Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,19

down" time. Kick boxing teaches you how to land the kick and keeps you fit enough to leg it afterward.

When he'd been sent down, Dennis had asked me to keep an eye on Christie. She'd inherited her mother's gleaming blond hair and wide blue eyes, but her brains had come from a father who knew only too well the dam¬age a teenage girl can wreak when the only adult around to keep an eye on things has a generous spirit and fewer brain cells than the average goldfish. Because she'd always been accustomed to seeing me around the gym, Christie had either failed to notice or decided not to resent the fact that I'd been spending a lot more time with her recently.

She filled me in on the latest school dramas of who was hanging out with whom and why as we showered next to each other-our club's strictly breeze-block. You want cubicles, go somewhere else and pay four times as much to join. By the time we were toweling ourselves dry, I'd managed to swing the conversation around to Dennis. "You told your dad about this Jason, then?" I asked her casually. She'd mentioned the lad's name once too often.

"You've got to be joking," she said. "Tell him about somebody he can't check out for himself and have the heavy mob kicking Jason's door in for a reference? No way. When he comes out'll be well soon enough."

"When you seeing him next?" I asked.

"Mum's got a VO for Thursday afternoon. I'm sup¬posed to be going with, but I've got cross-country trials and

I don't want to miss them," she grumbled as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head. "Dad wouldn't mind. He'll be the one giving me a go-along if I miss getting on the team. But Mum gets really depressed going to Strangeways on her own, so I feel like I've got to go with her."

"I could go instead of you," I suggested.

Christie's face lit up. "Would you? You don't mind? I'm warning you, it's a three-hankie job coming home."

"I don't mind," I said. "I'd like to see your dad. I miss him."

Christie sighed and stared at her trainers. "Me too." She looked up at me, her eyes candid. "I'm really angry with him, you know? After he came out last time, he promised me he'd never do anything that would get him banged up again."

I leaned over and gave her a hug. "He knows he's let you down. It's hard, recognizing that your dad's not per¬fect, but he's just like the rest of us. He needs you to for¬give him, Christie."

"Yeah, well," she said. "I'll tell Mum you'll pick her up dinnertime tomorrow, then." She got to her feet and stuffed her sweaty sports clothes into one of the counter¬feit Head holdalls Dennis had been turning out the previ¬ous spring. "See ya, Kate," she said on her way out the door.

Knowing I was doing her a favor made me feel less like the exploitation queen of South Manchester. But not a lot less. So much for doing it the straight way.

When I emerged from the gym, I decided to swing around by Gizmo's to see if he'd got anywhere with my earlier request. If the old axiom "if I was going there, I wouldn't start from here" didn't exist, they'd have to invent it for the journey from Sale to Levenshulme in mid-morning traffic. I knew before I started it was going to be hell on wheels, but for once, I didn't care. Me, reluctant to face Bill?

I crawled along in second while Cyndi Lauper reminded me that girls just wanna have fun. I growled at the cas¬sette deck and swapped Cyndi for Tanita Tikaram's more gloomy take on the world. I knew exactly what she meant when she accused someone of making the whole world cry. I sat in the queue of traffic at the lights where Wilbraham Road meets Oxford Road in the heart of undergraduate city, watching them going about their stu¬dent lives, backpacked and badly barbered. I couldn't believe it when the fashion world created a whole indus¬try around grunge as if it was something that had just happened. The rest of us knew it wasn't anything new; students have been wearing layers against the cold, and workmen's heavy-duty checked shirts for cheapness ever since I was a student a dozen years ago. Shaking my head, I glanced at the wall by the car. Plastered along it were posters for bands appearing at the