Y ENCOUNTER WITH JACKSON REMINDED ME OF THE OLD radical slogan; help the police, beat yourself up. After listen­ing to the usual rant about obstructing the police, withholding evidence and interfering with witnesses, I needed a drink. I was only a couple of miles away from the Cob and Pen, the pub where Joey Morton had breathed his last, which clinched the decision.

If they'd gone into mourning over the death of my host, it hadn't been a prolonged period of grief. It was pub quiz night, and the place was packed. In the gaps between the packed bod­ies, I got the impression of a bar that had been done out in the brewery version of traditional country house: dark William Morris-style wallpaper, hunting prints and bookshelves con­taining all those 1930s bestsellers that no one has read since 1941, not even in hospital outpatients' queues. No chance of anyone nicking them, that was for sure.

I bought myself a vodka and grapefruit juice and retreated into the farthest corner from the epicenter of the quiz. I squeezed on the end of a banquette, ignored by the other four people surrounding the nearby table. They were much too in­volved in arguing about the identity of the first Welsh footballer to play in the Italian league. There was no chance of en­gaging any of the bar staff in a bit of gossip, not even lubri­cated with the odd tenner. They were too busy pulling pints and popping the caps off bottles of Bud. I sipped my drink and waited for an interval in the incessant trivia questions. Even­tually, they announced a fifteen-minute break.

The foursome round my table sat back in their seats. "John Charles," I said. They looked blankly at me. "The first Welsh­man to play in Italy. John Charles." Amazing the junk that in­vades your brain cells when you live with a football fan.

"Really?" the lad with the pen and the answer sheet said.

"Truly."

The one who'd been rooting for Charles against the other three grinned and clapped me on the back. "Told you so," he said. "Can I get you a drink?"

I shook my head. "I've got to get off. But thanks all the same. I'm surprised you didn't all know the answer. I'd have thought anybody who was a regular in Joey Morton's pub would have been shit-hot on all the football questions."

They all looked momentarily embarrassed, as if they'd caught me swearing in front of their mothers. "Did you know Joey, then?" the pen pusher said.

"We met a couple of times. My fella's a journalist. Bad busi­ness."

"You're not kidding," another said with feeling. "Now, if you'd said it was Mrs. M. that took a bread knife to him, I wouldn't have been half as surprised. But dying like that, a ca­sual bystander in somebody else's war, that's seriously bad news."

"You thought his wife had done it?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light and joky.

They all snorted with laughter. "Gail? get real," Penpusher said scornfully. "Like Tez said, if it had been a bread-knife job, nobody would have been surprised. Them two fighting behind the bar's the nearest thing you used to get to cabaret in here.

But rigging up a drum of cleaning stuff with cyanide? Nah, Gail's too thick."

"When Gail writes the daily specials up on the board, there's more spelling mistakes than there are hot dinners," an­other added. "She probably thinks cyanide's a perfume by Elizabeth Taylor."

"Must have been a hell of a shock, then. I guess it hit her hard," I said.

The one I'd backed up gestured over his shoulder with his thumb toward the bar. "Looks like it, doesn't it?"

I looked across. "Which one's Gail? I never met her, just Joey."

"The bottle blonde with the cleavage," Penpusher said.

I didn't have to ask for more details. Gail Morton's tumbled blond mane looked as natural as candy floss, and the bra un­der her tight V-necked T-shirt didn't so much lift and separate as point and aim. As I looked, she served a customer with a laugh that revealed perfect teeth and healthy tonsils. "A bit of a merry widow," I remarked.

"Widow's weeds up until the funeral, then back to normal."

I began to wonder if my eager inquiries down the line of in­dustrial sabotage had shunted Jackson off the right track. Af­ter all, it's one of the great truisms that when wives or husbands die of unnatural causes, the prime suspect is the spouse. I was going to have to eat more than my usual portion of humble pie with Jackson if Gail Morton turned out to be Joey's killer. But that didn't explain why Mary Halloran had died. Time to go and pick some more brains.

I made my excuses and left. I headed east out of Stockport, and soon I was on the edge of the Pennine moors. About a mile before I hit Charlesworth village, I turned right on to a narrow road whose blacktop had been laid so recently it still gleamed in my headlights. The road climbed round the side of a hill and emerged in what had originally been a quarry. In the huge horseshoe carved out of the side of the hill stood ten beautiful stone houses, each individually designed by Chris.

For as long as I'd known them, Chris and Alexis had cher­ished the dream of building their own home, designed by Chris to their own specifications. They'd joined a self-build scheme a few years back, and, after a few hiccups, the dream had fi­nally become a reality. Chris had swapped her architectural skills for things like plumbing, bricklaying, carpentry and wiring, while Alexis had served as everybody's unskilled la­borer. The site was perfect for people who get off on a spec­tacular view, looking out through a gap in the Pennines to the Cheshire plain. There isn't a pub within three miles, the near­est decent restaurant is ten miles away, and if you run out of milk at half past nine at night, you're drinking black coffee. Me, I'd rather live in a luggage locker at Piccadilly Station.

The house wasn't quite ready to be inhabited yet. A small matter of connection to the main gas, electricity, telephone and sewage systems. So for the time being, Alexis and Chris were living in an ugly little caravan parked in their drive. It must have been a bit like going out for dinner to the best restaurant in town with your jaw wired up.

The light was on in their van, so I knocked. Chris opened the door in her dressing gown, blond hair in a damp, tousled halo round her head. Seeing me, a broad grin split her face. "Kate!" she exclaimed, then made a point of leaning out and scanning the area beyond me. "And you made it without a team of native bearers and Sherpa guides."

"Sarcasm doesn't become you," I muttered as I followed her into the claustrophobic's nightmare. The caravan was a four-berth job which might conceivably have contained a family for a fortnight's holiday. Right now, it was bursting at the seams with the worldly goods that Chris and Alexis simply couldn't do without. Once they'd packed in their work clothes, their ca­sual clothes, a couple of shelves of books, a portable CD player with the accompanying music library, two wine racks, a draw­ing board for Chris and the files Alexis deemed too sensitive to trust to her office drawers, there wasn't a lot of room left for bodies.

Alexis was sprawled on the double bed watching the TV news in a pair of plaster-and-paint-stained jogging pants and a ripped T-shirt, her unruly hair tied back in a ponytail with an elastic band. She greeted me with a languid wave and said, "Kettle's just boiled. Help yourself."

I made a cup of instant and joined the two of them on the bed. It wasn't that we were planning an orgy; there just wasn't anywhere else to sit. "So what brings you up here in the hours of darkness, girl?" Alexis asked languidly, leaning across me to switch off the TV. "You finally decided to tell me why you've been doing a Cook's tour of the E.C.I"

"I bring greetings from civilization," I told her. "Cliff Jack­son's just arrested two suspects in the Kerrchem product-tampering scam."

I had all her attention now. Alexis pushed herself into an up­right position. "Really? He charging them with the murders?"

"I don't know. If he does, he'll be making a mistake," I said.

"So, spill," Alexis urged.

I gave her the bare bones of the tale, knowing she wouldn't be able to say much in the following day's paper because of the reporting restrictions that swing into place as soon as suspects are charged with an offence. But the details would be filed away in Alexis's prodigious memory, to be dragged out as deep background when the case finally came to court. And she wouldn't forget where the information came from.

"And you believe them when they say they had nothing to do with the two deaths?" Chris chipped in.

"Actually, I do," I said. "Breaks my heart to say so, but I don't think the job's finished yet, whatever Cliff Jackson de­cides to charge them with."

Alexis lit a cigarette. Chris pointedly cracked the window open an inch and moved out of the draft. "I know, I know," Alexis sighed. "But how can I possibly be a laborer without a fag hanging out of my mouth and a rolled-up copy of The Sun stuffed in my back pocket? Anyway, K.B., I suppose this means that you're here for access to the Alexis Lee reference library?"

"You can see why she's an investigative reporter, can't you?" I said nonchalantly to Chris.

"So what do you want to know?" Alexis asked.

"Tell me about Joey Morton," I said. First rule of murder investigation, according to all the detective novels I've read. Find out about the victim. Embarrassing that it had taken me so long to get there.

"Born and raised in Belfast. Came over here with a fanfare of trumpets that said he was going to be the next George Best. Unfortunately, the only thing Georgie and Joey had in com­mon was their talent for pissing it all up against the wall. United took him on as an apprentice, but they didn't keep him on, and he never made it past the Third Division. Gail believed the publicity when she married him. She was expecting the days of wine and roses, and she never forgave him for not mak­ing the big time. So she gave him the days of bitter and thorns. They fought like cat and dog. When we were living in the Heatons, we used to pop into the Cob and Pen occasionally for a drink and the spectator sport of watching Joey and Gail tear lumps out of each other."

"So why didn't she leave him?" I asked.

Alexis shrugged. "Some people get addicted to rowing," Chris said. "You watch them at it and imagine how stressed it would make you to live like that, but then you realize they ac­tually thrive on it. If they ever found themselves in agreement, the relationship would die on the spot."

"Also, where would she go? It's not a bad life, being the grande dame of a busy pub like the Cob," Alexis added. "Be­sides, Joey was a staunch Catholic. He'd never have stood on for a divorce."

"Now she's got it all," I said. "She's got her freedom, and presumably the brewery aren't going to chuck her out of the pub as long as it keeps making money."

"And the insurance," Alexis said. "Word is, Joey was worth a lot more dead than he ever was in the transfer market."

"All of which adds up to a tidy bit of motive for Mrs. Mor­ton," I said. "But if she's behind Joey's murder, how does Mary Halloran's death fit in?"

"Copy cat?" Alexis suggested.

"Maybe, but cyanide isn't exactly a common household chemical. I wouldn't know how to get my hands on it. Would you?"

Alexis shrugged. "I've never wanted to kill her enough," she joked, grabbing Chris and hugging her. A sudden pang of envy took me by surprise. All too painfully, I could remember when Richard and I were as easy and warm together. It felt like a long time had passed since then. I wanted that back. I just didn't know anymore if I could recover it with Richard or if I was going to have to start all over again on the wary process of love.

I must have shown something on my face, for Chris looked at me with a worried frown. "You all right, Kate?" she asked.

"Not really," I said. "Me and Richard have had a major falling-out. We parted company in Italy a couple days ago, and I've not heard from him since. I'm just not sure if we can fix it this time."

I could hardly bear the love and concern on their faces. Chris pulled free from Alexis and leaned over to hug me. "He'll be back," she said with more confidence than I felt.

"Yeah, but will he be back with a bricklayer to build a wall across the conservatory?" I asked bitterly.

"If Richard needed a brickie, he'd have to ask you where to find one," Alexis said. "You don't get rid of him that easy, girl."

"He's obviously not very happy," I told them. "He said he's pissed off with everybody treating him like he's a pillock."

"Maybe he should stop behaving like one, then," Alexis said.

"Ever since he got himself arrested, he's been walking round like a dog waiting for the next kick. Wait till he comes back, girl, I'll take him out for a drink and put him right."

I couldn't help smiling. That was one encounter I'd pay for a video of. "Anyway, I don't want to talk about my troubles," I said briskly. "I've got too much to do trying to put right all the cock-ups I've made this week to worry about Richard. Did he have any dodgy contacts, this Joey Morton?"

"Not that I've heard. He hung out with one or two moody people, but that was probably for the so-called glamor as much as anything. He was probably into a few bits and pieces on the side, but he wasn't a player."

So I wasn't looking for some gangster that Joey had double-crossed on a deal over stolen Scotch. "What's the score with this Mary Halloran?" I asked.

"I haven't been over there myself, but I've still gotta few good contacts in Liverpool," she said, becoming more Scouse by the syllable. "This Mary Halloran, she was a real grafter. The only out-of-the-way thing about her was that her staff ac­tually liked her. They said she was a great boss, good payer, dead fair. According to them, she lived for her kids and her old man, Desmond. Our Desmond is apparently devastated. My mate Mo went round to try for a talk for the Post, but the guy was too distraught. She said he just burst into tears, then one of the relatives did the Rottweiler and saw her off."

"This Desmond. Has he got a job?"

"He's got his own business too. Not as successful as Mary's by all accounts, but he does okay. He's a photogra­pher. Does portraits mainly. Dead artistic, according to Mo. Specializes in unusual printing techniques and special-effects stuff. Not your weddings-and-babies type. Charges about five hundred a shot, apparently. God knows where he gets his clients. The only pictures I've ever seen of people in Liverpool with that kind of money are in police mug shots and wanted posters."

"And no connection between the Hallorans and the Mortons?"

"Nothing that's come up so far. The only thing they've got in common except for the way they died is that they've left their surviving partners a lot better off than they were before. Mo says the girls that worked for Mary Halloran reckoned she was well insured. Had to be. If anything happened to her, the business was bound to suffer a bit, because Mary was one of those who had to take charge of everything herself."

"Maybe they did a Strangers on a Train," Chris volunteered. "You know, I'll do your murder, you do mine." We both looked at her, astonished. "It was only a suggestion," she said defen­sively.

"The only point in doing something like that is when the murder method's one where having an alibi puts you in the clear. Like a shooting or a stabbing," Alexis finally pointed out. "A delayed-action thing like this, there wouldn't be any point."

"Nice idea, though," I mused. Suddenly, a huge yawn crept up on me and shook me by the scruff of my neck. "Oh God," I groaned. "I'm going to have to go, girls. If my overdraft was as big as my sleep deficit, the bailiffs would be kicking my door down."

I leaned over and hugged the pair of them. "You never know," Chris said. "He might be there when you get home."

It's just as well Chris is such a good architect. She'd never make a living as a fortune-teller.