Kickback

minutes from every city centre amenity. The downside was that it was surrounded by the kind of inner-city housing they make earnest Channel 4 documentaries about. The locale had brought the price down far enough for me also to afford the necessary state-of-the-art alarm system.

I decided home was where I should head for. Darkness was falling, so I wouldn't be able to continue my fascinating study of late-twentieth-century bricklaying. Besides, people were getting home from work and I was beginning to feel a Utile conspicuous. It was only a matter of time before some over-zealous Neighbourhood Watch vigilante called the cops, an embarrassment I could well do without. I drove out of the opposite end of the estate to the one I'd come in by, and suddenly realized I was only a couple of streets away from Alexis's house.

Alexis Lee is probably my best friend. She's the crime reporter on the Manchester Evening Chronicle. I guess the fact that we're both women who've broken into what is traditionally a male preserve helped build the bond between us. But apart from our common interest in things criminal, she's also saved me more money than anyone else I know. I can think of at least a dozen times when she's prevented me from making very costly mistakes in expensive dress shops. And, at the risk of making her sound like a stereotype, she's got that wonderful, rich Liverpudlian sense of humour that can find the funny side in the blackest tragedy. I couldn't think of anything that would cheer me up faster than a half-hour pit stop.

The earlier rain had turned the fallen leaves into a slick mush. As I braked gently to pull up outside Alexis's, I swear my Vauxhall Nova went sideways. Cursing the Highways Department, I slithered round the car and on to the safer ground of the driveway. I grabbed at a post to steady myself, then realized with a shock that this particular post wasn't a permanent fixture. It was supporting a For Sale sign. I was outraged. How dare they put the house on the market without consulting me? Time I found out what was going on here. I walked round to the back door, knocked and entered the kitchen.

Alexis's girlfriend Chris is a partner in a firm of community architects, which is why their kitchen looks like a Gothic cathedral, complete with flagged floor and vaulted ceiling with beams like whales' ribs. The plasterwork is stencilled with flower and fruit motifs, and there are plaster bas-relief bosses at regular intervals along the roof truss. It's an amazing sight.

Instead of the Quasimodo I always half-expect, Alexis was sitting at the pitch-pine table, a mug of tea at her elbow, some kind of catalogue open in front of her. As I came in, she looked up and grinned. 'Kate! Hey, good to see you, kid! Grab yourself a cuppa, the pot's fresh,' she said, waving at the multi-coloured knitted tea cosy by the kettle. I poured myself a mug of strong tea as Alexis asked, 'What brings you round here? You been doing a job? Anything in it for me?'

'Never mind that,' I said firmly, dropping into a chair. 'You trying to avoid me? What’s with the For Sale sign? You put the house on the market and you don't tell me?'

'Why? Were you thinking of buying it? Don't! Don't even let it cross your mind! There's barely enough room for me and Chris, and we agree on what's an acceptable degree of mess. You and Richard would kill within a week here,' Alexis parried.

'Don't try to divert me,' I said. 'Richard and I are fine as we are. Next door neighbours is as close as I'm ever going to let it get.'

'And how is your insignificant other?' Alexis interrupted.

'He sends you his love too.' Alexis and the man I love have a relationship that seems to me to consist entirely of verbal abuse. In spite of appearances, however, I suspect they love each other dearly; once I actually came upon the two of them having a friendly drink together in a corner of the Chronicle's local. They'd both looked extremely sheepish about it. “Now, about this For Sale board?'

'If s only been up a couple of days. If s all been a bit of a rush. You remember Chris and I talking about how we wanted to buy a piece of land and build our own dream home?'

I nodded. I could more easily have forgotten my own name. 'You're planning on doing it as part of a self-build scheme; Chris is going to design the houses in exchange for other people giving you their labour, yes?' They'd been talking about it for as long as I'd known them. With a lot of people, I'd have written it off as dreaming. But Alexis and Chris were serious. They'd spent hundreds of hours poring over books, plans and their own drawings till they'd come up with their ideal home. All they'd been waiting for was the right plot of land at the right price in the right location. The land?' I asked.

Alexis reached along the side of the table and pulled a drawer open. She tossed a packet of photographs at me. 'Look at that, Kate. Isn't it stunning? Isn't it just brilliant?' She pushed her unruly black hair out of her eyes and gazed expectantly at me.

I studied the pictures. The first half-dozen showed a selection of views of an area of rough moorland grass that had sheep grazing all over it. That’s the land,' Alexis enthused, unable to stay silent. I continued. The rest of the pictures were views of distant hills, woods and valleys. Not a Chinese takeaway in sight. 'And those are the views. Amazing, isn't it? That's why I'm going through this.' She waved the catalogue at me. I could see now it was a building supplies price list. Personally, I'd have preferred a night in with the phone book.

'Where on earth is it?' I asked. It looks so… rural.' That was the first word I could come up with that was truthful as well as sounding like I approved.

'It's really wild, isn't it? It's only three minutes away from the M66. If s just above Ramsbottom. I can be in the office in twenty minutes outside rush hour, but if s completely isolated from the hassle of city life.'

If that had been me, I'd have ended the sentence six words sooner. If you're more than ten minutes away from a Marks amp; Spencer Food Hall (fifteen including legal parking), as far as I'm concerned, you're outside the civilized world. 'Right,' I said. That's just what you wanted, isn't it?'

'Yeah, it's the business. As soon as we saw it advertised, we called a meeting of the other people we'll be building with, and we all went off to see it. We've agreed a price with the builder, but he wants a quick completion because someone else is interested. Or so he says, but if you ask me, he's just on the make. Anyway, we've put down a deposit of five thousand pounds on each plot, and it's looking good. So it's time to sell this place and get our hands on the readies we'll need to build the new house.'

'But where are you going to live while you're building?' I asked.

'Well, Kate, it's funny you should mention that. We were wondering…' I nearly panicked. Then I saw the smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. 'We're going to buy a caravan now, at the end of the season when it's cheap, live in it over the winter and sell it in the spring. The house should be just about habitable by then,' Alexis told me cheerfully. I couldn't control the shiver that ran through me.

'Well, any time you need a bath, you're more than welcome,' I said.

'Thanks. I might just take you up on that, you being so handy for the office,' she said.

I drained my mug and got to my feet. 'I've got to run.'

'Don't tell me, you're off on some Deep Throat surveillance,' Alexis teased.

'Wrong again. I can see why you just write about crime rather than detecting it. No, Richard and I are going tenpin bowling.' I said it quickly, but it didn't get past her.

Tenpin bowling?' Alexis spluttered. Tenpin bowling? Shit, Brannigan, it'll be snogging in the back row of the pictures next.'

I left her giggling to herself. All through history, the pioneers have been mocked by lesser minds. All you can do is rise above it.

There are probably worse ways to spend a wet Wednesday in Warrington than wandering round modern housing developments talking to the local inhabitants. If so, I haven't discovered them. I got to the first address soon after nine, which wasn't bad considering it had taken me twice as long as usual to get ready that morning because of the painful stiffness in my right shoulder. I'd forgotten you shouldn't go tenpin bowling unless you've got the upper body fitness levels of an Olympic shot putter.

The first house was at the head of a cul-de-sac that spiralled round like a nautilus shell. I tried the doorbell of the neat semi, but got no response. I peered through the picture window into the lounge, which was furnished in spartan style, with no signs of current occupation. The clincher was the fact that there was no TV or video in sight. It looked as if my conservatory buyers had moved and were renting out their house. Most people who let their homes furnished tuck their expensive but highly portable electrical goods away into storage in case the letting agency don't do their homework properly and let the house to people of less than sterling honesty. Strangely, a couple of the houses I'd visited the previous evening had had a similar air of absence.

Round the back, there was more evidence of the missing conservatory than in the others I'd seen, where the concrete bases they'd been built on had simply looked like unfinished patios. Here, there was a square of red