Star Struck. Val McDermid

out my window boxes, but I’m buggered if the Sun’s readers have any right to know whether I’m having Busy Lizzies or lobelia this year.’

      ‘So that probably confirms that whoever has been sending the letters is connected to the show; they can keep tabs on you because they see you at work every day. And they can pick up background details quite easily, it seems to me. The cast members talk quite freely among themselves and you don’t have to set out to eavesdrop to pick up all sorts of personal information. I’ve only been on the set for a couple of days and already I know Paul Naylor’s seeing an acupuncturist in Chinatown for his eczema, Rita Hardwick’s husband breeds pugs and Tiffany Joseph’s bulimic. Another week and I’d have enough background information to write threatening letters to half the cast.’ What I didn’t say was that another week among the terminally self-obsessed, and threatening letters would be the least of what I’d be up for.

      ‘It’s not a pretty thought, that. Somebody that knows me hates me enough to want me to be frightened. I don’t like that idea one little bit.’

      ‘If the letters and the tyre slashing are connected, then it almost certainly has to be somebody at NPTV, you know. Of course, it is possible that the tyre slasher isn’t the letter writer, just some sicko who took advantage of your concern over the letters to wind you up. I’ve asked you this before, but you’ve had time to think about it now: are you sure there isn’t anybody you’ve pissed off that might just be one scene short of a script?’

      Gloria shook her head. ‘Come on, chuck. You’ve spent time with me now. You’ve seen the way I am with the folk I work with. I’m a long way off perfect, but I don’t wind them up like certain other people I could mention.’

      ‘I’d noticed,’ I said drily. ‘The thing is, now everybody at NPTV knows you’re taking what Dorothea said seriously. The person who wrote you those letters is basking in a sense of power, which means that he or she probably won’t feel the need to carry the threats through any further. Besides, they won’t know whether I’m off the case altogether or I’ve taken the surveillance undercover. Much as I’d love to be on this hourly rate indefinitely, I’d be inclined to give it another couple of days and then I’ll pull out.’

      ‘You’re sure I’ll be safe? I’m not a silly woman, in spite of how I come across, but what Dorothea said really scared me, coming on top of the business with the tyres. She’s not given to coming the spooky witch, you know.’

      ‘When is she in next?’

      ‘Day after tomorrow. Do you want to see her?’

      ‘I want to interview her, not have a consultation,’ I said hastily.

      ‘Oh, go on,’ Gloria urged. ‘Have it on me. You don’t have to take it seriously.’ She opened her bag and took out a pen and one of the postcard-sized portraits of herself she carried everywhere for the fans who otherwise would have had her signing everything from their library books to any available part of their anatomies. ‘Give us your time, date and place of birth.’ She snapped on the interior light, making me blink hard against the darkness. ‘Come on, sooner you tell me, the sooner you get the light off again.’

      ‘Oxford,’ I said. ‘Fourth of September, 1966.’

      ‘Now why am I not surprised you’re a Virgo?’ Gloria said sarcastically as she turned off the light. ‘Caligula, Jimmy Young, Agatha Christie, Cecil Parkinson, Raine Spencer and you.’

      ‘Which proves it’s a load of old socks,’ I said decisively. A couple of miles down the road, it hit me. ‘How come you can rattle off a list of famous Virgoans?’

      ‘I married one. Well, not a famous one. And divorced him. I wish I’d known Dorothea then. Virgo and Leo? She’d never have let it happen. A recipe for disaster.’

      ‘Aren’t you taking a bit of a chance, working with me?’

      Gloria laughed, that great swooping chuckle that gets the nation grinning when things are going right for Brenda Barrowclough. ‘Working’s fine. Nobody grafts harder than a Virgo. You see the detail while I only get the big picture. And you never give up. No, you’ll do fine for me.’

      It’s funny how often clients forget they’ve said that when a case doesn’t work out the way they wanted it to. I only hoped Gloria wouldn’t live to regret her words. I grunted noncommittally and concentrated on the road.

      It was almost one when I walked through my own front door. Both my house and Richard’s were illuminated only by the dirty orange of the sodium streetlights. I’d hoped he’d be home; I was suffering from what my best friend Alexis calls NSA–Non-Specific Anxiety–and my experience of self-medicating has told me the best cure is a cuddle. But it looked like he was doing whatever it is that rock journos do in live music venues in the middle of the night. It probably involved drugs, but Richard never touches anything stronger than joints and these days all the cops do with cannabis is confiscate it for their own use, so I wasn’t worried on that score.

      I turned on the kitchen light, figuring a mug of hot chocolate might prevent the vague feeling of unease from keeping me awake. I couldn’t miss the sheet of paper stuck under a fridge magnet. ‘Babysitting for Alexis + Chris. Staying over. See you tomorrow. Big kisses.’ I didn’t need to be a handwriting expert to know it was from my besotted lover. The only problem was, it wasn’t me he was besotted with.

      I’d know how to fight back if it was a beautiful blonde waving her perfectly rounded calves at him. But how exactly can a woman keep her dignity and compete with a nine-month-old baby girl?

      The following day, we were let out to play. Because Northerners traded so heavily on its connection to Manchester, the city of cool, they had to reinforce the link with regular exterior and interior shots of identifiable landmarks. It had led to a profitable spin-off for NPTV, who now ran Northerners tours at weekends. The punters would stay in the very hotel where Pauline Pratt and Gordon Johnstone had consummated their adulterous affair, then they’d be whisked off on a walking tour that took in sites from key episodes. They’d see the tram line where Diane Grimshaw committed suicide, the alley where Brenda Barrowclough was mugged, the jewellery shop that was robbed while Maureen and Phil Pomeroy were choosing an engagement ring. They’d have lunch in the restaurant where Kamal Sayeed had worked as a waiter before his tragic death from streptococcal meningitis. In the afternoon, they visited the sets where the show was filmed, and a couple of cast members joined them for dinner, persuaded by veiled threats and large fees.

      To keep that particular gravy train running, the show had to film on the streets of the city at least once a month. That day, they were filming a series of exterior shots at various points along the refurbished Rochdale Canal. According to Gloria, a new producer was determined to stamp his authority on the soap with a series of themed episodes. The linking theme of this particular week was the idea of the waterway providing a range of backdrops, from the sinister to the seriously hip. Gloria had drawn the short straw of an argument with Teddy outside Barca, Mick Hucknall’s chic Catalan bistro. On a summer afternoon, it might have been a pleasant diversion. On a bleak December morning, it was about as much fun as sunbathing in Siberia. It took forever to film because trains and trams would keep rattling across the high brick viaducts above our heads when the cameras were rolling.