LITMIR.BIZ

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stuffed her sweaty sports clothes into one of the counterfeit Head holdalls Dennis had been turning out the previous spring. ‘See ya, Kate,’ she said on her way out the door.

      Knowing I was doing her a favour made me feel less like the exploitation queen of South Manchester. But not a lot less. So much for doing it the straight way.

      When I emerged from the gym, I decided to swing round by Gizmo’s to see if he’d got anywhere with my earlier request. If the old axiom, ‘If I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here,’ didn’t exist, they’d have to invent it for the journey from Sale to Levenshulme in mid-morning traffic. I knew before I started it was going to be hell on wheels, but for once, I didn’t care. Me, reluctant to face Bill?

      I crawled along in second while Cyndi Lauper reminded me that girls just wanna have fun. I growled at the cassette deck and swapped Cyndi for Tanita Tikaram’s more gloomy take on the world. I knew exactly what she meant when she accused someone of making the whole world cry. I sat in the queue of traffic at the lights where Wilbraham Road meets Oxford Road in the heart of undergraduate city, watching them going about their student lives, backpacked and badly barbered. I couldn’t believe it when the fashion world created a whole industry round grunge as if it was something that had just happened. The rest of us knew it wasn’t anything new: students have been wearing layers against the cold, and workmen’s heavy-duty checked shirts for cheapness, ever since I was a student a dozen years ago. Shaking my head, I glanced at the wall alongside the car. Plastered along it were posters for bands appearing at the local clubs. Some of the venues I recognized from razzing with Richard; others I knew nothing about. I hadn’t realized quite how many live music venues there were in the city these days. I looked more closely at the posters, noticing one that had peeled away on the top right corner. Underneath, I could see, in large red letters, ‘UFF’. It looked like Dan and Lice hadn’t been making it up as they went along.

      The impatient horn of the suit in the company car behind me dragged my attention away from the posters and back to the road. After the lights, the traffic eased up, and I actually managed to get into fourth gear before I reached Gizmo’s. This time, I reckoned it would be cheaper to take my chances with the traffic wardens than the locals, so I left the car illegally parked on the main drag. Judging by the other drivers doing the same thing, the wardens were about as fond of hanging out in Levenshulme as I was. I hit the hole in the wall for some cash for Gizmo, then I crossed the road and rang his bell.

      Gizmo frowned when he saw me. ‘Didn’t you get the e-mail?’ he asked.

      ‘I’ve not been back to the office,’ I said, holding a tightly rolled wad of notes towards him. ‘Do I take it you’ve had some joy?’

      ‘Yeah. You better come in,’ he said reluctantly, delicately removing the cash from my hand and slipping it into the watch pocket of a pair of grey flannels that looked as if they’d first drawn breath around the time of the Great War. ‘Somebody dressed as smart as you on the pavement around here looks well suspicious to the local plod. I mean, you’re obviously not a native, are you?’ he added as I followed him up the narrow stairs, the soles of my shoes sticking to the elderly cord carpet. It was the first time he’d let me past his front door, and frankly, I wasn’t surprised.

      I followed Gizmo into the front room of the flat. It was a dislocating experience. Instead of the dingy grime and chipped paint of the stairway, I was in a spotlessly clean room. New woodblock flooring, matt grey walls, no curtains, double-glazed windows. A leather sofa. Two desks with computer monitors, one a Mac, one a PC. A long table with an assortment of old computers – an Atari, a Spectrum, an Amiga, an Amstrad PCW and an ancient Pet. A couple of modems, a flat-bed scanner, a hand-held scanner, a couple of printers and a shelf stacked with software boxes. There was no fabric anywhere in the room. Even the chair in front of the PC monitor was upholstered in leather. Gizmo might look like Pigpen, but the environment he’d created for his beloved computers was as near to the perfect dust-free room as he could get.

      ‘Nice one,’ I said.

      He thrust his hands into the pockets of a woollen waistcoat most bag ladies would be ashamed to own and said, ‘Got to look after them, haven’t you? I’ve had that Pet since 1980, and it still runs like a dream.’

      ‘Strange dreams you have, Giz,’ I commented as he hit some keys on his PC and located the information I’d asked for. Within seconds, a sheet of paper was spitting out of one of the laser printers. I picked up the paper and read, ‘Sell Phones, 1 Beaumaris Road, Higher Crumpsall, Manchester.’ There was a phone number too. I raised an eyebrow. ‘That it?’

      ‘All I could get,’ he said.

      ‘No names?’

      ‘No names. They’re not listed at Companies House. They sound like they’re into mobies. I suppose if you wanted to go to the trouble and expense’ – stressing the last word heavily – ‘I could do a trawl through the mobile phone service providers and see if this lot are among their customers. But –’

      ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ I said. Breaking the law too many times on any given job is tempting fate. ‘Once is sufficient,’ I added. ‘Anything more would be vulgar.’

      ‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ Gizmo said pointedly, staring past my shoulder at the door. I took the hint. Find what you’re good at and stick to it, that’s what I say.

      Beaumaris Road was a red-brick back street running parallel to the main drag of Cheetham Hill Road. Unsurprisingly, number one was on the corner. Sell Phones occupied what had obviously once been a corner shop, though it had been tarted up since it had last sold pints of milk at all hours and grossly inflated prices. I parked further down the street and pulled on a floppy green velvet cap and a pair of granny specs with clear glass to complete the transformation from desolate widow to total stranger. They didn’t really go with my Levis and beige blazer, but fashion’s so eclectic these days that you can mix anything if you don’t mind looking like a borderline care-in-the-community case or a social worker.

      I walked back to the corner, noting the heavy grilles over the window of Sell Phones. I paused and looked through to an interior that was all grey carpet, white walls and display cabinets of mobile phones. A good-looking black guy was leaning languidly against a display cabinet, head cocked, listening to a woman who was clearly telling the kind of lengthy tale that involves a lot of body language and lines like, ‘So she goes, “You didn’t!” and I go, “I did. No messing.” And she looks at me gone out and she goes, “You never!”’ She was a couple of inches taller than me, but slimmer through the shoulders and hips. Her hair was a glossy black bob, her eyes dark, her skin pale, her cheekbones Slavic, scarlet lips reminding me irresistibly of Cruella De Vil. She looked like a Pole crossed with a racehorse. She was too engrossed in her tale to notice me, and the black guy was too busy looking exquisite in a suit that screamed, ‘Ciao, bambino.’

      I peered more closely through the glass and there, at the back of the shop, sitting behind a desk, head lowered as he took notes of the phone call he was engrossed in, was Will Allen in all his glory. I might not know his real name, but at least now I knew where he worked. I carried on round the corner and there, in the back alley behind the shop, was the Mazda I’d last seen parked outside my house the night before. At last something was working out today.

      Now for the boring bit. I figured Will Allen wouldn’t be going anywhere for the next hour or two, but that didn’t mean I could wander off and amble back later in the hope he’d still be around. I reckoned it was probably safe to nip round the corner to the McDonald’s on Cheetham Hill Road and stock up with some doughnuts and coffee to make me feel like an authentic private eye as I staked out Sell Phones, but that was as far away as I wanted to get.

      I moved my Rover on to the street that ran at right angles to Beaumaris Road and the alley so that I had a good view of the end of Allen’s car bonnet, though it meant losing sight of the front of the shop. I slid into the passenger seat to make it look like I was waiting for someone and took off the cap. I kept the glasses in place, though. I slouched in my seat and brooded on Bill’s perfidy. I sipped my coffee very slowly, just enough to keep me alert, not enough to make

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