Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,10

no point in petulance once you've been well and truly had over. "I think that lit¬tle routine makes us quits," I told Richard. He grinned. "I'm going to need a lot more details."

Dan sat down again. "It all started with the fly-posting," he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. I had the feeling it was going to be a long story.

It was just after midnight when Dan and Lice left Richard and me staring across the coffee table at each other. It had taken a while to get the whole story, what with Lice's digressions into the relationship between rock music and politics, with particular reference to right-wing racists and the oppression of the Scots. The one clear thread in their story that seemed impossible to deny was that someone was definitely out to get them. Any single incident in the Scabby Heided Bairns' catalog of disaster could have been explained away, but not the accumulation of cock-ups that had characterized the last few weeks in the band's career.

They'd moved down to Manchester, supposedly the alternative music capital of the U.K., from their native Glasgow in a bid to move on to the next rung of the lad¬der that would lead them to becoming the Bay City

Rollers of the nineties. Now, the boys were days away from throwing in the towel and heading north again. Bewildered that they could have made so serious an enemy so quickly, they wanted me to find out who was behind the campaign. Then, I suspected, it would be a matter of summoning their friends and having the Tartan Army march on some poor unsuspecting Manchester vil¬lain. I wasn't entirely sure whose side I was on here.

"You are going to sort it out for them?" Richard asked.

I shrugged. "If they've got the money, I've got the time."

"This isn't just about money. You owe me, Brannigan, and these lads are kicking. They deserve a break."

"So give them a good write-up in all those magazines you contribute to," I told him.

"They need more than that. They need word of mouth, a following. Without that, they're not exactly an attractive proposition to a record company."

"It would take more fans than Elvis to make Dan Druff and his team attractive to me," I muttered. "And besides, I don't owe you. It was you and your merry men who screwed up my job earlier tonight, if you remember."

Richard looked astonished, his big tortoiseshell glasses slipping down his nose faster than Eddie the Eagle on a ski-jump. "And what about this place?" he wailed, waving his arm at the neat and tidy room.

"Out of the goodness of my heart, I'm not going to demand the ten quid an hour that good industrial clean¬ers get," I said sweetly, getting up and tossing the empty tinfoil containers into plastic bags.

"What about killing me off?" he demanded, his voice rising like a BeeGee. "How do you think I felt, coming home to find my partner sitting discussing my gravestone with a complete stranger? And while we're on the subject, I hope you weren't going to settle for some cheap crap," he added indignantly.

I finished what I was doing and moved across to the sofa. "Richard, behave," I said, slipping my legs over his, straddling him.

"It's not very nice, being dead," he muttered as my mouth descended on his.

Eventually, I moved my lips along his jaw, tongue flick¬ering against the angle of the bone. "Maybe not," I said softly, tickling his ear. "But isn't resurrection fun?"

Richard barely stirred when I left his bed next morning just after seven. I scribbled, "Gone 2 work, C U might?" on a Post-it note and stuck it on the forearm that was flung out across the pillow. I used to write messages straight onto his arm with a felt-tip pen until he com¬plained it ruined his street cred to have "Buy milk" sten¬ciled indelibly across his wrist. Nothing if not sensitive to people's needs, I switched to Post-its.

Back in my own home, I stood under the shower, tak¬ing my first opportunity to consider Alexis's ballistic mis¬sile. I knew that having a baby had climbed to the top of her and Chris's partnership agenda now that they had put the finishing touches to their house on the edge of the Pennines, but somehow, I hadn't realized parenthood was quite so imminent a project. I'd had this mental picture of it being something that would rumble on for ages before anything actually happened, given that it's such