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 Art. 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 entitled 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 passenger 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 Coke cans, old newspapers and cigarette packets aside in a bid to find some floor space 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 sex.
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.
I pried him away from the screen not with the temptations of my body but with the offer of a pub lunch. He got up eagerly and went off to his house to have a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. What I had omitted to mention was that this was to be a working lunch. A couple of weeks ago, I had followed one of Billy Smart’s customers to a pub on the outskirts of Manchester. I wanted to take a look and see what was going on there. But a woman on her own would be both conspicuous and a target for the kind of assholes who think that a woman alone is desperate for their company. What better camouflage in a trendy young people’s fun pub than Richard?
We took my car, partly on environmental health grounds and partly so that Richard could have a drink. It took about twenty minutes to drive out to the pub in Worsley, a large 1950s tavern with a bowling green and a beer garden that ran down to the canal. The car park told me all I needed to know. Every car had its string of poser’s initials – GTI, XR3i, Turbo. I felt like a second-class citizen with a mere SR. Inside was no better. The interior had been completely revamped according to the chapter of the brewery bible headed ‘fun pub’. My first impression as we walked through the door was of pink neon and chrome. It looked like a tacky version of every New York bar featured in the teen movies of the last decade. I half-expected to find Tom Cruise throwing bottles around behind the bar.
I was out of luck. The barman who shimmied up to serve us looked more like a cruiserweight. While Richard ordered the drinks, I took a good look around. The pub was busy for a lunchtime. ‘Plenty of Traceys,’ Richard commented as he glanced round.
He wasn’t wrong. The women looked as if collectively they might just scrape together enough neurons for a synapse. The men looked as if they desperately wanted to be taken for readers of GQ magazine. One day, I’m going to find a pub where I feel equally comfortable with the staff, the decor, the clientele and the menu. I rate the chances of that as high as coming home to find Richard doing the spring-cleaning.
Richard handed me my orange juice and soda and I steered him over to a crowded corner of the lounge where I’d spotted my man. I’d briefed Richard on the way so he was happy to oblige. We sat down a few yards away at a table that gave me a good view of what my target was up to. He was sitting at a table with a bunch of eager young men and women around him. There was nothing particularly discreet about his operation. For a start, he was wearing a bright green Sergio Tacchini shell suit. In front of him on the table were half a dozen watches. I could identify the fake Rolexes and Guccis from that distance. Within minutes, all of them had been bought. He appeared to be charging fifty pounds a time, and getting it without a quibble. But he didn’t seem to be passing them off as the real thing. Realistically, though, anyone trying that routine would have to be a lot more discreet, dealing one on one to make it look like an exclusive.
Another half dozen watches appeared from Billy’s contact’s pockets, and most of them vanished as quickly as the others. He shuffled the remaining two back into his jacket then burrowed under the table. He surfaced with three cellophane packets containing shell suits. Surprise surprise. The suit he was wearing was a schneid.
‘Sometimes this job is a pain in the arse,’ I muttered to Richard.
He looked surprised. ‘Did I hear right?’ he asked in tones of wonderment. ‘Did I hear you say you were less than one hundred per cent thrilled with your life in crime?’
‘Piss off,’ I quipped wittily. ‘Just look at those shell suits! They’re the business. If this wasn’t a surveillance operation, I’d be over there right now buying those suits. Take a look at the colours!’ I couldn’t take my eyes off two of the suits, one gold, one teal blue. I just knew I’d look wonderful in those colours.
Richard got to his feet. ‘Poor old Brannigan,’ he teased. ‘But I’m not working.’ He moved towards the neighbouring table.
‘Richard!’ I wailed. A couple of heads turned and I lowered my voice to a piercing whisper. ‘Don’t you dare!’
He shrugged. ‘Who’s to know? Anybody asks you, I bought them for you as a present. You didn’t have to know they were copies, did you?’
‘That’s not the point,’ I hissed. ‘I do know. Sit down right now before you blow me out of the water.’
Richard reluctantly did as I asked him. His face had sulk written all over it. ‘I thought you wanted one,’ he muttered.
‘Of course I do. I also want a Cartier tank