Free Crack Down by Val McDermid Page A

lurid tales of Daddy in the nick.
    Which sounded simple if you said it very fast. Unless we could spring Richard in the next day or two, however, it was going to be extremely complicated. Richard and I had agreed an initial lie, which should hold the fort for a day or two. After that, it was going to get complicated. While Davy might just believe his dad had had to dash abroad on an urgent, chance-in-a-lifetime job, it wasn’t going to be easy to explain why Richard couldn’t get home again. There may be parts of the world where the transport isn’t too reliable on account of wars and famine, but unfortunately most of them don’t run to major rock venues. Either way, whether it took hours or days, I was going to need some assistant minders, if only to baby-sit while I rambled the city center streets looking for fast cars with trade plates. And there aren’t very many people I’d trust to do that.
    I picked up the phone again and tapped in Alexis Lee’s office number. “ Chronicle crime desk,” a young man’s voice informed me.
    â€œAlexis, please.”
    â€œSh’not’ere,” came the snippy reply.
    â€œI need to speak to her in a hurry. You wouldn’t happen to know where I can get hold of her?” I asked, clinging to my manners by my fingernails. My Granny Brannigan always said politeness cost nothing. But then, she never had to face the humiliation of dealing with lads who still think a yuppie is something to aspire to.
    â€œ ’Zit’bout’story?” he demanded. “You c’n tell me if it is.”
    â€œNot as such,” I said through clenched teeth. I could hear my
Oxford accent becoming more Gown than Town by the second. “Not yet, anyway. Look, I know you’re a very busy person, and I don’t want to waste any of your precious time, but it’s awfully important that I speak to Alexis. Do you know where she is?”
    There’s a whole generation of young lads who are either so badly educated or so thick skinned they don’t even notice when they’re being patronized. The guy on the phone could have featured in a sociology lecture as an exemplar of the type. “Sh’s a’ lunch,” he gabbled.
    â€œAnd do we know where?”
    â€œGone f’r a curry.”
    That was all I needed to know. There might be three dozen curry restaurants strung out along the mile-long stretch of Wilmslow Road in Rusholme, but everybody has their favorite. Alexis’s current choice was only too familiar. “Thanks, sonny,” I said. “I’ll remember you in my letter to Santa.”
    I was out of my seat before I’d put the phone back. I crossed my office in five strides and walked into the main office. “Shelley, I’m off to the Golden Ganges. And before you ask how I can eat at a time like this, don’t. Just don’t.”

7
    If the gods had struck me blind the moment I entered the Golden Ganges, I’d still have had no problem finding Alexis. That unmistakable Liverpudlian voice, a monument to Scotch and nicotine, almost drowned out the twanging sitar that was feebly trickling out of the restaurant’s speakers, even though she was seated a long way from the door. The volume told me she wasn’t working, just routinely showing off to her companion. When she’s doing the business with one of her contacts, the sound level drops so low that even MI5 would have a job picking it up. I walked towards the table.
    Alexis spotted me two steps into the room, though there was no pause in the flow of her narrative to indicate it. As I approached, she held up one finger to stop me in my tracks a few feet away, interrupting her story to say, “Just a sec, Kate, crucial point in the anecdote.” She turned back to her companion and said, “Thomas Wynn Ellis, a good Welsh name, you’d think you’d cracked it, yeah? I mean, she’s not crazy about the Welsh,