Authors: Val McDermid
I dragged my feet up the stairs to the office just after quarter past nine the next morning. I felt like I was fourteen again, Monday morning before double Latin. I’d lain staring at the ceiling, trying to think of good excuses for not going in, but none of the ones that presented themselves convinced either me or Richard, which gave them no chance against Shelley or Bill.
I needn’t have worried. There was news waiting that took Bill off the front page for a while. I walked in to find Josh Gilbert perched on the edge of Shelley’s desk, one elegantly trousered leg crossed casually over the other. I could have paid my mortgage for a couple of months easily with what the suit had cost. Throw in the shirt, tie and shoes and we’d be looking at the utility bills too. Josh is a financial consultant who has managed to surf every wave and trough of the volatile economy and somehow come out so far ahead of the field that I keep expecting the Serious Fraud Office to feel his collar. Josh and I have a deal: he gives me information, I buy him expensive dinners. In these days of computerization, it would be cheaper to pay Gizmo for the same stuff, but a lot less entertaining. Computers don’t gossip. Yet.
Shelley was looking up at Josh with that mixture of wariness and amusement she reserves for born womanizers. When he saw me, he broke off the tale he was in the middle of and jumped to his feet. ‘Kate!’ he exclaimed, stepping forward and sweeping me into a chaste embrace.
I air-kissed each cheek and stepped clear. The older he got, the more his resemblance to Robert Redford seemed to grow. It was disconcerting, as if Hollywood had invaded reality. Even his eyes seemed bluer. You didn’t have to be a private eye to suspect tinted contacts. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude,’ I said, ‘but what are you doing here at this time of the morning? Shouldn’t you be blinding some poor innocent with science about the latest fluctuations of the Nikkei? Or persuading some lucky Lottery winner that their money is safe in your hands?’
‘Those days are behind me,’ he said.
‘Meaning?’
‘I am thirty-nine years and fifty weeks old today.’
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Ever since I’ve known him Josh has boasted of his intention to retire to some tax haven when he was forty. Part of me had always taken this with a pinch of salt. I don’t move in the sort of circles where people amass the kind of readies to make that a realistic possibility. I should have realized he meant it; Josh will bullshit till the end of time about women, but he’s never less than one hundred per cent serious about money. ‘Ah,’ I said.
‘Josh has come to invite us to his fortieth birthday and retirement party.’ Shelley confirmed my bleak fear with a sympathetic look.
‘Selling up and selling out, eh?’ I said.
‘Not as such,’ Josh said languidly, returning to his perch on Shelley’s desk. ‘I’m not actually selling the consultancy. Julia’s learned enough from me to run the business, and I’m not abandoning her entirely. I might be going to live on Grand Cayman, but with fax machines and e-mail, she’ll feel as though I’ve only moved a few miles away.’
‘Only if you don’t have conversations about the weather,’ I said. ‘You’ll get bored, Josh. Nothing to do all day but play.’
The smile crinkled the skin round his eyes, and he gave me the look Redford reserves for Debra Winger in
Legal Eagles
. ‘How could I be bored when there are still beautiful women on the planet I haven’t met?’
I heard the door open behind me and Bill’s voice said, ‘Are we using “met” in the biblical sense here?’
Bill and Josh gave each other the usual onceover, a bit like dogs who have to sniff each other’s bollocks before they decide a fight isn’t worth the bother. They’d never been friends, probably because they’d thought they were competitors for women. Neither had ever realized how wrong they were; Bill could never have bedded a woman without brains, and Josh never bedded one with an IQ greater than her age except by accident. Shelley had her pet theories on their respective motivations, but life’s too short to rerun that seminar.
‘So it’s all change then,’ Bill said once Josh had brought him up to speed on his reasons for visiting. ‘You off to Grand Cayman, me off to Australia.’
‘I thought you’d only just come back,’ Josh said.
‘I’m planning to move out there permanently. I’m marrying an Australian businesswoman.’
‘Is she pregnant?’ Josh blurted out without thinking. Seeing my face, he gave an apologetic smile and shrug.
‘No. And she’s not a rich widow either,’ Bill replied, not in the least put out. ‘I’m exercising free will here, Josh.’
I swear Josh actually changed colour. The thought of a man as dedicated as he was to a turbo-charged love life finally settling down, and from choice, was like suddenly discovering his body was harbouring a secret cancer. ‘So because of this woman, you’re going to get married and live in
Australia
? My God, Bill, that’s worse than moving to Birmingham. And what about the business? You can keep a finger on the financial pulse from anywhere you can plug in a PC, but you can’t run an investigation agency from the other side of the globe.’
‘The game plan is that I’ll sell my share of the agency here and start up again in Australia.’
Josh’s eyebrows rose. ‘At your age? Bill, you’re only a couple of years younger than me. You’re really planning to start from ground zero in a foreign country where you don’t even speak the language? God, that sounds too much like hard work to me. And what about Kate?’
I’d had enough. ‘Kate’s gotta go,’ I said brusquely. ‘People to be, places to see. Thanks for the invite, Josh. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ I wheeled round and headed back out of the door. I wasn’t sure where I was going, and I didn’t care. I knew I was behaving like a brat, but I didn’t care about that either. I stood on the corner outside the office, not even caring about the vicious northeasterly wind that was exfoliating every bit of exposed skin. A giggling flurry of young women in leg warmers and tights accompanied by a couple of well-muscled men enveloped me, waiting for the lights to change as they headed for rehearsals at the new dance theatre up the street, one of the handful of tangible benefits we got from being UK City of Drama for a year. Their energy and sense of direction shamed me, so I followed briskly in their wake and collected my car from the meter where I’d left it less than twenty minutes before. Given that I’d planned to be in the office for a couple of hours, somebody was going to get lucky.
One quick phone call and fifteen minutes later, I was walking round the big Regent Road Sainsbury’s with Detective Chief Inspector Della Prentice. When I’d called and asked her if she could spare half an hour, she’d suggested the supermarket. Her fridge was in the same dire straits as mine, and this way we could both stock up on groceries while we did the business. We took turns pushing the trolley, using our packs of toilet rolls as a convenient Maginot line between our separate purchases. I filled her in on the headstone scam in the fruit and veg. department, handing over a list of victims who should be able to pick out Williams and Constable in an identity parade. She promised to pass it on to one of her bright young things.
The outrageous tale of Cliff Jackson’s waste of police time kept us going as far as the chill cabinets. By the time we hit the breakfast cereals, I’d moved on to the problems at Mortensen and Brannigan, which lasted right up to hosiery and tampons. Della tried an emerald green ruffle against her copper hair. I nodded agreement. ‘I can see why Shelley suggested you putting your share of the business on the market too,’ Della said. ‘But that could present you with a different set of problems.’
‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘But what else can I do?’
‘You could talk to Josh,’ she said. Sometimes I forget the pair of them were at Cambridge together, they’re such different types. It’s true that they were both fascinated by money but while Josh wanted to make as much of it as possible, Della wanted to stop people like him doing it illegally. She was too bright for him to fancy, so he gave her his respect instead, and a few years ago he did me the biggest favour he’s ever managed when he introduced us.
‘What good would that do? Josh deals with multinational conglomerates, not backstreet detective agencies. I can’t believe he knows anyone with investigative skills and enough money to buy Bill out that he hasn’t already introduced me to. Besides, investigative skills never seem to go hand in hand with the acquisition of hard cash. You should know that.’
Della reached for a tin of black olives then turned her direct green eyes on me. ‘You’d be surprised at what Josh knows about,’ she said, giving a deliberate stage wink.
‘I’m not even going to ask if the Fraud task force is about to lose its major inside source,’ I said. ‘Besides, Josh is too busy extricating himself from business right now. He’s not about to get involved in setting up a whole new partnership for me. Did you know he’s retiring in a couple of weeks?’
Della nodded, looking depressed. ‘He’s been saying he was going to retire at forty since he was nineteen.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Della. He’ll never retire. Not properly. He’ll die of boredom in a week if he’s not spreading fear and loathing in global financial institutions. He’ll always have fingers in enough pies to keep you busy.’
Whatever I’d said, it seemed to have deepened Della’s gloom. Then I twigged. If Josh was about to hit the big four zero, it couldn’t be far off for Della. And she wasn’t a multimillionaire with the world her oyster. She was a hardworking, ferociously bright woman in what was still a man’s world, a woman whose career commitment left her no space for relationships other than a few close friendships. I stopped the trolley by the spirits and liqueurs, put a hand on her arm and said, ‘He might have made the money, but you’ve made the difference.’
‘Yeah, and everything at the agency is going to work out for the best,’ she said grimly. We looked at each other, registering the self-pitying misery that was absorbing each of us. Then, suddenly and simultaneously, we burst out laughing. Nobody could get near the gin, but we didn’t give a damn. Like the song says, girls just wanna have fun.
If you think it’s embarrassing to get a hysterical fit of the giggles with one of your best friends in Sainsbury’s wines and spirits department, try having your mobile phone ring in the middle of it. Now that’s
really
excruciating. At least when it’s someone as laconic as Gizmo, you don’t have to destroy your street cred totally by having a conversation. A series of grunts signifying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ will do just fine. I gathered he’d got the stuff I wanted and he was about to stuff it through my letter box unless I had any serious objections. I didn’t. Even if it was Police Harassment Week and Linda Shaw and her sidekick were back on my doorstep, they could hardly arrest Gizmo for impersonating a postman.
Being midweek and mid-morning, we were through the checkouts in less time than it takes to buy a newspaper in our local corner shop. Della and I hugged farewell in the car park and went our separate ways, each intent on making some criminal’s life a misery. ‘Talk to Josh,’ were her final words.
Gizmo had done me proud. Not only had he translated the files into a format I could easily read on my computer, but he’d also printed out hard copies for me. As far as her patient notes were concerned, Sarah Blackstone’s passion for secrecy had been superseded by a medical training that had instilled the principle of always leaving clear notes that another doctor could follow through should you be murdered by a burglar between treatments. I flicked through until I found the file relating to Alexis and Chris. Not only were their names correct on the print-out, but so also were their phone numbers at home and work, address and dates of birth. Which meant the chances were high that all the other patients’ details were accurate. If ever I needed to interview any of them, I knew where to start looking.
At one level, the job Alexis had hired me to do was now complete. I had checked out the consulting rooms and removed any evidence that might lead back to Sarah Blackstone’s patients. But what I had were only backup copies. The originals were still out there somewhere, presumably sitting on the hard drive of the laptop that the doctor had used throughout her consultations. If Gizmo had cracked their file protection, it was always possible that the police had someone who could do the same thing. It was also possible that whoever had killed Sarah Blackstone had stolen her computer and was sitting on the best blackmail source since Marilyn Monroe’s address book. Women who could afford this treatment could afford payoffs too. The game was a long way from being over.
What I needed now was more information. I understood very little of the patient notes sitting in front of me and I understood even less of the fertility technology that I was dealing with here. I needed to know what technical backup Sarah Blackstone had needed, and just how difficult it was to achieve what she had done. I also needed to know if this was something she could do alone, or if she’d have had to involve someone else. Time to beg another favour from someone I already owed one to. Dr Beth Taylor is one of the legion of women who have been out with Bill Mortensen without managing to accomplish what an Australian boutique bimbo had pulled off. Beth works part time in an inner-city group practice where nobody’s had to pay a prescription charge in living memory. The rest of the time she lectures on ethics to medical students who think that’s a county in the south of England. If she feels like a bit of light relief, she does the odd bit of freelance work for us when we’re investigating medical insurance claims.
I tracked Beth down at the surgery. I didn’t tell her about Bill’s planned move. It wasn’t that I thought it would hurt her feelings; I just couldn’t bear to run through it yet again. Once we’d got the social niceties out of the way, I said, ‘Test-tube babies.’
She snorted. ‘You’ve been reading too many tabloids. IVF, that’s what you call it when you want a bit of respect from the medical profession. Subfertility treatment, when you want to impress us with your state-of-the-art consciousness. What are you after? Treatment or information?’