by Val McDermid
“I can’t see a court believing that. Stealing Mary Nkobo’s book was hardly something you did in the wink of an eye. How could you, Cordelia? You had it all. How could you throw it away? You must have known it would come out one day!” Lindsay wailed.
“I was in despair,” Cordelia replied defensively. “You’d walked out on me. I didn’t know where you were, or even if you were still alive, for God’s sake. My work had come to an abrupt full stop. When Mary’s manuscript arrived, it was like manna from heaven. Her covering letter emphasized how secret it was, and that I’d have to change the names to protect people. So I changed the title as well, as extra insurance.”
“I don’t think she meant you to change the name of the author to Cordelia Brown,” Lindsay said savagely.
“I know what I did was wrong. But I thought I was safe. If anyone had ever got any solid information and questioned me, I would have admitted that I had based Ikhaya Lamaqhawe on Mary Nkobo’s story, but that I had rewritten her prose completely. No one could prove otherwise.”
“Or so you thought. Jesus, Cordelia, how on earth could you have believed you’d get away with it?”
Cordelia shrugged wearily. “I don’t know. By the time I saw how stupid I’d been, I’d gone too far. The book was already with the publishers.”
“And then Anisha’s letter turned up. It couldn’t have gone to a worse person, from your point of view, could it?”
“You have no idea what it was like,” Cordelia complained. “Alison was such a bitch.”
“Oh, I know exactly what a bitch Alison could be. The difference is that I didn’t kill her for it. Why in God’s name didn’t you call her bluff? Why was it necessary to strangle the life out of her?” Lindsay pursued.
Cordelia got to her feet and poured herself a drink from the decanter left out from the previous evening. “I didn’t set out to kill her,” she defended herself. “I’d already had one meeting with her and she’d played with me like a cat with a mouse. She threatened that if I didn’t do as she told me, she’d expose me. Not just expose me, but, as she put it, ‘give Splash Gordon the story of her life.’ She was going to wait until you reappeared then pass all the information on to you and let you deliver the coup de grâce’’
“She always did have a good line in poetic justice,” Lindsay said cynically, to cover the feelings of sympathy that, in spite of herself, she found rising for Cordelia. “So what exactly were her demands?”
“She wanted all the money from the book. I could just about have lived with that if she’d been going to donate it to some charity, but she wanted it all for herself.”
“Your charitable impulses are very commendable, if lacking in credibility,” said Lindsay sarcastically. “And that was all?”
“Oh no. She wanted me to go to bed with her.”
“What a terrible price to have to pay. You’d probably have enjoyed it, you know. She was a stunning lover,” Lindsay replied, determined to wound Cordelia in return for the pain she was causing her.
For the first time, Cordelia’s calm was disturbed. “Sorry I could never come up to her high standards,” she retorted.
“Never mind the self-pity, just tell me how it happened.”
Cordelia flinched as if Lindsay’s words had been a physical blow. Then she swallowed hard and said, “I went to the flat that afternoon. I was supposed to be there in the morning, but I missed the plane. There was no reply when I rang the bell, but I followed someone else into the block and went up to her floor. The door wasn’t locked, so I slipped inside. I could hear Alison in the bedroom, having a row with someone. I know now that it was Jackie, of course, but I didn’t then. I decided I’d wait for Alison, maybe snoop on her the way she’d snooped on me. I even thought I might be able to find the original of Anisha’s letter and get myself off the hook. I couldn’t help overhearing what she was saying to Jackie, and it made my blood boil.” Cordelia sat down heavily in the chair, her hands nervously fiddling with her glass.
“I fixed myself a drink and searched Alison’s desk,” Cordelia continued. “I couldn’t find what I was looking for. By then, they were making love. It wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, listening to that. Eventually, they finished and Alison threw Jackie out, adding a few nasty threats and taunts on the way. I felt angry and upset on Jackie’s account as well as on my own, and I was furious when I went through to Alison’s bedroom. She was just getting out of bed, but she didn’t let that bother her.”
Lindsay’s blood ran cold at the matter-of-fact way in which Cordelia told her story. “Go on,” she insisted. “Don’t feel you’ve got to spare me. I don’t want to be left with any doubts, Cordelia.”
“For God’s sake, Lindsay. She started in on me in the same vein she’d been giving Jackie. She was ranting that I was late and she wouldn’t be kept waiting, and she’d make me pay for it. She was like a madwoman. She moved toward me and I panicked. I grabbed the scarf and I throttled her. She . . . she wouldn’t die, Lindsay, it was horrible. But once I’d started, I couldn’t stop, could I? I had to go on.” Cordelia covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forward.
Lindsay, feeling equally shattered by her ex-lover’s revelations, could find nothing to say. At last, Cordelia looked up. “I can’t face going to prison, Lindsay. You know what it would do to me. I’d kill myself before I’d spend years in prison.”
Lindsay knew it was no bluff. Cordelia’s hatred of confined spaces had been a familiar consideration for Lindsay in their relationship. Hotel rooms had to be spacious, and Cordelia had once flatly refused to even enter a cabin they’d booked for a long ferry crossing. Being locked in a cell would be her idea of hell, and even though part of Lindsay was convinced she deserved to suffer, another part of her still felt too much for Cordelia to condemn her to that. She swallowed hard and said, “Do you see me calling the police?”
“I need to get away. To get out of the country,” she said desperately. “Give me your car. No one will be looking for that. I’ll get a boat somewhere, I can disappear like you did.”
Lindsay shook her head. “I can’t do that. If I let you take my car, that makes me an accessory. And I don’t fancy the idea of prison any more than you do.”
“Please, Lindsay,” Cordelia pleaded. “You’re the only person I can trust. We loved each other for a long time. Please don’t turn your back on me now!”
Lindsay was buffeted by a series of contradictory emotions. The love she still felt for Cordelia battled with her new knowledge of what she was capable of. Her anger and sorrow at what had been done to Jackie and Alison was no longer any match for the pity she felt for what Cordelia had done to herself in the pursuit of reputation. Eventually she opened her handbag and took out her driving license.
“Here you are,” she said, tossing it over to Cordelia. “No one will be looking for you yet. Go and hire a car and get out. And if you do get caught, tell them you stole it from my bag.”
Cordelia got to her feet and moved toward Lindsay as if to embrace her. “Don’t you dare touch me,” Lindsay snapped. “Just go.”
Cordelia halted abruptly as if Lindsay had slapped her. From her pocket, she pulled the keys to her Mercedes coupé, and the car’s registration documents. “It’s parked round the corner. I’ve filled in the change of ownership section. I backdated it to last week. It’s about time you had a decent car.”
“I don’t want your bloody car,” Lindsay said. “What do you take me for? You think I can be bought and sold, just like that?”
“No,” Cordelia said. “I don’t. It’s one of the reasons why I still love you. But I know you’re broke. I can’t use the car. You might as well have it. No ulterior motive, I promise you.”
Lindsay marveled that Cordelia still had the power to make her feel ashamed. “Okay. But please, just go.” She stood up and watched Cordelia cross the room, knowing that it would be the last time they shared the same space.
Cordelia turned in the doorway. “Thanks,” she
said.
“Goodbye, Cordelia,” Lindsay said. She listened to the front door closing, then walked over to the window. From above, she watched the foreshortened figure emerge from the tenement block and hurry down toward the main thoroughfare. Discovering the truth about Cordelia was going to change her life in ways she couldn’t even imagine yet. Her trust in her own judgment was only the latest casualty of Cordelia’s monstrous course of action. To preserve Cordelia’s good name, Alison Maxwell had had to die and Jackie Mitchell’s life had been destroyed. But in spite of her “finely honed sense of justice,” Lindsay prayed that Cordelia would escape.
EPILOGUE
San Francisco, California, October 1990
Lindsay picked up her briefcase and slammed the car door shut. She collected a bundle of letters and a newspaper from the mailbox and sniffed the salty air appreciatively. She walked down the path to the house overlooking the beach, taking her time in the late afternoon sun.
She juggled her burdens till she had a free hand then let herself into the newly painted timber house. Kicking her shoes off, she headed for the long verandah that stretched the length of the house. There, she dropped everything on the table and went to the kitchen where she took a bottle of Stolichnaya out of the freezer and mixed herself a vodka and freshly squeezed orange juice. Then she returned to the balcony and opened her mail. A letter from her mother, a resistible invitation to join a book club, a note from a fellow faculty member inviting her and her partner to a barbecue brunch on Sunday.
Lindsay grinned happily. Just another day in paradise, she thought. It was the best thing she’d ever done, moving out here to California. Though it was early days, the job was everything it had promised and more. Teaching journalism at the local university was a dream compared with doing the real thing. And San Francisco was a peach of a place to live.
She ripped the wrapper open on her copy of the Sunday Times and settled back to enjoy her weekly taste of home. At the end of the news section, she refreshed her drink, then settled down with the arts pages. Her eye was instantly caught by a headline which read, “FROM SCANDAL TO BOOKER.”
Lindsay read on eagerly.
Mary Nkobo’s masterpiece, Ikhaya Lamaqhawe, this week became the most controversial Booker Prize winner in the history of the award.
Ikhaya Lamaqhawe (Home of the Heroes) was first published under the name of feminist author Cordelia Brown.
But following the issue of a warrant for Brown’s arrest for the murder of Scottish journalist Alison Maxwell, the truth about Ikhaya Lamaqhawe’s authorship came to light.
It was the work of African teacher Mary Nkobo, who has disappeared in South Africa after her arrest last year by the secret police. Friends fear that she has been killed.
Like a previous Booker winner, Schindler’s Ark, the book is a fictionalized version of real events. Ikhaya Lamaqhawe is the thinly disguised story of Mary Nkobo’s struggle to uncover the truth about her fiancé Joshua Shabala who was murdered by South African security forces. When she finally uncovered the truth, she too vanished.
Mary had the manuscript smuggled out via Zimbabwe prior to her disappearance. She sent it to Cordelia Brown, because they had been in correspondence about Brown’s work.
Believing that she was the only person who had actually seen the manuscript, Brown presented it to her publishers as her own work. Ikhaya Lamaqhawe was published under her name last December.
But her secret was not safe. Police sources say that Alison Maxwell uncovered the truth, and Brown killed her to maintain the fiction of her authorship of Ikhaya Lamaqhawe.
Another journalist, Jackie Mitchell, was found guilty of the murder, and had served some months in prison when the real sequence of events was uncovered by a private investigator working for Miss Mitchell’s lawyers.
By the time Brown’s imposture was discovered, she had fled the country, becoming the literary world’s Lord Lucan.
Ikhaya Lamaqhawe was recalled and reissued under Mary Nkobo’s name, and the Booker judges rewarded the undoubted power and clarity of the book on Thursday night.
The book’s publisher, Jonas Mimer, said, “It has been a very difficult and embarrassing experience for us. No one likes to be conned. We had no reason to be suspicious, because we knew Cordelia Brown was a very talented and versatile writer.
“But I’m glad to say that it has all been sorted out now. Ikhaya Lamaqhawe was a very worthy winner.
“Mary Nkobo’s mother, who accepted the award on her behalf, has announced that the money will go into a trust to award bursaries to black writers.”
Justice may have been done to Mary Nkobo. But it awaits Cordelia Brown, still on the missing list.
Lindsay folded up the paper with a smile on her face. She glanced at her watch. Sophie would be home any minute now, crises permitting. Her AIDS specialization had paid off handsomely, and she was now a senior consultant at the city’s maternity hospital. The offer of the job had come less than a week after Cordelia’s escape, and Lindsay had been more than glad to accept Sophie’s suggestion that they go to California together.
After some wrangling with the police, she’d been allowed to remove her belongings from Cordelia’s London house. It had been a sad and depressing experience, for the discovery of Cordelia’s crime had made it impossible for Lindsay to enjoy the good memories. The house had seemed oppressive and threatening, not the home where she had once been happy. Selling the Mercedes and donating the proceeds to an AIDS charity had felt like the last act in a long tragedy.
But California had banished the shadows from her life. And the job had been the icing on the cake. Lindsay padded through to the kitchen and opened a bottle of the local sparkling Chardonnay. Mary Nkobo’s Booker prize deserved a celebration. As she topped her glass up with orange juice, she heard the front door slam. Hastily, she poured another glass for Sophie, and greeted her as she strolled cheerfully in.
“Good day?” Lindsay inquired, kissing her lightly.
“Not bad. And you? Are we celebrating something?”
“In a way. The end of a story. Or at least, the end of a chapter. Come and see.” Lindsay took Sophie’s hand and led her out on to the sun deck. “Read that,” she said, pointing to the article.
Curious, Sophie picked up the paper and sat down with her glass of Buck’s Fizz. She read through to the end with a smile on her face. “I’m glad it won,” she said. “You’re right, it is the end of the chapter. Strangely enough, I have a surprise for you too.” She opened her bag and fished out a postcard which she handed to Lindsay.
Lindsay picked it up and glanced at the front, an artistic photograph of two cats on the doorstep of a Greek village house. She flipped it over and immediately recognized the handwriting. The card had been forwarded from Sophie’s flat in Glasgow to the hospital. The message was brief but curiously final.
“Dear Lindsay: Weather wonderful. Life very simple here. It’s good to get away from it all. A wonderful place to set a thriller, don’t you think? Hope everything is fine with you and Sophie.” There was no signature, but it needed none. She looked up at Sophie’s concerned face and managed a wan smile.
Relieved that the card hadn’t upset Lindsay, Sophie smiled back and said, “I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, but how are you feeling now?”
Lindsay sat down. “I think I’ve finally managed to let it go. I read that article and I didn’t feel a single pang of regret for Cordelia. Even that postcard didn’t churn up any unwanted feelings. I’m not sorry that she seems to have escaped, but I don’t think I care very much about what happens to her now. The woman who committed those crimes feels like a stranger. She must have existed inside the person I loved, but I never saw any clue to that side of her. She’s lost all power to hurt me. A lot of that’s to do with you. And California. And the new job.”
“In reverse order, eh?” Sophie grinned. “Aren’t you bored with our quiet life? No chasing fire engines? No murders to solve?”
“If I
never hear about another murder as long as I live, I’ll die a happy woman,” Lindsay vowed.
“Funny you should say that,” Sophie said nonchalantly. “A patient I saw today told me this long story about how she was convinced that her room-mate had been murdered . . .”
Val McDermid is the author of twenty-four best-selling novels, which have been translated into thirty languages and have sold over ten million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year award. She has a son and a dog, and lives in the north of England.
For the latest news and reviews, visit: www.valmcdermid.com.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Linzi Moody for her much-tried patience, her support and for the constant flow of ideas and suggestions that have made this a better book than it would otherwise have been; Christine Hamilton, Mary Timlin and Jennifer Young for helpful suggestions and for bearing with me while we trawled the delights of the City of Culture; my journalistic colleagues who couldn’t be more different from the heartless hacks I sometimes portray; Simon Travers, who explained the myth of fingerprints; and last but not least, my agents, Jane Gregory and Lisanne Radice whose unfailing good humour and encouragement help to keep me sane.
Copyright © 1991 by Val McDermid
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