Dead Beat Part 4

I eventually settled on my course of action. More lies. If my childhood Sunday School teacher ever finds out about me, she'll put me straight to the top of the list for the burning fire. I walked up the path and turned the door handle. I walked into a clean, airy hallway painted white with grey carpeting. A large sign pointing to the left read 'All visitors please report to reception.'

For once, I did as I was told and walked into a small, tidy office. Behind a wide desk, a mop of carrot red hair was bent over a pile of papers so high it almost hid its owner from view. I felt a pang of sympathy. I knew just how she felt. My own hatred of paperwork is so strong that I ignore it till Sh.e.l.ley practically locks me in my office with dire threats of what she'll do to me if I dare to emerge before it's finished. It's just the same at home; if I didn't force myself to sit down once a month and pay all the bills, the bailiffs would be a permanent fixture on the doorstep.

As the reception door closed behind me, a pale, freckled face looked up. 'Hi, can I help you?' she asked in a tired voice.

'I don't know, but I hope so,' I replied with my most ingratiating smile. 'I was wondering if you needed any volunteer workers here right now?'

The tiredness evaporated from her face and she grinned. 'Music to my ears!' she exclaimed. 'Those are the first good words I've heard today. Sit down, make yourself comfortable.' She gestured expansively at the two worn office chairs on my side of the desk. As I settled on the less dilapidated one, she introduced herself. 'I'm Jude. I'm one of the project's three full-time employees. We're always desperate for volunteers and fund-raisers.' She opened a drawer and took out a long form. 'Do you mind if I fill this out while we talk? I know I'm being quick off the mark, but it saves time in the long run if you do decide to help us.'

I shook my head. 'No problem. My name's Kate Barclay.' I knew Richard wouldn't mind me borrowing his name. After all, he knew I'd never be making the loan permanent.

'And where do you live, Kate?' Jude asked, scribbling furiously. I plucked a number out of the air and attached it to Leeds Road, which I knew was long enough to reduce the chances of her knowing a near neighbour.

We went through the formalities quickly. I told her I'd been working abroad as a teacher and that I'd just moved to Bradford with my boyfriend. I explained I'd heard about the project from the city council's voluntary services unit and had come along to offer my services. All the while, Jude nodded and wrote on her form. At the end of my recital, she looked up and said, 'Have you any experience with this kind of work?'

'Yes. That's why I came to you. We've been living in Antwerp for the last three years and I did some work with a drug rehabilitation charity there,' I lied fluently.

'Right,' said Jude. 'I'd no idea they ran something like that in Antwerp.'

I smiled sweetly and refrained from saying that that's why I'd chosen the Belgian city. No one in Britain has ever been to Antwerp, though I don't know why. It's more attractive, interesting and friendly than almost any other city I've ever been to. It's where Bill's parents came from originally and he still has a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins there that he visits regularly. I've been over with him a couple of times, and fell in love with it at first sight. I always use Antwerp now for obscure cover stories. No one ever questions it. Jude was no exception. She swallowed my story, made a note on her form then got to her feet.

'What I'll do is show you round now, to let you see exactly what we've got going here. Then I suggest you come to our weekly collective meeting tomorrow evening and see if you feel you'll fit in with us, and we feel we'll fit in with you,' she added, moving towards the door.

My heart sank. The thought of enduring a meeting of the Seagull Project's collective filled me with gloom. I hate the endless circular debate of collectives. I like decisions to be made logically, with the pros and cons neatly laid out. I know all the theory about how consensus is supposed to make everyone feel they have a stake in the decisionmaking. But in my experience, it usually ends up with everyone feeling they've been hard done by. I couldn't imagine any reason why the Seagull Project would be any different.

I hid my despair behind a cheerful smile and followed Jude on her tour of the building. My target was clearly the second room we entered. There were filing cabinets the length of one wall and an IBM PC clone on one of the two desks. As well as its hard disc drive, I noted a slot for 5.25 floppies. A man in his early thirties was sitting at the computer keyboard, and Jude introduced him as Andy.

Andy looked up and grinned vaguely at me before returning to his keyboard.

'The filing cabinets hold details of all the clients we've had through here, all the other agencies we work with, and all our workers. We're trying to transfer all our records to computer, most recent cases first, but it's going to take a while,' Jude explained as we left Andy to his task. I noticed that the only lock on the door was a simple Yale.

The other office on the ground floor was the fund-raising office. Jude explained that Seagull was kept on the wing by a mixture of local authority and national grants and charitable donations. The staff consisted of herself as administrator, a psychiatrist and a qualified nurse. They had an arrangement with a local inner-city group practice, and there were always a few biomedical sciences students from the university who were glad to help.

The first floor contained a couple of consulting rooms, two meeting rooms and a common room for the addicts who were living in. On the top floor, addicts in the early stages of kicking heroin sweated and moaned through the first weeks of their agony. If they made it through that, they moved on to a halfway house owned by the project, which tried to find them permanent jobs and homes well away from the temptations of their old stamping grounds. The whole place seemed clean and cheerful, if threadbare, and I thought that Moira could have done a lot worse for herself.

'We run an open door policy here,' Jude explained as we made our way back downstairs. 'We have to. As it is, we have to turn more away than we can treat. But they're free to go any time. That way, if they make it they know they've done it themselves and not had a cure imposed on them. We believe it makes them less likely to fall into the habit again.'

I knew better than to ask about their success rate. It would only depress Jude to talk about it, and she seemed so happy to have a new volunteer on her hands I didn't want to disappoint her any more than I was going to have to do anyway. As we reached the front door, I shook Jude's hand and asked when I should turn up the following evening.

'Come about half-past eight,' she said. 'The meeting starts at seven, but we have a lot of confidential stuff to get through first. You'll have to ring the bell when you get here because the front door's locked at six.'

'Open door policy?' I queried.

'To keep people out, not in,' Jude pointed out with a wry smile. 'See you then.'

'I can hardly wait,' I muttered under my breath as I walked down the path and headed back to the car. I felt a complete s.h.i.+t, having raised her hopes of finding another volunteer. Maybe I could pitch Jett into giving them a substantial donation once I'd reunited him with Moira. After all, he'd said he'd be happy to give everything he owned to get her back.

It was just after eight when I drew up at the foot of the carriage turning-circle outside Colcutt Manor. On the way back to Manchester, I'd dictated a report for Sh.e.l.ley to type up and fax to Jett so he'd know I wasn't just sitting around collecting my daily retainer. I pulled off the motorway to hit the ASDA superstore. I wandered around the aisles trying to fill my trolley only with the essential items on my mental shopping list, but I fell by the wayside at the deli counter, as usual, and loaded up with a dozen little treats to cheer myself up. Then I called the manor to ask for the fax number. I asked to speak to Jett. That was my first mistake.

'I'm sorry, Jett's unavailable at present,' Gloria informed me, unable to keep the spark of pleasure from her voice.

'Gloria,' I warned, 'I haven't got the energy to play games right now. Let me speak to him, please.'

'He really is unavailable,' she protested, her voice going from silky to sulky. 'They're in the recording studio. But he left a message for you,' she admitted grudgingly.

'And are you going to tell me or are we going to play twenty questions?'

'Jett said that he wants you to come round and give him a progress report.'

'I have a progress report right here. I'm about to drop it off in my secretary's in-tray. It'll be on your desk tomorrow morning,' I told her.

'He wants you here in person,' she retorted smugly.

I sighed. 'I'll be there in an hour.' I dropped the phone back in the cradle and stomped back to the car. Unfortunately, the trolley wouldn't go in a straight line, so the effect wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. Luckily there were no small children around to laugh. That saved me the aggravation of an a.s.sault charge.

I really wasn't in the mood for trekking over to Colcutt. Apart from anything else, my carton of double choc chip ice-cream would have melted by the time I got home. But I couldn't see any alternative. If I refused, it would give Gloria more ammunition than she'd need to see me off. Besides, we were charging Jett such astronomical fees I could hardly deny him a face-to-face. Maybe I could ask permission to put my ice-cream in their freezer.

At least Gloria had grown out of the silly childishness with the entryphone. This time she let me in right away. I was surprised to find the circle in front of the house crammed with the kind of motors the likes of me don't even know the price of. Top of the range Mercs, BMWs, even a couple of Porsches. It looked like a march past of Billy Smart's hire cars. For somebody who was working hard only an hour ago, Jett sure knew how to throw an impromptu party I thought as I opened the front door to a blast of Queen.

I looked uncertainly round the hall, not sure where to start a search for Jett. The music seemed to be coming from everywhere rather than one specific room, though the noise of raised voices was definitely on the left somewhere. I'd just set off on the long walk to what was probably once the ballroom when Tamar practically flattened me as she bounced out of a loo tucked under the stairs.

She giggled tipsily as I grabbed at her to steady myself. 'Well, well, well,' she gurgled. 'If it isn't our very own Sherlock Holmes. Come to check your burglar alarms, have you? Well, you've picked the wrong night.'

I pasted a smile on my tired face. 'Why's that, Tamar?'

'Celebration. World and his dog all celebrating the fact that we've finally got one b.a.s.t.a.r.d track that everyone's happy with. Jett's actually managed to write something that hasn't put the entire household to sleep.' She hiccuped and pulled away from me to head unsteadily towards the din. 'Whoops,' she muttered. 'Not supposed to say that to the hired help. Anyway, what exactly are you doing here?' she added, pirouetting so that her sequinned jacket sparkled, and fixing me with a bleary stare.

'Jett wanted to see me,' I said. Well, it was more or less true.

'About burglar alarms? At this time of night? Today?' Then the incredulity vanished from her voice, replaced by suspicion. 'You're not really installing a new alarm, are you?'

I shrugged. It wasn't my job to tell her my business. Apart from the rules of confidentiality, if Jett hadn't told her what I was doing, I certainly wasn't about to bring her wrath down on my head. 'That f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h,' she swore under her breath. She tossed her expensively tousled hair back from her forehead and stormed down the hall. Curious, I followed her back towards the front door and into the office, where Gloria sat at her word processor, apparently doing the housekeeping accounts, judging by the pile of bills beside her. She glanced up at Tamar, then coolly carried on typing.

'You told me she was here to sort out a burglar alarm,' Tamar accused Gloria, a mottled flush rising from her neck to her cheeks.

Gloria's fingers didn't even falter. 'And that's what I'll tell you now if you ask properly instead of barging in here like a spoilt child,' she said primly. She stopped typing and ran a hand over her blonde hair, pulled back so tightly that in the light from her desk lamp it looked like it had been painted on.

'She's looking for Moira, isn't she?' Tamar raged.

'Why don't you ask Jett? He'll tell you anything he wants you to know,' Gloria replied insultingly. I almost wished Tamar would flatten her. It would have made my day, and I wouldn't mind betting I wouldn't have been alone.

Instead, Tamar, who seemed to have sobered up under the influence of so much adrenalin, pushed past me and went back up the hall at a speed I wouldn't have believed possible on four-inch stilettos. I threw a vague smile in Gloria's direction and followed her. The cabaret was worth the trip.

I caught up with Tamar on the threshold of what looked like it had once been a Regency ballroom. The plaster swags were still in place. But everything had been painted gold and black. It would have given the National Trust an apoplexy, or a surfeit, or one of those other things they were always dying of way back then. There were no Regency bucks there tonight, however, just a couple of dozen ageing rockers with a fascinating array of bimbettes on their knees, arms or various other parts of their anatomy. It was hard to tell in the dim light.

Jett was leaning on the gilded mantelpiece, his arm round Kevin in a friendly sort of way. As we approached, I could see the unfocused look of a man who is on his way to being seriously drunk. It was quite an achievement for someone who had been in the studio just over an hour before. It must have been some track he'd just laid down. Tamar landed like a cloudburst on his parade.

'Why didn't you tell me she was looking for Moira?' she hissed.

Jett turned away from us and stared bleakly at the wall. Tamar grabbed his arm and repeated her question. Kevin quickly moved behind her, gripped her tightly above both elbows and stepped back. She had no choice but to move with him. Using the same grip, he turned her round and frogmarched her out of the door. She was so astonished she didn't say a word till they were halfway across the room. But then her yells caused less of a stir than a mugging in Moss-side. As far as everyone else was concerned, it was just a bit of good clean fun.

I moved closer to Jett. 'You wanted a report,' I said. 'I'm making progress. I know where she was a few months ago. By tomorrow night, I should have a current address.'

He turned his head to face me. When I got a whiff of the alcohol on his breath, I wished he hadn't bothered. 'Is she all right?' he slurred.

There wasn't a way to soften the blow. I called it like I saw it. 'She might be. She was on the streets, Jett. She was doing smack as well. But she'd checked into a clinic to clean herself up. Like I say, I'll know more tomorrow. I'll fax you a full update in the morning.' He didn't look like he was in the mood for details now.

He nodded. 'Thanks,' he mumbled. I felt like the last of the great party p.o.o.pers as I trudged across the room. I found Tamar halfway up the stairs, just where they split into two. Tears had done serious damage to her make-up. She looked like an aerial shot of a war zone. 'Don't bring her back,' she pleaded with me. 'You'll spoil everything.'

I sat down beside her. 'What makes you think that?'

'You wouldn't understand,' she said, pus.h.i.+ng herself upright. She ran a hand through her hair like a tragedy queen. 'Your kind never do. You just create havoc and walk away. Well, I'm telling you n.o.body wants Moira back. Not even Jett, not deep down. He doesn't want her back out of love, or out of his desperation to make a good alb.u.m. He wants her back so he can play the lead in the parable of the prodigal son,' she complained cynically. 'The thing he needs most of all right now is to feel good about himself, and she's the perfect vehicle. I mean, where's the kick in getting it on with me? I don't need saving, I don't need putting on track in my karmic journey. Moira's a f.u.c.king G.o.dsend, literally.'

She looked as if she was going to say more, but Kevin appeared at the head of the stairs. 'For G.o.d's sake, Tamar, pull yourself together. I don't b.l.o.o.d.y want it any more than you do. But at least if you keep him happy, maybe he won't fall for her s.h.i.+t again. OK?'

He glared at me as he came downstairs. 'Thanks for your contribution to the celebrations,' he said sarcastically. 'Have you found her yet?'

I shook my head.

'Good,' he commented bitterly. 'Take as long as you like. I'd rather pay your exorbitant fees for six months than have her back here.' That made me realize just how serious Kevin was about Moira.

Tamar sighed and headed upstairs. I followed Kevin down to the hall, in time to see Gloria lock her office behind her and head towards the ballroom. Good old Gloria. Nothing could make everyone's life a misery like her literal interpretation of the boss's instructions. Now she'd be able to toddle off and offer the hero a shoulder to cry on. He sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't be getting any offers of comfort from Tamar tonight.

10.

I dropped the tape off in Sh.e.l.ley's in-tray and headed home, determined to have some time to myself. I was in luck. Richard had gone to sit in on an Inspiral Carpets rehearsal session. The first time he'd come home talking about the band, I couldn't believe my ears. Thought he'd finally started taking an interest in interior design. Silly me.

After a languid bath, I booted up the computer. Until I met Bill, I'd always thought people who played computer games were intellectual pygmies. But Bill introduced me to role-playing adventures, so different from arcade shoot-em-ups that I can hardly bring myself to mention them in the same breath. The way the games work is that the player takes on the role of a character in the story, explores locations, achieves tasks, and solves complex puzzles. A really good game can take me up to a couple of months to complete. From there, I discovered strategy simulations, and that was the end of my relations.h.i.+p with the television set. Can't say it shows signs of missing me.

I loaded up Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry and spent a bawdy hour as the eponymous medallion man in the white polyester suit, looking for love in all the wrong places, from a wh.o.r.e's boudoir to a filthy toilet. I've played the game half a dozen times, but it's one of the old favourites I always go back to whenever I want to relax rather than stretch my mind on a fresh set of puzzles. By the time I went to bed, I was feeling more laid back than any carpet, inspiral or otherwise. I almost didn't mind when the alarm went off at six, catapulting me into another wonderful day of chasing the Smarts. We'd been to Glasgow and back by mid-afternoon, when I abandoned them to the delights of a late lunch in Chinatown and headed back to the office with a takeaway pizza, calabrese with onion and extra cheese. Sh.e.l.ley gave me a filthy look as the smell filled her office, so I skulked off to my own cubbyhole where I tried to type up my surveillance report without getting mozzarella on the keys.

The drive back to Bradford to the strains of Tina Turner almost seemed relaxing after the stresses of chasing Billy and Gary up the motorway. But I couldn't afford to let myself become too confident. The hardest part of the day still lay ahead. I sat in the car till half-past seven, then walked up the path to the Seagull Project. I rang the bell and waited.

After a few minutes, I heard feet thundering down the stairs and the door was opened by Andy. He looked surprised to see me. 'I've come for the meeting,' I told him. 'I know I'm early, but I was in the area, and I thought I could wait inside rather than go to the pub on my own.' I gave him the full hundred-watt smile.

He shrugged and said, 'I don't see a problem with that. Come on in. You can wait in Jude's office.' I followed him through and sat down, pulling a Marge Piercy novel out of my bag and trying to look as if I were settled for the evening.

'Help yourself to a coffee,' he said, gesturing towards a tray containing all the paraphernalia for brewing up. 'Someone'll come down for you when we're ready. I'm afraid it'll be about three quarters of an hour at least.'

'Thanks,' I said absently, already appearing immersed in my book. I waited till I heard his footsteps reach the top of the stairs, then I counted a hundred elephants. I put my book away and moved quietly across the room. I inched the door open and listened. There was a distant hum of conversation, too low to make out individual voices.

I pulled the door further open and stuck my head into the hall. If I'd seen anyone, I was looking for the loo. But the coast was clear. There was no one in the hall or on the stairs. I crept out of the room, closing the door quietly behind me, and moved quickly across the hall and down the side of the stairs towards the room where the records were kept. I paused outside the door.

My hands were slippery with nervous sweat, so I wiped them on my trousers before taking an out-of-date credit card from my pocket. I'm not bad at picking locks, thanks to Dennis the burglar, but with a simple Yale, the old credit card trick is quicker and leaves fewer traces if you're an amateur like me. I turned the door handle with one hand, and with the other, I slid the card between the door and the lintel. At first, it wouldn't budge and I could feel a trickle of sweat running down between my shoulder blades. I took the card out, took three deep breaths, listening all the time for noise from upstairs, then tried again.

This time, the lock slipped back and the door opened. I hurried into the room and closed the door behind me, flipping up the catch to double-lock it. I leaned against the door and found myself panting. I forced myself to breathe normally and took stock of my surroundings. First, I examined the filing cabinets. I soon found a drawer marked 'Clients. O-R'. It was locked.

Fortunately, the Seagull Project didn't just hand out charity. It had clearly been on the receiving end as far as the elderly filing cabinets were concerned. With new cabinets, you actually have to pick the locks. But with ones of this vintage, I could forget about the set of lock-picks I'd bought from Dennis. I inched the cabinet away from the wall and pushed the top, tipping it back. Cautiously, keeping it in place, I crouched down and slipped my hand underneath. I groped around till I found the lock bar and pushed it upwards. The sound of the bar releasing the locked drawers was sweet to my ears. I carefully let the cabinet down and pushed it back into place. It had taken me nearly five minutes. I flicked hastily through the files and found a cardboard folder marked 'Pollock, M'. I pulled it out. It was worryingly slim and when I opened it I discovered why. It contained only one sheet of paper. My heart sank as I read it. 'Moira Pollock. File transferred to computer 16th February.'

I swore under my breath and turned to the computer. The perfect end to a perfect day. I switched it on and sat down. As I'd expected, it wanted a pa.s.sword. I tried Seagull. No luck. Then Andrew. It's amazing how many people are stupid enough to use their own names as security pa.s.swords. Andy wasn't one of them. I thought hard. My next try had to be right. Like copy-protected games, most security programs only give you three attempts before they crash. I sat and stared into the screen, desperately racking my brains for inspiration.

Then it came to me. I crossed my fingers, said a swift prayer to the G.o.ds of the New Age and typed in JONATHAN. 'Thank you, Richard Bach,' I said softly as the menu appeared before me.

Once I was into the program, it didn't take me long to find Moira's records. I didn't have time to plough through them all then and there, but realizing I might have to steal some data from the computer, I'd taken the precaution of bringing a couple of blank floppies with me. I quickly made two copies of the file to be on the safe side, pocketed the discs and switched off the computer. So much for the Data Protection Act. I checked my watch and saw that it was nearly ten past eight. Time to get a move on.

At the door, I paused and listened. It seemed quiet, so I carefully released the lock catch and opened the door. I stepped into the hall with a sigh of relief and pulled the door to behind me. The noise of the lock snapping home sounded like a thunderclap. I didn't wait to see if that's how it sounded to anyone else. I raced down the hall and out of the front door. I didn't stop running till I got to the car.

I didn't like leaving the Seagull Project minus their new volunteer. But at least I'd managed to avoid the collective meeting. Besides, I figured that now she'd flown the nest, Moira might need my help more than them.

I arrived home just as Richard was leaving. When he saw me, his face lit up in my favourite cute smile and he leapt across the low fence that separates our front gardens. He pulled me into his arms in a comforting hug. Until I tried to relax into him, I hadn't realized how tense I still was after my burglary at Seagull.

'Hey, Brannigan!' he exclaimed. 'I'd given you up for dead. Come on, get your glad rags on and we'll go and paint the town.'

It was a tempting offer. I didn't keep the full range of software at home that we have in the office, and I knew that I couldn't read the disc I'd copied at the Seagull Project with what I had on my machine. I certainly couldn't face going into the office this late. Besides, it was Friday night and I felt ent.i.tled to time off for bad behaviour. 'Sounds like a good game,' I agreed.

I took a quick shower and blissfully pulled on a pair of clean toffee-coloured silk trousers that were my bargain of the year-a tenner in a reject shop. I added a cream camisole and a linen jacket, and half an hour after I got home, I was climbing into the pa.s.senger seat of Richard's hot pink Beetle convertible. I wriggled uncomfortably, then pulled out a handful of scrunched up papers from under me and tossed them on to the rest of the detritus in the back seat.

'This car's a health hazard,' I grumbled as I kicked Diet c.o.ke cans, old newspapers and cigarette packets aside in a bid to find some floor s.p.a.ce for my feet.

'It's my office,' he replied, as if that was some kind of reason for driving round in a dustbin.

'You leave it sitting around with the top down, and somebody's going to come along and mistake it for a skip. You'll come out one morning to find a mattress and a pile of builder's rubble in it,' I teased him, only half-joking.

Luckily for my eardrums, Richard was having a night off, so we avoided anywhere with live music. We ended up dancing the night away at one of the city's more intimate clubs. Afterwards, we went for a late Chinese, so it was after three when we finally crawled into bed, hungry for one thing only. And I don't mean s.e.x.

11.

I woke around noon to the electronic music of a computer game, and found Richard sitting naked in front of the screen playing Tetris. It's a game that sounds simple, but isn't. The object is to build a solid wall out of a random succession of differently shaped coloured bricks. Sounds boring, but the game has outsold every other computer game ever invented. Richard, like half the high-powered traders in the City, is addicted to it. Unlike the City superstars, however, Tetris is about Richard's limit when it comes to computers.