by Val McDermid
“Well,” Alexis drawled. “They ask for it, don’t they? So, is she really getting death threats?”
“I’ll swap you,” I said. “I’ll give you some nonattributable background if you tell me where the story came from in the first place.”
Alexis pulled a face and flicked the nonexistent ash from her cigarette. “You got me there, KB. You know I have as little to do with the brain-dead dickheads on the newsdesk as possible. And this didn’t actually come as a tip directly to news. The story came through features, from Mack Morrissey who does the showbiz beat. It’ll have come from a contact.”
“Any chance you could find out who?”
Alexis shrugged. “I don’t know. Mack’s a bit precious, you know. He wouldn’t let any of us hairy-arsed hacks anywhere near his valuable artistic contacts.”
“You could ask him,” Chris chipped in.
“I could,” Alexis admitted. “But there’s a better way of finding out. I can’t believe he got a tale like this for free. He’ll have had to put a payment through the credits book.”
“He won’t have stumped up readies?” I asked.
Alexis shook her head. “Not this amount. It’ll have been a few hundred. I’m surprised his contact gave the story to us, to be honest. It would have been worth a lot more to the nationals.”
Another interesting piece of information to tuck away in the file marked, “Makes no sense.” When the oddments of data reached critical mass, seemingly unrelated facts collided and rearranged themselves into logical sequences. It’s a process normally called “woman’s intuition.”
“I’ll check out the credits book in the morning,” Alexis promised. “So what’s the score with Gloria? Has she really had death threats? And does she really think you’re going to throw yourself between her and the assassin’s bullet?”
“How else will I catch it with my teeth?” I asked innocently. “People in Gloria’s position are always getting hate mail. Recently, she’s had a few letters that have seemed a bit more sinister than the usual run-of-the-mill stuff, and Dorothea Dawson threw some petrol on the flames. Bloody irresponsible, but what can you expect from a con merchant? None of these psychics and clairvoyants would earn a shilling if they had to stop preying on people’s irrational fears. Take it from me, Alexis, nothing is going to happen to Gloria Kendal. All I’m there for is to put the frighteners on anybody who might be thinking about taking advantage of the situation.”
Alexis’s eyebrows rose and she ran a hand through thick dark hair recently shorn from a wiry thicket to a shrubby bush less accessible to tiny grasping fists. Another consequence of motherhood. “You’ve not met Dorothea yet, then?”
I frowned. “No, but what difference does that make?”
“I didn’t think you’d be calling her a con artist if you’d met her.”
I stared open-mouthed at Alexis. “You’re not telling me you believe in that crap, are you?”
“Of course not, soft girl. But Dorothea Dawson’s not a charlatan. She’s sincere about what she does. I interviewed her a few years back, when I was still working for features. Before I actually met her, I was saying exactly the same as you’re saying now. And I had to eat my words. It wasn’t that she told me anything world shattering, like I was going to meet a tall dark handsome stranger and do a lot of foreign travel. She didn’t make a big production number out of it, just said very calmly that I had already met the love of my life, that my career was going to make a sideways move that would make me a lot more satisfied and it probably wouldn’t be the fags that killed me but they wouldn’t help.”
I shook my head. “And this revelation turned you into a believer?” I said sarcastically.
“Yeah. Because she didn’t grandstand. She was dead matter-offact, even apologized for not having anything more exciting to tell me. She came across as a really nice woman, you know? And she’s not just in it for the money. Sure, she charges rich bastards like the Northerners cast an arm and a leg, but she does a lot of freebies for charity.”
“That’s right,” Chris added. “She donated a full personal horoscope to the Women’s Aid charity auction last month. And you remember that mental health job I designed a couple of years ago?”
I nodded. It had been a major renovation project for Chris, turning an old mill in Rochdale into housing units for single homeless people with mental health problems. “I remember,” I said.
“Well, I happen to know that Dorothea Dawson was the biggest single donor for that scheme. She gave them fifty grand.”
“You never told me that,” Alexis complained. “That would have made a good diary piece.”
“That’s precisely why I didn’t tell you,” Chris said drily. “It was supposed to be confidential. She didn’t want a big song and dance about it.”
“It’s a lot of money,” I said diplomatically.
“So she can’t be a con artist, can she?” Alexis demanded. “They rip people off. They don’t donate that sort of cash to charity. It’s not like she’d need a tax loss, is it? I mean, a load of her earnings must be cash, so she could stash a bundle undeclared anyway.”
I held my hands up in submission. “OK, I give in. Dorothea Dawson is a sweet little old lady, grossly misunderstood by cynical unbelievers like me. It must be written in my stars.”
“Anyway, KB, you sure taking care of Gloria isn’t just a front?” Alexis demanded, changing tack in an obvious bid to wrong-foot me.
“For what?” I asked, baffled.
“Working for the management at NPTV. They’ve got a major mole in there, which is the last thing you need when you’re trying to finesse a major deal with the networks. I heard they’ve got a mole hunt going on. You sure they’ve not hired you to find out who’s stirring the shit for them?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. You’ll have to get your follow-up somewhere else.”
“I thought they’d be happy about all the press stories about the show,” Chris said. “I’d have thought it would increase the ratings. I had to go to London the other day on the train, and the two women opposite me talked about Northerners nonstop.”
“I think the scandalous stories about the stars whet people’s appetites,” I said. “According to my sources, what the management don’t like are the storyline leaks. They reckon that makes people turn off.”
Before anyone could say more, my moby began to bleat insistently. “Goodbye, pizza,” I said mournfully, grabbing my bag and reaching for the phone. “Brannigan,” I grunted.
“It’s me.”
My heart sank. “Donovan, you’ve not been arrested again?”
Chapter 8
MOON IN TAURUS IN THE 12TH HOUSE
The emotional swings of the moon are minimized in this placing, leading to balance between impulsiveness and determination. She is sociable, but needs to recharge her batteries in solitude which she seeks actively. Imaginative and intuitive, she has an instinctive rapport with creative artists though not herself artistic.
From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson
This time it was Alderley Edge, the village that buys more champagne per head of population than anywhere else in the UK. Donovan had been there to serve a subpoena on a company director who seemed to think the shareholders should fund the entire cost of his affair with a member of the chorus of Northern Opera. The detached house was in a quietly expensive street, behind tall hedges like most of its neighbors. Donovan had borrowed his mother’s car and sat patiently parked a few doors down from the house for about an hour waiting for his target to return.
When the man came home, Donovan had caught him getting out of his car. He’d accepted service with ill grace and stormed into the house. Donovan had driven home via his girlfriend’s student residence bedsit to pick up some tutorial handouts for the essay he was writing. He’d arrived home to find the police waiting. They hadn’t been interested in an explanation. They’d just hauled him off in a police car to the local nick where they’d informed him he was being arres
ted on suspicion of burglary.
By the time I arrived, tempers were fraying round the edges. It turned out that at some point during the day, a neighbor of the company director had been burgled. And another nosy neighbor had happened to jot down Shelley’s car number because, well, you
The police computer spat out Shelley’s address in response to the car registration number, and the bizzies were round there in no time flat. Things were complicated by the fact that the bloke Donovan had served the subpoena on decided to get his own back and denied all knowledge of a young black process-server with a legitimate reason for being in the street.
It took me the best part of an hour to persuade the police that Donovan was telling the truth and that I wasn’t some gangster’s moll trying to spring my toy boy. Thighs like his, I should be so lucky.
The one good thing about the whole pathetic business was that Shelley had been out when the police had turned up. With luck, she’d still be out. As I drove him home, I said, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, you doing the process-serving.”
“I’m serving the papers properly, what’s the problem?” he said defensively.
“It’s not good for your image or your mother’s blood pressure if you keep getting arrested.”
“I’m not letting those racists drive me out of a job,” he protested. “You’re saying I should just lie down and let them do it to me? The only places I have a problem are the ones where rich white people think that money can buy them a ghetto. People don’t call the cops when you go to serve paper in Alderley Edge, or when I turn up on a doorstep in Hulme.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking it through,” I said, ashamed of myself for only seeing the easy way out. “The job’s yours for as long as you want it. And first thing tomorrow, I’ll get your mother to have some proper business cards and ID printed up for you.”
“Fine by me. Besides, Kate, I need the money. I can’t be scrounging off my mother so I can have a beer with my mates, or go to see a film with Miranda. The process-serving’s something I can fit around studying and having fun. You can’t do that with most part-time jobs.”
I grinned. “You could always get an anorak and work with Gizmo on the computer security side of things.”
Donovan snorted. “I don’t think Gizmo’d let me. Have you noticed he’s got well weird lately?”
“How can you tell?” I signalled the right turn that would bring me into the narrow street of terraced brick houses where the Carmichael family lived.
“Yeah, right. He’s always been well weird. But this last few weeks, he’s been totally paranoid android about his files.”
“He’s always been secretive about his work,” I reminded him. “And not unreasonably. A lot of what we do for clients on computer security is commercially sensitive.”
“There’s secretive and there’s mentally ill. Did you know you even need a password to get out of his screen savers?”
“Now you are exaggerating,” I said.
“You think so? You try it the next time he goes to the loo. Touch a key when one of the screen savers is running and you’ll be asked for a password. You didn’t know?” Donovan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He opened the car door and unfolded his long body into the street. Then he bent down and said anxiously, “Check it out. I’m not making it up. Whatever he’s up to, he doesn’t want anybody else to know. And it is your hardware he’s doing it on.”
“It’ll be OK,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as Donovan. “Gizmo wouldn’t take risks with my business.” Which was true enough, I thought as I drove home. Except that what Gizmo thought was fair game didn’t necessarily coincide with the law’s view. And if he didn’t think it was wrong, why would he imagine it might be risky?
The response to the Chronicle’s story sharply polarized the Northerners cast in a way I hadn’t seen before. Up to that point, I’d been beginning to wonder whether I could possibly be right about
“What happened to that lot?” I asked as soon as Gloria closed the dressing room door behind us.
Rita Hardwick, who shared the room and played rough and ready tart with a heart Thelma Torrance, paused in stitching the tapestry she passed the slack time with. “Got the cold shoulder, did she?” she said with grim good humor.
“Yeah,” I said, not caring about showing my puzzlement. “Yesterday, everybody’s everybody’s pal and today, it’s like we’ve got a communicable disease.”
“It happens when you get a big show in the papers,” Gloria said, putting her coat on a hanger and subsiding into a chair. “It’s basically jealousy. The people below you in the pecking order resent the fact that you’re important enough to make the front page of the Chronicle and have the story followed up by all the tabloids the next day.”
I’d already seen the evidence of Gloria’s importance to the tabloids. When I’d arrived to collect her that morning, we’d had to run the gauntlet of reporters and photographers clustered round the high gates that kept Gloria safe from their invasive tendencies.
“Aye,” said Rita. “And the ones above you in the pecking order reckon you need cutting down to size before you start snapping too close at their heels. Not that there’s many above you these days, Glo.”
“Stuff like this shows you who your real friends are,” Gloria added.
“Aye, and we’ve all got precious few round here,” Rita said, thrusting her needle ferociously into the material. “There’s plenty would stab you in the back soon as look at you if they thought they could get away with it.”
If a bit of newspaper coverage was all it took to create a poisonous atmosphere like the one we’d just walked through, I hated to
Gloria shook her head. Rita disagreed. “There’s been a lot of stories about the abortion issue, Glo. Brenda and Debbie have been all over the tabloids.”
“But that’s Brenda, not me. The punters don’t know the difference, but the people who work here do.”
“It doesn’t make any odds to some of that lot,” Rita said. “Eaten up with jealousy, they are.” She glanced at her watch. “Bloody hell, is that the time? I’ve got an appointment with Dorothea in five minutes.” She shoved her sewing into a tapestry bag.
“You’re all right. I didn’t see the van when we parked up.” Gloria gave me a considering look. “You wanted a word with Dorothea, didn’t you, chuck?”
Rita stared. “By heck, Kate, I’d not have put you down as a lass who wanted her horoscope reading.”
I bristled. “The only stars I want to ask Dorothea Dawson about are the ones that work for Northerners.”
Rita giggled. “If that crystal ball could talk …”
“Aye, but going to Dorothea’s like going to the doctor. You can say owt you like and know it’ll go no further,” Gloria said. “Rita, chuck, do you mind if I just pop in ahead of you for a quick word with Dorothea, to see when she can fit Kate in?”
“Be my guest. I’ll walk across with you.”
The three of us left the studio building and crossed the car park. Over at the far end, near the administration block, I noticed a camper van that hadn’t been there when we’d arrived shortly before. It was painted midnight-blue, but as we drew closer, I could see there was a Milky Way of golden stars arcing across the cab door and the van’s side. The door into the living section of the van had a zodiac painted on it in silver, the glyphs of the signs picked out in gold. Even I could recognize the maiden that symbolized my Virgo star sign. I also identified the familiar three-legged symbol of Mercedes Benz. I didn’t need my background information from
Rita knocked and a familiar husky voice told us to come in. I expected a full blast of the histrionic mystic, complete with joss sticks and Indian cotton, but when it came to her personal environment, Dorothea clearly preferred the opulent to the occult. Leather, velvet, shag-pile carpet and wood paneling lined the luxurious interior. In the galley, I could see a microwave and a fridge. On a pull-out shelf sat a laptop and a portable color print
er, an ensemble that must have cost the thick end of three grand. Instead of a bloody awful tape of rainforest noises backed by Pan pipes and whales singing, the background music sounded like one of those “not available in the shops” collections of Romantic Classics. The only concession to the mystic world of the zodiac was the dining table, surrounded on three sides by a bench seat. It was covered in a dark-blue chenille cloth and on it sat a massive crystal ball. If it had had a set of finger holes, we could have gone ten-pin bowling.
“Nice to see you all, ladies,” Dorothea Dawson said as we piled through the door. She was smaller than I expected from TV. But then, they all were. Her hair was pure silver, cut in a chin-length bob that hid the fact that her jaw was too heavy for her small features. Her skin was criss-crossed with the fine wrinkles of an apple that’s been left lying around too long. Either she was older than she sounded or she’d loved the sun too much when she was younger. “And you must be Kate Brannigan,” she said, acknowledging me with a nod, assessing me with eyes like amethyst chips.
“Saw me in your crystal ball, did you?” I asked more pleasantly than I wanted to. I’ve never liked charlatans.
“No, I saw you in the Manchester Evening Chronicle,” she said with wry amusement. I found myself liking her in spite of all my prejudices against people who prey on the gullible. “You want to talk to me about my last session with Gloria?”
“Good guess,” I said.
“And I want you to cast her horoscope,” Gloria butted in, as usual incapable of holding her tongue.
Dorothea cocked her head, a knowing smile on her lips. “Virgo, with … an air sign rising, at a guess. Probably Gemini, with such a smart mouth.”
I tried not to look as surprised as I felt. A one-in-twelve chance of getting my sun sign right multiplied up to a one-in-a-gross chance of hitting the sun sign and the ascendant. Not that I believed any of that rubbish; I only knew my rising sign because I’d spent half an hour the night before on the computer with some astrological chart-casting shareware I’d pulled down from the Internet. But however she’d reached her conclusion, Dorothea was right. “I couldn’t say,” I lied, determined to show her my skepticism. “Gloria can give you my details.”
