by Val McDermid
Jasper frowned. 'I'm not sure I see what you mean.' Somehow, he'd managed to clean his plate with predatory efficiency while Jay was still barely a third of the way through her food. It was one of the reasons Jay had chosen Jasper as her agent when she'd first decided to write her misery memoir. She liked the people with appetite to be ranged on her side.
'Unrepentant gave them the chance to feel sorry for me. To be glad that they had escaped what I went through. But an account of how I triumphed at Oxford, set up a successful dotcom company, sold out before the bubble burst then went on to found a niche publishing business while knocking out a bestselling misery memoir . . . Well, it seems to me that all I'm doing is providing them with reasons to hate me. And that's not a recipe for selling books, Jasper.'
'You'd be surprised,' Jasper said, his voice dry as the Chablis they were drinking. 'People who know about these things tell me the punters love to read about people like them who have made it.'
Jay shook her head. 'What they love reading about is vacuous celebrity. Talentless show-offs who will do anything for their moment in OK magazine. Idiots who think appearing on The X-Factor is the pinnacle of achievement. That's people like them. I am not people like them.'
'You do a good job of pretending.'
'Only up to a point. Then there's the lesbian thing. By ending the book where I did, I managed to keep my adolescent yearnings more or less off-stage. But writing about Oxford and after - it's hard to see how I can avoid it.'
Jasper shrugged. 'The world's moved on, darling. Lesbians are cool now. Think Sandi Toksvig, Sam Ronson, Maggi Hambling, Sarah Waters.'
'You still wouldn't want your daughter to marry one.' She finished her appetiser and placed her cutlery neatly together on the plate. 'At best, they'll think I'm a lucky bastard.'
'They certainly will if they find out the size of the advance,' he said, his eyes narrowing in pleasure. 'Half as much again what we got for Unrepentant. Which is terrific in a flat market.'
A waiter whose designer suit had patently cost more than Jay's outfit whisked their plates away. 'Do you think they only hire staff who fit the suits?' she said absently as she watched him swagger back to the kitchen.
Jasper ignored the question and stuck heroically to his pitch. 'But you're a TV face now too. Ever since they started inviting you as a special guest investor on White Knight, you're on the radar.'
Jay scowled like a disgruntled teenager. 'And that's the last time I let you talk me into going against my better judgement. Bloody White Knight. I can't buy a packet of spaghetti in the supermarket without someone trying to pitch me their brilliant business idea.'
'Stop pretending to be a curmudgeon. You love the attention. '
'I am a curmudgeon.' Jay paused while artfully arranged slices of pink lamb surrounded by neat piles of Puy lentils interspersed with perfectly carved miniature root vegetables, all set on massive porcelain plates, appeared in front of them. 'I meant what I said the other day. I really don't want to do any more White Knight.'
She could see Jasper biting back his frustration. 'Fine,' he said, his smile thin and his voice tight. 'I think you're crazy, but fine. So why don't you do something instead that gives me a legitimate excuse to keep everyone at arm's length? "Sorry, she's writing. She's got a deadline." Plus you know you enjoyed the process of writing Unrepentant. And you also discovered you have a talent for writing memoir.'
Jay couldn't deny that she liked the idea of Jasper telling the world to go away. Bar the door and keep the barbarians out while she gorged on love. She knew enough about the arc of relationships to understand that the rush of emotional and sexual intensity between her and Magda would pass soon enough. You couldn't postpone the first flush till you could create a window in the diary. It came and went on its own timetable. And this had come so instantly, so unexpectedly, so unpredictably it was hard not to fear it might fade just as fast, though it was hard to imagine how it could fade when Magda's beauty made her heart flip every time she cast eyes on her. Having an excuse to hide from the world so she could bind Magda closer to her only had an upside. Never mind that in the long run the book wouldn't make her any friends. She had enough of those.
She sighed. 'Oh, all right, then,' she said, more grumbling than gracious.
Jasper's grin was naked delight. 'You're not going to regret this.'
'For your sake, I hope not. You know how bad things happen to people who cross me.' There was a moment of chill, then Jay smiled. 'Only joking, Jasper,' she said.
His smile was a shaky echo of hers.
5
Before they met, Charlie Flint had expected to despise and dislike Lisa Kent. Even though Charlie had been the one flying under false colours that first time, she'd been convinced she was the one on the moral high ground.
Her passion for her profession meant she was constantly alive to opportunities to extend her knowledge and experience. So when it became clear that there was a new trend in self-help programmes that tiptoed close to cult territory, she wanted to check the phenomenon out for herself. The one she'd chosen from the three or four she'd been aware of had been Lisa Kent's 'I'm Not OK, You're Not OK: Negotiating Vulnerability'. NV to its acolytes; groups always had to establish private language that set out the terms of their ownership.
Charlie had signed up under a false name for a weekend seminar. Her intent had been to use the experience as the basis for an incisive, devastating account of the whole phenomenon both for peer-reviewed academic publication and possibly for a three-page spread in the Guardian's G2 section.
The fifty-odd audience members were pretty much what Charlie had expected - mostly mid-twenties to late thirties, undistinguished by individual style, nearly all bearing the taint of defeat tempered only by an anxious hope that this weekend would somehow transform their lives. What had taken her aback was the grudging realisation that Lisa Kent was neither shaman nor charlatan. What she was peddling was mostly sensible and practical. Mainstream therapeutic stuff. What made the seminar cult-like was Lisa's charisma. When she spoke, she held the room in her hands. They loved her. And Charlie was shocked by the realisation that she wasn't so different from the rest of them. Her training and experience hadn't immunised her to Lisa's charm.
But still, there might yet have been no harm done. What happened in the afternoon coffee break changed that. Charlie had been leaning against a wall, drinking tea and trying to look downtrodden enough to belong when Lisa made her way through the crowd and stopped in front of her. Lisa had peered at her name badge and given a wry smile. 'I'd appreciate a little chat, Ms . . . Browning,' she'd said, hanging enough scepticism on the name to make sure Charlie understood this shouldn't be taken as flattery.
Charlie followed Lisa into a small room off the main hall. Low modular chairs lined the walls and a water cooler hummed in one corner. There was no clue to its function in the arrangement. Charlie sat down without waiting to be asked, crossing one leg over the other, wondering what was coming. Lisa leaned against the closed door, still with the twisted smile in place. Her eyes, Charlie thought, were hard to avoid. A greenish blue tractor beam that had transfixed a room full of people and now made her feel pinned down. 'This is an amazing experience,' she said, trying to imitate the enthusiasm she'd heard at lunch.
'Dr Charlotte Flint,' Lisa said. 'Charlie to your friends, I believe. First degree in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology from St Scholastika's College, Oxford. Masters in Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology at Sussex. Qualified as a psychiatrist in Manchester, where you are now a senior lecturer in Clinical Psychology and Psychological Profiling. Home Office-accredited to work with the police as a profiler. How am I doing?'
'You missed out my campfire badge from the Guides. How did you spot me?'
Lisa pushed off from the door and got herself some water, turning her back on Charlie. 'I recognised you.' She turned back, shaking her head gently. 'You spoke very eloquently at the Forensic Science Society about the reasons for the choices you ma
de in the Bill Hopton case.'
Bill Hopton. The man who had walked free thanks to Charlie's reluctant conclusion in the witness box that he hadn't murdered Gemma Summerville. The man who had walked free to murder four other women. Just mentioning his name was a gauntlet of sorts. The Hopton case had catapulted Charlie into the public eye. It hadn't done her many favours at the time. And now it appeared to have destroyed her career. But back then, that afternoon in Oxford facing Lisa Kent, it was still a bomb waiting to go off, although it remained the one case everyone connected to law enforcement wanted to talk about with her. Deliberately, Charlie said, 'I didn't know you're a member of the FSS.'
Lisa sipped her drink, studying Charlie over the rim of the white plastic cup, dark eyebrows raised in amused arcs. 'I'm not. But I do have friends who are familiar with my interest in the way people's minds work. I thought it was you this morning, but I made some checks at lunchtime to be certain.'
'It's a free country.'
Lisa laughed. 'Don't be ridiculous. You're here to do a demolition job. You think I'm exploiting gullibility and weakness for profit. Though quite how it ties in with offender profiling, I'm not sure.'
Bang to rights, Charlie thought. 'I did think that. I don't now. As to the professional relevance - manipulation of others is how a lot of serial offenders get away with things for so long.' She got up and moved towards the door. 'It's been an interesting day. But I think it's probably best if I leave.'
'I should be angry with you, Dr Flint. But for some reason I'm not. You really don't have to go.' The words were innocuous enough; the tone was not.
Charlie shook her head. 'I think it's best if I do. I don't want to put you off your stride.'
'You're probably right. Knowing that you know that I know who you are would alter the dynamic in the room.' Lisa dug a card out of the pocket of her loose trousers. 'I seem to have confounded your expectations, which means this has been a waste of your time.' She smiled. 'Let me make it up to you sometime. I really do think we might have some interesting things to share. Here's my card. Let's stay in touch.'
As she walked back to her hotel room, Charlie tried to unravel the nuances in Lisa's voice, but she could never be quite sure that what she thought she'd heard had really been there. Had Lisa been flirting? Was it some kind of professional challenge? Or did she simply enjoy the cat-and-mouse game? Whatever it was, Charlie was snagged on the hook of Lisa's charm.
Puzzling over the exact meaning of Lisa's words had become a familiar experience for Charlie. Since that first encounter the ether had hummed with their electronic interchanges, the professional usually making way for the personal exchanges of two people building a connection.
In Charlie's experience, clinical psychiatrists fell into two groups. The ones who deliberately chose never to question anything about themselves and the ones who subjected every aspect of their lives to the same scrutiny they applied to their patients. Charlie often wished she was not doomed to membership of the 'analyse this' crew. But it went some way to explaining her fascination with Lisa. The more inscrutable the woman's communications, the more Charlie yearned to unpick their meaning. What she was clear about was that they were flirting. Flirting with each other, flirting with ideas, flirting with danger.
Perhaps you should consider what your correspondent has failed to send you? I always like the answer that's not there . . . What exactly did Lisa mean by that, Charlie wondered, staring at her computer screen. Was she simply referring to the newspaper cuttings, or was this another instance of oblique suggestiveness? The way Lisa made her feel was like a family of termites burrowing through the solid foundation of her relationship with Maria. Charlie knew she had no business playing this risky game, but every time she resolved to leave it alone, there would be a text or an email demanding her attention and requiring a response. She was as hopeless as some of her patients. Unable to resist what she knew was bad for her. She couldn't even be sure the woman was a lesbian. Flirtation and obliquity might just be her natural mode. So little of their communication had been face to face and so much of it had been a teasing joust. Maybe Charlie was completely off the mark. Really, for all she knew, Lisa could be straight. This whole mess could be nothing more than pitiful wishful thinking. With a despairing moan, Charlie turned back to the contents of the envelope.
Clearly, the clippings were only a selection of what had been published in the media. Could it be that the answer lay in the missing stories? Impatiently, she called up Google News and typed in the name of the victim. In a fraction of a second, the search turned up a list of everything the media had produced about the murder of Philip Carling. There were dozens of them, even allowing for Google's winnowing-out of similar stories.
There were other, more urgent, calls on Charlie's time. Reviving her dying career, for one. But sometimes distraction was irresistible. Charlie called up the first story, determined to work through them methodically. The first revelation came in the second story she accessed, a Daily Telegraph article that referred to Dr Magda Newsam. Shocked, Charlie realised that the widowed bride was no stranger to her. The name Magdalene Carling had meant nothing. But the alternate identity jolted Charlie from academic enthusiasm to dismay. She was appalled that she had somehow failed to register that the woman at the heart of this tragedy was someone she had once known. Suddenly, things began to make sense.
'Poor kid,' she said softly, pity in her voice. The realisation of Magda's place in the murder trial made one thing incontrovertible. Whoever had sent the mysterious package had almost certainly been part of college life all those years ago when Charlie had been an undergraduate, a pupil of Magda's mother Corinna and an occasional babysitter of her children. Was it Corinna Newsam herself, or had someone else sent the photocopies? And still the question remained: why?
Methodical as ever, Charlie continued through the archive material. She had almost come to the end when a photograph downloaded to her screen, appearing one slice at a time from the top down. The woman it revealed had the kind of beauty that made people stare. Even a snatched newspaper shot left no room for doubt on that score. Dark blonde hair and apparently perfect skin, the regular features of a fashion model, a mouth whose fullness hinted at sensuality. 'Wow,' Charlie said, admiring the shapely figure and undeniably good legs that gradually appeared.
The caption revealed that this stunning woman in the foreground of the photograph was Philip Carling's widow Magdalene. 'Look how you turned out, Maggot,' she said, amazed at this trick of the genes. But as she studied the wider picture, Charlie realised she needed no caption to recognise the woman at Magda's elbow. Age had not withered Jay Macallan Stewart's fine-boned beauty, nor custom staled her air of dashing danger.
Although it created more questions than it answered, Charlie felt sure she had solved the basic problem of the source of the cuttings. 'If my daughter was hanging out with Jay Stewart, I'd be doing something about it,' she said. And with a few keystrokes, she was in her email program.
Subject: More Questions Than Answers
Date: 23 March 2010 15:35:26 GMT
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I followed your advice. It was obvious I hadn't been sent all the press coverage, so I Googled news to see if I could figure out what was missing. Lo and behold, I discovered almost instantly that none of the versions I had been sent named the widow appropriately. Her real identity is not
Reading on, I came across a photo of Magda - who has grown into a drop-dead gorgeous be
auty in the Princess Diana mould. And standing behind her was somebody else I recognised. She used to be plain Jay Stewart but now the world knows her as Jay Macallan Stewart. Dotcom millionaire and bestselling misery memoir author. Now she's the boss of 24/7, the web-based personalised travel guides. You might have seen her on White Knight, she appears sometimes in the guest investor slot. She was a couple of years behind me at Schollie's, but her notoriety was sufficient to overcome that handicap. Even among the dykes of Brighton, the stories about Jay Stewart galloped along the grapevine.
I remember her as ruthlessly ambitious, one of those working-class heroes who are determined to exploit every opportunity to the hilt and don't care whose faces they trample on in the scramble to the top of the heap. She was elected JCR president the year after I went down. Only after she'd secured the position did she come out, very spectacularly and stylishly, as the lover of a senior commissioning editor on one of the glossy fashion mags. Some of the college fellows wanted to throw her out, but she was always very careful never actually to break the rules.
So, I figure that if I was Corinna Newsam, and Jay Stewart was hanging round my daughter, I'd be looking to dig some dirt that could consign Stewart to the history bin. But she wouldn't want to approach me directly in case my lesbian solidarity was stronger than a very old loyalty to her and Maggot.
Now, having worked it all out, I'm not sure what to do. Do I want to get involved? Do I care? And doesn't lesbian solidarity count for something? All suggestions gratefully received.