4a-8482-543b-adb5-efdee7c20d32">
VAL McDERMID
Blue Genes
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996 Copyright © Val McDermid 1996 The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780006498315 Ebook Edition © MAY 2009 ISBN: 9780007327577 Version: 2016-09-21
For Fairy, Lesley and all the other lesbian mothers who prove that moulds are there to be broken. And for Robyn and Andrew and Jack
Table of Contents The day Richard’s death announcement appeared in the Manchester Evening Chronicle, I knew I couldn’t postpone clearing up the mess any longer. But there was something I had to do first. I stood in the doorway of the living room of the man who’d been my lover for three years, Polaroid in hand, surveying the chaos. Slowly, I swept the camera lens round the room, carefully recording every detail of the shambles, section by section. This was one time I wasn’t prepared to rely on memory. Richard might be gone, but that didn’t mean I was going to take any unnecessary risks. Private eyes who do that have as much chance of collecting their pensions as a Robert Maxwell employee. Once I had a complete chronicle of exactly how things had been left in the room that was a mirror image of my own bungalow next door, I started my mammoth task. First, I sorted things into piles: books, magazines, CDs, tapes, promo videos, the detritus of a rock journalist’s life. Then I arranged them. Books, alphabetically, on the shelf unit. CDs ditto. The tapes I stacked in the storage unit Richard had bought for the purpose one Sunday when I’d managed to drag him round Ikea, the 1990s equivalent of buying an engagement ring. I’d even put the cabinet together for him, but he’d never got into the habit of using it, preferring the haphazard stacks and heaps strewn all over the floor. I buried the surge of emotion that came with the memory and carried
