Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,62

day."

I explained my idea about generating more income by reclaiming process serving work. Shelley listened, a frown pulling her eyebrows closer together. "How are you going to get the business? All the solicitors who used to put the work our way have switched to somebody else, and presumably they're satisfied with the service they're getting."

This was the bit I was slightly embarrassed about. I leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "I thought I could do a Charlie's Angel and try some personal visits."

I risked a look. Shelley had a face like thunder. Jasper Charles runs one of the city's biggest firms of criminal solicitors. The primary qualification for employment as a clerk or legal executive there is having terrific tits and long legs. The key role of these women, known in legal circles as Charlie's Angels, is to generate more business for the firm. Every day, one or more of the Angels will visit remand clients in prison, often for the slenderest of reasons. They'll get the business out of the way then sit and chat with the prisoner for another half hour or so. All the other prisoners who are having visits from their briefs see these gorgeous women fawning all over their mates, and a significant proportion of them sack their current lawyers and shift their business to Jasper Charles. Every woman brief in Manchester hates them, not least because the sleazy trick undermines their need to be taken seri¬ously. "You've done some cheesy things in your time, Kate, but this is about as low as it gets," Shelley eventu¬ally said.

"I know. But it'll work. That's the depressing thing."

"So you go out and prostitute yourself and you snatch back all this business. How you going to find the time to do it?"

"I'm not."

Shelley's head tipped to one side. Unconsciously, she drew herself in and away from me. "Oh no," she said, shaking her head vigorously. "Oh no."

"Why not? You'd be great. You're the biggest no-shit I know."

"Absolutely not. There isn't enough money printed yet to make me want to do that. Know what you're good at and stick to it, that's my motto, and what I'm good at is running that office and keeping you in line." She slammed her drink down on the table so hard that the wine lurched in the glass like the contents of a drunk's stomach.

So far, it was going just as I'd expected it to. "Okay," I said with a small sigh. "I just thought I'd give you first refusal. So you won't mind me hiring someone else to do it?"

"Can we afford it?" was her only concern.

"We can if we do it on piecework, same as Bill did with me."

Shelley nodded slowly and picked up her glass again. "Plenty of students out there hungry for a bit extra."

"Tell me about it," I said. "Actually, I've got someone provisionally lined up."

"You never did hang about," Shelley said dryly. "How did you find somebody so fast? How d'you know they're going to be able to cut it?"

I couldn't keep the grin from my face. Any minute now, there was going to be the kind of explosion that Saddam could have used to win the Gulf War if there had been a way of harnessing it. "I think he'll fit in just fine," I told her. "You know how wary I am of involving strangers in the business, but this guy is almost like one of the family." I got up and opened the door into the hall. "You can come through now," I called in the direction of the spare room that doubles as my home office.

He had to stoop slightly to clear the lintel. Six feet and three inches of lithe muscle, the kind you get not from pumping iron but from actually exercising. Lycra cycling trousers that revealed a lunchbox like Linford's and quads to match, topped with a baggy plaid shirt. He moved lightly down the hall, his Air Nikes barely making a sound. I stepped back to let him precede me into the liv¬ing room and put my fingers in my ears.

"Donovan? What you doing here?" Shelley's thunder¬ous roar penetrated my defenses, no messing. The vol¬ume she can produce from her slight frame is a direct contradiction of the laws of physics. Don half-turned toward me, his face pleading for help.

"I've hired him to do our process serving, as and when we need him. We pay him a flat fee of..."

"No way," Shelley yelled. "This boy has a