Star Struck (13 page)

Gloria frowned. “It’s nice of you to offer, but I could do with being in my own space. I need to feel grounded. And I don’t want to be under your feet. You’re going to have to get stuck into your inquiries tomorrow, and I don’t want to get in the road.”

“I don’t want to leave you on your own. Even behind those high walls.” I thought for a moment, then pulled over to the roadside and took out my phone. A couple of phone calls and I had it sorted. It meant an awkward detour via the students’ union, but as soon as Gloria saw Donovan in all his hulking glory, she was perfectly happy for me to hoof it the mile across town to my house while she disappeared over the hills and far away with the best-looking bodyguard either side of the Pennines. The only question was whether she’d still respect him in the morning.

I stepped out briskly. The temperature was plummeting now the sleet had stopped, the pavements rapidly icing over. Twice the only thing that saved me from crashing to the pavement was a handy lamppost. All I wanted was to curl up in my dressing gown with a very large amount of Absolut Citron and a smudge of grapefruit juice. With luck, Richard might be home early, preferably armed with a substantial Chinese. He always says Friday night is amateurs’ night out as far as live music is concerned. I could almost taste the salt and pepper king prawns.

I should have known better. Nights like that just don’t get better. The man I suppose I love was home all right. But not home alone. I found him fast asleep in his bed, his arms around someone else. When I walked into the room, her eyes snapped open. She took one look at me and screamed.

Sensible girl.

MERCURY IN VIRGO IN THE 5TH HOUSE
She can turn her hand to anything. She has a discriminating intellect but tends to be overcritical of herself and others in times of stress. She analyzes problems with tenacity and is capable of painstaking research. She is logical, skeptical and can be obsessive.
From
Written in the Stars
, by Dorothea Dawson

Divorce may have deprived Richard of most of the last five years of his son Davy’s life, but because a lot of his work is done at night, he did most of the daytime childcare for the first three. Thankfully the old skills hadn’t deserted him. That meant I didn’t have to take any responsibility for the most remarkable child on the planet (if you believed Alexis and Chris). I watched with a mixture of relief and astonishment as he spooned greyish-pink mush into the eager mouth of his nine-month-old girlfriend. He managed it almost without looking, and without ever breaking off in mid-sentence. He’d already changed a nappy without flinching, which was a long way away from my idea of getting the day off to a good start.

I remember when northern men would have died rather than admit they knew how Pampers worked. Now, they pin you to the wall in café bars and tell you it’s possible for men to produce tiny amounts of breast milk. Certainly, Jay’s arrival had already achieved the seemingly impossible task of ending the superficial hostilities between Alexis and Richard. Before Jay, Alexis maintained she was a real journo and Richard a sycophant; Richard that he was a real journo and Alexis a police lackey. Work never entered their conversations any more.

As he did about once a week, Richard had taken Jay for the night to give Chris a chance at a straight eight hours. Oddly, when Jay

“So what are your plans for today?” Richard asked as we sat in the conservatory watching wet snow cascading from the sky.

“I’ve got Donovan minding Gloria, so I probably don’t need to go over there. I’ve told him she’s to stay indoors, but looking at the weather, I don’t think there’ll be much temptation to leave the fireside. I’m going to do some background research in the
Chronicle
library so I can start asking sensible questions about Dorothea Dawson.”

“Great,” he said enthusiastically. “You can take Jay in with you. I was supposed to drop her at the
Chronicle
crèche so Alexis can pick her up, but if you’re going in anyway, I can stay home and get on with some writing.”

Time for the application of the Kate Brannigan irregular verb theory of life. In this case, “I am diplomatic, you are economical with the truth, s/he is a lying little gobshite.” “No problem,” I said. Why should I mind drumming my fingers on the table while Richard finished feeding her, changing her, swaddling her for the outside world, swapping the baby seat from his car to mine then strapping her in? It wasn’t as if I had anything important like a murder to solve, after all.

I eventually tracked Alexis down in the office canteen. “Your daughter is in the crèche,” I told her. “So’s her car seat.”

“That’s great,” she said. “I’ll bob along in a minute and say hello. We really appreciate it, you know. It’s the only time we get a decent night’s sleep. She been OK?”

“As far as I know. She screamed her socks off when I got home last night, but that’s just because she can’t stand any competition for Richard’s attention. So I left them to it. She probably had a better night’s sleep than I did.”

Alexis shook her head, smiling. “I know you love her really.”

She knew more than I did. I smiled vacantly and said, “Dorothea Dawson.”

“She didn’t see that coming, did she?”

I love journalistic black humor. It always comforts me to know there are people more cynical than me around. “What’s this morning’s story?”

“What’s your interest?” she asked, instantly on the alert. Her cigarettes came out and she lit one for real.

“I found the body.”

Alexis ran her free hand through her hair so it stood up in a punk crest. “Shit,” she said. “The bizzies never said anything about that at the press conference. They said the body had been discovered by a member of staff, the lying gets.”

“You’re surprised?”

“No. Cliff Jackson would superglue his gob shut before he let the name ‘Brannigan’ pass his lips. Unless the sentence also contained the words, ‘has been charged with.’ So give, KB. A first-person color piece, that’s just what I need for the city final.” Her notebook had appeared on the table.

“What are they saying?”

“That she was killed in her camper van in the car park of the NPTV compound by a blow to the head around six last night. And that’s about all. What can you give me?”

I sighed. “It isn’t exactly something I want to dwell on. I needed to talk to Dorothea about the warning she’d given Gloria the last time she’d done a reading for her. I’d arranged to see her after her final client of the day. When I got there, I knocked but there was no reply. I knew she was expecting me, so I opened the door and walked in. She was lying face down on the table with her head caved in. It was obvious she was dead. Her crystal ball was lying on the carpet at the end of a track of blood. It looked to me as if that’s what the killer used. It’s much bigger than the usual crystal ball. It must be nine, ten inches across.”

Alexis nodded as she took notes. “She was famous for it. Claimed it came from some mystical mountain mine. Me, I reckon it came from Pilkington Glass at St Helens.” She gave me an apologetic grin. “Sorry about this but … How did you feel?”

“Sick. Can we talk about something else?”

“What, like Cliff Jackson’s marital problems?”

“He’s got marital problems?”

Alexis nodded, a grim little smile on her face. “In spades. His wife’s run off with another bloke.”

“What took her so long?”

“She probably couldn’t find the key to the handcuffs. The best bit, though, is who she’s run off with.” Alexis paused for effect. I rotated my wrist in the classic “get on with it” gesture. “His oldest lad’s in his second year at Liverpool University. His wife’s only run off with the lad’s best mate.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Would I lie to you?”

“How long have you been sitting on this?” I demanded.

“I only found out this morning. I was trying to get a comment from Jackson and he was going totally ballistic. I know one of his DCs from way back, so I cornered her and asked why Jackson was being even more of a pain than usual and she told me. So don’t expect any favors.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” I grinned. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke, though. By the way, did you get anywhere in tracking down who was the source of your story about me minding Gloria?”

Alexis savored her last mouthful of smoke and regretfully crushed the stub in the ashtray. “One of those things. Every Friday, the news credits book goes up to accounts so the payments can be processed. It doesn’t come back till Monday morning. I was too late getting to it yesterday. Sorry.”

“I’ll just have to possess my soul in patience,” I complained.

“So who was Dorothea’s last appointment with? Which member of the
Northerners
cast was the last person to see her alive?”

“You’ll have to ask Jackson that one.” I didn’t have much hope that I’d be able to keep Gloria’s name out of the papers, but the longer I could, the better for her. “Any chance I can pillage the library? I could use some background on Dorothea.”

“You digging into this, then?”

I shrugged. “If he’s not made an arrest overnight, the chances are Jackson’s stuck. Which means he’ll be wasting time making my

I could see from her eyes that Alexis didn’t believe a word of it, but she knew better than to try to push me in a direction I didn’t want to travel. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” she said. “Come on, I’ll sort you out.”

Ten minutes later, I was beginning to wish I hadn’t asked. A stack of manila files six inches deep contained the
Chronicle
’s archive on Dorothea Dawson, newly returned from the news reporters who had been writing the background feature for that day’s paper. Another two ten-inch stacks contained the last year’s cuttings about
Northerners
.

I tore a hole in the lid on the carton of coffee I’d brought up from the canteen, took the cap off my pen and began to explore Dorothea Dawson’s past.

I’d got as far as her early TV appearances when Alexis burst in, a fresh cigarette clamped between her teeth. The librarian shouted, “Crush that ash, shit-for-brains!” Alexis ignored him and grabbed my arm, hustling me out into the corridor.

“Where’s the fire? What the hell’s going on, Alexis?”

“Your mate Dennis has just been arrested for murder.”

I understood each of the words. But together they made no sense. “They think Dennis killed Dorothea Dawson?” I asked uncomprehendingly.

“Who said anything about Dorothea?”

“Alexis, just explain in words of one syllable. Please?”

“Some villain called Pit Bull Kelly was found dead early doors in one of the underground units in the Arndale. The place was empty, but apparently it had been squatted. According to my contact, they had a tip-off that it’d been Dennis who’d been using the place, and when they checked his fingerprints with records, they found them all over the place. So they’ve arrested him.”

I still couldn’t get my head round it. Dennis was a hard man, no stranger to violence. But for a long time, he’d not lifted a hand in anger to anyone. The crimes he’d committed had all been

“Calm down, KB,” Alexis said pointlessly as I passed her.

“I don’t want to be calm,” I shouted over my shoulder. “Sometimes I get fed up with calm.” I half ran down the corridor and, too wound up to wait for the lift, started down the stairs. I could hear Alexis’s feet pounding down behind me. “He’s not a killer, Alexis,” I shouted up at her. “He loves his wife, he loves his daughter too much. He wouldn’t do this to them.”

Her footsteps stopped. I could hear her gasping for breath. “Phone me,” she managed to get out.

I didn’t bother to reply. I was too agitated. Alexis would forgive me, I knew that. Specifically, she’d forgive me when she got the inside story. At the bottom of the stairwell, I pushed open the door to the car park and got into my car. My breath was coming in deep gulps and my hands were shaking. I realized it was probably delayed shock from the night before kicking in as soon as my defenses were down. I was close to Dennis, but not that close, I told myself.

When my pulse was back within the normal range, I took my phone out and dialled the number of Ruth Hunter’s moby. If being hated by the police and the judiciary is a measure of success in criminal defense work, Ruth must be one of the best solicitors in the North West. Behind her back, they call her firm Hunter, Killer & Co. A big woman in every sense of the word, she sails into court in her bespoke tailoring like an outsize catwalk queen and rips the Crown Prosecution case to rags. If she didn’t have clients, I suspect she’d do it anyway, just for the hell of it. She drives Officer Dibble wild by turning up to cop shops in the middle of the night in her millionaire husband’s Bentley Mulsanne turbo. She can park that car in streets where my Rover would be stripped to the chassis in ten minutes and know it’ll be there unscathed when she comes

“Ruth Hunter,” the voice said briskly.

“It’s Kate. I heard about Dennis.”

“What took you so long?” she asked drily. “It’s at least three hours since they lifted him.”

“Are they charging him?”

“I can’t talk now as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.”

That meant she was in a police station, probably with a custody sergeant breathing down her neck. “When can we talk?”

“Your office, three o’clock.”

“I’ll be there. Should I go and see his wife?”

“I’d leave it for now. Maybe tomorrow. Things are a little … volatile at the moment. I’ll see you later.” The line went dead.

I could imagine. Most of the contents of the glass cupboard were probably in bits. Debbie’s never had a problem expressing her emotions and Dennis was on his final warning following the twelvemonth stretch he’d recently done. She’d told him then, one more serious nicking and she’d file for divorce. She’d probably started shredding his suits by now, unless she was saving that for when they charged him.

The clock said half past eleven. I couldn’t face sitting in the
Chronicle
library for another three hours, and I didn’t want to kick my heels at home. It’s ironic. I spend half my life complaining that I never have time to do my washing or ironing, then when I get a couple of hours to myself, I’m too wound up to do anything constructive. I needed to find something that would make me feel like I was being effective. Then I remembered Cassandra Cliff. Cassie had once been one of the household names among the stars of
Northerners
. Then some creepy hack had left no stone unturned to find the slug who revealed that years before she’d been cast as Maggie Grimshaw, the bitch goddess gossip queen of
Northerners
, Cassie had been Kevin.