Conferences are Murder

by Val McDermid

  The young man shrugged. “It’d be a waste of time, Brid. Anybody could have done it.”

  “Only someone with access to a photocopier,” she said triumphantly.

  “Brid, think about it. There must be half a hundred places in a city the size of Sheffield where you can get photocopying done. If it is a journalist, they could have pals on the local paper who are only too happy to run them off copies in the office. Plus, don’t forget, you can get these wee portable ones now, just the size of a briefcase. I bet half the journalists here, if they haven’t got one, they’d know where to hire one from. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “I don’t know what this union’s coming to,” the woman said. She continued grumbling, but Lindsay tuned her out, scanning the room for anyone she knew. She was dying to find someone who could fill her in on all the latest gossip. She had enough experience of the internecine war-fare of union politics to know that Conference Chronicle would be the one topic of conversation in the bars that night. There would be plenty of candidates for the position of scapegoat, she felt sure.

  It was a long time since Lindsay had watched a witch-hunt. This time, she wanted a front row seat.

  2

  “Remember conference lasts for a week. Pace yourselves. And remember that fights you pick on Monday night will surely return to haunt you by Friday morning.”

  from “Advice for New Delegates”, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

  Jennifer crossed her legs and propped her notepad on her thigh. Lindsay had fallen silent. “It would be helpful if you could run through what’s happened since you got here,” she said, gently.

  Lindsay rubbed a hand over her face and muttered, “Sorry. I’m shattered. Monday. Well, I hadn’t even signed in before I saw the first issue of Conference Chronicle. The place was jumping. I kept having conversations with people I hadn’t seen for five years that all began, ‘Lindsay! It’s been ages. Have you seen Conference Chronicle?’ ”

  She’d been deep in thought when a loud shriek closely followed by a bear-hug brought her sharply back to the here and now. Kathy Dean, a civil service press officer, was bouncing up and down in front of her. “Lindsay!” she yelped. “Lindsay Gordon! Is it really you? Hey, no one said you were coming! Are you back for good?”

  Lindsay shook her head. “Just for conference. I’m only here as an observer.”

  “It’s great to see you,” Kathy said with a wide smile. “It’s been . . . what? Three years since you were last at conference. And judging by this,” she continued, waving a copy of Conference Chronicle, “it’s not going to be short of controversy.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Lindsay admitted. “I don’t remember anything this wild in my days as a young radical.”

  “I tell you, when they find out who’s responsible, I’m going to hire them to come and work in my department and produce scurrilous gossip sheets about my bosses,” Kathy said with a chuckle. “Look, I’ve got to run now, Lindsay, but it’s great to see you. The bar tonight?”

  Lindsay nodded as Kathy hurried off. “The bar tonight.”

  “Typical,” a loud voice boomed in her ear. “Not back five minutes and you can’t wait to get wide-eyed and legless.”

  Lindsay whirled around to face another old friend. Stan Merton was an East Ender who’d worked his way up the journalistic tree the old-fashioned way, starting as a tea boy and reaching his present position as city editor of a national daily. When Lindsay had been a junior reporter on the Daily Nation, she’d worked on the city desk for a few weeks, and she’d realized very quickly that under Stan’s loud-mouthed and heavy-handed humor there was a shrewd mind that could teach her a lot. She’d been a quick learner, and the mutual respect the pair had for each other had been more than enough to counterbalance their political incompatibility.

  “Stan!” Lindsay exclaimed. “What a lovely surprise.”

  “Sight for sore eyes, you are, girl,” Stan said. “You seen the error of your ways, then? You come back to grace our shores? Or did you come back to get your own back?” He waved Conference Chronicle.

  “Only wish I’d thought of it years ago,” she said. “Buy you a drink later?”

  “What about tomorrow morning? The second order-paper looks like the kind of bleeding-heart liberal crap that builds up no end of a thirst. I don’t know why I come to these conferences. I really don’t.”

  “You’ve said that at every one of the half dozen I’ve been to. You’re only here for the beer, Stan.”

  “Tomorrow then? Half past eleven? In the bar?”

  Lindsay shuddered inwardly but managed a smile. “Great. See you then, Stan,” she said, as Stan moved off, giving her a smacking kiss on the cheek as he passed.

  By the time she reached the registration table, Lindsay had chatted to half a dozen old acquaintances who were, in a triumph of hope over experience, still union activists. She’d also studiously pretended not to have seen a couple of others she’d hoped never to encounter again. As the queue snaked forward, she spotted one or two familiar faces among the union clerical staff who were dishing out the delegate packs. Even though the full Afro had been replaced by a sharp Grace Jones flattop, Lindsay instantly recognized Pauline Hardy. The black woman looked astonished. “Lindsay Gordon!” she exclaimed. “I thought you’d abandoned us for good. Hey, it’s good to see you!” The warmth in her voice was genuine, there was no mistaking that.

  “You really thought I could stay away? And never feast my eyes on you again?” Lindsay replied, falling straight back into the old teasing habit of years ago. She and Pauline had always flirted, each knowing that it was nothing more than a game. Pauline’s devotion to her husband and son was legendary, but that didn’t stop her enjoying a joke that had shocked dozens of prejudiced union hacks over the years.

  “I didn’t think my humble attractions could drag you back from California,” Pauline replied archly.

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” Lindsay said, taking the bulky plastic wallet of information that Pauline handed her. “Not from you, or from the delights of conference. I tell you, though, it’s depressing how many of the old familiar faces are kicking around. Hasn’t anyone moved forward?”

  “Oh, there are always plenty of old stagers around. They can’t stay away, just like you,” Pauline teased.

  “Are you two going to stand there blathering all afternoon, or what?” the Irishman behind Lindsay interrupted. “Some of us have got delegation meetings to go to, you know, so. Women,” he added under his breath.

  “Sorry, pal,” Lindsay said. She turned back to Pauline. “We’ll have to have a drink later, catch up on all the gossip.”

  Pauline smiled. “Have a read of Conference Chronicle,” she said with a throaty laugh. “That should bring you bang up to date. I’ll be in the main bar about eight, provided we’ve finished tomorrow’s order-papers.”

  “See you then.” Lindsay picked up her holdall and studied the plan of the 1960s campus that occupied one wall of the foyer. The map was laid out as a Romanesque mosaic, with the borders of the buildings picked out in different colors and identified in a key alongside. She worked out how to get to her room, and headed out into the spring afternoon. Immediately, she had to lean into the wind that was flattening the clumps of daffodils dotting the grass. The buildings seemed to have been cunningly laid out to maximize their aerodynamic effect. It was like walking through a wind-tunnel the wrong way. She thought with longing of her own campus, where a fresh breeze from the bay was often a welcome relief, where the buildings looked as if they’d actually been designed rather than thrown together by a bad-tempered child with a box of Lego.

  Lindsay eventually reached the lee of a tower block and looked up at its name plaque. Maclintock Tower. “Not so much a redbrick as a breeze-block,” she muttered and pushed the door open. She joined a bunch of strangers by the lifts which ran through the center of the modern tower block. As she waited, she pulled out the “Advice for New Delega
tes” booklet from her folder. It looked suspiciously similar to the old JU one. She couldn’t imagine how something so heavily laced with irony could have been positively vetted by the po-faced men in suits who had been print union officials when she’d been a JU activist. Maybe they’d taken it seriously. She boarded the lift, stuffing the booklet back into the folder. By the tenth and final floor, she was alone in the lift, and she emerged into a corridor that seemed about as lively as the deck of the Marie Celeste. She walked slowly along it, checking the door numbers against her key, trying to ignore the slight squeal that her trainers made on the shiny vinyl flooring.

  Maclintock Tower, one of five students’ residences at the newly upgraded Pennine University, was constructed as a series of concentric squares. In the center were the lifts, the toilets, showers and bathrooms and a small kitchenette. Lindsay stuck her head round the door and saw a tall fridge, two gas rings and a kettle. By the kettle were a catering tin of cheap instant coffee, a box of sugar cubes and a jar of coffee whitener. Above them a sheet of A4 paper was taped to the wall. It read, “Sheffield welcomes the Amalgamated Media Workers’ Union.” But not very heartily, Lindsay thought. She almost caught herself longing for a cup of wild strawberry tea.

  The corridor surrounded this central block, and the rooms were on the outside. Lindsay found hers as she rounded the third corner. She unlocked the door and stepped into the small room, skidding on a sheet of paper that had been slipped under the door. Picking it up, she immediately recognized the Conference Chronicle she’d already seen downstairs. With a wicked smile, she picked it up and placed it on the desk. There were quite a few activists from the former Journalists’ Union who deserved to get their come-uppance. It looked like Conference Chronicle might just provide that as the week went on. Now that was something to look forward to!

  The room seemed even more basic than the ones she’d inhabited as a student. The chair by the desk was plain wood, with no padded seat to ease the long hours that went into the production of an essay. Maybe the former polytechnic actively discouraged its students from writing lengthy analyses, she thought. The theory gained more weight as she noticed the room contained only one bookshelf. A wobbly armchair had a rip in its cracked plastic, revealing a lump of yellowish wadding. Lindsay slid open the wooden door of a built-in unit, to reveal a small hanging space, a few drawers and a tiny wash-basin with a tarnished mirror above it. The off-white walls were pockmarked with gray hollows where the adhesive pads that held up student posters had been removed. Considering how modern the block appeared from the outside, everything inside was astonishingly tatty. At least the room was light. A tall window stretched the width of the room, high as the ceiling, ending about two and a half feet above floor level.

  Lindsay swiftly unpacked her bag. Two pairs of leggings, a pair of jeans, a pair of black needlecord trousers. Two sweatshirts, three polo shirts, two oversize washable silk shirts (one cream, one russet). A handful of underwear, another of socks. Sponge bag, towel, black leather cowboy boots, a swimsuit and a dressing-gown. Two paperback novels, a box of microcassettes for the tape recorder in her handbag, a couple of spare notebooks and three liter bottles of Badoit. Lindsay pulled a face as she stowed the last of her things. Why was it that you needed as much for a week away as you did for six months?

  Then she’d headed back to the lifts, pricked by her Calvinist conscience to seek out someone who could give her impending thesis the blast from the past it so desperately needed. There would be plenty of opportunity for play; all she had to do was justify it with a little work.

  “I take it the deceased was one of those faces from the past you were looking for?” Jennifer asked, underlining something in her notes.

  “Not exactly,” Lindsay said. “I mean, I knew him from way back, but he wasn’t high on the list of people I was eager to see again. This thesis is about how the cause of women has been furthered, not hindered,” she added, acid in her voice.

  “So when did you meet up with him again?”

  “It was in the bar that evening. I’d noticed him earlier, when I was going into dinner. He was in a huddle in a corner with Laura Craig and Andy Spence. Andy used to be the deputy general secretary of the National Union of Printworkers. When the NUP amalgamated with the JU and the other print unions, their general secretary retired and Andy stood against Tom Jack for the AMWU top job. He lost that election, but he was definitely the people’s choice for the number two job.”

  “You seem very well informed, considering you live in San Francisco,” Jennifer observed.

  “I’m still a member of the union, so I get my monthly copy of Media Worker News. It’s usually only a couple of months out of date. That keeps me in touch with the factual stuff. As far as gossip’s concerned, I rely on global village syndrome,” Lindsay said. “San Francisco’s one of those cities where people are always happy to scrounge a bed for a couple of nights.”

  “I see. So, you saw Tom Jack with Spence and . . . now, who exactly is Laura Craig?”

  Lindsay rubbed her eyes hard with her knuckles. Anything to put off thinking about Laura. There were silver threads in that flowing crest of wavy brown hair now, and the laughter lines round the blue eyes were fast approaching crows’ feet. But the rest of the picture stayed the same. That mouth that could smile or sneer, but not much in between. Good figure, conventionally elegant clothes. It was hard to imagine Laura Craig in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt up a ladder painting the ceiling.

  “I don’t suppose you smoke, do you?” Lindsay asked.

  Jennifer shook her head. “I carry them for clients, though,” she said, taking a packet of Benson & Hedges out of her briefcase. She tossed them to Lindsay with a brushed chrome Zippo. Lindsay noticed a chased silver ring on the third finger of her left hand.

  She opened the packet and slowly drew out a cigarette. “I haven’t smoked for over two years,” she said. “Funny, I couldn’t have imagined anything making me start again. Sophie’ll kill me.” Jennifer raised an eyebrow plucked to a smooth arc without a stray hair in sight. “Sophie is the woman I live with. She’s a doctor.” Lindsay lit the cigarette and cautiously inhaled. Her head seemed to float away like a helium balloon on a piece of string, but the smoke was less irritating than she’d feared. She knew then that, like an alcoholic, she’d never be able to have the odd one. She was an addict. Only the nightmare thought of having to rerun the battle to give up made her crush out the cigarette on the floor after the third drag.

  Jennifer recrossed her legs and said, “Laura Craig?”

  “She’s been a full-time official in the JU since the late seventies, responsible for about half the journos in broadcasting. The rest of them were in a different union, and when the JU merged with them, Laura decided she was going to be the one in sole charge. So she made sure that everybody who mattered was convinced that the other official was an idle sod who didn’t have the confidence of his members. He took voluntary redundancy with record speed.”

  “I take it she’s not one of your favorite people,” Jennifer said mildly, making another note on her pad.

  “I’ve never been crazy about empire builders. Besides, we’ve got history,” Lindsay said abruptly.

  “Relevant history?”

  “I can’t imagine how it could be,” Lindsay said. “Call it a clash of personalities.”

  “So, you didn’t interrupt them to say hello?”

  “No. I went on into dinner with a few cronies from the old days that I’d run into in the bar. It wasn’t till a lot later that I actually managed to have a chat with Tom.” Oh boy, the euphemisms were piling up. Lindsay thought. “Having a chat” was one description of what she and Tom had been doing. She’d put money on that not being the words the witnesses would come up with.

  The bar was a seething mass of thirsty activists. Lindsay pushed her way through the crowd, making slow progress. If she’d had a drink for every person who’d hugged her, shaken her hand or clapped her on the back and asked how San Franc
isco was, she’d have been drunk before she was half-way across the room. Suddenly, it began to feel uncomfortably like she’d never been away.

  She spotted the gap at the bar between the two men, each waving money at the harassed bar staff and shouting orders incomprehensible in the general hubbub. Lindsay ducked under their arms, brandished a tenner and made eye contact with one of the barmaids. After the woman had finished pouring the three pints of bitter in her current order, she glanced across at Lindsay, who mouthed “Budweiser,” held up two fingers and pointed to the familiar red, white and blue can. She smiled sweetly at the scowling men flanking her, paid for her beers and resumed her search for Pauline.

  She found her in a distant corner with half a dozen other women, all of whom Lindsay recognized from her JU days. Three of them were clerical and administrative workers like Pauline, and the others were lay officials from the book and magazine sectors of her old union. Even from a distance, Lindsay could see this wasn’t a cheerful girls’ night out. In a serious huddle, heads close together, the women were speaking forcefully to each other, fingers jabbing at the table top, cigarettes, dragged on furiously. They were so engrossed that no one even noticed Lindsay till she said, “Is this a private council of war, or can anyone join in?”

  Sally, a book editor who had represented the staff of a major publishing conglomerate for as long as Lindsay had known her, growled, “Anyone who isn’t one of the bosses.”

  Pauline squeezed up to make room for Lindsay, who said, “Surely you’re not expecting the bosses here?” She waved at the room in a gesture that would have been expansive if she hadn’t clobbered a lager-drinking woman with a Sinead O’Connor haircut, black leggings and a short black skirt. She looked like a punk Tinkerbelle in mourning. “Sorry!” Lindsay exclaimed.