Dead Beat

I shook my head. 'No problem. My name's Kate Barclay.' I knew Richard wouldn't mind me borrowing his name. After all, he knew I'd never be making the loan permanent.

'And where do you live, Kate?' Jude asked, scribbling furiously. I plucked a number out of the air and attached it to Leeds Road, which I knew was long enough to reduce the chances of her knowing a near neighbour.

We went through the formalities quickly. I told her I'd been working abroad as a teacher and that I'd just moved to Bradford with my boyfriend. I explained I'd heard about the project from the city council's voluntary services unit and had come along to offer my services. All the while, Jude nodded and wrote on her form. At the end of my recital, she looked up and said, 'Have you any experience with this kind of work?'

'Yes. That's why I came to you. We've been living in Antwerp for the last three years and I did some work with a drug rehabilitation charity there,' I lied fluently.

'Right,' said Jude. 'I'd no idea they ran something like that in Antwerp.'

I smiled sweetly and refrained from saying that that's why I'd chosen the Belgian city. No one in Britain has ever been to Antwerp, though I don't know why. It's more attractive, interesting and friendly than almost any other city I've ever been to. It's where Bill's parents came from originally and he still has a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins there that he visits regularly. I've been over with him a couple of times, and fell in love with it at first sight. I always use Antwerp now for obscure cover stories. No one ever questions it. Jude was no exception. She swallowed my story, made a note on her form then got to her feet.

'What I'll do is show you round now, to let you see exactly what we've got going here. Then I suggest you come to our weekly collective meeting tomorrow evening and see if you feel you'll fit in with us, and we feel we'll fit in with you,' she added, moving towards the door.

My heart sank. The thought of enduring a meeting of the Seagull Project's collective filled me with gloom. I hate the endless circular debate of collectives. I like decisions to be made logically, with the pros and cons neatly laid out. I know all the theory about how consensus is supposed to make everyone feel they have a stake in the decision-making. But in my experience, it usually ends up with everyone feeling they've been hard done by. I couldn't imagine any reason why the Seagull Project would be any different.

I hid my despair behind a cheerful smile and followed Jude on her tour of the building. My target was clearly the second room we entered. There were filing cabinets the length of one wall and an IBM PC clone on one of the two desks. As well as its hard disc drive, I noted a slot for 5.25" floppies. A man in his early thirties was sitting at the computer keyboard, and Jude introduced him as Andy.

Andy looked up and gri

'The filing cabinets hold details of all the clients we've had through here, all the other agencies we work with, and all our workers. We're trying to transfer all our records to computer, most recent cases first, but it's going to take a while,' Jude explained as we left Andy to his task. I noticed that the only lock on the door was a simple Yale.

The other office on the ground floor was the fund-raising office. Jude explained that Seagull was kept on the wing by a mixture of local authority and national grants and charitable donations. The staff consisted of herself as administrator, a psychiatrist and a qualified nurse. They had an arrangement with a local i

The first floor contained a couple of consulting rooms, two meeting rooms and a common room for the addicts who were living in. On the top floor, addicts in the early stages of kicking heroin sweated and moaned through the first weeks of their agony. If they made it through that, they moved on to a halfway house owned by the project, which tried to find them permanent jobs and homes well away from the temptations of their old stamping grounds. The whole place seemed clean and cheerful, if threadbare, and I thought that Moira could have done a lot worse for herself.

'We run an open door policy here,' Jude explained as we made our way back downstairs. 'We have to. As it is, we have to turn more away than we can treat. But they're free to go any time. That way, if they make it they know they've done it themselves and not had a cure imposed on them. We believe it makes them less likely to fall into the habit again.'

I knew better than to ask about their success rate. It would only depress Jude to talk about it, and she seemed so happy to have a new volunteer on her hands I didn't want to disappoint her any more than I was going to have to do anyway. As we reached the front door, I shook Jude's hand and asked when I should turn up the following evening.

'Come about half-past eight,' she said. 'The meeting starts at seven, but we have a lot of confidential stuff to get through first. You'll have to ring the bell when you get here because the front door's locked at six.'

'Open door policy?' I queried.

'To keep people out, not in,' Jude pointed out with a wry smile. 'See you then.'

'I can hardly wait,' I muttered under my breath as I walked down the path and headed back to the car. I felt a complete shit, having raised her hopes of finding another volunteer. Maybe I could pitch Jett into giving them a substantial donation once I'd reunited him with Moira. After all, he'd said he'd be happy to give everything he owned to get her back.

It was just after eight when I drew up at the foot of the carriage turning-circle outside Colcutt Manor. On the way back to Manchester, I'd dictated a report for Shelley to type up and fax to Jett so he'd know I wasn't just sitting around collecting my daily retainer. I pulled off the motorway to hit the ASDA superstore. I wandered around the aisles trying to fill my trolley only with the essential items on my mental shopping list, but I fell by the wayside at the deli counter, as usual, and loaded up with a dozen little treats to cheer myself up. Then I called the manor to ask for the fax number. I asked to speak to Jett. That was my first mistake.

'I'm sorry, Jett's unavailable at present,' Gloria informed me, unable to keep the spark of pleasure from her voice.

'Gloria,' I warned, T haven't got the energy to play games right now. Let me speak to him, please.'

'He really is unavailable,' she protested, her voice going from silky to sulky. 'They're in the recording studio. But he left a message for you,' she admitted grudgingly.

'And are you going to tell me or are we going to play twenty questions?'

'Jett said that he wants you to come round and give him a progress report.'

T have a progress report right here. I'm about to drop it off in my secretary's in-tray. It'll be on your desk tomorrow morning,' I told her.

'He wants you here in person,' she retorted smugly.

I sighed. 'I'll be there in an hour.' I dropped the phone back in the cradle and stomped back to the car. Unfortunately, the trolley wouldn't go in a straight line, so the effect wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. Luckily there were no small children around to laugh. That saved me the aggravation of an assault charge.

I really wasn't in the mood for trekking over to Colcutt. Apart from anything else, my carton of double choc chip ice-cream would have melted by the time I got home. But I couldn't see any alternative. If I refused, it would give Gloria more ammunition than she'd need to see me off. Besides, we were charging Jett such astronomical fees I could hardly deny him a face-to-face. Maybe I could ask permission to put my ice-cream in their freezer.