Star Struck Read Free Page A

hand, it might mean that the death prediction was one of Dorothea Dawson’s regular routines for putting the frighteners on her clients and making them more dependent on her. Especially the older ones. Let’s face it, there can’t be that many public figures Gloria’s age who go through more than a couple of months without knowing
    The news seemed to cheer her up. “Right then, we’d better be off,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette and gathering her mac around her shoulders.
    “We’d better be off?” I echoed.
    She glanced at her watch, a chunky gold item with chips of diamond that glittered like a broken windscreen in a streetlight. “Depends where you live, I suppose. Only, if I’m opening a theme pub in Blackburn at eight and we’ve both got to get changed and grab a bite to eat, we’ll be cutting it a bit fine if we don’t get a move on.”
    “A theme pub in Blackburn,” I said faintly.
    “That’s right, chuck. I’m under contract to the brewery. It’s straightforward enough. I turn up, tell a few jokes, sing a couple of songs to backing tapes, sign a couple of hundred autographs and off.” As she spoke, she was setting her hat at a rakish angle and replacing her sunglasses. As she made for the door, I dived behind the desk and swept my palmtop computer and my moby into my shoulder bag. I only caught up with her because she’d stopped to sign a glossy color photograph of herself disguised as Brenda Barrowclough for Shelley.
    Something terrible had happened to the toughest office manager in Manchester. Imagine Cruella De Vil transformed into one of those cuddly Dalmatian puppies, only more so. It was like watching Ben Nevis grovel. “And could you sign one, ‘for Ted’?” she begged. I wished I had closed-circuit TV cameras covering the office. A video of this would keep Shelley off my back for months.
    “No problem, there you go,” Gloria said, signing the card with a flourish. “You right, Kate?”
    I grabbed my coat and shrugged into it as I followed Gloria into
    “This sign says, ‘Employees of DVS Systems only. Unauthorized users will be clamped,’” she pointed out.
    “It’s all right,” I said in a tone that I hoped would end the conversation. I didn’t want to explain to Gloria that I’d got so fed up with the desperate state of car parking in my part of town that I’d checked out which office car parks were seldom full. I’d used the macro lens on the camera to take a photograph of a DVS Systems parking pass through somebody else’s windscreen and made myself a passable forgery. I’d been parking on their lot for six months with no trouble, but it wasn’t something I was exactly proud of. Besides, it never does to let the clients know about the little sins. It only makes them nervous.
    Gloria stopped expectantly next to a very large black saloon with tinted windows. I shook my head and she pulled a rueful smile. I pointed the remote at my dark blue Rover and it cheeped its usual greeting at me. “Sorry it’s not a limo,” I said to Gloria as we piled in. “I need to be invisible most of the time.” I didn’t feel the need to mention that the engine under the bonnet was very different from the unit the manufacturer had installed. I had enough horsepower under my bonnet to stage my own rodeo. If anybody was stalking Gloria, I could blow them off inside the first five miles.
    I drove home, which took less than five minutes even in early rush-hour traffic. I love living so close to the city center, but the area’s become more dodgy in the last year. I’d have moved if I hadn’t had to commit every spare penny to the business. I’d been the junior partner in Mortensen & Brannigan, and when Bill Mortensen had decided to sell up and move to Australia, I’d thought my career prospects were in the toilet. I couldn’t afford to buy him out but I was damned if some stranger was going to end up with the lion’s share of a business I’d worked so hard to build. It