Deadline for Murder

by Val McDermid

  “Found what you were looking for?” Martin asked as he settled down with his pile of papers again.

  “Yes, thanks. You’re a star, Martin. Who’s on duty upstairs tonight?” Lindsay asked as she packed the cuttings back into their envelopes.

  Martin told her, and at the name of Blair Craigie, Lindsay’s ears pricked up. Blair had been her shift partner for the six months before she’d moved to London, and the close working relationship that had developed between them had spilled over into their private lives. They had often spent their days off walking in the mountains round Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. “Great,” she said. Borrowing Martin’s phone, she rang the newsdesk upstairs and spoke to Blair. He was due for a meal break in half an hour, and they arranged to meet in a pub some distance away from the office to avoid being sucked into a convivial journalistic gathering that would prevent them talking properly to each other.

  Lindsay headed back to her car, waving a farewell to Willie as she passed the security office. She drove up the Clydeside Expressway and turned off at Partick. She cruised up Byres Road and parked outside Tennants Bar. She pushed open the door and stopped in astonishment. They’d renovated Tennants! She could remember when the spit-and-sawdust pub had been the most basic of hostelries. They hadn’t even had a ladies’ toilet. When women were caught short, they had to go into the pub next door. It created a problem near closing time, for the neighboring pub shut half an hour before Tennants. But now, the bar was carpeted, the furnishings were new, and she could see a sign saying “Ladies’ Toilet.” Lindsay walked up to the bar and bought a pint of lager.

  She didn’t have long to wait. Before she was halfway down her glass, Blair arrived. He waved and headed straight for the bar, arriving minutes later at her table clutching two pints. He put the glasses down and swept her into his arms in a bear hug. “When did you get back?” he demanded.

  Breathlessly, Lindsay said, “A few days ago. How’s tricks?”

  “You see it all,” he said expansively, running a hand over his sandy curls.

  “That bad, eh? So, what’s been happening?” Lindsay settled back in her seat to catch up on the newspaper gossip that she’d missed in her absence. Why is it, she wondered with amusement, that whenever two or more journalists get together, there isn’t a reputation left intact by the end of the encounter?

  “I think that’s about it,” Blair said as he wound up. “Oh no, wait a minute. Did you hear about Alistair McGrath’s company medical?”

  Lindsay shook her head. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Well, the doctor examined him, and he was asking him all the questions about medical history, smoking and all that. So he says, ‘And what do you drink?’ Quick as a flash mad McGrath says, ‘What have you got?’” Blair convulsed with laughter as he reached the story’s punchline.

  When Lindsay stopped laughing, she said, “Time to be serious. I need your help, Blair.”

  His eyebrows rose and he stroked his mustache. “I hear that people who help you these days have a way of setting into bother,” he said carefully. “Mind you, we’ve pulled each other out of the shit enough times. What’s the problem?”

  “Bill Grace’s story this morning. About Jedburgh and the prisons. I need to know where he got it from.”

  Blair whistled softly. “Christ, Lindsay, that’s a tall order. You’ll have to form an orderly queue behind the Special Branch.”

  “That’s exactly why I need to know. The Branch picked me up this afternoon because they’ve got a bee in their bonnet that I was the person who leaked the documents to Bill.”

  “But what’s it got to do with you?”

  “The story was based on a leaked Scottish Office draft report that was stolen yesterday afternoon. Unluckily for me, I happened to be in the building where the burglary took place. And with my track record . . .” Lindsay tailed off.

  “I see. Christ, you’ve only been back five minutes and already you’re causing mayhem. So you want to know who gave Bill his info so you can get yourself out of the firing line.”

  “Not exactly,” she replied. “Whoever did that burglary also walked away with some other bits and pieces that he’d no right to. The woman who was burgled happens to be a friend, and I promised I’d try to get them back for her. Look, you know me. I’m not going to grass Bill’s source to the police. I believe in protecting sources as much as anybody. It’s purely so that I can get this other stuff back.”

  Blair looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Lindsay. It all sounds a bit iffy to me. Why don’t you ask Bill yourself?”

  Lindsay sighed. “I don’t think he’d tell me. We always got along all right, but we were never what you’d call buddies. He always treated me like a silly wee lassie who didn’t really understand what being a hotshot reporter was all about. Anyway, I didn’t want you to ask him straight out and drop yourself in it. Just a few discreet inquiries, that’s all.”

  Blair shrugged. “Okay. But no promises. Where can I reach you?”

  Lindsay gave him Sophie’s number. “Another thing . . .” she said.

  “Oh God. What now?” Blair groaned. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You want me to rob a bank riding blindfold on a unicycle?”

  “The unicycle comes later. Jackie Mitchell has asked for my help. She claims she’s innocent.”

  “And you fell for that? Christ, Lindsay, I didn’t think you were that naive. Haven’t you read the court reports?”

  Lindsay smiled wryly. “Yes, Blair, I’ve read the court reports. And I admit that on the face of it, it looks like she did it. But I don’t see how making a few inquiries can do any harm. And I promised I’d do what I could. I just wanted to ask you what the gossip was about Alison round the time of her death.”

  Blair stroked his mustache and stared into his beer. “Tell you the truth, everybody was so busy going ‘Fancy that!’ over the shock horror revelations about Jackie that nobody else’s name was mentioned. Whoever else Alison was seeing, nobody from the Clarion was putting their hand up. Mind you, after she got Jimmy Mills frozen out of the sports desk, everybody steered pretty clear of her.”

  “I didn’t hear about that. What happened with Jimmy Mills?”

  “It happened about a year after you went off to London. Alison’s version was that Jimmy gave her a lift home after a party, came up for coffee, and raped her. She said she wasn’t going to make a complaint to the police because she didn’t want him to lose his wife and kids. Jimmy’s version was that he’d been having an affair with her, but she’d cooled off and spread that tale to get him off her back. Jimmy had been doing regular shifts on the racing desk, but every time he was in the office when she was there, she would burst into tears and head for the loo. Eventually, the sports department decided they could do without the aggro and gave Jimmy the bullet. He was well pissed off about it.”

  “I can see why the lads were steering clear,” Lindsay mused. “Look, Blair, if you remember anything else that might be useful, give me a bell.”

  “Okay. And I’ll see what I can dig up about the Jedburgh affair.” He got to his feet. “I’d better be getting back. Some of us have got jobs to go to,” he teased.

  Lindsay finished her drink and got to her feet. She’d been glad to see Blair, but she was equally glad to see him go. The envelope was burning a hole in her pocket, and she was desperate to explore its secrets. The key to Alison’s death was in her hands now, she felt certain.

  9

  Thank God for infatuation, Lindsay thought, as she sprawled across the bed in Sophie’s spare room. If it hadn’t been for her initial obsession with Alison, she’d never have known about the existence of the envelope and its contents. She sprawled across the bed in Sophie’s spare room and sipped a glass of whisky and water. Sophie had instantly understood when Lindsay told her she didn’t feel like discussing her Special Branch ordeal. She’d simply poured her a large drink and left her to herself.

  Lindsay studied the envelope, tantalizing herself before she opened
it. It looked just like the one she’d discovered years before when, on fire with lust for Alison, she’d spent half of one night shift avidly reading every word her new lover had ever had published in the Scottish Daily Clarion. The contents of the envelope had shocked Lindsay, then amused her. But it was from the moment she understood the implications of what Alison had written that Lindsay dated her ultimate disillusionment.

  At the time, it had seemed a strange place to leave a document of this sort. Lindsay had eventually come to the conclusion that Alison had hidden it there to avoid accidental discovery by anyone who regularly visited her flat. Anyone routinely looking something up in her byline file would almost certainly have ignored it as journalists trawling through the files would only be looking for a specific story. It was only Lindsay’s obsession with Alison that had driven her to open the envelope.

  She supposed she should have left it where it was. Tampering with the evidence, Ainslie would doubtless call it. But if Alison had stuck to her old habits, the contents would be in her handwriting. There could be no dispute about their author. Lindsay pulled on a pair of thin leather driving gloves and opened the envelope. Carefully, to avoid destroying any existing prints, she removed its contents with a pair of eyebrow tweezers, then unfolded the thin sheets of airmail paper.

  With a sigh of satisfaction, Lindsay surveyed Alison’s secret dossier. There were about ten sheets of paper, all except the final page completely covered in the tiny neat handwriting that Lindsay recognized immediately. She turned straight to the last page. The final entry, dated the day before her death, began “Ocz kjgdodxvg kjovoj: rdoc rcvo d xvi kmjqz do rjio ws gjib ijr!” and continued for another couple of lines. Lindsay crossed her fingers and prayed that Alison was still using the same simple alphabetic cypher that she’d used when they’d been lovers.

  Lindsay turned back to the first page, which dated from six years previously. She’d be in this dossier somewhere, she knew. When she’d first found the document, she’d hastily photocopied it and taken it home to study at her leisure. The code Alison used hadn’t taken much working out. It had been obvious to Lindsay that Alison’s secret file was some kind of record of her sexual adventuring. It had seemed a strangely childish game to Lindsay. It was almost as if by committing it to paper in this way, Alison was proving something to herself about her desirability. Although Lindsay hadn’t fully understood the reasons for it at the time, she now saw it as an expression of a deep-rooted personal insecurity, an emotional stunting that had left Alison trapped in adolescence.

  But merely cracking the code hadn’t been the answer. Translating the jumble of letters into proper English words had simply provided Lindsay with another problem. For Alison was too shrewd to leave an incriminating record of proper names. Instead, she referred to her lovers by nicknames, or where they were part of an established couple, in relation to their partners. It was often snide, seldom flattering to her conquests. Often, there were references to people before they actually became her lovers, showing each step in her campaign to include them among the notches on her bedhead. Each nickname was preceded by a date, and sometimes by a time and place. It was often followed by a comment on their performance or personality, and each neat entry ended with the ultimate childishness in Lindsay’s eyes—a mark out of ten. Even the fact that Alison had given her 8.8 didn’t vindicate the system for Lindsay.

  She rubbed her tired eyes and put the papers to one side. She was too weary tonight for the close work involved in translating the dossier. Tomorrow, she’d get up bright and early and go down to the local print shop to make photostats of the sheets. That would save the originals from more handling than was strictly necessary. Then she could work her way through the list, and see where that took her.

  Lindsay rolled off the bed and undressed, leaving her clothes in a pile on the floor, too tired even to throw them on a chair. She swallowed the remains of her drink in one and crawled between the sheets. She turned out the light and started to review her day. But she was asleep before she even got as far as the prison gates.

  “I spent today decoding the entries. Here’s a copy of the original, and here’s a copy of my version of it. I’ve used highlighter pens to mark the ones that I think might have some relevance to my inquiries. As you’ll see, about seventy per cent of her lovers were men, the rest women. Interestingly enough, although she often had several male lovers on the go concurrently, she usually stuck to one woman at a time.” Lindsay handed the sheets of paper to Claire.

  She had arranged a meeting with her employer to discuss her progress so far, and to see if Claire could shed some light on the problem entries she’d uncovered. Lindsay had not bargained for Cordelia’s presence at the meeting, and she felt distinctly uncomfortable at the sight of her former lover leaning over Claire’s shoulder examining her work. They looked right together, she thought bitterly, in their designer jogging suits and trainers. Cordelia really had come home at last.

  “What a weirdo!” Cordelia exclaimed as she read the entries. “But how can we be sure that this is accurate? How do you know she didn’t just make it all up?”

  Lindsay blushed. “The implication has to be that she told it like it was. If you’ll take a look at the third page, there are several entries relating to me. Splash, she calls me. As far as I can recollect, her comments are accurate, if somewhat bitchy.”

  “Why Splash?” asked Claire, flicking through to the relevant section. As she reached it her eyebrows rose. She shoved her glasses up her nose and looked up questioningly.

  “I suppose because Lindsay was being a little megastar and always getting the front page at the time. You know, Claire, the front page is the splash. That’s right, isn’t it?” Cordelia said, the smile on her wide mouth failing to reach her gray eyes. Lindsay said nothing, while Cordelia read the sentences Claire pointed out to her with her pen. Cordelia giggled. “Only 8.8, Lindsay? I thought you reckoned you were at least eleven out of ten!”

  “Like wine, I’ve improved with age,” Lindsay retorted caustically, feeling herself blush in spite of herself. “I’d like to get down to the business in hand . . . If you’ll turn to the second-last page, you’ll see the first entry which I interpret as relating to Jackie.”

  “‘The legal eagle’s eager beaver: easier than I thought to get her to break the rules! 7.2.’ Is that the one you mean?” Claire asked bleakly. Her small, neat features looked pinched and she seemed to hunch into herself.

  Lindsay nodded. She was beginning to feel sympathy for Claire. She knew how much she’d have hated it if their positions had been reversed and she’d been hearing this about Cordelia. She wished there was a less embarrassing way of dealing with Alison’s diary, but forced herself to press on. “If you look farther down, you’ll see another half-dozen entries over the next couple of months. The last one, made a couple of days before her death, says, ‘Spent all afternoon doing very traditional things with champagne. She’s less fun than I expected. Still a bit of mileage, though. 6.8.’ That must have been the afternoon before you overheard the phone call. It certainly undercuts the prosecution’s argument that Alison was desperate to hang on to Jackie.” Catching Claire’s look of distaste, she added, “I’m sorry if this is very painful. But I think it might hold the key.”

  Claire nodded sadly. “I understand that.” She took a deep breath and visibly pulled herself together, flicking her hair away from her face. “I just find the whole thing deeply sick. Most people grow out of that sort of silly childishness by their early teens. Alison Maxwell must have been really screwed up. But I still can’t forgive the way she screwed up other people to make herself feel better. Now, Lindsay, what do you make of these other entries? And why have you picked them out in particular?”

  “I’ve disregarded the bulk of the entries because they relate to affairs that ended at Alison’s instigation when she had grown tired of the individual. Once she had decided it was the end of the line, that was it, you see. No recriminations, no exposure, just go
odnight Vienna. And I’ve set aside for now any of the ones where she was clearly not happy with the outcome but where she seems to have taken no action. I’ve marked ones where she appears to have done something to cause damage to the person who upset her. Those people might reasonably be deemed to have some kind of grudge. I’ve also left ones that were still current at the time of her death.”

  Claire nodded, completely restored to her brisk, cool legal persona. “Fine. Can we go through these now?” Cordelia, obviously feeling left out of the conversation, got to her feet and refilled everyone’s glasses with chilled Chardonnay.

  “Thanks,” Lindsay acknowledged curtly. “Starting in reverse order. The very last entry is one I am completely confounded by. ‘The political hot potato. With what I can prove, it won’t be long now. Let’s hope for some originality between the sheets!’ I haven’t the faintest idea who that refers to. But then, it’s three years since I spent any time with Alison. It’s unlikely that I would know.”

  “It looks as if it’s someone she hadn’t actually slept with yet, since there’s no rating,” Cordelia chipped in.

  “You could be right,” Lindsay agreed reluctantly. “What I propose, Claire, is that if you don’t understand any of these references either, I’ll discuss them with Jackie to see if she’s got any ideas.”

  Claire nodded. “I can’t imagine that many of them would mean much to me, but I’ll certainly try to help. But what about your former colleagues at the Clarion? Surely they might have a better idea?”

  “I’d already thought of that,” Lindsay said. “It’s a distinct possibility, which I’ve got covered. I don’t want to raise your hopes, though. Anyone who was having an affair with Alison at the time of her death has had plenty of time to cover their tracks, don’t forget. Now, if we could get started? ‘Ali and his technicolor dream ceiling. He’s starting to feel too secure. Time his cage was rattled a little. 6.3.’ I rather think that might refer to Alistair Anderson.”