by Val McDermid
A police officer said, “The beer in question was apparently a kind which contains live yeast. In the warm weather, it must have started a secondary fermentation, and so the pressure inside the bottle would have increased enormously. The slightest vibration could have triggered the resulting explosion.
“It was a freak accident. Ms. Varnavides was alone when it happened. If someone else had been present, it’s possible she might have survived. But there are no suspicious circumstances.”
Ms. Varnavides was in London to complete research on her latest book, said to be a departure from her award-winning Darkliners series of fantasy novels for adolescent readers. She was rumored to be working closely with her British publishers, Monarch Press, on a “women in jeopardy” thriller aimed at the adult audience.
A member of the Monarch editorial team said, “We’re all devastated by Penny’s death. She was in the office only hours before she died. It’s a tragic loss.”
Ms. Varnavides, 42, grew up in Chicago and studied at Northwestern and Stanford. After graduating, she worked in the computer industry. Her debut Darkliners novel, The Magicking of Danny Armstrong, was first published in England because she couldn’t find a US publisher. But its runaway success was repeated all over the world and she became a full-time novelist ten years ago. She was unmarried and lived in San Francisco.
The apartment where the tragedy took place is the home of a British academic who exchanged it with Ms. Varnavides’ duplex in Noe Valley for the summer.
The piece of bread never made it to her mouth. Lindsay sat down suddenly on a kitchen chair and reread the article, tears pricking her eyes. Mutton slumped against her leg, butting his head against her sympathetically. Lindsay’s hand went to the dog’s head in an automatic movement, rubbing her fingers over the silky ears. Her other hand traced the outline of the newsprint. Penny was dead.
The tears spilled over and trickled down Lindsay’s cheeks. Less than five weeks before, Penny had been sitting on their deck knocking back Sierra Nevada amber ale and bemoaning the end of her relationship with Meredith Miller, the woman she’d been seeing for the previous five years. It had been a shocking conversation. If anyone had asked Lindsay who were the couple most likely to make it work, she’d have answered without hesitation, “Meredith and Penny.” They’d always seemed entirely compatible, a marriage of equals. Even Penny’s need to remain in the closet because of her huge market among teenagers in middle America hadn’t been a bone of contention; it was matched by Meredith’s own requirements. A computer scientist with a defense contractor, she had top-secret clearance, a grading she’d lose immediately her sexuality became known to her professionally paranoid bosses.
The two women had shared a tall Victorian house that had been divided into a duplex; Meredith lived in the two lower floors, Penny above. But the terraced garden at the back was common, allowing them to move freely from one section of the house to the other without being overlooked. So they’d effectively lived together, while maintaining the fiction of being nothing more than friends. In San Francisco, Lindsay had realized a long time ago, it wasn’t always easy to tell who were lovers and who merely friends. It was so easy to be out that everyone assumed anyone who wasn’t had to be straight and sadly lacking a partner.
Although it had been clear from the tone of the conversation that it had been Penny who had given Meredith her marching orders, she had spoken with deep regret about the ending of the relationship. “She left me with no choice,” she’d said sadly, head leaning against Sophie’s shoulder as Lindsay tended the barbecue. “Right from the start, we always had borderlines, you know? We had common concepts of what was acceptable in a relationship and what wasn’t. Fidelity was an absolute. She must have known she was leaving me no option, doing what she did.” She took another pull on her beer and stared into the sunset.
“Maybe she was testing you,” Lindsay had tried.
“I don’t think so,” Penny said. “I think she was in self-destruct mode. And you can’t stop somebody who’s that determined.”
“No, but you don’t have to give them a shove in the wrong direction,” Lindsay muttered, knowing she wouldn’t be heard over the hissing of the marinade she’d just used to baste the salmon.
By the end of the evening, Penny had had enough bottles of the dark golden ale for Sophie to insist she stayed the night and Lindsay had had enough of Penny’s grief to slip away on the excuse of checking her e-mail. “Tactless toerag,” Sophie had muttered as she’d slid into bed beside her later.
“How can I be tactless from my study?” Lindsay asked plaintively.
“Have you forgotten who taught you to be computer literate? Who showed you how to surf the Internet?”
“Oops,” Lindsay said.
“Oops is right. You going off to collect your e-mail was the signal for Penny to slide right over into maudlin tears and reminisce about Meredith turning the lesbian community cyberpunk.”
“But only if they let her wear a bag over her head,” Lindsay responded. “You know, I couldn’t do a job where I had to stay in the closet.”
“No,” Sophie sighed. “You have many fine qualities, Lindsay, but discretion isn’t even in the top forty.”
And now Penny was dead. Lindsay kept staring at the newspaper. She had no idea what to do next. She supposed she should call Meredith in San Francisco, but she didn’t have any enthusiasm for it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be supportive, rather that she knew she was more use at the practical rather than the emotional side of things. In their partnership, it was Sophie who did emotional support.
Impatient with herself, Lindsay wiped the tears from her face. She’d take the dog for his evening run, then she’d call Meredith. “Penny would have taken the piss mercilessly,” she told Mutton as she walked up to the bedroom and changed into her running uniform of shorts, T-shirt and cross-trainers. “‘Whatever happened to the tough journalist?’ she’d have said. ‘Thought you could face out anybody? You scared of a bit of raw emotion, Lindsay?’ She’d have been a proper monkey on my back, dog,” she added as Mutton licked her knee.
Lindsay jogged up the street, then cut across towards the beach, avoiding the wiry grasses that would whip her legs raw within minutes. Once on the sand, she headed for the water’s edge, turned her back on Pillar Point and let her rhythm gradually build to a place where it became a part of her she didn’t have to think about. There were fewer people than usual on the beach that evening but Lindsay didn’t notice. Penny Varnavides was at the center of her mind’s eye, caught in a slo-mo memory replay, playing beach volleyball with Lindsay, Sophie, Meredith and half a dozen other women last Easter. Lindsay could see the ponytail of glossy black hair switch across Penny’s tanned shoulders as she leapt for the ball, the sun glinting on dark eyes and white teeth as she soared into the sky, fingers stretched to the limit to nudge the ball upwards again for one of her team-mates to sweep back over the net.
Never again, Lindsay thought, bitter and sad. Next time they all trooped down to the beach, they’d be one short.
Although she wasn’t consciously checking out her surroundings, part of Lindsay’s mind was on alert. Her evening routine with the dog had been going on sufficiently long for her to be familiar with other locals who ran or walked by the ocean. A stranger was enough in itself to register with her. A stranger walking a north-westerly line that looked as if it were chosen to intersect inevitably with her southerly one was enough to take her mind momentarily off Penny. Lindsay slowed slightly and stared at the approaching figure.
A woman. Height around five six, hair shoulder length and midbrown. A large leather satchel slung over one hip. Shorts, lightweight shirt and sandals, but the skin too pale to be a Californian. Mutton bounded up to the woman, barking cheerfully. At once, she stopped and crouched to pat him. “English,” Lindsay grunted to herself. She slowed till she was barely faster than walking pace. The woman looked up, met her eyes and straightened up. By then, only a dozen yards separated
them.
“Lindsay Gordon.” It was a statement, not a question. Two words were enough to confirm Lindsay’s presumption that those pale limbs didn’t belong to an American. Mutton dropped on to his stomach on the sand, head down between his front paws.
Lindsay paused, hands on hips, breathing slightly harder than she needed to. If she was going to have to take off, better that the other woman thought she was more tired than she was. “You have the advantage of me, then,” she said, a frosty imitation of Mel Gibson’s proud Scottish dignity in Braveheart.
“Meredith Miller sent me. I . . . I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
The accent was Estuary English. It had never been one of Lindsay’s favorites, always reminding her of spivvy Tory MPs on the make. Distance hadn’t lent it enchantment. She wiped away the sweat that had sprung out on her upper lip. She cocked her head to one side and said, “I know Penny’s dead, if that’s what you mean. It made the papers. Who are you?”
The woman opened her satchel and Lindsay rose on to the balls of her feet, ready for fight or flight. The past she’d tried so hard to bury in California had conditioned her responses more than she liked to admit. Especially when she was dealing with people with English accents. But nothing more threatening than a business card emerged from the bag. Lindsay took it and read, “DGM Investigations. Sandra Bloom, senior operative.” There was an address with an East London postcode that would have rendered the whole card a joke before Canary Wharf started to fill up. Now, it signalled that Sandra Bloom’s company thought they were out at the leading edge of private investigation, light years away from the bottle of bourbon and the trilby.
“DGM?” Lindsay asked.
Sandra Bloom’s mouth twisted in a wince. “Don’t get mad?”
Lindsay nodded. “Must have seemed like a good idea at the time. So what’s all this about, Ms. Bloom? What are you doing here? What’s your connection to Meredith? And why are we standing in the middle of a beach when we live in a world that has more phones, faxes and modems than hot dinners?”
Sandra looked faintly embarrassed. “I don’t know exactly what it is that Ms. Miller does for a living . . .”
Lindsay interrupted with a snort of ironic laughter. “Join a very large club.”
“. . . but whatever it is, it’s made her rather paranoid about normal methods of communication,” she continued regardless.
Lindsay nodded. “Right. I remember the lecture. Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, England. One of the biggest listening posts in the world, run to all intents and purposes by the US government. Who routinely monitor phone calls, faxes and computer traffic. I’ve always found it hard to get my head round the idea. I mean, the sheer volume of it. Some days I don’t have time to read my own e-mail. The thought of ploughing through everybody else’s . . . Anyway, yeah, it’s starting to make sense. Okay, I understand why Meredith wouldn’t want to entrust anything sensitive to any form of telecommunication. And given the news in today’s paper, I don’t have to be what’s-her-name with the crystal ball on the national lottery to figure out it must be something to do with Penny. So what’s going on?”
Sandra pushed her hair back from her face in what was clearly a regular time-buying gesture. “Ms. Miller and her lawyer have sent me over from London . . .”
“Hang on a minute,” Lindsay butted in again. “What’s with the ‘lawyer’ bit? I didn’t even know Meredith was in London, never mind that she’d got herself a lawyer.”
“Ms. Miller has a lawyer because she seems to think she’s about to become the police’s number one suspect in their inquiry into the murder of Penny Varnavides,” Sandra blurted out in a rush, clearly deciding it was the only way to tell Lindsay anything without interruption.
Lindsay found herself staggering slightly at the abrupt news. Mutton scrambled to his feet and thrust a wet nose into her hand. “Can we walk while we talk? My muscles need to warm down properly or I’ll cramp up,” she stalled, turning so she and Sandra faced back up the beach. Sandra fell in by her side. A few steps further on, Lindsay said, “The paper here said there were no suspicious circumstances. What changed?”
“The police found out about the murder method in Ms. Varnavides’ new book.”
“Which is?”
“The killer reads a warning in the newspaper from a chain of—is it ‘convenience stores’ they call them over here?”
“That’s right, if you mean off-licences.”
“This warning tells customers to keep wheat beer refrigerated in prolonged spells of warm weather to prevent secondary fermentation and possible explosive accidents. So the killer puts half a dozen bottles of wheat beer on top of the fridge at head height. Then he knocks one to the floor, where of course it breaks explosively. He snatches up a shard of glass and when his victim comes rushing through to see what’s going on, he thrusts it into her neck. Then he pulls it out, wipes it clean of his fingerprints and lets her bleed to death. Then he shakes up another bottle and opens it so that she’s sprayed with beer as if she’d been caught in the actual explosion.” Her delivery was precise and measured. That made it easier for Lindsay to tune out the thought that it was her friend who had been killed in this ruthless way. She imagined Sandra’s reports would be masterpieces of concision.
“Yeah, right,” Lindsay sighed. “I can see why they might have changed their minds. But that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here, stalking me like some trainee assassin,” she added, trying to get rid of the sinking feeling in her stomach with smart-mouthed defiance.
“I’m here to bring you back to England,” Sandra said baldly.
Lindsay shook her head. “No way.” She’d been right to feel apprehensive. For once, being right didn’t make her feel any better.
“Ms. Miller has hired me to persuade you to come back and help her,” Sandra said woodenly.
“So far, you’re not doing too well. What does she need me for? She’s already got a private eye.”
“We don’t do this kind of work. Our specialty is white collar fraud. I wouldn’t know where to begin on a murder investigation. Ms. Miller seems to think you would.”
Lindsay shook her head. “I’m not a hired gun. I’m a journalist, not a private eye. Besides, I’ve been away from England a long time. I’m not what Meredith needs.”
“She thinks you are.”
Lindsay shook her head violently. “No way. You’ve had a wasted journey, Ms. Bloom.” Then she turned away and started to run back towards the safety of her own four walls.
Chapter 2
The high whine of the jet engine dropped a little as the plane hit its cruising height and levelled out. Lindsay pressed a button in the armrest and exchanged the operatic aria in her headphones for contemporary Irish music. At least flying Aer Lingus meant there was a decent choice of in-flight music, she thought. And the music was the perfect distraction to avoid having to think about why she had agreed to a marathon journey back to London, changing at Dublin, in the charmless company of Sandra Bloom.
Ten minutes after Lindsay had made it back home, the dogged private eye had rung the doorbell. Lindsay had tried to ignore it, continuing on her journey to the fridge for a cold beer, but Mutton refused to play. He ran to the front door, snuffling eagerly round the edges, then barking loudly, tail wagging as he scented his newest friend. He turned to look expectantly at Lindsay, uncapping her beer and ostentatiously ignoring the dog. He gave a soft whimper then turned back to the door, outlining its edges with anxious snorts and anguished yelps.
“All right,” Lindsay sighed. She took a long swig of beer, then crossed to the door. She yanked it open and immediately said, “I told you no, and I meant it.”
Sandra Bloom nodded agreement. “I know. But Ms. Miller is adamant that you’re the only person who can help her. She stressed that she wants you to come not only because of your investigative skills but also because you’re a friend and that means she can trust you with things she’d be wary of explaining to a stranger.”
Lindsay cast her eyes upwards. “Emotional blackmail now, is it? I suppose you’d better come in. The neighbors think we lower the tone enough as it is without having private eyes leaning on the doorbell.”
Sandra Bloom had been an investigator for long enough not to care how ungracious an invitation might be as long as it was forthcoming. She followed Lindsay inside and took in a living area with polished wood-block floors, dark squashy sofas and brilliantly colored Georgia O’Keeffe prints splashed across white walls. She decided not to comment on its attractiveness, knowing instinctively her target would dismiss it as merely another ploy. “I realize you feel pressured,” she said as Lindsay threw herself down on the nearest sofa, scowling.
“Good.”
“But Ms. Miller is in a very vulnerable emotional state. Her lover—”
“Former lover,” Lindsay interrupted.
“Her lover until very recently,” Sandra Bloom corrected her precisely, “has been murdered in a particularly calculated and cold-blooded way. She’s on her own in a strange city, thousands of miles from her friends. And as if that isn’t enough, she’s a suspect in the murder inquiry. And you’re the only person she thinks can help her.”
“But I’m not,” Lindsay protested. “What has she told you about me?”
“Very little. She did say that although you weren’t a detective, you’d solved murders before.”
Lindsay took another long pull at her bottle of beer. “Look,” she said. “I’m a journalist by trade. I don’t even do that any more. I teach kids how to be journalists because I realized I couldn’t do the job any more. It was costing me too much to burst into people’s lives and turn them upside down. Yes, I got caught up in murder investigations a couple of times and managed to uncover some stuff that the police didn’t. But none of that makes me competent to sort out Meredith’s problems.”
