Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

Time stretched to impossible lengths. I wondered if Dennis was going downstairs head first or feet first. I wondered whether the keypad itself was covered by an infrared detector. I wondered whether it was possible to install detectors that didn’t show they’d been activated. I even wondered if Turpin was paranoid enough to have installed one of those silent alarms that rang in a remote control center staffed by battle-hungry security guards. I wondered

Suddenly the main alarm klaxon gave a single whoop. Shocked, I cracked my head on the underside of the bed in my manic scramble to get out from under there. “It’s all right,” Dennis shouted. “It’s off.”

He found me sitting on the landing carpet gingerly fingering the egg on my forehead. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” I groaned. “Jesus, Dennis, if I was a cat I’d be on borrowed lives after tonight.”

“Never mind whingeing, let’s get done and get out of here,” he said. “I fancy a night in with the wife.”

“I didn’t realize you’d been banged up that long,” I said tartly, getting to my feet and heading back into Turpin’s study, this time via the loo. I was amazed we’d got away with it; directly in the line of sight from the doorway was a CD gleaming like a beacon on Turpin’s desk.

Ransacking his secrets took less time than I expected. Less time, certainly, than I deserved, given how overdrawn my luck must have been that night. We let ourselves out of the front door just after midnight. I dropped Dennis outside his front door half an hour later and drove home on freshly gritted roads. For once, Richard was home alone, awake and ardent. Unfortunately I felt older than God and about as sexy as a Barbie doll so he made me cocoa and didn’t say a word against me crashing alone in my own bed. It must be love.

I think.

I was constructing the fire wall between me and the evidence when Gizmo stuck his head round my office door next morning. “What’s happening?” he asked.

“I’m trying to make this stuff look like it came through the letterbox,” I said, waving a hand at the pile of material I’d amassed from John Turpin’s office. “It’s all sorted now, except for the computer files. All I can do is enclose a floppy copy with a printed note of where to find the original files on Turpin’s hard disk. But it’s not conclusive.”

Gizmo sidled into the room, looking particularly smart in one of

The top sheet revealed John Turpin’s present shareholding in NPTV as well as details of his future potential share options. I whistled softly. Even a movement in share price of a few pence could make a significant difference to Turpin’s personal wealth. Next came what were clearly commercially sensitive details of NPTV’s current negotiations with a cable TV company. I didn’t even want to know where this stuff had come from. What was clear from the terms of the deal was that if certain levels of viewing figures were reached in the twelve months either side of the deal, senior executives of NPTV — among them John Turpin — were going to be a lot richer than they were now.

The last sheet was the killer. Somehow, Gizmo had got his sticky fingers on the details of a transaction carried out by John Turpin’s stockbroker on his behalf. The order for a tranche of NPTV shares had been placed on the day of Dorothea Dawson’s murder. According to the computerized time code on the order, Turpin had instructed his broker in the short space of time between Gloria and me leaving the camper van and the police arriving in response to my call.

I looked up at Gizmo. “I suppose he thought he’d be too busy later on to get his order in. And then he’d have lost the edge that killing Dorothea had given him.”

“You mean he killed her just to push up the program ratings and make himself richer?” Gizmo said, clearly shocked.

“I think that was just a bonus. He actually killed her because she’d sussed that he was the mole leaking the storylines to the papers. Ironically, she had powerful reasons for keeping quiet about his involvement, but he didn’t believe her. He thought she was going to blackmail him or expose him, and he wasn’t prepared to take that risk. He just bided his time till he found the right opportunity.”

Gizmo shook his head. “It never ceases to amaze me, what people will do for money. People always say shit like it buys you

Philosophy for breakfast now. It had to be better than Clitheroe sausages, I thought with a bitter smile. I hoped Turpin was making the most of it. He’d be a fair few years older before he tasted anything other than prison food. With a sigh, I picked up the phone and managed to persuade the police switchboard to connect me to Linda Shaw. “Hi, Sergeant,” I said. “It’s Kate Brannigan.”

“Oh yes,” she said, her voice guarded.

“I’ve something at the office I think you might like to see,” I told her.

“Oh yes? And what would that be?” She sounded neutral. I guessed Jackson was within hearing range.

“You need to see it to get the full effect. I can promise you it’ll help your clear-up rate.”

“I’d heard you’ve already contributed to that this week,” she said tartly. “I can’t say I’d like to share the experience.”

“This is different,” I said firmly. “Please, Linda. I’m trying to do us both a favor here. You know and I know that if I approach Jackson his first instinct will be to rubbish what I’ve got. And that could mean a murderer walking. You don’t want that any more than I do. So will you come round?”

“Give me an hour,” she said, a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in her voice.

It couldn’t have suited me better. An hour was perfect for what I had to do.

Given the grief I’d already had over the Perfect Son, I’d expected Shelley to rip Gloria’s face off and send her home with it in a paper bag. Instead, Gloria got the star treatment. Apparently, according to Shelley, if her boy was with Gloria, he couldn’t be getting into the kind of trouble I organized especially for him on a daily basis. But Gloria, being a mother herself, would understand Shelley’s concerns. Gloria patted Shelley’s hand, sympathized and told her what a credit to his mother the Perfect Son was. Donovan shifted

Eventually, I managed to shoo Gloria into my office. She did a double take when she saw Freddie perched uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa. I’d promised him there was no reason why anyone had to know he was Dorothea’s son or that he’d been the major mole, but his body language didn’t actually indicate conviction. When Gloria walked in, his face spasmed in panic. “Gloria,” he stammered, jerking to his feet and taking an involuntary sideways step away from her.

“Hiya, chuck,” she said warmly, collapsing on to the sofa. “You another one of Kate’s mystery witnesses, then?”

“Er … yes. She never mentioned you were coming …” He shot me a look that said he’d never trust a private eye again. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I’d lied to him, but I hadn’t. Well, not so’s you’d notice.

We didn’t have long to wait for Linda. She came in with more attitude than a rap band. “This better be good,” she said even before she got across the threshold. I waved her to a chair and leaned against my desk.

“Since you’re all so thrilled to be here, I’ll keep it short as I can. There’s been a mole at NPTV making a small fortune out of selling scandal stories and advance storylines to the press. Dorothea Dawson thought she had worked out the identity of that mole by studying her astrological charts and matching what they told her against the names of people who had access to advance stories and who were in a position to find out about the murky pasts of the cast.” I nodded towards Freddie.