‘Mr Sixsmith? Is that you?’
The voice was if anything pitched lower than the neckless monster’s, but undeniably and very pleasingly female. A figure advanced from the shadows of the landing.
‘Miss Jones?’ said Joe.
‘Sort of,’ said the woman.
She too was wearing a baggy tracksuit, but with the hood up. Now with a little shake of the head she tossed it back to reveal a face he just had time to start to recognize before Whitey made his move. From a standing start he got up to maximum knots in a couple of strides, then leapt up at the woman’s long throat.
‘Whitey!’ yelled Joe in alarm.
But it was too late. The cat hit the woman in the chest, caught his claws in the tracksuit top, relaxed into her cradling arms and lay there, looking up, four paws in the air, purring like a chocolate-box kitten.
It was quite revolting, like Boris Karloff playing Little Lord Fauntleroy.
‘Now aren’t you a beauty then?’ she said, nuzzling her nose against his head.
And Joe said, ‘He thinks so. And aren’t you Zak Oto, the runner?’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you coming up or do you interview all your clients on the stairs?’
In the office, seated on the chair which didn’t fall to pieces if you leaned back too hard, Zak Oto said, ‘Sorry about the Miss Jones thing on the answerphone, but I couldn’t be certain who’d hear the message. Thing is, Mr Sixsmith, I’m being threatened and I need someone to take care of it.’
She flashed him the multi-megawatt smile which made her as big a hit on billboards and screen as her legs did on the track. She was already the Bloo-Joo girl and word had it that Nymphette were after her to front up their new range of popular sports clothing. Even dressed in a baggy tracksuit she looked a million dollars, which was probably a lot less than she was going to be worth.
Joe was making a production number of looking round his office.
‘Something up, Mr Sixsmith?’ she asked.
‘Just checking there’s no one here but me and my cat. Which of us did you see for the job, Miss Oto?’
She gave him the smile again, perfect white teeth gleaming in a face so black she made Joe feel like a crypto Caucasian.
‘Hey, you do jokes too like a real PI.’
‘I am a real PI,’ said Joe. ‘What I’m not is a minder. I’m ten pounds over my recommended weight which I can’t punch anyway, and though I’m growing through my hair, I’m short for my size. You’d be better off with Whitey here. Compared with me he’s a fighting machine.’
The fighting machine snuggled up against the athlete’s bosom and purred complacently. Joe didn’t blame him. In the same position he guessed he’d be feeling pretty complacent too.
She said, ‘Perhaps if you just listen to me a moment, Mr Sixsmith?’
‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘Long as you understand, you may be tipped for a world record next season, but if some guy came after us both with a meat cleaver and bad attitude, you’d be looking at my heels.’
Now she laughed out loud. It was a real pleasure making her laugh. It came out dark and creamy like draught Guinness and set up a turbulence beneath the tracksuit upon which Whitey bobbed with undisguised sensuality.
‘Must try that some day,’ she said. ‘But seriously, Mr Sixsmith, I’m not here looking for a minder. I’ve got all the minder I need. You probably saw him downstairs.’
‘No neck and ears like Chinese mushrooms?’
‘That’s him. He really is called Jones. Starbright Jones.’
‘Starbright? You’re joking?’
‘You think that’s funny, you’d better keep it to yourself,’ she said. ‘He’s Welsh and doesn’t care to be laughed at.’
‘Sorry,’ said Joe, who knew all about racial sensibilities. ‘So if you’ve got Mr Jones, what are you doing here?’
‘Trying to tell you what I’m doing here,’ she said with an irritation which didn’t make her any the less attractive. ‘Starbright’s fine for fighting off trouble if and when it happens. What I really want is someone who’ll take care of the ifs and the whens. Someone who’ll stop it happening.’
She paused. Joe nodded encouragingly though he didn’t much care if she went on talking or not. Miss Poetry in Motion the papers called her, but even in repose a man could spend his time less poetically than just staring at her. From her earliest appearances on the track she’d been the pride of Luton, a pride not dinted when last autumn, after equalling the British 800 metres record, instead of starting an art foundation course at South Beds Institute, she had accepted a sports scholarship in the Fine Arts Faculty of Vane University, Virginia. Word from over the water was that her American coach wanted her to move up to the mile and 1500 metres, and was forecasting she would be rewriting the record books in the next couple of seasons. Locals would have the chance to make their own assessment on New Year’s Day at the grand opening of the new Luton Pleasure Dome. With its art gallery, theatre, olympic-size swimming pool, go-kart track, climbing wall, cinema, skating rink and sports hall, the Plezz, as it was known, had carved a huge chunk out of both the green belt and the council’s budget. But with the town’s own golden girl not only performing the official opening, but also running in an invitation 1000 metres on the indoor track it would take a very bold environmental or economic protester to attempt disruption.
Joe realized the girl hadn’t just paused, she was waiting for him to ask an intelligent PI-type question.
He said, ‘Miss Oto …’
‘Call me Zak,’ she said. ‘And I’ll call you Joe. OK?’
Zak. Funny name, but he didn’t need to ask where it came from. The papers had told him her real name was Joan, but when she started running almost as soon as she started walking, her athletics-mad father had started referring to her proudly as ‘my Zatopek’ which her childish tongue had rendered as Zak.
‘OK. Zak, this being threatened you mentioned, is this just a general feeling you have or something specific?’
She said. ‘You worried I may just be another neurotic woman, Joe?’
‘Just encouraging you to tell me what you’re doing here, Zak,’ he said.
‘I’m trying. OK, you know I’m running at the Plezz New Year’s Day?’
‘Does Rudolf know it’s Christmas?’ said Joe.
She didn’t smile but went on, ‘Boxing Day, I got a call. It was sort of a husky voice, maybe a woman trying to sound like a man, or could’ve been a man trying to sound like a woman …’
‘What did it say?’ urged Joe.
‘It said, wasn’t Christmas a wonderful time with everyone trying to help everybody else out, and this was why she was ringing – let’s call it her, OK? – because some friends of hers wanted to do me a great big favour, and they’d expect nothing in return except a very little favour from me. Well, by now I was beginning to think I’d got myself a weirdo. They come crawling out once your name gets in the papers, you know.’
‘So why’d you keep on talking?’ asked Joe.
‘I got curious, I guess. Besides she didn’t sound threatening. Just the opposite, nice and concerned. She said she’d heard about the Nymphette deal – you know about that?’
‘I saw something in the papers,’ said Joe. ‘Tell me.’
‘It’s just something my agent’s setting up. Nymphette do perfume and cosmetics, but now they’re branching out into a range of casual and sportswear and they