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 Shelley 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 assault 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 bastard 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 fucking bitch,’ 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
