Conferences are Murder

by Val McDermid

  “It’s going to be another mystery like Maxwell and the yacht . . .”

  “He’ll have been pissed out of his head. He could easily have fallen . . .”

  Everyone had their own theory, and the volume increased by the second as everyone tried to make theirs the one that was heard above the others. Jennifer made it to the door of the conference hall, where the clerical staff were under siege as they tried to hand out order-papers for the morning’s business.

  “For the last time, we don’t know what’s happening,” one said sharply to a bunch of determined journalists who had abandoned their role of delegates for the far more exciting one of on-the-spot news reporters. As their baying rose to a crescendo, she shouted, “I don’t give a damn what your news-desks want to hear, we haven’t got anything to tell you. All we know is what you know. If you want to hassle someone who might have some answers, why don’t you go and find the Standing Orders Sub-Committee? They’re meeting right now to decide what’s going to happen to conference.”

  The pack were gone faster than Jennifer would have believed possible.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a low voice to the harassed woman. “I’m Lindsay Gordon’s solicitor. I rather think I need to speak to your Standing Orders Sub-Committee. They may be able to help me. Can you give me directions?”

  The woman gave a wicked grin. “Well, you won’t find them in their committee room. All you’ll find there is a shower of frustrated journos. They needed to meet in peace, so they went off somewhere else. But I don’t think they’ll object if I tell you.”

  Ten minutes later, Jennifer stood in the doorway of Burger King. A quick glance was all she needed to spot the seven members of the committee that was responsible for the smooth running of the first annual conference of the AMWU. The four women and three men had taken over two tables and each had a bundle of papers in front of them. Although, like all Standing Orders committees, they were generally credited with possessing the sharpest brains in their union, right then they all looked like bankers with indigestion.

  Jennifer walked confidently up to the table and gave them her best professional smile. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she said, “but I think I need your help.”

  They gazed at her with expressions that ranged from bewilderment to relief. Jennifer sat down on the vacant chair and introduced herself. “What I need desperately is to find the Irishman that Lindsay was talking to between leaving the ceilidh and entering her room. I know it’s rather like asking you to produce a needle from a haystack, but I hoped you’d be able to indicate the best way of achieving this.”

  A middle-aged man with a crew-cut and a flamboyant silk waistcoat snorted. “Dear lady,” he drawled in the cultivated tones of a Radio Three announcer, “we find ourselves desperately searching the rule book for something that might conceivably cover the eventuality of the suspicious death of a general secretary in the midst of conference. We’d got as far as a two-minute silence. You have no idea how welcome it is to be asked to do something so simple and straightforward as to find one Irish drunk among so many!”

  Jennifer smiled with relief. For the first time, she was beginning to think she’d be able to get her client out of her cell without being charged.

  6

  “While SOS will do everything in their power to ensure the smooth running of conference, we cannot control Acts of God. In the event of an earthquake, a nuclear attack or an American decision to bomb some God-forsaken part of the globe, we ask delegates to observe the conventions of conference, to be patient and not to shower us with pointless emergency motions.”

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

  Jennifer had never heard a silence more eloquent than the two-minute tribute to the memory of Union Jack. It felt like a balloon whose surface had been so stretched that a whisper of air would explode it into shreds of twisted rubber. The delegates stood, heads bowed, the bright colors of their clothes lending the scene the air of a Billy Graham crusade at prayer.

  The platform party were uncomfortably at attention, a few of them failing to avoid the temptation to glance at their wrists. The union president stared down at the table where he’d had the foresight to place his own watch. As the hand crawled round the dial and reached twelve for the second time, his shoulders straightened and he lifted his head. He leaned forward over his microphone and said, “Thank you, brothers and sisters. I’ll hand you over now to Brian Robinson from Standing Orders Sub-Committee.”

  The man who had first spoken to Jennifer in the Burger King got to his feet and composed his face into a mask of solemnity as the delegates subsided noisily into their seats. She noted that multi-colored silk had given way to a more sombre black leather waistcoat.

  “I realize that many of you will feel uncomfortable about continuing with conference under the circumstances,” he began. Judging by the faces Jennifer could see, he was well wide of the mark. “But those of you who had known Tom Jack for as long as I have will realize he was a man who always demanded most forcefully that the show must go on; except, of course, when it was a matter of getting a paper out during an industrial dispute,” he continued, raising a murmur of appreciation from his audience.

  “My colleagues on SOS and I are attempting to ensure that conference will therefore continue. But before we proceed with this morning’s first order-paper, I have an appeal to make to you all. Police inquiries into Tom’s death are proceeding, and one of our number is, as they say, helping with their inquiries. Many of you will know Lindsay Gordon of old, and I for one am convinced that she had nothing whatsoever to do with an event that I feel certain will finally be seen as a tragic accident rather than something more sinister. Those of you who don’t know Lindsay may have noticed her sitting among the observers at the back of the hall yesterday. She’s the one with the rather noticeable Californian suntan; medium height and build, short brown hair, blue eyes, Scottish accent. There is a point to this,” he added peevishly, frowning down into the floor of conference, where delegates had begun to move around and chat excitedly to each other.

  The mutter subsided and Brian resumed. Jennifer couldn’t help being impressed by his stage presence, since delegates deprived of conversation appeared to be like plants deprived of light and water.

  “Lindsay was at the Scots-Irish Ceilidh last night, and in the early hours of the morning, she was introduced to a delegate who has been offered a job in America. They left the ceilidh together so she could offer him some tips about working among the barbarians, and they chatted for some time. Unfortunately, it’s been so long since Lindsay was a working journalist that she’s forgotten some of the cardinal rules. She failed to ascertain the name of the person she was talking to, and it is imperative that her solicitor talks to the gentleman in question. Ms. Okido, if you could just step forward . . .?”

  Feeling more self-conscious than she ever had in court, Jennifer stepped away from the group of people round the door at the rear of the hall. Hundreds of heads swivelled round to look at her. She smiled bleakly.

  “Ms. Okido up at the back there is the person in question. So if you were at the ceilidh last night, and you know the identity of the Irishman Lindsay was talking to, or if indeed you are that soldier, please let her know. I can’t stress how important this is, and I know you’ll all be as eager as I am to ensure that Lindsay isn’t in custody for a moment longer than necessary.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” Jennifer heard in a rumbling baritone by her side. She turned in surprise to see a tall, burly man who resembled a battered teddy bear. “I’m a friend of your client,” he said as Brian moved on to run through the order-paper.

  “What exactly did you mean, Mr. . . .?” Jennifer asked.

  “McAndrew. Dick McAndrew. Well, somebody killed Union Jack,” he said. “And whoever it was, the cops are leaving them well alone while they give Lindsay the heavy-duty hassle. Besides, if what I hear about the hooly last night is anything like the truth,
there were plenty of people at that ceilidh who wouldn’t piss on Lindsay if she was on fire. Which it sounds like she might be. How bad is it looking?”

  Jennifer shrugged. “I’ve seen worse, Mr. McAndrew.”

  “The word on the street is that the police have a witness from the ninth floor who says she was woken up by the sound of breaking glass. According to her clock, it was five to three. I take it you’re looking for an alibi witness who was with Linds then?”

  Jennifer smiled. “Whether you’re asking as a friend or as a journalist, you must be well aware I can’t answer that.”

  As she spoke, a man shuffled up to them. He looked like he’d just crawled out of bed, his shirt rumpled and his eyes red-rimmed. “Excuse me,” he said in tones so soft he was barely audible. “I think you want to talk to me.”

  Jennifer said, “Are you the man Lindsay Gordon was talking to?”

  He nodded, then immediately looked as if he regretted a motion so violent. He closed his eyes momentarily, then said, “I am.”

  “You two need to get away from this mob,” Dick said, his reporter’s eye noticing the attention they were attracting. Almost imperceptibly, people were shifting closer to the three of them, desperate for any gobbet of gossip that would put them in pole position among their peers.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Jennifer said. “Where can we . . .?”

  “You can use my room,” Dick fished a key out of the pocket of his jeans. “It’s in Wilberforce Hall, second floor. If I’m not here when you’ve finished, just leave it with one of the head office staff in the conference office.”

  “Thanks,” said Jennifer, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. Looking at the state of her potential witness, she could only imagine what his room looked and smelled like.

  “No bother,” said Dick. “Just get my buddy out of jail. That’ll do me fine.”

  Dick’s room managed to look as if he’d been at home there for months. There were a dozen books on the shelf, a Tandy computer and printer on the desk beside a pile of typing paper. On the window-sill, a queue of used mugs displaying a bewildering range of political slogans sat beside a framed photograph of a woman and two children. The Irishman made straight for the armchair and collapsed into it.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “After Lindsay went off, I went back to the ceilidh. My head feels like it’s got an army of elephants doing the rumba in there.”

  Jennifer couldn’t have cared less. She perched on the edge of the neatly made bed and pulled out her note-pad. “First, let’s get your name.”

  “Desmond Joyce,” he said. “I’m a freelance in Birmingham. I work two days a week at the university in the media studies department.”

  “Tell me about last night.”

  Hands shaking, Desmond fumbled a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. When he stopped coughing, he said, “I was at the ceilidh, and a woman I used to work with in Dublin introduced me to Lindsay. I’ve been offered a teaching job in Minnesota, you see, and Rose thought Lindsay might be able to give me a wee bit of a notion what it would be like working in America.” He rubbed a hand over the bright ginger stubble on his chin that looked the more disreputable because of the contrast with his chestnut hair.

  “We couldn’t talk properly, what with all the music, and Lindsay had just had a bit of a head-to-head with some of the jackals from the Street of Shame, so we went outside.”

  Desmond continued with the story that Jennifer had already heard from Lindsay. She registered gratefully that there seemed to be no significant discrepancy.

  “She asked me what time it was. My watch said ten past three. She said she had to be going because she had things to do in the morning. So I said cheerio and went back to the ceilidh. That was my big mistake,” he groaned. “I never could tell when to call it a night. Half past five I got to my bed.”

  “And you’re quite sure about the time?”

  “Half past five? That’s right, a bunch of us left the ceilidh together not long after I went back. We all went to Rose’s room because she had a couple of duty-free bottles of Black Bush there. That’s how come I didn’t hear about this business till I got up this morning and read the Conference Chronicle.”

  “Not half past five. The time when you left Ms. Gordon,” Jennifer said, unable to hide the note of exasperation in her voice.

  “Oh. Sorry. Yes, sure I’m sure. I remember because I thought to myself that it was a bit early to be heading for bed when there was a good time going on. I was thinking that if that was what living in America does to a person then maybe it wasn’t for me after all.” He gave a feeble smile.

  “Right. Well, Mr. Joyce, what I need is for you to have a shower, a shave, a clean shirt and two aspirin.” She glanced at her watch. “How long will that take you?”

  “About half an hour, I suppose,” he stuttered.

  “Fine. Well, when you’ve done all you can to make yourself look like a respectable citizen whose word could be accepted by a police officer, we will go to the police station where you will tell them exactly what you have told me,” Jennifer said briskly.

  She got to her feet. “I have some calls to make, since I’m clearly not going to be at the magistrates’ court this morning. I will see you outside the conference hall in thirty minutes.” As Desmond hauled himself out of the chair and moved towards the door with all the care of a man balancing a tray of eggs, she said, “And Mr. Joyce? Thank you for coming forward. I appreciate that, and so will my client.”

  “What do you mean, she isn’t there?” Sophie demanded of the telephone. “You took her into custody, didn’t you? Well, what have you done with her?”

  Whatever the beleaguered police officer on the other end of the phone was saying, it was clearly what Sophie wanted to hear. Her shoulders dropped back from their stiff, hunched position and her breathing became more calm. “I see. And when exactly was this?” As she asked the question, the sixth sense that informs lovers of each other’s presence checked in. She swung round to see Lindsay walk into the conference office. Sophie’s face broke into a huge grin of welcome and relief. “It’s okay,” she gabbled into the phone. “She’s just walked in. Thanks.” She dropped the phone back into its cradle. For a moment, the two women simply stared at each other. Then Lindsay opened her arms and they fell into a hug.

  The atmosphere their reunion created was so tangible that a handful of the clerical workers in the room broke into spontaneous applause. “Thank God you arrived when you did, Lindsay,” Pauline Hardy called across the room. “I thought she was going to throw that phone through the wall.”

  Sophie laughed. “Sorry. But you must know what Lindsay’s like. I had visions of her starting to tunnel out of her cell. Either that or doing the usual Scottish trick of remonstrating with the arresting officer with a chair leg.”

  Pauline winked as she headed for the door. “Didn’t they tell you that’s why they released her? The council tax payers of Sheffield couldn’t afford to pay for any more damage to their cop shop. I’m off to the station to pick up some parcels of stationery,” she added, “otherwise I’d offer to buy you a celebration drink. So have one for me!”

  “It wasn’t a drink I had in mind,” Lindsay murmured in Sophie’s ear.

  “I had a feeling it might not be,” Sophie replied. “That’s why I took the precaution of booking into a hotel.”

  Sophie, had barely closed the door behind them before Lindsay was pulling her clothes off.

  “Hang on,” Sophie protested mildly. “At least give me a chance to phone room service for a bottle of bubbly.”

  “Feel free,” Lindsay said, dragging her shirt over her head. “But I’ve got to get out of these clothes. They stink of sweat and smoke and drink and police cells.”

  Sophie giggled. “And there was me thinking you were desperate for my body.”

  “Oh, I am, I am. So get the fizz on ice while I wash away the night.”

  “Yes boss,” Sophie said, snapping to mock attention
and waving a vague salute at her partner.

  As Lindsay towelled her hair dry, she heard the blissful sound of the champagne cork easing out of the bottle with a soft pop. “Have I told you lately that I love you?” she inquired as she emerged into the bedroom.

  Sophie, by now naked too, handed her a glass and said, “Actions speak louder . . .” She held out her arms and Lindsay stepped into her embrace.

  After the love came the tears. Lindsay sobbed and rocked in the safe circle of Sophie’s arms.

  “I don’t know, I let you out of my sight for two days, and you end up embroiled in another murder,” Sophie said gently, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “I’m beginning to wonder if I need danger money to live with you.”

  Even Sophie’s embrace and the surge of desire that accompanied it couldn’t stop the shadow that passed through Lindsay’s mind. “Tell me about it,” she murmured. “Sometimes I feel like the bloody angel of death.” She sighed, and stroked the smooth, cool skin in the small of Sophie’s back. “I was so bloody scared,” she gulped. “And I couldn’t show anyone how scared I was in case they thought I’d done it. Oh, Sophie, you’ll never know how pleased I was to see you when I walked through that office door. It was like the light coming on.”

  Gradually, Lindsay grew calm, and they lay quietly together sipping champagne. “How did you find out about it?” she asked.

  “You know Helen,” Sophie said. “The world would end if she didn’t wake up to Radio 4. I was spark out in the spare room, sleeping like the dead after a night on the jungle juice with her and Ros when the whirling dervish bounced in.”

  “Oh God,” Lindsay groaned. “What a start to the day! You know, I sometimes wonder how you managed to live with her for so long without caving her head in one morning.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Sophie said with a grin. “Anyway, she announced that the general secretary of AMWU had perished in suspicious circumstances during the night. Before my eyes were even open, she was informing me that I’d better get down here, given your track record of sticking your nose in wherever it’s none of your business. We both agreed there was no way you’d be able to stay out of this one.