THE ANSWERING MACHINE WAS FLASHING LIKE A SEX OFFENDER.

I played back the long chain of messages against my better judgment. I'd had enough coppers on the line to staff my very own Tactical Aid Group minibus. But the one message I really wanted wasn't there. I hated myself for letting Richard's child­ish behavior get to me, but that didn't make it any easier to es­cape. I ignored the rest of the messages and crashed out in my own bed. Deep down, I knew the Mafia weren't after me. Sleeping in Richard's bed the night before had been nothing but a self-indulgence I wasn't about to allow myself again.

I woke up just after eight, my head muzzy with the novel experience of a proper night's sleep. The phone was ringing already, but I had no problem ignoring it. I took a long, leisurely bath, deciding on my plans for the day. I know I'd told Delia I'd be prepared to talk to the Art Squad and the Drugs Squad, but I had other ideas now. A few hours delay wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference to their inves­tigation, and I was determined to press on with my in­quiries into the KerrSter murders as fast as I could. The last thing I wanted was another head-to-head with Cliff Jackson, and the best way to avoid that was to get going while he was still working out what to do with Sandra Bates and Simon Morley.

After breakfast, I filled the washing machine with the first load of dirty clothes. Glancing out of the kitchen window, I no­ticed an unfamiliar car parked in one of the residents' bays. I didn't have to be Manchester's answer to Nancy Drew to work out that an unmarked saloon with a radio aerial and two men in it was a police car. The only thing left to wonder was which squad it belonged to. I wasn't about to pop over and ask a po­liceman.

I pulled the blond wig out of its bag and arranged it on my head, adding the granny glasses with the clear lenses and a pair of stilettos to give me a bit of extra height. Then I nipped through the conservatory into Richard's house and out his front door. The two bobbies gave me a cursory glance, but they were waiting for a petite redhead from next door. That told me Delia wasn't responsible, even indirectly, for their presence; she'd have told them about the conservatory. Which left Jack­son.'

Of course, the car was in the clear, since I was still driving Shelley's Rover. She'd tried the previous afternoon to per­suade me to swap it for Richard's Beetle, but I played the card of professional necessity and managed to hang on to hers for the time being. I headed out of town toward Stockport and got to the Cob and Pen while the cleaners were still doing their thing. The bar stank of stale tobacco and sour beer, somehow more noticeable when the place was empty. "I'm looking for Mrs. Morton," I told one of them.

"You from the papers?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I'm representing Kerrchem, the company who manufacture the cleanser Mr. Morton was using when he died." Nothing like a bit of economy with the truth. Let them think I was here to talk about the compensation if they wanted.

The woman pursed her lips. "You'd better go on up, then.

It's going to cost your lot plenty, killing Joey like that." She gestured toward a door marked "Private".

I smiled my thanks and opened the door onto a flight of stairs. The door at the top had a Yale, but when I tapped gen­tly and turned the handle, it opened. "Hello?" I called.

From a doorway on my left, I could hear a voice say, "Hang on," then the clatter of a phone being put down on a table. Gail Morton stuck her head through the doorway and said sharply, "Who are you? What are you doing up here?"

"The cleaners sent me up," I said. "My name's Kate Brannigan. I'm a private investigator working for Kerrchem."

She frowned and cast a worried glance back through the doorway. "You'd better come through, then." She moved back smartly into the room ahead of me and swiftly picked up the phone, swivelling so she could keep an eye on me. "I'll call you back," she said firmly. "There's some private detective here from the chemical company. I'll ring you after she's gone... No, of course not," she added sharply. Then, "Okay then, af­ter one." She replaced the phone and turned to face me, lean­ing against the table as if she were protecting the phone from hostile attack.

All my instincts told me that phone call was more than some routine condolence. Something was going on. Maybe it was nothing to do with anything, but my instincts have served me too well in the past to ignore them. I wanted to know just who she'd been talking to that needed to know a private eye was on the premises. "Sorry to interrupt," I said. "Hope it wasn't an important call."

"You'd better sit down," she said, ignoring the invitation I'd dangled in front of her.

The room was as much of a cliche as Gail Morton herself. Dralon three-piece suite, green-onyx-and-gilt coffee table and side tables, complete with matching ashtrays, cigarette box and table lighter. Naff lithographs in pastel shades of women who looked like they'd escaped from the pages of those true romance graphic novels. The room was dominated by a wide-screen TV, complete with satellite decoder. I chose the chair farthest away from Grail.

She moved away from the telephone table and sat down op­posite me. She leaned forward to take a cigarette from the box on the table, her deep-cut blouse opening to reveal the tanned swell of her breasts. Philip Marlowe would have been entranced. Me, I felt faintly repelled. "So what have you come here for?" she asked. "Have they sent you to make me an offer?"

"I'm afraid not," I said. "Kerrchem hired me to try to find out who tampered with their product."

She gave a short bark of laughter. "Trying to crawl out from under, are they? Well, they're not going to succeed. My lawyer says by the time we're finished with your bosses, they'll be lucky to have a pot to piss in."

"I leave that sort of thing to the lawyers," I said mildly. "They're the only ones who can guarantee walking away rich after tragedies like this." I thought I'd better remind her of her role as grieving widow.

"You're not kidding," she said, dragging deep on her ciga­rette. In the unkind daylight coming through the window, I could see the incipient lines round her mouth as she kissed the filter tip. It wouldn't be long before her face matched her per­sonality. "So what do you want to know?"

"I've got one or two questions you might be able to help me with. First off, can you remember who actually bought the KerrSter?"

"It could have been me or Joey," she said. "We used to do the cash-and-carry run turn and turn about. KerrSter was one of the things that was always on the list, and we usually had a spare drum in the cupboard." "Who made the last trip?"

"That was Joey," she said positively. Given when the af­fected batch had gone out, that meant Joey had purchased the fatal drum.

"Where are your cleaning materials kept?" I asked.

"In a cupboard in the pub kitchen."

"Is it locked?"

She looked at me scornfully. "Of course it's not. There's al­ways spills and stuff in a pub. The staff need to be able to clean them up as and when they happen, not leave them for the cleaners."

"So anybody who works in the pub would have access?"

"That's right," she said confidently. "That's what I told the police."

"What about private visitors, friends or business associ­ates? Would they be able to get to the cupboard?"

"Why would they want to? Do your friends come round your office and start nosing about in the cleaner's cupboard?" she asked aggressively.

"But in theory they could?"

"It'd be a bit obvious. When people come to visit, they don't usually swan round the pub kitchen on their own. You must know some really funny people. Besides, how would they know Joey was going to open that particular container?"

Before I could ask my next question, a voice from the stair­well shouted, "Gail? There's a delivery down here you need to sign for."

Gail sighed and crushed out her cigarette. "I'll be back in a minute."

As soon as she left the room, I was on my feet. I wouldn't be getting a second chance to check out what had set my anten­nae twitching. I took my tape recorder out of my bag and pressed the record button, then I picked up the phone and put the machine's built-in mike next to the earpiece. Then I hit last number redial. The phone clicked swiftly through the numbers, then connected. A phone rang out. I let it ring a dozen times, then broke the connection and gently replaced the phone.

I heard steps on the stairs and threw myself back into my chair. When Gail entered the room, I was sitting demurely flicking through the pages of TV Times. "Sorted?" I asked po­litely.

"I hate paperwork," she said. "But then, so did Joey, so we've got a little woman that comes in every week to keep the books straight."

"Did your husband have any enemies?" I asked. Eat your heart out, Miss Marple.

"There were plenty of people Joey would happily have seen dead, most of them football managers. But people tended to like him. That was his big trouble. He was desperate to be liked. He'd never stand up for himself and make the bosses treat him properly. He just rolled over," she said, years of bit­terness spilling into her voice. "I told him, you've got to show them who's in charge, but would he listen? No, he wouldn't. Same with the brewery. I'd been on at him for ages to talk to them about our contract, but he just fobbed me off. Well, they'll know a difference now it's me they've got to deal with," she added vigorously. Knowing the corporate claws of brewery chains, I thought Gail Morton was in for a nasty surprise.

"So, no enemies, no one who wanted him dead?"

"You're barking up the wrong tree," she told me. "You should be looking for somebody at that factory who has it in for their bosses. Joey just got unlucky."

"You benefit from his death," I commented.

Her eyes narrowed. "It's time you were on your way," she said. "I'm not sitting here listening to that crap in my own liv­ing room. Go on, get out."

I can take a hint.

When I walked into the office, Shelley had a look on her face I'd never seen before. After a couple of minutes of awkward conversation, I worked out what it was. The shifty eyes, the nervous mouth. She was feeling guilty about something.

"Okay," I said heavily, perching on the corner of her desk. "Give. What's eating you? Is it having to lie to the police about where I am?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said sniffily. "Anyway, I'm black. Isn't lying to the cops supposed to be congenital?"

"Something's bothering you, Shell."

"Nothing is bothering me. By the way, if you wart your coupe back, it's on a meter round the corner. I wouldn't mind having my Rover back." She couldn't meet my eyes.

"Has he been here?" Try as I might, I couldn't keep my voice cool.

"No. He came round the house about eight o'clock this morning. I asked him to talk to you, but you're too good a teacher. That man of yours has really learned how to ignore. I was going to phone you, but he was gone by then, so it wouldn't have been a whole lot of use."

"Did he say where he was going?" There was a pair in my stomach which was nothing to do with what I'd had for break­fast.

"I asked him, but he said he wasn't sure what he was doing. He told me to tell you not to waste your time looking for him."

I looked away, blinking back tears. "Fine," I said unsteadily. "Though why he should think I can spare the time to chase him..."

Shelley reached out and gripped my hand. "He's hurting in his pride, Kate. It's going to take him a bit of time, that's all."

I cleared my throat. "Sure. I should give a shit." I walked through to my office. "If anybody wants me, I'm not here, okay?"

I closed the door and sat down with the tape recorder. I'd recorded the number dialing on high speed, and now I played it back on the lower speed setting so I could more easily count the clicks. Given the way my luck had been running lately, the call I'd interrupted had probably been made to Gail, aid all I was going to end up with was the number of her dentist.

I wrote the numbers down on a sheet of paper. Unless Gail made a round-trip of eighty miles every time she wanted her teeth fixed, it looked like I'd struck gold. The number I'd recorded from her telephone was a Liverpool number. On an impulse, I marched through to Bill's office, where the phone books live, and picked out a three-year-old Liverpool directory. I looked up Halloran. There it was. Desmond J. Halloran, an address in Childwall. The number didn't match.

"It ain't over till it's over," I said grimly, picking up the phone and calling Talking Pages. I asked for portrait photog­raphers in Liverpool. The second number she gave me matched the number on the sheet of paper. D JH Portraits. I didn't think Ladbrokes would be offering me odds on those ini­tials not standing for Desmond J. Halloran.

I shut myself back in my office and rang Paul Kingsley, a commercial photographer who occasionally does jobs for us when Bill and I are overstretched or we need pictures taken in conditions that neither of us feels competent to handle. Paul's always delighted to hear from us. I suspect he read too many Batman comics when he was a lad. I got him on his mobile. "I need your help," I told him.

"Great," he said enthusiastically. "What's the job?"

"I want to check out a photographer in Liverpool. I need to know how his business is doing. Is he making money, is he on the skids, that kind of thing. Do you know anybody who could color in the picture?"

"That's all you want?" He sounded disappointed. It was worrying. This is man whose assignments for us have included spending a Saturday night in an industrial rubbish bin, and standing for three days in the rain in the middle of a shrubbery. In his shoes, I'd have been delirious with joy at the news that his latest task for Mortensen and Brannigan involved nothing more hazardous to the health than picking up a phone.

"That's all I want," I confirmed. "Only I want it yesterday. DJH Portraits, that's the firm."

"Consider it done," he said.

My next call was to Alexis. "All right?" she greeted me. "Has dickhead turned up?" I told her about Shelley's encounter with Richard. "That doesn't sound like good-bye to me," she said. "You want my advice, give your insurance man a bell. Show Richard you're not sitting round waiting for him to de­cide it's time to come home."

"Strangely enough, I'm seeing him for dinner," I told her.

"Nice one. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"That doesn't give me a lot of scope on a date with a fella, does it?"

"Exactly. Now, what was it you wanted?"

"You still got your contact in Telecom accounts?" I asked her.

"You bet. Like the song says, once you have found her, never let her go. What are you after?"

"I want the itemized bills for the last six months on three numbers," I said. "One Manchester, two Liverpool. How much is that going to rush me?"

"It's usually fifty quid a throw. I'll ask her if she'll give you the three for a hundred and twenty. You want to give me the numbers. I'll pass them on?"

I read the three numbers over to her. "Soon as possible," I said.

"If I catch her now, she'll fax them to you when she gets home tonight. That do you?"

"It'll have to."

"Is this something I should know about, K.B.? I mean, I'm the woman you were pumping last night about mysterious deaths in Manchester and Liverpool."

I chuckled. "If I said it was a completely unrelated matter, would you believe me?"

"Girl, if the Pope himself told me it was a completely unre­lated matter, I wouldn't believe him. You've got no chance. You want to share this with me?"

"Do your own investigations," I told her.

"I'll catch up with you later. Have fun with the insurance man. I'll expect a Ml report tomorrow."

"Only paying clients get full reports," I laughed. I replaced the receiver and swung my feet up onto the desk. A vague shape was forming in my mind, but there were still too many questions that needed answering. Not least of them was the one Gail Morton herself had raised. If someone had been tar­geting Joey Morton specifically, how could they be sure he would be the person to open the fatal container?

I was still worrying at that point when Paul called back. "DJH Portraits," he said. "Desmond Halloran. One-man band. He used to work with another guy, doing the usual wed­dings, babies and pets. But he fancied himself as a bit of an artist, so he set up on his own, doing specialist portrait work. I'm told his stuff is really good, but the problem is that using the kind of processes he does is very labor-intensive, as well as costing a fair bit on the chemicals. He was keeping his head above water to begin with, but the way the recession's been bit­ing, nobody's got the cash to spare for fancy photographs that come in at five hundred quid a throw. My contact says he reck­ons he must be running at a loss these days. That what you wanted to hear?"

"Smack on the button," I said.

"This wouldn't have something to do with the fact that his wife has just popped her clogs, would it?" he asked eagerly, ever the boy detective.

"Now, Paul, you know I never divulge confidential client in­formation."

"I know. Only, my mate, he says Desmond only kept afloat because his wife's business was a raging success and she sub­sidized him. He was wondering how Desmond's going to go on now."

Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place. "Thank you, Paul," I said. "Send me an invoice." It was a long shot, but if Desmond Halloran was having an affair with Gail Morton and they wanted to ditch their partners and run off together, they'd need something to live on. Quite a big something, if my impressions of Gail were accurate. But if Desmond divorced Mary, she'd doubtless hang on to the kids and to her business, leaving Desmond potless. And I suspected that Desmond pot-less was a lot less attractive to Gail than Desmond loaded.

Before I could do anything more, the door to my office opened and Delia walked in. She looked at me, eyes reproach­ful, and gently shook her head. "Running out on Cliff Jackson I could understand," she said. "But running out on a promise you made to me? Kate, you checked your brains in with your bags at Milan and forgot to pick them up at the other end."

She didn't need to say any more. I could beat myself up. She was right. When I start letting my friends down, I know my life's starting to spin out of control. I got to my feet. "I'm sorry," I said inadequately. "You're right. You deserve better."

"Shall we go?"

I nodded. On the way out, Shelley said, "Sorry, Kate. I can lie to most people, but not to the rest of the team."

"No need to apologize," I said. "I'm the one in the wrong. You better phone Ruth and tell her to meet me at... where, Delia?"

"Bootle Street," Delia said.

"Oh, and Shelley? I think I might be awhile. Better ring Michael Haroun at Fortissimus and tell him I need a rain check tonight."

I followed Delia out to the waiting police car. I knew I was damn lucky not to be under arrest. I just didn't feel like I could risk walking under ladders.