Donovan grinned with relief. “That’s great. I don’t think I can do tomorrow, Kate, because I’ve got to finish an essay for Monday.”
And I am Marie of Romania, I thought to myself. “No problem. I’ll handle it. OK?” I asked Gloria.
“You’re the boss,” she pouted. “I’ll get you my spare Brenda wig.” She disentangled her arm from Donovan, gave him a little pat on his iron-hard gluteus maximus and sashayed out of the room.
Donovan moved to my side and stooped close to my ear. “I thought you were going to make me spend another night here,” he whispered. I thought only the prospect of his mother’s anger had the power to make him that twitchy.
“You survived last night intact, didn’t you?” I asked sweetly.
He straightened up and scowled. “Only just,” he muttered. “What’s the polite way to tell somebody ten years older than your mum to take her hand off your thigh?”
“You obviously found one,” I said drily.
“I went to the toilet a lot,” he said bitterly. “And the spare bedroom’s got a bloody big chest of drawers that fits nicely behind the door. It took me all my time to get it shifted, and it’s just as well I did because I swear I woke up to the sound of the door handle turning.”
I stifled a snort of laughter. “Sorry, Don,” I giggled. “I know it’s not funny. What happened?”
“I did snoring. Loudly. Eventually she went away. She must think I’m a pretty crap bodyguard if I can sleep through that.”
I grinned. “Somehow I don’t think it’s the guarding capabilities of your body that she’s interested in. Don’t worry, I’ll come and rescue you in good time tonight.”
We shut up and moved apart as we heard Gloria’s approach. She came in twirling a rigid platinum-blonde beehive on the end of her finger. “There you go, chuck. One Brenda Barrowclough barnet.” She tossed it in my direction. Donovan stretched out a long arm and intercepted it, then handed it ceremoniously to me.
“Let’s see what you look like,” he said, a mischievous grin lighting up his eyes.
I pulled the wig over my head. It wasn’t a bad fit, and in the poor light of the streetlamps I reckoned it would be good enough to fool anyone expecting Gloria. Five minutes later and I was proving myself right, always a feeling I enjoy. At the end of the narrow lane leading to Gloria’s, I slowed to turn on to the main road. To either side, headlights snapped on and engines coughed into life. “Gotcha,” I said under my breath as I led the cavalcade down the road towards Oldham. As far as I could see, they were all nailed to my tail. I was just grateful there were no tunnels between Saddleworth and Manchester. And that it was too cold for riding motorbikes.
I drove to the office, not particularly wanting to invite the rat pack back to my own doorstep. I managed to find a parking space that wasn’t illegal enough to earn a ticket on a Saturday night, aware of the four press cars hovering nearby, trying to find nonexistent spaces where they could abandon ship and follow “Gloria.” I got out of the car, pulled the wig off and ran my hand through my hair. I wiggled my fingers at the hacks and walked round the corner to my office. Nobody followed me. Like private eyes, journos always know when they’ve just been had over by an expert. One humiliation was enough for one evening.
The office was dark and empty, Gizmo having finally remembered he had a home to go to. I brewed myself a cappuccino and stretched out on the clients’ sofa to skim the authorized version of Dorothea’s life. The two hundred and fifty pages of largish print left a lot of scope for the imagination. The rosy glow of a happy Lancashire childhood in a poor but honest family, followed by an adolescence troubled only by the upheavals surrounding the discovery of her psychic powers and the difficulties of coming to terms with a “gift” that set her apart from her contemporaries.
She had married at twenty to a man eight years older than her, referred to only as Harry. The marriage lasted less than a chapter. If Dorothea’s cursory dismissal was anything to go by, the real thing hadn’t endured much longer. Because she’d needed to support herself, she’d started charging for astrological consultations. By the time Edna Mercer had stumbled across her, she’d graduated from her front room to her own booth on a seaside pier.
Northerners had changed everything. Within months of becoming the personal astrologer to a handful of cast members, she was the most sought-after stargazer in the country. A year after Edna Mercer had plucked her from relative obscurity, she had a monthly slot on daytime TV, syndicated weekly newspaper columns and pre-recorded local radio horoscopes. Now, a few years after her book had appeared, she had been edged from pole position among astrologers by the high-profile appearances of Mystic Meg on the national lottery broadcasts, but Dorothea Dawson was still Seer to the Stars in the public’s mind. The amazing thing, the one fact that had kept her going through the tough times, was the certain knowledge that once she reached a particular point in her astrological cycle, she would be a star herself. And the moon is made of green cheese.
Bored by the book’s relentless tabloid prose and frustrated by its deliberate superficiality, I gave up on it after an hour or so. I knew that compared to the police, my chances of uncovering Dorothea’s killer were slim. They had forensic evidence and teams of trained officers who could question everybody who’d ever crossed the threshold of the NPTV compound. All I had going for me was the chance that my informal networks could produce information that was denied to the police. Cassie had been some help, but I needed a lot more.
There was one source that I suspected wouldn’t occur to Cliff Jackson if he thought from now till next Christmas. Even if it did, a private operator like me was always going to get a far better response from the anarchic community of the Internet than a copper ever would. Even the straightest suit turns into a bit of a rebel when he — or she — ventures into cyberspace.
Reluctantly abandoning the comfort of the sofa, I slouched in
I switched off the computer and checked the time. Way too early to pick up Gloria. There was no chance of Richard being home on a Saturday night, at least not before Match of the Day. But I knew someone who would be.
As I parked outside the O’Briens’ house, a couple of pairs of curtains in the deeply suburban close twitched open, shards of light sparking on their frosted lawns like glitter on Christmas cards. Even thick middle managers know that nobody as small as me gets into the police, so the pale stripes of curtain gaps soon disappeared. Debbie answered the door with a defiant glower that turned her beauty into a threat. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I thought it was the Old Bill come back for another run through the laundry basket. Bastards. Come on in.”
It was hardly a gracious invitation, but I don’t suppose I’d have been any better behaved in the circumstances. I followed her into the immaculate and characterless kitchen. I’d been right about the glasses. The cabinet was empty. I didn’t think that was because Debbie was secretly having a party in the next room. “Want a drink?” she asked.
When I started working in Manchester, the first time someone had asked me that I’d said, “No thanks, I’m driving.” He’d given me a very strange look. It took me about six months and a lot of thirsty
The silence grew thick between us while Debbie brewed up, the hiss as boiling water exploded coffee granules perfectly audible. She’s never quite sure what to make of me. Being a woman whose IQ is around the same as her continental shoe size, she can’t quite make herself believe that any woman would prefer to go out to work to support herself from choice. She also finds it hard to get her head round the notion that any heterosexual woman could spend serious time with her husband without having designs on his body. Every now and again Dennis or I or their teenage daughter Christie convinces her that our relationship is purely platonic. Then she forgets what platonic means and we have to start all over again. Sometimes I think it would just be easier if I told her I was a lesbian.