n an indictable offense to say it, but Sean Costigan didn't have to open his mouth to reveal he was Irish. I only had to look at him, even in the sweaty laser-split gloom of the nightclub. He had dark hair with the sort of kink in it that guarantees a bad hair life, no matter how much he spent on expensive stylists. His eyes were dark blue, his com-plexion fair and smooth, his raw bones giving him a youthful, unformed look that his watchful expression and the deep lines from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth denied.

I'd got home around nine after fish and chips in Leeds's legendary Bryan's, making the mistake I always do of thinking I'm hungry enough for a jumbo haddock. Feel¬ing more tightly stuffed than a Burns's Night haggis, I'd driven back with the prospect of an early night-all that was keeping me going. I should have known better, really. Among the several messages on my machine-Alexis, Bill, Gizmo, and Richard, just for a kickoff-there was one I couldn't ignore. Dan Druff had called to say he'd set up a meet at midnight in Paradise. Why does nobody keep office hours anymore?

I've never been able to nap. I always wake up with a thick head and a mouth that feels like it's lined with sheepskin. I don't mean the sanitized stuff they put in slippers-I mean the stuff you find in the wild, still attached to its smelly owner. I rang Alexis, but she didn't want to talk in front of Chris, whom she was keeping in the dark about Sarah Blackstone's murder on account of her delicate condition. Richard was out-his message had been to tell me he wouldn't be home until late. We'd probably meet on the doorstep as we both staggered home in the small hours. Bill, I still wasn't talking to, and Gizmo doesn't do conversation. So I booted up the com¬puter and settled down for a serious session with my foot¬ball team. Not many people know this, but I'm the most successful manager in the history of the football league. In just five seasons, I've taken struggling Halifax Town from the bottom of the Conference League up through the divisions to the Premier League. In our first season there, we even won the cup. This game, Premier Man¬ager 3, is one of my darkest secrets. Even Richard doesn't know about my hidden nights of passion with my first team squad. He wouldn't understand that it's just fantasy; he'd see it as an excuse to buy me a Manchester United season ticket for my next birthday so I could sit next to him in the stands every other week and perish from cold and boredom. He'd never comprehend that while watch¬ing football sends me catatonic, developing the strategies it takes to run a successful team is my idea of a really good time. So I always make sure he's out when I sit down with my squad.

Around half past eleven, I told the boys to take an early bath and grabbed my leather jacket. When I stepped outside the door, I discovered the rain had stopped, so I decided to leave the car and walk to the Paradise. It's only fifteen minutes on foot, and the streets of Central Manchester are still fairly safe to walk around late at night. Especially if you're a Thai boxer. Besides, I figured it wouldn't do me any harm to limber up for looking chilled out.

The Paradise Factory considers itself Manchester's coolest nightclub. The brick building is on the corner of Princess Street and Charles Street, near Chinatown and the casinos, slightly off the beaten track of clubland. It used to house Factory Records, the famous indie label that was home to Joy Division and lots of other bands less talented but definitely more joyful. When Factory fell casualty to the recession, an astute local businesswoman took over the building and turned it into poseur's heaven. Officially, it's supposed to be an eclectic mix of gay and hetero, camp and straight, but it's the only club where I've been asked at the door to verify that I'm not a gender tourist by listing other Manchester gay and lesbian venues where I've drunk and danced.

As soon as I walked through the door, I was hit by a bass rhythm that pounded stronger in my body than my heart ever had. It was hard to walk without keeping the beat. I found Dan and Lice propped against a wall near the first bar I came to as I walked into the three-story building. The guy I knew without asking was Scan Costi-gan stood slightly to one side, his wiry body dwarfed by his fellow Celts. His eyes were restless, constantly check¬ing out the room. He let me buy the drinks. Both rounds. That wasn't the only way he made it plain he was there on sufferance. The sneer was another dead giveaway. It stayed firmly in place long after the formal introductions were over and he'd given me the kind of appraising look that's more about the labels and the price tags on the clothes than the body inside them.

"I don't know what the boys have been saying to you, but I want to make one thing absolutely plain," he told me in a hard-edged Belfast whine. "We are the victims here, not the villains." He sounded like every self-justifying North¬ern Irish politician I'd ever heard. Only this one was lean¬ing over me, bellowing in my ear, as opposed to on a TV screen I could silence with one blast of the remote control.

"So how do you see what's been happening?" I asked.

"I've been at this game a very long time," he shouted over the insistent techno beat. "I was the one put Morrissey on the map, you know. And the Mondays. All the big boys, I've had them all through my hands. You're talking to a very experienced operator here," he added, wetting his whistle with a swig of the large dark rum and Coke he'd asked for. Dan and Lice nodded sagely, backing up their man. Funny how quickly clients forget whose side you're on.

I waited, sipping my extremely average vodka and bot¬tled grapefruit juice. Costigan lit a Marlboro Light and let me share the plume of smoke from his nostrils. Some¬times I wonder if being a lawyer would really have been such a bad choice. "And I have not been trespassing," he said, stabbing my right shoulder with the fingers that held the cigarette. "I am the one trespassed against."

"You're telling me that you haven't been sticking up posters on someone else's ground?" I asked skeptically.

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. Like I said, we're the victims here. It's my ground that's getting invaded. More times than I can count in the past few weeks, I've had my legitimate poster sites covered up by cowboys."

"So you've been taking revenge on the guilty men?"

"I have not," he yelled indignantly. "I don't even know who's behind it. This city's always been well regulated, you know what I mean? Everybody knows what's what and nobody gets hurt if they stick to their own patch. I've been doing this too long to fuck with the opposition. So if you're trying to lay the boys' trouble at my door, you can forget it, okay?"

"Is there any kind of pattern to the cowboy fly-posting?" I asked.

"What do you mean, a pattern?"

"Is it always the same sites where they're taking liber¬ties? Or is it random? Are you the only one who's being hit, or is it a general thing?"

He shrugged. "It's all over, as far as I can tell. It's not the sort of thing you talk about, d'you understand? Nobody wants the opposition to think they're weak, you know? But the word on the street is that I'm not the only one suffering."

"But none of the other bands are getting the kind of shit we're getting," Dan interjected. God knows how he managed to follow the conversation. He must have trained as a lip-reader. "I've been asking around. Plenty other people have had some of their posters covered up, but nobody's had the aggravation we've had."

"Yeah, well, it's nothing to do with me, okay?" Costigan retorted aggressively.

There didn't seem to be anything else to say. I told Dan and Lice I'd be in touch, drained my drink, and walked home staring at every poster I passed, wondering what the hell was going on.

I dragged my feet up the stairs to the office just after quarter past nine the next morning. I felt as if I were four¬teen again, Monday morning before double Latin. I'd lain staring at the ceiling, trying to think of good excuses for not going in, but none of the ones that presented them¬selves convinced either me or Richard, which gave them no chance against Shelley or Bill.

I needn't have worried. There was news waiting that took Bill off the front page for a while. I walked in to find Josh Gilbert perched on the edge of Shelley's desk, one elegantly trousered leg crossed casually over the other. I could have paid my mortgage for a couple of months eas¬ily with what the suit had cost. Throw in the shirt, tie, and shoes and we'd be looking at the utility bills too. Josh is a financial consultant who has managed to surf every wave and trough of the volatile economy and somehow come out so far ahead of the field that I keep expecting the Serious Fraud Office to feel his collar. Josh and I have a deal; he gives me information, I buy him expensive din¬ners. In these days of computerization, it would be cheaper to pay Gizmo for the same stuff, but a lot less entertaining. Computers don't gossip. Yet.

Shelley was looking up at Josh with that mixture of wariness and amusement she reserves for born womaniz¬ers. When he saw me, he broke off the tale he was in the middle of and jumped to his feet. "Kate!" he exclaimed, stepping forward and sweeping me into a chaste embrace.

I air-kissed each cheek and stepped clear. The older he got, the more his resemblance to Robert Redford seemed to grow. It was disconcerting, as if Hollywood had invaded reality. Even his eyes seemed bluer. You didn't have to be a private eye to suspect tinted contacts. "I don't mean to sound rude," I said, "but what are you doing here at this time of the morning? Shouldn't you be blinding some poor innocent with science about the latest fluctua¬tions of the Nikkei? Or persuading some lucky lottery winner that their money is safe in your hands?"

"Those days are behind me," he said.

"Meaning?"

"I am thirty-nine years and fifty weeks old today."

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Ever since I've known him Josh has boasted of his intention to retire to some tax haven when he was forty. Part of me had always taken this with a pinch of salt. I don't move in the sorts of circles where people amass the kinds of readies to make that a realistic possibility. I should have realized he meant it; Josh will bullshit till the end of time about women, but he's never less than one hundred percent serious about money. "Ah," I said.

"Josh has come to invite us to his fortieth birthday and retirement party." Shelley confirmed my bleak fear with a sympathetic look.

"Selling up and selling out, eh?" I said.

"Not as such," Josh said languidly, returning to his perch on Shelley's desk. "I'm not actually selling the con¬sultancy. Julia's learned enough from me to run the busi¬ness, and I'm not abandoning her entirely. I might be going to live on Grand Cayman, but with fax machines and e-mail, she'll feel as though I've only moved a few miles away."

"Only if you don't have conversations about the weather," I said. "You'll get bored, Josh. Nothing to do all day but play."

The smile crinkled the skin around his eyes, and he gave me the look Redford reserves for Debra Winger in Legal Eagles. "How could I be bored when there are still beautiful women on the planet I haven't met?"

I heard the door open behind me and Bill's voice said, "Are we using 'met' in the biblical sense here?"

Bill and Josh gave each other the usual once-over, a bit like dogs who have to sniff each other's bollocks before they decide a fight isn't worth the bother. They'd never been friends, probably because they'd thought they were competitors for women. Neither had ever realized how wrong he was; Bill could never have bedded a woman without brains, and Josh never bedded one with an IQ greater than her age except by accident. Shelley had her pet theories on their respective motivations, but life's too short to rerun that seminar.

"So it's all change then," Bill said once Josh had brought him up to speed on his reasons for visiting. "You off to Grand Cayman, me off to Australia."

"I thought you'd only just come back," Josh said.

"I'm planning to move out there permanently. I'm marrying an Australian businesswoman."

"Is she pregnant?" Josh blurted out without thinking. Seeing my face, he gave an apologetic smile and shrug.

"No. And she's not a rich widow either," Bill replied, not in the least put out. "I'm exercising free will here, Josh."

I swear Josh actually changed color. The thought of a man as dedicated as he was to a turbocharged love life finally settling down, and from choice, was like suddenly discovering his body was harbouring a secret cancer. "So because of this woman, you're going to get married and live in Australia? My God, Bill, that's worse than moving to Birmingham. And what about the business? You can keep a finger on the financial pulse from anywhere you can plug in a PC, but you can't run an investigation agency from the other side of the globe."

"The game plan is that I'll sell my share of the agency here and start up again in Australia."

Josh's eyebrows rose. "At your age? Bill, you're only a couple of years younger than me. You're really planning to start from ground zero in a foreign country where you don't even speak the language? God, that sounds too much like hard work to me. And what about Kate?"

I'd had enough. "Kate's gotta go," I said brusquely. "People to be, places to see. Thanks for the invite, Josh. I wouldn't miss it for the world." I wheeled around and headed back out of the door. I wasn't sure where I was going, and I didn't care. I knew I was behaving like a brat, but I didn't care about that either. I stood on the corner outside the office, not even caring about the vicious northeasterly wind that was exfoliating every bit of exposed skin. A giggling flurry of young women in leg warmers and tights accom¬panied by a couple of well-muscled men enveloped me, wait¬ing for the lights to change as they headed for rehearsals at the new dance theater up the street, one of the handful of tangible benefits we got from being U.K. City of Drama for a year. Their energy and sense of direction shamed me, so I followed briskly in their wake and collected my car from the meter where I'd left it less than twenty minutes before. Given that I'd planned to be in the office for a couple of hours, somebody was going to get lucky.

One quick phone call and fifteen minutes later, I was walking around the big Regent Road Sainsbury's with Detective Chief Inspector Delia Prentice. When I'd called and asked her if she could spare half an hour, she'd suggested the supermarket. Her fridge was in the same dire straits as mine, and this way we could both stock up on groceries while we did the business. We took turns pushing the trolley, using our packs of toilet rolls as a convenient Maginot Line between our separate purchases. I filled her in on the headstone scam in the fruit and veg department, handing over a list of victims who should be able to pick out Williams and Constable in an identity parade. She promised to pass it on to one of her bright young things.

The outrageous tale of Cliff Jackson's waste of police time kept us going as far as the chill cabinets. By the time we hit the breakfast cereals, I'd moved on to the problems at Mortensen and Brannigan, which lasted right up to hosiery and tampons. Delia tried an emerald green ruffle against her copper hair. I nodded agreement. "I can see why Shelley suggested you putting your share of the busi¬ness on the market too," Delia said. "But that could pre¬sent you with a different set of problems." "I know," I sighed. "But what else can I do?" "You could talk to Josh," she said. Sometimes I forget the pair of them were at Cambridge together, they're such different types. It's true that they were both fasci¬nated by money but while Josh wanted to make as much of it as possible, Delia wanted to stop people like him doing it illegally. She was too bright for him to fancy, so he gave her his respect instead, and a few years ago he did me the biggest favor he's ever managed when he intro¬duced us.

"What good would that do? Josh deals with multina¬tional conglomerates, not backstreet detective agencies. I can't believe he knows anyone with investigative skills and enough money to buy Bill out that he hasn't already introduced me to. Besides, investigative skills never seem to go hand in hand with the acquisition of hard cash. You should know that."

Delia reached for a tin of black olives then turned her direct green eyes on me. "You'd be surprised at what Josh knows about," she said, giving a deliberate stage wink. "I'm not even going to ask if the Fraud Task Force is about to lose its major inside source," I said. "Besides, Josh is too busy extricating himself from business right now. He's not about to get involved in setting up a whole new partnership for me. Did you know he's retiring in a couple of weeks?"

Delia nodded, looking depressed. "He's been saying he was going to retire at forty since he was nineteen."

"I wouldn't worry about it, Delia. He'll never retire. Not properly. He'll die of boredom in a week if he's not spreading fear and loathing in global financial institu¬tions. He'll always have fingers in enough pies to keep you busy."

Whatever I'd said, it seemed to have deepened Delia's gloom. Then I twigged. If Josh was about to hit the big four zero, it couldn't be far off for Delia. And she wasn't a multimillionaire with the world her oyster. She was a hard¬working, ferociously bright woman in what was still a man's world, a woman whose career commitment left her no space for relationships other than the friendships that bind women together more closely than any other bond. I stopped the trolley by the spirits and liqueurs, put a hand on her arm, and said, "He might have made the money, but you've made the difference."

"Yeah, and everything at the agency is going to work out for the best," she said grimly. We looked at each other, reg¬istering the self-pitying misery that was absorbing each of us. Then, suddenly and simultaneously, we burst out laughing. Nobody could get near the gin, but we didn't give a damn. Like the song says, girls just wanna have fun.