by Val McDermid
“They got heated?” Lindsay asked eagerly.
“Not really. It was like it was part of the whole arm’s-length thing. Baz just wasn’t prepared to go head to head with Penny. She just backed down and said okay, if it was that important to Penny it could stay. Everybody was gobsmacked, because Baz never backs down with her authors. Like, never. That’s why it stuck in my mind. So you see, everybody at Monarch knew about the murder method. And God alone knows who they went home and told.”
Chapter 10
Lindsay sat in the swaying tube train, her thoughts swirling in confusion. At breakfast, she’d had two suspects—three if she’d been prepared to include Meredith. But thanks to Lauren’s revelations, she now had dozens. The publishing world was so riddled with gossip that if anything could be guaranteed, it was that half London would know Penny Varnavides and her editor weren’t seeing eye to eye. The disagreement over the bottled beer murder method would have been discussed avidly among publishers, agents and, by now, probably authors too. Rather than narrowing down her list of suspects, Lindsay’s visit to Monarch had swelled it a hundredfold.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, she didn’t have the faintest idea what to do next. But if six years in California had taught her anything, it was that there weren’t many problems that couldn’t be eased by some judicious retail therapy. For some, that took the form of trawling the department stores and boutiques for designer clothes at charity shop prices. For others, the gourmet food stores were the fount of all comfort. For Lindsay, shopping paradise took the form of second-hand book and CD stores, where she could browse for hours, then emerge with some obscure gem that cost next to nothing. It didn’t matter when Sophie pointed out that in the time she had taken to find that single specimen, Lindsay could have written an article that would have earned enough to buy a dozen brand-new CDs or hardback books. The hunt was the fun as much as the purchase, and fun was what Lindsay needed in her present mood.
However, given Sophie’s decidedly stiff manner on the phone the previous evening, Lindsay realized a serious peace offering was going to be required at the airport when Sophie arrived the following week. There was nothing more calculated to win her round than some obscure object to add to her collection of historic obstetric instruments. Lindsay could hardly look at them without wincing and crossing her legs, but they fascinated Sophie. And if her memory served her well, one of the antique shops in Camden catered for such perverse tastes. Lindsay could find something for Sophie, then indulge herself in the second-hand stores around Camden Lock. And if she was really lucky, maybe the logical part of her brain, left in peace, would come up with a possible new direction for her investigation.
Just over an hour later, she emerged from the antique shop with an 1860s variant of a Higginson syringe, a fearsome object used by surgeons for aborting the unwanted foetuses of the gentry as well as for routine internal spring-cleaning. Just listening to the shopkeeper describe its function made Lindsay’s flesh creep.
As she walked towards the canal, she started to review what she had learned earlier. She’d got as far as rerunning her conversation with Baz when a hand clamped heavily on her shoulder. Her stomach lurched, seized by the same panic she’d felt escaping from Derek Knight’s flat. Startled, Lindsay swung round on the balls of her feet, ready to push her assailant away and run for it.
Familiar red curls swirled in front of her. “What are you doing here?” Helen demanded. “I thought you were off in darkest Shepherd’s Bush making citizen’s arrests on publishers.”
Lindsay closed her eyes and let out the breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. “Don’t ever do that again,” she said. “Jesus, Helen, I’ve eaten too much cholesterol over the years. Another shock like that and I could drop down dead.”
“You know, sometimes I forget you were a tabloid hack for a million years. Then you go and sound like the front page of the Sun and it all comes flooding back to me. Never let the truth get in the way of a good exaggeration, eh? So what are you doing over here?”
“I decided I better arm myself for Sophie’s arrival,” Lindsay said, unwrapping her package and waving it under Helen’s nose.
“Yeuuch! That’s disgusting. Take it away, you revolting little toerag. And don’t tell me what it’s for,” she warned.
“It’s a peace offering.”
“A peace offering? Bloody hell, Lindsay, I know they do things differently in California, but I didn’t realize the sex was that bizarre!”
“It’s for Sophie’s collection,” Lindsay said, casting her eyes upwards in mock exasperation.
“I know that. So, you finished over at Monarch, then?”
“I’m finished. Don’t take it personally, but I really don’t want to talk about it just now. This is one of those cases where the more I find out, the less I know. And now I come to think about it, what are you doing walking around the streets instead of looking important in your office?”
Helen scowled like a child caught playing truant. “I reached the point where if I’d stayed there a minute longer, even you wouldn’t have been able to get me off a murder charge. Come on, I’ll treat you to something long and cold and you can listen to me moan.” Without waiting for an answer, Helen linked an arm through Lindsay’s and dragged her into a nearby pub which promised air conditioning.
“If you called this air conditioned in California, you’d get lynched,” Lindsay remarked as they stood at the bar. The stale air was admittedly a couple of degrees colder than the street outside, but it reeked of smoke and dead beer.
“I’d heard that about the American justice system,” Helen said sweetly, catching the barman’s attention and ordering without consultation two bottles of Belgian raspberry beer. Lindsay looked dubiously at the brownish red liquid in her glass, shrugged resignedly and sipped.
“I’ve tasted worse,” she muttered as she followed Helen to a quiet corner booth.
“I picked up a tasty bit of goss this morning that might interest you,” Helen said, settling herself on the bench and fanning her face ineffectually with a beermat.
“About Penny?”
“Penny’s books, actually. I was talking to a mate of mine, Kes, who brokers co-production deals, and I asked her what she was working on and she told me she’s putting something together on Penny’s books. Some transatlantic deal to do a TV series. Serious players, too. Galaxy Pictures in the States and an independent over here called Primetime, who’ve got it slotted in with the BBC.”
Lindsay stared. “The Darkliners novels? Is that what we’re talking about?”
Helen nodded. “Apparently so. We’re talking a big deal here. First series will be three books, three thirty-minute episodes per book. If it takes off, they’ll do all the books, then they’ll do like they did with Morse—use the characters and get other writers to do the storylines.”
Lindsay shook her head. “There must be some mistake. Penny hated the idea of her books being made into films or TV programs. Producers were always pitching her and she always turned them down. She said it wasn’t like she needed the money, and she didn’t want to see her characters trashed on the screen. I remember she used to say, ‘Any time I’m tempted, I say the magic words “V. I. Warshawski” and I waken from my enchantment.’ Are you sure you got it right?”
Helen breathed heavily through her nose. “I’m sure I’m sure. I didn’t realize Penny felt like that. I thought this was some routine agreement they were working out with her. From what Kes was saying, they’ve just got some final details to iron out, but the deal should be done and dusted within the next few weeks.”
“I just can’t believe Penny would agree to this,” Lindsay said. “She said nothing to me about it, and I’m sure if she’d discussed it with Sophie, I’d have heard. Meredith said nothing about it either. I wonder how they persuaded Penny? It must have taken something really special to get round her objections . . .” Lindsay’s voice tailed off and her eyes widened.
“Like murder?” He
len wondered.
“Like murder,” Lindsay echoed. “If you kill somebody, you don’t need their consent any more. Particularly when you’re their literary executor.”
There was silence for a moment while they both considered the implications of what Helen had learned. “That can’t be right,” Helen said eventually. “This isn’t something that’s just been cobbled together over the last couple of days. Kes’s company must have been in negotiation for months.”
“Would Penny have had to know that?”
Helen pondered. “Not necessarily, I suppose. Authors tend to get involved in negotiations if they want to write the script themselves or if they want to have a fair bit of input into the end product. But some of them just want to take the money and run, in which case they leave it up to their agents to do the business and they never actually meet the people who are planning to make the film.”
“So what you’re saying—let me get this straight—is that Penny’s agent could have been working out the terms of this deal without Penny ever having had to meet the other parties? And that’s normal?” Lindsay asked, feeling slightly like Alice in Wonderland.
“Penny might not even have known there were negotiations going on. Quite often, agents just don’t mention negotiations to their client authors till they’re a long way down the road. TV and film companies are always scouting around for stuff. Out of every hundred approaches an agent gets from a film company, they might actually sign five options. And out of every hundred option contracts that get signed, maybe five get made. With those kind of odds, you can see why agents let things move quite a long way down the road before they mention them to authors. Otherwise their phone lines would be permanently clogged with clients demanding to know what the latest was on the deal and how soon they were going to be able to buy the house with the swimming pool. And then nobody would ever get any work done.”
“It also makes the agents look good,” Lindsay said.
“How do you work that one out?”
Lindsay shrugged. “If the only time you hear from your agent is when she’s calling to tell you about the great deal she’s got to offer, you don’t know how many approaches she’s had and fucked up, do you?”
“How did you get this cynical?” Helen demanded, full of mock outrage.
“I hung around with you at a crucial age. What kind of money are we talking about, by the way?”
“For the options, say five grand a book, and there’s how many books?”
“Twenty-six, twenty-seven, something like that.”
Helen’s eyes swivelled up at an angle as she did the mental arithmetic. “About £130,000? Then for each one that gets made, say fifty grand. For the first series, we’d be talking options for the lot, plus rights for six—call it £450,000. And these are not high end figures, by the way. For US and UK rights, you could easily be talking double that.”
Lindsay whistled softly. “So we could be looking at a million-pound scenario where your mate Kes made Penny’s agent an opening offer she couldn’t refuse. Catriona Polson—that’s the agent—knows how Penny feels about TV and film deals, but she decides that this is too good to miss. She figures that she’ll go with it and see if she can talk it up into a deal that’s so wonderful that even Penny will abandon all her artistic principles and bite their hands off. How does that sound?”
“So far, so good. I like it. Nothing makes me happier than the sight of one of life’s Ms. Ten Percents getting stitched up,” Helen said enthusiastically.
“Only problem is, Penny throws her hands up in horror and says she’d rather eat razor blades than betray her readers and her masterworks in such a tawdry, money-grubbing way. And bearing in mind that agents usually charge more for TV and film deals, Catriona sees the thick end of 150 grand flying out of the window,” Lindsay theorized.
“Whereas, with Penny dead . . .” Helen interjected.
“The deal is even sweeter. She can probably screw more money on the notoriety basis, plus she’s got the added bonus of increased sales on the books that are currently out there. When I saw her, she said that she’d be crazy to kill Penny for a short-term gain when Penny alive would write more books. But if there’s TV in the pipeline, that means she’d get long-term benefit anyway, because all the books would be reissued as TV tie-ins. And Catriona Polson’s a really big woman. She’d have no trouble grabbing Penny and stabbing her in the neck.” Lindsay finished her beer in a single swallow, suddenly feeling dry-mouthed. “Same again?”
When she returned with fresh drinks, Helen was looking sheepish. “Spit it out,” Lindsay sighed.
“You just made out a great case against the agent. It’s a good motive. And it’s just about credible that the agent would use the murder method in the book as a kind of poetic justice, almost to make herself feel like it wasn’t real, just something in a book. Only you can’t tell the police about it, can you?”
“I’m not with you. Why not?”
Helen swallowed a gulp of beer and said, “You told me Meredith is Penny’s residuary legatee, yeah? Well, if it plays as a motive for the agent, it works as an even better motive for Meredith. About ten times better, in fact. You need something more solid before you pass this info on to the bizzies.”
Lindsay closed her eyes and cursed silently. Helen was absolutely right. If Catriona had told Penny about the talks, the chances are that Meredith would know it was a possibility. Even if she hadn’t, if Helen had heard it on the grapevine it was entirely possible that Meredith had too, Lindsay thought, remembering with a lurch that Meredith’s best friend from college worked in Los Angeles, writing machine code to produce computerized special effects for Hollywood. And there would be plenty of special effects in any films of the Darkliners novels. It would be almost impossible for Meredith to establish her ignorance. Proving a negative was always the hardest thing in any investigation, Lindsay knew from her long journalistic experience. “I can’t think about this any more today,” she said. “I need to sleep on it. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, my subconscious will have had the chance to work out where I go for proof.”
“You’re probably right,” Helen said. “And I know just how to help you put it right out of your mind.”
Warning bells rang like a smoke alarm in Lindsay’s head. “Oh, yeah?” she said warily.
“Yeah. You can advise me on my little problem.”
Lindsay groaned and raised her hands as if to fend off a blow. “I already gave you the only advice I know. Dig the dirt, then dish it.”
“Can’t you do the digging for me?” Helen asked plaintively. “I don’t have your experience. I’m just a simple TV producer. I don’t even know where to start.”
“And you think I do?” Lindsay said, amused in spite of herself by Helen’s attempts at pathos. “I know nothing about this woman. I don’t know her surname, her age, what she looks like, where she lives, what she drives or what kind of clothes she wears. I don’t know who her friends are, what she does on her days off or anybody she’s ever shagged. If anybody’s going to get something on Stella, don’t you think you’re a bit better equipped?”
Helen shook her head. “Her surname is Piper and she’s thirty-two.” She rummaged in her bag and came out with an A3 brochure promoting Watergaw Films. She flicked it open to the back cover. There, beneath Helen and Guy, was a head-and-shoulders shot of Stella Piper. Straight dark hair cut close to her head, liquid brown eyes accentuated with eyeliner and mascara, a pert, upturned nose and a rosebud mouth.
“She looks like Bambi,” Lindsay said.
“Knowing her, it wouldn’t have been the hunters who shot her mother,” Helen said darkly. “She drives a metallic green Fiat Punto and she lives in some trendy warehouse conversion on the canal behind King’s Cross station when she’s not round Guy’s flat in Stoke Newington. She wears that skin-tight fashion that looks great on Kate Moss and would make you and me look like sausages that need to go on a diet. As for friends, I shouldn’t think she’s got any.”
>
“Fine, but I still don’t know where to start digging,” Lindsay insisted firmly.
“You could start by following her.”
“Helen, I haven’t even got a car,” Lindsay protested.
“That’s no problem. We use a hire firm just round the corner when we need some extra wheels. I’ll take you round there and sort you out with something right now.” She finished her beer in one swallow and looked expectantly at Lindsay.
Lindsay closed her eyes and sighed. In the long years of their friendship, Helen had only ever asked for Lindsay’s help once before. It had seemed straightforward that time too, but it had led Lindsay into a confrontation with a murderer that had forced her into the hardest decision she’d ever taken and had altered the course of her life irrevocably. It wasn’t an experience she’d willingly repeat. But even putting the most pessimistic of glosses on Helen’s present request, it was hard to see how it could get her into the kind of trouble she’d been trying to avoid ever since that bitter tragedy in Glasgow.
She opened her eyes and shook her head with an air of fatalism. “I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to regret this,” she said, picking up her glass and following Helen’s example. “Let’s go and get me a set of wheels.”
Chapter 11
Lindsay fiddled with the radio tuning buttons again. She’d been parked across the street from the industrial unit that housed Watergaw Films for the best part of an hour. So far, she’d grown irritated with one presenter’s attempts at controversiality, bored with a magazine program that seemed to cater for the prurience of people without a life of their own, and infuriated to discover a play she’d been listening to was the first of three episodes of a serial. Now she’d never know why Prunella had taken the Old English sheepdog to the archbishop’s consecration. Giving up on talk radio, she settled for a station that played oldies with minimal chatter between records.
