by Val McDermid
“Police have gone home for the night, leaving the statutory constable to repel boarders, journos, and ghouls. No arrest has been made. No one has been held for questioning. They have been taking statements all day and as yet are not in a position to make any comment. Several parents are arriving tomorrow to remove offspring. James Cartwright is unavailable for comment. The body has been removed and the music room sealed. The funeral will be on Thursday in London, with a memorial service to be arranged. Cause of death thought to be asphyxiation. Or whatever it is when you are garroted. End message,” Lindsay rattled off.
“Looks as though you’ve had a busy day.”
“You’re not wrong. What about you?”
“I had a brief chat with the charming Inspector Dart who doesn’t seem terribly interested in me except in so far as I seem to provide an end point in his timetable. He seems to think she was dead by then. Since which time, I have been sitting around reading Trollope and avoiding human contact like the plague, apart from dear Paddy who looks more harrassed with every hour that passes. She’s at a staff meeting just now, they’re all wondering what the hell to do next. I just wish the bloody police would get a move on and arrest the bloody murderer,” said Cordelia, trying unsuccessfully to force some lightness into her voice.
“Are you leaving tomorrow?”
“I should really. I’m supposed to have lunch with my agent, and I’ve already put her off once. I’m torn, I must admit, between hanging on to see if I can be of any help and wanting to put as much distance as possible between me and the school. I expect I’ll go, though. Good agents are hard to find! What about you? Heading back tomorrow?”
Lindsay shrugged. “I’m aiming to get a train about three at the latest, so I can be back in Glasgow at a decent time of night. Then I’m going to get well pissed in my local. Put all of this out of my mind.”
“You seem to be doing that rather well anyway,” Cordelia commented drily.
“What do you mean?” asked Lindsay indignantly.
“Well, I couldn’t have sat on the end of a phone all day rattling off sensational stories about Lorna’s murder. I don’t know how you can be so cool about it.”
Lindsay shook her head, disappointed. “It’s the job I do. I’ve been trained to forget my feelings and do the business. And I do it very well. Don’t think I’ve enjoyed today.”
“That’s exactly what I do think. You came in here like you were coming off a high. Like you’d got a real buzz from doing the business, as you call it. I find that very strange, quite honestly.”
The remark stung Lindsay, who was not about to admit its truth. She took a deep breath and said angrily, “Look, Cordelia, at the end of the day, I have to make a living. Lorna’s murder cost me money, to be brutal about it. The feature I was supposed to write would have cleared me £150. Now, I’ve got to earn myself at least that this weekend, otherwise things start happening in my life that don’t appeal to me. Like the phone gets cut off. Like I can’t afford to have the car exhaust repaired so I can’t work. I didn’t know Lorna, so I’m not personally devastated by her death. By doing what I’m doing, I do myself the favor of earning a bit. I’m also doing the school a favor. Make no mistake about it, whether I supply the raw copy or not, all the papers are going to have their sensational stories. But at least this way, we know they’re getting accurate copy to start with. And if they get it wrong, well, Pamela Overton knows who to blame and where to find me.
“It’s easy to criticize the job I do, but most people never have to make the moral decisions I take as a way of life. And whatever they may think, few of them would make a better job of it than me. I could have a go at you about the antifeminist slant of your telly scripts. But that’s none of my business because I don’t know the pressures on you. Until you understand the pressures on me, don’t knock me.”
Cordelia looked stunned by the onslaught. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about it,” she said huffily. Conversation died there. They both pretended to watch television, each reluctant to bridge the gap and swallow her pride. Eventually Lindsay rose and poured a drink. “I’m taking this up to bed with me,” she announced. “I feel like flopping with a good book and trying to forget the day I’ve had.”
“Okay. Listen, Lindsay—I may not get much chance to talk to you tomorrow because I’ll probably be off about nine. I haven’t forgotten that meal I promised you. So when are you likely to be in London next?”
Lindsay shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve no firm plans. It’s hard for me to take a weekend off because Sundays especially are good days for me and I can’t really afford to turn down work at the moment. But I’d like to come down soon and see some magazine editors—I give myself till the end of the month to get organized. That’ll probably be in the middle of the week.”
“That’s no problem for me. I can easily arrange my work schedule to fit round your visit. Do you have somewhere to stay?”
“I’ve got friends in Kentish Town I usually stay with.”
“Well, if you’re stuck, you’re welcome to stop over at my place. I’ve got plenty of room and it’s good to have company.”
“Thanks,” Lindsay said shyly. “I might take you up on that.” There was an awkward pause. “Well. Goodnight, Cordelia.”
“Goodnight. Sleep well.”
In the morning, Lindsay again breakfasted with Pamela Overton. She was nervous about the encounter, having risen early and made a trip into Buxton in Paddy’s Land Rover to pick up a full set of the morning papers. Most of the tabloids, being a little short on alternative tales of shocking horror, had gone to town on Death at Derbyshire House. But Lindsay was put at her ease at once by Pamela Overton’s praise for her efficient and unobtrusive work.
“I can’t pretend that I particularly enjoyed the sensational aspect given to the story by most of the newspapers,” she remarked, “but I do realize how much more difficult things would have been for us if we had had to deal with a whole battery of reporters. As it is, we have managed to keep them all out of the school, thanks to the joint efforts of yourself and the police, and have retained some measure of control over the stories that have appeared. I am only sorry that you can’t stay longer to defend us, but Miss Callaghan has explained the position to me, and I do realize that you have commitments you must stick to. I want to say again how grateful we are, and if ever I can be of any help to you, don’t hesitate to let me know.”
Lindsay went on to ask about the future of the school and the playing fields fund. The headmistress looked troubled for the first time since Saturday’s horrors.
“I am very much afraid that we’ll have to give up the idea of saving the playing fields—and concentrate instead on saving the school. Already, seventeen girls are being withdrawn, and I fully expect more to follow. One can scarcely blame the parents. I hope the police will deal swiftly with this business so we can reassure parents that their girls are in safe hands. I care about this school, Miss Gordon. I very much hope that we shall not be destroyed by what has happened.”
Lindsay felt the strength of the other woman’s determination, and it stayed at the back of her mind as more than just an angle for the news story of the day while she went for a walk on the ridge that Monday morning. She looked down on the privileged panorama of Derbyshire House Girls’ School and resented the fact that Pamela Overton had infected her with her determination. She knew that whether she liked it or not, she, too, was in some degree involved with the school. She realized that in spite of herself she cared what happened to it.
8
Few assignments appealed less to Lindsay than royal visits. To be stuck with the rest of the pack, trailing behind some lesser scion of a monarchy she despised, festooned with badges of different colors to tell the security guards where one could and couldn’t go, was not her idea of a good day’s work. And as a common freelance she could not even complain as bitterly as the rest of the press were doing, for she was glad of a day’s work, tedious though it might be
. And on that Tuesday, tedious it certainly was, particularly after the excitements of her weekend in Derbyshire. A children’s hospital, an art exhibition, and a new youth club on a housing estate had all been superficially visited and the correct rituals observed. The photographers had taken their pictures, the reporters had scrambled their words together, everyone had kept in their rightful places. So, as she stood watching the royal jet take off through the rain in the late afternoon, Lindsay felt an enormous sense of relief. Another day, another dollar.
She said goodbye to her photographer and found a phone. It was after five by the time she had finished dictating copy, but she was nevertheless surprised when the news-desk told her not to bother coming into the office for the last couple of hours of her shift and to call it a day. “See you tomorrow, then,” she said, quickly putting down the phone before they could change their minds. There was a spring in her step as she walked over to the car park and climbed into her MG. Being in love made a difference, she thought wryly. Even with a possible murderer.
Twenty minutes later she was unlocking the front door of her top-floor tenement flat. She sighed with pleasure as she closed the door behind her. There was something on the answering machine, she noticed, but she ignored it, went through to the living-room, and poured herself a generous whisky. She took her glass over to the window, sat down, and lit a cigarette as she gazed over the trees to the distant university tower which stabbed the skyline to her left. She always relished returning to her eyrie, and loved the view that had nothing to do with the Glasgow of popular mythology; that hard, mean city composed of razor gangs and high-rise slums was not the city that most Glaswegians recognized as their home. Sure, there were bits of the city that were barely civilized. But for most people Glasgow now was a good place to live, a place with its own humor, its own pride.
After a while, she got to her feet with a sigh and went back through to the hall to listen to her messages. She switched the machine to playback and rewound the tape. The voices came through. “This is Bill Grenville at the Sunday Tribune. Can you do the eleven o’clock shift for me on Saturday? Ring and let me know as soon as possible.” Bleep. “Lindsay, Mary here. Fancy a pint tonight to get the royal dust out of your throat? I’ll be in the bar about nine.” Bleep. “This is Cordelia Brown. I’m catching the six o’clock shuttle. Meet me at Glasgow Airport about quarter to seven. If you’re not there, I’ll wait in the bar.”
“Hellfire!” Lindsay exclaimed. “It’s five past six now. What the bloody hell is she up to?” There was no time to shower, but it took only five minutes to change from her working uniform of skirt, shirt, and jacket into a pair of jeans, a thick cotton shirt, and a clean sweatshirt, and to give her face a quick scrub. Then she was running down the three flights of stairs, shrugging into a sheepskin jacket and into her car again. She had deliberately not allowed herself to wonder what was bringing Cordelia to Glasgow for fear that hope would betray her. To keep her mind off the subject, she turned the car radio on to hear the tail-end of the news. She drove fast down the expressway and over the Kingston Bridge, trying to convince herself that the day’s financial report was truly fascinating. Then, in the middle of the news headlines, she had her second shock of the hour, a shock so acute it caused her to take her foot clean off the accelerator momentarily, to the consternation of the driver behind her, who flashed his lights as he swerved convulsively into the outside lane.
Lindsay could hardly believe that she had heard correctly. But the newsreader’s words were branded on her brain: “Police investigating the brutal murder of cellist Lorna Smith-Couper at a girls’ boarding school at the weekend have today made an arrest. Patricia Gregory Callaghan, aged 32, a housemistress at the school, has been charged with murder and will appear before High Peak magistrates tomorrow morning.” Now she understood why Cordelia had jumped on the first plane to Glasgow. Lindsay threw the car round the bend in the airport approach road and parked illegally outside the main entrance, grateful for the royal visit sticker which still adorned her windscreen.
The arrival of Cordelia’s flight was being announced as she ran up the escalator. She resisted the temptation to slip into the bar for a quick drink and headed for the Domestic Arrivals gate. She could see the first passengers in the distance as they walked up the long approach to the main concourse. They were only about twenty yards away when she spotted Cordelia. Then Cordelia was through the gate; without pause for thought, the two fell into each other’s arms and held on tight.
“You’ve heard, then?” asked Cordelia.
“Yes. Only just now, on the radio in the car.”
“I thought you would have heard at work.”
“No, I’ve been out on the road all day. Look, we can’t talk here. Let’s go back to my flat.”
Lindsay picked up the leather holdall which Cordelia had dropped when they met and led the way back to the car. Cordelia was silent till they were roaring back down the motorway. Then she said, “I’m not just here off my own bat. I did want to come up to see you because I know you love Paddy as much as I do, but I wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it without being prodded. Pamela Overton rang me not long after the police took Paddy away. She wanted to enlist your help, and mine, in trying to find out what really happened. Can you believe it? She put it perfectly, though—just enough flattery to pull it off. ‘With Miss Gordon’s talent for investigative journalism and your novelist’s understanding of human psychology, you might be able to ensure there is no miscarriage of justice.’ You see, she knows Paddy couldn’t have done it.”
“She’s got a way of making people do things, hasn’t she? I can’t imagine why she thinks we’ll be able to succeed where the police have made an absolute cock-up,” said Lindsay. She was focusing on the road ahead and talking about Pamela Overton, but her thoughts were on Cordelia and the nagging fear at the back of her mind.
“I suppose she thinks that our personal interest in Paddy will make us that bit sharper,” Cordelia replied. There was silence as they swung off the motorway on to the Dumbarton road. Lindsay pulled up alongside an Indian grocer’s. The street was as busy as midday, with people shopping, gossiping, and hurrying by to keep out the cold of the raw autumn weather.
“Won’t be a tick,” she promised, hurrying into the shop. She returned a few minutes later, clutching a cooked chicken, some onions, mushrooms, and natural yogurt. “Dinner,” she muttered as she drove off again.
Lindsay pulled up outside her flat. “But this is beautiful,” Cordelia exclaimed. “I didn’t know Glasgow was like this!” She gestured in the sodium-lit darkness at the crescent of trees outside Lindsay’s door, at the Botanic Gardens and the River Kelvin beyond, at the newly sandblasted yellow sandstone tenements elegant under their dramatic lighting.
“Most people don’t,” Lindsay replied defensively as she led the way upstairs. “We’ve also got eighteen parks, some of the finest art collections in the world, terrific architecture, and Tennents lager. It’s not all high-rise flats, gap sites, and vandals. But don’t get me started on my hobby horse. Come on in and have a drink and something to eat.”
Lindsay lit the gas fire in the living-room and poured them both a drink. She said, “Now, come through to the kitchen with me while I get some dinner together and tell me exactly what you know.”
As Lindsay put together a quick chicken curry, Cordelia spoke, pacing up and down the kitchen floor. “The first I knew about it was when the phone rang this afternoon. It was Paddy. She used her one permitted phone call to ring me because she knows I have a good solicitor and she wanted either her or someone local recommended by her. She wasn’t able to tell me much except that she’d been arrested and charged, and that somehow the police had found out she had some sort of motive.
“So I called my solicitor, who put me on to a firm in Manchester, who got someone out there right away. It’s a very bright-sounding young woman called Gillian Markham who specializes in criminal work. I’d just got all that organized, plus phoning Pa
ddy’s parents to break the bad news, when Pamela Overton rang.
“She told me they’d had Paddy in for questioning for most of last night. Obviously, she doesn’t know all the details of why they’ve arrested Paddy, but she did tell me this much. You see, no one saw or heard anything of Lorna after Paddy had left her. And now they’ve got a couple of other bits of evidence, which, as far as they’re concerned, tie the murder to Paddy. They have statements from several people, saying Paddy was hanging around in the music department for ages for no apparent reason. And the toggle on the garrote comes from Paddy’s own duffel coat. It normally hangs in the cloakroom just outside her rooms.”
“How can they be sure?”
“It’s got special horn toggles, not ordinary wooden ones.”
“Oh God, they’ve tied her up well and truly, haven’t they? It’s all circumstantial and I doubt if they’d get a conviction before a jury if that’s all they’ve got. But it hangs together, especially since, from what you said about motive, they obviously know all about the drugs business,” said Lindsay, slicing onions savagely.
“What drugs business?” Cordelia interrupted, bewildered.
“Paddy’s supposed motive. I thought from what you said that you knew all about it,” Lindsay replied, and proceeded to tell Cordelia the depressing tale. As she led the way back to the living room, she added, “So what are we going to do? How do we go about making this mess any less chaotic?”
They sat down. Cordelia stretched out on the faded chintz sofa and looked appraisingly round her at the spacious, high-ceilinged room. Lindsay had painted the walls chocolate brown, with cream woodwork, picture rail, and ceiling. The room was big enough, with its huge bay window, to stand it. On the walls were Lindsay’s black and white photographs of buildings and street scenes in Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow, and London. Book cases stretched the length of one wall; along another was a massive carved oak sideboard, which Lindsay had inherited when she bought the flat and which she feared she would have to leave behind if she ever left as it was so enormous. There was a stereo which Lindsay had built into a series of cupboards under the bay window, with shelves for records and cassettes alongside. She said, “I like this room. But it seems very heartless of me to be relaxing here while Paddy languishes in some spartan bloody cell. How could they be so stupid? Any fool can see that Paddy couldn’t hurt a fly. She might demolish people verbally, but violence is something she’d simply find beneath that dignity of hers. Not her style at all.”