“Hellfire, Kate, you’ve done wonders,” my grateful client said. “I can sleep easy in my bed at night now.”
“I’m glad,” I said. Not least because I could get Donovan back on the work he was supposed to be doing. I turned back to Linda. “Taken together, it’s a hard conclusion to resist.”
“It’d be easier for my boss to swallow if the information came from somewhere else,” she said resignedly.
“Howsabout if it does?” I asked. “It won’t take five minutes for Gizmo to walk down to Bootle Street and leave it in an envelope at the front counter with your name on it. You can tell Jackson you’ve been out taking a statement from Freddie about Dorothea’s conversation with Turpin and then when you got back to the office, hey presto! There it was. You can leave me out of it altogether.”
“Are you sure?” she said. I could tell she was weighing up how much my generosity might cost her in the future.
I shrugged. “I don’t need my face all over the Chronicle again. Besides, there is one thing you could do for me.”
Her face closed like a slammed door. “I thought it was too good to be true.”
I held my hands up. “It’s no big deal. Just a word with your colleagues in uniform. Donovan is going to be serving process for me for at least the next eighteen months. I’d really appreciate it if you could spread the word that the big black guy on the bicycle is wearing a white hat.”
Linda grinned. “I think I can manage that.” She got to her feet and took some folded sheets of A4 out of her shoulder bag. “As it happens, I’ve got something for you too. I’ll see myself out.”
Curious, I unfolded the bundle of paper. There was a Post-it stuck on one corner in Linda’s handwriting. “Printed out from Dorothea Dawson’s hard disk. It gave us all a laugh.” I pulled off the note and started to read: 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
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 Fifth House, it indicates a player of games …
“What is it, chuck? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Gloria said, concern in her voice.
I shook my head, folding the papers away. “It’s nothing, Gloria. Just some sad twisted copper’s idea of a joke.”
Epilogue
SATURN TRINES NEPTUNE
She loses her own apprehensions through her profound and penetrating investigative interest in others. She has a strong sense of how her life should be arranged, often bringing order to chaos. She follows her feelings and is sensitive to the subtext that lies beneath the conversation and behavior of others. She can harness irrationality and factor it into her decision-making.
From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson
If I hadn’t known how thoroughly Dorothea Dawson researched her clients, I’d probably have been impressed with her astrological analysis of my character. I wouldn’t have minded betting that the minute Gloria told Dorothea she’d hired me, the astrologer had started digging. I wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet. For a start, I’d appeared in Alexis’s stories in the Chronicle more times than I was entirely comfortable with. So it wouldn’t have been too hard for Dorothea to pick up a few snippets about me and weave them into an otherwise standard profile.
What she missed completely was my sense of humor. I mean, if I didn’t have a world-class sense of humor, why else would I be sitting in the Costa Coffee forecourt at Piccadilly Station drinking moccachino and reading my horoscope when I could be at home, snug as a bug in a phone, working out how to solve my latest computer game with a Stoly and pink grapefruit juice on the side?
The reason why I was lurking among the sad souls condemned to travelling on Virgin Trains was shuffling from foot to foot a few yards away, like a small child who needs to go to the toilet but doesn’t want to miss some crucial development in his favorite TV show. Gizmo had clearly had a hard time deciding between style
As well as hopping from one foot to the other, Gizmo was clutching a copy of Iain M. Banks’s cult sci-fi novel, Feersum Endjin, the agreed recognition signal. He’d arranged to meet Jan off the London train at half past eight and he’d been dancing his quaint jig since a quarter past. Imagine expecting a train to be early. I’d sat comfortably sipping my brew and dipping into Dorothea’s digest of my personality.
There was an indecipherable announcement over the Tannoy and Gizmo stopped jigging. He leaned slightly forward, nose towards the platforms like a setter scenting the breeze. I followed his gaze and watched the dark-red livery of the London train easing into platform six with a rumble and a sigh. I couldn’t help crossing my fingers. If this went pear-shaped, I’d get no proper work out of him for weeks.
The carriage doors were opening the length of the train and people spilled on to the platform. First past us were the smokers, carrying with them a miasma of overflowing ashtray after two and a half hours sitting in stale tobacco smoke. Then the usual Fridaynight mixture of day-trip shoppers, students coming to Manchester for a groovy weekend, senior citizens exhausted from a week with the grandchildren, sales reps and educational consultants in cheap suits crumpled by the journey and, finally, the first-class passengers in sleek tailoring with their identikit suit carriers and briefcases, men and women alike.
Gizmo bobbed like a ball on the tide of humanity streaming past him, his eyes darting from side to side. The crowd swelled, then steadied, then thinned to the last stragglers. His head seemed to shrink into his shoulders like a tortoise and I saw him sigh.
Last off the train was a blond giant. His broad shoulders strained a black leather jacket that tapered to narrow hips encased in tight blue denim. They didn’t leave much to the imagination, especially with his swivel-hipped walk. As he reached the end of the platform,
He settled for left and moved in our direction. As he grew nearer, I could see the book clutched in the massive hand that wasn’t carrying the black leather holdall. I closed my eyes momentarily. Even Dennis might have a bit of bother menacing his way out of this one. Gizmo would have no chance.
When I opened them, Jan was looming over Gizmo. “You’re Gizmo,” he boomed. I couldn’t quite place the accent.
Gizmo half turned towards the café, panic in his eyes. “I never … she never said anything about anybody else,” he stammered desperately.
Typical, I thought. Great with silicon, crap with carbon-based life forms. Does not compute.