Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

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.

On second thoughts, perhaps not.

“Ruth says you’re going to help him,” Debbie said flatly as she plonked the mug in front of me.

“I’ll do what I can. But I’m not sure what I can usefully do. It’s not like I can track down missing alibi witnesses or anything.”

Debbie bristled. “That’s because he was here with me all night.”

“You’re sure he didn’t pop out for a packet of fags or anything?” I asked.

Debbie glared at me. “Whose side are you on? You sound like the bloody bizzies. Look, he didn’t pop out for a packet of fags because I buy his fags at the supermarket, right?” She swung away from me and yanked open one of the tall kitchen units. The cupboard contained an unbroached carton of Dennis’s brand and a half-full wrap of hers. “Even Dennis can’t smoke two hundred fags a night.”

“I’m just checking, Debbie,” I said calmly. “I’m on Dennis’s side. I only asked because if he did bob out for ten minutes, you can bet the dibble are going to find out and use that to make you look like a liar.”

She lit a cigarette, then gripped her right elbow with her left hand in a classic defensive gesture. “Look, I know I gave him a moody alibi one time. But you’ve got to when it’s your man. And

I held my hands up in a placatory gesture. “I believe you. The problem I’ve got is that I’m not up to speed with who hates who among the Cheetham Hill villains. Until I can speak to Dennis, I haven’t a clue whose doors I should be kicking in.”

Debbie sighed a long ribbon of smoke. “No point in asking me. I’ve always kept my nose out. There is one thing, though,” she added, frowning as she thought. The absence of permanent lines on her forehead demonstrated what a rare event I was witnessing.

“What’s that?” I had little hope of a result, but my mother brought me up to be polite.

“The dog. I can’t understand how come the dog was in the corridor and Pit Bull Kelly was in the shop.”

“Pit Bull must have been attacked as he walked in the door.”

“So how did whoever killed him get out past the dog? That’s a killer dog, that. It wouldn’t let Pit Bull’s killer walk. It’d rip his throat out.”