARES NEPTUNE

This is a tense aspect that produces strain in affairs of the heart because she has a higher expectation of love and comradeship than her world provides. She has a strong determination to beat the odds stacked against her.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

It’s not every night you feel like you need a Visiting Order to enter your own conservatory. That night I definitely wanted reinforcements before I could face the music or the men. A quick trip to the kitchen and I was equipped with a sweating tumbler of ice-cold pepper-flavoured Absolut topped up with pink grapefruit juice. I took a deep draught and headed for whatever Dennis and Richard had to throw at me.

When I say the conservatory was full of criminals, I was only slightly exaggerating. Although Richard’s insistence on the need for marijuana before creativity can be achieved means he cheerfully breaks the law every day, he’s got no criminal convictions. Being a journalist, he doesn’t have any other kind either.

Dennis is a different animal. He’s a career criminal but, paradoxically, I trust him more than almost anyone. I always know where I am with Dennis; his morality might not be constructed along traditional lines, but it’s more rigid than the law of gravity, and a hell of a lot more forgiving. He used to be a professional burglar; not the sort who breaks into people’s houses to steal the video and rummage through the lingerie, but the sort who relieves the very rich of some of their ill-gotten and well-insured gains. Some of his victims had so many expensive status symbols lying around that they didn’t even realize they’d been burgled. These days, he’s more or less given up robbing anyone except other villains who’ve got too much pride to complain to the law. That’s because, after his last enforced spell of taking care of business from behind high walls with no office equipment except a phone card, his wife told him she’d divorce him if he ever did anything else that carried a custodial sentence.

I’ve known Dennis even longer than I’ve known Richard. He’s my Thai-boxing coach, and he taught me the basic principle of self-defence for someone as little as I am – one crippling kick to the kneecap or the balls, then run like hell. It’s saved my life more than once, which is another good reason why Dennis will always be welcome in my house. Well, almost always.

I leaned against the doorjamb and scowled. ‘I thought you didn’t do drugs,’ I said mildly to Dennis.

‘You know I don’t,’ he said. ‘Who’s been telling porkies about me?’

‘Nobody. I was referring to the atmosphere in here,’ I said, wafting my hand in front of my face as I crossed the room to give Dennis a kiss on a cheek so smooth he must have shaved before he came out for the evening. ‘Breathe and you’re stoned. Not to mention cutting your life expectancy by half.’

‘Nice to see you too, Brannigan,’ my beloved said as I pushed the evening paper to one side and dropped on to the sofa next to him.

‘So what are you two boys plotting?’

Dennis grinned like Wile E. Coyote. My heart sank. I was well past a convincing impersonation of the Road Runner. ‘Wanted to pick your brains,’ he said.

‘And it couldn’t wait till morning?’ I groaned.

‘I was passing.’

Richard gave the sort of soft giggle that comes after the fifth bottle and the fourth joint. I know my man. ‘He was passing and he heard a bottle of Pete’s Wicked Bohemian Pilsner calling his name,’ he spluttered.

‘Looking at the number of bottles, it looks more like a crate shouting its head off,’ I muttered. The boys looked like they were set to make a night of it. There was only one way I was going to come out of this alive and that was to sort out Dennis’s problem. Then they might not notice if I answered the siren call of my duvet. ‘How can I help, Dennis?’ I asked sweetly.

He gave me the wary look of a person who’s drunk enough to notice their other half isn’t giving them the hard time they deserve. ‘I could come back tomorrow,’ he said.

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ I said repressively. ‘Like the song says, tonight will be fine.’

Dennis gave me a quick sideways look and reached for his cigarettes. ‘You never finished your law degree, did you?’

I shook my head. It was a sore point with my mum and dad, who fancied being the parents of the first graduate in the family, but all it brought me was relief that business could never be so bad that I’d be tempted to set up shop as a lawyer. Two years of study had been enough to demonstrate there wasn’t a single area of legal practice that wouldn’t drive me barking within six months.

‘So you couldn’t charge me for legal advice,’ Dennis concluded triumphantly.

I raised my eyes to the heavens, where a few determined stars penetrated the sodium glow of the city sky. ‘No, Dennis, I couldn’t.’ Then I gave him the hard stare. ‘But why would I want to? We’ve never sent each other bills before, have we? What exactly are you up to?’

‘You know I’d never ask you to help me out with anything criminal, don’t you?’

‘’Course you wouldn’t. You’re far too tight to waste your breath,’ I said. Richard giggled again. I revised my estimate. Sixth bottle, fifth joint.

Dennis leaned across to pick up his jacket from the nearby chair, revealing splendid muscles in his forearm and a Ralph Lauren label. It didn’t quite go with the jogging pants and the Manchester United away shirt. He pulled some papers out of the inside pocket then gave me a slightly apprehensive glance. Then he shrugged and said, ‘It’s not illegal. Not as such.’

‘Not even a little bit?’ I asked. I didn’t bother trying to hide my incredulity. Dennis only takes offence when it’s intended.

‘This bit isn’t illegal,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s a lease.’

‘A lease?’

‘For a shop.’

‘You’re taking out a lease on a shop?’ It was a bit like hearing Dracula had gone veggie.

He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Only technically.’

I knew better than to ask more. Sometimes ignorance is not only bliss but also healthy. ‘And you want me to cast an eye over it to see that you’re not being ripped off,’ I said, holding a hand out for the papers.

Curiously reluctant now, Dennis clutched the papers to his chest. ‘You do know about leases? I mean, it’s not one of the bits you missed out, is it?’

It was, as it happened, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Besides, since I’d quit law school, I’d learned much more practical stuff about contracts and leases than I could ever have done if I’d stuck it out. ‘Gimme,’ I said.

‘You don’t want to argue with that tone of voice,’ Richard chipped in like the Dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Dennis screwed his face up like a man eating a piccalilli sandwich, but he handed over the papers.

It looked like a bog standard lease to me. It was for a shop in the Arndale Centre, the soulless shopping mall in the city centre that the IRA tried to remove from the map back in ’96. As usual, they got it wrong. The Arndale, probably the ugliest building in central Manchester, remained more or less intact. Unfortunately, almost every other building within a quarter-mile radius took a hell of a hammering, especially the ones that were actually worth looking at. As a result, the whole city centre ended up spending a couple of years looking like it had been wrapped by Christo in some bizarre pre-millennium celebration. Now it looked as if part of the mall that had been closed for structural repairs and renovation was opening up again and Dennis had got himself a piece of the action.

There was nothing controversial in the document, as far as I could see. If anything, it was skewed in favour of the lessee, one John Thompson, since it gave him the first three months at half rent as a supposed inducement. I wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t Dennis’s name on the lease. He’s a man who can barely bring himself to fill in his real name on the voters’ roll. Besides, no self-respecting landlord would ever grant a lease to a man who, according to the credit-rating agencies, didn’t even exist.

What I couldn’t understand was what he was up to. Somehow, I couldn’t get my head round the idea of Dennis as the natural heir of Marks and Spencer. Karl Marx, maybe, except that they’d have had radically different views of what constituted an appropriate redistribution of wealth. I folded the lease along its creases and said, ‘Looks fine to me.’

Dennis virtually snatched it out of my hand and shoved it back in his pocket, looking far too shifty for a villain as experienced as him. ‘Thanks, love. I just wanted to be sure everything’s there that should be. That it looks right.’

I recognized the key word right away. Us detectives, we never sleep. ‘Looks right?’ I demanded. ‘Why? Who else is going to be giving it the once-over?’

Dennis tried to look innocent. I’ve seen hunter-killer submarines give it a better shot. ‘Just the usual, you know? The leccy board, the water board. They need to see the lease before they’ll connect you to the utilities.’

‘What’s going on, Dennis? What’s really going on?’

Richard pushed himself more or less upright and draped an arm over my shoulders. ‘You might as well tell her, Den. You know what they say – it’s better having her inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.’

I let him get away with the anatomical impossibility and settled for a savage grin. ‘He’s not wrong,’ I said.

Dennis sighed and lit a cigarette. ‘All right. But I meant it when I said it’s not criminal.’

I cast my eyes upwards and shook my head. ‘Dennis O’Brien, you know and I know that “not criminal” doesn’t necessarily mean “legal”.’

‘Too deep for me,’ Richard complained, reaching for another bottle of beer.

‘Let’s hear it,’ I said firmly.

‘You know how I hate waste,’ Dennis began. I nodded cautiously. ‘There’s nothing more offensive to a man like me than premises standing empty because the landlords’ agents are crap at their job. So I had this idea about making use of a resource that was just standing idle.’

‘Shop-squatting,’ I said flatly.

‘What?’ Richard asked vaguely. ‘You going to live in a shop, Den? What happened to the house? Debbie thrown you out, has she?’

‘He’s not going to be living in the shop, dope-head,’ I said sarcastically.

‘You keep smoking that draw, you’re going to have a mental age of three soon,’ Dennis added sententiously. ‘Of course I’m not going to be living in the shop. I’m going to be selling things in the shop.’

‘Take me through it,’ I said. Dennis’s latest idea was only new to him; he was far from the first in Manchester to give it a try. I remembered reading something in the Evening Chronicle about shop-squatting, but as usual with newspaper articles, it had told me none of the things I really wanted to know.

‘You want to know how it works?’

Silly question to ask a woman whose first watch lasted only as long as it took me to work out how to get the back off. ‘Was Georgie Best?’

‘First off, you identify your premises. Find some empty shops and give the agents a ring. What you’re looking for is one where the agent says they’re not taking any offers because it’s already let as from a couple of months ahead.’

‘What?’ Richard mumbled.

Dennis and I shared the conspiratorial grin of those who are several drinks behind the mentally defective. ‘That way, you know it’s going to stay empty for long enough for you to get in and out and do the business in between,’ he explained patiently.

‘Next thing you do is you get somebody to draw you up a moody contract. One that looks like you’ve bought a short-term lease in good faith, cash on the nail. All you gotta do then is get into the shop and Bob’s your uncle. Get the leccy and the water turned on, fill the place with crap, everything under a pound, which you can afford to do because you’ve got no overheads. And the Dibble can’t touch you for it, on account of you’ve broken no laws.’

‘What about criminal damage?’ I asked. ‘You have to bust the locks to get in.’

Dennis winked. ‘If you pick the locks, you’ve not done any damage. And if you fit some new locks to give extra security, where’s the damage in that?’

‘Doesn’t the landlord try to close you down?’ Richard asked. It was an amazingly sensible question given his condition.

Dennis shrugged. ‘Some of them can’t be bothered. They know we’ll be out of there before their new tenant needs the premises, so they’ve got nothing to lose. Some of them have a go. I keep somebody on the premises all the time, just in case they try to get clever and repo the place in the night. You can get a homeless kid to play night watchman for a tenner a time. Give them a mobile phone and a butty and lock them in. Then if the landlord tries anything, I get the call and I get down there sharpish. He lays a finger on me or my lad, he’s the criminal.’ Dennis smiled with all the warmth of a shark. ‘I’m told you get a very reasonable response when you explain the precise legal position.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said drily. ‘Do the explanations come complete with baseball bat?’

‘Can people help it if they get the summons when they’re on their way home from sports training?’ He raised his eyebrows, trying for innocent and failing dismally.

‘Profitable, is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s got to be a very nice little earner, what with Christmas coming up.’

‘You know, Dennis, if you put half the effort into a straight business that you put into being bent, you’d be a multimillionaire by now,’ I sighed.

He shook his head, rueful. ‘Maybe so, but where would the fun be in that?’

He had a point. And who was I to talk? I’d turned my back on the straight version of my life a long time ago. If Dennis broke the law for profit, so did I. I’d committed burglary, fraud, assault, theft, deception and breaches of the Wireless and Telegraph Act too numerous to mention, and that was just in the past six months. I dressed it up with the excuse of doing it for the clients and my own version of justice. It had led me into some strange places, forced me into decisions that I didn’t like to examine too closely in the harsh light of day. Once upon a time, I’d have had no doubt whether it was me or Dennis who could lay claim to the better view from the moral high ground.

These days, I wasn’t quite so sure.

4

MOON SQUARES MARS

An accident-prone aspect, suggesting she can harm herself through lack of forethought. She is far too eager to make her presence felt and doesn’t always practice self-control. Her feelings of insecurity can manifest themselves in an unfeminine belligerence. She has authoritarian tendencies.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

Anyone can be a soap star. All you need is a scriptwriter who knows you well enough to write your character into their series, and you’re laughing all the way to the BAFTA. I’d always thought you had to be an actor. But two hours on the set of Northerners made me realize that soap is different. About ten per cent of the cast could play Shakespeare or Stoppard. The rest just roll up to the studios every week and play themselves. The lovable rogues are just as roguish, the dizzy blondes are just as empty-headed, the salts of the earth make you thirst just as much for a long cold alcoholic drink and the ones the nation loves to hate are every bit as repulsive in the flesh. Actually, they’re more repulsive, since anyone hanging round the green room is exposed to rather more of their flesh than a reasonable person could desire. There was more chance of me being struck by lightning than being star struck by that lot of has-beens and wannabes.

They didn’t even have to learn their words. TV takes are so short that a gnat with Alzheimer’s could retain the average speech with no trouble at all. Especially by the sixth or seventh take most of the Northerners cast seemed to need to capture the simplest sentiment on screen.

The main problem I had was how to do my job. Gloria had told everyone I was her bodyguard. Not because I couldn’t come up with a decent cover story, but because I’d weighed up both sides of the argument and decided that if there was somebody in cast or crew who was out to get her it was time for them to understand they should back off and forget about it. Gloria had been all for the cloak and dagger approach, hoping I could catch the author of her threatening letters in the act of extracting vengeance, but I pointed out that if I was going to stay close enough to protect her, I’d be an obvious obstacle to nefarious doings anyway.

Besides, members of the public weren’t allowed on the closed set of Northerners. The storylines were supposed to be top secret. NPTV, the company who made the soap, were so paranoid they made New Labour look relaxed. Everyone who worked on the programme had to sign an agreement that disclosure of any information relating to the cast characters or storylines was gross misconduct, a sacking offence and a strict liability tort. Even I had had to sign up to the tort clause before I was allowed into the compound that housed the interior and exterior sets, as well as the production suite and admin offices. Apart from location shooting to give the show that authentic Manchester ambience, the entire process from script conference to edited master tapes took place behind the high walls that surrounded NPTV’s flagship complex.

A fat lot of good it did them. Northerners generated more column inches than any other TV programme in the country. The fuel for the flames had to come from somewhere, and tabloid papers have always had deep pockets. There’s not a tabloid journalist I’ve ever met who couldn’t explain in words of one syllable to a nervously dithering source that the NPTV legal threat of suing for civil damages was about as solid as the plyboard walls of Brenda Barrowclough’s living room.

But NPTV insisted on their power trip, and I’d persuaded Gloria it would be simpler all round if we were upfront. The downside of being out in the open was that everyone was on their guard. Nobody was going to let anything slip accidentally. If my target was a member of the Northerners team, they’d be very careful around me.

In order to be effective protection for my client, I had to be visible, which meant that I couldn’t even find a quiet corner and catch up with my e-mail and my invoices. If Gloria was in make-up, I was in make-up. If Gloria was on set, I was hovering round the edges of the set, getting in everybody’s way. If Gloria was having a pee, I was leaning against the tampon dispenser. I could have made one of those video diary programmes that would have had any prospective private eye applying for a job as a hospital auxiliary.

I was trying to balance that month’s books in my head when a hand on my shoulder lifted my feet off the floor. Spot the alert bodyguard. I spun round and found my nose level with the top button of a suit jacket. I took a step back and looked up. The man must have been six-three, wide shouldered and heavy featured. The suit, whose tailoring owed more to Savile Row than to Armani, was cut to disguise the effects of too many business lunches and dinners, but this guy was still a long way off fat. On the other hand, he looked as if he was still only in his early forties and in the kind of trim that betrays a commitment to regular exercise. In a few years, when his joints started complaining and his stamina wasn’t what it had been, he’d swiftly slip into florid flabbiness. I’d seen the type. Greed was always a killer.

The smile on his broad face softened the stern good looks that come with a square jaw, a broad brow and deep-set eyes under overhanging brows. ‘You must be Kate Brannigan,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m John Turpin.’

For a man who’d gone out of his way to try to persuade Gloria to keep her problems in the family, he seemed amazingly cordial. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

‘How are your investigations proceeding?’ he asked, smiling down on me benevolently.

‘I could ask you the same question.’ If the guy was trying to win me over with his affable helpfulness, the least I could do was take advantage and trawl for some information.

His smile curved up at one corner, suddenly turning his expression from magnanimous to predatory. ‘I’m afraid I’m more of a guardian of company confidentiality than Ms Kendal,’ he said, with a note of acid in his voice.

‘But you expect me to share with you?’ I asked innocently.

He chuckled. ‘Not really, but it never hurts to try. As you yourself so ably demonstrated. I had hoped we could keep Ms Kendal’s little problem in-house, but if she insists on wasting her money on services we can provide more effectively and for free, I can’t stop her.’

‘Can I tell her when to expect the results of your internal inquiry?’ I wasn’t playing the sweetness and light game any more. It hadn’t got me anywhere so I figured I might as well turn into Ms Businesslike.

Turpin thrust one hand into his jacket pocket, thumb sticking out like Prince Charles always has. ‘Impossible to say. I have so many calls on my time, most of them rather more serious than the antics of some poison-pen writer.’

‘She had her car tyres slashed. All four of them. On NPTV premises,’ I reminded him.

‘It’s a bitchy business, soap,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m far from convinced there’s any connection between the letters and the car tyres. I can’t believe you find it hard to credit that Ms Kendal could annoy a colleague enough for them to lose their temper and behave so childishly.’

‘You’re really not taking this seriously, are you?’ I said, struggling to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

‘That’s what you’re being paid for, Ms Brannigan. Me, I’ve got a television production company to run.’ He inclined his head and gave me the full charm offensive again. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

I said nothing, just watched his retreating back with its double-vent tailoring that perfectly camouflaged the effects of too many hours sitting behind a desk. If our conversation was par for the course around here, the only surprise was that it had taken Gloria so long to get round to hiring me.

In spite of Turpin’s intervention, by lunchtime I was more bored than I’d been in the weeks before I finally managed to jettison A level Latin. If anyone had asked, I’d have admitted to being up for any distraction. I’d have been lying, as I discovered when my moby rang, right in the middle of the fifth run-through of a tense scene between my client and the putative father of her granddaughter’s aborted foetus.

Mortified, I twisted my face into an apologetic grimace as the actor playing opposite Gloria glared at me and muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake. What is this? Fucking amateur city?’ The six months he’d once spent on remand awaiting trial for rape (according to the front page of the Sun a couple of months back) hadn’t improved his word power, then.

I ducked behind a props skip and tucked my head down into my chest as I grunted, ‘Hello?’

‘Kate? I’ve been arrested.’ The voice was familiar, the scenario definitely wasn’t. Donovan Carmichael was a second-year engineering student at UMIST. He’d just started eking out his pathetic student grant by working part time for me as a process-server, doing the bread and butter work that pays his mother’s wages. Did I mention Shelley the office tyrant was his mother? And that she hated the thought that her highly educated baby boy might be tempted to throw it all away to become a maverick of the mean streets like her boss? That probably explained why said boy was using his one phone call on me rather than on his doting mother.

‘What for?’

‘Being black, I think,’ he said angrily.

‘What happened?’

‘I was in Hale Barns.’ That explained a lot. They don’t have a lot of six-feet-three-inch black lads in Hale Barns, especially not ones with shoulders wider than the flashy sports cars in their four-car garages. It would lower the property values too much.

‘Doing what?’

‘Working,’ he said. ‘You know? Trying to make that delivery that came in yesterday afternoon?’ His way of telling me there were other ears on our conversation. I knew he was referring to a domestic violence injunction we’d been hired to serve. The husband had broken his wife’s cheekbone the last time he’d had a bad day. If Donovan succeeded in serving the paper, there might not be a next time. But there were very good reasons why Donovan was reluctant to reveal his target or our client’s name to the cops. Once you get outside the high-profile city-centre divisions that are constantly under scrutiny, you find that most policemen don’t have a lot of sympathy for the victims of domestic violence. Especially when the guy who’s been doing the battering is one of the city’s biggest football stars. He’d given a whole new meaning to the word ‘striker’, but that wouldn’t stop him being a hero in the eyes of the boys in blue.

‘Are they charging you with anything?’

‘They’ve not interviewed me yet.’

‘Which nick are you in?’

‘Altrincham.’

I looked at my watch. I stuck my head round the side of the skip. They were about to go for a take. ‘I’ll get someone there as soon as I can. Till then, say nothing. OK?’ I said in a low voice.

I didn’t wait for a reply, just ended the call and tiptoed back to the set. Gloria and the idiot boy she was acting opposite went through their interaction for the eighth time and the director announced she was satisfied. Gloria heaved a seismic sigh and walked off the set, dragging Brenda’s beehive from her head as she approached me. ‘That’s me for today, chuck,’ she said. ‘Drop me at home and you can have the rest of the day off.’

‘Are you staying in?’ I asked, falling into step beside her as we walked to the dressing room she shared with Rita Hardwick, the actress who played Thelma Torrance, the good-time girl who’d never grown up.

‘I am that. I’ve got to pick up next month’s scripts from the office on the way out. I’ll be lying in the Jacuzzi learning my lines till bedtime. It’s not a pretty sight, and I don’t need a spectator. Especially one that charges me for the privilege,’ she added with an earthy chuckle.

I tried not to look as pleased as I felt. I could have sent a lawyer out to rescue Donovan, but it didn’t sound as if things had reached the point where I couldn’t sort it out myself, and lawyers cost either money I couldn’t afford or favours I didn’t want to owe.

Two hours later, I was walking Donovan back to my car. The police don’t like private eyes, but faced with me threatening a lawsuit for false imprisonment and racial harassment, they were only too happy to release Donovan from the interview room where he’d been pacing the floor for every one of the minutes it had taken me to get there.

‘I didn’t do anything, you know,’ Donovan complained. His anger seethed just below the surface. I couldn’t blame him, but for all our sakes, I hoped the cycle ride back into town would get it out of his system.

‘According to the copper I spoke to, one of the neighbours saw you sneaking round the back of the house and figured you for a burglar,’ I said drily.

‘Yeah, right. All I was doing was checking if he was in the snooker room round the back, like his wife said he usually is if he’s not training in the morning. I reckoned if he was there, and I walked right up to the French windows, he’d be bound to come over and open up, at least to give me a bollocking. When I saw the place was empty, I came back down the drive and went and sat on a wall down the road, where I could see him come home. It’s not like I was hiding,’ he continued. ‘They only arrested me because I’m black. Anybody black on the street in Hale Barns has got to be a burglar, right?’

‘Or a drug dealer. The rich have got to get their coke and heroin from somewhere,’ I pointed out reasonably. ‘Where’s your bike?’

‘Hale Barns. Chained to a lamppost, I hope.’

‘Let’s go back out there and do it,’ I sighed.

The leafy lanes of Hale Barns were dripping a soft rain down our necks as we walked along the grass verge that led to our target’s house. Wrought-iron gates stood open, revealing a long drive done in herringbone brick. There was enough of it there to build a semi. At the top of the drive, a matching pair of Mercedes sports cars were parallel parked. My heart sank. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I muttered.

We walked up the drive towards a vast white hacienda-style ranch that would have been grandiose in California. In Cheshire, it just looked silly. I leaned on the doorbell. There was a long pause, then the door swung silently open without warning. I recognized his face from the back pages of the Chronicle. For once, I didn’t have to check ID before I served the papers. ‘Yeah?’ he said, frowning. ‘Who are you?’

I leaned forward and stuffed the papers down the front of the towelling robe that was all he was wearing. ‘I’m Kate Brannigan, and you are well and truly served,’ I said.

As I spoke, over his shoulder, I saw a woman in a matching robe emerge from an archway. Like him, she looked as if she’d been in bed, and not for an afternoon nap. I recognized her from the Chronicle too. From the diary pages. Former model Bo Robinson. Better known these days as the wife of the man I’d just served with the injunction her solicitor had sweated blood to get out of a district judge.

Now I remembered what I’d hated most about my own days as a process-server.

The last thing Donovan had said before he’d pedalled off to the university library was, ‘Don’t tell my mum I got arrested, OK? Not even as a joke. Not unless you want her to put the blocks on me working for you again.’

I’d agreed. Jokes are supposed to be funny, after all. Unfortunately, the cops at Altrincham weren’t in on the deal. What I didn’t know was that while I’d been savouring the ambience of their lovely foyer (decor by the visually challenged, furnishings by a masochist, posters from a template unchanged since 1959) the desk sergeant had been calling the offices of Brannigan & Co to check that the auburn-haired midget and the giant in the sweat suit really were operatives of the agency and not a pair of smart-mouthed burglars on the make.

I’d barely put a foot inside the door when Shelley’s voice hit me like a blast furnace. ‘Nineteen years old and never been inside a police station,’ came the opening salvo. ‘Five minutes working with you, and he might as well be some smackhead from Moss Side. That’s it now, his name’s on their computer. Another black bastard who’s got away with it, that’s how they’ll have him down.’

I raised my palms towards her, trying to fend off her fury. ‘It’s all right, Shelley. He wasn’t formally arrested. They won’t be putting anything into the computer.’

Shelley snorted. ‘You’re so street smart when it comes to your business. How come you can be so naive about our lives? You don’t have the faintest idea what it means for a boy like Donovan to get picked up by the police! They don’t see a hard-working boy who’s been brought up to respect his elders and stay away from drugs. They just see another black face where it doesn’t belong. And you put him there.’

I edged across reception, trying to make the safe haven of my own office without being permanently disabled by the crossfire. ‘Shelley, he’s a grown man. He has to make his own decisions. I told him when I took him on that serving process wasn’t as easy as it sounded. But he was adamant that he could handle it.’

‘Of course he can handle it,’ she yelled. ‘He’s not the problem. It’s the other assholes out there, that’s the problem. I don’t want him doing this any more.’

I’d almost reached the safety of my door. ‘You’ll have to take that up with Don,’ I told her, sounding more firm than I felt.

‘I will, don’t you worry about that,’ she vowed.

‘OK. But don’t forget the reason he’s doing this.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘It’s about independence. He’s trying to earn his own money so he’s not dipping his hand in your pocket all the time. He’s trying to tell you he’s a man now.’ I took a deep breath, trying not to feel intimidated by the scowl that was drawing Shelley’s perfectly shaped eyebrows into a gnarled scribble. My hand on the doorknob, I delivered what was supposed to be the knockout punch. ‘You’ve got to let him make his own mistakes. You’ve got to let him go.’

I opened the door and dived for safety. No such luck. Instead of silent sanctuary, I fell into nerd heaven. A pair of pink-rimmed eyes looked up accusingly at me. Under the pressure of Shelley’s rage, I’d forgotten that my office wasn’t mine any more. Now I was the sole active partner in Brannigan & Co, I occupied the larger of the two rooms that opened off reception. When I’d been junior partner in Mortensen & Brannigan it had doubled as Bill Mortensen’s office and the main client interview room. Now, it was my sanctum.

These days, my former bolthole was the computer room, occupied as and when the occasion demanded by Gizmo, our information technology consultant. In our business, that’s the polite word for hacker. And when it comes to prowling other people’s systems with cat-like tread, Gizmo is king of the dark hill. The trade off for his computer acumen is that on a scale of one to ten, his social skills come in somewhere around absolute zero. I’m convinced that was the principal reason he was made redundant from his job as systems wizard with Telecom. Now they’ve become a multinational leading-edge company, everybody who works there has to pass for human. Silicon-based life forms like Gizmo just had to be downsized out the door.

Their loss was my gain. There had had to be changes, of course. Plain brown envelopes stuffed with banknotes had been replaced with a system more appealing to the taxman, if not to the company accountant. Then there was the personal grooming. Gizmo had always favoured an appearance that would have served as perfect camouflage if he’d been living on a refuse tip.

The clothes weren’t so hard. I managed to make him stop twitching long enough to get the key measurements, then hit a couple of designer factory outlets during the sales. I was planning to dock the cost from his first consultancy fees, but I didn’t want it to terrify him too much. Now he had two decent suits, four shirts that didn’t look disastrous unironed, a couple of inoffensive ties and a mac that any flasher would have been proud of. I could wheel him out as our computer security expert without frightening the clients, and he had a couple of outfits that wouldn’t entirely destroy his street cred if another of the undead happened to be on the street in daylight hours to see him.

The haircut had been harder. I don’t think he’d spent money on a haircut since 1987. I’d always thought he simply took a pair of scissors to any stray locks whose reflection in the monitor distracted him from what he was working on. Gizmo tried to make me believe he liked it that way. It cost me five beers to get him to the point where I could drag him across the threshold of the city centre salon where I’d already had to cancel three times. The stylist had winced in pain, but had overcome his aesthetic suffering for long enough to do the business. Giz ended up with a seriously sharp haircut and I ended up gobsmacked that lurking underneath the shambolic dress sense and terrible haircut was a rather attractive man. Scary.

Three months down the line, he was still looking the business, his hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes fitting the current image of heroin addict as male glamour. I’d even overheard one of Shelley’s adolescent daughter’s mates saying she thought Gizmo was ‘shaggable’. That Trainspotting has a lot to answer for. ‘All right,’ he mumbled, already looking back at his screen. ‘You two want to keep the noise down?’

‘Sorry, Giz. I didn’t actually mean to come in here.’

‘Know what you mean,’ he said.

Before I could leave, the door burst open. ‘And another thing,’ Shelley said. ‘You’ve not done a new client file for Gloria Kendal.’

Gizmo’s head came up like it was on a string. ‘Gloria Kendal? The Gloria Kendal? Brenda Barrow-clough off Northerners?’

I nodded.

‘She’s a client?’

‘I can’t believe you watch Northerners,’ I said.

‘She was in here yesterday,’ Shelley said smugly. ‘She signed a photograph for me personally.’

‘Wow! Gloria Kendal. Cool! Anything I can do to help?’ The last time I’d seen him this excited was over an advance release of Netscape Navigator 3.0.

‘I’ll let you know,’ I promised. ‘Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I have some work to do.’ I smiled sweetly and sidled past Shelley. As I crossed the threshold, the outside door opened and a massive basket of flowers walked in. Lilies, roses, carnations, and a dozen other things I didn’t know the names of. For a wild moment, I thought Richard might be apologizing for the night before. He had cause, given what had gone on after Dennis had left. The thought shrivelled and died as hope was overtaken by experience.

‘They’ll be from Gloria Kendal,’ Shelley predicted.

I contradicted her. ‘It’ll be Donovan mortgaging his first month’s wages to apologize to you.’

‘Wrong address,’ Gizmo said gloomily. Given the way the day had been running, he was probably right.

‘Is this Brannigan and Co?’ the flowers asked. For such an exotic arrangement, they had a remarkably prosaic Manchester accent.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m Brannigan.’ I stepped forward expectantly.

‘They’re not for you, love,’ the voice said, half a face appearing round the edge of the blooms. ‘You got someone here called Gizmo?’

5

JUPITER IN CANCER IN THE 3RD HOUSE

Jupiter is exalted in Cancer. She has a philosophical outlook, enjoying speculative thinking. She is good humoured and generous, with strong protective instincts. Her intuition and imagination are powerful tools that she could develop profitably. She has a good business sense and communicates well in that sphere. She probably writes very thorough reports.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

It was hard to keep my mind on Gloria’s monologue on the way in to the studios the next morning. The conundrum of Gizmo’s mysterious bouquet was much more interesting than her analysis of the next month’s storylines for Northerners. When the delivery man had announced who the flowers were for, Shelley and I had rounded on Gizmo. Scarlet and stammering, he’d refused to reveal anything. Shelley, who’s always been quick on her feet, helped herself to the card attached to the bouquet and ripped open the envelope.

All it said was, ‘www gets real’. I know. I was looking over her shoulder. The delivery man had placed the flowers on Shelley’s desk and legged it. He’d clearly seen enough blood shed over bouquets to hang around. ‘So who have you been chatting up on the Internet?’ I demanded. ‘Who’s the cyberbabe?’

‘Cyberbabe?’ Shelley echoed.

I pointed to the card. ‘www. The worldwide web. The Internet. It’s from someone he’s met websurfing. Well, not actually met, as such. Exchanged e-mail with.’

‘Safer than body fluids,’ Shelley commented drily. ‘So who’s the cyberbabe, Gizmo?’

Gizmo shook his head. ‘It’s a joke,’ he said with the tentative air of a man who doesn’t expect to be believed. ‘Just the guys trying to embarrass me at work.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never met a techie yet who’d spend money on flowers while there was still software on the planet.’

‘Honest, Kate, it’s a wind-up,’ he said desperately.

‘Some expensive wind-up,’ Shelley commented. ‘Did one of your mates win the lottery, then?’

‘There is no babe, OK? Leave it, eh?’ he said, this time sounding genuinely upset.

So we’d left it, sensitive girls that we are. Gizmo retreated back to his hi-tech hermitage and Shelley shrugged. ‘No use looking at me, Kate. He’s not going to fall for the, “You can talk to me, I’m a woman, I understand these things,” routine. It’s down to you.’

‘Men never cry on my shoulder,’ I protested.

‘No, but you’re the only one around here who knows enough about computers to find who he’s been talking to.’

I shook my head. ‘No chance. If Gizmo’s got a cybersecret, it’ll be locked away somewhere I won’t be able to find it. We’ll just have to do this the hard way. First thing tomorrow, you better get on to the florist.’

Call me a sad bastard, but as I was driving Gloria to the studios, I was busy working out how we could discover Gizmo’s secret admirer if she’d been clever enough to cover her tracks on the flower delivery. So I almost missed it when Gloria asked me a question that needed more than a grunt in response. ‘So you don’t mind coming along tonight?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ I said, not quite certain what I’d agreed to.

‘I’m really buggering up your social life, chuck,’ she continued. ‘If you’ve got a fella you want to bring along, you’re welcome, you know.’

I must have shown how unlikely a prospect that was, since Gloria chuckled. ‘He’s a rock journalist,’ I said.

She roared with laughter. ‘Better not bring him anywhere I’m singing, then,’ she spluttered. ‘I’m too old to be insulted.’

By the time we reached the studios, the sky had clouded over and large raindrops were plopping on the windscreen. ‘Oh bugger,’ Gloria said.

‘Problems?’

‘We’re supposed to be filming outside this morning. When it’s raining like this, they’ll hang on to see if it clears up and fill the time with the indoor scenes scheduled for this afternoon. I’m not in any of them, so not only do I lose an afternoon off but I get a morning hanging around waiting for the weather to change.’ She rummaged in the bulging satchel that contained her scripts and pulled out a crumpled schedule. ‘Let’s see … Could be worse. Teddy and Clive are in the same boat. D’you play bridge, Kate?’

‘Badly. I haven’t played against humans since I was a student, and these days the computer usually gives me a coating.’

‘You can’t be worse than Rita Hardwick,’ she said firmly. ‘That’s settled then.’

‘Two spades,’ I said tentatively. My partner, Clive Doran (Billy Knowles, the crooked bookmaker with an eye for his female employees) nodded approval.

‘Pass,’ said Gloria.

‘Three hearts.’

‘Doubled,’ announced Teddy Edwards, Gloria’s screen husband, the feckless Arthur Barrowclough, cowboy builder and failed gambler. I hoped he had as much luck with cards in real life as he did on screen. What Gloria had omitted to mention in the car was that we were playing for 10p a point. I suppose she figured she was paying me so much she needed to win some of it back.

I looked at my hand. ‘Redoubled,’ I said boldly. Clive raised one eyebrow. My bid passed round the table, and we started playing. I soon realized that the other three were so used to each other’s game that they only needed a small proportion of their brains to choose the next card. The bridge game was just an excuse to gossip in the relative privacy of Gloria’s dressing room.

‘Seen the Sun this morning?’ Clive asked, casually tossing a card down.

‘It’d be hard to miss it,’ Gloria pointed out. ‘I don’t know about where you live, but every newsagent we passed on the way in had a board outside. Gay soap star exposed: Exclusive. I sometimes wonder if this is the end of the nineteenth century, not the twentieth. I mean, who gives a stuff if Gary Bond’s a poof? None of us does, and we’re the ones as have to work with the lad.’

‘They’re bloody idle, them hacks,’ Teddy grumbled, sweeping a trick from the table that I’d thought my ace of diamonds was bound to win.

Clive sucked his breath in over his teeth. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘It couldn’t have taken much digging out. It’s not like it’s a state secret, Gary being a homo. He’s always going on about lads he’s pulled on a night out in the gay village.’ Teddy sighed. ‘I remember when it were just the red light district round Canal Street. Back in them days, if you fancied a bit, at least you could be sure it was a woman under the frock.’

‘And it’s not as if he’s messing about with kids,’ Gloria continued, taking the next trick. ‘Nice lead, Teddy. I mean, Gary always goes for fellas his own age.’

‘There’s been a lot of heavy stories about Northerners lately,’ I said. I might be playing dummy in this hand, but that didn’t mean I had to take the job literally.

‘You’re not kidding,’ Clive said with feeling, sweeping his thin hair back from his narrow forehead in a familiar gesture. ‘You get used to living in a goldfish bowl, but lately it’s been ridiculous. We’re all behaving like Sunday-school teachers.’

‘Aye, but you can be as good as gold for all the benefit you’ll get if the skeletons are already in the cupboard,’ said Gloria. ‘Seventeen years since Tony Peverell got nicked for waving his willy at a couple of lasses. He must have thought that were dead and buried long since. Then up it pops on the front of the News of the World. And his wife a churchwarden.’ She shook her head. I remembered the story.

‘He quit the programme, didn’t he?’ I asked, making a note of our winning score and gathering the cards to me so I could shuffle while Gloria dealt the next hand with the other pack.

‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ Clive intoned. It would have sounded sinister from someone who didn’t have a snub nose and a dimple in his chin and a manner only marginally less camp than Kenneth Williams. It was hard to believe he was happily married with three kids, but according to Gloria, the limp-wristed routine was nothing more than a backstage affectation. ‘And I should know,’ she’d winked. I didn’t ask.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked now.

‘John Turpin’s what he means,’ Gloria said. ‘I told you about Turpin, didn’t I? The management’s hatchet man. Administration and Production Coordinator, they call him. Scumbag, we call him. Just a typical bloody TV executive who’s never made a programme all his born days but thinks he knows better than everybody else what makes good telly.’

‘Turpin’s in charge of cast contracts,’ Clive explained, sorting his cards. ‘So he’s the one who’s technically responsible when there’s a leak to the press. He’s been running around like all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled into one for the last six months. He threatens, he rants, he rages, but still the stories keep leaking out. One diamond.’

‘Pass. It drives him demented,’ Teddy said with a smug little smile that revealed rodent teeth.

‘One heart?’ I tried, wondering what message that was sending to my partner. When he’d asked what system of bidding I preferred, I’d had to smile weakly and say, ‘Psychic?’ He hadn’t looked impressed.

‘It’s not the scandals that really push his blood pressure through the ceiling. It’s the storyline leaks.’ Gloria lit a cigarette, eyeing Teddy speculatively. ‘Two clubs. Remember when the Sunday Mirror got hold of that tale about Colette’s charity?’

‘Colette Darvall?’ I asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘I must have missed that one,’ I said.

‘Two diamonds,’ Clive said firmly. ‘Off the planet that month, were you? When her daughter was diagnosed with MS, Colette met up with all these other people who had kids in the same boat. So she let them use her as a sort of figurehead for a charity. She worked her socks off for them. She was always doing PAs for free, giving them stuff to raffle, donating interview fees and all sorts. Then it turns out one of the organizers has been ripping the charity off. He legged it to the West Indies with all the cash. Which would have been nothing more than a rather embarrassing tragedy for everyone concerned if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate detail that he’d been shagging Colette’s brains out for the previous three months.’

‘Oops,’ I said.

‘By heck, you private eyes know how to swear, don’t you?’ Teddy said acidly. ‘I don’t think “oops” was quite what Colette was saying. But Turpin was all right about that. He stuck one of the press officers on her doorstep night and day for a week and told her not to worry about her job.’

‘That’s because having a fling with somebody else’s husband is sexy in PR terms, whereas flashing at schoolgirls is just sleazy,’ Clive said. ‘Have you taken a vow of silence, Teddy? Or are you going to bid?’

‘Oh God,’ Teddy groaned. ‘Who dealt this dross? I’m going to have to pass. Sorry, Glo.’

‘Pass,’ I echoed.

‘And I make it three in a row. It’s all yours, Clive.’ Gloria leaned back in her chair and blew a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘God, I love it when Rita’s not here to whinge about me smoking.’

‘Better not let Turpin catch you,’ Clive said.

‘He sounds a real prize, this Turpin,’ I said. ‘I met him yesterday and he was nice as ninepence to me. Told me nothing, mind you, but did it charmingly.’

‘Smooth-talking bastard. He did the square root of bugger-all about sorting out my security. Bloody chocolate teapot,’ Gloria said dismissively. ‘At least this latest furore about the future of the show has stopped him going on about finding out who’s leaking the storylines to the press.’

‘The future of the show? They’re surely not going to axe Northerners?’ It was a more radical suggestion than abolishing the monarchy, and one that would have had a lot more people rioting in the streets. For some reason, the public forgave the sins of the cast of their favourite soap far more readily than those of the House of Windsor, even though they paid both lots of wages, one via their taxes, the other via the hidden tax of advertising.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Gloria said. ‘Of course they’re not going to axe Northerners. That’d be like chocolate voting for Easter. No, what they’re on about is moving us to a satellite or cable channel.’

I stared blankly at her, the cards forgotten. ‘But that would mean losing all your viewers. There’s only two people and a dog watch cable.’

‘And the dog’s a guide dog,’ Teddy chipped in gloomily.

‘The theory is that if Northerners defects to one of the pay-to-view channels, the viewers will follow,’ Clive said. ‘The men in suits think our following is so addicted that they’d rather shell out for a satellite dish than lose their three times weekly fix of an everyday story of northern folk.’

‘Hardly everyday,’ I muttered. ‘You show me anywhere in Manchester where nobody stays out of work for more than a fortnight and where the corner shop, the fast-food outlet and the local newsagent are still run by white Anglo-Saxons.’

‘We’re not a bloody documentary,’ Teddy said. He’d clearly heard similar complaints before. His irritation didn’t upset me unduly, since it resulted in him throwing away the rest of the hand with one hasty lead.

‘No, we’re a fantasy,’ Clive said cheerfully, sweeping up the next trick and laying down his cards. ‘I think the rest are ours. What we’re providing, Kate, is contemporary nostalgia. We’re harking back to a past that never existed, but we’re translating it into contemporary terms. People feel alienated and lonely in the city and we create the illusion that they’re part of a community. A community where all the girls are pretty, all the lads have lovely shoulders and any woman over thirty-five is veneered with a kind of folk wisdom.’

I was beginning to understand why Clive hid behind the camp manner. Underneath it all there lay a sharper mind than most of his fellow cast members ever exhibited. He was just as self-absorbed as they were, but at least he’d given some thought to how he earned his considerable living. I bet that made him really popular in a green room populated by egos who were each convinced they were the sole reason for the show’s success. ‘So you reckon the tug of fantasy is so strong that the millions who tune in three times a week will take out their satellite subscriptions like a bunch of little lambs?’ I said, my scepticism obvious.

‘We don’t, chuck,’ Gloria said, lighting a fresh cigarette while Clive dealt the cards. ‘But the management do.’

‘That’s hardly surprising,’ Teddy said. ‘They’re the ones who are going to make a bomb whatever happens.’

‘How come?’ I asked.

‘The contract NPTV has with the ITV network is due for renegotiation. The network knows NPTV have been talking to satellite and cable companies with a view to them buying first rights in Northerners for the next three years. So the network knows that the price is going to have to go up. There’s going to be a bidding war. And the only winners are going to be the management at NPTV, with their pocketfuls of share options. If they’re wrong and the viewers don’t follow the programme in droves, it doesn’t matter to them, because they’ll already have their hot sticky hands on the cash,’ Clive explained.

‘So Turpin needs to plug the storyline leak,’ Gloria said, examining her cards.

‘I’m not sure I follow you. Surely any publicity is good publicity?’

‘Not when it involves letting the public know in advance what’s going to happen,’ Teddy said, raising his eyes to the heavens as if I was stupid. I didn’t react. After all, I wasn’t the one who was currently fourteen quid out of pocket.

Clive took pity on my puzzlement. ‘If people know the big storylines in advance, a lot of them think it won’t be the end of the world if they miss a few eps, because they know what they’ll be missing. Once they get out of the habit of watching every ep religiously, their viewing habits drift.’

‘They find other programmes on at the same time that they get to like. They don’t bother setting the video to watch us because they think they already know what’s going to happen. Or they just go down the pub. Before you know it, they’ve lost touch with the programme,’ Gloria continued. ‘One heart.’

‘Especially now we’re three times a week. You dip out for two, three weeks and when you come back, you don’t know some of the faces. I’m going to pass this time.’

Teddy tugged at his shirt collar, a mannerism either he’d borrowed from Arthur Barrowclough or the character had borrowed from him. ‘Two hearts. And every time the viewing figures drop, John Turpin sees his share of the profits going down.’

‘And we get to watch his blood pressure going up,’ Gloria said. ‘Three hearts,’ she added, noting my shake of the head.

‘I’d have thought he’d be on to a loser, trying to find out who’s behind it. It’s too good an earner for the mole to give it up, and no journalist on the receiving end of a series of exclusives like that is going to expose a source,’ I said.

‘It won’t be for want of trying,’ Gloria said. ‘He’s even got every script coded so that any photocopied pages can be traced back. I hope whoever it is really is making a killing, because they’re not going to earn another shilling off NPTV if they’re caught.’

‘You’ll never work in this town again,’ Teddy drawled in a surprisingly convincing American accent. I was so accustomed to him behaving in character I’d almost forgotten he was an actor.

‘And speaking of making a killing, Gloria, any more news from your stalker?’

Gloria scowled. ‘By heck, Clive, you know how to put a girl off her game. No, I’ve heard nowt since I took Kate on. I’m hoping we’ve frightened him off.’

‘How do you know it’s a he?’ Clive said.

‘Believe me, Clive, I know.’

We played out the hand in silence for a moment. In bridge as in life, I’ve always been better at defence than attack. Clive also seemed to relish the taste of blood and we left Gloria and Teddy three tricks short of their contract. My client raised her eyebrows and lit another cigarette. ‘She lied so beautifully, Teddy. I really believed her when she said she was crap at this.’

‘Don’t tell Turpin,’ Teddy said sharply. ‘He’ll hire her out from under you.’

‘My dears, for all we know, he’s done that already,’ Clive said archly.

I should be so lucky, I thought as they all stared at me. I’m not proud about whose money I take. Maybe I should engineer another encounter with Turpin the hatchet man and kill two birds with one stone. Gloria’s eyes narrowed, either from the smoke or because she could see the wheels going round in my head. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned me. ‘Chances are it’s one of our brain-dead mates who’s ratting to the vampires, and I don’t want that on my conscience.’

I nodded. ‘Fair enough. Whose deal is it?’

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