Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

“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.