Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

“Do me a favor? I left my car at the O-Pit. If you get a cab round there and pick it up for me, by the time you come back I’ll be able to listen to whatever you’ve got to say.”

His mouth showed his discontent. “Do I have to?” he asked like a ten-year-old.

“Yes,” I said, pointing to the door. “Call a cab, Giz.”

Half an hour later, I’d kick-started my system with a mixture of hot and cold showers followed by four slices of peanut-buttered toast from a loaf that had been lurking in the freezer longer than I liked to think about. I even managed a smile for Gizmo when he returned twirling my car keys round his trigger finger.

“Thanks,” I said, settling us both down in my home office with a pot of coffee. “Sorry if I was a bit off. Rough night, you know?”

“I could tell,” he said. “You looked like you needed a new motherboard and a few more RAM chips.”

“It’s not just the brain, it’s the chassis,” I complained. “This last year I’ve been starting to think something terrible happens to your body when you hit your thirties. I’m sure my joints never used to seize up from a night’s clubbing.”

“It’s downhill all the way,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be arthritis next. And then you’ll start losing nouns.”

“Losing nouns?”

“Yeah. Forgetting what things are called. You watch. Any day now, you’ll start calling everything wossnames, or thingumajigs, or whatchamacallits.” He looked solemn. It took me a few seconds to realize I was experiencing what passed for a joke on his planet. I shook my head very slowly to avoid killing off any more neurones and groaned softly.

Gizmo reached past me and switched on my computer. “You’ve got Video Translator on this machine, haven’t you?”

“It’s on the external hard disk, the E drive,” I told him.

He nodded and started doing things to my computer keyboard and peripherals too quickly for my hungover synapses to keep up. After a few minutes of tinkering and muttering, he sat back and said, “There. It’s a bit clunky in places, not enough polygons in the program to keep it smooth. The rendering’s definitely not going to win any awards. But it’s what you asked for. I think.”

I managed to get my bleary eyes to focus on the screen. Somehow, the color looked brighter than they had on the original crime-scene photographs. If I’d been alone, I’d have been reaching for the sunglasses, but my staff has little enough respect for me as it is. I leaned forward and concentrated on what Gizmo had put together.

We both sat in silence as his work unfolded before us. At the end, I clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s brilliant,” I enthused. “That must have taken you hours.”

He tilted his head while shrugging, regressing to awkward adolescent. “I started soon as I got home. I finished about two. But I did have a little break to talk to Jan. So it wasn’t like I blew the whole night on it or anything.” He scuffed his feet on the carpet. “Anyway, Dennis is your mate.”

“He owes you,” I said. “Don’t let him forget it. There must be somebody out there you want menacing.”

Gizmo looked shocked. “I don’t think so. Unless he knows where to find the moron who sent me that virus that ate all my.DLL files.”

I said nothing. It wasn’t the time to point out that if the lovely Jan was a hoax, he might want Dennis’s talent for terror sooner than he thought. “I’m going to be half an hour or so on the phone. You can either wait or head on into the office.”

“I’ve got my Docs on. I’ll walk over,” he said. “I like it in the snow. I’ll let myself out.”

I reached for the phone and called Ruth. Within ten minutes, she’d rung back to tell me she’d set up a meeting with DI Tucker at our office later that morning. “He’s not keen,” she warned me. “I think your fame has spread before you. He did ask if you were the PI involved with the Dorothea Dawson case.”

“Did you lie?”

“No, I told him to check you out with Della. Apparently his bagman used to work for her, so it’s a name that meant something to him.”

“Ah.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not for me, but it might be for the bagman,” I said. Tucker wouldn’t have to be much of a detective to work out where I’d gained my access to the crime-scene photographs. “My fault. I should have warned you.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Ruth said warily.

“Don’t worry. I’ll see you later.”

It took another twenty minutes to sort out Donovan and Gloria. We finally fixed that he would pick up her and her daughter, take them to the police station and hang on while Gloria gave the statement that would get him off the hook. Then he’d take them shopping. I hoped they’d stick to the plan of going a very long way away from anywhere policed by the Greater Manchester force. If they were going to be arrested for shoplifting, I didn’t want to be involved.

I took a fresh pot of coffee out into the conservatory. The sun had come back from wherever it had been taking its winter holiday. The reflection on the snow was a killer. I fished a pair of sunglasses out of the magazine rack and stared at the blank white of the

I wasn’t any nearer a solution by the time I had to leave for my meeting with Tucker and Ruth. Richard was still asleep, flat on his back, arms in the crucifixion position. I considered nails but settled for sticking an adhesive note to his chest suggesting lunch. When all else fails, I’ve found it helps to enlist another brain. Failing that, I’d make do with Richard and his hangover.

If Shelley had heard about the previous night’s debacle, the atmosphere in the office was going to be frostier than it was outside. I stopped off at the florist on the way in and bought the biggest poinsettia they had. It would act both as peace offering and office decoration. There were three weeks to Christmas, and even with my chlorophyll-killer touch the plant had to stand a good chance of making it into the New Year.

I placed the poinsettia on her desk, a tentative smile nailed on. She looked up briefly, surveyed the plant and savaged me with fashion folk wisdom. “Red and green are never seen except upon a fool,” she said. “Gizmo was right. You do look like shit.”

“And a merry Christmas to you too, Scrooge,” I muttered.

“I don’t have to work here,” she sniffed.

“Nobody else would put up with you now the war’s over,” I told her sweetly and swept into my office. Gizmo had already set everything up. All I needed now was a cop with an open mind. If they could get miracles on 34th Street, I didn’t see why we couldn’t have them on Oxford Road.

Ruth was first to arrive. “I hate surprises,” she grumbled, dropping her fake fur in a heap in the corner. Maybe Tucker would take it for a timber wolf and be cowed into submission.

“Nice outfit,” I said, trying to change the subject.

“Mmm,” she said, preening her perfectly proportioned but extremely large body in its tailored kingfisher-blue jacket and

“Sweetheart, you are a Cheshire Wife.”

She bared her teeth in a snarl. If she’d still been wearing the coat I’d have dived out of the window. “Only geographically,” she said. “I thought you needed me on your side this morning?”

Before we could get too deeply into the banter, the intercom buzzed. “I have a Detective Inspector Tucker for you,” the human icicle announced. I made a big production of crossing my fingers and opened the door.

If the man standing by Shelley’s desk had been any taller, we could have dipped his head in emulsion and repainted the ceiling. He was so skinny I bet he had to make a fist when he walked over cattle grids. He had a thick mop of salt and pepper hair, skin cratered from teenage acne and a thousand-watt smile that lit up the kind of gray eyes that can resemble granite or rabbit fur. “I’m Kate Brannigan,” I said. “Thanks for coming. Would you like to come through?”