grinned, flashing a display of brilliant white teeth at me. ‘Come to the manor tomorrow about three,’ he said, not expecting any more problems.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know, Jett. We don’t usually touch missing persons.’
‘For me? As a personal favour?’
‘Like the one you’ve just done Richard?’
He winced. ‘OK, OK. Point taken. Look, Kate, I’m truly sorry about that. I shouldn’t have mentioned it to Richard and raised his hopes without clearing it with Kevin. When it comes to things like contracts, he’s the man who makes the decisions. He keeps me right. In the business side of things, he’s the boss. But this other thing, it’s personal. This is really important to me, Kate. Listening to what I want won’t cost you anything. Please,’ he added. I had the feeling it was a word he’d lost familiarity with.
Wearily, I nodded. ‘OK. Three o’clock. If I can’t make it, I’ll ring and rearrange it. But no promises.’
He looked as if I’d taken the weight of the world off his shoulders. ‘I appreciate it, Kate. Look, tell Richard what I said. Tell him I’m really sorry, would you? I’ve not got so many friends among the press that I can afford to lose my best one.’
I nodded and pushed my way through the crowds. By the time I’d reached the door, Jett and his problems were at the back of my mind. What was important to me now was helping Richard through the night.
When the alarm went off the following morning, Richard didn’t even stir. I slid out of bed, trying not to disturb him. If how I felt was any guide, he’d need at least another six hours’ sleep before he returned from Planet Hangover. I headed for the kitchen and washed down my personal pick-me-up. Paracetamol, vitamins C and B complex and a couple of zinc tablets with a mixture of orange juice and protein supplement. With luck, I’d rejoin the human race somewhere around Billy Smart’s house.
I had a quick shower, found a clean jogging suit and picked up a bottle of mineral water on the way out of the front door. Poor Richard, I thought as I slipped behind the wheel of the car and drove off. I’d caught up with him in the foyer, kicking his heels for want of a better target while he waited for a taxi. He’d been grimly silent all the way home, but as soon as he’d had half a pint of Southern Comfort and soda, he’d started ranting. I’d joined him in drink because I couldn’t think of anything else to do or say that would make it better. He’d been shat on from a great height, and that was an end to it. It didn’t make me feel any better about having agreed to Jett’s request for a meeting, but luckily Richard was too wrapped up in his own disappointment to wonder why it had taken me so long to catch up with him.
I drove through the pre-dawn deserted streets and took up my familiar station a few doors down from Billy’s house. It always amazes me that people don’t pick up on it when I’m staking them out. I suppose it’s partly that a Vauxhall Nova is the last car anyone would expect to be tailed by. The 1.4 SR model I drive looks completely innocuous – the sort of little hatchback men buy for their wives to go shopping in. But when I put my foot down, it goes like the proverbial shit off a shovel. I’ve followed Billy Smart to the garage where he swaps his hired cars every three days, I’ve tailed him in his Mercs and BMWs all over the country, and my confidence in my relative invisibility hasn’t been dented yet. The only worry I have on stakeouts is a uniquely female one. Men can pee in a bottle. Women can’t.
Luckily, I didn’t have long to hang around before Billy appeared. I sat tight while he did his routine once-round-the-block drive to check he had no one on his tail, then I set off a reasonable distance behind him. To my intense satisfaction, he followed the same routine he’d used on the previous Wednesday. He picked up brother Gary from his flat in the high-rise block above the Arndale shopping centre, then they went together to the little backstreet factory in the mean area dominated by the tall red-brick water tower of Strangeways Prison. They stayed in there for about half an hour. When they emerged they were carrying several bulky bundles wrapped in black velveteen, which I knew contained hundreds of schneid watches.
I had to stay close to their hired Mercedes as we wove through the increasing traffic, but by now I knew their routine and could afford to keep a few cars between us. True to the form of the last two weeks, they headed over the M62 towards Leeds and Bradford. I followed them as far as their first contact in a lock-up garage in Bradford, then I decided to call it a day. They were simply repeating themselves, and I already had photographs of the Wednesday routine from my previous surveillance. It was time for a chat with Bill. I also wanted to talk to him about Jett’s proposition.
I got back to the office towards the end of the morning. We have three small rooms on the sixth floor of an old insurance company building just down the road from the BBC Oxford Road studios. The best thing I can find to say about the location is that it’s handy for the local art cinema, the Cornerhouse, which has an excellent cafeteria. Our secretary Shelley looked up from her word processor and greeted me with ‘Wish I could start work at lunchtime.’
I was halfway through a self-righteous account of my morning’s work when I realized, too late as usual, that she was winding me up. I stuck my tongue out at her and dropped a micro-cassette on her desk. It contained my verbal report of the last couple of days. ‘Here’s a little something to keep you from getting too bored,’ I said. ‘Anything I should know about?’
Shelley shook her head, and the beads she has plaited into her hair rattled. I wondered, not for the first time, how she could bear the noise first thing in the morning. But then, since Shelley’s mission in life is keeping her two teenage kids out of trouble, I don’t think there are too many mornings when she wakes with a hangover. There are times when I could hate Shelley.
Mostly I find myself in her debt. She is the most efficient secretary I have ever encountered. She’s a 35-year-old divorcée who somehow manages to look like a fashion plate in spite of the pittance we pay her. She’s just under five feet tall, and so slim and fragile-looking that she makes even me feel like the Incredible Hulk. I’ve been to her cramped little two-up, two-down and in spite of living with a pair of teenagers, the house is spotlessly clean and almost unnaturally tidy. However, Richard has pointed out to me more than once that I am a subscriber to the irregular verb theory of language – ‘I have high standards, you are fussy, she is obsessive.’
She picked up the cassette and slotted it into her own player. ‘I’ll have it for you later this afternoon,’ she said.
‘Thanks. Copy in Bill’s system as well as mine, please. Is he free?’
She glanced at the lights on her PBX. ‘Looks like it.’
I crossed the office in four strides and knocked on Bill’s door. His deep voice growled, ‘Come in.’ As I shut the door behind me, he looked up from the screen of his turbo-charged IBM compatible and grunted, ‘Give me a minute, Kate.’ Bill likes things turbo-charged. Everything from his Saab 9000 convertible to his sex life.
There was a fierce frown of concentration on his face as he scanned the screen, tapping the occasional key. No matter how often I watch Bill at his computers, I still feel a sense of incongruity. He really doesn’t look like a computer boffin or a private investigator. He’s six foot three inches tall and resembles a shaggy blond bear. His hair and beard are shaggy, his eyebrows are shaggy over his ice blue eyes, and when he smiles his white teeth look alarmingly like the ones that are all the better to eat you with. He’s a one-man EC. I still haven’t got the hang of his ancestry, except that I know his grandparents were, severally, Danish, Dutch, German and Belgian. His parents settled over here after the war and have a substantial cattle farm in Cheshire. Bill shook them to the core when he announced he was more interested in megabytes than
