by Val McDermid
“And when she did, it looks like it killed her.”
Meredith looked at Lindsay while she automatically lit a third cigarette. “So what are we going to do about it?”
Chapter 14
Sophie Hartley had just settled her patient on the examining table when the summons came. Rita Hernandez was an illegal immigrant who had escaped from El Salvador in search of the American dream. Instead, she’d ended up working a street corner in the Mission with a pimp who thought wearing a condom was a denial of machismo. Now she was HIV-positive and six months pregnant and she wasn’t convinced that the Grafton Clinic was a safe place to be. Sophie had finally persuaded her she wasn’t going to turn her in to the authorities, so a nurse telling Sophie she had a transatlantic call was the last thing she needed right then. “Momento, por favor, señorita,” she said in her English-accented Spanish, giving Rita a calming pat on the ankle. “Stay with her, would you?” she asked the nurse, then headed for the reception area.
“Line two,” the receptionist mouthed at her between responding to waiting patients.
Sophie picked up the phone. “This had better be good,” she said impatiently.
“I love you too,” the familiar voice said. “Sorry to hit you at work, but it’s the time difference. I hoped I could pitch you into doing me a favor this evening when you get off work, then you’d be able to call me back in the morning our time with the results.”
“What kind of a favor?” Sophie said guardedly, running a hand through her hair in the familiar gesture of affectionate frustration that Lindsay tended to produce in her.
“Penny was so paranoid she used to drive down to Half Moon Bay every week with a spare set of back-up disks. She used to leave them with . . .”
“Carolyn Coogan, her best friend from high school,” Sophie finished for her. “They live on Palisades Drive.”
“How did you know that?” Lindsay demanded.
“There are a lot of miles of shore around the Bay Area. I once asked Penny if she had some sentimental attachment to Half Moon Bay, given how often she used to drop in on us. She said there was nothing sentimental about it, purely practical.”
“You never told me,” Lindsay said.
“Just one of my hundreds of dark secrets,” Sophie teased. “You want me to go and see Carolyn?”
“Penny’s laptop has gone missing. There are no back-up disks anywhere in the flat, and nobody’s got a copy of her manuscript. I was thinking maybe she’d stashed another set somewhere, with somebody like Carolyn. And if so, whether she mentioned it to her. I know it’s a long shot, but it would save me wasting tomorrow trying to track down everybody Penny knew over here. I’d really appreciate it,” Lindsay added, injecting a dose of pathos into her voice.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sophie said repressively.
“So you won’t want to know who Meredith had her fling with,” Lindsay said tantalizingly.
Sophie groaned. “Make it quick. I have a patient waiting.”
“Baz Burton. Penny’s editor.”
“No!”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Not and live. I want chapter and verse on this, Lindsay, but not now. Call me tomorrow, okay? Love you.”
“Love you too,” Lindsay said to dead air.
Radio stations all smelled the same, Lindsay had realized in recent years. It didn’t matter how old or new the studios were. A blind person who had once sampled the ambience would have it indelibly stamped in their olfactory banks for ever. It was an indefinable smell: a history of cigarette smoke now abolished but present like a ghost; a faint whiff of nervous sweat, the decaying molecules of the pheromones still lingering; the unmistakable tang produced by hot coffee in plastic or polystyrene; and dust. The office where Kirsten was working had the radio smell, even though it was in a sixties building behind Broadcasting House which seemed to be occupied almost entirely by teenagers.
Lindsay was sitting on the tiled window-sill, feet on a chair, head tilted back and hanging out of the metal window-frame in a vain attempt to get some air in her lungs that hadn’t already been breathed by half the population of London. Kirsten sat at a cluttered desk swigging some designer fruit drink from the bottle while sweat ran down either side of her nose as she talked into the phone. “. . . that’s right, you remember! Well, I’m sort of looking at an idea that might make a piece for one of the media magazine programs . . . Yeah, that’s the sort of thing. I was wondering, you know. We still keep hearing about authors getting swag bags of money—Jeffrey Archer getting millions for his backlist, Martin Amis getting half a mil for a two-book deal. Plus, with the end of the Net Book Agreement, what seems to be happening is that bottom of the list authors, the unpromotables, they’re getting the bullet, leaving the marketplace to the ones who can reasonably claim to be worth half-decent advances, yeah?” Kirsten paused in her flow, obviously listening to the voice on the other end. It was the third call she’d made so far.
At breakfast, Lindsay had moved in for the kill. She’d tried to talk to Sophie, but she’d only reached their answering machine, which informed her that Sophie had been called in to an emergency and that Lindsay should ring her around six in the morning, California time. Rather than kick her heels until early afternoon, she’d hit on the bright idea of using Kirsten’s contacts to dig up background on Catriona Polson. She’d been perfectly prepared to do the research herself, but Kirsten was adamant that she wanted to help out. Lindsay wasn’t sure if it was because she’d had the chance to get to know Meredith the previous evening, or because Helen had warned her not to let Lindsay close enough to her contacts to upset them. Either way, it relieved her of the tension of telling lies convincingly to strangers. Looking at Kirsten grafting away there, she wasn’t sorry she’d been forced to abdicate the responsibility.
“Yeah, right,” Kirsten resumed, blowing out a cloud of smoke from the forbidden cigarette she’d just lit. “Anyway, it seemed to me that the people who must really be coining it in off of this are not the authors, who after all, let’s face it, have probably spent years in abject penury to write that one special book. And it’s not even the publishers, given the balancing act they’re all playing at just now with the ending of the Net Book Agreement and getting to grips with electronic publishing. No, the people who must really be raking it in are the agents . . .” Kirsten made a face, casting her eyes upward and holding the phone away from her ear so Lindsay could hear the yakkety-yak coming from the receiver.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Clive, but think about it for a minute. All their crap authors get dispublished . . . yeah, I said dispublished, it’s the new Americanism for what happens when your publisher tells you to get a life that doesn’t include book signings. So you’ve got these literary agencies, right, with all their dead weight dropping off their client lists, and let’s not forget that these are the authors who take up a disproportionate amount of time compared to the actual cash they bring in. So what they’re left with . . .” Kirsten leaned back in her chair and mopped her face with a crumpled tissue.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. So you get someone like Catriona Polson coming along and not only swallowing up an old, established firm like Paul Firestone but also moving into the kind of naff but flash offices that Saatchi and Saatchi wouldn’t sniff at. So I thought we could maybe look at these super-agents, and of course, I thought, Clive’s the man. So take somebody like Catriona Polson. How did she go from a three-woman operation in Holborn to head honcho of Polson and Firestone?” Kirsten listened for a moment, then abruptly tipped forward and started scribbling on a scratch pad by the phone, dumping her cigarette in the flower vase on the desk. Now Lindsay knew how the carnations had died. She watched Kirsten take notes, interjecting the occasional, “Yeah,” or, “Well, there’s a surprise.” In spite of the sweat and the pressure, she couldn’t help feeling a faint pang of nostalgia for the journalistic trade she’d left behind her. Moments like this, when the adrenaline was pumping and there was the
unmistakable sense of a hunch paying off, were simply not available in teaching.
Eventually, Kirsten’s writing hand started to slow and she shifted in her seat, reaching into her desk drawer for another cigarette. “Clive, I owe you one,” she sighed through a cloud of smoke, then replaced the handset. Kirsten grinned up at Lindsay, who found herself wondering just how it was that Helen managed to attract stunning women who also possessed brains and a sense of humor. Sophie and Kirsten were the two who had lasted longest, but they were far from the only ones. “Bingo,” Kirsten growled happily.
“You going to tell me or do I have to hang you out of the window by the ankles and threaten to drop you?” Lindsay asked, sliding off the window-sill and into the chair.
“Sounds like fun, but I haven’t got time for all that sophisticated foreplay,” Kirsten said. “I’ll cut to the chase.”
“I was right, then? There is something dodgy at Polson and Firestone?”
“Well, not dodgy so much as stretched. When she ‘discovered’ Penny, she was literally a one-woman show. It was Penny’s success that created her business and brought other writers beating a path to her door. Her business grew and she took on a couple of assistants, but she needed to expand, and the lesson everybody learned in the eighties was that the quickest way to do that was to swallow somebody else, preferably somebody bigger than you.”
“The reverse takeover?”
“Sort of. Only in this case, Catriona Polson was the company that was making the money. The Firestone Agency was struggling, to be honest. They had quite a few talented people on the staff, but Paul Firestone had lost his edge and morale was crap. They lost a couple of their bigger names and soon as they started to slide, Catriona pounced. According to my buddy Clive, who works for Bookselling News, Paul Firestone hadn’t entirely lost his marbles. He negotiated a deal on the sale of his agency that concluded with a balloon payment after three years, the amount to be dependent on Polson and Firestone’s turnover. On a sliding scale that increased geometrically once profits hit a certain target.” Kirsten paused expectantly.
“Wasn’t that kind of betting against her own success?” Lindsay asked.
“Yes and no,” Kirsten said. “Under normal circumstances, no literary agency would hope to generate the kind of profits in a single year that would have caused problems for Polson.”
Lindsay grinned. “Why do I have the feeling you’re about to outline a set of circumstances so far off the normal curve that our instruments have no way of measuring it?”
“Because you’re psychic?”
“It’s not a phenomenon I’m noted for. So what were these exceptional circumstances?”
Kirsten leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. “After Martin Amis got his half-million-pound advance, literary novelists woke up to the fact that they might have a bit of clout. When Milos Petrovicĉ won last year’s Booker Prize, he decided that he more than deserved what Martin had already achieved, but his current agent couldn’t get the deal up above £350,000. Meanwhile, Polson’s personal assistant was bonking a chap called Jeremy Dunstan, who’s head honcho of a new literary imprint that one of the populist houses is trying to get off the ground. And Polson hears pillow talk that Jeremy is about to go out with a wallet full of dosh to pull in a couple of prime catches so that agents and authors will get their heads round the idea that his list is serious business, not some loss leader to make his company look like they’re not dragging their knuckles on the bottom of the cave. With me so far?” she asked, tipping herself forward to extinguish her cigarette.
“Fascinated,” Lindsay said, heavy on the irony. “I had no idea the world of gentlemen publishers had spun into the orbit of the eighties. So what happened next? As if I couldn’t guess.”
“Polson poached Petrovicĉ and got him half a million to head up Jeremy’s list. His previous agent was chewing the carpet, but there was nothing he could do. Petrovicĉ paid him the commission on the £350,000 he’d negotiated already, as per his contract, and Polson got the reputation. And in this business, where reputation goes, authors follow, sure as seagulls follow the sardine boat. The end result being that Polson had to pay Paul Firestone a massive chunk of dosh about three months ago and now her cash flow is plunging through the floor. The business owes money to its landlord, and its authors, and Polson’s taken out a second mortgage on her house.” Kirsten smiled sweetly. “Looks like the Darkliners film deal was her lifebelt.”
Lindsay stood up and wiped the sweat from her upper lip. “Does Helen know about your killer instinct?”
Kirsten grinned like a barracuda. “What else do you think she sees in me? I’m just glad I could help you out. You’re a bit of a legend in our house, you know. Radical feminism’s answer to Miss Marple.”
“I wish,” Lindsay said wryly. “If I was ever radical, it’s ancient history now. If I’m the answer, somebody’s asking the wrong question.”
The climb to Catriona Polson’s office hadn’t got any easier since Lindsay had last scaled the heights. Nor had the stairwell become any more appealing. It was hardly surprising, given what she now knew about the agent’s finances. If you were looking at losing the roof over your head, paying a cleaner wasn’t going to be high on the list of priorities.
The receptionist hadn’t become any more welcoming, either. “You can’t see Ms. Polson without an appointment,” she announced as soon as recognition sparked in her eyes.
“That what you say to Milos Petrovicĉ, is it?” Lindsay said conversationally.
“Anyway, you lied about not being a journalist,” the receptionist continued.
Lindsay shrugged. “I never said I wasn’t a journalist. You assumed I wasn’t. However, if you’d looked at that card with half a brain, you’d have seen it was at least eight years out of date. Nation Newspapers moved to Docklands back in ’88. And London phone numbers have changed a bit since then, too.”
“She won’t see you, you know. There’s no point in me even trying.”
Lindsay had always hated gatekeepers who, powerless in their own right, jealously guarded access to the source. If there was one thing she valued about her years as a journalist, it was the selection of methods it had shown her to get past the dragons at the gates. Taking out her notebook, she scribbled, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t tell the police about the Darkliners film deal. V. I. Warshawski.” She tore the page off, folded it half and said, “I think you might find that will change her mind. And don’t even think about not showing it to Ms. Polson. I can guarantee that that would seriously upset her.” She placed the note on the receptionist’s keyboard.
She glowered at Lindsay, then picked up the paper and dialled a number on her switchboard. Picking up the handset as the number rang out, she said, “Trish, there’s a note here for Catriona. Can you come and get it? I can’t leave reception right now.” She gave Lindsay a malicious little smirk.
“I’m really not going to steal the art,” Lindsay said, settling into one of the enveloping leather sofas. She leaned back and gazed into the middle distance, affecting not to notice the dumpy gopher who emerged from the tall office door, snatched up the note and disappeared again. Within five minutes, the gopher returned and muttered something to the receptionist, who scowled, gestured with a pen and said, “That’s her.”
The other woman came over and said, “Catriona will see you now.”
As she followed, Lindsay winked at her antagonist. “Aren’t you glad we didn’t take a bet on it?” she asked, enjoying the pink fury of the receptionist’s face.
Lindsay was escorted to the same conference room and left to her own devices for the best part of ten minutes. When Catriona Polson finally entered, she found Lindsay sitting staring at the portrait of Penny Varnavides. “I can’t get used to the idea of not seeing her again,” Polson said.
“Really? Don’t you worry she might come back to haunt you once Galaxy Pictures have fucked over her books?” Lindsay said, hoping she sounded as offen
sive as she intended.
“I don’t think either of those things is going to happen,” the agent said icily, folding her long body into one of the chairs. “Look, I really don’t want to get into a ruck with you. The only reason I agreed to see you was in the hope that we could strike me off your ridiculous suspect list for good and all. I had no motive for Penny Varnavides’ death. Yes, it would have been a blow if she had turned down what is a very attractive TV deal, but it would have been a long way from the end of the world.”
Lindsay snorted with a mockery of laughter. “Oh, yeah? When your company’s so strapped for cash you’ve had to take out a second mortgage on your home?”
Polson tilted her head on one side. “You really have done your homework, haven’t you? And two weeks ago, you’re right, the thought of losing the Darkliners TV deal would have rendered me near suicidal, if not homicidal. And then a deal we thought was dead rose from the grave. A Hollywood producer called to say they’d finally got the green light for a film adaptation of someone else’s work. And that means even more in financial terms to this agency than the Varnavides deal.”
Lindsay’s stomach seemed to hollow as the agent’s words sank in. “You expect me to believe that?” she tried, knowing it was a last-gasp bluff.
“I’ve got a file of signed contracts and faxes that demonstrate the truth of what I’m saying,” she said, not unsympathetically. “I’m not prepared to show you, since I have no conviction that you would treat it confidentially. But I’m perfectly prepared to show it to the police, should you be inclined to make yourself look foolish by involving them.”
