“I’ve been doing some work on the computer at home,” I said defensively. Shelley has the unerring knack of making me feel fifteen and guilty again.

“A report would be nice now and again,” she said. “I know I’m only the office manager, but it does help when clients phone if I know where we’re up to.”

“Sorry,” I said contritely. “It’s just that most of the things I’ve been doing for the last couple of days are the kind of things I don’t want the clients to know I’m up to. I’ll get something down on tape for you by the end of today, promise.” I smiled ingratiatingly. “Would you like a cappuccino?”

“How much is it going to cost me?” Shelley asked suspiciously. Abe Lincoln wouldn’t have said you can fool all of the people some of the time if he’d ever met Shelley.

“Can I borrow you and your car this afternoon?” I asked. “I’ve got a meet with the fence who’s been handling these stolen artworks, and I’m going to need to tail him afterwards. He’s going to have clocked the coupe, and it’s too obvious a car to follow him in. I want you to come out there with me and after the meet, we can swap cars. I go off in your motor, you come back in the coupe”.“

“You saying my Rover’s common?” Shelley asked.

“Only in a numerical sense. Please?”

“How do I know you’ll bring it back in one piece?”

She had a point. In the past eighteen months I’d written off one car and done serious damage to the Little Rascal, the van we’ve got fitted out with full surveillance gear. Neither incident had been my fault, but it still made me the butt of all office jokes about drivers. “I’ll bring it back in one piece,” I said through gritted teeth.

“What about the Little Rascal?” Shelley demanded. “You could tail him in that. All you have to do is make sure he doesn’t see you getting out of it. Just be there early, out of the car, waiting for him.”

I pulled a face. “The guy drives a Merc. I suspect I’d lose him on the motorway. Besides, he’s no dummy. He’s probably going to wait till he sees me drive off before he takes off himself.”

“So if you drive off, how are we going to swap cars?”

“Trust me. I’ll show you when we get there.”

“I get the coupe overnight?” she bargained.

“But of course. I might as well take it now, since I need to look unobtrusive in Burnage.”

We swapped keys and I headed off in her four-year-old Rover to Burnage. My first stop was the local library, where I checked the electoral roll. Sandra Bates was the only resident listed at 37. Alder Way was a quiet street of 1930s semis, each with a small garden. I marched boldly up the path of 37 and knocked on the door. There was no reply. There was an empty carport at the side of the house, and I walked cautiously through it and opened the wrought-iron gate leading into the back garden. Sandra was obviously as efficient at home as she was at work. There was a line of washing pegged out, drying in the watery sunlight. Whatever the electoral roll said, Sandra didn’t live alone. Hanging beside her underwear were boxer shorts and socks. Flapping in the breeze like a phantom among the shirts and blouses were two pairs of overalls. Maybe I wouldn’t have to look so far for the mystery chemist after all.

I RANG THE DOORBELL Of 35 ALDER WAY. I WAS ABOUT TO GIVE up when the door opened. I realized why it had taken so long. The harassed-looking young woman who stood in the doorway had identical toddlers clinging onto each leg of her jeans. As a handicapping system, it beat anything the Jockey Club has ever come up with. The twins stared up at me and conducted a conversation with each other in what sounded like some East European language, all sibilants and diphthongs. “Yes?” the woman said. At least she spoke Mancunian.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’m looking for a guy called Richard Barclay. The address I’ve got for him is next door at number thirty-seven. But there doesn’t seem to be anybody in.”

She shook her head. “There’s nobody by that name next door,” she said with an air of finality, her hand rising to close the door.

“Are you sure?” I said, looking puzzled and referring to the piece of paper in my hand where I’d just written my lover’s name and Sandra Bates’s address. I waved it at her. “I was supposed to meet him here. About a job.”

She took the paper and frowned. “There must be some mistake. The bloke next door’s called Simon. Simon Morley.”

I sighed. “I don’t suppose he’s the one taking people on, then? I mean, I’ve not got the right address and the wrong name?”

One of the twins detached itself from the woman’s jeans and lurched toward me. “Without looking down, she stuck her leg out and stopped its progress. ”I shouldn’t think so, love,“ she said. ”Simon got made redundant about six months ago. He’s only started working himself a couple of months back, and judging from the overalls he goes in and out in, he’s not hiring and firing.“

I did the disappointed look, but it was wasted on the hassled woman. The pitch of the twins’ dialogue had risen to a level she couldn’t ignore. “Sorry,” she said, closing the door firmly in my face.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said softly as I walked back to the Rover. “Lady, you just made my day.” Simon Morley’s name had rung so many bells my head felt like the cathedral belfry.

By three o’clock, everything was in place. Shelley and I had driven across the Pennines on the M62, to the Bradford exit, the first past Hartshead Services. We’d turned off on the Halifax road, where I remembered there was a lay-by just after the motorway roundabout. I left Shelley there in her Rover while I zoomed back down the motorway, doubling back so I ended up on the correct side of the sprawling service area. I parked away from the main body of cars and teetered up the car park on the white stilettos I keep in the bottom of the wardrobe for days like these.

I went to the ladies’ room to check that I still looked like a tarty blonde. I don’t often go in for disguises that involve wigs, but a couple of years before, I’d needed a radical appearance change, so I’d spent a substantial chunk of Mortensen and Brannigan’s petty cash on a really good wig. It was a reddish blond, which meant it didn’t look too odd against my skin, which is the typically yellow-based freckle-face that goes with auburn hair. Coupled with a much heavier makeup than I’d normally be seen dead in, the image that peered out of the mirror at me was credible, if a bit on the doggy side. I’d dressed to emphasize that impression, in a black Lycra miniskirt and a cream scoop-necked vest under my well-worn brown leather blouson. My own mother would have thrown me out of the house.

I touched up the scarlet lipstick and gave myself a toothy grin. “Show time, Brannigan,” I muttered as I walked back across the car park and leaned against the door of my coupe.

He was right on time. At precisely three thirty, a metallic green Mercedes appeared at the entrance to the car park. He cruised round slowly before purring to a halt next to my car. The driver was indeed fortyish, though calling him bald on top seemed to be a euphemistic description for someone well on the way to the billiard-ball look. I opened the passenger door and sank into the leather seat. “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Dennis tells me you have something I might be interested in,” he said without preamble. His voice was nasal, the kind that gets on my nerves after about five minutes. “I don’t normally deal with people on a freelance basis,” he added, glancing at me for the first time.

“I know. Dennis explained how you like to work. But I thought that if I showed you what I can do, you might put some work my way,” I said, trying to sound hard-bitten.

“Let’s see what you’ve got, then.” He turned in his seat toward me. His eyes were gray and cold, slightly narrowed. When he spoke, his mouth moved asymmetrically, as if he were gripping an imaginary cigarette in one corner.