Authors: Val McDermid
The impatient horn of the suit in the company car behind me dragged my attention away from the posters and back to the road. After the lights, the traffic eased up, and I actually managed to get into fourth gear before I reached Gizmo’s. This time, I reckoned it would be cheaper to take my chances with the traffic wardens than the locals, so I left the car illegally parked on the main drag. Judging by the other drivers doing the same thing, the wardens were about as fond of hanging out in Levenshulme as I was. I hit the hole in the wall for some cash for Gizmo, then I crossed the road and rang his bell.
Gizmo frowned when he saw me. ‘Didn’t you get the e-mail?’ he asked.
‘I’ve not been back to the office,’ I said, holding a tightly rolled wad of notes towards him. ‘Do I take it you’ve had some joy?’
‘Yeah. You better come in,’ he said reluctantly, delicately removing the cash from my hand and slipping it into the watch pocket of a pair of grey flannels that looked as if they’d first drawn breath around the time of the Great War. ‘Somebody dressed as smart as you on the pavement around here looks well suspicious to the local plod. I mean, you’re obviously not a native, are you?’ he added as I followed him up the narrow stairs, the soles of my shoes sticking to the elderly cord carpet. It was the first time he’d let me past his front door, and frankly, I wasn’t surprised.
I followed Gizmo into the front room of the flat. It was a dislocating experience. Instead of the dingy grime and chipped paint of the stairway, I was in a spotlessly clean room. New woodblock flooring, matt grey walls, no curtains, double-glazed windows. A leather sofa. Two desks with computer monitors, one a Mac, one a PC. A long table with an assortment of old computers—an Atari, a Spectrum, an Amiga, an Amstrad PCW and an ancient Pet. A couple of modems, a flat-bed scanner, a hand-held scanner, a couple of printers and a shelf stacked with software boxes. There was no fabric anywhere in the room. Even the chair in front of the PC monitor was upholstered in leather. Gizmo might look like Pigpen, but the environment he’d created for his beloved computers was as near to the perfect dust-free room as he could get.
‘Nice one,’ I said.
He thrust his hands into the pockets of a woollen waistcoat most bag ladies would be ashamed to own and said, ‘Got to look after them, haven’t you? I’ve had that Pet since 1980, and it still runs like a dream.’
‘Strange dreams you have, Giz,’ I commented as he hit some keys on his PC and located the information I’d asked for. Within seconds, a sheet of paper was spitting out of one of the laser printers. I picked up the paper and read, ‘Sell Phones, 1 Beaumaris Road, Higher Crumpsall, Manchester.’ There was a phone number too. I raised an eyebrow. ‘That it?’
‘All I could get,’ he said.
‘No names?’
‘No names. They’re not listed at Companies House. They sound like they’re into mobies. I suppose if you wanted to go to the trouble and
expense
’—stressing the last word heavily—‘I could do a trawl through the mobile phone service providers and see if this lot are among their customers. But—’
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ I said. Breaking the law too many times on any given job is tempting fate. ‘Once is sufficient,’ I added. ‘Anything more would be vulgar.’
‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ Gizmo said pointedly, staring past my shoulder at the door. I took the hint. Find what you’re good at and stick to it, that’s what I say.
Beaumaris Road was a red-brick back street running parallel to the main drag of Cheetham Hill Road. Unsurprisingly, number one was on the corner. Sell Phones occupied what had obviously once been a corner shop, though it had been tarted up since it had last sold pints of milk at all hours and grossly inflated prices. I parked further down the street and pulled on a floppy green velvet cap and a pair of granny specs with clear glass to complete the transformation from desolate widow to total stranger. They didn’t really go with my Levis and beige blazer, but fashion’s so eclectic these days that you can mix anything if you don’t mind looking like a borderline care-in-the-community case or a social worker.
I walked back to the corner, noting the heavy grilles over the window of Sell Phones. I paused and looked through to an interior that was all grey carpet, white walls and display cabinets of mobile phones. A good-looking black guy was leaning languidly against a display cabinet, head cocked, listening to a woman who was clearly telling the kind of lengthy tale that involves a lot of body language and lines like, ‘So she goes, “You didn’t!” and I go, “I did. No messing.” And she looks at me gone out and she goes, “You never!”’ She was a couple of inches taller than me, but slimmer through the shoulders and hips. Her hair was a glossy black bob, her eyes dark, her skin pale, her cheekbones Slavic, scarlet lips reminding me irresistibly of Cruella De Vil. She looked like a Pole crossed with a racehorse. She was too engrossed in her tale to notice me, and the black guy was too busy looking exquisite in a suit that screamed, ‘
Ciao, bambino
.’
I peered more closely through the glass and there, at the back of the shop, sitting behind a desk, head lowered as he took notes of the phone call he was engrossed in, was Will Allen in all his glory. I might not know his real name, but at least now I knew where he worked. I carried on round the corner and there, in the back alley behind the shop, was the Mazda I’d last seen parked outside my house the night before. At last something was working out today.
Now for the boring bit. I figured Will Allen wouldn’t be going anywhere for the next hour or two, but that didn’t mean I could wander off and amble back later in the hope he’d still be around. I reckoned it was probably safe to nip round the corner to the McDonald’s on Cheetham Hill Road and stock up with some doughnuts and coffee to make me feel like an authentic private eye as I staked out Sell Phones, but that was as far away as I wanted to get.
I moved my Rover on to the street that ran at right angles to Beaumaris Road and the alley so that I had a good view of the end of Allen’s car bonnet, though it meant losing sight of the front of the shop. I slid into the passenger seat to make it look like I was waiting for someone and took off the cap. I kept the glasses in place, though. I slouched in my seat and brooded on Bill’s perfidy. I sipped my coffee very slowly, just enough to keep me alert, not enough to make me want to pee. By the time I saw some action, the coffee was cold and so was I.
The nose of the silver Mazda slipped out of the alleyway and turned left towards Cheetham Hill Road. Just on five, with traffic tight as haemoglobin in the bloodstream. Born lucky, that’s me. I scrambled across the gear stick and started the engine, easing out into the road behind the car. As we waited to turn left at the busy main road, I had the chance to see who was in the car. Allen was driving, but there was also someone in the passenger seat. She conveniently reached over into the back seat for something, and I identified the woman who had been in Sell Phones talking to the Emporio Armani mannequin. I wondered if she was the other half of the scam, the woman who went out to chat up the widowers. They don’t call me a detective for nothing.
The Mazda slid into a gap in the traffic heading into Manchester. I didn’t. By the time I squeezed out into a space that wasn’t really there, the Mazda was three cars ahead and I was the target of a car-horn voluntary. I gave the kind of cheery wave that makes me crazy when arseholes do it to me and smartly switched lanes in the hope that I’d be less visible to my target. The traffic was so slow down Cheetham Hill that I was able to stay in touch, as well as check out the furniture stores for bargains. But then, just as we hit the straight, he peeled off left down North Street. I was in the right-hand lane and I couldn’t get across, but I figured he must be heading down Red Bank to cut through the back doubles down to Ancoats and on to South Manchester. If I didn’t catch him before Red Bank swept under the railway viaduct, he’d be anywhere in a maze of back streets and gone forever.
I swung the nose of the Rover over to the left, which pissed off the driver of the Porsche I’d just cut up. At least now the day wasn’t a complete waste. I squeezed round the corner of Derby Street and hammered it for the junction that would sweep me down Red Bank. I cornered on a prayer that nothing was coming up the hill and screamed down the steep incline.
There was no silver Mazda in sight. I sat fuming at the junction for a moment, then slowly swung the car round and back up the hill. There was always the chance that they’d stopped off at one of the dozens of small-time wholesalers and middlemen whose tatty warehouses and storefronts occupy the streets of Strangeways. Maybe they were buying some jewellery or a fur coat with their ill-gotten gains. I gave it ten minutes, cruising every street and alley between Red Bank and Cheetham Hill Road. Then I accepted they were gone. I’d lost them.
I’d had enough for one day. Come to that, I’d had enough for the whole week. So I switched off my mobile, wearily slotted myself back into the thick of the traffic and drove home. Plan A was to run a hot bath lavishly laced with essential oils, Cowboy Junkies on the stereo, the pile of computer magazines I’d been ignoring for the last month and the biggest Stoly and grapefruit juice in the world on the side. Plan B involved Richard, if he was around.
I walked through my front door and down the hall, shedding layers like some sixties starlet, then started running the bath. I wrapped myself in my bathrobe which had been hanging strategically over a radiator, and headed for the freezer. I’d just gripped the neck of the vodka bottle when the doorbell rang. I considered ignoring it, but curiosity won. Story of my life. So I dumped the bottle and headed for the door.
They say it’s not over till the fat lady sings. Alexis is far from fat, and from her expression I guessed singing wasn’t on the agenda. Seeing the stricken look on her face, I kissed Plan A goodbye and prepared for the worst.
‘Chris?’ I asked, stepping back to let Alexis in.
She looked dumbly back at me, frowning, as if trying to call to mind why I should be concerned about her partner.
‘Has something happened to Chris?’ I tried. ‘The baby?’
Alexis shook her head. ‘Chris is all right,’ she said impatiently, as if I’d asked the kind of stupid question TV reporters pose to disaster victims. She pushed past me and walked like an automaton into the living room, where she subsided onto a sofa with the slack-limbed collapse of a marionette.
I left her staring blankly at the floor and turned off the bath taps. By the time I came back with two stiff drinks, she was smoking with the desperate concentration of an addict on the edge of cold turkey. ‘What’s happened, Alexis?’ I said softly, sitting down beside her.
‘She’s dead,’ she said. I wasn’t entirely surprised that somebody she knew was. I couldn’t imagine anything else that would destroy the composure of a hard-bitten crime reporter like this.
‘Who is?’
Alexis pulled a scrunched up copy of the
Yorkshire Post
out of her handbag. I knew it was one of the out-of-town papers that the
Chronicle
subscribed to. ‘I was going through the regionals, looking to see if anybody had any decent crime feature ideas,’ Alexis said bleakly as she spread the
YP
out on the table. DOCTOR DIES IN RAID, I read in the top right-hand section of the front page. Under the headline was a photograph of a dark-haired woman with strong features and a wide, smiling mouth. I read the first paragraph.
Consultant gynaecologist Sarah Blackstone was fatally stabbed last night when she disturbed an intruder in her Headingley home.
‘You knew her?’ I asked.
‘That’s the doctor who worked with us on Christine’s pregnancy.’
It was a strange way of expressing it, but I let it pass. Alexis clearly wasn’t in command of herself, never mind the English language. ‘I’m so sorry, Alexis,’ I said inadequately.
‘Never mind being sorry. I want you working,’ she said abruptly. She crushed out her cigarette, lit another and swallowed half her vodka and Diet Coke. ‘Kate, there’s something going on here. That’s definitely the woman we dealt with. But she wasn’t a consultant in Leeds called Sarah Blackstone. She had consulting rooms here in Manchester and her name was Helen Maitland.’
There are days when I’m overwhelmed with the conviction that somebody’s stolen my perfectly nice life and left me with this pile of shit to deal with. Right then, I was inches away from calling the cops and demanding they track down the robber. After the day I’d had, I just wasn’t in the mood for chapter one of an Agatha Christie mystery. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘I mean, newspaper photographs…’
Alexis snorted. ‘Look at her. She’s not got a face that blends into the background, has she? Of course it’s Helen Maitland.’
I shrugged. ‘So she uses an assumed name when she’s treating lesbians. Maybe she just doesn’t want the notoriety of being the dykes’ baby doctor.’
‘It’s more than that, KB,’ Alexis insisted, swallowing smoke as if her life depended on it. ‘She’s got a prescription pad and she writes prescriptions in the name of Helen Maitland. We’ve not had any trouble getting them filled, and it’s not like it was a one-off, believe me. There’s been plenty. Which also makes me worried, because if the bizzies figure out that Sarah Blackstone and Helen Maitland are the same person, and they try and track down her patients, all they’ve got to do is start asking around the local chemists. And there we are, right in the middle of the frame.’
All of which was true, but I couldn’t see why Alexis was getting so wound up. I knew the rules on human fertility treatment were pretty strict, but as far as I was aware, it wasn’t a crime yet to give lesbians artificial insemination, though if the Tories started to get really hysterical about losing the next election, I could see it might have its attractions as a possible vote winner. ‘Alexis,’ I said gently. ‘Why exactly is that a problem?’