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  “How many fingers have you got left?”

  Gloria made a show of counting. “Looks like they’re all still here.”

  “In that case, I’m colder,” I said, waving a hand with one finger bent over.

  “Freddie, meet Kate Brannigan, my bodyguard. Kate, this is Freddie Littlewood. It’s his job to stop me looking like the raddled old bag I really am.”

  “Hi, Freddie.”

  He ducked his head in acknowledgment and gave me a quick once-over in the mirror. He had a narrow head and small, tight features framed by spiky black hair. With his black polo neck and black jeans like a second skin, he looked as if he’d escaped from one of those existential French films where you don’t understand a

  “It’s surprising how often she gets things right,” Gloria said mildly as he expertly applied powder to her cheeks.

  “And how often she causes trouble,” he added drily. “All those sly little hints that people take a certain way and before you know it, old friends are at each other’s throats. You watch, now she’s got you all wound up and scared witless, I bet this week she’ll tell you something that starts you looking out the corner of your eye at one of your best friends.”

  “I don’t know why you’ve got it in for Dorothea,” Gloria said. “She’s harmless and we’re all grown-ups.”

  “I just don’t like to see you upset, Gloria,” he said solicitously.

  “Well, between me and you and the wall, Freddie, it wasn’t what Dorothea said that upset me. I was already in a state. I’d been getting threatening letters. I’d had my tires slashed to ribbons. All Dorothea did was make me realize I should be taking them seriously.”

  I could have clobbered her. I’d told her to carry on keeping quiet about the threatening letters and the vandalism, to let everyone think it was Dorothea’s eerie warning that was behind my presence. And here she was, telling all to the man perfectly placed to be the distribution center of the rumor factory. “Nice one, Gloria,” I muttered.

  It’s not the people you go up against that make this job a bitch; it’s the clients, every time.

  Chapter 7

  SUN CONJUNCTION WITH MERCURY

  She has a lively mind. Her opinions are important to her and she enjoys expressing them. Objectivity sometimes suffers from the strength of her views. Exchanging and acquiring information which she can subsequently analyze matters a lot.

  From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

  When she finally finished filming her outdoor scene with Teddy, Gloria announced we were going shopping. I must have looked as dubious as I felt. “Don’t worry, chuck,” she laughed as I drove her into the NPTV compound. “We won’t get mobbed. How do you think I manage when I’ve not got you running around after me?”

  I was gobsmacked by the result. I’d seen her in plain clothes already, not least when she’d first come to the office. But this was something else again. I thought I was the mistress of disguise until I met Gloria. When she emerged from her dressing room after a mere ten minutes to slough off Brenda Barrowclough, I nearly let her walk past me. She’d cheated; this wasn’t the outfit she’d worn when I’d driven her to work that morning. Wearing jeans and cowboy boots under a soft nubuck jacket that fell to mid-thigh, the image was entirely different. On her head perched a designer version of a cowboy hat, tilted to a jaunty angle. Instead of sunglasses, she’d gone for a pair of slightly tinted granny glasses that subtly changed the shape of her face. She looked twenty years younger. I wasn’t going to be the only person who wouldn’t instantly recognize Gloria now she’d ditched the wig and adopted a wardrobe that didn’t include polyester.

  Thankfully, she didn’t have a major expedition in mind. Her granddaughter had been invited to a fancy dress party and she The Hunchback of Notre Dame. “They’ve got outfits at the Disney store, but they cost a fortune and I could make better myself,” Gloria explained as I squeezed the car into a slot in the Arndale Center car park. She never ceased to amaze me. This was a woman who could afford a hundred Esmeralda outfits without noticing the dent in her bank balance. But her pretense of meanness didn’t fool me. Making the costume wasn’t about saving money; it was about giving her granddaughter something of herself. It was also a way, I suspected, of reminding herself of the life she had come from.

  We descended a claustrophobic concrete stairwell that reeked so strongly of piss it was a relief to step out into the traffic fumes of High Street. Gloria led me unerringly through the warren of Victorian warehouses that house the city’s rag trade till we fetched up at a wholesaler who specialized in saris. Judging by the warmth of the welcome, she was no stranger. Merely because I was with her, I was offered tea too. While Gloria sipped from a thick pottery mug and browsed the dazzling fabrics, I hung around near the door, peering into the street with the avidity of the truly paranoid. The only people in sight were hurrying through the dank cold of the dying December day, coat collars turned up against the knife edge of the wind that howled through the narrow streets of the Northern Quarter. It wasn’t a day for appreciating the renaissance of yet another part of the inner city. Nobody was going to be browsing the shop windows today. The craft workers must have been blessing their good fortune at having an enclosed market.

  We emerged on the street just as darkness was falling, me staggering two steps behind Gloria toting a bale of fabric that felt heavy enough to clothe half of Lancashire. As we approached the Arndale from a slightly different angle, I realized we must be close to Dennis’s latest venture. I couldn’t help smiling at the thought of the double act Dennis and Gloria would be. It had been a long week, and I felt like some light relief, so I said, “A mate of mine has just opened a shop this end of the Arndale. Do you mind if we just drop in to say hello?”

  “What kind of shop?”

  “You remember what they used to say about how cheap it was

  Gloria chuckled. “That good, eh? Oh well, why not? We’ve got nowt else on till tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t think it’ll take that long.”

  It wasn’t hard to spot Dennis’s establishment. Sandwiched between a cut-price butcher and a heel bar in the subterranean section of the mall, it was notable for the dump bins of bargains virtually blocking the underpass and the muscle-bound minder keeping an eye on potential shoplifters. All he was wearing was a pair of jogging pants and a vest designed to show off his awesome upper body development. “High-class joint, then,” Gloria remarked as we followed the chicane created by the dump bins, artfully placed to funnel us past whitewashed windows proclaiming, “Everything Under a Pound!” and into the shop.

  By the door were three tills, all staffed by slack-jawed teenagers. The girls were the ones with the mascara. I think. Dennis was up near the back of the shop, stacking shelves with giant bottles of lurid green bath foam. We squeezed up a narrow aisle packed with weary shoppers who had the look and smell of poverty. My awkward parcel of material earned me a few hard words and a lot of harder looks.

  Of course, I didn’t get anywhere near Dennis before he noticed us. I swear that man has eyes in the back of his head. “Kate,” he said, his face creasing up in a delighted grin. “Fabulous!” He cleared a way through for us, telling his customers to kindly move their arses or take the consequences. “So, what do you think?” he asked almost before I was within bear-hug reach.

  I gave the shelves the quick once-over. Exactly what I’d expected. Cheap and nasty, from the toys to the toiletries. “I think you’re going to make a mint,” I said sadly, depressed at the reminder of how many skint punters there are out there who needed to fill Christmas stockings on a weekly budget of the same amount that most MPs spend on lunch.

  “Are you not going to introduce us, chuck?” Gloria said. I half turned to find her giving Dennis the appraising look of a farmer at a fatstock show. That was all I needed. Dennis has a habit of

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “This is just a flying visit.”

  I was too late. Dennis was already sli
ding round me and extending a hand to Gloria. “Dennis O’Brien at your service, darling,” he said. Gloria slid her hand into his and he raised it to his lips, all the time fixing her with the irresistible sparkle of his intense blue eyes. I groaned.

  “I’m Gloria Kendal.”

  His smile reminded me of crocodiles at feeding time. “I know,” he said.

  “It’s the voice,” I muttered. “Total giveaway.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the voice,” he said. “It’s because this lovely lady’s with you. I can read, you know, Kate.”

  “What do you mean, it’s because she’s with me?”

  Dennis cast his eyes heavenwards. “Tonight’s Chronicle. You mean you’ve not seen it?”

  “No. What about it?”

  He jerked his head towards a door at the rear of the shop. “Through the back. It’s in my ski-jacket pocket.”

  I looked at him. I looked at the door. I looked at Gloria. “On you go, chuck,” she said. “I think I’m in safe hands here.”

  “That’s all you know,” I mumbled. But I dumped the fabric parcel on Dennis and left them to it while I went to chase whatever he’d seen in the evening paper. I didn’t have to look hard. There wasn’t much room in the bare concrete back shop to hide anything as big as Dennis’s ski jacket, which was draped over one of two folding chairs by a cardboard computer carton doing a bad impersonation of a table. The paper was sticking out of a pocket and the story I was clearly supposed to be looking for was splashed across the front page. “NORTHERNERS STAR IN DEATH THREAT DRAMA,” I read.

  “Gloria Kendal, busybody Brenda Barrowclough in top soap Northerners, is at the heart of a real-life

  “The desperate warning was spelled out by her personal astrologer Dorothea Dawson, the TV Seer to the Stars. But following a savage act of vandalism on her Saab sports car, Ms. Kendal has taken the danger to heart and has hired top local private investigator Kate Brannigan to act as bodyguard.

  “The star of the Manchester-based soap has vowed not to be driven underground by the vicious poison-pen writer …”

  I skimmed to the end of the article, but there didn’t seem to be any more meat on the bones. There were a couple of paragraphs mentioning previous cases where my name had unfortunately made it into the press, but nothing too damaging. What I couldn’t figure out, apart from where the story had come from, was why nobody had called me all afternoon about it. Shelley should have been straight on to me the minute the paper landed, I thought. I was almost glad of the rare opportunity to put her in the wrong.

  Then I took my moby out of my bag and realized I’d forgotten to switch it back on after I’d had it muted for the filming.

  There were fourteen messages. I wasn’t strong enough to deal with them yet. Besides, if the situation was out in the open, I needed to get my client away from the public eye as fast as possible. The last thing I needed was for some care-in-the-community case to hit on the idea of making a name for himself by metamorphosing into the secret stalker.

  I hurried back to the shop, clutching the paper. I was too late. When I opened the door, it looked as if a small riot had enveloped the shop. At the eye of the storm was Dennis, standing on a counter with Gloria perched next to him. The massive bouncer had moved inside the store and was brandishing one of the red plastic under-a-pound fun cameras like King Kong with a fire engine. “Did you get that, Keith? Did you get that?” Dennis kept asking.

  The shoppers had lost all interest in Dennis’s wares, but for once Sun and tell them we’ve got exclusive pictures to sell of Gloria Kendal defying death threats and shopping in Manchester’s best value-for-money store.”

  “Ah, shit,” I muttered, lowering my head and thrusting through the crowd. Getting through to Gloria was a lot harder than Moses parting the Red Sea. Eventually I managed it, but only by elbowing a couple of elderly ladies in the ribs and stepping hard on the instep of a teenage girl who was still yelping in complaint minutes later. “Come on, Gloria, time to go home,” I said grimly.

  “I was just starting to enjoy myself,” she complained goodnaturedly, pushing herself to her feet.

  “You’re not whisking this wonderful woman off before we’ve had the chance to get to know each other?” Dennis demanded, sounding aggrieved.

  “That’s as good a reason as any,” I grunted, trying to force a way through the clamoring crowd to the door.

  Gloria turned to wiggle her fingers at him. “See you around, Dennis. I hope.”

  “Keith,” I shouted. “Stop poncing around pretending to be David Bailey and give us a hand here. I need to get Gloria home.”

  The big bouncer looked to Dennis for guidance. He gave a rueful smile and nodded. “Sort it,” he said.

  Keith picked up the parcel of fabric and carved a path to the door in seconds flat. One look at biceps the size of cannonballs, and the obstructive punters just melted into the shelves. Gloria signed postcards as she walked, automatically passing them into the grasping hands of the fans. Out in the underpass, Keith thrust the bundle into my arms and I hustled Gloria towards a nearby bank of lifts that would take us back to the car park. “I like your friend,” she said as we crammed in beside a pushchair and a harassed-looking woman who was too busy pacifying her toddler to care who was in the lift with her.

  “He obviously likes you too. But then, his wife’s a big fan of Northerners,” I said drily.

  “That’s a pity,” she said.

  “I thought you needed all the viewers you could get just now.”

  Gloria raised her eyebrows, not entirely amused by my deliberate misunderstanding. “I meant, the existence of a wife. I was going to ask you for his number, but if he’s a married man, I’m not interested.”

  “Worried about the press?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not fear of the Sun that stops me having affairs with married men. There are enough people out there ready to make women’s lives a misery without me joining in.”

  The lift doors opened and Gloria stepped out, turning to give the young mother a hand with her pushchair. “You never cease to amaze me, Gloria,” I said as we crossed the car park. “You must have some bad habits.”

  In response, she took out her cigarette packet and waved it at me. “One for the road,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat of her Saab. “And I like a drink,” she added as I started the engine. “And I have been known to play the odd game of bingo.”

  “You’re too good for this world,” I said wryly.

  She plucked the Chronicle from the pocket where I’d stowed it and stared grim-faced at the front page. “I flaming hope not,” she said.

  After I dropped Gloria at home where she planned a quiet night in with her sewing machine and a stack of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies, there was only one logical place to go. Even if it did involve one of those cross-country routes that looks sensible on the map but suddenly develops a mind of its own as soon as all human habitation falls out of sight.

  My best friend Alexis and her partner Chris live in the wilds of the Derbyshire Peak District. Alexis claims she can be in her office in central Manchester twenty-three minutes after leaving home, but that’s only because she’s the crime correspondent of the Chronicle and so she starts work around half past six in the morning. I always feel like I need a sherpa and a St Bernard with a barrel of brandy to make it to the dream home they built themselves. Chris is an architect, and she designed the small development in exchange for the skills of her neighbors who did a

  Then they found the perfect way to spend all the money they’d saved. They had a baby. Chris actually did the bit that makes most people wince and cross their legs, but Alexis has just as much of a stake in Jay Appleton Lee. I’m about as fond of woodlice as I am of children, but even I have to admit—if only to myself—that I can see why Richard finds this particular baby as delightful as her parents do.

  But that night I wasn’t interested in admiring Jay’s shock of black spiky hair or her latest tooth. I
t was Alexis I needed to see. I’d timed my arrival perfectly. Jay was en route from bath to bed, so all I had to do was make a few admiring noises before Chris whisked her away. Five minutes later, the three of us were installed in the comfortable living room, Chris and Alexis with dark smudges under their eyes that just about matched the glasses of Murphy’s stout they were drinking.

  “You having a night off, then, girl?” Alexis asked, her Scouse accent as rich as the creamy head on her glass. “Rather you than me, minding a soap star for a living.”

  “Just let me lie down for five minutes then I’ll throw some pizza at the oven,” Chris said, stifling a yawn and stretching out on the sofa, dumping her feet in Alexis’s lap. “So what’s she like, Gloria Kendal?”

  “Brenda Barrowclough with a bit more insight, humor and style,” I said. “At first, all I saw was that total self-absorption you get with actors. But the more I’ve got to know her, the more I’ve come to realize there’s more to her than that. She’s forthright, funny, generous. I’m amazed, but I actually like her.” I told them about our adventures with Dennis. They both knew him well enough to fill in the gaps for themselves.

  “I wish I’d been there. It sounds like one to cut out and keep,” Alexis said, reaching for her cigarette packet. She took out a fag and began to go through the motions of smoking without actually lighting up. Another consequence of motherhood. She’d gone from fifty Silk Cut a day to smoking about a dozen and using a few

  “Thanks to the Chronicle.” I scowled.

  “The newsdesk were on to me about it,” Alexis said. “I told them there wasn’t any point in me ringing you for a quote. Or in them ringing you for a quote. I gave them this whole spiel about how you’ve got this Philip Marlowe code of conduct and you’d never grass up a client.”

  “Very noble of you,” Chris said drily. “Respecting Kate’s professional code. You really love pissing off the newsdesk, don’t you?”