Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

But that night I wasn’t interested in admiring Jay’s shock of black spiky hair or her latest tooth. It 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?”

“Well,” Alexis drawled. “They ask for it, don’t they? So, is she really getting death threats?”

“I’ll swap you,” I said. “I’ll give you some nonattributable background if you tell me where the story came from in the first place.”

Alexis pulled a face and flicked the nonexistent ash from her cigarette. “You got me there, KB. You know I have as little to do with the brain-dead dickheads on the newsdesk as possible. And this didn’t actually come as a tip directly to news. The story came through features, from Mack Morrissey who does the showbiz beat. It’ll have come from a contact.”

“Any chance you could find out who?”

Alexis shrugged. “I don’t know. Mack’s a bit precious, you know. He wouldn’t let any of us hairy-arsed hacks anywhere near his valuable artistic contacts.”

“You could ask him,” Chris chipped in.

“I could,” Alexis admitted. “But there’s a better way of finding out. I can’t believe he got a tale like this for free. He’ll have had to put a payment through the credits book.”

“He won’t have stumped up readies?” I asked.

Alexis shook her head. “Not this amount. It’ll have been a few hundred. I’m surprised his contact gave the story to us, to be honest. It would have been worth a lot more to the nationals.”

Another interesting piece of information to tuck away in the file marked, “Makes no sense.” When the oddments of data reached critical mass, seemingly unrelated facts collided and rearranged themselves into logical sequences. It’s a process normally called “woman’s intuition.”

“I’ll check out the credits book in the morning,” Alexis promised. “So what’s the score with Gloria? Has she really had death threats? And does she really think you’re going to throw yourself between her and the assassin’s bullet?”

“How else will I catch it with my teeth?” I asked innocently. “People in Gloria’s position are always getting hate mail. Recently, she’s had a few letters that have seemed a bit more sinister than the usual run-of-the-mill stuff, and Dorothea Dawson threw some petrol on the flames. Bloody irresponsible, but what can you expect from a con merchant? None of these psychics and clairvoyants would earn a shilling if they had to stop preying on people’s irrational fears. Take it from me, Alexis, nothing is going to happen to Gloria Kendal. All I’m there for is to put the frighteners on anybody who might be thinking about taking advantage of the situation.”

Alexis’s eyebrows rose and she ran a hand through thick dark hair recently shorn from a wiry thicket to a shrubby bush less accessible to tiny grasping fists. Another consequence of motherhood. “You’ve not met Dorothea yet, then?”

I frowned. “No, but what difference does that make?”

“I didn’t think you’d be calling her a con artist if you’d met her.”

I stared open-mouthed at Alexis. “You’re not telling me you believe in that crap, are you?”

“Of course not, soft girl. But Dorothea Dawson’s not a charlatan. She’s sincere about what she does. I interviewed her a few years back, when I was still working for features. Before I actually met her, I was saying exactly the same as you’re saying now. And I had to eat my words. It wasn’t that she told me anything world shattering, like I was going to meet a tall dark handsome stranger and do a lot of foreign travel. She didn’t make a big production number out of it, just said very calmly that I had already met the love of my life, that my career was going to make a sideways move that would make me a lot more satisfied and it probably wouldn’t be the fags that killed me but they wouldn’t help.”

I shook my head. “And this revelation turned you into a believer?” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah. Because she didn’t grandstand. She was dead matter-offact, even apologized for not having anything more exciting to tell me. She came across as a really nice woman, you know? And she’s not just in it for the money. Sure, she charges rich bastards like the Northerners cast an arm and a leg, but she does a lot of freebies for charity.”

“That’s right,” Chris added. “She donated a full personal horoscope to the Women’s Aid charity auction last month. And you remember that mental health job I designed a couple of years ago?”

I nodded. It had been a major renovation project for Chris, turning an old mill in Rochdale into housing units for single homeless people with mental health problems. “I remember,” I said.

“Well, I happen to know that Dorothea Dawson was the biggest single donor for that scheme. She gave them fifty grand.”

“You never told me that,” Alexis complained. “That would have made a good diary piece.”

“That’s precisely why I didn’t tell you,” Chris said drily. “It was supposed to be confidential. She didn’t want a big song and dance about it.”

“It’s a lot of money,” I said diplomatically.

“So she can’t be a con artist, can she?” Alexis demanded. “They rip people off. They don’t donate that sort of cash to charity. It’s not like she’d need a tax loss, is it? I mean, a load of her earnings must be cash, so she could stash a bundle undeclared anyway.”

I held my hands up in submission. “OK, I give in. Dorothea Dawson is a sweet little old lady, grossly misunderstood by cynical unbelievers like me. It must be written in my stars.”

“Anyway, KB, you sure taking care of Gloria isn’t just a front?” Alexis demanded, changing tack in an obvious bid to wrong-foot me.

“For what?” I asked, baffled.