I couldn’t help wondering what would happen when men found out what was going on. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that sooner or later the world was going to know about this. It didn’t seem possible that Helen Maitland was the only one who had worked out the practical means of making men redundant. I had this niggling feeling that all over California, women were Making babies with women and doctors with fewer scruples than Helen Maitland were making a lot of money.
That was another thing that had become clear from Alexis’s story. In spite of their desperation, Helen Maitland wasn’t bleeding her patients dry. The prescriptions were expensive, but there was nothing she could do about that. However, her fees for the rest of the treatment seemed remarkably cheap. She was charging less per hour than I do. If the medical establishment had found out about that, she’d have been struck off a lot faster for undercharging than she ever would have been for experimenting on humans.
There was no other word for it. What she had been doing was an experiment, with all the attendant dangers. I didn’t know enough about embryology to know what could go wrong, but I was damn sure that all the normal genetic risks a foetus faced would be multiplied by such an unorthodox beginning. If I’d been the praying sort, I’d have been lighting enough candles to floodlight Old Trafford on the off chance it would give Chris a better chance of bearing a healthy, normal daughter. Being the practical sort, the best thing I could do would be to find Helen Maitland’s killer before the investigation led to my friends. Or worse. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone had killed Helen Maitland because they’d discovered what she was doing and decided she had to die. Anyone with so fundamental a set of beliefs wasn’t going to stop at seeing off the doctor who had set these pregnancies in motion. There was a lot to do, and the trouble was, I didn’t really know where to start. All I had was an alias and a consulting room that I hadn’t been able to get near.
I finished my drink and stared moodily at the dirty grey water of the canal. The city has screwed so much inner-city renewal money out of Europe that the banks of our canals are smarter than Venice these days. The water doesn’t stink either. In spite of that, I figured I’d be waiting a long time before I saw a gondola pass. Probably about as long as it would take me to raise the money to buy Bill out of the partnership.
I couldn’t bear the idea of just throwing in the towel, though. I’d worked bloody hard for my share of the business, and I’d learned a few devious tricks along the way. Surely I could think of something to get myself off the hook? Even if I could persuade the bank to lend me the money, working solo I could never generate enough money to pay off the loan and employ Shelley, never mind the nonessentials like eating and keeping a roof over my head. The obvious answer was to find a way to generate more profit. I knew I couldn’t work any harder, but maybe I could do what Bill had done and employ someone young, keen and cheap. The only problem was where and how to find a junior Brannigan. I could imagine the assorted maniacs and nerds who would answer a small ad in the Chronicle. Being a private eye is a bit like being a politician — wanting the job should be an automatic disqualification for getting it. I mean, what kind of person admits they want to spend their time spying on other people, lying about their identity, taking liberties with the law, risking life and limb in the pursuit of profit, and never getting enough sleep? I didn’t have time to follow the path of my own apprenticeship — I’d met Bill when I was a penniless law student and he was having a fling with one of the women I shared a house with. He needed someone to serve injunctions and bankruptcy petitions, and I needed a flexible and profitable part-time job. It took me a year to realize that I liked the people I spent my time with when I was working for Bill a lot better than I liked lawyers.
I walked out of Metz and set off across town to where I’d parked my car. On my way through Chinatown, I popped into one of the supermarkets and picked up some dried mushrooms, five spice powder and a big bottle of soy sauce. There were prawns and char siu pork in the fridge already and I’d stop off to buy some fresh vegetables later. I couldn’t think of a better way to deal with my frustrations than chopping and slicing the ingredients for hot and sour soup and sing chow vermicelli.
At the till, the elderly Chinese woman on the cash register gave me a fortune cookie to sample as part of a promotion they were running. Out on the street, I broke it open, throwing the shell into the gutter for the pigeons. I straightened out the slip of paper and read it. It was hard not to believe it was an omen. ‘Sometimes, beggars can be choosers,’ it said.
Chapter 8
As my car rolled to a halt outside Debbie and Dennis’s house on a modern suburban estate, the curtains started to twitch the length of the close. Before I could get out of the car and ring the bell, the front door was open and Debbie was coming down the drive of their detached home with gleaming blonde head held high for the benefit of the neighbours. She looked like a recently retired supermodel slumming it for the day. The dignified impression was only slightly diminished by the tiny stride imposed by the tightness of her skirt and the height of her heels. Debbie folded herself into the passenger seat of my car, her long legs gleaming with Lycra, and said, ‘Nosy so-and-sos. Did you see them nets? Up and down like a bride’s nightie. Imagine having nothing better to do all day than spy on everybody else. That Neighbourhood Watch scheme is just a licence to poke your nose into other people’s business, if you ask me. Sad bastards.’
‘How you doing, Debbie?’ I asked in the first pause in the tirade.
She sighed. ‘You don’t want to know, Kate.’
She wasn’t wrong. I’d had a brief taste of seeing the man I loved behind bars, and that had been enough for me to realize how hellish it must be to lose them to prison for months or years. ‘You know you can always talk to me, Debbie,’ I lied.
‘I know, but it does my head in just thinking about it. Talking about it’d only make it worse.’ Debbie flicked open the cover of the car’s ashtray with a manicured nail. Seeing it was clean and empty, she closed it again and breathed out heavily through her nose.
‘It’s OK to smoke if you don’t mind having the window open,’ I told her.
She took a pack of Dunhills out of a handbag that I knew wasn’t Chanel in spite of the distinctive gilt double C on the clasp. I knew it wasn’t Chanel because I had an identical one in the same burgundy leather-look plastic. It had been a passing gift from Dennis about a year before, when he’d come by a vanload of counterfeit designer accessories. It had been good gear; Richard was still using the ‘Cerruti’ wallet. She managed to light up without smudging her perfect lipstick, then said, ‘I flaming hate seeing him in there. I really appreciate you coming today. It’ll do him good to see you. He always asks Christie if she’s seen you and how you’re doing.’
From anyone other than Debbie, that would have been a deliberate crack, a sideswipe aimed at triggering a major guilt trip. But given that her IQ and her dress size are near neighbours, I knew she’d meant exactly what she said, no more and no less. It didn’t make any difference to me; I still got the stab of guilt. In the seven weeks Dennis had been inside, I’d only got along to see him once so far, and that had been the week after he went down. Sure, I’d been stretched at work, with Bill clearing his desk before Australia. But that was only half the story. Like Debbie, I hated seeing Dennis inside Strangeways. Unlike her, nobody was going to give me a bad time for not visiting him every week. Nobody except me.