Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,89

feet sensibly shod in flat-soled pumps.

From her vantage point washing glasses behind the bar, no one would see more than the tarty top half and imme¬diately dismiss her. With her hair loose and enough makeup to change the shape of eyes and mouth, Lovell was never going to recognize a woman DCI who might have been pointed out to him a couple of times across a crowded canteen. "Did you manage to pick up anything on the grapevine about Lovell?" I asked.

She pulled a face. "Not a lot. I didn't want word getting back to him that I was interested. I heard his wife divorced him because he was too handy with his fists, but that's hardly exceptional in the Job. What I did find out, though, was that he claims to have a couple of weeks time-share in a villa in Lanzarote. Very tasteful property up in the hills, swimming pool, terraced garden, half a dozen en suite bedrooms. A little bit of poking around and the calling in of a couple of favors reveals that the holding company that owns the villa is in turn wholly owned by Peter Lovell. Since the property's worth the thick end of quarter of a million, it does raise one or two questions about DI Lovell's finances."

"Nice one, Delia," I said.

"That's not quite the end of it," she said as we walked up to the waiting car. "An old school friend of mine is married to a chap who manages one of the vineyards there, so I gave her a call. Her husband knows Lovell. Clothes by Versace, car by Ferrari, part owner of a restau¬rant, a bar, and two discos in Puerto del Carmen," she said, her voice tight with anger.

"Obviously not the kind of lifestyle one could sustain on a police pension."

"Quite. And about bloody time his gravy train hit the buffers. Let's go and make it happen."

The plan was simple enough. Delia would be inside the club watching what was going down. Three of her most trusted lieutenants would be hidden within yards of the main bar where the meeting was scheduled for-two in the ladies' loo, one behind the DJ's setup. Another four handpicked officers would be stationed outside the club, listening to the transmission from my radio mike. When they had enough on tape to hang Lovell out to dry, they would move in and relieve him of his liberty. A classic sting.

Considering Tony had only had eight hours to sort everything out, he'd come up with a credible cover story for me. I was the keyboard player in a new all-female band. We'd allegedly got together in Germany and we'd been touring in Europe, so successfully that we already had a recording contract with a small indie label in Ham¬burg. But we wanted more, so we'd come back to Britain to make a full-frontal assault on the music scene in a bid to get a major label contract. Because we were already fairly established, we didn't want to piss around. We wanted promotion, we wanted exposure. We wanted it fast and we wanted it top quality. And we'd told Tony Tambo we wanted to talk to the top man because we weren't going to waste time or money. Now I just had to pray that Lovell would give us enough to pull him on, or I was going to owe so many favors the only solution would be to leave town.

Thinking of favors reminded me of my grave robbers. "Did you turn over Sell Phones?" I asked.

Delia nodded. "We sent a team in this morning. The shop was clean, but one of my bright boys noticed there was a trap-door for a cellar. And lo and behold, there was a phone room down below."

"A phone room?"

Delia raised her eyebrows. "You mean I've finally found a scam you haven't heard about?"

"Try me."

"Okay. There's a little electronic box you can buy that allows you to eavesdrop on mobile phone calls. What it also tells you is the phone number of the mobile phone that's being used, and its electronic code number. With that information, you can reprogram the silicon chip in a stolen phone and turn it into a clone of a legitimate phone. You can then use that phone to call all over the world until the cellphone company cottons on and cuts you off. Normally, you can get a few hours' worth of calls, but if you're making international calls, sometimes they cut you off within