Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

I stood up. “I’m sorry,” I said.

His wary look was back. “Why? I wasn’t part of her life. I don’t know who her friends were outside Northerners . I don’t even know if she had any lovers.” He sighed. “In all the ways that count, we were strangers, Kate.” It was the first time he’d used my name.

I followed him to the door. As we emerged into the hall, a woman was coming downstairs wrapped in a fluffy toweling

I took my cue from Freddie and grinned inanely at the woman who continued down the stairs and gave me a trusting smile. She had a disturbing resemblance to Thumper the rabbit but with none of his street smarts. “Hello and goodbye, Stacey,” I said, noticing that she looked a good ten years younger than Freddie.

“Maybe see you another time, eh?” she said, standing back to let me reach the front door.

“Maybe,” I lied, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. I turned the knob on the lock and let the night in. “See you, Freddie.”

“Thanks, Kate.”

I looked back once, as I turned out of the gate. His slim frame was silhouetted dark against the light spilling out of the hallway, Stacey a white blob beside him. I didn’t fancy her job one little bit.

My stomach hurt. Not because of the nagging sense of failure but because it was a very long time since I’d last eaten. I stopped at the first chippie I came to and sat in the car eating very fishy cod and soggy chips, watching tiny stutters of snow struggling to turn into a blizzard. They were getting nowhere fast, just like me. So far, I had no idea who’d been sending hate mail to Gloria Kendal, or why. I had no idea who had killed Dorothea Dawson, or why, or whether they posed a threat to Gloria or anybody else. I couldn’t even clear my sort-of other client, Ross Grant, because the only mole I could substitute for him in Turpin’s firing line was someone who had even more to lose. My assistant had been arrested more times than I’d had hot dinners all week, my computer specialist was in love with somebody who might not even exist and one of my best friends was in jail.

It was just as well none of the women’s magazines were

I scrunched up the chip papers and tossed them into the passenger footwell. I hoped I’d remember to dump them when I got home, otherwise the car would smell of fish and vinegar until the first sunroof day of spring. Home seemed even less appetizing, somehow. The idea of an empty house and an empty bed felt too much like film noir for my taste.

I had a reasonably good idea where Richard might have gone. Since he’d planned a romantic night in, he wouldn’t have made any plans to listen to a live band. That meant he’d have chosen somewhere he could sit in a corner with a beer and a joint and listen to techno music so loud it would make his vertebrae do the cha-cha. I knew he wouldn’t have ventured further afield than the city center when the roads were so treacherous and there was no one to drive him home. There were only a couple of places that fitted the bill.

I gave the matter careful thought. Frash was the most likely. He’d been raving about the new midweek DJ there. The way my luck was running, that meant he was almost certainly not grooving in Frash. It had to be the O-Pit, a renovated die-cast works down by the canal that still smelled of iron filings and grease. To add insult to injury, there was a queue and I didn’t have enough energy left to jump it. I leaned against the spalled brickwork, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed deep into my pockets. I might not be dressed for the club, but I was the only one in the queue who stood a chance against hypothermia. Eventually, I made it inside.

It was wall to wall kids, fuelled with whizz and E, pale faces gleaming with sweat, clothes sticking to them so tight they appeared to be wearing body paint. I could spot the dealers, tense eyes never still, always at the heart of a tight little knot of punters. Nobody was paying them any mind, least of all the bar staff who could barely keep pace with the constant demand for carbonated pop.

I found Richard where I’d expected, in the acoustic center of the club, the point where the music could be heard at maximum quality and volume. Unlike the dancers, he went for the drug that

I moved into his line of vision and tried an apologetic smile. Instead of a bollocking, he gave me that slow, cute smile that had first reeled me in, then drew me into his arms and gently kissed the top of my head. “I love you, Brannigan,” he shouted.

Nobody but me heard. “Let’s go home,” he yelled in my ear.

I shook my head and took a long swig of his beer, leading him to the dance floor. Sometimes sex just isn’t enough.

She loves research and investigation, particularly if it is done secretly. She uses her discoveries to assert her power in the workplace. She is subtle, fascinated by secrets and their revelation and loves to expose hidden wickedness, especially if they feed her sense of social justice.

From Written in the Stars , by Dorothea Dawson

I remember a Monty Python sketch where a character complains, “My brain hurts. I’ve got my head stuck in the cupboard.” I knew just how he felt when the opening chords of Free’s “All Right Now” crashed through my head. It felt like the middle of the night. It was still dark. Mind you, in Manchester in December, that could make it mid-morning. I dug Richard in the ribs. It was his house, after all. He made a noise like a sleeping triceratops, rolled over and started snoring.

I stumbled out of bed, wincing as my aching feet hit the ground and gasping at the stiffness in my hips as I straightened up. Richard’s “Twenty Great Rock Riffs” doorbell blasted out again as I rubber-legged my way down the hall, wrapping my dressing gown around me, managing to tie the belt at the third fumbling attempt. I knew I shouldn’t have had that last treble Polish hunter’s vodka on the rocks. I yanked the door open and Gizmo practically fell in the door, accompanied by half a snowdrift.

“I’ve done it,” he said without preamble.

I wiggled my jaw in various directions, trying to get my mouth to work. “Oh God,” I finally groaned through parched lips. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes while the floor and ceiling rearranged themselves in their normal configuration.

“You look like shit,” Gizmo observed from the living-room doorway.

“Bastard,” I said, gingerly pushing myself away from the wall to test whether I could stand upright. Nothing seemed to collapse, so I put one foot in front of the other until I made it to the living room. “My place,” I croaked, leading the way through the conservatory to the life-support system in my kitchen.

“It’s not that early,” Gizmo said defensively. “You said it was important.”

The clock on the microwave said 07:49. “Early’s relative,” I told him, opening the fridge and reaching for the milk. “So’s important.” I poured a glass with shaking hand and got the vitamins out. Four grams of C, two B-complex tablets and two extra-strength paracetamol. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those days when ibuprofen and paracetamol count as two of the four main food groups. I washed the pills down with the milk, shuddered like a medieval peasant with the ague and wished I’d remembered to drink more water when we’d finally got home the wrong side of four o’clock.

“Did you come on the bus?” I asked. Gizmo has the same affection for public transport as most obsessives. He’s the sort who writes to TV drama producers to complain that they had the hero catching the wrong bus on his way to his rendezvous with the killer.

“The one-nine-two,” he said. “Single decker.”