Val McDermid - Kickback

It's amazing how long I can take to work my way through steak pudding, chips, mushy peas, gravy, a pot of tea and a plate of bread and butter. Oddly enough, I actually enjoyed it, especially since I'd missed lunch. Best of all was the spotted dick and custard that tasted better than anything my mother used to make. I managed to make the whole lot string out until half past ten, then it was back out into the cold. Of course, it started to rain as soon as I emerged from the chippy. I crossed to the pub and had another look through the glass. The scene hadn't changed much, except that the pub had got busier. Lomax was still standing at the bar with his cronies, a pint pot in his fist. I couldn't see any point in getting soaked while he got pissed, so I jogged back to the guest house, my dinner sitting in my stomach like a concrete block.

He came back, alone, just on half past eleven. Five minutes later, a light went on in an upstairs room and he appeared at the window to close the curtains. Ten minutes after that, another light went on and Nell did the same thing in her room. I didn't bother waiting for their lights to go out. I bet I was asleep before they were.

I bet I was up before them too. I'd set my alarm for six, and I was out of the shower by quarter past. Lomax's curtains opened at a quarter to seven, and my heart sank. My landlady didn't start serving breakfast till eight, and it looked like he'd be out of the house by then. I consoled myself with the individually wrapped digestive biscuits supplied with the tea- and coffee-making facilities. (Fine if you like sterilized milk, tea bags filled with house dust and powdered instant coffee that tastes like I imagine strychnine does.)

Wearily, I packed my bag and returned to the car. I was beginning to wonder if there was any point to this surveillance. I sometimes think my boredom threshold's too low for this job. Twenty minutes later, the nose of a white E-type appeared in his gateway. I'd seen the Jag sitting next to Nell's GTi in the garage the night I'd spotted the T.R. Harris signboard. The classic car's long bonnet emerged cautiously, until I could see Lomax himself was at the wheel. He drove past me without so much as a glance. I watched him round the bend in my rear-view mirror, then quickly reversed out of the guest house drive and sped after him.

I'd thought the road from Manchester had been bad enough.

The one we took out of Buxton was that nightmare you wake up from in a clammy sweat. The road corkscrewed up through a series of tight bends with sheer drops on the other side, just like in the Alps. Then it became a narrow bucking switchback that made me grateful for missing breakfast. The visibility was appalling. I couldn't decide if it was fog or cloud I was driving through, but either way I was glad there weren't too many side turnings for the E-type to disappear into. What left me gasping with disbelief was the amount of traffic on this track from hell. Lorries, vans, cars by the dozen, all bucketing along as if they were in the fast lane of the M6.

Eventually, we left the grey-green moors behind and dropped into the red brick of Macclesfield. I felt like an explorer emerging from the jungle after a close encounter with the cannibals. These were proper roads, with traffic lights, roundabouts, and white lines up the middle. Through Macclesfield, we emerged into the country again, but this was more my idea of what countryside should be. None of those dreadful moors, heather stretching to infinity, dilapidated dry-stone walls with holes in where someone failed to make the bend, grim pubs stranded in the middle of nowhere and trees that grow at an angle of forty-five degrees to the prevailing wind. No, this was much more like it. Neat fields, pretty farmhouses, Little Chefs and garden centres, notices nailed to trees announcing craft fairs and car boot sales. The kind of country you might just be tempted to take a little run out to in the car.

We roared down the slip road of the M6 at 8:14, according to my dashboard clock. I began to feel excited. Whatever Lomax was up to, it was more interesting than repairing guttering. As the speedo hit ninety, I really began to miss my Nova. It may not have looked much, but it was a car that only really ever seemed to get into its stride over eighty. Unlike the Fiesta, which had an interesting shake in the steering wheel between eighty-two and eighty-eight. As we changed lanes to head west down the M62,I remembered the phone call from Alexis that had started this latest phase of the operation. A passport application form.

To obtain a full British passport, you have to fill in a complicated form, have your photographic identity attested by a supposedly reputable member of the community who's known you for at least two years, and send it off to the passport office. Then you sit back and wait for a few weeks while the wheels of bureaucracy grind exceeding slow. If you're in a hurry, you take yourself off to one of the five passport offices on the UK mainland – London, Liverpool, Newport, Peterborough or Glasgow. I remember the performance well. Richard and I booked a fortnight's holiday in July driving round California in a Winnebago. Two days before we were due to leave, he materialized in my office mid-morning to announce his passport was out of date. Of course, he was too busy to sort it out himself, could I possibly…?

If you get there on the stroke of nine, they deign to take your paperwork off you and tell you to come back in four hours' time. If you're late, you have to wait in the queue and pray they get round to you before closing time. If that was where Brian Lomax was headed, he was clearly determined to avoid queuing all day.

He headed straight for the centre of Liverpool, and parked his car in the multi-storey nearest the passport office at ten to nine. I stayed in my car and watched him through the door of India Buildings. He might well have been headed for any of the offices on any floor except the fifth, but I doubted it. He was out within twenty minutes but, instead of going straight back to his car, he headed off towards the city centre. I swore steadily under my breath as I tried to keep him in sight. As long as he didn't turn into a pedestrian precinct, I might just be OK.

I was and I wasn't. About a mile from the passport office, Brian Lomax marched purposefully into a travel agency.

I burst through the door, fighting back the tears, rushed up to the assistant and wailed, 'Where's he taking her? Tell me! I've got a right to know where he's going with the bitch!' Then I burst into tears and collapsed into the chair that Brian Lomax had just vacated.

'I know it's stupid, but I still love him,' I sobbed. 'Whatever he might have done with that cow, he's still my husband.' Through the tears I could see the travel agent looking completely stricken. Her mouth was opening and closing.

'For God's sake, put me out of my misery! Let me know the worst. You're a woman, you should understand,' I added, accusingly.

Another woman pushed the younger assistant out of the way. 'What is it, queen?' she said soothingly.

'My h-husband,' I hiccuped. 'He's got a girlfriend, I just know it. So I've been following him. When he came in here, I thought, he's taking her away, never mind that me and the kids haven't had a holiday for two years. And something just snapped. You've got to tell me,' I added, on a rising note. Then I gulped noisily.

'Sharon,' the older woman said. The gentleman who was just in.'

'Lomax,' I said. That's his name. Brian Lomax.'

'Mr. Lomax,' the woman echoed. 'What was he after, Sharon?'

'I thought we weren't supposed to discuss clients?' the younger girl muttered.

'Have you got no heart, girl? That could be you one day. Us girls have got to stick together,' the woman said. Then to me she said, 'Men. They're all the same, eh, girl?' Thank God for the legendary hearts of gold of Liverpudlians.