Reginald Hill - Killing the Lawyers

He was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. Perhaps, thought Joe, who always tried to look on the bright side, he was a British heavyweight out on a training run who’d stopped for a rest and a smoke.

Why was the bright side always fantasy?

The man was blocking his path. Purposefully.

‘Sixsmith?’ he growled or rather shrilled, in a surprisingly high voice which was nonetheless menacing.

‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘It’s not Miss Jones, is it?’

To his surprise, instead of breaking him in two, the man said, ‘Just Jones. Inside.’

Taking this as instruction rather than analysis, Joe pushed open the door and stepped in. He glanced round to see if the man was following but he remained on the step glaring down at Whitey who returned the glare with interest.

‘It’s OK,’ said Joe. ‘He’s with me.’

Despite a slight weakness round the knees, he ignored the lift and headed for the stairs. Whitey never used the lift on the grounds that his life was far too valuable to entrust to a piece of machinery installed by Alderman Peck. Joe, no great lover of exercise, usually thought it a risk worth taking, but the fear of being followed into that rickety tin box by that slab of flesh and bone on the doorstep sent him heading for the stairway.

But his fears were groundless. The street door closed and the man remained outside.

His relief only lasted to the final half landing. Whitey as usual had nimbled ahead of him, but as Joe turned the final bend he saw the cat had halted in his I’m-going-to-get-me-a-wildebeest crouch.

Oh shoot, thought Joe. There’s someone else up here.

He thought of a discreet retreat, but memory of what stood on his doorstep plus shame that he should be revealed as scareder than a cat combined to move him onward and upward. But pride did not inhibit him from calling, ‘Hello. Someone up there?’

‘Mr Sixsmith? Is that you?’

The voice was if anything pitched lower than the neckless monster’s, but undeniably and very pleasingly female. A figure advanced from the shadows of the landing.

‘Miss Jones?’ said Joe.

‘Sort of,’ said the woman.

She too was wearing a baggy tracksuit, but with the hood up. Now with a little shake of the head she tossed it back to reveal a face he just had time to start to recognize before Whitey made his move. From a standing start he got up to maximum knots in a couple of strides, then leapt up at the woman’s long throat.

‘Whitey!’ yelled Joe in alarm.

But it was too late. The cat hit the woman in the chest, caught his claws in the tracksuit top, relaxed into her cradling arms and lay there, looking up, four paws in the air, purring like a chocolate-box kitten.

It was quite revolting, like Boris Karloff playing Little Lord Fauntleroy.

‘Now aren’t you a beauty then?’ she said, nuzzling her nose against his head.

And Joe said, ‘He thinks so. And aren’t you Zak Oto, the runner?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you coming up or do you interview all your clients on the stairs?’

In the office, seated on the chair which didn’t fall to pieces if you leaned back too hard, Zak Oto said, ‘Sorry about the Miss Jones thing on the answerphone, but I couldn’t be certain who’d hear the message. Thing is, Mr Sixsmith, I’m being threatened and I need someone to take care of it.’

She flashed him the multi-megawatt smile which made her as big a hit on billboards and screen as her legs did on the track. She was already the Bloo-Joo girl and word had it that Nymphette were after her to front up their new range of popular sports clothing. Even dressed in a baggy tracksuit she looked a million dollars, which was probably a lot less than she was going to be worth.

Joe was making a production number of looking round his office.

‘Something up, Mr Sixsmith?’ she asked.

‘Just checking there’s no one here but me and my cat. Which of us did you see for the job, Miss Oto?’

She gave him the smile again, perfect white teeth gleaming in a face so black she made Joe feel like a crypto Caucasian.

‘Hey, you do jokes too like a real PI.’

‘I am a real PI,’ said Joe. ‘What I’m not is a minder. I’m ten pounds over my recommended weight which I can’t punch anyway, and though I’m growing through my hair, I’m short for my size. You’d be better off with Whitey here. Compared with me he’s a fighting machine.’

The fighting machine snuggled up against the athlete’s bosom and purred complacently. Joe didn’t blame him. In the same position he guessed he’d be feeling pretty complacent too.

She said, ‘Perhaps if you just listen to me a moment, Mr Sixsmith?’

‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘Long as you understand, you may be tipped for a world record next season, but if some guy came after us both with a meat cleaver and bad attitude, you’d be looking at my heels.’

Now she laughed out loud. It was a real pleasure making her laugh. It came out dark and creamy like draught Guinness and set up a turbulence beneath the tracksuit upon which Whitey bobbed with undisguised sensuality.

‘Must try that some day,’ she said. ‘But seriously, Mr Sixsmith, I’m not here looking for a minder. I’ve got all the minder I need. You probably saw him downstairs.’

‘No neck and ears like Chinese mushrooms?’

‘That’s him. He really is called Jones. Starbright Jones.’

‘Starbright? You’re joking?’

‘You think that’s funny, you’d better keep it to yourself,’ she said. ‘He’s Welsh and doesn’t care to be laughed at.’

‘Sorry,’ said Joe, who knew all about racial sensibilities. ‘So if you’ve got Mr Jones, what are you doing here?’

‘Trying to tell you what I’m doing here,’ she said with an irritation which didn’t make her any the less attractive. ‘Starbright’s fine for fighting off trouble if and when it happens. What I really want is someone who’ll take care of the ifs and the whens. Someone who’ll stop it happening.’

She paused. Joe nodded encouragingly though he didn’t much care if she went on talking or not. Miss Poetry in Motion the papers called her, but even in repose a man could spend his time less poetically than just staring at her. From her earliest appearances on the track she’d been the pride of Luton, a pride not dinted when last autumn, after equalling the British 800 metres record, instead of starting an art foundation course at South Beds Institute, she had accepted a sports scholarship in the Fine Arts Faculty of Vane University, Virginia. Word from over the water was that her American coach wanted her to move up to the mile and 1500 metres, and was forecasting she would be rewriting the record books in the next couple of seasons. Locals would have the chance to make their own assessment on New Year’s Day at the grand opening of the new Luton Pleasure Dome. With its art gallery, theatre, olympic-size swimming pool, go-kart track, climbing wall, cinema, skating rink and sports hall, the Plezz, as it was known, had carved a huge chunk out of both the green belt and the council’s budget. But with the town’s own golden girl not only performing the official opening, but also running in an invitation 1000 metres on the indoor track it would take a very bold environmental or economic protester to attempt disruption.

Joe realized the girl hadn’t just paused, she was waiting for him to ask an intelligent PI-type question.

He said, ‘Miss Oto …’

‘Call me Zak,’ she said. ‘And I’ll call you Joe. OK?’

Zak. Funny name, but he didn’t need to ask where it came from. The papers had told him her real name was Joan, but when she started running almost as soon as she started walking, her athletics-mad father had started referring to her proudly as ‘my Zatopek’ which her childish tongue had rendered as Zak.