Common Murder

by Val McDermid

  At about midday, Deborah came looking for her. Leaving Cara and three other children in the van with Josy, one of the other mothers living at the camp, they joined the steady surge of women making for the main gate. About forty women were gathered round. A group of half a dozen marched boldly up to the sentry boxes on either side of the gate and started to unwind the balls of wool they carried with them. They wove the wool around the impassive soldiers and their sentry boxes, swiftly creating a complex web. Other women moved to the gates themselves and began to weave wool strands in and out of the heavy steel mesh to seal them shut. Deborah climbed on top of a large concrete litter bin just outside the gates and hauled Lindsay up beside her. Together they started to sing one of the songs that had grown up with the camp and soon all the women had joined in.

  Inside the camp the RAF police and behind them the USAF guards came running toward the gate. On the women’s side, civil police started to appear at the trot to augment the pair permanently on duty at the main gate. The film crew were busy recording it all.

  It looked utterly chaotic. Then one of the women let out an excited whoop and pointed to the silos. There, silhouetted against the gray March sky, women could be seen dancing and waving. Alerted by her cries, the film crew ran off round the perimeter fence, filming all the while. Inside the wire, the military turned and raced across the scrubby grass to the bunkers constructed to house the coming missiles.

  Outside the base the women calmly dispersed, to the frustration of the police who were just getting into the swing of making arrests. Lindsay, feeling as high as if she’d just smoked a couple of joints, jumped down from the litter bin and swung Deborah down into her arms. Like the other women around them they hugged each other and jumped around on the spot, then they bounced away from the fence and back toward the main road. A tall man stood at the end of the camp road. On the end of a lead was a fox-terrier. A sneer of scorn spoiled his newly healed features.

  “Enjoy yourself while you can, Miss Patterson. It won’t be long before I have you put some place where there won’t be much to rejoice over.” His threat uttered, Crabtree marched on down the main road away from the camp. Lindsay looked in dismay at Deborah’s stunned face.

  “Sadistic bastard. He can’t resist having a go every time he sees me,” said Deborah. “He seems to go out of his way to engineer these little encounters. But I’m not going to let him get the better of me. Not on a day like today.”

  4

  The women had gathered in the big bender that they used for meeting and talking as a group. Lindsay still couldn’t get used to the way they struggled to avoid hierarchies by refusing to run their meetings according to traditional structures. Instead, they sat in a big circle and each spoke in turn, supposedly without interruption. The euphoria of the day’s action was tangible. The film crew were still around, and not even the news that the dozen women who had made it to the silos had been charged with criminal damage and trespass could diminish the high that had infected everyone.

  But there was a change in attitude since Lindsay had first encountered the peace women. It was noticeable that far more women were advocating stronger and more direct action against what they perceived as the forces of evil. She could see that Jane and several other women who’d been with the camp for a long time were having a struggle to impress upon others like the headstrong Nicky the need to keep all action nonviolent and to minimize the criminal element in what they did. Eventually, the meeting was adjourned without a decision till the following afternoon.

  The rest of the day passed quickly for Lindsay who spent her time walking the perimeter fence and picking up on her new friendships with women like Jackie. Lindsay appreciated the different perspectives the women gave her on life in Thatcher’s Britain. It was a valuable contrast with the cynical world of newspapers and the comfortably well-off life she shared with Cordelia. Jackie and her lover Willow, both from Birmingham, explained to Lindsay for the first time how good they felt at the camp because there was none of the constant pressure of racial prejudice that had made it so difficult for them to make anything of their lives at home. By the time Lindsay had eaten dinner with Cara and Deborah, she knew she had made a firm decision to stay. By unspoken consent, Deborah took Cara off to spend the rest of the night with her best friend Christy in the bender she shared with her mother Josy. When she returned, she found Lindsay curled up in a corner with a tumbler of whisky.

  “Help yourself,” said Lindsay.

  Deborah sensed the tension in Lindsay. Carefully she poured herself a small drink from the bottle on the table and sat down beside her. She placed a cautious hand on her thigh. “I’m really glad to be with you again,” she said quietly. “It’s been a long time since we had the chance to talk.”

  Lindsay took a gulp of whisky and lit a cigarette. “I can’t sleep with you,” she burst out. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Deborah hadn’t forgotten the knowledge of Lindsay that six hectic months had given her. She smiled. “You haven’t changed, have you? What makes you think I wanted to jump into bed with you again?” Her voice was teasing. “That old arrogance hasn’t deserted you.”

  Outrage chased incredulity across Lindsay’s face. Then her sense of humor caught up with her and she smiled. “Touché. You never did let me get away with anything, did you?”

  “Too bloody true I didn’t. Give you an inch and you were always halfway to the next town. Listen, I didn’t expect a night of mad, passionate lovemaking. I know your relationship with Cordelia is the big thing in your life. Just as Cara is the most important thing in my life now. I don’t take risks with that, and I don’t expect you to take risks with your life either.”

  Lindsay looked sheepish. “I really wanted to make love with you. I thought it would help me sort out my feelings. But when you took Cara off, I suddenly felt that I was contemplating something dishonest. You know? Something that devalued what there is between you and me.”

  Deborah put her arm round Lindsay’s tense shoulders. “You mean, you’d have been using me to prove something to yourself about you and Cordelia?”

  “Something like that. I guess I just feel confused about what’s happening between me and her. It started off so well—she made me feel so special. I was happy as a pig. Okay, it was frustrating that I was living in Glasgow and she was in London. But there wasn’t a week when we didn’t spend at least two nights together, often more, once I’d got a job sorted out.

  “We seemed to have so much in common—we liked going to the same films, loved the theatre, liked the same books, all that stuff. She even started coming hill-walking with me, though I drew the line at going jogging with her. But it was all those things that kind of underpinned the fact that I was crazy about her and the sex was just amazing.

  “Then I moved to London and it seemed like everything changed. I realized how much of her life I just hadn’t been a part of. All the time she spent alone in London was filled with people I’ve got the square root of sod all in common with. They patronize the hell out of me because they think that being a tabloid hack is the lowest form of pond life.

  “They treat me like I’m some brainless bimbo that Cordelia has picked up. And Cordelia just tells me to ignore it, they don’t count. Yet she still spends great chunks of her time with them. She doesn’t enjoy being with the people I work with, so she just opts out of anything I’ve got arranged with other hacks. And the few friends I’ve got outside the business go back to Oxford days; they go down well with Cordelia and her crowd, but I want more of my life than that. And it never seems the right time to talk about it.

  “About once a fortnight at the moment I seriously feel like packing my bags and moving out. Then I remember all the good things about her and stay.”

  Lindsay stopped abruptly and leaned over to refill her glass. She took another long drink and shivered as the spirit hit her. Deborah slowly massaged the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. “Poor Lin,” she said. “You do fe
el hard done by, don’t you? You never did understand how compromise can be a show of strength, did you?”

  Lindsay frowned. “It’s not that. It just seems like me that’s made all the compromises—or sacrifices, more like.”

  “But she has too. Suddenly, after years of living alone, doing the one job where you really need your own space, she’s got this iconoclast driving a coach and horses through her routines, coming in at all hours of the day and night, thanks to her wonderful shift patterns, and hating the people she has to be nice to in order to keep a nice high profile in the literary world. It can’t be exactly easy for her either. It seems to me that she’s got the right idea—she’s doing what she needs to keep herself together.”

  Lindsay looked hurt. “I never thought I’d hear you taking Cordelia’s side.”

  “I’m not taking sides. And that reaction says it all, Lin,” Deborah said, a note of sharpness creeping into her voice. “I’m trying to make you see things from her side. Listen, I saw you when the two of you had only been together six months, and I saw you looking happier than I’d ever seen you. I love you like a sister, Lin, and I want to see you with that glow back. You’re not going to get it by whingeing about Cordelia. Talk to her about it. At least you’re still communicating in bed—build on that, for starters. Stop expecting her to be psychic. If she loves you, she won’t throw you out just because you tell her you’re not getting what you need from her.”

  Lindsay sighed. “Easier said than done.”

  “I know that. But you’ve got to try. It’s obviously not too late. If you were diving into bed with me to prove you still have enough autonomy to do it, I’d say you were in deep shit. But at least you’re not that far down the road. Now, come on, drink up and let’s get to bed. You can have Cara’s bunk if you can’t cope with sharing a bed with me and keeping your hands to yourself.”

  “Now who’s being arrogant?”

  Lindsay stood by the kettle waiting for it to boil, gazing at Deborah who lay languidly in a shaft of morning sunlight staring into the middle distance. After a night’s sleep, the clarity she had felt after the conversation with Deborah had grown fuzzy round the edges. But she knew deep down she wanted to put things right between her and Cordelia, and Deborah had helped her feel that was a possibility.

  She made the coffee, and brought it over to Deborah. Lindsay sat on the top of the bed and put her arms round her friend. Lindsay felt at peace for the first time in months. “If things go wrong when it comes to court, I’d like to take care of Cara, if you’ll let me,” she murmured.

  Deborah drew back, still holding Lindsay’s shoulders. “But how could you manage that? With work and Cordelia and everything?”

  “We’ve got a crèche for newspaper workers’ kids from nine till six every day. I can swap most of my shifts round to be on days and I’m damn sure Cordelia will help if I need her to.”

  Deborah shook her head disbelievingly. “Lindsay, you’re incredible. Sometimes I think you just don’t listen to the words that come out of your mouth. Last night, you were busily angsting about how to get your relationship with Cordelia back on an even keel. Now today you’re calmly talking about dumping your ex-lover’s child on her. What a recipe for disaster that would be! Look, it’s lovely of you to offer, and I know she’d be happy with you, but I hope that won’t be necessary. We’ll look at the possibilities nearer the time and I’ll keep it in mind. What counts is what’s going to be best for her. Now, let’s go and get Cara, eh? She’ll be wondering where I am.” They found Cara with Jane, and after a bread and cheese lunch the four of them went for a walk along the perimeter fence. Lindsay and Cara played tig and hide-and-seek among the trees while Jane and Deborah walked slowly behind, wrangling about the business of peace and the problems of living at Brownlow.

  They made their way back to the camp, where the adults settled down in the meeting bender for a long session. Three hours later, it had been agreed that the women charged the day before should, if they were willing, opt for prison for the sake of publicity and that a picket should be set up at the gate of Holloway in their support. Jane offered to organize the picket. Lindsay thought gratefully that at least that way her friend could make a small escape without offending her conscience. It had been a stormy meeting and Lindsay was glad when it was over. Even though she had by now experienced many of these talking-shops, she never failed to become slightly disillusioned at the destructive way women could fight against each other in spite of their common cause.

  Deborah went off to collect Cara and put her to bed and Lindsay joined Willow and Jackie and their friends in their bender. There were a couple of guitars and soon the women were singing an assortment of peace songs, love songs, and nostalgic pop hits. Deborah joined them and they sat close. Lindsay felt she couldn’t bear to wrench herself away from the sisterhood she felt round her. Sentimental fool, she thought to herself as she joined in the chorus of “I Only Want To Be With You.”

  Just after ten the jam session began to break up. Most of the women left for their own benders. Lindsay and Deborah followed. “I’m going to have a word with Jane about the Holloway picket,” said Lindsay. “You coming?”

  “No, I’ll see you at the van.”

  “Okay, I’ll not be long.”

  Deborah vanished into the darkness beyond the ring of benders to where the van was parked near the road. Lindsay headed for Jane’s makeshift surgery and found the harassed doctor sorting through a cardboard box of pharmaceutical samples that a sympathetic GP had dropped off that evening. She stopped at once, pleased to see Lindsay in spite of her tiredness, and began to explain the picket plans. Although Lindsay was itching to get back to Deborah, it was after eleven when she finally set off to walk the fifty yards to the van.

  The first thing that caught her eye as she moved beyond the polythene tents was bright lights. Now that the army had cleared the ground round the perimeter fence, it was possible to see the temporary arc lights from quite a distance. That in itself wasn’t extraordinary as workmen occasionally sneaked in a night shift to avoid the picketing women.

  She stopped dead as she caught sight of three figures approaching the camp, silhouetted against the dim glow from the barracks inside the fence. Two were uniformed policemen, no prizes for spotting that. The third was a tall, blond man she had noticed in the area a couple of times before. Her journalistic instinct had put him down as Special Branch. She was gratified to find that instinct vindicated. She glanced around, but the only other women in sight were far off by a campfire. Most of them had already gone to bed.

  Lindsay had no idea what was going on, but she wanted to find out. The best way to do that was to stay out of sight, watch, and listen. She crouched down against the bender nearest her and slowly worked her way round the encampment, trying to outflank the trio who were between her and the lights. When she reached the outer ring of tents, she squatted close to the ground while the three men passed her and headed for Jane’s bender with its distinctive red cross. Lindsay straightened up and headed for the lights, keeping close to the fringes of woodland that surrounded the base. As she neared the lights, she was able to pick out details. There were a couple of police Landrovers pulled up on the edge of the wood. Near by, illuminated by their headlamps and the arc lights, were a cluster of green canvas screens. Beyond the Landrovers were three unremarkable saloon cars. A handful of uniformed officers stood around. Several people in civilian clothes moved about the scene, vanishing behind the screens from time to time.

  Lindsay moved out of the shelter of the trees and approached the activity. She had only gone a few yards when two uniformed constables moved to cut off her progress. Her hand automatically moved to her hip pocket and she pulled out the laminated yellow Press Card which in theory granted her their cooperation. She flashed it at the young policemen and made to put it away.

  “Just a minute, miss,” said one of them. “Let’s have a closer look if you don’t mind.”

  Reluctantly, she han
ded the card over. He scrutinized it carefully; then he showed it to his colleague who looked her up and down, noting her expensive Barbour jacket, corduroy trousers, and muddy walking boots. He nodded and said, “Looks okay to me.”

  “I’m here writing a feature about the camp,” she said. “When I saw the lights, I thought something might be doing. What’s the score?”

  The first constable smiled. “Sorry to be so suspicious. We get all sorts here, you know. You want to know what’s happening, you best see the superintendent. He’s over by the Landrover nearest to us. I’ll take you across in a minute, when he’s finished talking to the bloke who found the body.”

  “Body?” Lindsay demanded anxiously. “What is it? Accident, murder? And who’s dead?

  “That’s for the super to say,” the policeman replied. “But it doesn’t look much like an accident at this stage.”

  Lindsay looked around her, taking it all in. The scene of the murder was like a three-ring circus. The outer ring took the form of the five vehicles and a thinly scattered cordon of uniformed police constables. Over by one of the Landrovers, a policewoman dispensed tea from a vacuum flask to a nervous-looking man talking to the uniformed superintendent whom Lindsay recognized from the demonstration outside the police station. She crossed her fingers and hoped the victim was no one from the camp.

  The temporary arc lights the police had rigged up gave the scene the air of a film set, an impression exaggerated by the situation, part of a clear strip about fifteen yards wide between a high-chain link fence and a belt of scrubby woodland. It was far enough from any gates to be free of peace campers. The lamps shone down on the second ring, a shield of tall canvas screens hastily erected to protect the body from view. Round the screen, scene-of-crime officers buzzed in and out, communicating in their own form of macabre shorthand.