Deadline for Murder

by Val McDermid

  “That would be nice,” she said sweetly. “I’d like to meet your wife again.”

  Mottram frowned. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. My wife and I are separated, and she’s living in Samoa.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize,” Lindsay stammered, putting her hand to her mouth to hide her grin.

  “I’m not. Sorry, that is,” Mottram said with a predatory smile. “We’d been on the rocks for a long time. The holiday in Madeira was something of a last ditch attempt to get back together again. But it didn’t work out. So I’m footloose and fancy free.”

  “I’ll give you a ring about that drink,” Lindsay lied as she made her thankful escape.

  Back at the flat, she cleaned the makeup from her face and climbed back into her own clothes, glad to shed the false skin she’d assumed for the interview. It looked as if Donald Mottram was off her list of suspects, but she wanted to make absolutely sure. She called his office and asked to speak to his secretary again, slipping back into the persona of the dizzy woman. “I’m so sorry to bother you again,” she said. “Mr. Mottram was telling me about the wonderful holiday he had in Madeira last year, and I foolishly forgot to write down the name of the hotel he was staying at. It sounded so lovely, I wanted to make a note of it. I don’t suppose you know what it was?”

  “If you’ll just hold the line, I’ll look it up for you,” the secretary replied. Moments later, she was back. “The Hotel Miramar,” she said.

  “Thank you so much,” Lindsay gushed. “I don’t suppose you know if they’re open all year round, do you? Only, I was thinking we might go next winter.”

  “I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. But Mr. Mottram was there for the first fortnight in October, so they’re definitely open then.”

  “Thank you. Oh, I’m so pleased you were able to help me. So nerve-racking, isn’t it, going on holiday when you don’t know what the place is like? Thanks again.” Gratefully, Lindsay put the phone down.

  Five minutes later, she was talking to the manager of the Hotel Miramar. “We met a couple while we were on the island last year, and we wanted to get in touch with them, but foolishly, I’ve lost their address: I wondered if you could help me?”

  “Certainly, madam,” the crisp English voice replied. “Can you tell me their names and when they were staying?”

  Within two minutes, she had eliminated Donald Mottram from her inquiries, making a mental note to ask Claire for expenses to cover the damage she was doing to Sophie’s phone bill.

  Lindsay glanced at her watch. It was still only half past eleven. Maybe she should ring Ruth and set up a meeting with her and Antonis? She’d already cleared with Sophie the possibility of inviting them round to the flat for dinner. She was almost looking forward to putting her chief suspects under the microscope.

  Before she could do anything more, the phone rang. “Hello?” she said.

  “Can I speak to Lindsay, please?”

  “It’s me, Blair,” Lindsay said, recognizing his voice instantly.

  “Hi. Listen, I think I’ve got something for you. I was on the night shift again last night, so I took the opportunity to go through the credits book,” he said, referring to the ledger that sat on the newsdesk, where the names of freelances and tipsters to whom the paper owed money for stories or information were entered. “Our blue-eyed chief reporter wasn’t giving anything away about his sources, so I thought the book might hold a clue.”

  “But surely they wouldn’t be daft enough to credit anyone for the story? They must have known the police or the Special Branch would be all over them after a leak like that,” Lindsay protested.

  “You’re right. But the guy would have to be paid somehow, wouldn’t he? So I looked very carefully through the credits for the last few days, and I think I might have cracked it.”

  Lindsay felt the adrenaline coursing through her. Good old Blair! He was like a terrier with a rat when he got his teeth into something. “Go on,” she said eagerly, grabbing a pen and notepad.

  “On the day the story came in, there’s a payment of £150 to one particular freelance. On the following day, a payment of £200 to the same guy. And yesterday, another payment of £150. Making a total of £500 so far. All the payments were marked down as being for stories that all made page leads. And the payments are about the going rate for strong exclusive page leads. But all the stories appeared in the paper with staff bylines. Now, I don’t have to tell you that it’s not unusual for us to put a staff byline on a story when all the staff reporter has done is rejig the intro or add a couple of paragraphs. So I thought I’d do a little check to see whether that was what had happened in this case.” Blair paused for dramatic effect.

  “And?” Lindsay asked impatiently.

  “It would have been easy in the old days when we had everything on paper. But nowadays, the computerized newsdesk is cleared out of stories on a daily basis. So I couldn’t access the material directly. However, over the last few months I’ve been doing a lot of night shifts and I’ve got pally with the night systems editor. So, in exchange for a half-bottle of Grouse, which you owe me, by the way, I got him to give me a complete trail on the copy for those stories.”

  “Wonderful, Blair, you’re a star. So what did you learn?” Lindsay demanded.

  “None of the stories in question came from the freelance who has been paid for them. One came from a reader’s phone call. One seems to have been brought in by the reporter herself. And the third one came as a tip from a different freelance altogether. Which means that our freelance friend has been paid a total of £500 for stories he had nothing to do with.”

  “Which means that he’s done something that requires payment which they don’t want to put through the books,” Lindsay breathed. “I think you’ve got him, Blair.”

  “I think so too. Want to know who it is?” he teased.

  “Of course I do!” Lindsay yelled.

  “Barry Ostler.”

  Blair’s words immediately conjured up an image in Lindsay’s mind. Barry Ostler. Early fifties, small, running to fat, silvery white hair cut like Elvis. The sort of chauvinist pig who, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, lived inside the illusion that he was irresistible to women. She’d had to work with him a couple of times and had hated every patronizing minute of it. “That sleazeball?” she said. “Is he still making a living?”

  “He doesn’t do much for us these days. But he seems to do all right. He’s still driving around in that big American gas-guzzler.”

  “Does he still live in Pollokshields?”

  “Far as I know. His number in the contacts book is still the same.”

  “Blair, I owe you one.”

  “You owe me several after this,” he told her. “But I’ll settle for dinner at the Koh-i-Noor.”

  “You’re on. Can I add to my debt? Just a simple query this time.”

  Blair groaned. “Nothing’s ever simple with you. Go ahead, what is it this time? Lord Lucan’s phone number, maybe?”

  “Where can I find Jimmy Mills these days?”

  “I don’t even want to know why you’re asking me this, Lindsay. Jimmy’s got a job in Motherwell. He’s the sports editor of the local paper. He drinks in the pub opposite the office. You’ll usually find him there between half one and three. That do you?”

  “Perfect. Thanks again. I’ll give you a ring in a couple of days to fix up that meal. Okay?”

  “Okay. And Lindsay . . .?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful out there. Don’t take chances with Barry Ostler. He’s a nasty piece of work. He’s obviously taken a lot of care to cover his tracks on this one. He’s going to be very twitchy about you turning up and pointing the finger.”

  “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, Blair. I’ll cover my back. And yours. Thanks again.”

  Lindsay put down the phone with a sigh of satisfaction. Things were starting to move at last.

  12

  The Printer’s Devil was an old-fashione
d working-man’s pub. There were no modern frills—just a scattering of wobbly tables and chairs, a couple of fruit machines, and a long wooden bar in front of shelves of spirits and glasses. When Lindsay walked in just before two, it was moderately busy. Half the clientele were dressed in grubby overalls stained with the printer’s ink that betrayed their occupation. Lindsay walked straight up to the bar, looking neither right nor left, aware of the eyes appraising the stranger. She ordered a pint of lager, then slowly looked round the scruffy tavern. She was relying on the journalistic tradition of never showing surprise when a face from the past walked into a press pub. Unless the journalist in question operated in an area of direct competition, it was also regarded as bad form to pry too closely into what they were doing there. And if, when questioned, they hedged, it was an unwritten rule that you didn’t carry on probing. She didn’t think Jimmy would be too surprised to see her here. Any journalist doing a job in Motherwell would naturally gravitate to the Printer’s Devil.

  She soon spotted her target, sitting at a table with three other men, engrossed in a game of dominoes. Jimmy Mills hadn’t changed much in the three years since she’d seen him last. With his build, he could have been one of the jockeys whose racing cards he’d sub-edited for years. As she watched him, he glanced up, feeling her eyes on him. His face registered uncertainty then surprise. He sketched a quick greeting with a handful of dominoes.

  Lindsay walked across the room toward him. But before she reached the table, the hand came to an end and Jimmy hastily got to his feet and met her halfway. “Lindsay Gordon, isn’t it?” he asked with the lop-sided smile she remembered. Thanks God for the instant camaraderie of journalists the world over. Once met, a contact for life, even if they can’t stand the sight of each other! “What brings you to these parts?” Jimmy added. “Hot on the trail of some world exclusive?”

  “Something like that,” she said. “Let me get you a drink.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have a wee goldie,” he replied, walking back to the bar with her.

  “A whisky, please,” Lindsay said to the barmaid, before turning back to Jimmy. Close up, she noticed his straight dark hair was still free from gray hairs, though there were a few more lines round his quick brown eyes. “I didn’t know you lived out this way,” she said.

  “I don’t. I’m still living in Partick. I’m working across the road now. Sports editor, for my sins,” he replied with a rueful grimace.

  “Oh, I hadn’t heard. I knew you’d left the Clarion, but I didn’t realize you were in Motherwell,” Lindsay lied, hoping she sounded convincing. The last thing she wanted was for him to suspect their encounter wasn’t entirely fortuitous.

  “It’s not the kind of thing you shout about, is it? What about you? Still working for the Clarion?”

  Lindsay shook her head ruefully. “No. They kind of fell out with me. And you know what they’re like. Long memories. They don’t give you a second chance.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Jimmy said bitterly.

  “I heard you had a bit of bother too. Alison Maxwell, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye, Alison bloody Maxwell. Funny, isn’t it? You’d read her work and think, what a bloody good journalist. And then you’d get to know her and find out she was the biggest bitch in town,” he said with a bitter bark of laughter.

  “Yeah,” Lindsay agreed. “Mind you, if they kicked out all the journalists whose private lives don’t match up to their talent, there would be a lot of empty newsrooms.”

  “I know, but Alison Maxwell was in a class of her own. If anyone deserved what they got, she did.” Jimmy added some water to his whisky and took a sip. “I was surprised at Jackie Mitchell, though. Never thought she had it in her.”

  “If you push people hard enough, they’ll do anything to get out,” Lindsay said. “And when it came to pushing, Alison was the expert. As I found out the hard way.”

  “You?” Jimmy exclaimed, his face a caricature of astonishment.

  “Me,” Lindsay said. She expected that, like most people on the Clarion, Jimmy had always known she was gay, but he had seemed genuinely surprised about Alison. “I was young and daft, Jimmy,” she explained. “And she really knew how to put on the ritz. I was completely dazzled by her. But when I finally saw what she was really like, I had a hell of a job to get her claws out of me.”

  “I wish I’d known that,” he replied. “I could have done with a few tips. That bitch wrecked my career. Damn near wrecked my marriage too. I put out the flags when I heard that she was dead, I can tell you.” He pulled a pipe out of his pocket and started poking viciously at it with a tool he took from another pocket. Lindsay couldn’t remember him having this particular mannerism, and wondered if he were using it to cover his nervousness at the way the conversation was going.

  “It’s kind of like Kennedy, isn’t it? I bet anyone who had had a run-in with Alison could tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of her death,” she probed.

  “You’re not wrong,” Jimmy said, pushing tobacco into his pipe as if he were trying to suffocate it. “I was at home in my bed with the ’flu. I heard it on the local news at half-past ten. I tell you, it was the best cure I ever had. I felt like a new man, you know? While she was alive, there was always the threat hanging over me that she’d contact my wife and tell her the same poisonous lies she put round the office. Can you believe it? Me, a rapist? For God’s sake, she was bigger than me!”

  “I suppose a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief when Jackie was arrested, though,” Lindsay said, refusing to be sidetracked by Jimmy’s indignation.

  “How do you mean?” Jimmy asked, draining the last of his whisky. “Another pint?”

  Lindsay nodded. “Well, if the police hadn’t got hold of Jackie so quickly, they’d have been picking over Alison’s past in all its gory details. Every poor sod like us who’d had anything to do with her would have been put under the microscope. There would have been a few ruined marriages after that.”

  “You’re not kidding. I never thought of it like that. I suppose the police did me a favor, really.” He used several matches in a bid to light his pipe, realized he’d packed it too tightly, and started prodding the tobacco with a spent match in an attempt to loosen it.

  “Especially since being in your bed with the ’flu isn’t much of an alibi,” Lindsay added jocularly. “Mind you, I suppose your wife was your alibi.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t have been as it happens. She’d taken the kids round to her mother’s so they wouldn’t catch it too. So she’d have been round there, giving them their tea. She probably wouldn’t have been home till about eight o’clock. No, my alibi was the ’flu. It was that epidemic that went round. You must have written the ‘Killer ’Flu Bug’ stories. I could hardly walk to the toilet, never mind strangle anybody.” Jimmy had finally got his pipe going, and he visibly relaxed as his head was engulfed in a cloud of blue, aromatic smoke.

  Lindsay chuckled. “I can beat that, Jimmy. I was in Italy at the time.”

  “On holiday, were you?”

  “No, I was working over there.”

  He grinned. “All right for some. Christ, you wouldn’t catch me coming back here if I could get a job over there. A bottle of wine and a place in the sunshine, eh? What more could anybody ask for?”

  Lindsay was content to let the conversation slip into more general channels now she had the information she wanted. When she finished her drink, she glanced at her watch and said, “I’d better be off. I’ve got to meet a punter in ten minutes. It was nice bumping into you, Jimmy. All the best with the new job.”

  “Thanks, Lindsay. If you see any of the boys from the Clarion, tell them I was asking for them.”

  Lindsay drove back down the motorway, thinking over what Jimmy had told her. It would have been easy enough to exaggerate his illness for the benefit of his wife and the doctor. But how would he have known he would find Alison alone, unless they were still on good enough terms for him to have made an arra
ngement to see her? And why kill her then? The crisis was over and he was clearly getting his life back together again, even if the Motherwell Tribune sports desk wasn’t as well paid or prestigious as the Daily Clarion. Still, he’d said himself that while she was alive he’d had to live with the constant edge of fear that one day she might extract a crueler revenge. And all that displacement activity with his pipe could have disguised a multitude of emotions. No, she couldn’t write Jimmy off just yet.

  She glanced at the dashboard clock. Just after three. She should drop in at Claire’s on the way back. Lindsay would have dearly loved to put off so potentially awkward an encounter, but she knew it would have to be faced sooner or later. Better sooner.

  Lindsay rang the entryphone buzzer for Claire’s flat. There was no reply. After a couple of minutes, she rang again. She was on the point of giving up and going back to Sophie’s when the loudspeaker crackled incomprehensibly. “It’s Lindsay,” she shouted into it. The door release buzzer sounded, and Lindsay hurriedly pushed the door open. On the third floor landing, the door stood ajar. Cautiously, Lindsay pushed it open and walked in. “Hello?” she called out.

  “In here,” came a voice from the bathroom. But it wasn’t the voice Lindsay expected to hear. It was, unmistakably, the voice of the woman who had been her lover for more than three years.

  “It’s Lindsay,” she said.

  “I know who it is,” Cordelia replied, emerging from the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel that ended too many inches above her knees for Lindsay’s peace of mind. Her black hair was damp and tousled, her shoulders glistening with drops of water. “I was in the bath,” she said unnecessarily.

  Lindsay stared at her with a mixture of astonishment and desire. Then anger and self-disgust quickly took their place. How dare Cordelia wind her up like this with Claire only feet away!

  As if reading her thoughts, Cordelia let a slight smile appear on her lips. “Claire’s not here,” she said. “She had to go over to Edinburgh at short notice. Something about getting an injunction in the High Court on behalf of one of her clients. She tried to phone you and let you know, but there was no reply. She said, if you came, to apologize on her behalf.”