Free Stranded by Val McDermid

I’d come up on the lottery.
    The only drawback is that after a few months, she tells me she can’t be doing with the villainy. She’s got a proposition for me. If I go straight, she’ll kick Danny into touch and move in with me.
    So that’s why I’m trying to figure out a way to make an honest living. You can see that convincing a bunch of suits they should give me a job would be difficult. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Finnieston, but I’m afraid you don’t quite fit our present requirements.’
    The only way anybody’s ever going to give me a job is if I monster them into it, and somehow I don’t think the straight world works like that. You can’t go around personnel offices saying, ‘I know where you live. So gizza job or the Labrador gets it.’
    This is where I’m up to when I meet my mate Chrissie for a drink. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but Chrissie writes them hardasnails cop dramas for the telly. She looks more like one of them bleeding-heart social workers, with her wholemeal jumpers and jeans. But Chrissie’s dead sound, her and her girlfriend both. The girlfriend’s a brief, but in spite of that, she’s straight. That’s probably because she doesn’t do criminal stuff, just divorces and child custody and all that bollocks.
    So I’m having a pint with Chrissie in one of them trendy bars in Chorlton, all wooden floors and hard chairs and fifty different beers, none of them ones you’ve ever heard of except Guinness. And I’m telling her about my little problem. Halfway down the second pint, she gets that look in her eyes, the dreamy one that tells me something I’ve said has set the wheels in motion inside her head. Usually, I see the results six months later on the telly. I love that. Sitting down with Kimmy and going, ‘See that? I told Chrissie about that scam. Course, she’s softened it up a bit, but it’s my tale.’
    â€˜I’ve got an idea,’ Chrissie says.
    â€˜What? You’re going to write a series about some poor fucker trying to go straight?’ I say.
    â€˜No, a job. Well, sort of a job.’ She knocks back the rest of her pint and grabs her coat. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll get back to you. Stay lucky.’ And she’s off, leaving me surrounded by the wellmeaning like the last covered wagon hemmed in by the Apaches.
    A week goes by, with me trying to talk my way into setting up a little business doing one-day hall sales. But everybody I approach thinks I’m up to something. They can’t believe I want to do anything the straight way, so all I get offered is fifty kinds of bent gear. I am sick as a pig by the time I get the call from Chrissie.
    This time, we meet round her house. Me, Chrissie and the girlfriend, Sarah the solicitor. We settled down with our bottles of Belgian pop and Sarah kicks off. ‘How would you like to work on a freelance basis for a consortium of solicitors?’ she asks.
    I can’t help myself. I just burst out laughing. ‘Do what?’ I go.
    â€˜Just hear me out. I spend a lot of my time dealing with women who are being screwed over by the men in their life. Some of them have been battered, some of them have been emotionally abused, some of them are being harassed by their exes. Sometimes, it’s just that they’re trying to get a square deal for themselves and their kids, only the bloke knows how to play the system and they end up with nothing while he laughs all the way to the bank. For most of these women, the law either can’t sort it out or it won’t. I even had a case where two coppers called to a domestic gave evidence in court against the woman, saying she was completely out of control and irrational and all the bloke was doing was exerting reasonable force to protect himself.’
    â€˜Bastards,’ I say. ‘So what’s this got to do with me?’
    â€˜People doing