Conferences are Murder

by Val McDermid

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Also by Val McDermid

  Title Page

  NOTE TO READERS

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE - Blackpool, April 1984

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  PART TWO - Sheffield, April 1993

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  EPILOGUE

  V. L. McDermid

  Copyright Page

  Praise for V. L. McDermid

  “One of my favorite authors, Val McDermid is an important writer—witty, never sentimental, taking us through mean streets with the dexterity of a Chandler.” Sara Paretsky

  “If you haven’t discovered this award-winning trailblazer in lesbian detective fiction you’re missing out on a good one.”

  Katherine V. Forrest

  “There is no one in contemporary crime fiction who has managed to combine the visceral and the humane as well as Val McDermid . . . . She’s the best we’ve got.”

  The New York Times Book Review

  “Val McDermid is one of the bright lights of the mystery field.”

  The Washington Post

  “McDermid’s a skillful writer—comparisons with such American novelists as Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton are appropriate.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “Lindsay Gordon has got a heart of gold and a nose for trouble.”

  Randye Lordon

  “Lindsay Gordon is smart, tenacious, daring, lusty, loyal, and class-conscious to the bone.” Barbara Neely

  Also by Val McDermid

  The Grave Tattoo

  Stranded

  The Distant Echo

  Killing the Shadows

  A Place of Execution

  Lindsay Gordon novels

  Report for Murder

  Common Murder

  Deadline for Murder

  Conferences are Murder

  Booked for Murder

  Hostage to Murder

  Kate Brannigan novels

  Star Struck

  Blue Genes

  Clean Break

  Crack Down

  Kick Back

  Dead Beat

  Tony Hill and Carol Jordon novels

  The Mermaids Singing

  The Wire in the Blood

  The Last Temptation

  The Torment of Others

  Non-fiction

  A Suitable Job for a Woman

  NOTE TO READERS

  For the best part of a decade, I was an active member of the National Union of Journalists, holding a variety of posts at local and national level. During that time, I was elected as one of Manchester’s representatives for several Annual Delegate Meetings. My experiences in the union provided me with the knowledge that underpins this book. But I should emphasize that neither the events nor the characters in Conferences are Murder are even remotely based in fact. The truth is that, just as thousands of delegates to union conferences have told their spouses, we spent our time in earnest debate, working tirelessly to improve the lot of our members. If we looked worn out by the time we returned home, it was simply because of the energy we had expended in passionate argument. Would I lie to you?

  On a more serious note, I’d like to thank the many fellow trade unionists who became friends over those years for their help, conscious and unconscious, in the preparation of this book. These include Sue Jackson and Kerttu Kinsler, Diana Muir, Scarlett MccGwire, Gina Weissand, Malcolm Pain, Eugenie Verney, Nancy Jaeger, Pauline Norris, Sally Gilbert, Colin Bourne, Tim Gopsill and Dick Oliver. Most of all, I want to thank BB, who gave me inspiration when I needed it most.

  Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely in the mind of the reader.

  For BB:

  Good things come to she who waits

  PROLOGUE

  Mid-Atlantic, April 1993

  “I could murder some proper orange juice,” Lindsay Gordon grumbled, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the plastic cup of juice on her airline breakfast tray. She sipped suspiciously. It managed to be both sharp and sickly at the same time. “You know, something that tastes like it once met an orange. This stuff hasn’t even been shown a photograph.”

  “You’d better get used to it,” Sophie Hartley said, peeling the lid back from her own cup and knocking back the liquid. She winced. “Not that it’ll be easy. Think you can survive two weeks without freshly squeezed juice?”

  Lindsay shrugged. “Who knows? If it was only the juice . . .”

  Sophie snorted. “Hark at it. This is the woman whose idea of healthy eating used to be adding a tin of baked beans to bacon, sausage, egg and chips. Listen, Gordon, you can’t come the California health freak with me. I can remember when the nearest thing to fruit juice in your flat was elderberry wine.”

  “Huh,” Lindsay grunted. “Don’t get superior with me just because you used to eat your vegetables raw even though you could afford the gas bill. Anyway, I’m not a California health freak. It would take more than a bunch of New Age born-again hippies to change Lindsay Gordon, let me tell you. First thing I’m going to do when I get off this plane is head for a chip shop and get tore in to a fish supper.”

  Sophie shook her head, smiling. “You can’t fool me, Gordon. Three years in California and you’re working out, eating salad twice a day, swallowing vitamins like Smarties, even wearing jumpers made from reclaimed wool. You’re a California girl now, like it or not.”

  Lindsay shuddered. “Rubbish. The odd jog up the beach, that’s all, and I was doing that long before America.”

  Sophie grinned affectionately at her lover, and wisely held her peace.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now commencing our descent into Glasgow Airport. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. Please extinguish all smoking materials . . .”

  “Looking forward to it?”

  Lindsay shrugged. “Yes and no. I’ve been out of the game a long time. I’m not sure I even know what the issues are for trade unionists in the UK any longer.”

  Sophie squeezed her hand. “It’ll be just fine.”

  Lindsay smiled. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that to you, Dr. Hartley? You’re the one delivering a keynote paper at an international conference.”

  “Play your cards right at this media conference, and you’ll be a doctor soon too. Pick the right brains for your thesis, and they’ll be begging you to accept a Ph.D.”

  Lindsay pulled a face. “I’m not so sure. I’m not even sure I’ve still got the old interview techniques. Teaching journalism’s a long way away from practising it.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Sophie assured her. “You’ll soon adapt to being back in the old routine. After all, you’ll be among friends.”

  Lindsay gave a shout of laughter that turned heads three rows away. “Among friends? At a union conference? Soph, I’d feel safer in the lion’s cage half an hour before feeding time. One thing I’ll never be able to forget is the aggro level of Journalists’ Union conferences. You’d think we were arguing over life and death, not politics. I can’t imagine that amalgamating with the broadcasting and printing unions has made the atmosphere any friendlier. It’s not culture shock I’m afraid of—it’s being trapped in a time warp.”

  PART ONE
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  Blackpool, April 1984

  1

  “Delegates are discouraged from travelling to conference by private car, and mileage expenses will only be paid in extraordinary circumstances. This is because, firstly, the union has negotiated a bulk-rate discount with British Rail; secondly, there are limited car-parking facilities available at the hotels we are using; and thirdly, the chances are that when driving home on Friday afternoon at the end of conference you will still be over the limit from Thursday night’s excesses. It is not the union’s policy to encourage members to lose their licences due to drink-driving.”

  from “Advice for New Delegates”, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

  “This traffic’s murder,” Ian Ross complained, easing the car forward another couple of feet. “Look at it,” he added, waving his arm at the sea of hot metal that surrounded them.

  Lindsay Gordon did as she was told, for once. In the distance, Blackpool Tower’s iron tracery stood outlined against the skyline like an Eiffel Tower souvenir on a mantelpiece. “Only the Journalists’ Union could organize a conference that involves 400 delegates travelling to the biggest holiday resort in the North of England on Easter Monday,” he remarked caustically. “Bloody Blackpool. It’s taken us an hour to travel six miles. By the time we get to the hotel, the conference will be over and it’ll be time to come home. I bet you wish you’d taken the train, don’t you? You could have been walking along the prom by now, eating candy-floss and wearing a kiss-me-quick hat.” Ian glanced sideways and saw the bleak look on Lindsay’s face. He sighed. “Sorry, love. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve told you. You don’t have to treat me like a piece of porcelain.” An awkward silence filled the car. Lindsay patted Ian’s hand and repeated, “It’s okay.”

  Ian nodded. “Time for The World At One. Shall I stick the radio on?”

  “Sure.” Lindsay leaned back in her seat and tried to let the radio obliterate her thoughts.

  “A hundred arrests are made in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the worst violence of the miners’ strike so far. Police clash with miners outside several collieries, and NUM leader Arthur Scargill accuses officers of intimidation. Anti-apartheid protesters besiege the Home Office after last week’s decision to grant British citizenship to the South African runner Zola Budd. And Senator Gary Hart fights to continue his campaign against Walter Mondale for the Democratic nomination in the US Presidential race.” The announcer’s voice droned on, fleshing out the day’s headlines. But Lindsay’s mind was already miles away.

  It had been a mistake to come. She had been too easily persuaded by Ian. She wasn’t ready for this. It was hard enough coping with the day to day routine of life, a routine that was manageable precisely because it was familiar, because her mind could drift off into free-fall while she gave the appearance of being in touch with what was going on around her. But to plunge into something so strange and challenging as her first national union conference was madness. It had been bad enough just reading about conference. She’d had to give up on the “Advice for New Delegates” booklet half-way through, her head spinning with such bizarre and diverse items as “taking a motion seriatim” and “compositing sessions.” How on earth was she going to wrestle with the real thing with only half her brain functioning?

  Ian had meant well, she knew that. He was a news sub-editor on the tabloid newspaper where Lindsay, at twenty-five, was the most junior staff reporter. When she had started to show an interest in the union, speaking up at the meetings of the Daily Nation’s office chapel, it was Ian who had taken the time to explain to her how their union functioned in national newspapers. He had spent the weary, slow hours of several night-shifts outlining the organization and the internal politics that governed the union far more than the rule book.

  Lindsay, who had learned about socialism and solidarity from her fisherman father as soon as she could grasp the concepts, was bemused by the schisms and hierarchies of what she had naïvely imagined would be an organization unified by a common aim. It didn’t take her long to decide that the entrenched power of the national newspaper chapels generated its own in-built conservatism, and that the real arenas for potential change within the union lay elsewhere. The radical concepts of feminism and genuinely representative democracy that were dear to her were clearly never going to find fertile soil in this sector of the industry. Here traditions had provided the hacks with a comfort zone where they could all be good old boys together, and to hell with troublesome dykes, poofs, women, jungle bunnies and cripples.

  That complacency placed the Daily Nation’s chapel high on Lindsay’s list of institutions in need of a short, sharp shock. But before she could do anything about it, she’d been overtaken by events that had rendered the Journalists’ Union as significant as a speck of dust in a rainstorm. In the weeks that had followed, Ian had tried to take her mind off her own problems by involving her in the JU, but she couldn’t have cared less. When he’d tried to jog her out of her misery by arranging for her to be elected as one of the Fleet Street Branch’s dozen delegates to the Annual Delegate Conference, she’d simply let herself be carried along with the tide.

  Frances. It would all be all right if Frances was still with her. They could have laughed about these codes and rituals that made the Freemasons sound rational. Frances would have worked through the agenda with her, discussing the 246 motions. She and Frances would have snuggled up in bed together, giggling over the strange injunctions in the advice booklet. And Lindsay would have had the anticipation of nightly phone calls to keep her going through the difficulties of the days. She wouldn’t be going through this state of semi-panic that seemed to grip her all the time.

  But Frances wasn’t ever going to be with her again. Lindsay knew that getting used to that idea was the hardest thing she’d ever have to face. No more Frances at the breakfast table, frowning over The Times’ law reports, or, if she was due in court, taking a last-minute look through her brief for the day. No more meeting for a snatched lunchtime drink in one of the dozens of pubs between the Daily Nation’s Fleet Street offices and the law courts. No more sitting on the press benches, watching Frances on her feet defending her client, face stern beneath the barrister’s absurd curly wig. No more coming home from a hard day’s news reporting to sit on the side of the bath sipping dry white wine while Frances luxuriated in the suds and they swapped stories. No more Frances.

  It wasn’t self-pity. At least, she didn’t think it was. It was the difficulty of adjusting to absence. Someone who had been there was no longer around. And it had left a Frances-shaped hole in her life that sometimes felt as if it would engulf her and drain the very life from her. That was the worst feeling of all. The pain of loss, a physical stab in the chest that sometimes made her gasp, that was bad enough. But the hollowness, that was the worst.

  With a start, Lindsay realized that Ian was speaking. “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “That lot,” Ian said, gesturing with his thumb at the radio. “Bloody coppers on their horses, acting like the Cossack army. The writing’s on the wall, Lindsay. This government isn’t going to stand for any sort of trade union activity, you mark my words.” When he was angry, Ian’s Salford accent always reemerged from the southern patina it had acquired over ten years of working in London. The thickness of his accent was a rough guide to the level of his anger. Right now, he sounded like a refugee from Coronation Street.

  “Before Thatcher’s finished with us, she’ll have the Combination Acts back on the statute book. A few years from now, we’ll all be arrested for conspiracy if we try to hold a chapel meeting,” he continued.

  Lindsay sighed and reached for her cigarettes. “It’s so shortsighted,” she said. “The government’s always telling us about the wonderful economic success of the Germans, about how they don’t have strikes. It never seems to occur to them that that’s because the German bosses consult the workforce before they embark on anything that affects them. But this government do
esn’t want consultation, they want confrontation.”

  “Yeah, but only on their terms. As soon as journalists try to confront them with the hard questions about what’s happening in this country, they slam the shutters down. Look at the hassle they’ve been giving the BBC!” Ian exploded. Then, suddenly, he fell silent, mouth clamped shut, the muscles standing out against the sharp line of his jaw.

  “I suppose it’s keeping Laura busy,” Lindsay said uncertainly, assuming Ian’s silence was somehow connected to his lover, Laura Craig. Laura was employed by the JU to organize union activities in the broadcasting sector. The government’s recent ham-fisted efforts at censorship and control had given her several thorny problems to deal with. Lindsay had often heard Ian complain that he hardly saw her these days.

  “I suppose it is,” he said coldly. A slight gap in the traffic opened up, and Ian accelerated jerkily to take advantage of it. As he drew close to the car in front, he braked sharply enough to throw them both against their seat belts. “Sorry,” he muttered, running a hand through his thick, straight salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Problems?” Lindsay asked with sinking heart. She had enough on her own plate without having to bother with someone else’s hard time, she thought bitterly. But Ian was a friend. She felt obliged to give him the opening.

  “You could say that.” The news program ended, and the jaunty signature tune of The Archers jangled in their ears. Ian’s hand shot out and twisted the volume knob as far down as it would go. “She’s moved out,” he said softly in the sudden peace. His gray eyes stared straight ahead.