by Val McDermid
REPORT FOR MURDER
Val McDermid
Bywater Books
Ann Arbor
For Gill
Contents
PART ONE: OVERTURE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO: EXPOSITION
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART THREE: FUGUE
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
PART FOUR: FINALE
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
PART FIVE: CODA
Chapter 22
PART ONE:
OVERTURE
1
Lindsay Gordon put murder to the back of her mind and settled down in the train compartment to enjoy the broken grays and greens of the Derbyshire scenery. Rather like home, she decided. Except that in Scotland, the greens were darker, the grays more forbidding. Although in Glasgow, where she now lived, there was hardly enough green to judge. She congratulated herself on finishing the detective novel just at the point where Manchester suburbia yielded place to this attractive landscape foreign to her. Watching it unfold gave her the first answer to the question that had been nagging her all day: what the hell was she doing here? How could a cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist (as she mockingly described herself) be on her way to spend a weekend in a girls’ public school?
Of course, there were the answers she’d been able to use to friends: she had never visited this part of England and wanted to see what it was like; she was a great believer in “knowing thine enemy,” so it came under the heading of opportunities not to be missed; she wanted to see Paddy Callaghan, who had been responsible for the invitation. But she remained unconvinced that she was doing the right thing. What had made her mind up was the realization that, given Lindsay’s current relationship with the Inland Revenue, anything that had a check as an end product couldn’t be ignored.
The fact that she cheerfully despised the job she was about to do was not a novel sensation. In the unreal world of popular journalism which she inhabited, she was continually faced with tasks that made her blood boil. But like other tabloid journalists who laid claim to a set of principles, she argued that, since popular newspapers were mass culture, if people with brains and compassion opted out the press would only sink further into the gutter. But in spite of having this missionary zeal to keep her warm, Lindsay often felt the chill wind of her friends’ disapproval. And she had to admit to herself that saying all this always made her feel a pompous hypocrite. However, since this assignment involved writing for a magazine with some credibility, she was doubly pleased that it would avoid censure in the pub as well as provide cash, and that was enough to stifle the stirrings of contempt for Derbyshire House Girls’ School.
Paddy, with the contacts of a life membership of the old girls’ network, had managed to persuade the features editor of Perspective to commission a piece from Lindsay about a fund-raising program about to be launched by the school with a Gala Day. At that point, Lindsay was hungry for the cash and the prestige, so she couldn’t afford the luxury of stopping to consider if it was the sort of project she’d actually choose to take on. Three months ago she’d reluctantly accepted redundancy when the Daily Nation discovered it needed fewer journalists so that it could pay its print workers their “pound of flesh.” Since then, she had been applying for unlikely jobs and frenetically trying to make a living as a freelance. That made the call from Paddy all the more welcome because it meant a relatively quiet weekend away from the demands of the telephone—which would soon stop disrupting her life altogether if she didn’t earn enough to pay the last quarter’s bill.
At that unwelcome thought, Lindsay reflected with relief on the money she would receive from the Derbyshire House job. It seemed poetic justice that such a bastion of privilege should stake her. Good old Paddy, she mused. Ever since they’d met in Oxford six years before, Paddy had not only been a tower of strength in emotional crises but the first to offer help when life got Lindsay into one of its awkward corners. When Lindsay’s car staged a break-down on a remote Greek mountainside it was Paddy who organized the flying out of a spare part. When Lindsay was made redundant it was Paddy who found the cousin who told Lindsay the best thing to do with her less-than-golden handshake. And when Lindsay’s lover died, it was Paddy who drove through the night to be with her. The daughter of two doctors, with an education begun at the “best” schools and polished off at Oxford, Paddy Callaghan had shaken her family by deciding to become an actress. After four years of only moderate success and limited employment, however, she had realized she would never make the first rank. Always a realist, and fundamentally unaffected by four years of living like a displaced person, she reverted to type and decided to make sure that the rising generation of public schoolgirls would have a better grounding on the stage than she’d had. When the two women first met, Paddy was halfway through the teacher training that would take her back to her old school in Derbyshire to teach English and Drama. It had taken Lindsay quite a long time to realize that at least part of her appeal for Paddy was her streak of unconventionality. She was an antidote to the staid world Paddy had grown up in and was about to return to. Lindsay had argued bitterly with Paddy that to go back to her old environment was copping out of reality. Though the argument never found a solution, the friendship survived.
Lindsay felt sure that part of the reason for the continuation of that friendship was that they had never let their separate worlds collide. Just as Lindsay would never drag Paddy off to a gay club, so Paddy would never invite Lindsay to one of her parents’ weekend house parties. Their relationship existed in a vacuum because they understood and accepted the gulf that separated so much of their lives. So Lindsay was apprehensive about encountering Paddy on what was firmly her territory. Suddenly all her fears about the weekend crystallized into a panic over the trivial issue of what she was wearing. What the hell was the appropriate gear for this establishment, anyway? It wasn’t something that normally exercised her thoughts, but she had gone through her wardrobe with nervous care that morning, rejecting most items on the grounds that they were too casual, and others on the grounds that they were too formal. She finally settled on charcoal-gray trousers, matching jacket, and burgundy shirt. Very understated, not too butch, she’d thought. Now she thought again and considered the vision of the archetypal dyke swaggering into this nest of young maidens. God help her if St. George hove into sight.
If only she’d brought the car, she could have brought a wide enough selection of clothes to run no risk of getting it wrong. But her crazy decision to opt for the uncertain hands of British Rail so she could get some work done had boomeranged—you could only carry so much for a couple of days, unless you wanted to look like the wally of the weekend tipping out at the school gates with two cabin trunks and a holdall. As her paranoia gently reached a climax, she shook herself. “Oh sod it,” she thought. “If I’m so bloody right-on, why should I give a toss what they think of me? After all, I’m the one doing them a favor, giving their fundraising a puff in the right places.”
With this bracing thought, the train shuddered into the station at Buxton. She picked up her bags and emerged on to the platform just as the sun came out from the autumn clouds, making the trees glow. Then through the glass doors she caught sight of Paddy, waiting and waving. Lindsay thrust her ticket at the collector and the two women hugged each
other, laughing, each measuring the other for changes.
“If my pupils could see me now, they’d have a fit,” laughed Paddy. “Teachers aren’t supposed to leap around like lunatics in public, you know! My, you look good. Frightfully smart!” She held Lindsay at arms’ length, taking in the outfit, the brown hair, and the dark blue eyes. “First time I’ve ever seen you fail to resemble a jumble sale in search of a venue.”
“Lost weight. It’s living off the wits that does it. Food’s a very easy economy.”
“No, darling, it’s definitely the clothes. Who’s the new woman, then?”
“Cheeky sod! There’s no new woman, more’s the pity. I went out and bought this all by myself. At least six months ago, too. So there, Miss Callaghan.”
Paddy grinned. “All right, all right. I’ll take your word for it. Now, come along. I’m parked outside. I’ve got to pick up a couple of things from the town library, then we can shoot back to the school itself and have a quick coffee to wipe away the strain of the train.”
In the station car park, they climbed into Paddy’s battered Land Rover. “Not exactly in its prime, but it’s practical up here,” she apologized. “Highest market town in England, this is. When the snow gets bad, I’m the only member of staff who can make a bid for freedom to the local pub. You still got that flashy passion wagon of yours?”
Lindsay scowled. “If you mean my MG, yes I have.”
“Dear, oh dear. Still trying to impress with that retarded status symbol?”
“I don’t drive it to impress anyone. I know it’s the sort of car that provokes really negative reactions from the 2CV brigade, but I happen to enjoy it.”
Paddy laughed, “Sorry. I didn’t know it was such a sore spot.”
“Let’s just say that I’ve been getting a bit of stick about it lately from one or two people who should know better. I’m seriously thinking about selling it just for a bit of peace and quiet from the purists who think you can only be right-on in certain cars. But I think I’d miss it too much. I can’t afford to buy a new sports car. I spend a lot of time in transit and I think I’ve got a right to be in a car that performs well, is comfortable, and doesn’t get like an oven in the summer. Plus it provokes interesting reactions from people. It’s a good shorthand way of finding out about attitudes.”
“Okay, okay. I’m on your side,” Paddy protested.
“I know it’s flash and pretentious,” Lindsay persisted. “But then there’s a bit of that in me anyway. So you could argue that I’m doing women a favor by forewarning them.”
Paddy pulled up in a Georgian crescent of imposing buildings. “You are sensitive about it, aren’t you? Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve never thought you were flash. A little over the top sometimes, perhaps . . .”
Lindsay changed the subject abruptly. “What’s this, then,” she demanded, waving an arm at the buildings.
“Not bad, eh? The North’s answer to Bath. Not quite on the same scale. Rather splendid but slightly seedy. And you can still drink the spa water here. Comes out of the ground warm; tastes rather like an emetic in its natural state, but terribly good for one, so they say. Come and see the library ceiling.”
“Do what?” demanded Lindsay as Paddy jumped down. She had to break into a trot to catch Paddy, who was walking briskly along a colonnade turned golden by the late afternoon sun. They entered the library. Paddy gestured to Lindsay to go upstairs while she collected her books. A few minutes later she joined her there.
“Hardly over the top at all, dear,” Lindsay mocked, pointing to the baroque splendors of the painted and molded ceiling. “Worth a trip in itself. So where are all the dark satanic mills, then? I thought the North of England was full of them.”
“I thought you’d appreciate this,” said Paddy with a smile. “You’re in altogether the wrong place for dark satanics, though. Only the odd dark satanic quarry hereabouts. But before you dash off in search of the local proletarian heritage, a word about this weekend. I want to sort things out before we get caught up in the hurly-burly.”
“Sort out the program, or my article?”
“Bit of both, really. Look, I know everything about the school goes right against the grain for you. Always embraced your principles so strongly, and all that. I also know that Perspective would be very happy if you wrote your piece from a fairly caustic point of view. But, as I tried to get across to you, this fund-raising project is vital to the school.
“If we don’t raise the necessary £50,000 we’ll lose all our playing fields. That might not seem any big deal to you, but it would mean we’d lose a great deal of our prestige because we’ve always been known as a school with a good balance—you know, healthy mind in a healthy body and all that. Without our reputation for being first class for sport as well as academically we’d lose a lot of girls. I know that sounds crazy, but remember, it’s usually fathers who decree where daughters are educated and they all hark back to their own schooldays through rose-tinted specs. I doubt if we’d manage to keep going, quite honestly. Money’s become very tight and we’re getting back into the patriarchal ghetto. Where parents can only afford to educate some of their children, the boys are getting the money spent on them and the girls are being ignored.” Paddy abruptly ran out of steam.
Lindsay took her time to answer while Paddy studied her anxiously. This was a conversation Lindsay had hoped would not have had to take place, and it was one she would rather have had over a drink after they’d both become accustomed to being with each other again. At last she said, “I gathered it was serious from your letter. But I can’t help feeling it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the public schools felt the pinch like everyone else. It seems somewhat unreal to be worrying about playing fields when a lot of state schools can’t even afford enough books to go round.”
“Even if it means the school closing down?”
“Even if it means that, yes.”
“And put another sixty or seventy people on the dole queue? Not just teachers, but cleaning staff, groundsmen, cooks, the shopkeepers we patronize? Not to mention the fact that for quite a lot of the girls, Derbyshire House is the only stable thing in their lives. Quite a few come from broken homes. Some of their parents are living abroad where the local education isn’t suitable for one reason or another. And others need the extra attention we can give them so they can realize their full potential.”
“Oh, Paddy, can’t you hear yourself?” Lindsay retorted plaintively, and was rewarded by scowls and whispered “shushes” from around the reading room. She dropped her voice. “What about all the kids in exactly the same boat who don’t have the benefit of Mummies and Daddies with enough spare cash to use Derbyshire House as a social services department? Maybe their lives would be a little bit better if the middle classes had to opt back into real life and use their influence to improve things. I can’t be anything but totally opposed to this system you cheerfully shore up. And don’t give me those spurious arguments about equal opportunities. In the context of this society, what you’re talking about isn’t an extension of equality; it’s an extension of inequality. Don’t try to quiet my conscience like that.
“Nevertheless . . . I’ve had to come to the reluctant conclusion that I can’t stab you in the back having accepted your hospitality. Shades of the Glencoe massacre, eh? Don’t expect me to be uncritically sycophantic. But I won’t be doctrinaire either. Besides, I need the money!”
Paddy smiled. “I should have known better than to worry about you,” she said.
“You should, really,” Lindsay reproached her. “Now, am I going to see this monument to the privileged society or not?”
They walked back to the Land Rover, relaxed together, catching up on the four months since they had last seen each other. On the short drive from Buxton to Axe Edge, where Derbyshire House dominated a fold of moorland, Paddy gave Lindsay a more detailed account of the weekend plans.
“We decided to start off the fund-raising with a bang. We’ve done the usu
al things, like writing to all the old girls asking for contributions, but we know we’ll need a bit of extra push. After all, most of our old girls are the wives and mothers brigade who don’t exactly have wads of spare cash at their disposal. And we’ve got less than six months to raise the money.”
“But surely you must have known the lease was coming up for renewal?”
“Oh, we did, and we budgeted for it. But then James Cartwright, a local builder and developer, put in a bid for the lease that was £50,000 more than we were going to have to pay. He wants to build time-share holiday flats with a leisure complex. It’s an ideal site for him, right in the smartest part of Buxton. And one of the few decent sites where he’d still be able to get planning permission. The agents obviously had to look favorably on an offer as good as that. So our headmistress, Pamela Overton, got the governors mobilized and we came up with a deal. If we can raise the cash to match that £50,000 in six months, we get the lease, even if Cartwright ups his offer.”
Lindsay smiled wryly. “Amazing what influence can do.”
Although Paddy was watching the road, Lindsay’s tone of voice was not lost on her. “It’s been bloody hard to get this far,” she complained mildly. “The situation’s complicated by the fact that Cartwright’s daughter is one of our sixth-formers. And in my house, too. Anyway, we’re all going flat out to get the money, and that’s what the weekend’s all about.”
“Which is where I come in, yes?”
“You’re our bid to get into the right section of the public consciousness. You’re going to tell them all about our wonderful enterprise, how we’re getting in gear, and some benevolent millionaire is going to come along and write us a check. Okay?”
Lindsay grinned broadly. “Okay, yah!” she teased. “So what exactly is going to happen? So far you seem to have avoided supplying me with any actual information.”
“Tomorrow morning we’re having a craft fair, which will carry over into the afternoon. All the girls have contributed their own work as well as begging and scrounging from friends and relations. Then, in the afternoon, the sixth form are presenting a new one-act play written especially for them by Cordelia Brown. She’s an old girl of my vintage. Finally, there will be an auction of modern autographed first editions, which Cordelia and I and one or two other people have put together. We’ve got almost a hundred books.”