Part 36 (2/2)

his own, for that matter -made Buchanan feel sick. But that was typical of Fizz, he thought. If she wanted something she went for it, straight on past where any sensible person would have had enough, no matter if her monumental effort gained her only half an inch of headway.

He said, 'We haven't had many breaks in the past two weeks. If we get one over the weekend it'll be a miracle.'

'From now on, like I said, we make our own breaks. I've got an idea that might work. First thing tomorrow we pay a visit to the . . .'

Buchanan looked up from the litter of paper clips and elastic bands which he was sweeping into the bin bag to see her examining a narrow strip of cardboard no more than a couple of inches long. 'What's that?'

She narrowed her eyes, scowling at the sc.r.a.p as though commanding it to give up its secrets. 'I don't know . . . but I recognise those colours. That sickly pink and turquoise blue. I could be totally off beam on this, Buchanan. I mean it could be anything

'Yes?' said Buchanan, tiring of all this justification.

'I'm just saying ... I'd have to check, of course, but. . .

it reminds me of the packaging from a pregnancy test kit.' 225.

Chapter Nineteen.

It was impossible for Fizz to check out her pregnancy-test

theory immediately because the chemists' shops were

closed. She had to leave it till nine o'clock the following

morning when Buchanan came to pick her up and drive

her to their next nefarious project. Luckily, there was a pharmacy right next door to her flat and it only took a moment to check it out while Buchanan sat, double-parked and choleric, outside.

'Well?' he asked, as he pulled away virtually under the nose of a traffic warden. 'Were you right?'

'Am I ever wrong, muchacho?'

Fizz really liked it when things went well first thing in the morning. You could be almost certain it would continue to be a good day: a day when everything you set your hand to would go the way you wanted it to and random chance would operate in your favour. A day that started off badly was doomed to be one in which even inanimate objects turned against you, but today she had a feeling that they were going to see some action.

'Does that mean . . .?' Buchanan asked, as they waited at the roundabout at Holyrood House. 'Does that mean we can be reasonably sure that the cardboard came from a pregnancy test kit, or are there other packages with the same colour scheme? You know . . . some Pharmaceuticals have a livery of colours that all their products come in.'

'No, not this one,' Fizz a.s.sured him. 'I had a good look around the shelves for anything similar -and, anyway, no 227. two companies would pick such vile colours. I'd stake my ranch in Texas on it.'

G.o.d knows, she thought, I've seen enough of those packets to recognise one when I see it. She wondered briefly about the flatmate she'd lived with in Manchester.

Linda Something. She used to make out that she was so cool, so streetwise, yet every other month there was a pink-and-turquoise packet in the bathroom bin. Poor fat- headed Linda. She'd probably have acquired six kids, chronic depression, and no future by this time.

'We don't even know when Vanessa bought the thing, do we?' Buchanan was saying. 'Could have been months ago.'

'No, I don't think so. None of her rubbish was that old.

Didn't you look at the dates on the letters and the postmarks on the envelopes? They only went back to about six weeks before she died.' Fizz did a little mental arithmetic.

'I reckon she bought that test around about the last week in January at the earliest. Any earlier than that and it wouldn't have been in the bin.'

Buchanan slid her a funny look as one who would say, and anyway, how come you're such an expert on pregnancy tests? but Fizz didn't feel she had to explain herself to him.

After a while he said, 'We're making rather a lot of unfounded a.s.sumptions, of course. The test may not have been Vanessa's, or it could have been left behind in the waste bin accidentally -maybe months ago -when she last emptied it, and anyway, we've no way of telling whether the actual test turned out positive or negative.'

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