burst through the door, fighting back the tears, rushed up to the assistant and wailed, 'Where's he taking her? Tell me! I've got a right to know where he's going with the bitch!' Then I burst into tears and collapsed into the chair that Brian Lomax had just vacated.

'I know it's stupid, but I still love him,' I sobbed. 'Whatever he might have done with that cow, he's still my husband.' Through the tears I could see the travel agent looking completely stricken. Her mouth was opening and closing.

'For God's sake, put me out of my misery! Let me know the worst. You're a woman, you should understand,' I added, accusingly.

Another woman pushed the younger assistant out of the way. 'What is it, queen?' she said soothingly.

'My h-husband,' I hiccuped. 'He's got a girlfriend, I just know it. So I've been following him. When he came in here, I thought, he's taking her away, never mind that me and the kids haven't had a holiday for two years. And something just snapped. You've got to tell me,' I added, on a rising note. Then I gulped noisily.

'Sharon,' the older woman said. The gentleman who was just in.'

'Lomax,' I said. That's his name. Brian Lomax.'

'Mr. Lomax,' the woman echoed. 'What was he after, Sharon?'

'I thought we weren't supposed to discuss clients?' the younger girl muttered.

'Have you got no heart, girl? That could be you one day. Us girls have got to stick together,' the woman said. Then to me she said, 'Men. They're all the same, eh, girl?' Thank God for the legendary hearts of gold of Liverpudlians.

I nodded and made a great show of trying to get myself under control while Sharon nervously jabbed the keys of her computer with nails that would have had Cruella de Vil looking to her laurels. There, Dot," she said, pointing at the screen.

The older woman nodded sagely and swung the screen round so I could see it for myself. 'Whatever he might be up to, he's not going off with her,' she said. 'Look. He's only booked for one person. Fly/drive to Florida. Flight, car hire and accommodation vouchers, including single person supplement.' As she spoke, I was taking it all in. Airline, flight number, price. Flying out of Manchester on Monday night. 'He paid in cash an' all,' Dot added. 'Now that's something we don't see a lot of in here these days.'

'What about his tickets?' I demanded. 'I bet he's not having them sent to the house.'

'No,' Dot said. 'With him going on Monday, he'll get them off the ticket agent at the airport.'

'Selfish bastard,' I spat.

'You're not kiddin', girl,' Dot said. 'Still, look on the bright side. At least he's not got the cow with him, has he?'

I got to my feet. 'By the time I've finished with him, he won't be fathering any more kids in a hurry,' I said.

'Attagirl!' Dot called after me as I stormed out of the travel agency.

By the time I rounded the corner and climbed into the Fiesta, which had miraculously escaped a parking ticket, the reaction to my performance had set in. My legs felt like jelly and my hands were shaking. Thank God for the solidarity of women whose men done them wrong.

So Alexis had been right, I thought as I drove back more sedately along the M62. Brian Lomax was about to do a runner. And the only thing that could stop him was me finding out what exactly he'd been up to. I decided to spend the rest of the day ignoring all distractions and getting to the bottom of Martin Cheetham's files. But before I did that, I reckoned I deserved the breakfast I'd missed out on earlier. On the horizon, I could see the Burtonwood motorway services building, a dead ringer for the Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. If I tell you that the locals call the house of God 'the concrete wigwam', maybe you'll get the picture.

I pulled off the road and cruised into the car park. And there it was. Smack bang in the middle of the car park: Brian Lomax's E-type. I parked the car then cautiously explored the service area. He wasn't in the shop, or playing the video arcade machines. I finally spotted him in the cafeteria, alone except for a huge fry-up. Goodbye breakfast. With a sigh, I returned to my car and headed for the service road that led back to the motorway. When I reached the petrol pumps, I pulled off and parked. I nipped in to the shop and bought a bottle of mineral water and a bacon and egg sandwich, the nearest I was going to get to a proper breakfast that day. Back at the car, I let the engine idle while I ate my butty and waited for Lomax. I couldn't help myself; since the gods had handed him back to me on a plate, I just had to see what he was up to.

Quarter of an hour later, we were heading back towards Manchester. The traffic was heavy by now, but the E-type was so distinctive it was easy to tail. On the outskirts, he took the M63 towards Stockport. He turned off at the cheaper end of Cheadle, where you don't have to be able to play bridge or golf to be allowed to buy a house, and cut across to the terraced streets that huddle round Stockport County's football ground. Tailing him through the tight grid of narrow streets was a lot trickier, but luckily I didn't have to do it for long. And Lomax acted like the idea of being followed hadn't even crossed his mind.

He pulled up outside a house where a couple of workmen seemed to be removing the windows, and a youth up a ladder was clearing moss out of the guttering. A sign on the ladder had the familiar Renew-Vations logo, as did the scruffy van parked with two wheels on the kerb. Lomax had a few words with the workmen, then went inside. Ten minutes later, he re-emerged, gave them the thumbs-up sign then drove off.

We went through the same routine a couple more times, in Reddish then in Levenshulme. All the houses were elderly terraced properties in streets that looked as if they were struggling upwards rather than plunging further downhill. On the third house, it clicked. These were some of the most recent purchases in the RV directory. I was actually looking at the houses Cheetham and Lomax had bought cheap to do up and sell dear.

The last stop was on the fringes of Burnage, but this time it was a between-the-wars semi that looked completely dilapidated. There was grass growing through the gravel, the gate was hanging from one hinge. So much paint had peeled off the door and window frames it was a miracle they hadn't dropped to bits. Two men were working on the roof, replacing broken slates and pointing the chimney stack. Lomax got out of the Jag and shouted something to the men. Then he took a pair of overalls out of the boot, put them on over his jeans and sweatshirt and walked into the house. A few minutes later, I heard the high whine of a power drill. I decided I could use my time more fruitfully back in the office with the computer files.

Shelley was on the phone making 'new client' noises when I walked in, but judging by the speed with which the coffee appeared on my desk, she'd already had the run-down on my success with Ted's conservatories. 'Good news travels fast, huh?' I said.

'I don't know what you mean,' she said haughtily. 'Have you done the client reports for PharmAce and Ted Barlow yet?'

I took the cassettes out of my handbag. 'Voila!' I said, handing them over with a flourish. 'God forbid we should keep Ted waiting. How is he, by the way? Happy as a sandboy?'

'As if it isn't bad enough spending my days with someone who thinks she's a genius, I now have to listen to Ted Barlow telling me you're a genius. The bank's agreed to restore his loan and his access to their financial services division, and he's got an advert in Monday's Evening Chronicle for a new sales person. The police raided the three houses last night and got enough evidence to arrest Jack McCafferty and Liz Lawrence. They should both be charged later today, and Ted's completely in the clear,' Shelley said, unable to keep the smile out of her eyes.

'Great news. Tell me, Shelley, how come you know all this?'

'Because it's my job to answer the phone, Kate,' she replied sweetly. 'Also, I've had calls from a DCI Prentice, a woman called Rachel Lieberman, Alexis Lee and four calls from Richard who says he doesn't want to trouble you but have you charged the battery on your mobile because it's not responding.'

I knew there had to be a reason why I'd had peace all morning. I'd remembered to charge the phone up overnight. I'd just omitted to make sure it was switched on this morning. Feeling like a fool, I smiled sweetly at Shelley. 'I must have been in one of those black holes when he tried me,' I said.

Shelley gave me the look my mother used to when I swore blind I'd not eaten the last biscuit. 'If you're having that much of a problem, maybe we should just send it back,' she said.

I bared my teeth. 'I'll manage, thanks. So now he's got that load off his mind, how's Ted? Able to devote one hundred per cent of his attention to helping you achieve the full potential of your house?'

'Have I ever told you what a blessing it is for me to work with you, Kate? You're the only person I know who makes me realize just how mature my two kids really are.' She turned and headed for the door. I poked my tongue out at her retreating back. 'I saw that," she said without turning her head. At the door, she looked back at me. 'Joking apart, it's OK.' Then she was gone, leaving me alone with the laptop and my phone messages, which I chose to ignore.

Now I'd worked out what the RV directory was all about and I'd actually seen some of the properties in question, I had to unravel the contents of DUPLICAT. At first sight, they seemed to be completely innocuous. They were files relating to the purchase of various properties by assorted individuals and the mortgages that had been arranged for them. The material seemed exactly the same sort of stuff that was in the unprotected WORK.C directory. The only difference was that in DUPLICAT, every single mortgage lender was different. In the few instances where the same building society had been used more than once, Cheetham's clients had chosen different branches.

It was only when I'd worked my way through to the most recent of the files that something finally caught my eye. Even then, I had to look twice and cross-check with another file to make sure it wasn't just boredom and tiredness that were tricking me. But my first reaction was right. The property in the file was a detached house on an exclusive development in Whitefield. But another couple had arranged a mortgage on the same property and their address was none other than the dilapidated semi I'd left Brian Lomax working on.

I could feel a dull ache starting at the base of my skull. The combination of staring into my laptop and trying to work out what was going on was getting to me. I stood up and stretched, then moved around the office doing some of the warm-up exercises I'd learned down the Thai boxing gym. I swear the routine sends my brain into an altered state. As my body found its rhythm, the tension flowed out of me, and my mind went into free fall.

Then all the assorted bits and pieces of information that had been swilling round in confusion inside my head came together in a pattern. Abruptly, I stopped leaping around the room like Winnie the Pooh's imitation of Mikhail Baryshnikov and dropped into my chair. I didn't have a split screen facility on the laptop, so I hastily scribbled down half a dozen of the addresses of the houses that had been mortgaged according to DUPLICAT, along with the names of their buyers. Then I called up the files from WORK.C, the directory of Cheetham's straight conveyancing business.

It didn't take me long to discover that for every file in DUPLICAT there was another file in WORK.C that corresponded to it. In each case, the house was the same but the buyers and the mortgage lenders were different. Now I understood exactly what Brian Lomax and Martin Cheetham had been up to. They'd exploited the system's weaknesses in a scam that would have given them a tidy profit almost indefinitely. The pair of them were committing the classic victimless crime. But someone had grown greedy, and that greed had led to Martin Cheetham's death.

I glanced at my watch. It was just on four. I still had no proof that Brian Lomax had been an active conspirator rather than a mug that Martin Cheetham and, possibly, Nell Lomax had exploited for their own ends. But I was convinced that whatever had gone wrong with Cheetham's carefully worked out scheme could be traced straight back to Lomax. There was something about his body language, a kind of swagger in the way he carried himself. Brian Lomax was no more one of life's victims than Warren Beatty. And I had to get him in the frame before a jumbo jet took off into the sunset on Monday night.

I closed the laptop and took it through to Bill's office. He was staring at an A4 pad, gnawing the end of a pencil. 'Bad time?' I asked.

'I'm trying to write a memory resident program that will automatically check for any date-activated programs hiding in the computer's memory,' he said. He dropped the pencil with a deep sigh and started chewing his beard instead. I'm often tempted to ring his mother and ask what experience he had in his infancy that's made him so oral.

'Virus protection?' I asked.

'Yup. I've been meaning to get to it since the debacle on Yom Kippur, but this is the first chance I've had.' He pulled a face. Bill was still smarting from the computer virus that had attacked one of our clients at the beginning of October. The virus had been set to activate itself on the Jewish Day of Atonement. Our clients, a firm of accountants called Goldberg and Senior, had taken it very personally when all of their records had been turned into gobbledygook. They didn't find it a consolation when Bill told them it was a one-off that wouldn't recur in other years, unlike the really vicious Friday the Thirteenth and Michelangelo viruses that attack again and again till they're cleansed for good.

'I'm putting the laptop in the safe. It's got the data from Martin Cheetham's hard disc on it, and I think it's probably the only evidence left of what he and Brian Lomax were up to,' I said.

'You've cracked it, then?' Bill looked eager and stopped chewing.

'I think so. The only problem is that it's hard to prove Lomax was actively involved with the criminal aspect of it. So I've got a little experiment in mind to sort it out one way or the other.' I crossed the office and pushed the frame of the print of Escher's Belvedere. The spring-loaded catch released itself and the picture swung back on its hinges to reveal the office safe.

'You want to enlighten me?' Bill asked as I keyed in the combination. The door clicked open and I cleared a space on the bottom shelf for the laptop.

'I'd love to, but I haven't got the time right now. I need to be in Buxton before six if this is going to work. Besides, this is not a tale you want to try and digest on a Friday tea time. The twists and turns in this make Yom Kippur look as simple as Space Invaders.' I closed the safe, then unlocked the cupboard that contains all our Elint equipment.

'I don't want you to think I'm being chauvinist about this, but you're not going to do anything dangerous, are you?' Bill asked anxiously.

'I wasn't planning to, no. Just a simple bit of bugging in the hope of picking up something incriminating.' I chose a directional bug with a magnetic base, and added the screen that indicates where the bug is relative to the receiver. I also helped myself to a couple of tiny radio mikes with integral batteries, each about the size of the top joint of my thumb, and the receiver that goes with them. The tape recorder was still in the Fiesta, so I'd be able to record anything I overheard. I screwed each mike into a plastic pen-housing that also contained a U-shaped length of wire which acted as an aerial.

Bill sighed. 'As long as you're careful. We don't want a repeat performance of last Friday night.' From anyone else, it would have sounded patronizing. But I recognized the genuine concern that lay behind Bill's words.

'I know, I know, the firm can't afford the insurance premiums to get any higher,' I said. 'Look, there's been no sign of anyone having another go. Maybe it was the real thing, a genuine accident. You know, someone a bit pissed or tired? Stranger things have happened.'

'Maybe,' Bill agreed reluctantly. 'Anyhow, take care. I haven't got the time to train a replacement.' He grinned.

'I promise. Like I said, just a simple bit of bugging, that's all.' I didn't want to upset him. That's why I chose not to tell him I was going out to find me a murderer.