Val Mcdermid - Blue Genes

The key to that was to find a way to make the agency work more profitably. There was one obvious avenue that might prove lucrative, but I’d need an extra pair of hands. Back when I’d started working for Bill, I’d done bread-and-butter process-serving. Every week, I’d abandon the law library and turn up at the office where Shelley would hand me a bundle of court papers that had to be served a.s.a.p. Domestic-violence injunctions, writs and a whole range of documents relating to debt. My job was to track down the individuals concerned and make sure they were legally served with the court documents. Sometimes that was as straightforward as cycling to the address on the papers, ringing the doorbell and handing over the relevant bumf. Mostly, it wasn’t. Mostly, it involved a lot of nosing about, asking questions of former colleagues, neighbours, drinking cronies and lovers. Sometimes it got heavy, especially when I was trying to serve injunctions on men who had been persistently violent to wives who took out injunctions one week and were terrorized, bullied, sweet-talked or guilt-tripped into taking their battering men back the next. The sort of men who see women as sexually available punchbags don’t usually take kindly to being served papers by a teenager who barely comes up to their elbow.

In spite of the aggravation, I’d really got into the work. I’d loved the challenge of tracking down people who didn’t want to be found. I’d enjoyed outwitting men who thought that because they were bigger and stronger than me, they weren’t going to accept service. I can’t say I took any pleasure slapping some of the debtors with bankruptcy papers when all they were guilty of was believing the propaganda of the Thatcher years, but even that was instructive. It gave me a far sharper awareness of real life than any of my fellow law students. So I’d quit to work for Bill full time as soon as the opportunity arose.

But I hadn’t joined the agency to be a process-server. In the medium to long term, Bill wanted a partner and he was prepared to train me to do everything he could do. I learned about surveillance, working undercover, doing things with computers that I didn’t know were possible, security systems, white-collar crime, industrial sabotage and espionage, and subterfuge. I learned how to use a video camera and how to bug, how to uncover bugs and how to take photographs in extreme conditions. I’d also picked up a few things that weren’t on the syllabus, like kick boxing and lock picking.

Of course, as my skills grew, the range of jobs Bill was prepared to let me loose on expanded too. The end result of that was that we’d been content to let most of the process-serving fall into the laps of other agencies in the city. Maybe the time had come to snatch back that work for ourselves.

What I needed was a strategy and a body to serve the papers.

Shelley sipped her glass of white wine suspiciously, as if she were checking it for drugs, and glanced around her with the concentration of a bailiff taking an inventory. She had only been in my house a couple of times before, since we tended to do our socializing on the neutral ground of bars and restaurants. That way, when Richard reached screaming point we could make our excuses and leave. It’s not that he doesn’t like Shelley’s partner Ted, a former client who opted for a date with her instead of a discount for cash and ended up moving in. It’s just that Ted has the conversational repertoire of a three-toed sloth and is about as quick on the uptake. Nice bloke, but…

‘You can’t stay out of the office forever,’ she said. A woman who’s never been afraid to state the obvious, is Shelley.

‘Call it preventative medicine. I’m trying to get a plan in place before I have to confront Bill,’ I said. ‘At the moment, every time I’m within three yards of him, I feel an overwhelming desire to cave his head in, and I don’t fancy spending the next twenty years in prison. Besides, I do have some cases that I’m working on.’ I picked up the microcassette recorder on the table and flipped the cassette out of it. ‘I dictated some reports this afternoon. That brings me up to date. I’ve included the new client details.’

Shelley leaned across and picked up the tape. ‘So why am I here? I don’t guess it’s because you couldn’t go without my company for a whole day.’

I explained my idea about generating more income by reclaiming process-serving work. Shelley listened, a frown pulling her eyebrows closer together. ‘How are you going to get the business? All the solicitors who used to put the work our way have switched to somebody else, and presumably they’re satisfied with the service they’re getting.’

This was the bit I was slightly embarrassed about. I leaned back and looked at the ceiling. ‘I thought I could do a Charlie’s Angel and try some personal visits.’

I risked a look. Shelley had a face like thunder. Jasper Charles runs one of the city’s biggest firms of criminal solicitors. The primary qualification for employment as a clerk or legal executive there is having terrific tits and long legs. The key role of these women, known in legal circles as Charlie’s Angels, is to generate more business for the firm. Every day, one or more of the Angels will visit remand clients in prison, often for the slenderest of reasons. They’ll get the business out of the way then sit and chat to the prisoner for another half-hour or so. All the other prisoners who are having visits from their briefs see these gorgeous women fawning all over their mates, and a significant proportion of them sack their current lawyers and shift their business to Jasper Charles. Every woman brief in Manchester hates them. ‘You’ve done some cheesy things in your time, Kate, but this is about as low as it gets,’ she eventually said.

‘I know. But it’ll work. That’s the depressing thing.’

‘So you go out and prostitute yourself and you snatch back all this business. How you going to find the time to do it?’

‘I’m not.’

Shelley’s head tipped to one side. Unconsciously, she drew herself in and away from me. ‘Oh no,’ she said, shaking her head vigorously. ‘Oh no.’

‘Why not? You’d be great. You’re the biggest no-shit I know.’

‘Absolutely not. There isn’t enough money printed yet to make me want to do that. Know what you’re good at and stick to it, that’s my motto, and what I’m good at is running that office and keeping you in line.’ She slammed her drink down on the table so hard that the wine lurched in the glass like the contents of a drunk’s stomach.

So far, it was going just like I’d expected it to. ‘OK,’ I said with a small sigh. ‘I just thought I’d give you first refusal. So you won’t mind me hiring someone else to do it?’

‘Can we afford it?’ was her only concern.

‘We can if we do it on piecework, same as Bill did with me.’

Shelley nodded slowly and picked up her glass again. ‘Plenty of students out there hungry for a bit extra.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Actually, I’ve got someone provisionally lined up.’

‘You never did hang about,’ Shelley said drily. ‘How did you find somebody so fast? How d’you know they’re going to be able to cut it?’

I couldn’t keep the grin from my face. Any minute now, there was going to be the kind of explosion that Saddam could have used to win the Gulf War if there had been a way of harnessing it. ‘I think he’ll fit in just fine,’ I told her. ‘You know how wary I am of involving strangers in the business, but this guy is almost like one of the family.’ I got up and opened the door into the hall. ‘You can come through now,’ I called in the direction of the spare room that doubles as my home office.