Blue Genes

Kate Brannigan’s not just having a bad day, she’s having a bad week. Her boyfriend’s death notice is in the paper, her plan to catch a team of fraudsters is in disarray and a neo-punk band want her to find out who’s trashing their flyposters. And her business partner wants her to buy him out. Fine, but private eyes with principles never have that kind of cash.

Kate can’t even cry on her best friend’s shoulder, for Alexis has worries of her own. Her girlfriend’s pregnant, and when the doctor responsible for the fertility treatment is murdered, Alexis needs Kate like she’s never done before.

So what’s a girl to do? Delving into the alien world of medical experimentation and the underbelly of the rock-music business, Kate confronts betrayal and cold-blooded greed as she fights to save not only her livelihood, but her life as well…

The day Richard’s death announcement appeared in the
Manchester Evening Chronicle
, I knew I couldn’t postpone clearing up the mess any longer. But there was something I had to do first. I stood in the doorway of the living room of the man who’d been my lover for three years, Polaroid in hand, surveying the chaos. Slowly, I swept the camera lens round the room, carefully recording every detail of the shambles, section by section. This was one time I wasn’t prepared to rely on memory. Richard might be gone, but that didn’t mean I was going to take any unnecessary risks. Private eyes who do that have as much chance of collecting their pensions as a Robert Maxwell employee.

Once I had a complete chronicle of exactly how things had been left in the room that was a mirror image of my own bungalow next door, I started my mammoth task. First, I sorted things into piles: books, magazines, CDs, tapes, promo videos, the detritus of a rock journalist’s life. Then I arranged them. Books, alphabetically, on the shelf unit. CDs ditto. The tapes I stacked in the storage unit Richard had bought for the purpose one Sunday when I’d managed to drag him round Ikea, the 1990s equivalent of buying an engagement ring. I’d even put the cabinet together for him, but he’d never got into the habit of using it, preferring the haphazard stacks and heaps strewn all over the floor. I buried the surge of emotion that came with the memory and carried on doggedly. The magazines I shoved out of sight in the conservatory that runs along the back of both our houses, linking them together more firmly than we’d ever been prepared to do in any formal sense with our lives. I leaned against the wall and looked around the room. When people say, ‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,’ how come we never really believe we’ll be the ones left clutching the sticky end? I sighed and forced myself on. I emptied ashtrays of the roaches left from Richard’s joints, gathered together pens and pencils and stuffed them into the sawn-off Sapporo beer can he’d used for the purpose for as long as I’d known him. I picked up the assorted notepads, sheets of scrap paper and envelopes where he’d scribbled down vital phone numbers and quotes, careful not to render them any more disordered than they were already, and took them through to the room he used as his office when it wasn’t occupied by his nine-year-old son Davy on one of his regular visits. I dumped them on the desk on top of a remarkably similar-looking pile already there.

Back in the living room, I was amazed by the effect. It almost looked like a room I could sit comfortably in. Cleared of the usual junk, it was possible to see the pattern on the elderly Moroccan rug that covered most of the floor and the sofas could for once accommodate the five people they were designed for. I realized for the first time that the coffee table had a central panel of glass. I’d been trying for ages to get him to put the room into something approaching a civilized state, but he’d always resisted me. Even though I’d finally got my own way, I can’t say it made me happy. But then, I couldn’t get out of my mind the reason behind what I was doing here, and what lay ahead. The announcement of Richard’s death was only the beginning of a chain of events that would be a hell of a lot more testing than tidying a room.

I thought about brushing the rug, but I figured that was probably gilding the lily, the kind of activity that people found a little bizarre after the death of a lover. And bizarre was not the impression I wanted to give. I went back through to my house and changed from the sweat pants and T-shirt I’d worn to do the cleaning into something more appropriate for a grieving relict. A charcoal wool wraparound skirt from the French Connection sale and a black lamb’s-wool turtleneck I’d chosen for the one and only reason that it made me look like death. There are times in a private eye’s working life when looking like she’s about to keel over is an image preferable to that of Wonder Woman on whizz.

I was about to close the conservatory door behind me as I returned to Richard’s house when his doorbell belted out an inappropriate blast of the guitar riff from Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’. ‘Shit,’ I muttered. No matter how careful you are, there’s always something you forget. I couldn’t remember what the other choices were on Richard’s ‘Twenty Great Rock Riffs’ doorbell, but I was sure there must be something more fitting than Clapton’s wailing guitar. Maybe something from the Smiths, I thought vaguely as I tried to compose my face into a suitable expression for a woman who’s just lost her partner. Just how was I supposed to look, I found a second to wonder. What’s the well-bereft woman wearing on her face this season? You can’t even go for the mascara tracks down the cheeks in these days of lash tints.

I took a deep breath, hoped for the best and opened the door. The crime correspondent of the
Manchester Evening Chronicle
stood on the step, her black hair even more like an explosion in a wig factory than usual. ‘Kate,’ my best friend Alexis said, stepping forward and pulling me into a hug. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she added, a catch in her voice. She moved back to look at me, tears in her eyes. So much for the hard-bitten newshound. ‘Why didn’t you call us? When I saw it in the paper…Kate, what the hell happened?’

I looked past her. All quiet in the street outside. I put my arm round her shoulders and firmly drew her inside, closing the door behind her. ‘Nothing. Richard’s fine,’ I said, leading the way down the hall.

‘Do what?’ Alexis demanded, stopping and frowning at me. ‘If he’s fine, how come I just read he’s dead in tonight’s paper? And if he’s fine, how come you’re doing the “Baby’s in Black” number when you know that’s the one colour that makes you look like the Bride of Frankenstein?’

‘If you’d let me get a word in edgeways, I’ll explain,’ I said, going through to the living room. ‘Take my word for it, Richard is absolutely OK.’

Alexis stopped dead on the threshold, taking in the pristine tidiness of the room. ‘Oh no, he’s not,’ she said, suspicion running through her heavy Scouse accent like the stripe in the toothpaste. ‘He’s not fine if he’s left his living room looking like this. At the very least, he’s having a nervous breakdown. What the hell’s going on here, KB?’

‘I can’t believe you read the death notices,’ I said, throwing myself down on the nearest sofa.

‘I don’t normally,’ Alexis admitted, subsiding on the sofa opposite me. ‘I was down Moss Side nick waiting for a statement from the duty inspector about a little bit of aggravation involving an Uzi and a dead Rottweiler, and they were taking so long about it I’d read everything else in the paper except the ads for the dinner dances. And it’s just as well I did. What’s going on? If he’s not dead, who’s he upset enough to get heavy-metal hassle like this?’ She stabbed the paper she carried with a nicotine-stained index finger.

‘It was me who put the announcement in,’ I said.

‘That’s one way of telling him it’s over,’ Alexis interrupted before I could continue. ‘I thought you two had got things sorted?’

‘We have,’ I said through clenched teeth. Ironing out the problems in my relationship with Richard would have taken the entire staff of an industrial laundry a month. It had taken us rather longer.

‘So what’s going on?’ Alexis demanded belligerently. ‘What’s so important that you have to give everybody a heart attack thinking me laddo’s popped his clogs?’

‘Can’t you resist the journalistic exaggeration for once?’ I sighed. ‘You know and I know that nobody under sixty routinely reads the deaths column. I had to use a real name and address, and I figured with Richard out of town till the end of the week, nobody’s going to be any the wiser if I used his,’ I explained. ‘And he won’t be, unless you tell him.’

‘That depends on whether you tell me what this is all in aid of,’ Alexis said cunningly, her outrage at having wasted her sympathy a distant memory now she had the scent of a possible story in her nostrils. ‘I mean, I think he’s going to notice something’s going on,’ she added, sweeping an eloquent arm through the air. ‘I don’t think he knows that carpet has a pattern.’

‘I took Polaroids before I started,’ I told her. ‘When I’m finished, I’ll put it back the way it was before. He won’t notice a thing.’

‘He will when I show him the cutting,’ Alexis countered. ‘Spill, KB. What’re you playing at? What’s with the grieving widow number?’ She leaned back and lit a cigarette. So much for my clean ashtrays.

‘Can’t tell you,’ I said sweetly. ‘Client confidentiality.’

‘Bollocks,’ Alexis scoffed. ‘It’s me you’re talking to, KB, not the bizzies. Come on, give. Or else the first thing Richard sees when he comes home is…’

I closed my eyes and muttered an old gypsy curse under my breath. It’s not that I speak Romany; it’s just that I’ve refused to buy lucky white heather once too often. Believe me, I know exactly what those old gypsies say. I weighed up my options. I could always call her bluff and hope she wouldn’t tell Richard, on the basis that the two of them maintain this pretence of despising each other’s area of professional expertise and extend that into the personal arena at every possible opportunity. On the other hand, the prospect of explaining to Richard that I was responsible for the report of his death didn’t appeal either. I gave in. ‘It’s got to be off the record, then,’ I said ungraciously.

‘Why?’ Alexis demanded.

‘Because with a bit of luck it will be sub judice in a day or two. And if you blow it before then, the bad guys will be out of town on the next train and we’ll never nail them.’

‘Anybody ever tell you you’ve got melodramatic tendencies, KB?’ Alexis asked with a grin.

‘A bit rich, coming from a woman who started today’s story with, “Undercover police swooped on a top drug dealer’s love nest in a dawn raid this morning,” when we both know that all that happened was a couple of guys from the Drugs Squad turned over some two-bit dealer’s girlfriend’s bedsit,’ I commented.

‘Yeah, well, you gotta give it a bit of topspin or the boy racers on the newsdesk kill it. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I want to know why Richard’s supposed to be dead.’

‘It’s a long and complicated story,’ I started in a last attempt to lose her interest.

Alexis grinned and blew a long stream of smoke down her nostrils. Puff the Magic Dragon would have signed up for a training course on the spot. ‘Great,’ she enthused. ‘My favourite kind.’

‘The client’s a firm of monumental masons,’ I said. ‘They’re the biggest provider of stone memorials in South Manchester. They came to us because they’ve been getting a string of complaints from people saying they’ve paid for gravestones that haven’t turned up.’

‘Somebody’s been nicking
gravestones
?’

‘Worse than that,’ I said, meaning it. Far as I was concerned, I was dealing with total scumbags on this one. ‘My clients are the incidental victims of a really nasty scam. From what I’ve managed to find out so far, there are at least two people involved, a man and a woman. They turn up on the doorsteps of the recently bereaved and claim to be representing my client’s firm. They produce these business cards which have the name of my clients, complete with address and phone number, all absolutely kosher. The only thing wrong with them is that the names on the cards are completely unknown to my client. They’re not using the names of his staff. But this pair are smart. They always come in the evening, out of business hours, so anyone who’s a bit suspicious can’t ring my client’s office and check up on them. And they come single-handed. Nothing heavy. Where it’s a woman who’s died, it’s the woman who shows up. Where it’s a man, it’s the bloke.’