Conferences are Murder

by Val McDermid

  Lindsay returned to the outer office. “Any keys in them? I’m looking for a key that would unlock a serious desk.”

  “Help yourself,” Sophie said, returning to the menu on her screen. Lindsay searched the top drawer, with no result. Then she felt the underside of the drawer.

  She let out a satisfied sigh. “Oldest trick in the book,” she said, pulling the key away, complete with the Sellotape that had held it in place. “I don’t know, some days it’s just all too easy.”

  Back in Tom Jack’s office, she slipped the key into the lock that held all three drawers on the left-hand side shut. It turned effortlessly, and Lindsay started her search. The top drawer contained stationery, a couple of half-used pads with scribbled notes from committee meetings, pens, pencils and paperclips. The second drawer held three loose-leaf folders crammed with press clippings about Tom Jack and his role as general secretary of AMWU. There were also a few computer discs and a contacts book, which Lindsay slipped into her bag for later.

  The third drawer was filled with an assortment of document wallets. The first few contained details of union-management disputes which Lindsay soon discovered involved Tom Jack himself. They had all been resolved, not exclusively to the greater good of the AMWU members, but there was nothing contentious enough in any of them to lead to threats, never mind murder.

  The next said on its cover SIGS. It contained a bizarre assortment of documents. There were photostats of membership applications for the former Journalists’ Union, some going back more than twenty years. There were nomination forms for JU lay officials’ posts, properly filled in and signed by the appropriate branch officers. There were applications for Press passes, photocopies of motions for annual delegate conferences sent in by branches and a few meetings’ attendance sheets. All the documents related to the JU, but there was no other common factor that Lindsay could discern, apart from the fact that they all seemed to be completely in order. Frustrated, she shoved the contents back into the file and continued her burrowing.

  The bottom folder in the pile was unmarked. Lindsay opened it and pulled out a thick sheaf of expenses dockets. Almost all of them were JU forms, though the last few dozen were AMWU ones. Off the top of her head, Lindsay estimated there must be several hundred. A quick flick through the pile revealed they had all been stamped “paid.”

  Lindsay sat back in the seat and began to go through the dockets more carefully. Soon, she began to discern a pattern. The earliest went back almost nine years. They covered a wide range of committee and executive meetings. What was fascinating was the signatures on more than three quarters of the dockets. In an assured, sprawling hand, they read “Laura Craig.”

  13

  “If you think you’re entitled to loss of earnings expenses for attending conference, you should fill in Form FAD21A and return it to conference office no later than Wednesday morning. If you think you’re entitled to travelling expenses, you’re wrong. (see minutes of NEC meeting 2.3.92)”

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

  Feeling slightly dazed, Lindsay walked back through to the outer office, where Sophie had also closed the blinds and switched on a desk lamp. “Find anything?” she said, with an air of preoccupation.

  “I think so. I’m just not sure exactly what it is. How about you?” Lindsay asked, leaning over Sophie’s shoulder and peering at the screen.

  “Nothing of any interest. Letters, balance sheets, confidential reports about restructuring. I suppose some of it must be controversial, but I can’t for the life of me imagine anyone killing Union Jack because he proposed halving the size of the Printing New Technology Steering Group,” she said drily.

  “Is this machine a stand-alone or part of a network?” Lindsay asked.

  “My God, Gordon, you’re not finally getting to grips with modern technology, are you? Where did you learn about things like networks? Have you been reading adult magazines again?”

  “Very droll. I didn’t just ask for fun, you know,” Lindsay said huffily.

  Sophie cast her eyes heavenwards. “So-rree. It’s part of a network.”

  “Does it have committee minutes on it?” Lindsay asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s have a look.” Sophie left the file she was reading and made her way back to the main network menu.

  Lindsay scanned the list and pointed to the seventh item. “That’ll do. Industrial Sector Councils. Can you get that for me?” Sophie hit a key and brought up a sub-menu. Lindsay consulted her dockets, then said, “Broadcasting Technology.” Sophie selected another key, and an array of dates appeared. “Okay. Let’s try 25.2.92.” Sophie moved the cursor over the date Lindsay had chosen and hit “enter.” On the screen, the minutes of the meeting appeared.

  Lindsay ran her finger along the list of those present. Then she checked two of her dockets. She compared them to the list again, then let out a long, slow sigh of satisfaction. “I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and I’d bet a month’s salary that it’s not an oncoming train.”

  “Care to enlighten me? Or do I get treated like the typical Watson, kept in the dark till the very end?” Sophie asked.

  “Sorry. I think that someone has been fiddling expenses on a scale to make your eyes water. It works like this. When you’re a lay official of the union, and you come to head office for meetings, you’re entitled to claim travelling and meal expenses, and sometimes overnight allowances too. If you’re a freelance, you can also claim a sum of money that’s supposed to go some way towards covering loss of potential earnings while you’re attending meetings. What usually happens is, you get to the meeting and the full-time officer who’s responsible for that sector of the union dishes out expenses forms. You fill in your form, the officer authorizes them with a signature, takes them up to the accounts department and goes back in an hour or so to pick up the cash and hand it out.”

  “Cash? In 1993?” Sophie said incredulously.

  “The theory is that it’s cheaper to the union than issuing dozens of checks for relatively small amounts. Anyway, not everyone gets round to filling their form in on the day. For example, if you’re actually chairing the meeting, it can be difficult to make the time. So in those cases, you send the form in later, an officer authorizes it retrospectively, and the accounts department hang on to the dosh till the next time you’re in head office for a meeting. If you specifically ask for it, they’ll send you a check, but they don’t like doing that. So what I have here is a bundle of expense dockets that have apparently gone through the system and been paid out. Only problem is, according to at least one set of minutes, people appear to have been paid money for attending meetings they weren’t at. And in the vast majority of these cases, Laura Craig was the officer responsible for signing the dockets.” Suddenly, Lindsay leapt to her feet with the look of a woman whose brain has just made a racing change from second to third gear.

  She dashed back through to Tom Jack’s office, shouting, “And that’s what the SIGS file is for! Union Jack was comparing the signatures on the dockets with those people’s real signatures!” She came tearing back with the SIGS wallet. “He was stitching her up! He’d signed some of those phoney dockets himself, and so had other officials, but I bet she’d actually taken them up to the finance office and grabbed the dosh. He was covering his own back by stitching her up!” Lindsay sounded like an over-excited five-year-old on Christmas morning. She thumbed through the documents till she found the one she was looking for.

  “Here!” she shouted triumphantly. “Look at this. It’s Peter McKellar’s signature on his application for a Press card. Now look at this expenses docket that’s supposed to cover his return train fare from Newcastle!” She thrust the documents under Sophie’s nose. While there were similarities between the two signatures, it was clear that they were by different hands.

  “The one on the expenses form is much more rounded,” Sophie said. “I agree, they do look as if they’ve been written by differ
ent people. So where exactly does that take us?”

  “Sophie, we’re looking at thousands of pounds here over the last nine years,” Lindsay said, awe in her voice. “Tom Jack was obviously about to expose Laura Craig. There’s no way she could survive that. She’d be facing charges of fraud, maybe even prison. One thing’s for sure, she’d never work in the labor movement again. What better motive could anyone have for getting rid of him?”

  Sophie got to her feet, switching off the computer as she rose. “Personally, I’d sell my soul to someone who promised me I’d never have to work in the labor movement again. Your theory does presuppose that she knew what he was doing. I suppose you want me to have a poke about in his PC to see if there’s anything in there to support that?”

  Lindsay nodded. “I bet there is! He knew that he couldn’t put off any longer a full-scale probe into the finances of the Journalists’ Union. And he was determined to head them off at the pass before they started asking too many questions about his stewardship by giving them Laura. It’s one of the great maxims of trade union politics—always have a body to trade. Once they had Laura bang to rights on the expenses fiddle, Union Jack could have laid any other swindles at her door, and he’d have come out of the whole thing smelling of roses as usual.”

  “What I can’t understand is why the documents are still here if Laura killed him to avoid exposure,” Sophie said as she booted up Tom Jack’s PC. “I’d have expected her to get down here faster than a speeding bullock before someone stumbled on them and put two and two together.”

  Lindsay frowned, instantly comprehending the hole Sophie’s throwaway remark had blown in her theory. “Hmm,” she said. “Good point. Maybe she was intending to, but hasn’t been able to get away. Or maybe she doesn’t know where the evidence is. I mean, nobody in their right mind would just leave it lying around in a drawer, would they?”

  “Or maybe she didn’t know yet she had a motive for killing him,” Sophie added with a cheeky grin.

  Lindsay smiled back. “I hear what you’re saying,” she sighed. “Okay, I’ll take the blinkers off. Maybe it’s pure coincidence that Tom has something on Laura. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with his murder.”

  “And maybe you should wander off and find a photocopier so you can copy the evidence and put it back where you found it. What you absolutely don’t need right now is some officious copper deciding to hit you with a charge of interfering with the evidence,” Sophie said.

  “You mean, would I kindly sod off and leave you in peace with your toy? Okay, will do.” Lindsay kissed the top of Sophie’s head and headed off in search of a photocopier. It was almost an hour later when she returned, to find Sophie leaning back in Tom Jack’s chair, feet on the desk, a sheaf of printout on her lap.

  Lindsay dumped her stacks of papers on the desk and threw her arms round Sophie. “Don’t tell me! You’ve cracked the case! It was the butler!”

  Sophie kissed her mouth, damming the flow of Lindsay’s excited conversation. Lindsay closed her eyes and moaned softly, before she pulled away. “Don’t,” she groaned. “Don’t start what we can’t finish. Apart from anything else, it’s probably a disciplinary offense to bonk in the general secretary’s office.” She pulled away, shook her head like a retriever emerging from a pond, and said, “So what’s the print-out?”

  “I found the audited files of expense payments for the last nine years. Alongside the official files, Tom Jack had worked out which expenses were phoney. It looks as if Laura was creaming off an average of £200 a week. Sweetheart, would anyone kill to avoid being exposed for defrauding ten grand a year?”

  Lindsay’s jaw jutted stubbornly. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Is that all you found?”

  Sophie shook her head. “No, but I don’t understand the rest of it. There are a few similar sets of files. One seems to relate to pensions. From the look of it, Laura, Tom and three other officials have pension arrangements which give them far better benefits than anyone else.”

  “How do you mean? I thought there were legal limits on pensions? That you couldn’t get more than two-thirds of your final salary?” Lindsay said.

  “I don’t know about that. But how does a lump sum payment of an index-linked £50,000 sound to you?” Sophie said.

  Lindsay looked as shaken as she felt. “How could they?” she gasped. “How could they say the things they said about the ‘rights of working people’ and then rob us blind? Shit, Soph, how long had this been going on?”

  Sophie handed her the print-out, and pointed to the relevant sections as she spoke. “See for yourself. Two of the arrangements, Laura’s and Malcolm Bridgnorth’s, started eight years ago, then two years later, Alan Porter joined them. Two years after that, Barney Price. Then, just after he was elected general secretary of the JU, Tom Jack enters the frame.”

  Lindsay shook her head. “I don’t understand. Malcolm left the JU five years ago. But Alan and Barney are okay guys. I mean, they’re not crooks, no way. What the hell’s going on here? Is that it?” she asked Sophie, apprehension in her eyes.

  “Nope. There’s another set of figures relating to strike pay. It looks like every time you had a strike, an extra body was added to the tally. There’s no documentary evidence as to who was pocketing the cash, but it was definitely being paid out to someone.” Sophie gently took the print-out from her lover and folded it up. She stood up and held Lindsay in her arms.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Lindsay said. “I feel physically sick at the thought of it all. Let’s get out of here, Sophie. We’re going to have to do some more digging, but not here. I can’t face finding out any more of the truth.”

  Sophie swam up into consciousness after only five hours sleep. She rolled over to cuddle up to Lindsay, only to find the other side of the bed cold and empty. She ungummed one eye and read the clock. 08:23. “Oh God, Gordon. Oh no, where are you now?” she mumbled, dragging her stiff body out of bed and across the room to the bathroom. She stumbled through the door into a glare of fluorescent light and the improbably floral smell of hotel bubble bath. Lindsay lay stretched out full length, up to her chin in foam, Walkman clamped to her ears, head nodding almost imperceptibly in time to the music.

  Sophie pulled one earplug out and bellowed, “Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “Shit,” Lindsay yelled, almost submerging as she jumped with the shock. “And a very good morning to you too,” she groused as she straightened up. “No, as it happens, I couldn’t. I know it might seem daft to you, but what we found out last night really shocked me. I mean, more than Union Jack being dead, in a funny kind of way.”

  “You’re all heart,” Sophie said. “Seriously, I know what you mean. So what now?”

  “Tom Jack’s widow. If he shared what he knew with anyone, it might well have been her. And he might have stashed some more evidence back home. There’s obviously some proof of the other scams to correspond to the fiddled expenses dockets we found,” Lindsay said, removing her Walkman and shoving her damp hair back from her forehead. “Fancy joining me?”

  “In the bath or visiting the grieving widow?” Sophie asked.

  “Both or either,” Lindsay said.

  “I’ll pass on the bath. And before I commit on the widow, where are we talking about? After yesterday, I don’t think I can handle any more British motorways. They’ve turned roadworks into performance art.”

  “Don’t panic. It’s just down the road. Tom was a Yorkshireman, born and bred, as he never tired of telling anyone who’d sit still for long enough. And although he kept a flat in London for the week, his wife had no intention of leaving her patch. They live about twenty minutes’ drive from the center of Sheffield, on the edge of the moors. Can I count you in?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Sophie lied. Before she could say more, the phone trilled like a dentist’s drill. She reached out and picked up the extension. “Hello?” She listened for a moment, then waved the receiver at Lindsay. “It’s for you. Dick McAn
drew.”

  Lindsay hauled herself out of the bath, grabbed a towel, and said, “I’ll get out of your way and take it in the room.” She picked up the phone by the bed and said, “Dick? Lindsay. How did you know where to find me?”

  “I’m supposed to be an investigative journalist, for fuck’s sake. Jet set medics don’t stay in poxy bed and breakfasts,” he said. “Believe me, that cut the choice down dramatically.”

  “So, to what do I owe the expenditure of all this effort?”

  “Not to mention all the 10p pieces,” Dick responded. “Put it on the slate of favors owed. What I rang for is, unless you want to be mobbed by the world’s press, and probably South Yorkshire’s finest, you’d be well-advised to give this place the body swerve for today.”

  Lindsay sighed. “Spit it out, Dick. What’s happened now?”

  “You’re headline news again, kiddo. Conference Chronicle has thrust you into the white-hot glare of notoriety yet once more,” Dick said. “Joking apart, Lindsay, you’re gonnae have to keep your bunnet below the parapet on this one.”

  “God, how you journos love talking up a good story,” Lindsay complained, only too aware of her own hypocrisy. “C’mon, give it to me straight. Just read the words, Dick. I can pick the tune up for myself.”

  “Okay, you asked for it. Here we go. Headline first, ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. The burning question today is why Lindsay Gordon isn’t telling the whole story about Tom Jack’s death, a death, incidentally, which the police are still showing a remarkable reluctance to call murder.

  “ ‘In a spectacular editorial coup, Conference Chronicle can reveal exclusively that Gay Gordon not only knows it was murder, but she also saw the only person who could have committed the horrific crime leaving the scene.

  “ ‘Everyone should be asking why Gay Gordon is protecting AMWU’s Broadcasting Officer and Special Branch plant Laura Craig. Our sources tell us that Gordon saw the lovely Laura sweeping out of the murder room only moments after Union Jack had done his spectacular shuffling off of the mortal coil. Yet Gay Gordon has kept her mouth tightly clamped shut about their close encounter, even after a night’s interrogation in South Yorkshire police cells.