Dead Beat

9

I parked the car in a pay and display behind the National Film and Television Museum. I walked round to the museum foyer and found a telephone booth which miraculously contained a phone book. I looked up the Seagull Project, and copied its address and number into my notebook. I checked my watch and decided I deserved a coffee, so I walked upstairs to the coffee bar and settled myself down in a window seat looking out over the city centre.

The pale spring sun had broken through the grey clouds, and the old Victorian buildings looked positively romantic. Built on the sweatshops of the wool industry, the once prosperous city had fought its urban decay and depression by jumping on the tourism bandwagon that's turning England into one gigantic theme park. Now that the nearby Yorkshire countryside had been translated into The Bronte Country, Bradford had seized its opportunity with both hands. Even the biscuits in the tearooms and snack bars are called Bronte. But it was the Asian community who'd really revitalised the city's slum areas, producing oases of industrial and wholesaling prosperity. I'd been around a few of those in the past few weeks, hot on the trail of Billy Smart's personal mobile circus.

I tore my eyes away from the view and looked up the Seagull Project's address in my street directory. Stick's information was sound so far. The street was third on the left, off the hill that climbed up the side of the Alhambra Theatre. I finished my coffee and set out on foot.

Five minutes later, I was outside two three-storey stone-built terraced houses that had been knocked together with a board on the front proclaiming 'Seagull Project'. I stood around uncertainly for a few minutes, not at all sure what was the best way to play it. The one thing I was sure about was that introducing myself and explaining my mission was the certain route to failure. Bitter experience has taught me that voluntary organisations make the Trappists look like blabbermouths.

I eventually settled on my course of action. More lies. If my childhood Sunday School teacher ever finds out about me, she'll put me straight to the top of the list for the burning fire. I walked up the path and turned the door handle. I walked into a clean, airy hallway painted white with grey carpeting. A large sign pointing to the left read 'All visitors please report to reception.'

For once, I did as I was told and walked into a small, tidy office. Behind a wide desk, a mop of carrot red hair was bent over a pile of papers so high it almost hid its owner from view. I felt a pang of sympathy. I knew just how she felt. My own hatred of paperwork is so strong that I ignore it till Shelley practically locks me in my office with dire threats of what she'll do to me if I dare to emerge before it's finished. It's just the same at home; if I didn't force myself to sit down once a month and pay all the bills, the bailiffs would be a permanent fixture on the doorstep.

As the reception door closed behind me, a pale, freckled face looked up. 'Hi, can I help you?' she asked in a tired voice.

'I don't know, but I hope so,' I replied with my most ingratiating smile. 'I was wondering if you needed any volunteer workers here right now?'

The tiredness evaporated from her face and she grinned. 'Music to my ears!' she exclaimed. 'Those are the first good words I've heard today. Sit down, make yourself comfortable.' She gestured expansively at the two worn office chairs on my side of the desk. As I settled on the less dilapidated one, she introduced herself. 'I'm Jude. I'm one of the project's three full-time employees. We're always desperate for volunteers and fund-raisers.' She opened a drawer and took out a long form. 'Do you mind if I fill this out while we talk? I know I'm being quick off the mark, but it saves time in the long run if you do decide to help us.'

I shook my head. 'No problem. My name's Kate Barclay.' I knew Richard wouldn't mind me borrowing his name. After all, he knew I'd never be making the loan permanent.

'And where do you live, Kate?' Jude asked, scribbling furiously. I plucked a number out of the air and attached it to Leeds Road, which I knew was long enough to reduce the chances of her knowing a near neighbour.

We went through the formalities quickly. I told her I'd been working abroad as a teacher and that I'd just moved to Bradford with my boyfriend. I explained I'd heard about the project from the city council's voluntary services unit and had come along to offer my services. All the while, Jude nodded and wrote on her form. At the end of my recital, she looked up and said, 'Have you any experience with this kind of work?'

'Yes. That's why I came to you. We've been living in Antwerp for the last three years and I did some work with a drug rehabilitation charity there,' I lied fluently.

'Right,' said Jude. 'I'd no idea they ran something like that in Antwerp.'

I smiled sweetly and refrained from saying that that's why I'd chosen the Belgian city. No one in Britain has ever been to Antwerp, though I don't know why. It's more attractive, interesting and friendly than almost any other city I've ever been to. It's where Bill's parents came from originally and he still has a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins there that he visits regularly. I've been over with him a couple of times, and fell in love with it at first sight. I always use Antwerp now for obscure cover stories. No one ever questions it. Jude was no exception. She swallowed my story, made a note on her form then got to her feet.

'What I'll do is show you round now, to let you see exactly what we've got going here. Then I suggest you come to our weekly collective meeting tomorrow evening and see if you feel you'll fit in with us, and we feel we'll fit in with you,' she added, moving towards the door.

My heart sank. The thought of enduring a meeting of the Seagull Project's collective filled me with gloom. I hate the endless circular debate of collectives. I like decisions to be made logically, with the pros and cons neatly laid out. I know all the theory about how consensus is supposed to make everyone feel they have a stake in the decision-making. But in my experience, it usually ends up with everyone feeling they've been hard done by. I couldn't imagine any reason why the Seagull Project would be any different.

I hid my despair behind a cheerful smile and followed Jude on her tour of the building. My target was clearly the second room we entered. There were filing cabinets the length of one wall and an IBM PC clone on one of the two desks. As well as its hard disc drive, I noted a slot for 5.25" floppies. A man in his early thirties was sitting at the computer keyboard, and Jude introduced him as Andy.

Andy looked up and grinned vaguely at me before returning to his keyboard.

'The filing cabinets hold details of all the clients we've had through here, all the other agencies we work with, and all our workers. We're trying to transfer all our records to computer, most recent cases first, but it's going to take a while,' Jude explained as we left Andy to his task. I noticed that the only lock on the door was a simple Yale.

The other office on the ground floor was the fund-raising office. Jude explained that Seagull was kept on the wing by a mixture of local authority and national grants and charitable donations. The staff consisted of herself as administrator, a psychiatrist and a qualified nurse. They had an arrangement with a local inner-city group practice, and there were always a few biomedical sciences students from the university who were glad to help.

The first floor contained a couple of consulting rooms, two meeting rooms and a common room for the addicts who were living in. On the top floor, addicts in the early stages of kicking heroin sweated and moaned through the first weeks of their agony. If they made it through that, they moved on to a halfway house owned by the project, which tried to find them permanent jobs and homes well away from the temptations of their old stamping grounds. The whole place seemed clean and cheerful, if threadbare, and I thought that Moira could have done a lot worse for herself.

'We run an open door policy here,' Jude explained as we made our way back downstairs. 'We have to. As it is, we have to turn more away than we can treat. But they're free to go any time. That way, if they make it they know they've done it themselves and not had a cure imposed on them. We believe it makes them less likely to fall into the habit again.'

I knew better than to ask about their success rate. It would only depress Jude to talk about it, and she seemed so happy to have a new volunteer on her hands I didn't want to disappoint her any more than I was going to have to do anyway. As we reached the front door, I shook Jude's hand and asked when I should turn up the following evening.

'Come about half-past eight,' she said. 'The meeting starts at seven, but we have a lot of confidential stuff to get through first. You'll have to ring the bell when you get here because the front door's locked at six.'

'Open door policy?' I queried.

'To keep people out, not in,' Jude pointed out with a wry smile. 'See you then.'

'I can hardly wait,' I muttered under my breath as I walked down the path and headed back to the car. I felt a complete shit, having raised her hopes of finding another volunteer. Maybe I could pitch Jett into giving them a substantial donation once I'd reunited him with Moira. After all, he'd said he'd be happy to give everything he owned to get her back.

It was just after eight when I drew up at the foot of the carriage turning-circle outside Colcutt Manor. On the way back to Manchester, I'd dictated a report for Shelley to type up and fax to Jett so he'd know I wasn't just sitting around collecting my daily retainer. I pulled off the motorway to hit the ASDA superstore. I wandered around the aisles trying to fill my trolley only with the essential items on my mental shopping list, but I fell by the wayside at the deli counter, as usual, and loaded up with a dozen little treats to cheer myself up. Then I called the manor to ask for the fax number. I asked to speak to Jett. That was my first mistake.

'I'm sorry, Jett's unavailable at present,' Gloria informed me, unable to keep the spark of pleasure from her voice.

'Gloria,' I warned, T haven't got the energy to play games right now. Let me speak to him, please.'

'He really is unavailable,' she protested, her voice going from silky to sulky. 'They're in the recording studio. But he left a message for you,' she admitted grudgingly.

'And are you going to tell me or are we going to play twenty questions?'

'Jett said that he wants you to come round and give him a progress report.'

T have a progress report right here. I'm about to drop it off in my secretary's in-tray. It'll be on your desk tomorrow morning,' I told her.

'He wants you here in person,' she retorted smugly.

I sighed. 'I'll be there in an hour.' I dropped the phone back in the cradle and stomped back to the car. Unfortunately, the trolley wouldn't go in a straight line, so the effect wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. Luckily there were no small children around to laugh. That saved me the aggravation of an assault charge.

I really wasn't in the mood for trekking over to Colcutt. Apart from anything else, my carton of double choc chip ice-cream would have melted by the time I got home. But I couldn't see any alternative. If I refused, it would give Gloria more ammunition than she'd need to see me off. Besides, we were charging Jett such astronomical fees I could hardly deny him a face-to-face. Maybe I could ask permission to put my ice-cream in their freezer.

At least Gloria had grown out of the silly childishness with the entryphone. This time she let me in right away. I was surprised to find the circle in front of the house crammed with the kind of motors the likes of me don't even know the price of. Top of the range Mercs, BMWs, even a couple of Porsches. It looked like a march past of Billy Smart's hire cars. For somebody who was working hard only an hour ago, Jett sure knew how to throw an impromptu party I thought as I opened the front door to a blast of Queen.

I looked uncertainly round the hall, not sure where to start a search for Jett. The music seemed to be coming from everywhere rather than one specific room, though the noise of raised voices was definitely on the left somewhere. I'd just set off on the long walk to what was probably once the ballroom when Tamar practically flattened me as she bounced out of a loo tucked under the stairs.

She giggled tipsily as I grabbed at her to steady myself. 'Well, well, well,' she gurgled. 'If it isn't our very own Sherlock Holmes. Come to check your burglar alarms, have you? Well, you've picked the wrong night.'

I pasted a smile on my tired face. 'Why's that, Tamar?'

'Celebration. World and his dog all celebrating the fact that we've finally got one bastard track that everyone's happy with. Jett's actually managed to write something that hasn't put the entire household to sleep.' She hiccuped and pulled away from me to head unsteadily towards the din. 'Whoops,' she muttered. 'Not supposed to say that to the hired help. Anyway, what exactly are you doing here?' she added, pirouetting so that her sequinned jacket sparkled, and fixing me with a bleary stare.

'Jett wanted to see me,' I said. Well, it was more or less true.

'About burglar alarms? At this time of night? Today?' Then the incredulity vanished from her voice, replaced by suspicion. 'You're not really installing a new alarm, are you?'

I shrugged. It wasn't my job to tell her my business. Apart from the rules of confidentiality, if Jett hadn't told her what I was doing, I certainly wasn't about to bring her wrath down on my head. 'That fucking bitch,' she swore under her breath. She tossed her expensively tousled hair back from her forehead and stormed down the hall. Curious, I followed her back towards the front door and into the office, where Gloria sat at her word processor, apparently doing the housekeeping accounts, judging by the pile of bills beside her. She glanced up at Tamar, then coolly carried on typing.

'You told me she was here to sort out a burglar alarm,' Tamar accused Gloria, a mottled flush rising from her neck to her cheeks.

Gloria's fingers didn't even falter. 'And that's what I'll tell you now if you ask properly instead of barging in here like a spoilt child,' she said primly. She stopped typing and ran a hand over her blonde hair, pulled back so tightly that in the light from her desk lamp it looked like it had been painted on.

'She's looking for Moira, isn't she?' Tamar raged.

'Why don't you ask Jett? He'll tell you anything he wants you to know,' Gloria replied insultingly. I almost wished Tamar would flatten her. It would have made my day, and I wouldn't mind betting I wouldn't have been alone.

Instead, Tamar, who seemed to have sobered up under the influence of so much adrenalin, pushed past me and went back up the hall at a speed I wouldn't have believed possible on four-inch stilettos. I threw a vague smile in Gloria's direction and followed her. The cabaret was worth the trip.

I caught up with Tamar on the threshold of what looked like it had once been a Regency ballroom. The plaster swags were still in place. But everything had been painted gold and black. It would have given the National Trust an apoplexy, or a surfeit, or one of those other things they were always dying of way back then. There were no Regency bucks there tonight, however, just a couple of dozen ageing rockers with a fascinating array of bimbettes on their knees, arms or various other parts of their anatomy. It was hard to tell in the dim light.

Jett was leaning on the gilded mantelpiece, his arm round Kevin in a friendly sort of way. As we approached, I could see the unfocused look of a man who is on his way to being seriously drunk. It was quite an achievement for someone who had been in the studio just over an hour before. It must have been some track he'd just laid down. Tamar landed like a cloudburst on his parade.

'Why didn't you tell me she was looking for Moira?' she hissed.

Jett turned away from us and stared bleakly at the wall. Tamar grabbed his arm and repeated her question. Kevin quickly moved behind her, gripped her tightly above both elbows and stepped back. She had no choice but to move with him. Using the same grip, he turned her round and frogmarched her out of the door.

She was so astonished she didn't say a word till they were halfway across the room. But then her yells caused less of a stir than a mugging in Moss-side. As far as everyone else was concerned, it was just a bit of good clean fun.

I moved closer to Jett. 'You wanted a report,' I said. 'I'm making progress. I know where she was a few months ago. By tomorrow night, I should have a current address.'

He turned his head to face me. When I got a whiff of the alcohol on his breath, I wished he hadn't bothered. 'Is she all right?' he slurred.

There wasn't a way to soften the blow. I called it like I saw it. 'She might be. She was on the streets, Jett. She was doing smack as well. But she'd checked into a clinic to clean herself up. Like I say, I'll know more tomorrow. I'll fax you a full update in the morning.' He didn't look like he was in the mood for details now.

He nodded. 'Thanks,' he mumbled. I felt like the last of the great party poopers as I trudged across the room. I found Tamar halfway up the stairs, just where they split into two. Tears had done serious damage to her make-up. She looked like an aerial shot of a war zone. 'Don't bring her back,' she pleaded with me. 'You'll spoil everything.'

I sat down beside her. 'What makes you think that?'

'You wouldn't understand,' she said, pushing herself upright. She ran a hand through her hair like a tragedy queen. 'Your kind never do. You just create havoc and walk away. Well, I'm telling you nobody wants Moira back. Not even Jett, not deep down. He doesn't want her back out of love, or out of his desperation to make a good album. He wants her back so he can play the lead in the parable of the prodigal son,' she complained cynically. 'The thing he needs most of all right now is to feel good about himself, and she's the perfect vehicle. I mean, where's the kick in getting it on with me? I don't need saving, I don't need putting on track in my karmic journey. Moira's a fucking godsend, literally.'

She looked as if she was going to say more, but Kevin appeared at the head of the stairs. 'For God's sake, Tamar, pull yourself together. I don't bloody want it any more than you do. But at least if you keep him happy, maybe he won't fall for her shit again. OK?'

He glared at me as he came downstairs. 'Thanks for your contribution to the celebrations,' he said sarcastically. 'Have you found her yet?'

I shook my head.

'Good,' he commented bitterly. Take as long as you like. I'd rather pay your exorbitant fees for six months than have her back here.' That made me realise just how serious Kevin was about Moira.

Tamar sighed and headed upstairs. I followed Kevin down to the hall, in time to see Gloria lock her office behind her and head towards the ballroom. Good old Gloria. Nothing could make everyone's life a misery like her literal interpretation of the boss's instructions. Now she'd be able to toddle off and offer the hero a shoulder to cry on. He sure as hell wouldn't be getting any offers of comfort from Tamar tonight.