Val McDermid
Blue Genes
Chapter 1
The day Richard’s death announcement appeared in the
Once I had a complete chronicle of exactly how things had been left in the room that was a mirror image of my own bungalow next door, I started my mammoth task. First, I sorted things into piles: books, magazines, CDs, tapes, promo videos, the detritus of a rock journalist’s life. Then I arranged them. Books, alphabetically, on the shelf unit. CDs ditto. The tapes I stacked in the storage unit Richard had bought for the purpose one Sunday when I’d managed to drag him round Ikea, the 1990s equivalent of buying an engagement ring. I’d even put the cabinet together for him, but he’d never got into the habit of using it, preferring the haphazard stacks and heaps strewn all over the floor. I buried the surge of emotion that came with the memory and carried on doggedly. The magazines I shoved out of sight in the conservatory that runs along the back of both our houses, linking them together more firmly than we’d ever been prepared to do in any formal sense with our lives. I leaned against the wall and looked around the room. When people say, ‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,’ how come we never really believe we’ll be the ones left clutching the sticky end? I sighed and forced myself on. I emptied ashtrays of the roaches left from Richard’s joints, gathered together pens and pencils and stuffed them into the sawn-off Sapporo beer can he’d used for the purpose for as long as I’d known him. I picked up the assorted notepads, sheets of scrap paper and envelopes where he’d scribbled down vital phone numbers and quotes, careful not to render them any more disordered than they were already, and took them through to the room he used as his office when it wasn’t occupied by his nine-year-old son Davy on one of his regular visits. I dumped them on the desk on top of a remarkably similar-looking pile already there.
Back in the living room, I was amazed by the effect. It almost looked like a room I could sit comfortably in. Cleared of the usual junk, it was possible to see the pattern on the elderly Moroccan rug that covered most of the floor and the sofas could for once accommodate the five people they were designed for. I realized for the first time that the coffee table had a central panel of glass. I’d been trying for ages to get him to put the room into something approaching a civilized state, but he’d always resisted me. Even though I’d finally got my own way, I can’t say it made me happy. But then, I couldn’t get out of my mind the reason behind what I was doing here, and what lay ahead. The announcement of Richard’s death was only the beginning of a chain of events that would be a hell of a lot more testing than tidying a room.
I thought about brushing the rug, but I figured that was probably gilding the lily, the kind of activity that people found a little bizarre after the death of a lover. And bizarre was not the impression I wanted to give. I went back through to my house and changed from the sweat pants and T-shirt I’d worn to do the cleaning into something more appropriate for a grieving relict. A charcoal wool wraparound skirt from the French Connection sale and a black lamb’s-wool turtleneck I’d chosen for the one and only reason that it made me look like death. There are times in a private eye’s working life when looking like she’s about to keel over is an image preferable to that of Wonder Woman on whizz.
I was about to close the conservatory door behind me as I returned to Richard’s house when his doorbell belted out an inappropriate blast of the guitar riff from Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’. ‘Shit,’ I muttered. No matter how careful you are, there’s always something you forget. I couldn’t remember what the other choices were on Richard’s ‘Twenty Great Rock Riffs’ doorbell, but I was sure there must be something more fitting than Clapton’s wailing guitar. Maybe something from the Smiths, I thought vaguely as I tried to compose my face into a suitable expression for a woman who’s just lost her partner. Just how was I supposed to look, I found a second to wonder. What’s the well-bereft woman wearing on her face this season? You can’t even go for the mascara tracks down the cheeks in these days of lash tints.
I took a deep breath, hoped for the best and opened the door. The crime correspondent of the
I looked past her. All quiet in the street outside. I put my arm round her shoulders and firmly drew her inside, closing the door behind her. ‘Nothing. Richard’s fine,’ I said, leading the way down the hall.
‘Do what?’ Alexis demanded, stopping and frowning at me. ‘If he’s fine, how come I just read he’s dead in tonight’s paper? And if he’s fine, how come you’re doing the “Baby’s in Black” number when you know that’s the one colour that makes you look like the Bride of Frankenstein?’
‘If you’d let me get a word in edgeways, I’ll explain,’ I said, going through to the living room. ‘Take my word for it, Richard is absolutely OK.’
Alexis stopped dead on the threshold, taking in the pristine tidiness of the room. ‘Oh no, he’s not,’ she said, suspicion running through her heavy Scouse accent like the stripe in the toothpaste. ‘He’s not fine if he’s left his living room looking like this. At the very least, he’s having a nervous breakdown. What the hell’s going on here, KB?’
‘I can’t believe you read the death notices,’ I said, throwing myself down on the nearest sofa.
‘I don’t normally,’ Alexis admitted, subsiding on the sofa opposite me. ‘I was down Moss Side nick waiting for a statement from the duty inspector about a little bit of aggravation involving an Uzi and a dead Rottweiler, and they were taking so long about it I’d read everything else in the paper except the ads for the dinner dances. And it’s just as well I did. What’s going on? If he’s not dead, who’s he upset enough to get heavy-metal hassle like this?’ She stabbed the paper she carried with a nicotine-stained index finger.
‘It was me who put the announcement in,’ I said.
‘That’s one way of telling him it’s over,’ Alexis interrupted before I could continue. ‘I thought you two had got things sorted?’
‘We have,’ I said through clenched teeth. Ironing out the problems in my relationship with Richard would have taken the entire staff of an industrial laundry a month. It had taken us rather longer.
‘So what’s going on?’ Alexis demanded belligerently. ‘What’s so important that you have to give everybody a heart attack thinking me laddo’s popped his clogs?’
‘Can’t you resist the journalistic exaggeration for once?’ I sighed. ‘You know and I know that nobody under sixty routinely reads the deaths column. I had to use a real name and address, and I figured with Richard out of
