Star Struck. Val McDermid

private eye applying for a job as a hospital auxiliary.

      I was trying to balance that month’s books in my head when a hand on my shoulder lifted my feet off the floor. Spot the alert bodyguard. I spun round and found my nose level with the top button of a suit jacket. I took a step back and looked up. The man must have been six-three, wide shouldered and heavy featured. The suit, whose tailoring owed more to Savile Row than to Armani, was cut to disguise the effects of too many business lunches and dinners, but this guy was still a long way off fat. On the other hand, he looked as if he was still only in his early forties and in the kind of trim that betrays a commitment to regular exercise. In a few years, when his joints started complaining and his stamina wasn’t what it had been, he’d swiftly slip into florid flabbiness. I’d seen the type. Greed was always a killer.

      The smile on his broad face softened the stern good looks that come with a square jaw, a broad brow and deep-set eyes under overhanging brows. ‘You must be Kate Brannigan,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m John Turpin.’

      For a man who’d gone out of his way to try to persuade Gloria to keep her problems in the family, he seemed amazingly cordial. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

      ‘How are your investigations proceeding?’ he asked, smiling down on me benevolently.

      ‘I could ask you the same question.’ If the guy was trying to win me over with his affable helpfulness, the least I could do was take advantage and trawl for some information.

      His smile curved up at one corner, suddenly turning his expression from magnanimous to predatory. ‘I’m afraid I’m more of a guardian of company confidentiality than Ms Kendal,’ he said, with a note of acid in his voice.

      ‘But you expect me to share with you?’ I asked innocently.

      He chuckled. ‘Not really, but it never hurts to try. As you yourself so ably demonstrated. I had hoped we could keep Ms Kendal’s little problem in-house, but if she insists on wasting her money on services we can provide more effectively and for free, I can’t stop her.’

      ‘Can I tell her when to expect the results of your internal inquiry?’ I wasn’t playing the sweetness and light game any more. It hadn’t got me anywhere so I figured I might as well turn into Ms Businesslike.

      Turpin thrust one hand into his jacket pocket, thumb sticking out like Prince Charles always has. ‘Impossible to say. I have so many calls on my time, most of them rather more serious than the antics of some poison-pen writer.’

      ‘She had her car tyres slashed. All four of them. On NPTV premises,’ I reminded him.

      ‘It’s a bitchy business, soap,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m far from convinced there’s any connection between the letters and the car tyres. I can’t believe you find it hard to credit that Ms Kendal could annoy a colleague enough for them to lose their temper and behave so childishly.’

      ‘You’re really not taking this seriously, are you?’ I said, struggling to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

      ‘That’s what you’re being paid for, Ms Brannigan. Me, I’ve got a television production company to run.’ He inclined his head and gave me the full charm offensive again. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

      I said nothing, just watched his retreating back with its double-vent tailoring that perfectly camouflaged the effects of too many hours sitting behind a desk. If our conversation was par for the course around here, the only surprise was that it had taken Gloria so long to get round to hiring me.

      In spite of Turpin’s intervention, by lunchtime I was more bored than I’d been in the weeks before I finally managed to jettison A level Latin. If anyone had asked, I’d have admitted to being up for any distraction. I’d have been lying, as I discovered when my moby rang, right in the middle of the fifth run-through of a tense scene between my client and the putative father of her granddaughter’s aborted foetus.

      Mortified, I twisted my face into an apologetic grimace as the actor playing opposite Gloria glared at me and muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake. What is this? Fucking amateur city?’ The six months he’d once spent on remand awaiting trial for rape (according to the front page of the Sun a couple of months back) hadn’t improved his word power, then.

      I ducked behind a props skip and tucked my head down into my chest as I grunted, ‘Hello?’

      ‘Kate? I’ve been arrested.’ The voice was familiar, the scenario definitely wasn’t. Donovan Carmichael was a second-year engineering student at UMIST. He’d just started eking out his pathetic student grant by working part time for me as a process-server, doing the bread and butter work that pays his mother’s wages. Did I mention Shelley the office tyrant was his mother? And that she hated the thought that her highly educated baby boy might be tempted to throw it all away to become a maverick of the mean streets like her boss? That probably explained why said boy was using his one phone call on me rather than on his doting mother.

      ‘What for?’

      ‘Being black, I think,’ he said angrily.

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘I was in Hale Barns.’ That explained a lot. They don’t have a lot of six-feet-three-inch black lads in Hale Barns, especially not ones with shoulders wider than the flashy sports cars in their four-car garages. It would lower the property values too much.

      ‘Doing what?’

      ‘Working,’ he said. ‘You know? Trying to make that delivery that came in yesterday afternoon?’ His way of telling me there were other ears on our conversation. I knew he was referring to a domestic violence injunction we’d been hired to serve. The husband had broken his wife’s cheekbone the last time he’d had a bad day. If Donovan succeeded in serving the paper, there might not be a next time. But there were very good reasons why Donovan was reluctant to reveal his target or our client’s name to the cops. Once you get outside the high-profile city-centre divisions that are constantly under scrutiny, you find that most policemen don’t have a lot of sympathy for the victims of domestic violence. Especially when the guy who’s been doing the battering is one of the city’s biggest football stars. He’d given a whole new meaning to the word ‘striker’, but that wouldn’t stop him being a hero in the eyes of the boys in blue.

      ‘Are they charging you with anything?’

      ‘They’ve not interviewed me yet.’

      ‘Which nick are you in?’

      ‘Altrincham.’

      I looked at my watch. I stuck my head round the side of the skip. They were about to go for a take. ‘I’ll get someone there as soon as I can. Till then, say nothing. OK?’ I said in a low voice.

      I didn’t wait for a reply, just ended the call and tiptoed back to the set. Gloria and the idiot boy she was acting opposite went through their interaction for the eighth time and the director announced she was satisfied. Gloria heaved a seismic sigh and walked off the set, dragging Brenda’s beehive from her head as she approached me. ‘That’s me for today, chuck,’ she said. ‘Drop me at home and you can have the rest of the day off.’

      ‘Are you staying in?’ I asked, falling into step beside her as we walked to the dressing room she shared with Rita Hardwick, the actress who played Thelma Torrance, the good-time girl who’d never grown up.

      ‘I am that. I’ve got to pick up next month’s scripts from the office on the way out. I’ll be lying in the Jacuzzi learning my lines till bedtime. It’s not a pretty sight, and I don’t need a spectator. Especially one that charges me for the privilege,’ she added with an earthy chuckle.

      I tried not to look as pleased as I felt. I could have sent a lawyer out to rescue Donovan, but it didn’t sound as if things had reached the point where I couldn’t sort it out myself, and lawyers cost either money I couldn’t afford or favours I didn’t want to owe.

      Two hours later, I was walking Donovan back to my car.