Val McDermid – Star Struck (страница 9)

‘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?’