'So you don't live over the shop, then?'

'No.' He closed his magazine and leaned back against the cigarette shelves, happy to have a break in routine. 'Me mam told me dad it was dead common, made him buy the house next door. He turned the upstairs here into offices. Brian Burley, the insurance broker, he's got two offices and a share of the bathroom and kitchenette. He's been here five years, ever since me dad did them up. But the other office, that's had loads of people through it. I'm not surprised. You couldn't swing a rat in there, never mind a cat.'

'So, Tom Harris isn't here any longer?' I asked.

'Nah. He was paid up to the end of last week, and we ain't seen him since. He said he just needed an office while he sorted out a couple of deals over here. He said he was from down south, but he didn't sound it. Didn't sound local neither. Anyway, what're you after him for? He stood you up, or something?' He couldn't help himself, and he was cute enough to get away with it. Give him a few years and he'd be lethal. God help the women of Ramsbottom.

'I need to talk to him, that's all. Any chance of a look round upstairs? See if he left anything that might give me an idea where he moved on to?' I gave him my sultriest smile.

'You'll not find so much as a fingerprint up there,' the lad told me, disappointed. 'Me mam bottomed it on Sunday. And when she cleans, she cleans.'

I could imagine. There didn't seem a lot of point in pushing it, and if Harris had paid in cash, there wasn't likely to be any other clue as to his whereabouts. 'Did you know him at all,' I asked.

'I saw him going in and out, but he didn't have no time for the likes of me. Fancied himself, know what I mean? Thought he was hard.'

'What did he look like?' I asked.

'A builder. Nowt special. Brown hair, big muscles, quite tall. He drove a white Transit, it said T.R. Harris Builders' along the side. Here, you're not the cops, are you?' he asked, a sudden note of apprehension mixing with excitement.

I shook my head. 'Just trying to track him down for a friend he promised to do some work for. D'you know if he hung out in any of the local pubs?'

The lad shrugged. 'Dunno. Sorry.' He looked as if he meant it, too. I bought a pound of Cox's Orange Pippins to stave off the hunger pains and hit the road.

Some days things get clearer as time wears on. Other days, it just gets more and more murky. This one looked like a goldfish bowl that hasn't been cleaned since Christmas. The address I'd carefully copied down from Graves' letterhead that Martin Cheetham had showed me wasn't the office of a solicitor. It wasn't any kind of office at all, to be precise. It was the Farmer's Arms. The pub was about quarter of a mile from the nearest house, the last building on a narrow road up to the moors where Alexis and Chris had hoped to build their dream home. In spite of its relative isolation, the pub seemed to be doing good business. The car park was more than half full, and the stonework had been recently cleaned.

Inside, it had been refurbished in the 'country pub' style of the big breweries. Exposed stone and beams, stained-glass panels in the interior doors, wooden chairs with floral chintz cushions, quarry-tiled floor and an unrivalled choice of fizzy keg beers that all taste the same. There must have been getting on for sixty people in, but the room was big enough for there still to be a sense of space. Two middle-aged women and a man in his late twenties were working the bar efficiently.

I perched on a stool at the bar and didn't have long to wait for my St Clement's. I watched the clientele for ten minutes or so. They sounded relatively local, and were mostly in their twenties and thirties. Beside me at the bar was the kind of group I imagined T.R. Harris would feel one of the lads with. But first I had to solve the problem of the moody address for his solicitor.

I waited for a lull, then signalled one of the barmaids. 'Same again, love?' she asked.

I nodded, and as she poured, I said, 'I'm a bit confused. Is this 493 Moor Lane?'

It took a bit of consultation with bar staff and customers, but eventually, consensus was reached. 493 it was. 'I've been given this as the address for a bloke called Graves,” I told them. For some reason, the men at the bar convulsed with laughter.

The barmaid pursed her lips and said, 'You've got to excuse them. They're not right in the head. The reason they're laughing is, the pub car park backs on to the churchyard. We're always having a to-do with the vicar, because idiots that know no better go and sit on the gravestones with their pints in the summer.'

I was beginning to feel really pissed off with T.R. Harris and his merry dance. Wearily, I said, 'So there's no one here by the name of Graves? And you don't let rooms, or have any offices upstairs?'

The barmaid shook her head. 'Sorry, love. Somebody's been having you on.'

I forced a smile. 'No problem. I don't suppose any of you know a builder called Tom Harris? Bought some land up the road from here?'

There were smiles and nods of recognition all around me. That's the fella that bought Harry Cartwright's twelve-acre field,' one said. The man from nowhere,' another added.

'Why do you say that?' I asked.

'Why are you asking?' he countered.

I'm trying to get hold of him in connection with the land that he bought.'

'He doesn't own it any more. He sold it last week,' the barmaid said. 'And we haven't seen him since.'

'How long has he been coming in here?' I asked.

'Since he first started negotiating with Harry about the land. Must be about three months ago, I'd guess,' one of the men said. 'Good company. Had some wild stories to tell.'

'What kind of wild stories?' I asked.

They all laughed uproariously again. Maybe I should audition for the Comedy Store. 'Not the kind you tell when there are ladies present,” one of them wheezed through his laughter.

I couldn't believe I was putting myself through this out of friendship. Alexis was going to owe me a lifetime of favours after this. I took a deep breath and said, 'I don't suppose any of you knows where his yard is? Or where he lives?'

They muttered among themselves and shook their heads dubiously. 'He never said,' one of them told me. 'He rented an office above the corner shop on Bolton High Road, maybe they'd know.'

'I've tried there. No joy, I'm afraid. You lads are my last hope.' I batted my eyelashes, God help me. The appeal to chivalry often works with the kind of assholes who sit around in pubs telling each other mucky stories to compensate for the lack of anything remotely exciting in their own squalid little lives.

Depressingly, it worked. Again, they went into a muttering huddle. 'You want to talk to Gary,' the spokesman eventually announced confidently.

Not if he's anything like you lot, I thought. I smiled sweetly and said, 'Gary?'

'Gary Adams,' he said in that irritated tone that men reserve for women they think are slow or stupid. 'Gary cleared the land for Tom Harris. When he bought it, half of it was copse, all overgrown with brambles and gorse between the trees. Gary's got all the equipment, see? He does all that kind of work round here.'

I kept the smile nailed on. 'And where will I find Gary?' I said, almost without moving my lips.

Watches were studied, frowns were exchanged. Exasperated, the barmaid said, 'He lives at 31 Montrose Bank. That's through the centre of the village, up the hill and third left. You'll probably find him in his garage, rebuilding that daft big American car of his.' I thanked her and left, managing to keep the smile in place for as long as the lads could see me. My face muscles felt like they'd just done a Jane Fonda work-out.

As predicted, Gary was in the garage tacked on to a neat stone cottage. The up-and-over door was open, revealing a drop-head vintage Cadillac. The bonnet was up, and the man I took to be Gary Adams was leaning into the engine. As I approached, I could see him doing something terribly brutal-looking with a wrench the size of a wrestler's forearm. I cleared my throat and instructed the muscles to do the smile again. Reluctantly, they obeyed. Gary glanced up, surprised. He was in his mid-thirties, with a haircut that looked like it came right out of National Service.