We found Paki Paulie an hour later in a seedy bar in Cheetham Hill. The front bar looked like any other run down pub, its clientele mainly middle-aged, poor and defeated. But the back bar was like walking into another world. In the dim light, a handful of guys in expensive suits held court at the tables lining the walls, accompanied by their muscle. Scruffy kids meandered in and out, pausing by one table or another for muttered conversation. Sometimes cash was passed over fairly discreetly in exchange for dope. More often, the dealer got up and accompanied his punter out of the bar's back door into the car park.

On my own, I'd have been scared I'd be taken for a cop. But with Dennis by my side, there was no danger of that. He nodded towards one of the corner tables while we waited for our drinks.

'That him?' I asked, trying to keep my glance casual. Dennis nodded.

Paki Paulie wore a shimmering silver grey double-breasted suit over an open-necked cobalt blue shirt. The clothes were obviously expensive but he looked cheap as a bag of sherbet lemons. He was leaning back in his chair, gazing at a point on the ceiling as if his only worry in the world was what to drink next. Next to him, a hard-looking white youth stared gloomily into an almost-empty pint pot.

Dennis picked up his glass and strolled over to the table, with me in his wake. 'All right, Paulie?' he said.

'Dennis,' Paulie acknowledged with a regal nod.

'How's business?'

'Not good. It's the interest rates, you know?' Paulie replied, twitching his mouth into a smile. That was all I needed. A smack dealer with a smart mouth.

'A word, Paulie,' Dennis said softly.

'Dennis, you can have as many words as you want.' Paulie's urbanity was firing on all four cylinders now, but it wasn't polished enough to cover the quick flicker of concern in his eyes.

'You heard about Jack the Smack?' Dennis asked innocently. Paulie's eyebrows rose. He clearly knew all about Dennis's little vigilante action. 'Bad time for accidents in your line of business,' Dennis went on conversationally. 'State of the health service these days, nobody in their right mind'd want to end up in hospital.'

Paulie's protection seemed to gather himself together and shifted forward in his seat. 'You want to…' was all he got out before Paulie snapped, 'Shut it.' He turned back to Dennis and said, “I hear what you're saying, Dennis.'

Dennis gestured towards me with his glass. 'This is a friend of mine. She's looking for some information. She's not the law, and if you're straight with her, there's no comeback.'

Paulie looked directly at me. 'How do I know I can trust you?'

'The company I keep,' I answered.

Dennis put his glass down and cracked his knuckles dramatically. Paulie's eyes flicked from me to Dennis and back again. I took a photograph of Tamar out of my bag. It was one I'd clipped from the papers that morning, with Jett cut out of it. 'Has this woman ever bought anything from you?'

He barely glanced at it and shrugged. 'Maybe. How do I know? I serve a lot of punters.'

'I can't believe you've got a lot of punters like this, Paulie. Natural blonde, doesn't dress out of a catalogue, accent like Princess Di? Come on, you can do better than that.'

Paulie picked up the picture and studied it. 'I seen her down the Hassy,' he finally conceded.

'How much did you sell her, then?' Dennis butted in, thrusting his face forwards till it was only inches from the dealer's.

'Who said I sold her anything? Shit, man, what is this? You joined the drugs squad?'

Dennis's head snapped back, like a cobra ready to strike. Before he could complete the manoeuvre that would spread Paulie's nose over his face, the dealer shouted, 'Wait!' Dennis paused. The sound level in the room had dropped to an ominous level. A sheen of sweat had appeared above Paulie's top lip. His hand fluttered at his bodyguard who was straining at an invisible leash. 'It's OK,' he said loudly.

Gradually, the noise picked up. Paulie wiped his face with a paisley silk handkerchief. 'OK,' he sighed. 'About a month ago, this tart came up to me in the Hassy saying she wanted some smack. She didn't seem to know what she wanted or how much. She told me she wanted it for a coming home present for a friend, enough for a dozen hits. I thought she was full of shit, but what the hell? I don't give a monkey's what they do with it. So I sold her ten grammes. I never saw her again. And that's the truth.'

I believed him. It wasn't so much the threat of Dennis breaking his nose that had changed his mind. It was the thought of what would happen to him if the O'Brien brothers came looking for him. Even bodyguards have to sleep.

The thing that bothered me was that Dennis's methods hadn't bothered me. Maybe I'd been reading the wrong books. Perhaps tonight I should tuck myself up with an Agatha Christie and a few balls of pink wool.

26

I was thirty pages into The Murder At The Vicarage when Richard breezed in through the conservatory. 'Sorry to interrupt you while you're working,' he teased. I put the book down as he sat down beside me and pulled me into his arms. It was a long kiss, as if to make up for the little time we'd spent together in the previous few days.

'Fancy an early night?' Richard whispered.

'That's the nicest thing anybody's said to me today,' I replied, snuggling into him. 'How in God's name do you manage to put up with your job? If I had to spend my time with assholes like that lot, I'd slit my wrists.'

'You just tune it out. I always treat it like I'm watching Dynasty or the South Bank Show. You know, it's either glitz or pretension. I never let myself believe it's the real world. Sometimes I feel like David Attenborough, sitting in a hide watching the habits of a strange species,' he told me. 'It's fascinating. And I like most of the music, so I try to forgive them their worst excesses.'

'Like murder?'

'Maybe not murder,' he conceded. 'Though I'd have to say I think that someone like Jett is a bigger contributor to the quality of life than your average copper.'

'He's not contributing much to the quality of my life right now. This job is mission impossible. A house full of people and not a decent alibi among them. And everybody has some kind of a motive. Except for Neil, who seems to be the only person who had a vested interest in her staying alive.'

Richard snorted. 'Him? I wouldn't put it past him to have bumped her off just to stir up a bit of scandal for his book.'

'That's outrageous!' I protested. 'Besides, she was an important source for him on Jett's early days in the business.'

'Yeah, well maybe he milked her dry then bumped her off. From what I hear, he's been talking to the world since she died.' Richard sounded mean and spiteful, which isn't like him.

I tried to show him he was just talking out of blind prejudice, explaining that Kevin had asked Neil to handle all the press liaison. 'So of course he's had to talk to people.'

'It's not just all the copy he's been flogging,' Richard replied, still peeved. 'He's been doing the hard sell on this biography too, telling people that there's going to be stuff in there that no one else even guessed at before.'

I was puzzled. I remembered Neil telling me that his biggest problem with the book was that there were no new, exciting revelations. However, that had been before Moira had reappeared on the scene. 'Maybe he's just talking it up,' I suggested.

T don't think so. I suppose he could just be trying to cash in on the interest in Moira's death by trying to stitch up a serialisation deal sight unseen, but most feature desks won't play unless they've got a bloody good idea what they're getting for their money. Everybody's under the cosh financially these days. The golden age when you could talk a story up and still get paid when the end product didn't match up to expectations is long gone. The emperor's new clothes trick just doesn't work any more. Now they want to talk to the tailor.' Richard shifted away from me and got up. 'I need a beer,' he said, heading for the kitchen.