'Nothing, thanks all the same. He fired me.'

'What? That's terrible! Mimi, I'm ...'

'Hold it there, Joe. It's OK. I've been looking for an easy escape route for a while now and they don't come any easier than getting sacked.'

'But what will you do?' said Joe, still guilt ridden. 'I mean, without a job ... and what about money ...?'

'Well, first I'll finish my margarita, then I'll do some serious work on my tan. That should take three or four days. Meanwhile I'll get back to the three or four guys who've been dangling tempting job offers in front of me for the past six months and decide if there's anything there I fancy. As for money, well, when I saw you this morning I said to myself, I don't think this guy is serious about coming to Spain. So I took the precaution of paying for my hotel room in advance with the company credit card before the Rat put a stop on it. Oh, and I hit a couple of money machines and got myself a whole hatful of euros too. So I'm fine. Hope you will be too, Joe.'

'Any reason I shouldn't be?'

'I don't know why Ratcliffe wanted you in Spain, Joe, but I do know he doesn't much care for not getting what he wants. You see Stephen Hardman coming towards you, better turn and run! In fact, maybe a little holiday abroad wouldn't be such a bad idea.'

'I'll think about it. Mimi, something you can maybe help me with. Mr King used to be in close cahoots with Sir Monty Wright. They got anything going lately?'

There was a silence long enough to get Joe apologizing again.

'Look, sorry, shouldn't have asked. Even though he's your ex-employer, I know you can't go mouthing off about your work there ...'

'No, I was just thinking. In fact, I never had any dealings with Wright-Price. No reason to, Ratcliffe was just a non-exec director, nothing hands on. But he has spent a lot of phone time talking to Sir Monty lately, don't know what about. Could be just exchanging recipes. That it, Joe? The ice is melting in my margarita.'

'Yeah. And thanks for being such a sport.'

'No sweat. Like I say, I was ready for fresh fields and pastures new. Take care, Joe.'

'No, hold on,' said Joe. He rarely got flashes of inspiration but sometimes a trigger could produce a flash. 'Pastures new, I mean New Pastures you ever hear of an outfit with that name?'

'Yes. How do you know about them, Joe? It's a landholding company that Ratcliffe set up a couple of months back.'

'Thanks, Mimi. See you around, maybe.'

'Hope so, Joe. Bye.'

The lift had arrived and Joe had stuck his foot in the door to hold it there. He now stepped inside. As the door closed he saw the swing doors of the main entrance begin to open. His first instinct was to hold the lift for the newcomer. Then he saw who it was.

Jura.s.sic George.

'Oh shoot!' cried Joe and hit the 7 b.u.t.ton. Fortunately though a long way from the smooth swift sweet-smelling elevator in ProtoVision House, the lifts on Ra.s.selas were just as far removed from the mechanically and physically dangerous mobile urinals you found on Hermsp.r.o.ng.

The door closed. The ascent began. Not even a super athlete could make it up seven flights of stairs as fast as the lift, but Joe still sprinted down the corridor. Once in his flat he locked and bolted the door. The security chain dangled uselessly from the woodwork. Joe grabbed a stout dining chair and wedged it under the handle.

'There,' said Joe. 'Let's see you get through that!'

Breathing deeply he opened the balcony window to get some air. Below him Luton slumbered in the heat. It was good slumbering weather, specially if you were lying beside a pool with some like Mimi ...

Beryl ... he corrected guiltily. He meant someone like Beryl ...

In Aunt Mirabelle's strict theology, even a fantasized infidelity deserves punishment, so she might have been unsurprised by what happened next, but Joe was figuratively as well as literally bowled over when he felt himself hit from behind and flung forward against the balcony railing.

Whoever said lightning never struck twice clearly didn't know Jura.s.sic George!

For the second time that day Joe found himself staring down at the area of paving seven floors below which was likely to be the last resting place of his scattered brains.

One part of his mind was thinking, no misnomer calling George lightning, speed he'd got here. The guy couldn't be human!

But the other and larger part, that devoted to self-interest and survival, was instructing his voice to scream, 'George, George, my man, no need for this, I thought we got it all settled, you seen my girl, you seen my Beryl, I got eyes for n.o.body else, man!'

In view of his recent lascivious fantasy about Mimi, this wasn't strictly true, but while Jura.s.sic might have superhuman physical powers, not all the hard training in the world could make him telepathic.

The one improvement on his earlier experience was that this time, rather than being dangled over the balcony, he was folded across the rail on his stomach and he had instinctively taken a vice-like grip of the metal bar. Also his attacker seemed more interested in dragging him back than pushing him over; but as his preferred method of doing this was to heave at Joe's personal parts while simultaneously punching him in the kidneys, it did not appear that his motives were altogether benevolent, and now Joe found himself hanging on to prevent being dumped on the balcony floor rather then being dropped to the entrance paving stones.

The hand between his legs twisted viciously and Joe, who'd always envied the ability of the solo tenor in the Boyling Corner Chapel Choir to soar effortlessly towards his top-C's, now found himself hitting notes even a coloratura soprano might have balked at. Just as the agony brought him to the point of fainting, there was some kind of disturbance behind him and suddenly the grip on his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es relaxed. But this blessed relief seemed likely to be counterproductive. Weakened and barely conscious, he slumped over the rail like a sack of potatoes and hardly registered that gravity was pulling him inexorably down towards the waiting paving stone.

Too late he recognized his peril. His fingers clawed once more at the balcony railings but he could draw on no strength to get a grip. Then he was falling ... falling ...

Then something grasped his legs and dragged him upwards and backwards and bore him through the balcony door and deposited him on his own sofa.

He opened his eyes, blinking away the tears which the pain had started there, and as his sight cleared he saw looming over him the terrifying features of Jura.s.sic George.

Now to the sound range which he'd never expected to reach was added a whimper. He would have declared with some force that whatever else he might be he wasn't the whimpering type, but there was no other word to describe the noise he heard himself make in antic.i.p.ation of George's renewed a.s.sault.

And now that monstrous face was coming closer, so close that he could feel the hot breath as the boxer uttered words Joe could not understand but which he knew must be his death knell.

Frozen Broccoli.

In his detective career Joe had formulated many a hypothesis which proved so far from the truth that it would have taken a fully equipped inter-galactic s.p.a.ce expedition to traverse the distance between. This time he felt he understood the truth beyond hypothesizing. George had made such a ham-fisted effort at reconciliation with Eloise that he'd provoked her into saying something like, Yeah, that Joe's quite tasty and you're dead right, he really fancies me and I wouldn't mind getting something going there.

The only problem was, as the sounds issuing from the boxer's mouth stretched into syllables and then joined together to form words, something was going wrong with the script.

What he seemed to be hearing was, 'Hey, Joe, my man, are you OK? Take your time, man. Breathe deep. Here, try to sit up, get your head between your legs, long breaths, that's it, yeah, you keep doing that, I'll get you some water ...'

Then George vanished into the kitchen.

Persuaded that he was orally hallucinating, Joe glanced desperately towards the door. What he saw there drained any little strength he had remaining. The frame around the lock was splintered like matchwood ... the wooden chair he'd wedged under the handle had snapped in half like a breadstick ...

In any case George was back.

'Drink this. Hey man, how are your goolies? Thought that b.a.s.t.a.r.d was going to pull them right off. My corner man say, anything an ice-pack can't cure, you need surgery, so let's try this.'

Joe found himself looking at a packet of frozen broccoli as, with remarkably delicacy, Jura.s.sic's banana-bunch fingers unfastened his trouser belt, slid down the fly zip and pressed the packet against his crotch.

After the initial cold shock, it felt great, and as his injured parts stopped demanding ninety-nine per cent of his attention, it started getting through to him that either George had a serious schizoid condition, or he wasn't in fact the attacker.

He gasped, 'George ... why you here, man?'

'Came to say I'm sorry,' said George. 'For this morning, you know ... the misunderstanding ...'

'Like when you tried to kill me, you mean?' said Joe.

'Hey, no, I was never gonna let you go,' said the boxer earnestly. 'Just give you a fright, shake the truth out of you.' 'And now you know the truth?'

'Yeah. That Beryl girl, she convinced me. Then when I saw Eloise later at the garage ... well, she really bad-mouthed me for even dreaming she'd pick you over me-no disrespect meant, man ...'

'None taken,' Joe a.s.sured him, feeling better by the second. 'So things are OK between you two?'

'Just great!' said George, his face lighting up. 'But she says I gotta apologize to you, which I want to do anyways. So I come round here and there you are getting into the lift, only you don't wait. So I come up after you and I reach your door and I hear this noise of yelling inside. First, I think maybe you and your girl are having a domestic, then you start screaming and I know it ain't no family row. So I push open the door and there's you hanging over the balcony and this guy pummelling you and trying to pull your goolies off. So I give him a tap and he hits the deck, and I'm just going to make sure he don't get up again when I notice you're slipping away. So I've got to grab you and meanwhile the guy has got to his feet and hightailed it out of the door. Sorry about that, Joe, should have hit him harder, then he'd still be here for you to give him a kicking.'

'George, don't be sorry, you made the right decision and I'm truly grateful.'

'That's OK. You must be really burning up, this pack's beginning to thaw. Think I saw some prawns in the freezer, how about I try them?'

It occurred to Joe that lovely little Mimi, who'd jumped to the wrong conclusions this morning when she burst in on him standing starkers over a nurse with her legs in the air, would really mark him down as a Number One weirdo if she could see him now having his crotch ma.s.saged by Jura.s.sic with a packet of broccoli.

He took control of the pack himself and said, 'No thanks, George, this will be fine.'

But the thought of Mimi brought to mind the conversation he'd just had with her on the phone. King Rat knew he hadn't gone to Spain. Didn't need a Sudoku whiz to work out it must have been Colin Rowe who told him.

And what was King's likely reaction ...?

'George, my friend, this guy trying to kill me, you get a good look at him?'

'Yeah. Didn't know him, but I'll know him again. Real mean-looking b.a.s.t.a.r.d, got them hard eyes, know what I'm saying? Like some guys in the ring who try to stare you down while the ref's doing the intro. Me, I let my fists do the fighting. What you been doing, Joe, to get him so p.i.s.sed with you?'

'Don't think it was him that was p.i.s.sed,' said Joe.

Had to be Hardman, the Rat's personal minder, who'd been sent round to take care of him. Not kill him, which was a small comfort. Getting knocked about a bit was regarded as an occupational hazard for a PI. Indeed, Joe had heard Sergeant Chivers, his arch-enemy in Luton's Finest, opine that a day in which Sixsmith got a good kicking could never be said to have been altogether wasted. But not even Chivers would have been able to turn a blind eye if Joe's body had been found splattered on the paving stones under the Ra.s.selas tower. No, Hardman's mission had been to put him out of the picture by terrifying and disabling him.

Which he'd got at least half right. But what he'd also done was confirm that King Rat was definitely involved, and the only thing that got the Rat's nose twitching was the ripe smell of filthy lucre. Lots and lots of it. A multimillion deal. Which, together with Mimi's hint that something big was brewing between ProtoVision and the supermarket chain, put Wright-Price in the frame, dead centre.

It was beginning to look like Butcher's obsessive belief that Sir Monty was involved was more than just political prejudice.

But Joe found it hard to accept that a man so selflessly devoted to the wellbeing of Luton City FC could be party to any form of physical violence that took place off the field. He was ruthless in business, yes. He would cut so many corners in a deal he could turn a polygon into a straight line. But he was at heart a sportsman. Would he underwrite beating up a fellow Luton fan? Or framing an honest golfer for cheating?

Joe found it hard to believe. Which meant nothing. He'd been absolutely certain the Lutes were going to stuff Spurs last time they went to White Hart Lane, and look what happened then.

But he only knew one way to find out.

With a sigh, he started to push himself upright.

'Hey, you take it easy now,' advised George. 'You want I should call that girl of yours? She's a nurse, right? Maybe she could give you a ma.s.sage or something.'

'Think that would probably finish me off right now, George,' he said. 'Look, I got things to do. Thanks a bunch for helping me out here. Don't know what I'd have done else. Except maybe die.'

'My pleasure,' said the big boxer. 'Listen, man, you get any more trouble, you give me a call, right?'

'You'll be first on my wish-list,' Joe a.s.sured him.

As George left, he paused and looked at the splintered door frame.

'Sorry about that,' he said. 'You'd best get that fixed afore some of them Hermsp.r.o.ng brothers come across to borrow your TV and hi-fi. You got anyone you can ring?'

'Yeah, but it will probably be the weekend before he gets here.'

'Then leave it to me. I know this guy owes me a favour. He'll be round this afternoon, right?'

'Right,' said Joe, thinking, the Prince of Wales would probably be round this afternoon if Jura.s.sic George asked him. 'Tell him I'll leave the door open.'

It took George a full thirty seconds to work this one out, but when he did, he really appreciated it, and Joe heard his deep ba.s.s laugh echoing all the way down the corridor.

When it died away, he felt suddenly lonely.

In the bedroom he stripped naked and examined his a.s.saulted parts in a mirror. Apart from being a rather fetching shade of red and feeling very tender, no real damage seemed to have been done, and five minutes under an icy shower completed the good work begun by the frozen broccoli. He got dressed in his loosest fitting boxers and slacks and gingerly made his way down to the Morris.

The Right Price.

Ten minutes later he was walking into the Supporters' Club. He met Larry Hardwick and one of his staff coming out of the kitchen bearing trays of beer and sandwiches.

'Those for the directors?' Joe asked.

He knew a meeting was scheduled for today.

'Yeah, they just rang down. Must have a lot to talk about.'

'Give Sir Monty a message, will you, Larry? Tell him I'd appreciate a quick word.'

'Now, you mean?' Hardwick looked at him. 'Joe, personally I'd walk a hundred miles for one of your smiles, but I don't think even your rendition of "Mammy" is going to get Sir Monty out of his meeting.'

'Tenner says you're wrong, Larry,' said Joe.

'You're on.'

Joe sat down at the big corner table and hoped he was going to have to pay up. If Monty Wright appeared, it had to mean he really was involved.

A couple of minutes pa.s.sed. Then the door opened and the club chairman came in.

He made straight for Joe's table and sat down heavily. He carried too much weight, most of it round his waist, and his round face was flushed.