Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

Then there was the time element. There had only been a gap of ten minutes at the very outside between Gloria and me leaving the van and me returning. But someone had been bold or desperate enough to seize that tiny window of opportunity to invade Dorothea’s camper van. They’d caught her unawares, obviously, and smashed the heavy crystal ball into her skull so swiftly she’d had no time to react.

Then they’d slipped back into the night. No time to search or steal. Time only to kill and to disappear again. Suddenly, I realized the

The thought hit me like a blow to the heart. My mouth went dry and a violent shiver ran through me from head to foot. My stomach started to heave and I barely got the door open in time. Secondhand lunch splattered on to the puddled car park. I retched and retched long past the point where my stomach was empty, hanging on grimly to the door with one hand.

That’s how the police found me. I hadn’t even been aware of the approaching sirens. I figured they must have turned them off when they reached the security gates at NPTV. Now, it was only the flashing blue lights that announced their arrival. I looked up blearily, my hair stuck to my head with sleet and sweat, and took in two liveried police cars and an ambulance. The occupants were out and running almost before the cars came to a standstill.

They headed towards me. I straightened up and pointed weakly to the door that led directly into the living section. “She’s in there,” I croaked. Three of them shifted their angle of approach. The fourth moved towards me, blocking any getaway I might have planned. He wasn’t to know we were on the same side. Not surprising; it was a role I found pretty unfamiliar myself. After a quick scan of his colleagues’ faces to check there was no opposition, the first policeman opened the door and cautiously stuck his head inside the van. I heard the hiss of indrawn breath and a muffled curse.

Now the paramedics were also at the door, trying to get past the knot of police officers. “Let us in,” I heard one of them say impatiently.

“No way,” the cop who’d seen the body said. “That’s a crime scene.”

“She could be alive,” the paramedic protested, attempting to shove through the barrier of blue uniforms.

“No way,” the policeman repeated. He looked about as good as I felt. “Take it from me, there’s nothing you can do for her.”

“She didn’t have a pulse when I found the body,” I said.

“When was that?” the officer keeping an eye on me asked.

“About two minutes before I made the treble-niner.”

My unthinking use of a professional term won me a quizzical look. One of his colleagues was speaking into his radio, collar turned up against the wind-driven sleet. Grumbling, the paramedics headed back to the shelter of their ambulance. I inched back so that I was out of the worst of the weather, making sure I kept my hands in sight. I knew that right now I had to be their prime suspect. One being a prime number.

Another car splashed through the puddles, illuminating a couple of executives making for their cars, too worried about getting wet to care about the presence of police cars and ambulances. The new arrival skidded to a halt only feet away from the front of Dorothea’s Mercedes. The doors swung open, switching on the interior light and the impossible happened.

Things got worse.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in the Northerners green room, instantly commandeered by the police as a temporary incident room until their own purpose-built caravan could be brought over. Opposite me sat Detective Sergeant Linda Shaw, her hands wrapped around a cardboard cup of instant coffee. I didn’t mind Linda; she probably had more in common with me than she’d ever have with the hard-nosed bastard she worked for.

I suspected Detective Chief Inspector Cliff Jackson had an auburn-haired doll in his desk drawer. I was convinced he stuck pins into it at regular intervals. It was the only explanation I could think of for that stabbing pain I sometimes got in my left ankle. Jackson had been one of the senior murder detectives in the city for the last seven years or so. You’d think he’d be pleased that I’ve made a significant contribution to his clear-up rate. You’d be wrong. Now, whenever the planets really want to gang up on me, they send me an encounter with Jackson.

Linda Shaw stood between Jackson and me like a buffer zone between warring Balkan armies. As soon as he’d seen me palefaced and shivering in the cab of Dorothea’s van, the wheels had started going round in his head as he imagined the many ways he

“Working,” I said. “How about you?”

He turned scarlet. “Don’t push your luck, Brannigan,” he stormed. “I’m here less than a minute and already you’re looking at spending the night in the cells. You just don’t know when to keep your smart mouth shut, do you?”

“If you want me to keep my mouth shut, that’s fine by me. I’ll make my one call to my solicitor and then you’ll get ‘no comment’ from here to eternity,” I snarled back. “And as soon as I get home, I’ll be on the phone to Alexis Lee. The world should hear how a material witness in the murder of the nation’s favorite astrologer gets treated by Manchester’s finest.”

“Sir.” Linda’s voice was quiet but urgent. “Sir, you’re needed inside the van. The scene-of-crime lads are right behind us, and the rest of the team has just got here. Why don’t I find a quiet corner and take a statement from Ms. Brannigan? Then we’ll have an idea where we’re up to?”

“I don’t want you sticking your nose in this, Brannigan,” Jackson snapped, straightening an electric-blue tie that clashed disturbingly with his lilac shirt. “You give your statement to DS Shaw and then you bugger off out of it. That’s not an invitation, it’s an instruction. I’d love to arrest you for obstruction. But then, I shouldn’t have to tell you that, should I? She’s all yours, Detective Sergeant.”

I had led Linda from the van to the production building, suggesting it would be a good idea to get someone to contact John Turpin to tell NPTV what was going on and find out where we could talk. She’d got it sorted, right down to discovering where the nearest coffee machine was. Finally we had a moment to give each other the once-over. I saw a woman hovering around the crucial cusp of thirty, the skin around her eyes starting to show the attrition of long hours and late nights, the slight downturn to her mouth revealing the emotional price of dealing with people who have been violently bereaved, and the ones responsible for smashing those lives to smithereens.

I didn’t want to think about what she saw. I opened the batting. “Detective Sergeant, eh? Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I hear you’ve come up in the world too. Brannigan and Co, not Mortensen and Brannigan any more.”

“Cliff keeps tabs on me, does he? At least I get to be my own boss. But you’re still stuck being Jackson’s bag carrier.”

“There are worse jobs in the police service,” she said drily.

“Especially if you’re a woman.”

She inclined her head in agreement. “So, help me to keep my job and tell me what happened here tonight?”

“You know I don’t have any problem with you, Linda. Ask what you want. As long as you don’t expect me to breach my client’s confidentiality, I’ll tell you all I can.”

She took me through the reason for my presence, then on to the precise circumstances of my discovery. We’d just got to the part where I described trying to find Dorothea’s pulse when the door crashed open. Gloria staggered in dramatically, hair plastered to her head, eye make-up spreading like a bad Dusty Springfield impersonation. “Kate,” she wailed. “Thank God you’re all right! Oh Kate, I can’t believe it. Not Dorothea,” she continued, stumbling towards me. Think Vanessa Redgrave playing King Lear. I had no choice but to jump to my feet and support her. She’d have had no problem collapsing in a heap for effect. I had no doubt that she was sincerely upset, but being a thespian she couldn’t help going over the top so much she made the Battle of the Somme look like a little skirmish.