Report for Murder

by Val McDermid

  Lindsay nodded sympathetically. “You must feel really shut off from everything. But don’t think you’re forgotten. Pamela Overton’s got us working overtime to try and find out what actually happened. I know it must seem pretty pointless, expecting a pair of wallies like us to get to the bottom of things, but we’re doing the best we can.”

  “Gillian told me. I appreciate it. It’s not easy to feel optimistic in here, though. I feel condemned already. After all, what can you do against the combined forces of the police and the legal system?”

  Lindsay pulled a wry face. “Probably not a lot. But we’ve got an advantage over them—we know you’re innocent.”

  Paddy produced a tired smile. “Thanks for that. But you can’t really know that for sure. I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t have a brainstorm and I just can’t remember it now. You never think that a miscarriage of justice is going to happen to you, do you? I’ve spent all my life in a world where the police are the ones you call when the house gets burgled, or some drunk is falling through your hedge at midnight. Even when I was dealing dope I never really believed they’d touch me. You never expect them to get it wrong for you.”

  “You mustn’t begin thinking like that,” pleaded Cordelia. “Eventually they’ll realize that they’ve made a terrible mistake. We’re just trying to speed the process up a bit, that’s all. You’ll be out of here a free woman in no time at all.”

  Paddy shook her head. “I’ll never be able to think of myself as a ‘free woman’ again, Cordelia.”

  Seeing that the conversation was moving into channels likely to depress Paddy even further, Lindsay interrupted.

  “Look, Paddy, we’re only allowed quarter of an hour. We need to pick your brains about the other people involved in this business. We’ve already talked to Margaret Macdonald about her relationship with Lorna—believe it or not, it turns out they were lovers years ago.”

  “Margaret? And Lorna?” Paddy interrupted. “That’s incredible. I thought I knew Margaret well. But I’d no idea. My God, the skeletons are falling out of the cupboards now, aren’t they?”

  “You’re not wrong there. But we think we’ll have to rule her out and we don’t want to have to drag her in as a red herring just to cast doubt on the evidence against you, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. We’ve also got something on Sarah Cartwright’s father that could be promising. But we need some other lines of attack. Who else might have wanted to see the back of Lorna?”

  Cordelia butted in, “For example, did Caroline Barrington think that Lorna was behind her parents’ marriage breakup?”

  Paddy lit a cigarette before she replied. “Caroline blamed Lorna totally. I tried to talk her out of seeing it that way, but she wasn’t having any. I don’t know the full story, but apparently Lorna had an affair with Caroline’s father, which he was more wrapped up in than she was. The marriage broke up over it, but Lorna and he never really got it together. Caroline was very bitter at the time, and when she heard Lorna was coming to the school, she was furious. I was quite surprised when she volunteered for the program selling at the concert.”

  “What about the girl who came to fetch you from Longnor? The one with the amazing head of red hair. Is there anything she might be able to tell us that could help?” Lindsay asked. Paddy shrugged again. “I doubt it. Though if there was, Jessica would certainly tell you. She’s another one who hated Lorna’s guts, you see. That’s why she wasn’t playing at the concert even though she’s one of our best young musicians. You remember that row I had with Margaret in the staffroom, Lindsay? That was about Jessica. She’d come to me at the last minute and explained she couldn’t go through with the concert with Lorna there.

  “It was all to do with her brother, Dominic. He was a brilliant violinist, and Jessica worshiped the ground he walked on. There was some business between him and Lorna—she latched on to him and promised him the first vacancy in her string quartet. But things went wrong between them and she gave the post to someone else. Then there was some business about a reference she wouldn’t give him for some other orchestral job, and he didn’t get that either. The pressure of being rejected twice like that was too much for him—he killed himself. He clearly wasn’t at all stable; in fact, from what I’ve heard the blame was as much on his side as on Lorna’s, but Jessica will never see it that way.”

  “I don’t see how you can be so bloody charitable about Lorna,” Cordelia burst out. “She was nothing but trouble to us while she was alive; and now she’s dead, she’s carrying on the good work.”

  “Leave it, Cordelia,” soothed Lindsay. “What’s the girl’s full name, Paddy?”

  “Jessica Bennett.”

  “Thanks, we’ll have a chat with her. Now, what about Sarah Cartwright? Gillian tells us that she’s given the police a statement about Saturday morning.” Lindsay succinctly outlined what the lawyer had said on the phone. “What have you got to say to that, Paddy? Did it happen like she says?”

  Paddy looked bewildered. “I don’t know . . . It’s true that I took her to Music 2 because I knew that nobody else would be using it and I wanted to get her on her own in the hope that she might open up a bit. I don’t remember the other things she says happened—but then, I was very abstracted. I was worried about her; I had the play on my mind; and I was still twitchy about Lorna. So they might have happened. I honestly can’t say definitely that they didn’t take place. After all, there’s no reason why the girl should lie.”

  “But of course there is,” argued Cordelia. “She could be protecting either herself or her father.”

  Paddy shook her head. “I don’t think she’d have deliberately done something that would cause me trouble. I’m closer to the girl than anyone else in the school. I can’t believe she would calculatedly lie about me.”

  Lindsay interrupted gently. “I know it’s hard to believe, Paddy, but try to think objectively. Don’t you think that Sarah might just do anything for her father’s sake? Even to the extent of killing?”

  Paddy considered the question. “She’s cool enough under normal circumstances to pull it off, I suppose. And she feels passionately protective of her father. Perhaps she might not be too worried about putting me in a spot if she looked at it as a straight choice between him and me. But when it comes to murder—I can’t believe that. For one thing, I don’t think she knew the music department well enough to set it up. And besides, she was so upset after her row on Saturday morning, I doubt if she’d have been able to compose herself sufficiently to get it all together. No, I can’t see Sarah as the killer at all.”

  Seeing that this line of conversation was upsetting Paddy, Lindsay decided on another approach. “Is there anything you can think of that might give us a new line to work on? Anything at all? Some little detail you might have noticed but not bothered about—in the room or in the music department?”

  Paddy slowly shook her head. “Nothing springs to mind. Don’t you think I’ve already been through it a million times in my head these last three days?” She rubbed her eyes with her fists. “After all,” she sighed, “there’s not a lot else to fill my head.”

  They all sat back in their chairs for a moment, Lindsay trying to hide her pity for her friend and her disappointment that nothing more substantial had emerged from the conversation. She leaned forward again and said reassuringly, “I’ve managed to come up with the goods on investigative stories before with less to go on than we’ve got here. And with Cordelia to keep me right, I’m sure we’re going to crack this one too. I’m not giving up on you, Paddy, I owe you one.”

  For a moment, Paddy’s face looked animated and she almost smiled, but at that moment the prison officer approached Paddy and said that their time was up. Immediately, Paddy’s eyes became bleak again and she got to her feet. “Come again when you can,” she implored before vanishing through the door once more.

  When they emerged into the open space of the car park, Lindsay gulped air in as though that would somehow cleanse her. She l
eaned against the car, shoulders slumped and face full of dismay. Cordelia leaned against the wall, fighting back the tears. “It’s so bloody unfair,” she spat.

  “I know,” Lindsay sighed. “I feel completely inadequate. How the hell can we sort this mess out? I just don’t know where to start.”

  “At least she’s given us a couple of leads. We’ve got reasonable excuses for talking to Caroline and Jessica now.”

  Lindsay nodded wearily. “I suppose so. I kept on thinking there was something important I should have asked Paddy, but I don’t know what it was. There’s something which has been nagging at the back of my mind since Sunday and it won’t surface for long enough to grasp it. But I know it’s somehow significant, whatever it is.”

  Cordelia shrugged herself away from the wall. “Come on, we’d better get on the road to London. Maybe Andrew Christie will hold the key that will unlock all of this.”

  “I doubt it,” Lindsay muttered. “But let’s go anyway.”

  12

  Andrew Christie ushered the two of them into the living-room of an elegant and expensive flat. It occupied the basement and ground floor of a tall, narrow Victorian house, and the large living-room was exactly what Lindsay imagined a slightly pretentious television producer should inhabit. The furniture was Habitat—inevitably tasteful without exhibiting any taste—three two-seater settees and a plethora of low tables piled with magazines, newspapers, scripts, and half-full ashtrays. But the room was dominated by the electronic media. There was a giant television screen and a normal-sized set, two video recorders, an expensive hi-fi system, and yards of shelves containing records, cassettes, video tapes, and reel-to-reel tapes. Lindsay found it the least relaxing room she’d ever been in. Christie was in his late thirties, with shaggy blond hair, slim and wiry, and dressed in tight olive green jeans, an open-necked plaid shirt, and a shapeless hairy sweater. He looked the part.

  “Sit down, do,” he said in a voice like a radio announcer’s. “I don’t quite know how I can help you. Lorna and I had only been seeing each other for about three months and I can’t say I was aware of her having enemies of sufficient seriousness to . . . well—to do this.”

  “We were hoping you’d be able to tell us a bit about her. Her personality, her lifestyle, her friends, that sort of thing,” Lindsay responded gently. She knew she wouldn’t be able to press this man as she had done Cartwright. She understood his grief too well. “The more we know about Lorna, the more chance we have of finding out why she was killed. And by whom. I know it’s not easy to talk when it’s only just happened and we do appreciate you giving us some time. I know we’ve got no official standing here, but it’s important to us to establish who really did this. If you knew Paddy Callaghan like we do, you’d know that it would have been impossible for her to have committed such a cowardly crime.”

  For the first time, emotion flickered across his face. “I miss Lorna,” he said. “I know a lot of people didn’t care too much for her; she had a very cutting tongue at times. But to me she was always very tender. She used to make me laugh. She could be very funny at other people’s expense. I don’t think she especially meant to be cruel, but not everyone could see the humor behind what she said.”

  There was a pause. “How did you meet?” asked Cordelia. “I’d known her slightly for quite a long time—we had some mutual acquaintances and found ourselves at the same parties. Then I was producing a drama-documentary about Elgar and I needed someone to play the cello concerto. She seemed the obvious choice. I was very impressed by her attitude as I worked with her. She was the complete professional. I know she put people’s backs up by criticizing their talent and motivation, but that was simply because she was such a perfectionist herself. But no one gets killed for that. It makes no sense to me at all. I keep thinking about all that beauty gone out of the world just because of some evil bastard’s inability to cope with life.”

  “Did she say anything about last weekend before she went? I mean, did she mention anyone in particular?” asked Lindsay.

  He paused, then said, “She was looking forward to it. She said it should be good for a laugh, at least. She said there were one or two people she’d take pleasure in showing that she’d arrived and was somebody. She didn’t mention any names. She also said it would be good for publicity because of the controversy about the fund locally. She hated talking to the press; she thought they were scum. But she was too good a businesswoman to ignore the value of publicity. Sorry, that’s not much help, is it?”

  “More than you think,” said Lindsay. “Now, I’m going to ask you if some names mean anything to you, if you’d ever heard of any of them before the weekend. For example, had she ever mentioned Cordelia here?”

  “Yes. At first, she was terribly amused that some people seemed to think that a nasty character in your last novel was based on her. She said it wasn’t terribly likely, since you hadn’t spent any time together for years. Then a few weeks ago when your novel was nominated for the Booker, it all flared up again and she began to get cross with people for making the same remark over and over again. She decided that if she was going to get all this stick, she should get something in return. So she set the wheels in motion to sue. She was amused that you were going to be at the school. She said—sorry about this—it would be fun to watch you squirm.”

  “Did she indeed!” said Cordelia through frozen lips.

  “Had you ever heard her speak of Paddy Callaghan?”

  “Never.”

  “James Cartwright? Or his daughter Sarah?” The mechanical recital of names was helping Lindsay relax into her questioning.

  “Definitely not.”

  “Jessica Bennett, Dominic Bennett’s sister?”

  “She never mentioned a sister, but I know about Dominic, yes. He was quite a gifted young musician, Lorna said, and she’d encouraged his talent. She told him that one day she might be able to use him in her string quartet. But he wasn’t quite up to scratch when a vacancy came up, so of course she had to turn him down. He was more distressed than she realized, and he killed himself soon after. Where does his sister come into this?”

  “She’s a pupil at the school. Does the name Margaret Macdonald mean anything?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “Caroline Barrington?”

  “Barrington? Any relation to Anthony Barrington? He had a relationship with Lorna. She told me about him. Apparently he couldn’t accept it when she cooled off, and went to the extent of divorcing his wife to try to force Lorna to marry him. But she wouldn’t have it. They split up about six months before we got together. I got the impression that he caused her a lot of grief. But she never tried to make one feel sorry for her, for what she’d suffered in the past. She always said you start relationships with a clean sheet. God, I’m going to miss her,” and he pressed the back of his hands against his eyes in a curiously vulnerable gesture. “The worst thing is that I can’t get peace simply to sit and grieve. The police, the press, and now you. Not that I blame you. I like to think that I’d do the same for a friend of mine. But there will be no peace until after the court case. And probably not even then. It makes me so bloody sad. A complete waste.”

  “And damage done to the living,” said Cordelia. “There’s been enough of that already and it’s not finished yet. One last thing before we go—how many people knew she was going up to Derbyshire last weekend? Is there anyone else you can think of who might have had a motive for wanting to harm her—I mean in the widest sense?”

  “Thousands of people knew where she was going. There were a few paragraphs about it in the Daily Argus diary column last week. As for motives—no, I don’t know anyone who’d be crazy enough to want to harm her. It’s all insane. All of it. It doesn’t feel real. I’ve been working these last few days on the final stages of the Elgar documentary. It’s going out in three weeks. It’s very weird watching the film and hearing the soundtrack of her playing and knowing that’s all that’s left. I must have actually
been working on that with the editor when she was being killed. It’s hell.”

  “I know,” said Lindsay. “I lost someone I loved once. You feel like part of you has been amputated. And nothing anyone says makes the slightest difference.”

  Cordelia cleared her throat. “Well, thanks for your help. We’d better be off now. I’m sorry if we’ve upset you.”

  He saw them to the door. His parting words as they climbed the shallow steps up from his basement entrance were, “Thanks, I wish you could have known her as I did.”

  They got back into the car. Lindsay had found the interview extremely painful. The man’s grief had taken her back three years to the death of her lover. It was an experience she thought she had learned how to handle. But now she felt again the vivid pain that had filled her life for months after Frances’ death had devastated her world.

  “At least one person grieves for her,” said Cordelia. “I can’t decide whether she did a magnificent con job on him or whether he genuinely saw a side to Lorna that was hidden from the rest of us.”

  “Who’s to say?” Lindsay replied. “Either way, it’s not going to affect his memories. Unfortunately, however, I don’t think our little chat has taken us any further forward. If anything, it only widens the field to the entire readership of the Daily Argus. Still, it was edifying to find out what Lorna apparently thought of Dominic Bennett and Anthony Barrington. Now, how do I get to your place?”