Star Struck

‘Hale Barns. Chained to a lamppost, I hope.’

‘Let’s go back out there and do it,’ I sighed.

The leafy lanes of Hale Barns were dripping a soft rain down our necks as we walked along the grass verge that led to our target’s house. Wrought-iron gates stood open, revealing a long drive done in herringbone brick. There was enough of it there to build a semi. At the top of the drive, a matching pair of Mercedes sports cars were parallel parked. My heart sank. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I muttered.

We walked up the drive towards a vast white hacienda-style ranch that would have been grandiose in California. In Cheshire, it just looked silly. I leaned on the doorbell. There was a long pause, then the door swung silently open without warning. I recognized his face from the back pages of the Chronicle. For once, I didn’t have to check ID before I served the papers. ‘Yeah?’ he said, frowning. ‘Who are you?’

I leaned forward and stuffed the papers down the front of the towelling robe that was all he was wearing. ‘I’m Kate Brannigan, and you are well and truly served,’ I said.

As I spoke, over his shoulder, I saw a woman in a matching robe emerge from an archway. Like him, she looked as if she’d been in bed, and not for an afternoon nap. I recognized her from the Chronicle too. From the diary pages. Former model Bo Robinson. Better known these days as the wife of the man I’d just served with the injunction her solicitor had sweated blood to get out of a district judge.

Now I remembered what I’d hated most about my own days as a process-server.

The last thing Donovan had said before he’d pedalled off to the university library was, ‘Don’t tell my mum I got arrested, OK? Not even as a joke. Not unless you want her to put the blocks on me working for you again.’

I’d agreed. Jokes are supposed to be funny, after all. Unfortunately, the cops at Altrincham weren’t in on the deal. What I didn’t know was that while I’d been savouring the ambience of their lovely foyer (decor by the visually challenged, furnishings by a masochist, posters from a template unchanged since 1959) the desk sergeant had been calling the offices of Brannigan & Co to check that the auburn-haired midget and the giant in the sweat suit really were operatives of the agency and not a pair of smart-mouthed burglars on the make.

I’d barely put a foot inside the door when Shelley’s voice hit me like a blast furnace. ‘Nineteen years old and never been inside a police station,’ came the opening salvo. ‘Five minutes working with you, and he might as well be some smackhead from Moss Side. That’s it now, his name’s on their computer. Another black bastard who’s got away with it, that’s how they’ll have him down.’

I raised my palms towards her, trying to fend off her fury. ‘It’s all right, Shelley. He wasn’t formally arrested. They won’t be putting anything into the computer.’

Shelley snorted. ‘You’re so street smart when it comes to your business. How come you can be so naive about our lives? You don’t have the faintest idea what it means for a boy like Donovan to get picked up by the police! They don’t see a hard-working boy who’s been brought up to respect his elders and stay away from drugs. They just see another black face where it doesn’t belong. And you put him there.’

I edged across reception, trying to make the safe haven of my own office without being permanently disabled by the crossfire. ‘Shelley, he’s a grown man. He has to make his own decisions. I told him when I took him on that serving process wasn’t as easy as it sounded. But he was adamant that he could handle it.’

‘Of course he can handle it,’ she yelled. ‘He’s not the problem. It’s the other assholes out there, that’s the problem. I don’t want him doing this any more.’

I’d almost reached the safety of my door. ‘You’ll have to take that up with Don,’ I told her, sounding more firm than I felt.

‘I will, don’t you worry about that,’ she vowed.

‘OK. But don’t forget the reason he’s doing this.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘It’s about independence. He’s trying to earn his own money so he’s not dipping his hand in your pocket all the time. He’s trying to tell you he’s a man now.’ I took a deep breath, trying not to feel intimidated by the scowl that was drawing Shelley’s perfectly shaped eyebrows into a gnarled scribble. My hand on the doorknob, I delivered what was supposed to be the knockout punch. ‘You’ve got to let him make his own mistakes. You’ve got to let him go.’

I opened the door and dived for safety. No such luck. Instead of silent sanctuary, I fell into nerd heaven. A pair of pink-rimmed eyes looked up accusingly at me. Under the pressure of Shelley’s rage, I’d forgotten that my office wasn’t mine any more. Now I was the sole active partner in Brannigan & Co, I occupied the larger of the two rooms that opened off reception. When I’d been junior partner in Mortensen & Brannigan it had doubled as Bill Mortensen’s office and the main client interview room. Now, it was my sanctum.

These days, my former bolthole was the computer room, occupied as and when the occasion demanded by Gizmo, our information technology consultant. In our business, that’s the polite word for hacker. And when it comes to prowling other people’s systems with cat-like tread, Gizmo is king of the dark hill. The trade off for his computer acumen is that on a scale of one to ten, his social skills come in somewhere around absolute zero. I’m convinced that was the principal reason he was made redundant from his job as systems wizard with Telecom. Now they’ve become a multinational leading-edge company, everybody who works there has to pass for human. Silicon-based life forms like Gizmo just had to be downsized out the door.

Their loss was my gain. There had had to be changes, of course. Plain brown envelopes stuffed with banknotes had been replaced with a system more appealing to the taxman, if not to the company accountant. Then there was the personal grooming. Gizmo had always favoured an appearance that would have served as perfect camouflage if he’d been living on a refuse tip.

The clothes weren’t so hard. I managed to make him stop twitching long enough to get the key measurements, then hit a couple of designer factory outlets during the sales. I was planning to dock the cost from his first consultancy fees, but I didn’t want it to terrify him too much. Now he had two decent suits, four shirts that didn’t look disastrous unironed, a couple of inoffensive ties and a mac that any flasher would have been proud of. I could wheel him out as our computer security expert without frightening the clients, and he had a couple of outfits that wouldn’t entirely destroy his street cred if another of the undead happened to be on the street in daylight hours to see him.

The haircut had been harder. I don’t think he’d spent money on a haircut since 1987. I’d always thought he simply took a pair of scissors to any stray locks whose reflection in the monitor distracted him from what he was working on. Gizmo tried to make me believe he liked it that way. It cost me five beers to get him to the point where I could drag him across the threshold of the city centre salon where I’d already had to cancel three times. The stylist had winced in pain, but had overcome his aesthetic suffering for long enough to do the business. Giz ended up with a seriously sharp haircut and I ended up gobsmacked that lurking underneath the shambolic dress sense and terrible haircut was a rather attractive man. Scary.

Three months down the line, he was still looking the business, his hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes fitting the current image of heroin addict as male glamour. I’d even overheard one of Shelley’s adolescent daughter’s mates saying she thought Gizmo was ‘shaggable’. That Trainspotting has a lot to answer for. ‘All right,’ he mumbled, already looking back at his screen. ‘You two want to keep the noise down?’

‘Sorry, Giz. I didn’t actually mean to come in here.’

‘Know what you mean,’ he said.

Before I could leave, the door burst open. ‘And another thing,’ Shelley said. ‘You’ve not done a new client file for Gloria Kendal.’

Gizmo’s head came up like it was on a string. ‘Gloria Kendal? The Gloria Kendal? Brenda Barrow-clough off Northerners?’

I nodded.

‘She’s a client?’

‘I can’t believe you watch Northerners,’ I said.

‘She was in here yesterday,’ Shelley said smugly. ‘She signed a photograph for me personally.’

‘Wow! Gloria Kendal. Cool! Anything I can do to help?’ The last time I’d seen him this excited was over an advance release of Netscape Navigator 3.0.

‘I’ll let you know,’ I promised. ‘Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I have some work to do.’ I smiled sweetly and sidled past Shelley. As I crossed the threshold, the outside door opened and a massive basket of flowers walked in. Lilies, roses, carnations, and a dozen other things I didn’t know the names of. For a wild moment, I thought Richard might be apologizing for the night before. He had cause, given what had gone on after Dennis had left. The thought shrivelled and died as hope was overtaken by experience.

‘They’ll be from Gloria Kendal,’ Shelley predicted.

I contradicted her. ‘It’ll be Donovan mortgaging his first month’s wages to apologize to you.’

‘Wrong address,’ Gizmo said gloomily. Given the way the day had been running, he was probably right.

‘Is this Brannigan and Co?’ the flowers asked. For such an exotic arrangement, they had a remarkably prosaic Manchester accent.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m Brannigan.’ I stepped forward expectantly.

‘They’re not for you, love,’ the voice said, half a face appearing round the edge of the blooms. ‘You got someone here called Gizmo?’

5

JUPITER IN CANCER IN THE 3RD HOUSE

Jupiter is exalted in Cancer. She has a philosophical outlook, enjoying speculative thinking. She is good humoured and generous, with strong protective instincts. Her intuition and imagination are powerful tools that she could develop profitably. She has a good business sense and communicates well in that sphere. She probably writes very thorough reports.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

It was hard to keep my mind on Gloria’s monologue on the way in to the studios the next morning. The conundrum of Gizmo’s mysterious bouquet was much more interesting than her analysis of the next month’s storylines for Northerners. When the delivery man had announced who the flowers were for, Shelley and I had rounded on Gizmo. Scarlet and stammering, he’d refused to reveal anything. Shelley, who’s always been quick on her feet, helped herself to the card attached to the bouquet and ripped open the envelope.

All it said was, ‘www gets real’. I know. I was looking over her shoulder. The delivery man had placed the flowers on Shelley’s desk and legged it. He’d clearly seen enough blood shed over bouquets to hang around. ‘So who have you been chatting up on the Internet?’ I demanded. ‘Who’s the cyberbabe?’

‘Cyberbabe?’ Shelley echoed.

I pointed to the card. ‘www. The worldwide web. The Internet. It’s from someone he’s met websurfing. Well, not actually met, as such. Exchanged e-mail with.’

‘Safer than body fluids,’ Shelley commented drily. ‘So who’s the cyberbabe, Gizmo?’

Gizmo shook his head. ‘It’s a joke,’ he said with the tentative air of a man who doesn’t expect to be believed. ‘Just the guys trying to embarrass me at work.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never met a techie yet who’d spend money on flowers while there was still software on the planet.’

‘Honest, Kate, it’s a wind-up,’ he said desperately.

‘Some expensive wind-up,’ Shelley commented. ‘Did one of your mates win the lottery, then?’

‘There is no babe, OK? Leave it, eh?’ he said, this time sounding genuinely upset.

So we’d left it, sensitive girls that we are. Gizmo retreated back to his hi-tech hermitage and Shelley shrugged. ‘No use looking at me, Kate. He’s not going to fall for the, “You can talk to me, I’m a woman, I understand these things,” routine. It’s down to you.’

‘Men never cry on my shoulder,’ I protested.

‘No, but you’re the only one around here who knows enough about computers to find who he’s been talking to.’

I shook my head. ‘No chance. If Gizmo’s got a cybersecret, it’ll be locked away somewhere I won’t be able to find it. We’ll just have to do this the hard way. First thing tomorrow, you better get on to the florist.’

Call me a sad bastard, but as I was driving Gloria to the studios, I was busy working out how we could discover Gizmo’s secret admirer if she’d been clever enough to cover her tracks on the flower delivery. So I almost missed it when Gloria asked me a question that needed more than a grunt in response. ‘So you don’t mind coming along tonight?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ I said, not quite certain what I’d agreed to.

‘I’m really buggering up your social life, chuck,’ she continued. ‘If you’ve got a fella you want to bring along, you’re welcome, you know.’

I must have shown how unlikely a prospect that was, since Gloria chuckled. ‘He’s a rock journalist,’ I said.

She roared with laughter. ‘Better not bring him anywhere I’m singing, then,’ she spluttered. ‘I’m too old to be insulted.’

By the time we reached the studios, the sky had clouded over and large raindrops were plopping on the windscreen. ‘Oh bugger,’ Gloria said.

‘Problems?’

‘We’re supposed to be filming outside this morning. When it’s raining like this, they’ll hang on to see if it clears up and fill the time with the indoor scenes scheduled for this afternoon. I’m not in any of them, so not only do I lose an afternoon off but I get a morning hanging around waiting for the weather to change.’ She rummaged in the bulging satchel that contained her scripts and pulled out a crumpled schedule. ‘Let’s see … Could be worse. Teddy and Clive are in the same boat. D’you play bridge, Kate?’

‘Badly. I haven’t played against humans since I was a student, and these days the computer usually gives me a coating.’

‘You can’t be worse than Rita Hardwick,’ she said firmly. ‘That’s settled then.’

‘Two spades,’ I said tentatively. My partner, Clive Doran (Billy Knowles, the crooked bookmaker with an eye for his female employees) nodded approval.

‘Pass,’ said Gloria.

‘Three hearts.’

‘Doubled,’ announced Teddy Edwards, Gloria’s screen husband, the feckless Arthur Barrowclough, cowboy builder and failed gambler. I hoped he had as much luck with cards in real life as he did on screen. What Gloria had omitted to mention in the car was that we were playing for 10p a point. I suppose she figured she was paying me so much she needed to win some of it back.

I looked at my hand. ‘Redoubled,’ I said boldly. Clive raised one eyebrow. My bid passed round the table, and we started playing. I soon realized that the other three were so used to each other’s game that they only needed a small proportion of their brains to choose the next card. The bridge game was just an excuse to gossip in the relative privacy of Gloria’s dressing room.

‘Seen the Sun this morning?’ Clive asked, casually tossing a card down.

‘It’d be hard to miss it,’ Gloria pointed out. ‘I don’t know about where you live, but every newsagent we passed on the way in had a board outside. Gay soap star exposed: Exclusive. I sometimes wonder if this is the end of the nineteenth century, not the twentieth. I mean, who gives a stuff if Gary Bond’s a poof? None of us does, and we’re the ones as have to work with the lad.’

‘They’re bloody idle, them hacks,’ Teddy grumbled, sweeping a trick from the table that I’d thought my ace of diamonds was bound to win.

Clive sucked his breath in over his teeth. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘It couldn’t have taken much digging out. It’s not like it’s a state secret, Gary being a homo. He’s always going on about lads he’s pulled on a night out in the gay village.’ Teddy sighed. ‘I remember when it were just the red light district round Canal Street. Back in them days, if you fancied a bit, at least you could be sure it was a woman under the frock.’

‘And it’s not as if he’s messing about with kids,’ Gloria continued, taking the next trick. ‘Nice lead, Teddy. I mean, Gary always goes for fellas his own age.’

‘There’s been a lot of heavy stories about Northerners lately,’ I said. I might be playing dummy in this hand, but that didn’t mean I had to take the job literally.

‘You’re not kidding,’ Clive said with feeling, sweeping his thin hair back from his narrow forehead in a familiar gesture. ‘You get used to living in a goldfish bowl, but lately it’s been ridiculous. We’re all behaving like Sunday-school teachers.’

‘Aye, but you can be as good as gold for all the benefit you’ll get if the skeletons are already in the cupboard,’ said Gloria. ‘Seventeen years since Tony Peverell got nicked for waving his willy at a couple of lasses. He must have thought that were dead and buried long since. Then up it pops on the front of the News of the World. And his wife a churchwarden.’ She shook her head. I remembered the story.

‘He quit the programme, didn’t he?’ I asked, making a note of our winning score and gathering the cards to me so I could shuffle while Gloria dealt the next hand with the other pack.

‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ Clive intoned. It would have sounded sinister from someone who didn’t have a snub nose and a dimple in his chin and a manner only marginally less camp than Kenneth Williams. It was hard to believe he was happily married with three kids, but according to Gloria, the limp-wristed routine was nothing more than a backstage affectation. ‘And I should know,’ she’d winked. I didn’t ask.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked now.

‘John Turpin’s what he means,’ Gloria said. ‘I told you about Turpin, didn’t I? The management’s hatchet man. Administration and Production Coordinator, they call him. Scumbag, we call him. Just a typical bloody TV executive who’s never made a programme all his born days but thinks he knows better than everybody else what makes good telly.’

‘Turpin’s in charge of cast contracts,’ Clive explained, sorting his cards. ‘So he’s the one who’s technically responsible when there’s a leak to the press. He’s been running around like all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled into one for the last six months. He threatens, he rants, he rages, but still the stories keep leaking out. One diamond.’

‘Pass. It drives him demented,’ Teddy said with a smug little smile that revealed rodent teeth.

‘One heart?’ I tried, wondering what message that was sending to my partner. When he’d asked what system of bidding I preferred, I’d had to smile weakly and say, ‘Psychic?’ He hadn’t looked impressed.

‘It’s not the scandals that really push his blood pressure through the ceiling. It’s the storyline leaks.’ Gloria lit a cigarette, eyeing Teddy speculatively. ‘Two clubs. Remember when the Sunday Mirror got hold of that tale about Colette’s charity?’

‘Colette Darvall?’ I asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘I must have missed that one,’ I said.

‘Two diamonds,’ Clive said firmly. ‘Off the planet that month, were you? When her daughter was diagnosed with MS, Colette met up with all these other people who had kids in the same boat. So she let them use her as a sort of figurehead for a charity. She worked her socks off for them. She was always doing PAs for free, giving them stuff to raffle, donating interview fees and all sorts. Then it turns out one of the organizers has been ripping the charity off. He legged it to the West Indies with all the cash. Which would have been nothing more than a rather embarrassing tragedy for everyone concerned if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate detail that he’d been shagging Colette’s brains out for the previous three months.’

‘Oops,’ I said.

‘By heck, you private eyes know how to swear, don’t you?’ Teddy said acidly. ‘I don’t think “oops” was quite what Colette was saying. But Turpin was all right about that. He stuck one of the press officers on her doorstep night and day for a week and told her not to worry about her job.’

‘That’s because having a fling with somebody else’s husband is sexy in PR terms, whereas flashing at schoolgirls is just sleazy,’ Clive said. ‘Have you taken a vow of silence, Teddy? Or are you going to bid?’

‘Oh God,’ Teddy groaned. ‘Who dealt this dross? I’m going to have to pass. Sorry, Glo.’

‘Pass,’ I echoed.

‘And I make it three in a row. It’s all yours, Clive.’ Gloria leaned back in her chair and blew a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘God, I love it when Rita’s not here to whinge about me smoking.’

‘Better not let Turpin catch you,’ Clive said.

‘He sounds a real prize, this Turpin,’ I said. ‘I met him yesterday and he was nice as ninepence to me. Told me nothing, mind you, but did it charmingly.’

‘Smooth-talking bastard. He did the square root of bugger-all about sorting out my security. Bloody chocolate teapot,’ Gloria said dismissively. ‘At least this latest furore about the future of the show has stopped him going on about finding out who’s leaking the storylines to the press.’

‘The future of the show? They’re surely not going to axe Northerners?’ It was a more radical suggestion than abolishing the monarchy, and one that would have had a lot more people rioting in the streets. For some reason, the public forgave the sins of the cast of their favourite soap far more readily than those of the House of Windsor, even though they paid both lots of wages, one via their taxes, the other via the hidden tax of advertising.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Gloria said. ‘Of course they’re not going to axe Northerners. That’d be like chocolate voting for Easter. No, what they’re on about is moving us to a satellite or cable channel.’

I stared blankly at her, the cards forgotten. ‘But that would mean losing all your viewers. There’s only two people and a dog watch cable.’

‘And the dog’s a guide dog,’ Teddy chipped in gloomily.

‘The theory is that if Northerners defects to one of the pay-to-view channels, the viewers will follow,’ Clive said. ‘The men in suits think our following is so addicted that they’d rather shell out for a satellite dish than lose their three times weekly fix of an everyday story of northern folk.’

‘Hardly everyday,’ I muttered. ‘You show me anywhere in Manchester where nobody stays out of work for more than a fortnight and where the corner shop, the fast-food outlet and the local newsagent are still run by white Anglo-Saxons.’

‘We’re not a bloody documentary,’ Teddy said. He’d clearly heard similar complaints before. His irritation didn’t upset me unduly, since it resulted in him throwing away the rest of the hand with one hasty lead.

‘No, we’re a fantasy,’ Clive said cheerfully, sweeping up the next trick and laying down his cards. ‘I think the rest are ours. What we’re providing, Kate, is contemporary nostalgia. We’re harking back to a past that never existed, but we’re translating it into contemporary terms. People feel alienated and lonely in the city and we create the illusion that they’re part of a community. A community where all the girls are pretty, all the lads have lovely shoulders and any woman over thirty-five is veneered with a kind of folk wisdom.’

I was beginning to understand why Clive hid behind the camp manner. Underneath it all there lay a sharper mind than most of his fellow cast members ever exhibited. He was just as self-absorbed as they were, but at least he’d given some thought to how he earned his considerable living. I bet that made him really popular in a green room populated by egos who were each convinced they were the sole reason for the show’s success. ‘So you reckon the tug of fantasy is so strong that the millions who tune in three times a week will take out their satellite subscriptions like a bunch of little lambs?’ I said, my scepticism obvious.