V.L. McDERMID

Final Edition

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by The Women’s Press Ltd 1991

Copyright © Val McDermid 1991

Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007191765

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007301829

Version: 2014-12-08

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

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

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Glasgow, Scotland, December 1989

Jackie Mitchell stared down at the murdered body of Alison Maxwell, fear and horror mingling in equal measure. Alison was sprawled on the familiar bedroom carpet, limbs crooked, blonde hair spread round her head in a jagged halo. The ravages of strangulation had left her face barely recognisable. The scarf that was wound into a tight ligature round her neck was, however, only too easily identifiable. Jackie would know her own distinctive yellow tartan muffler anywhere. Slowly, with an enormous effort of will, she forced herself to look up.

Jackie gazed round the crowded courtroom, only too aware of the accusing eyes that had already made their judgment about her guilt. The photograph she clutched in her sweating hands was her first sight of Alison Maxwell’s corpse. But she knew that the number of people in the stuffy courtroom who genuinely believed that could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Certainly the fifteen members of the jury, who were flicking through the prosecution’s photograph album with looks of shock, horror and disgust that mirrored her own emotions, were not among them.

The wiry figure of Duncan Leslie, the Advocate Depute charged with presenting the prosecution case against her, paced to and fro across the wood-panelled courtroom as he gently drew every last scrap of damning information from the pathologist in the witness box. ‘And in your opinion,’ Leslie probed in his soft Borders accent, ‘are the features of this case consistent with strangulation by a male or a female?’

The pathologist paused momentarily, glancing towards the dock, refusing to meet Jackie’s pale green eyes. His mouth tightened in disapproval. ‘In my view,’ he said in a clipped voice, ‘I would say that this method of killing would suggest either a woman, or a man who was not very strong.’

‘Would you explain that opinion to the court?’

‘Well, strangulation with a ligature like this scarf requires considerable strength. But the need for brute force is avoided by using a lever with the ligature. In this case, as you can see from Photograph Number Five, the killer used the handle of a strong hairbrush to twist the ligature tighter. That implies to me that the strangler was not sufficiently strong to perform the act manually, thus suggesting either a woman or a weak male.’

Another nail in my coffin, thought Jackie in despair, her hands involuntarily gripping the wooden rail of the dock. As the evidence droned on around her, she looked despondently round the courtroom. In her seventeen years as a journalist, she’d had little experience of the courts. While she’d been a young trainee on a weekly paper in Ayrshire, she’d occasionally covered routine cases in the Sheriff Court. But after that, she had become a feature writer and had never even crossed the threshold of the imposing High Court building by the Clyde.

It wasn’t an environment she felt comfortable with, unlike the crowd of news reporters crammed into the press bench. All men, for crime reporting was still a male preserve in Glasgow. They sat there, hour after hour, like eager jackals, taking down every detail in their meticulous shorthand. And tomorrow, she knew, the bricks of evidence that were slowly building a wall round her would be reassembled to provide the foundations of sensational stories that would strip all her privacy from her. She knew most of these men. That was the hardest part of all. For ten years, she had been a leading freelance feature writer in the city, working for all the major newspapers and magazines. These were men she’d laughed with, gossiped with, drunk with. Now, as she studied them intent on their task, they looked like strangers. Familiar features seemed to have shifted, hardened, changed somehow. She wasn’t their pal Jackie any more. She was a brutal bitch, an animal with a perverted sexuality who had killed one of their number. In life, Alison Maxwell had been a talented Scottish Daily Clarion feature writer with a dubious personal reputation. In death, she had been promoted to the Blessed Martyr of Fleet Street.

When she could no longer bear to look at her former colleagues, Jackie turned her eyes to the jury. Nine men, six women. A spread of ages from early twenties to middle fifties. They looked for the most part like solid, respectable citizens. The sort of people for whom her first crime was being a lesbian, a state from which any other crime might naturally flow. When she’d been led into the dock on the first morning, they had looked at her curiously, weighing her up as if calculating the likelihood of her guilt. But as the prosecution had steadily built its case, they had shown an increasing reluctance to look at her, contenting themselves with furtive glances. She began to wonder if she’d been right to listen to her solicitor’s advice about her clothes. The series of smart, feminine suits and dresses she’d chosen for the trial made her look too normal, she feared. Almost as if she were one of them. Perhaps they’d have been more open-minded about the evidence placed before them if she hadn’t disturbed them with that subtle threat. Maybe they’d have been less unnerved by her if she was standing there with her copper hair cropped short, wearing a Glad to Be Gay sweatshirt. Then they could have treated her more like Exhibit A.

Wearily she sighed, and tried to raise her spirits with a glance at the one person she could be certain still believed in her innocence. In the front row of the public benches, her fine, white-blonde hair falling round her head like a gleaming helmet, Claire Ogilvie sat taking notes. Her neat, small features, dwarfed by the huge glasses she wore, were fixed in concentration, except when she looked up at Jackie. Then she would give a small, encouraging smile, which against all odds and logic kept a flicker of hope alive in Jackie’s heart. In the five years they’d been together, she’d never had to rely so much on Claire. Whatever happened at the end of the trial, she’d never be able to repay that debt.

As soon as the police had arrived that October evening to arrest Jackie, Claire had been on the phone to one of Glasgow’s top criminal lawyers, who had responded to the call of a fellow solicitor with a speed astonishing to anyone familiar with the procrastinations of his breed. Jim Carstairs had actually been waiting at the Maryhill Police Station when they’d brought her in to charge her with the murder of Alison Maxwell. Although Claire Ogilvie’s flourishing commercial law practice never dealt with criminal law, she always sent any of her clients who needed a good trial lawyer to Macari, Stevenson and Carstairs, so Jim had pulled out all the stops for Jackie. But it had made little difference. Because of the gravity of the charge, bail had been refused, and she’d spent the last eight weeks on remand in the women’s prison near Stirling. In spite of the demands of her clients, Claire had somehow contrived to visit her almost every day. It had been the only thing that had kept Jackie going when she felt the walls closing in and heard the voices of madness in her head. There had been times when she’d even begun to wonder herself if she’d killed Alison in a moment of insanity that she could no longer recall.

But through it all, Claire had been there, practical, indomitable, supportive. Although Claire concentrated on commercial and contract law herself, she had many friends with criminal practices, and she knew only too well the costs of mounting a first-class defence. So, the morning after the bail hearing, she’d put their fashionable three-bedroomed first-floor flat on the market. Because of its size and its position on a sunny corner near the University, it had been sold within days, thanks to the efficient processes of the Scottish property laws. Claire had dutifully paid half the proceeds into Jackie’s bank account to fund her lover’s defence. She had promptly bought herself a new home, free from all past associations, in a newly renovated block in the heart of the Merchant City, the yuppified district in the city centre where property developers were busily cashing in on the aspirations of the suddenly rich. Claire told herself she had no doubts about Jackie’s innocence; but she was nobody’s fool when it came to the law. She’d had enough discussion with Jim Carstairs to realise that Jackie’s chances of walking away from this murder indictment were so slim as to be negligible. Although Jackie was unaware of it, the ever-practical Claire Ogilvie had already started to rebuild her life.

Part of that rebuilding took the shape of the attractive, dark-haired woman who sat next to her during the trial. As far as Jackie was concerned, Cordelia Brown was simply a friend who had done her best to help the defence in the build-up to the trial. In her despair at ever clearing her name of the charge, Jackie had dredged up the name of one person that she believed might be able to find out the truth. When Claire had gone looking for Lindsay Gordon she had quickly discovered that Cordelia was their only hope of finding her. But their efforts had been fruitless. Like everything else that had happened to Jackie since her last visit to Alison’s flat, things hadn’t worked out according to plan. But for Claire, it was a very different story.

Duncan Leslie got to his feet and slowly surveyed the jury. The trial was almost over, and he was filled with a quiet confidence. He had spun his web around Jackie Mitchell. Now, all he had to do was to draw the threads together to present her to the jury as a tightly wrapped cocoon with no prospect of escape.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he began, pacing slowly backwards and forwards in front of the jury box. ‘This has not been a pleasant case for any of us. A woman has been brutally killed in the one place where she could reasonably hope to be safe – in the bedroom of her own flat, in the arms of her lover. The defence have tried to cloud your judgment with tawdry allegations about the victim of this particularly horrific crime. But I’d like to remind you that it is not Alison Maxwell who is on trial here today – it is her killer, Jackie Mitchell.

‘You have heard how, on the afternoon of 16 October, Jackie Mitchell visited Alison Maxwell in her flat, thus betraying her own live-in lover. The two women went to bed together and had sex. A quarrel followed. Jackie Mitchell then left the flat. Within minutes of her departure, Alison Maxwell’s strangled body was discovered, still warm. None of these facts is in dispute.’ Leslie stopped walking to and fro and turned to face the jury, fixing them one by one with an unblinking stare that, more effectively than any histrionics, gave force to his words.

‘My colleague for the defence is asking you to believe that in those few short moments, a third party managed to enter a block of flats protected by security entryphones and contrived to get into Alison Maxwell’s flat, leaving no signs of any break-in. Then this unknown assailant strangled her with Jackie Mitchell’s own scarf – a method of killing, incidentally, which does not lend itself to speed. This mysterious murderer then managed to make a clean get-away. And during all this, our killer was never seen, never heard.

‘If you believe that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, then I expect you will also believe that the moon is made of green cheese.

‘The truth is far, far simpler.’ Leslie turned away from the jury and stared at Jackie. At the end of his dramatic pause, he turned back to the jury, who looked mesmerised by a performance that was outshining every courtroom drama they’d ever watched on television. ‘Forget the mysterious stranger. Alison Maxwell’s killer is sitting before you now, ladies and gentlemen.

‘Jackie Mitchell wanted to end her affair with Alison Maxwell. Now, Alison’s sexual preferences might be alien to most people, but her emotional responses were identical to ours. She didn’t want Jackie to depart from her life. Like most of us, faced with losing someone we care about, she used emotional blackmail in a bid to hold on to her lover. What she didn’t realise was that she was trying to blackmail a killer. The threat of losing the things that mattered to her drove Jackie Mitchell over the edge.

‘Jackie Mitchell was the only other person in that flat on the afternoon of 16 October. Jackie Mitchell was overheard quarrelling angrily with Alison Maxwell. And Jackie Mitchell’s scarf was the weapon that choked the life out of Alison Maxwell. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is an open and shut case. On the basis of the evidence before you, the only possible verdict you can bring in this case is guilty.’

The defence advocate did his best. But his emotive pleas clearly had less effect on the jury than the short, measured address of Duncan Leslie. As the judge summed up, Jackie felt as if a door had been slammed in her face. There was no escape, she realised. Her worst fears were about to become her new reality. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the room fixed on her, but she could meet none of them. She stared straight ahead at a point on the wall above the judge’s head, a creeping numbness filling her. She felt cold sweat trickling uncomfortably down her spine, and she suddenly became aware that the simple act of breathing needed conscious effort. As the jury filed out, the slow shuffle of their feet reminded her of the prison sounds that had filled her ears for the last weeks, and would now be part of her life for as long as she could imagine. It was all over.

The verdict came as no surprise to Claire. Her faith in the ability of the legal system to achieve justice had diminished as the circumstantial evidence had piled up against Jackie. Nevertheless, she felt tension grip her chest, forcing the breath from her, as the foreman of the jury got to his feet, carefully looking only at the judge, and delivered the inevitable sentence. ‘We find the panel guilty.’

The judge’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. The words ‘life imprisonment’ boomed hollowly in Claire’s ears. Her notepad fell to the floor with a soft rustle and her head dropped into her hands.

Cordelia immediately put her arm round Claire, comforting her, a complicated mixture of emotions bringing her close to tears. She glanced up to the dock, where Jackie was being led away to begin her sentence. Then she turned back to Claire and murmured softly, ‘It’s all over.’

Claire raised her head. There were no tears, just a coldness in her eyes that had not been there before. She gazed over at the empty dock and slowly said, ‘No, Cordelia. It’s only just begun.’

1

Cavallino, Italy, January 1990

Death would be a welcome release. That was her first conscious thought. Behind her eyes, a dull pain throbbed. It seemed as if an iron band constricting her forehead were being slowly, continuously tightened. Her throat was so dry that it felt as though she were forcing down a lump of cold potato each time she swallowed. The last time her stomach had been as bad as this was on a long ferry crossing in a force ten gale. A sheen of sweat covered her body. She stirred tentatively and wished she hadn’t. Her limbs were stiff and aching; her legs and feet in particular protested. Bloody grappa, she thought. Bloody, bloody grappa.

She forced herself out of the camper van’s double berth and stumbled to the stove. The coffee pot was sitting ready. She had known before she went out the previous evening exactly how she’d feel now and had taken precautions. She turned on the gas and headed straight for the van’s shower compartment. Under the stream of warm water, she gradually began to feel less like the living dead. Two mugs of coffee later, her body began to feel restored. She pulled on a pair of sweat pants, a sweatshirt and a pair of trainers and emerged into the daylight.

New Year’s Day had brought a watery sun to the grassy grove quartered by pine trees that had been her home for the last eight months. For most of the year it was a thriving campsite, choked with the caravans and tents of northern Europeans determined to extract the maximum return from the delights of the Veneto and the Adriatic. But now, in the off-season, the only vehicle left was the one from which she carried out her limited tasks as on-site watchdog and caretaker. She jogged slowly round the ten-hectare site, checking that all the toilet blocks, shops and restaurants were still properly locked up and shuttered.

She carried on to the site’s private beach, part of the shoreline that curls round like a crescent moon from Trieste to Venice. She slowed down as she made her way through the heavy sand to the water’s margin then, turning her back on the tower block hotels of Lido di Jesolo, she started to run the hangover out of her system. It had been a hell of a party.

The family who owned the site, the Maciocias, had accepted her for no better reason than that her hairdresser in the UK was their niece. When she had turned up with her life in shreds, looking for a place to hide and heal, they had asked no questions. Instead, they had persuaded her to occupy her time by working for them. In the summer months, she’d been the ideal candidate for dealing with the English families whose Italian never seemed to encompass more than ‘Arrivederci Roma’, and whose demands caused constant chaos at Reception. And when the end of the season arrived, she had decided to stay on, living in her van, earning a few thousand lire a day for keeping an eye on things.

Last night’s New Year celebration should have reinforced her decision. The Maciocias had taken over a trattoria owned by someone’s brother-in-law, and she couldn’t remember ever having been at a party like it. The food had been lavish, delicious and deeply traditional. Cousin Bartolomeo had brought his dance band along and the singing and dancing had enveloped her like summer sunlight. The kindness of these strangers who had become her surrogate family meant her glass was never allowed to become empty. It had taken the full resources of her Italian, her diplomacy and her determination to persuade all the male relatives that she’d be safe to return to her van without an escort. But as she walked home alone with the desperate concentration of the mortally drunk, she had been overwhelmed with homesickness.

She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt what she had longed for as soon as midnight struck. The mellow taste of good malt soaked up by shortbread, oatcakes and caboc. The hysterical, ordered chaos of ‘Strip the Willow’. The sound of accordion, bass and drums. The voice of her father singing ‘The Road And the Miles To Dundee’. The contented smile of her mother as she listened. The welcoming warmth in Cordelia’s deep, grey eyes. For too long, Lindsay thought sadly, she’d been looking into brown eyes. At the time, she had forced the thoughts away, telling herself she was maudlin and sentimental. Back at the van, a final tumbler of fiery grappa had brought a welcome oblivion.

But this morning, as she jogged back along the beach, she forced herself to examine her life in the hungover light of day. She’d left Britain in a state of panic, and all her actions since then had been governed by the lurking fear that she might lose her liberty or even her life. When she’d been unwillingly caught up in a murder investigation at a women’s peace camp, she’d had no idea what she’d uncover. The last thing she’d expected was to find herself embroiled in the cover-up of a spy scandal.

The knowledge she’d ended up with was the sort of thing it was only safe to know if you were inside the charmed circle of the secret society. For her, a dedicated anti-establishment journalist, it had nearly sealed her death warrant. So she’d fled, but had refused to keep silent. After her story had been published by a German magazine, she knew she couldn’t go home till long after the dust had settled. And that had meant not only leaving Cordelia behind, but keeping her in ignorance of her whereabouts. She had left a long letter to explain her absence, and she’d sent a card to Cordelia to reassure her that she was alive and well, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to reveal where she was. The card had been mailed in a sealed envelope to an old friend in New York, with instructions to address it to Cordelia care of her literary agent and to post it on to London from there. A more direct route might have brought the full weight of the Special Branch down on Cordelia. She’d even been afraid to phone in case the line was tapped and they could trace the call.

While she was still a marked woman as far as the British security services were concerned, Lindsay wasn’t prepared to do anything that might expose Cordelia to more trouble than she’d already been through on her account. And that meant not giving her any information that might provide them with a reason to lean on her. If her lover had known where to find her, she’d have been out on the next plane, no doubt with a team of heavies on her trail. The irony of keeping silent was that she now had no way of knowing if the heat had died down. Maybe she’d been wrong not to trust Cordelia to act responsibly, but the fear had gnawed too deep into Lindsay for her to feel able to take even the smallest chance.

But she couldn’t run forever. Minding an Italian campsite wasn’t part of her life-plan, in so far as she had one. It was time to face up to the truth. She had been in hiding for long enough. Some of the questions she had been trying to answer were resolved. Others never would be, she suspected. But at least she had the strength now to face the consequences she had run away to avoid. The time had come for Lindsay Gordon to go home.

The confirmation of that decision came only two days later on her weekly trip into Venice. As usual, she caught the early steamer from Punta Sabbione and huddled against the window in the saloon as the boat chugged across the Venetian lagoon. Half an hour later, she was walking down the wide quay of the Riva Schiavoni, past the Bridge of Sighs and the Doge’s Palace, and into the Piazza San Marco, the domes of the basilica lost in the January mist that swirled around the sinking city. Lindsay had never particularly cared for the huge square. As a tourist attraction, it lived up to its promise, but precisely because it was a tourist attraction, it repelled her. It was never free from the souvenir vendors, the gaping crowds and the hordes of pigeons, encouraged by the food the tourists bought from the stall holders. The white smears of their droppings were everywhere, ruining the vista that Napoleon had called ‘the finest drawing room in Europe’.

Lindsay much preferred the other Venice, that maze of twisting alleys, canals and bridges where she could escape the crowds and wander alone, savouring the sights, smells and sounds of the real life that lurked behind the picture postcard facades. She loved watching the Venetians display the skills that living on the water had forced them to develop. On that particular January morning, after collecting her subscription copy of the Sunday Times from the central post office at the far end of the Piazza San Marco, she made her way through the narrow alleys to a wooden landing stage on the Grand Canal, pausing only to watch a builder with a heavy hod of bricks climbing a ladder precariously balanced in a motor boat. After a few minutes wait, the traghetto, one of the long gondolas that ferry passengers across the canal for a few hundred lire, crossed back to her side and she climbed aboard. The gondolier looked cold and miserable, a sharp contrast to the carefree image he would present to the summer tourists. On the other side of the canal, she plunged into a labyrinth of passages, following a familiar route to a small café near the Frari church.

The man behind the counter greeted Lindsay with a nod as she sat at a small table by the door, and busied himself with the espresso machine. He brought her usual cappuccino over to the table, exchanged a few pleasantries about the New Year, and left her to her paper. Lindsay tore open the wrapper and unfolded the paper. Before she could take in the headlines, her eye was caught by a box on the side of the page trailing the attractions in the rest of the paper. ‘Cordelia Brown: Booker Prize this time?’

Lindsay’s stomach churned and she reached instinctively for a cigarette. She hardly smoked at all these days, but this wasn’t something she could face nicotine-free. With trembling fingers, she turned to the review section. The whole of the front page was devoted to an interview with her … how should she describe Cordelia these days? Her lover? Her former lover? Her lover-in-abeyance?

At first, Lindsay had been too busy covering her tracks and establishing a safe routine to miss Cordelia. Because their relationship had hit a rough patch before Lindsay left, she’d stopped noticing all the ways in which she had relied on Cordelia. Now she was alone in a foreign country, she had begun to realise how much she had depended on her lover. The problems they’d had had all been external – the unpredictable pressures of Lindsay’s job as a national newspaper journalist, the paralysing writer’s block that had gripped Cordelia. Deep down, Lindsay had slowly come to understand, their relationship had been founded on solid ground. Knowing she had walked away from that because of her stubborn adherence to principle was the hardest thing Lindsay had had to deal with since her arrival in Italy.

But now she’d decided to go home, she also began to see how they could start to rebuild their life together. There was no way she wanted to go back into national newspaper journalism, even supposing anyone would have her. Whatever else she chose to do would provide a more straightforward life. No more shift working, late nights and unpredictable overnight stays away from home. And, judging by this article that she was deliberately postponing reading, Cordelia had cured her writer’s block.

Lindsay gulped a mouthful of hot coffee and stubbed out her cigarette. Taking a deep breath, she plunged into the words. ‘Eighteen months ago, Cordelia Brown feared she’d never write another novel,’ she read. Too true, Lindsay remembered with a sweet sadness. She had been the one caged in that beautiful London house with Cordelia while she paced the floor restlessly, ranting about her vanished talent. In vain, Lindsay had tried to reassure her, pointing to her successes as a television scriptwriter. ‘Pap and crap,’ Cordelia had spat back at her before storming out of the room to spend yet more hours motionless in front of the blank screen of her word processor.

But something had obviously happened to change all that. And it must have happened fast. For her to have a new book out now, she must have written it in a flurry of energy. It was nine months since Lindsay had left. Making a few quick mental calculations, she worked out that Cordelia must have written the first draft in the space of eight weeks at the very most. She never managed to work like that when she was with me, Lindsay thought painfully. Lighting another cigarette, she read on.

With four successful novels, a film script and three television series under her belt, the 36-year-old writer suffered a crippling failure of imagination. ‘I was in a state of blind panic,’ she revealed. ‘I felt as if I had used myself up.’

Then a friend told her the moving story of a Black South African woman who had died in police custody after battling to uncover the truth about the death of her lover. The tragic events struck a deep chord in Cordelia, who sat down the following day and wrote Ikhaya Lamaqhawe in a record six weeks.

It’s being hailed as her masterpiece, and although the Booker Prize ceremony is still ten months away, book trade insiders consider Ikhaya Lamaqhawe is certain to be a strong contender. A moving tour de force of controlled emotion, the book has astonished the literary world by its penetrating insights into the life of Black people under apartheid.

Ikhaya Lamaqhawe – which means Home Of the Heroes – tells the story of Alice Nbala, a teacher in a Black township. Her lover, Joseph Bukolo, is a mildly political student who is caught in a spiral of circumstances that leads to his disappearance. When his horribly mutilated body is found, Alice sets out to discover what happened to him. As she slowly realises that he has been a victim of the security forces, the net begins to close round her too.

Cordelia, who has never visited South Africa, admitted, ‘I was terrified that I wouldn’t get it right. I was aware of the sensitivities around this issue, and I didn’t want to be seen as another white liberal trying to hijack a subject I knew nothing about from personal experience. But although I haven’t gone through the traumas myself, I could relate very strongly to the emotions and the responses of the characters. I knew a lot about South Africa from reading and talking to Black people who had escaped from the regime, and I drew heavily on what they’d told me.’

News to me, thought Lindsay self-critically. She couldn’t remember Cordelia ever showing more than the general interest expected of a right-on feminist in the whole issue of racial oppression. Had she really known so little about what was going on in her lover’s mind?

With another deep sigh, she read on.

Not only has Cordelia got it right, she’s won plaudits from a wide spectrum of Black activists and writers, who privately have expressed their astonishment that a white writer could have written so passionate and accurate an exposé of the grim truth of life in the RSA.

Lindsay signalled for another cappuccino and quickly read on to the end of the article. To her relief, there was no mention of her and the spy scandal that had led to her exile. It would have been an obvious point for the interviewer to pick up on, given its tenuous parallels with Cordelia’s plot. Maybe it really had been the nine-day wonder Cordelia had predicted. If that was the case, then there truly was no reason why she shouldn’t go home. Or maybe it was simply that Cordelia had excised her so thoroughly from her life that she had insisted on no mention of Lindsay’s name. After all, what right had Lindsay to assume that Cordelia would want her back?

There was only one way to find out. Lindsay carefully folded up her paper, got to her feet and took the first step on the road home.

2

Glasgow, Scotland, February 1990

‘I always maintained that Glasgow was the only truly European city in Britain,’ Lindsay stated smugly as she stared out of the taxi window at the rows of sandblasted tenements glowing yellow in the streetlights. ‘But I didn’t realise till now how right I was.’

‘Listen to it,’ muttered her companion. ‘Nine months in Italy and suddenly she’s an expert on European culture.’ Eight years of friendship had given Sophie Hartley the right to snipe at Lindsay’s occasional pomposity and she never hesitated.

‘Listen,’ Lindsay argued. ‘Nothing you’ve told me about this wine bar we’re heading for sounds British to me. A place where writers, actors, lawyers and politicians go to drink good wine, eat serious food and put the world to rights sounds like café society in Paris or Vienna or Berlin, not bloody Glasgow. I know it’s three years since I lived here, but it seems to me that everything’s changed.’

Sophie smiled. ‘It’s got yuppified, if that’s what you mean. Every other car a BMW. Don’t forget, it’s the European City of Culture now,’ she teased.

‘As if I could,’ Lindsay replied ironically. ‘Every corner shop has got posters up advertising some cultural beanfeast. Everything from opera to open days, from puppets to psychodrama. I don’t even recognise the streets any more. Where there used to be nice wee bakeries selling cream doughnuts and every other sort of cholesterol-packed traditional Scottish goody, there are wholefood cafés. I tell you, Soph, I felt less of a stranger in Venice than I feel in Glasgow these days,’ she added with a sigh.

‘Well, you shouldn’t have stayed away from us so long, should you?’ said Sophie mercilessly, choosing to ignore the fact that she had been Lindsay’s first port of call after her duty visit to her parents in the Highlands.

‘I didn’t have much of a choice. I never wanted to be a bloody hero. All I wanted was to be the best journalist I could be.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Lindsay. If those mad bastards in the secret service had really wanted you, they’d have come and got you, wherever you were. Spy scandals are ten a penny these days. A couple of months after you broke the story, your average 007 would have been hard pressed even to remember your name, never mind what lid you had lifted.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Lindsay said gloomily. ‘You make it all seem worthwhile.’

Sophie laughed. ‘Come on, Lindsay, you’re still in one piece, and you’ve got the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’

Before Lindsay could reply, the cab driver pushed back his glass partition. ‘Youse gonny sit there blethering all night while the meter runs?’ he enquired pleasantly.

‘Sorry,’ Sophie said, pushing Lindsay out of the cab and paying the driver. Lindsay watched her as she searched her bag for her wallet. Time was being kind to Sophie, she thought. Now she had passed thirty, she seemed to have grown into her bones. In her twenties, her high cheekbones, straight nose and strong jaw had given her face a raw, unfinished look. But age had softened the impression, producing a striking image of humour and strength of character. Her curly brown hair was shot with grey now, giving an effect that other women paid their hairdressers fortunes for. Tonight, she was wearing a silky cobalt-blue jogging suit under a padded ski jacket, and Lindsay envied her style.

Sophie turned round and caught Lindsay’s scrutiny. One eyebrow twitched upwards in amusement. ‘You look like you’re sizing me up for the kill,’ she remarked wryly. ‘Come on, this is it,’ she said, pointing down an alley between the tall, Victorian buildings. A large square sign swinging in the evening air proclaimed ‘Soutar Johnnie’s’ above a painting of a cobbler working at his last. ‘We’ll have a drink and something to eat here before we meet Helen and Rosalind at the Tron Bar after their Labour Party meeting. Let’s just hope my radiopager doesn’t go off,’ she added as she led the way down the alley.

‘You’re not on call tonight, are you?’ Lindsay asked.

‘Technically, no. But if one of my patients goes into labour, they’ll probably call me in. The price of being a specialist.’ Sophie was a consultant gynaecologist at Stobhill Hospital, where she was in the vanguard of those treating the city’s growing numbers of HIV-positive women, mainly prostitutes and drug addicts.

Sophie pushed open the polished wooden door of the bar and Lindsay followed her in. She stopped on the threshold, taken aback. There had been nowhere quite like this when she had been a struggling freelance journalist in the city, and it was a shock to a system accustomed to the functional, masculine atmosphere of the old-fashioned city-centre pubs. The bar was well lit, with square tables and comfy looking chairs scattered around. Food was being eaten at several tables, and even at first glance it looked completely different from the old pub staple of pie and peas. And, to Lindsay’s astonishment, quite a few of the patrons appeared to be drinking coffee rather than alcohol. Very Continental, she thought wryly as she followed Sophie to the horseshoe-shaped mahogany bar.

Lindsay joined Sophie and studied the long list of wines scrawled on the blackboard behind the bar. Her astonishment grew as she read it. Not a single Liebfraumilch or Lambrusco to be seen! The wine list was as varied and interesting as the clientele, who ranged from a few long-haired hippies who looked like reluctant refugees from the sixties, to well-barbered young men in double-breasted suits. Sophie meanwhile had caught the attention of the barman, a huge bull of a man with a mop of thick black curls and a black patch over one eye. ‘Hi, Cosmo,’ Sophie said as he approached. ‘Give us a bottle of the Australian Chardonnay and two glasses, please.’

‘Coming up, Sophie,’ he replied, opening a tall glass-fronted fridge. ‘What’s all this, then? Buying classy bottles of wine for strange women? Good gossip! Wait till the Sisters of Treachery get to hear about this!’

Sophie grinned as she paid for the wine and picked it up. ‘If they do, I’ll know who told them, Cosmo,’ she replied. ‘This is an old friend of mine, Lindsay Gordon. Lindsay, meet Cosmo Mackay. He owns this disreputable dive.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Lindsay. Any friend of Sophie’s stands a good chance of becoming one of my best customers. She’s never introduced me to a teetotaller yet! Are you eating tonight, by the way?’ he asked.

‘You bet,’ said Sophie.

Cosmo handed her a menu. ‘I’ll take your order in a minute. There’s plenty of tables in the back room.’ He turned away to serve another customer.

‘What was all that about?’ Lindsay demanded. ‘Who in God’s name are the Sisters of Treachery?’

‘It’s a little political joke. Cosmo’s a member of the same Constituency Labour Party as Helen and Rosalind. The party’s been split over lots of issues lately, so there’s been a lot of intriguing going on. One of the right-wingers was having a go at Helen and Rosalind one night and he called them the Sisters of Treachery. The pair of them thought it was hysterical, and the name became a sort of in-joke among the left,’ Sophie explained. ‘Now, what do you want to eat?’

Lindsay studied the menu with delight. There were all the traditional favourites like black pudding with scrambled eggs, mutton stovies and haggis. But there were also vegetarian dishes, and new variations on old themes, like spiced chicken stovies – a mixture of potatoes, onions and spiced chicken pieces. Just reading the list made her mouth water. What a change from pasta and pizza, she thought happily. Eventually she settled on haggis with mashed potatoes and turnips.

While they were waiting for Cosmo to return, Sophie turned to Lindsay and asked, ‘Have you given any more thought to what you’re going to do for a living?’

Lindsay shrugged. ‘Not really. I don’t think I can go back to being a journo, though, even if they wanted me. My heart just isn’t in it any more.’

‘You could always become a private detective. After all, you’ve solved two murders so far. I can just see you with the snap-brimmed trilby and the bottle of Jack Daniels in the desk drawer. And just think of the perks! All those beautiful blondes falling at your feet,’ Sophie teased.

Lindsay pulled a face and shook her head. ‘No thanks. I’m looking for a quiet life these days.’

‘You came to the wrong place then,’ Cosmo interrupted. ‘What can I get you ladies – sorry, women – to eat?’

Having given their order to Cosmo, Sophie steered a path through the crowded bar towards a doorway at the rear. Lindsay followed her into a remarkable room. The far wall and the sloping roof were made of glass, and the other walls were covered from floor to ceiling with plants trained over trellises. Chattering groups of people sat on white garden furniture with brightly coloured cushions. Before she had a chance to take it all in, she cannoned into Sophie who had stopped dead.

Sophie turned on her heel and tried to usher Lindsay out of the room. But she was too late. Lindsay had already spotted the reason for her abrupt, awkward halt. Sitting at a table on the far side of the room were two women, deeply engrossed in conversation. It was obvious to the most casual observer that they were a couple. She had never seen the slender blonde before. But the woman sitting opposite her was as familiar to Lindsay as her own face in the mirror. She felt her stomach lurch and fought the desperate urge to be sick. Without even realising she was doing it, she shrugged off Sophie’s restraining arm and purposefully crossed the room.

Neither of the two women registered her presence till she was only feet from their table. Even then, it was the blonde who looked up first. When she saw Lindsay, a series of reactions flashed across her face in a moment. Curiosity was overtaken by bewilderment, bewilderment by shock, and shock by a strange mixture of relief and amusement. Her companion was slower to realise they had company, since Lindsay had approached from behind her. She turned in her chair and her eyes widened. ‘Lindsay!’ she gasped, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. She gave a nervous half-smile, apparently incapable of further speech.

‘Hello, Cordelia. Fancy meeting you here. That explains why I couldn’t find you in London,’ Lindsay said with ice in her voice.

The blonde woman got to her feet and extended a slim hand. ‘Hello, Lindsay. We’ve never met before, but I’ve heard a lot about you …’

‘I bet you have,’ Lindsay interrupted savagely, ignoring the outstretched hand.

Undaunted, the other continued. ‘I’m Claire Ogilvie. Jackie – Jackie Mitchell, that is, told me a lot about you. That’s how I came to meet Cordelia.’

‘How fascinating,’ Lindsay said with heavy sarcasm, mentally slotting Claire into place. Jackie’s girlfriend, the lawyer. Portia with a Porsche. Cordelia had obviously had her fill of working-class heroes and reverted to type, Lindsay thought furiously. In a cold voice she said, ‘Well, don’t let us interrupt your intimate little tête-à-tête. Come on, Sophie,’ she added, turning away. ‘We’ll find somewhere more congenial to eat.’

‘No, wait,’ said Cordelia, finally finding her tongue. ‘Don’t go, Lindsay.’

‘Why not? You’ve obviously not been counting the minutes till I got back, have you?’

‘I think you’re being a little unfair, Lindsay,’ Claire said. ‘Why don’t you calm down and sit down and we can discuss this like adults?’

‘Discuss what?’ Lindsay demanded, her voice rising. ‘Discuss your relationship with the woman I have just discovered is my ex-lover?’

‘Lindsay,’ Sophie said in the soothing but firm voice she’d developed years ago to deal with drunks in casualty. ‘Cool it. Either let’s go now, or else sit down and have a drink.’

Lindsay, struggling with a mixture of anger, disappointment and hurt, abruptly sat down, followed by the other three.

‘When did you get back? And where have you been?’ Cordelia asked. Even to herself, her questions sounded empty and irrelevant. But she didn’t know what else to say. Seeing Lindsay again so unexpectedly had left her floundering in a welter of emotions that she could neither separate nor identify.

‘I got back a week ago,’ Lindsay replied in weary tones. ‘I tried to phone a couple of times en route, but I kept getting the answering machine, and it didn’t seem the appropriate way to break the silence. When I got to London, I went straight to the house, but you weren’t there. I rang your mother, but she didn’t seem to know where you were. Your agent said you’d gone away for a couple of weeks, she wasn’t sure where either, so rather than hang about in London on the off-chance that you’d be back, I drove up to Yorkshire, gave Deborah her van back and collected my MG. Then I went to see my parents and came back to Glasgow. I’ve been in Italy. By myself, which is more than I can say for you,’ she added bitterly.

‘My God, you’ve got a nerve,’ Cordelia said. ‘You vanish off the face of the earth for nine bloody months and you expect to come home like the prodigal daughter and find everything exactly the way it was?’

‘Obviously I was wrong, wasn’t I? You knew exactly why I went to ground. For God’s sake, I left a letter explaining what the hell was going on. And I sent you a card to let you know I was safe.’

‘One poxy card in nine months! I could recite it from memory. “Weather stunning. Natives friendly. Hope to get over to London to see you soon, but life is hectic right now. Be patient!”’ Cordelia flashed back sarcastically.

‘I was trying to protect you. I didn’t want them leaning on you to turn me in,’ Lindsay replied defensively.

‘How noble!’ Cordelia retorted, grey eyes cloudy with anger, generous mouth uncharacteristically pursed.

‘I did what I thought was right. I didn’t expect you to jump into bed with someone else the minute my back was turned,’ Lindsay accused.

‘What the hell was I supposed to do? Answer me that! How long was I supposed to wait before I started to put my life back together again? Have you any idea how much time, energy and money I spent trying to find you? I rang everyone I could think of, I went everywhere I thought you might be. I even went to bloody New York!’

‘And how long did it take you to steal Jackie’s girlfriend?’

Both Claire and Cordelia looked shocked by Lindsay’s question. But it was Claire who collected herself first and said in conciliatory tones, ‘It wasn’t like that. I was looking for you, and a mutual friend introduced me to Cordelia, who was in Glasgow at the time, also trying to get a lead on your whereabouts. So we joined forces and spent a lot of time trying to track you down. But you made a good job of your disappearing act.’

‘And what the hell business of yours was it where I was?’ Lindsay snapped, stalling while she took in what Claire had said.

‘Jackie asked me to find you.’

‘So why couldn’t she look for me herself if she was so desperate?’ said Lindsay defiantly. She remembered Jackie Mitchell well – a hardworking, hard-bitten journalist, well capable of fighting her own battles. If Jackie had wanted to find her, she wouldn’t have delegated her mission to this toffee-nosed yuppie.

‘It’s a bit hard to scour the world for someone when you’re behind bars,’ Claire replied ironically.

‘Behind bars? You mean … in prison?’ Lindsay asked, confused.

‘That’s right. She’s serving life for the murder of Alison Maxwell.’

Lindsay stared at Claire, unbelieving. ‘This has got to be some kind of sick joke,’ she muttered. Lindsay turned to Sophie. ‘Tell me she’s making this up.’

Sophie shook her head. ‘She’s telling you the truth. The trial was just before Christmas. I’m sorry, I didn’t think to tell you.’

‘Jesus,’ Lindsay sighed, dragging out the syllables. ‘Alison? What the hell happened?’

Claire took over in businesslike fashion, perhaps because she sensed that Cordelia was too shaken to deal with Lindsay. ‘Alison was found strangled in her flat. Jackie had been there with her shortly before she was killed, and in the absence of any other obvious candidate, the police chose her. Unfortunately, the jury agreed with them. Shortly after her arrest, Jackie asked me to see if I could find you. She knew you’d been involved with a couple of murder investigations before, and she was very impressed with your courage over the Brownlow Common spy scandal. And of course, because you’re gay, she thought you’d be more sympathetic. She believed that if anyone could prove her innocence, it was you. While I was searching for you, I met Cordelia. I’m sorry if our relationship outrages you, but you can hardly have expected Cordelia to take a vow of chastity till you deigned to show up.’

Lindsay stared miserably at Cordelia. It was all too much to take in. She had lost the one woman with whom she had ever formed an equal relationship; a former lover was dead; and a former colleague was in prison for her murder. Once she could have turned to Cordelia for the love and support to carry her through those moments when the roof caved in on her life. But it was too late for that now. She gradually became aware that Claire was talking to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ Lindsay said. ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

‘I said I’d like to discuss with you the possibility of trying to clear Jackie’s name. It’s not too late for an appeal if we can dig up some fresh evidence. I’m not asking you to make any decision now – I realise this has been rather a traumatic evening. But I’d appreciate it if you’d call me tomorrow when you’ve had time to think it over.’ Claire fished in the inevitable filofax and produced a card. ‘My home and my business numbers are both there.’

Lindsay stared numbly at the card lying on the table. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d encountered someone with Claire’s thick-skinned audacity. Her nerve was breathtaking, a sharp contrast to the way Lindsay herself was feeling. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Coming home was supposed to feel good. But she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so bad.

3

Lindsay sat staring at the cigarette in her hand, watching the smoke spiral up to join the thick layer that hung below the ceiling in the crowded bar of the Tron Theatre. The noisy chatter of the literary wing of Glasgow’s renaissance could not distract her from the bleakness that filled her. She was shaken from her reverie by Sophie’s return from the bar with two spritzers, condensation already dripping down the glasses. ‘Drink up, doctor’s orders,’ Sophie said sympathetically as she sat down.

‘Thanks,’ Lindsay muttered. ‘Sorry to spoil your evening.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Sophie replied. ‘I haven’t seen a cabaret as good as that since last year’s Edinburgh Festival. I’d forgotten what a drama queen you can be. I’ll be dining out on it for months.’ In spite of herself, Lindsay smiled. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Sophie added.

‘About Cordelia or about Jackie?’

‘Both.’

Lindsay sighed. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot I can do about Cordelia, does there? She’s got herself a class act to cuddle up to. Much more her speed than a toerag like me, don’t you think?’

‘More fool Cordelia, then,’ said Sophie consolingly. Privately, she thought Lindsay’s reaction to Cordelia’s new relationship was completely unreasonable, but she was too fond of her to say so yet. There would be plenty of time to thrash it out when Lindsay was feeling less raw. She tried to take her mind off the débâcle in Soutar Johnnie’s, saying, ‘But what about Jackie?’

Lindsay shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The fact that I’ve managed to dig out the truth a couple of times in the past doesn’t mean I’m some kind of private eye. You know, Sophie, I can’t seem to take it in that Alison’s dead. I mean, when I was having my own little fling with her, God knows I felt like strangling her often enough; but the difference between feeling like that and actually doing it … I can’t imagine what makes that possible. I suppose I feel like I’ve got a score to settle on Alison’s account, never mind Jackie. But I’m in such a mess about myself and my future that I don’t know how much use I’d be.’

Sophie ran a hand through her curly hair, a gesture Lindsay recognised from the days when the brown hadn’t been streaked with grey. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said with feeling. ‘But you’re not committed to anything else right now, are you? And in spite of the way you’ve been putting yourself down ever since you saw Claire and Cordelia together, you’ve got a pretty good track record when it comes to discovering things that the police have missed or ignored. And there is one other aspect of it you might not have considered. If you can get Jackie released, it might well be enough to drive a wedge between Cordelia and Claire. That would at least give you the chance to find out if the two of you have still got a future together.’

Before Lindsay could reply, a booming Liverpool accent rang across the room. ‘Bloody skinflint, Hartley. Where’s the bottle? I suppose we’ll have to buy our own drinks?’

Lindsay swung round in her seat to see Helen Christie waving from the bar, her unmistakable mane of carrot-red hair glinting under the lights. Behind her, paying for a carafe of wine, was her fellow Sister of Treachery, Rosalind Campbell. As they came over to the table, Lindsay thought it was no wonder that they struck terror into their political opponents. They looked like a pair of Valkyries striding across the bar.

‘My God,’ Helen groaned as she subsided into a chair, after planting a cursory kiss on the top of Sophie’s head. ‘What a night we’ve had! That lot couldn’t organise an explosion in a fireworks factory!’

Lindsay watched fondly as Helen and Rosalind launched into a double-act recitation of the evening’s meeting. No matter how down Lindsay felt, Helen had always had the power to make her laugh. They’d met at Oxford, the only working-class students reading English at St Mary’s College. They’d instantly formed an alliance whose main weapon had been satire, a desperate wit born of their never-admitted feelings of inferiority. After university, their ways had parted, Lindsay choosing journalism, Helen arts administration. Now, she ran her own television and film casting agency, and, with what was left from her boundless supply of energy, she had thrown herself into local politics.

But the two women had stayed in touch, and even when Helen and Sophie had set up home together eight years earlier, there had been no diminution of the close friendship that still bound Lindsay and Helen. In fact, Lindsay had gained a friend in Sophie. When Helen and Sophie had split up eighteen months before, Lindsay had feared that she would be forced to choose between her two friends. But to her amazement, the ending of their love affair had been remarkably without rancour, and they had remained the closest of friends. The only real change, as far as Lindsay could see, was that they now lived separately. Neither had formed any lasting relationship with anyone else, although, according to Sophie, Helen had recently been spending time with a young actress she’d spotted in a pub theatre group and placed in a new television series.

Lindsay suddenly became aware that Helen was looking enquiringly at her. She pulled herself back into the painful present. ‘I’m sorry,’ she confessed, ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

‘Pearls before swine,’ Helen sighed. ‘Here am I, bringing you despatches from the front line of British politics, and you’re daydreaming about some leggy blonde, no doubt. I said, what kind of evening have you had, Lindsay?’

‘Ask Sophie,’ Lindsay replied wryly. ‘She’s already told me it’s given her enough ammo to sing for her supper for months to come. You might as well practise on the experts, Soph.’

Sophie pulled a face, then launched into a detailed account of their earlier encounter at Soutar Johnnie’s. Before she could finish, Helen had exploded. ‘My God, what a complete shit for you, Lindsay!’ she exclaimed. ‘I had no idea she was still around, did you, Sophie? We saw her a couple of times after you first left, Lindsay. She was desperate to get in touch with you and thought you might have been in contact with one or other of us. But I thought she’d gone back to London. Poor you!’

With her usual detachment, Rosalind had been listening. As Helen paused for breath, she cut in. ‘You will take it on, though, won’t you? I can’t imagine you sitting back and letting Jackie rot.’

Reluctantly, Lindsay nodded. ‘I don’t suppose I’ve got much choice.’

‘Well at least Claire can afford it,’ Rosalind said.

‘Afford what?’ Helen demanded.

‘Afford Lindsay,’ Rosalind replied.

‘What do you mean, afford me?’ Lindsay asked, puzzled.

‘You’ve got to be realistic about it,’ Rosalind said patiently. ‘You’ve got no job and no prospect of one, if I understand you correctly. If you refuse to help and Claire wants to pursue this, she’s going to have to go to a private detective. There is no reason on God’s earth why you should be prepared to do it for free. And Claire Ogilvie can certainly afford to pay.’

Lindsay looked stunned. ‘I’m not taking money from that bloody designer dyke,’ she replied angrily. ‘What do you take me for?’

‘Ros is right,’ Sophie said quietly. ‘If Claire wants you to do a job, she should be prepared to pay the going rate.’

‘It feels like taking money under false pretences,’ said Lindsay stubbornly. ‘I’m hardly Philip Marlowe, am I?’

‘You’ve got skills and specialist knowledge,’ Rosalind argued. ‘It’s unprofessional not to charge her for exercising them. I can’t imagine Claire dishing out free professional advice, can you?’

‘But I don’t know where to start,’ Lindsay said weakly, knowing she had been outflanked by Rosalind. And, given the tenacity of her friends, she knew she’d actually have to go through with the business of charging Claire for her services.

‘I might just be able to help you there,’ Rosalind said with a slow smile.

Lindsay rang off and threw the cordless phone to the other end of the sofa. Burned my boats now, she thought with a scowl. ‘Why do I let myself get talked into these things?’ she muttered as she walked through to the big, airy kitchen of Sophie’s tenement flat. Lindsay poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down to think. She had agreed to meet Claire in an hour’s time, and she wanted to get everything straight in her head before then.

Recalling Alison Maxwell wasn’t difficult. They had met the first time Lindsay had been hired to do a shift on the Scottish Daily Clarion. Lindsay had been standing at the library counter waiting for a packet of cuttings. She turned to find herself faced with a woman who seemed to have stepped out of her most secret fantasies, the ones she guiltily felt shouldn’t inhabit the mind of a politically aware feminist. The vision had sandy blonde hair, and an almost Scandinavian cast to her high-cheekboned features. She was a couple of inches taller than Lindsay, with slim hips, and a cleavage that was impossible to ignore. ‘Hi,’ she said in a rich, cultivated Kelvinside accent. ‘I’m Alison Maxwell. Features department.’

Lindsay had fallen head over heels in lust. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she croaked, feeling gauche and adolescent. ‘I’m Lindsay Gordon. I’m doing a shift for the newsdesk.’

‘Ah,’ said Alison. ‘Pity you’re not a photographer, then I could call you Flash Gordon.’

‘If I get the front page tonight, then you can call me Splash Gordon instead.’

Lindsay hadn’t made the front page splash that night, but she’d still been Splash from then on to Alison. To Lindsay’s surprise, the feature writer seemed determined to include Lindsay in her busy social life, inviting her out to dinner, to parties and to her flat for drinks. It wasn’t long before they became lovers. But it was Alison who made the first move. If it had been up to Lindsay, they would never have got beyond a peck on the cheek when they parted. Lindsay would have been happy to leave Alison on her pedestal, having no confidence at all in her own power to attract a woman so different from her previous lovers.

At first, Lindsay was in a daze of lust fulfilled by exotic and imaginative sex. But once the initial infatuation wore off, she began to see Alison more clearly, and she grew to dislike and distrust what she saw. Lindsay gradually came to understand that Alison Maxwell was a woman who was incapable of simple human relationships. She was too in love with power to have love left over for people. That power was usually exercised through the nuggets of information she’d acquired in the bedroom. It took only a matter of days for Lindsay to discover that she was far from being Alison’s only lover. In a matter of weeks, she had reached the bitter conclusion that Alison was sexually omnivorous.

Faced with this, Lindsay had made up her mind to end their relationship. That was when she had discovered the cruellest streak in Alison. For Alison was a woman who only let go when she was ready. She had to have control over every situation, and that included the ending of her sexual relationships. When Lindsay had announced her intention to sever their connection, Alison had wept and raged, and finally threatened. She would claim that Lindsay had got her drunk and seduced her. She would make sure everyone knew what a twisted little dyke Lindsay was. And she’d make sure that Lindsay never did another day’s work at the Clarion. Her venom had unnerved Lindsay, and she had allowed herself to be swallowed up in the passion of their reconciliation.

The following day, ashamed of having given in to Alison’s blackmail, Lindsay had left town for a few days, making the excuse of a feature she wanted to research in Aberdeen. By the time she had returned, Alison had been absorbed in someone new, and had lost all interest in Lindsay, much to her relief. Being dropped from Alison’s social circle had left a gap at first, but Lindsay was grateful to have survived relatively unscathed. As the months passed and she observed her former lover wreaking havoc in other people’s lives, Lindsay vowed never to let her fantasies run away with her again.

Since she’d moved away from Glasgow, Alison had been no more than a distant memory. But the news of her death had brought these memories to life. There had been so much life in Alison. It might not have been a desirable vivacity, but nevertheless, Lindsay felt herself diminished by Alison’s death. They had hit the heights together, after all. And she’d been a bloody good journalist. The same skills that she used to wind her lovers round her little finger were invaluable when it came to persuading interviewees to open up to her. Alison might have been a bitch, thought Lindsay sadly, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. And however hard she tried, Lindsay couldn’t picture Jackie Mitchell as her killer. Jackie had been a hard-nosed journalist, but underneath, like so many of them, she was soft-centred and weak. Nothing Lindsay had learned about the murder seemed to fit her image of Jackie.

Rosalind had provided a surprising amount of information about Alison Maxwell’s murder. Surprising, that is, until Lindsay had remembered that Rosalind’s compact modern flat was in the same block as the dead woman’s apartment. As a result, Rosalind had taken a keen interest in the progress of the investigation and trial. The training and experience she’d acquired over her years in the civil service had stood her in good stead when it came to reporting her version of events to Lindsay. She had run through everything she knew in a crisp, factual way, making Lindsay feel like a Scottish Office Minister on the receiving end of some vital briefing. No wonder politicians felt inferior to their senior civil servants! And no wonder Rosalind had climbed to the rank of Principal Officer.

All the evidence against Jackie had been circumstantial, Rosalind had reported. She had never denied that she had been in Alison’s flat on the afternoon of the murder. She had never denied that they had been to bed together. She had never denied her ownership of the scarf that had strangled Alison. But from the moment of her arrest till now, convicted and sentenced, she had vigorously denied killing her. The point at issue, according to Rosalind, was whether Jackie was telling the truth about the time of her departure.

‘Jackie was seen by Alison’s mother leaving the building by the side door at five minutes to six. Mrs Maxwell was trying to gain admittance to the block. We have security entryphones, and there was no response from Alison’s flat. Mrs Maxwell had to wait another fifteen minutes before someone arrived who could let her into the building. They went up in the lift together. Mrs Maxwell went straight to Alison’s flat, where the front door was ajar. She walked as far as the bedroom door, saw her daughter and started screaming,’ Rosalind explained.

‘Jackie maintained at the time, and later, that she had left the flat nearly half an hour before the body was discovered. She had walked down the fire escape stairs rather than take the lift, and stopped to have a cigarette and a think. The police took the not unreasonable view that this was scarcely normal behaviour. And of course, once they had Jackie in custody, and had satisfied the Procurator Fiscal that the case against her covered all the eventualities, the investigation stopped dead.’

It didn’t leave too many avenues for exploring, Lindsay thought to herself as she finished her coffee. But Rosalind had been able to give her a spare set of keys to the building and her flat. Later this afternoon, Lindsay would take advantage of that to have a good look around and refresh her memory about the layout of the block that had once been almost as familiar as her own tenement. But first, she had to face Claire.

She glanced in the full-length mirror in the hall as she reached for her heavy sheepskin jacket. If Cordelia was going to be at Claire’s, Lindsay wanted to look her best. All the exercise and healthy eating in Italy had left her nearly a stone lighter, and her tight Levis emphasised the fact. But her thick Aran sweater did her no favours. Impatiently, Lindsay pulled it off and surveyed herself in the loose but flattering scarlet polo shirt she was wearing underneath. She’d probably freeze to death, but at least she was looking pretty good. She shrugged into her jacket, determined to show Cordelia exactly what she was missing!

4

Lindsay managed to find a free parking meter by the river, a couple of streets away from Claire’s flat. She set the alarm on her ancient MGB roadster then strode briskly through the misty winter air, casting a jaundiced eye on the cold grey waters of the Clyde. Not an improvement on the blue of the Adriatic, she thought. At times like this, she wished she’d never left Italy. Fancy thinking coming home would solve anything.

Following Claire’s detailed instructions, she turned into a narrow alleyway which opened out into a small courtyard with several staircases leading off it. Originally, these had been the semi-slum homes of the ill-paid clerks who had tended the fortunes of the Victorian merchants and shipping magnates who had once made the city great. Over the years, the properties had deteriorated, till they were precariously balanced on the edge of demolition. But in the nick of time, a new prosperity had arrived in Glasgow and the property developers had snapped up the almost derelict slums and renovated them. Now, there were luxury flats with steel doors and closed circuit video security systems where once there had been open staircases that rang with the sounds of too many families crammed into too small a space. Lindsay surveyed the clean, sandblasted courtyard with an ironic smile, before pressing the buzzer for Claire’s flat and glowering at the camera lens three feet above her head.

The speaker at her ear crackled, and she could just make out Claire’s voice. ‘It’s Lindsay,’ she said, and was rewarded by the angry buzz of the door release. Lindsay mounted the stairs to the third landing, where Claire stood by her open front door. Lindsay took in the details of her appearance that she had been too upset to notice the night before. The most striking thing about her was her height. She was nearly six feet tall, and her body had all the willowy sinuousness of a model. Her fine white-blonde hair was beautifully cut, like the severely tailored grey herringbone woollen suit she wore. She looked like a recruitment poster for law graduates.

‘Come in,’ Claire greeted her. ‘You’re very punctual.’

Lindsay bit back a sarcastic retort and followed her through a spacious hallway furnished with a small Turkish carpet and several pale wood bookcases. In an alcove, behind glass doors, was a collection of Oriental porcelain. Claire showed her into a huge square room with two bay windows which overlooked the river. The room must originally have been the living rooms of two separate flats, Lindsay thought to herself. Two families would have occupied the space now filled with Claire’s Scandinavian pine furniture and colourful wall hangings. Even the stereo system and the CD collection were housed in tailor-made glass-fronted pine units. It could have come straight from the pages of the kind of glossy magazine Lindsay couldn’t imagine wanting to write for. Cordelia would feel right at home here, she thought bitterly, taking in the Cartier briefcase standing beside the sofa. The room’s designer consumerism epitomised everything that had disturbed Lindsay about their life together. But Cordelia had never shared her discomfort.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Claire asked.

‘No thanks,’ Lindsay replied. She might have to take Claire’s money, but she was damned if she would accept anything that fell outside the ambit of a purely professional relationship. At least Cordelia wasn’t here to churn up her emotions again, she thought with a mixture of relief and regret. ‘So, you said that Jackie wants my help,’ she added, perching on the edge of a pine-framed armchair.

Claire pushed her glasses up her nose in a nervous gesture. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Look, before we start, I just wanted to apologise for last night. I realise it must have been something of a shock for you, and I’m sorry if I was less than helpful.’

Lindsay shrugged. ‘What exactly did Jackie want me to do?’

Claire was clearly unsettled by Lindsay’s ungracious response to her apology, and walked over to the window to stare out at the mist-shrouded water. ‘She thought you could establish her innocence.’

‘But why? What made her think I could succeed where the police and her own lawyers had failed? Surely if there had been anything to go on you would have hired a private detective before the trial.’

Having recovered her poise, Claire turned back and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Lindsay couldn’t help picturing Cordelia curled up there beside her, watching television or just talking. She pushed the bitter thought aside and forced herself to listen to Claire. ‘We didn’t go to a conventional private detective because Jackie didn’t believe that we’d find one who would genuinely be on our side. I have to say that in my experience professionally with the breed, I wouldn’t expect to find one who was sympathetic to a gay woman. Jackie thought you’d believe her. And she thought you’d have a vested interest in finding out the truth. She knew about your own affair with Alison, knew you’d understand what she’d been put through.’

Lindsay lit a cigarette without her usual courtesy of asking permission first. Claire leapt to her feet, saying, ‘I’ll get you an ashtray.’ She disappeared through another door and returned moments later with an ostentatiously large crystal ashtray. Lindsay felt that using it would be like shouting in a museum. Claire placed it on the occasional table next to Lindsay’s chair and said, ‘Well, will you help? She didn’t do it, you know.’ There was a note of desperation in her voice that touched Lindsay in spite of herself.

Wearily, Lindsay nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said. ‘My daily rate is £100 plus expenses. I’d expect a week’s payment in advance, as a retainer,’ she added quickly, amazed at how easily it came out.

Claire’s eyebrows rose. ‘Cordelia didn’t seem to think you’d expect to be paid,’ she said coolly. ‘But I’m used to paying for professional services. In return, I expect full reports on what you are doing.’ Claire opened her briefcase and swiftly wrote a cheque for £700. She handed it to Lindsay with a look of contempt.

‘That goes without saying,’ Lindsay replied. She glanced at the cheque and noted it was drawn on the JM Defence Account. Claire might be happy to splash out on maintaining her own high-flying image, but clearly a private detective wasn’t considered a designer accessory, Lindsay thought with a spurt of anger. She took a deep breath before she spoke. ‘Now, before we go any further, I want you to tell me everything you know about the events leading up to the murder.’ Lindsay took a notebook out of her shoulder bag to take down Claire’s words in her rusty shorthand.

Claire took a deep breath and went back to her vantage point at the window. ‘We’d been having a difficult time. We’d been together just over five years, and I suppose we’d started taking each other for granted. I had only recently been made a partner in my firm, and I was bringing a lot of work home. And Jackie was busier than ever. So many new magazines have been launched in the last couple of years, and they’re all hungry for strong, well-written features. But I was too absorbed in my own problems to notice the strain she was under. I suppose that was Alison’s appeal for her. Alison was in the same business, and they could talk shop together. I know Jackie had a lot of professional respect for Alison.’ Claire sighed deeply and walked across to a tray with a decanter and glasses. She poured herself a careful inch of Scotch, turning to Lindsay and saying, ‘Sure you won’t have one?’

Lindsay shook her head. ‘Go on,’ she probed.

Claire paced the floor. ‘It was the old, old story. I was the last to know. It had apparently been going on for about two months when I found out.’

‘How did you find out?’ Lindsay asked gently. She couldn’t help herself. Even with a woman she instinctively disliked so much, she still slipped straight into the persona of the professionally sympathetic interviewer.

‘I usually went to bed before Jackie. One night, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to make myself a cup of cocoa. I came through from the bedroom and I could hear Jackie’s voice. It wasn’t that I was eavesdropping, I just couldn’t help overhearing. She was clearly having an intimate conversation with someone …’ Claire’s voice tailed off, and she traced the pattern on the crystal glass with one long fingernail.

‘What made you think it was the sort of intimate conversation you have with lovers?’ Lindsay probed.

‘For want of a better way of putting it, she was talking dirty to someone,’ Claire said with a look of distaste. ‘I was completely stunned. The idea of her having a lover had never once crossed my mind, can you believe it?’

‘Oh, I can believe it all right,’ Lindsay said, pushing the thought of Cordelia away again. ‘But how did you find out it was Alison? Did you confront Jackie then and there?’

‘I didn’t know what to do, so I crept back to bed. When she finally came through, I waited till she’d fallen asleep, then I got up and pressed the last number redial button on the phone. I got Alison Maxwell’s answering machine. The following evening, I confronted Jackie with it, and she admitted it immediately. It was almost as if it was a relief to her.’ Claire took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘We had a very traumatic evening. A lot of tears, a lot of talking. At the end of it, we decided that there was still too much between us to finish it. Jackie agreed that she would stop seeing Alison. And as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. Two days later, I came home to find Jackie in tears. She told me she’d been to see Alison to break it off, but that Alison had been completely unreasonable. She had threatened to tell me all sorts of lies about what they had done together, and to destroy Jackie’s career. Jackie was in a hell of a state. Before we could sort anything out between us, the police arrived and arrested her.’ Claire stopped pacing and stared at Lindsay in mute misery. The cool lawyer’s façade had vanished completely. ‘It was only later that I discovered that Alison and Jackie had been to bed together that afternoon. I know it sounds absurd, but I was more upset over her lying to me about that than I was about her being accused of the murder.’

‘So instead of pledging yourself to wait for her, you jumped into bed with Cordelia. Very supportive,’ Lindsay said, fighting the sympathy she was beginning to feel for Claire with her anger at Cordelia.

‘That’s not fair,’ Claire protested angrily. ‘It wasn’t like that. Neither of us planned what happened.’

Lindsay ignored Claire’s response and asked, ‘Is there anything more you can tell me that might shed some light? Did Jackie mention anyone else in connection with Alison?’

Claire shook her head. ‘No. You’ll need to ask Jackie all the details of what actually happened that afternoon,’ she grimaced. ‘Ever the lawyer, you see, I’m not giving you any hearsay evidence. I’ll also speak to Jackie’s lawyer, Jim Carstairs, so you can have access to all the legal papers. Remember – what I’m interested in is getting Jackie freed. To do that, you don’t have to provide definitive proof against any individual. You simply have to come up with enough new evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the conviction.’

‘I might not have a law degree, but I do have a qualification in Scots law for journalists, Claire. I’m well aware of the standard of proof required by the courts,’ Lindsay retorted, feeling patronised by Claire’s spelling out of the situation.

Claire flushed. ‘Very well. What do you plan to do next?’

‘I want to see Jackie as soon as that can be arranged. In the meantime, I’m going to take a look at the flats where Alison lived. I’ve borrowed a set of keys from a friend of mine who lives in the block. I want to refresh my memory on the layout. I’ll ring Jim Carstairs and arrange a time to see the papers. And I’ll look up a few contacts from my Clarion days. I’ll call you tomorrow evening and let you know how I’m going on.’

‘Where can I reach you?’ Claire asked. ‘Cordelia told me you rented your flat out when you moved to London three years ago.’

‘Yes. Unfortunately, the students who are in it now have a lease that doesn’t run out till July. So I’m staying with a friend.’ Lindsay scribbled down Sophie’s number on a sheet from her notebook. She got to her feet. ‘Goodbye, Claire. I’ll see myself out.’

Lindsay drove out of the city centre with a sour taste in her mouth. How could Cordelia have fallen for a pretentious yuppie like Claire Ogilvie? To distract herself, she studied Great Western Road as she drove out towards Alison’s flat in Hyndland. There had been a few changes here in recent years. It all looked smarter, somehow, the last-ditch hippy emporia of the seventies having finally vanished, overtaken by bookshops, up-market restaurants and interesting food shops. I like being back, she thought with surprise as she swung left off the main road and headed for Caird House. The flats were a ten-storey modern block, built by a housing association in the late seventies. Alison’s flat was on the sixth floor, two below Rosalind’s.

Lindsay left her car in one of the visitors’ parking bays, then walked down the ramp and past the barrier into the residents’ underground car park. It was almost empty in the late afternoon. Like Claire’s Merchant City eyrie, these were flats for single professionals, or couples without children. At this time of day, they would all be at work. Lindsay crossed the garage and examined the door. Unlike the ground floor entrances, this one had no entryphone, just the same seven-lever mortice lock as the other outside doors. Presumably only residents were expected to come in from the garage. Lindsay tried the key that Rosalind had given her and entered the block.

She noticed the two lifts, but ignored them and headed for the fire escape stairs. She climbed up one level and emerged through a heavy swing door into the foyer. There were two outside exits, one on either side of the block, each leading to a small landscaped parking area. Through the far door, she could just see the nose of her own car. There were no flats on the ground floor, merely boxroom storage areas and the collection area where the rubbish chutes deposited their contents. Lindsay pushed the fire door open again and climbed the stairs. She’d always used the lifts before, and wanted to see for herself how likely it was that Jackie might have been spotted from the outside as she’d sat on the stairs smoking. Small frosted glass windows provided the only daylight, killing that possibility. Overhead, fluorescent strips hummed. At the sixth floor, Lindsay emerged on to a familiar landing.

There were four flats on each landing, one at each corner of the central core. Two had one bedroom, the others had two, she remembered. Ahead of her lay Alison’s front door. 6A. How many times had she stood here in a fever of anticipation, desperate for the satisfaction she knew she’d find on the other side of that cherry-red door?

Lindsay turned away, aware for the first time of the depth of her sorrow for Alison. She examined the landing more carefully. Beside the lifts was another door. Curious, she opened it. Inside, there was just room for a person to stand. In the wall was a large, square hole with a sign above it saying ‘Rubbish Chute’. Cautiously, Lindsay stuck her head into the gap. It was pitch black. Presumably this was the chute that carried bin bags from the flats down to the huge bins in the ground floor storeroom.

Lindsay withdrew and thoughtfully returned to the landing. She pressed the lift button and waited a few seconds for it to arrive. The double doors slid back, revealing a woman standing in the cramped compartment. As she saw Lindsay she gasped in surprise.

Lindsay stepped into the lift and said nonchalantly, ‘Hello, Ruth, I didn’t realise you still lived here.’

‘Lindsay. What a surprise. I heard you’d left the country after … But … what on earth were you doing on the landing there? You hadn’t come to see … I mean, you did know about … ?’

Same old Ruth, thought Lindsay. Congenitally incapable of finishing her sentences. ‘I got back a couple of weeks ago,’ Lindsay said. ‘I only heard about Alison last night. I guess I just wanted to make a sort of pilgrimage. For old times’ sake, you know?’

Ruth Menzies gulped and nodded vigorously. ‘I know what you mean. Antonis and I were thinking of selling up and moving out, you know? I couldn’t face all the memories, it was all too … But anyway, we decided to stay a bit longer and see how …’ The lift slid to a smooth halt and the doors opened.

‘Nice to see you, Ruth,’ said Lindsay pleasantly. ‘Maybe we could get together some time and talk about old times?’ The lift stopped at the ground floor and Lindsay stepped out.

Ruth’s answer was cut short as the lift doors closed and carried her down to the basement. Lindsay walked back to her car, musing on the coincidence that had thrust her back into contact with Ruth. The mousey-haired art gallery owner had been Alison Maxwell’s closest friend for years. About the only friend who hadn’t been one of her lovers, Lindsay wouldn’t mind betting. They’d been friends since schooldays, she seemed to remember, the classic pairing of the siren who needs the mouse to show her off to full advantage. Alison had been more than a little put out when insignificant little Ruthie had returned from a buying trip to Athens with a husband in tow. And not just any husband, but a handsome, dashing Greek three years her junior, who was determined to put Ruth’s money to good use while he wrote the Great European Novel. Lindsay wondered idly if he’d managed to put pen to paper yet.

On her way back to Sophie’s flat, Lindsay made a detour to Wunda Wines, a discount warehouse in Partick, where she bought a couple of bottles of crisp white Tokai di Aquilea to go with dinner. Even that little taste of the Veneto was better than nothing, she reflected as she drove back. She parked behind a Mercedes coupé and hurried towards the tenement entrance. She had only taken a few steps when she was brought up short by the sound of a familiar voice calling her name. A moment later, Cordelia was by her side.

Lindsay struggled to find something to say that wouldn’t betray the confusion of emotions that were churning inside her. It didn’t matter how many times she told herself it was over, her heart hadn’t got the message yet. ‘I like the new car,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Very tasty. Must be more money in the book business than I thought. Or was it another windfall from a rich relative?’ she added, feeling ashamed as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She’d never been able to forgive Cordelia for the ostentatious luxury of her London home, bought with the money her grandmother had left her.

Cordelia failed to respond to Lindsay’s barb. ‘I had to get rid of the BMW. Some joyriders smashed into it outside the house one night, and the steering was never the same afterwards. When I sold the film rights for Ikhaya Lamaqhawe, I treated myself to the Merc,’ she replied. ‘But I didn’t drive over here to discuss cars. Claire told me where you were staying. I need to talk to you.’

Lindsay felt anger rising up inside her. Hadn’t Cordelia made her position clear enough the night before? ‘What is there to say?’ she demanded abruptly. She wanted this conversation over with. The longer it went on, the more upset she was going to become. ‘You’ve obviously made your choices,’ she snapped.

‘At the time, it was the choice between loneliness and having someone to share things with. I missed you so much, Lindsay. And the months kept going by … well, I decided I couldn’t go on hurting forever. Then I met Claire.’ In spite of the conciliatory tone of her words, Cordelia’s face was set in a stubborn expression of self-righteousness.

‘Fine,’ said Lindsay, cutting Cordelia off. ‘I’ll see you around.’ She moved forward, but Cordelia was in front of her, barring her path.

‘Wait,’ she said urgently. ‘Claire says you’ve agreed to try to clear Jackie. I wanted to offer my help.’

‘That’s very noble of you.’ Lindsay snorted derisively, refusing to let herself be moved. ‘Aren’t you worried about the competition if Jackie gets out?’

Cordelia flinched, but didn’t rise. ‘We used to work well together on this kind of thing. I know you like bouncing your ideas off someone. Look, Lindsay, we might not be lovers any more, but I know the way your mind works. Let me help.’

In spite of herself, Lindsay was touched by Cordelia’s offer. ‘Okay, let me think about it. I’m not making any promises, but I’ll think about it.’

Cordelia smiled and Lindsay felt as if she would burst into tears. ‘Thanks,’ Cordelia said. ‘You can get me at Claire’s if you want to talk.’ Then, with the impeccable sense of timing that always left people wanting more, she walked briskly back to her new Mercedes without a backward glance.

Close to tears, Lindsay stumbled blindly into the close and ran up the stairs to the first-floor flat. She walked into the hall, but before she could reach her room, Helen’s voice rang out. ‘Lindsay? Is that you? Thank God you’re back. Rosalind’s flat’s been burgled!’

5

Less than an hour after she had left Caird House, Lindsay was heading back there, this time with Helen. ‘I told Rosalind I’d find you and bring you round as soon as you got back,’ Helen announced for the third time. ‘I knew you’d be going back to Sophie’s flat, so I thought I’d wait for you there. I still have a key, so I can feed her bloody tropical fish when she’s away.’ Why me, thought Lindsay wildly. Answering her unspoken question, Helen continued. ‘With you being there this afternoon, Rosalind thought you might have noticed somebody hanging around. And besides,’ she added mysteriously, ‘there are things involved that I don’t think Rosalind will be too happy to tell the police about.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lindsay asked.

‘Oh, I’ll leave Rosalind to tell you all about it. It’ll be better coming from her. How did you get on with Claire? Tell all!’

Lindsay gave Helen a brief rundown on her day, punctuated at regular intervals with Helen’s sharp exclamations. When she reached the meeting with Cordelia, Helen exploded in righteous anger as incandescent as her flaming red hair. ‘The nerve of the woman!’ she declared. ‘I hope you sent her away with her guts in a paper bag!’

Lindsay drew up in Caird House car park, saying, ‘What’s the point, Helen? She’s got every right to her own life. I was the one who did the walking.’ She got out and slammed the car door, adding as they walked over to the flats, ‘I don’t think I was doing her much good by the end. As soon as I left, her writer’s block disappeared, and she wrote the best book of her career, by all accounts. I guess she’s better off without me.’

Before Helen could reply, Lindsay used Rosalind’s spare keys to let them into the block and headed straight for the lifts. ‘It’s the eighth floor, isn’t it?’ she asked, her finger hovering over the button.

‘That’s right,’ Helen replied, finally realising that Lindsay didn’t want to discuss Cordelia further.

When they rang Rosalind’s bell, the door was opened almost immediately by a uniformed police constable. ‘We’re friends of Ms Campbell,’ Helen announced, sweeping past him in the narrow hall. ‘She’s expecting us.’ Flashing an apologetic smile at the constable, Lindsay followed Helen through to the living room.

Rosalind was sitting in an armchair, looking dazed in the midst of the chaos that surrounded her. Her violet eyes were red-rimmed, as if she’d been rubbing them, her white hair in a disarray that was all the more shocking because of the contrast with her usual neatly groomed appearance. Papers were thrown everywhere, furniture had been overturned, carpets pulled up, and pictures hurled from the walls into corners where they lay surrounded by shards of broken glass. The drawers of the desk had been pulled out and emptied on the floor, and a bottle of ink had broken, leaving a permanent-blue puddle on a scattered pile of envelopes. Lindsay, who had only been in the flat a couple of times before, remembered how neat and orderly it had always been and felt a dim version of the shock that clearly possessed Rosalind.

Helen rushed impulsively across the room to hug Rosalind. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ Lindsay said, feeling useless. She went through to the kitchen where the burglars had also been active. All the storage jars had been emptied on the floor, and the contents of the cupboards were strewn everywhere. It didn’t have the air of random vandalism, however. Odd, thought Lindsay. Almost as if they knew they were looking for something specific. Lindsay raked through the wreckage till she found a mound of teabags and put the kettle on. She stuck her head into the hall and asked the policeman if he wanted a cup of tea.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said gratefully, following her back into the kitchen.

‘How many are there of you?’ Lindsay asked.

‘Just me,’ he replied. ‘I was told to hang on here till the CID could send somebody round. They’ve made some mess, eh?’ he added almost admiringly as he looked around.

‘You’re not kidding,’ Lindsay said absently as she brewed up. ‘I’ve never understood why they feel the need to do it.’

‘Anger and frustration, so they say. If they don’t find any money or decent jewellery that they can sell easy, they take it out on the householder. I always tell the wife, leave £20 in a drawer in the living room. That way, if we do get some animal breaking in, they might not make a mess of the place.’

Crime prevention from the horse’s mouth, Lindsay thought wryly. She handed a mug of tea to the constable and returned to the living room where Helen was sitting with her arms round Rosalind, who looked smaller and more vulnerable than Lindsay could have imagined possible. She handed them both a cup of hot tea, then settled down to wait for Rosalind to tell her what had happened.

Rosalind took a gulp of tea then gave Lindsay a weak smile. ‘If I hadn’t gone white at twenty, this lot would have done the trick. I’m sorry to drag you into this,’ she said, clutching her mug as if it were a lifebelt in a stormy sea. ‘But I needed your advice.’

‘What happened?’ Lindsay asked.

‘I came back from the office in Edinburgh at lunchtime because I had a report to finish for my Minister by tomorrow morning,’ Rosalind said. ‘You can never get any serious work done in that office. The Minister’s in and out all afternoon, wanting his hand held about something or other, so I thought I’d just pack up the draft and bring it back here.

‘When I went to print out the finished report, I realised I was nearly out of computer paper. So I drove down to Byres Road and bought a box, then came straight back. I was only gone for about twenty minutes. As soon as I got out of the lift, I knew something was wrong. The front door was open, you see. I dithered for a minute or two, wondering whether there was still someone inside, but then I decided, to hell with it, and went in. The place was empty, but it was like this. The policeman said he reckoned they must have been keeping an eye out for me, and just did a runner when they saw my car come back.’

‘That’s funny,’ Lindsay mused.

‘What’s funny about that?’ Helen objected. ‘It’s exactly what I’d do if I was a burglar.’

‘Well, how would they know it was Rosalind’s car, unless they were specifically targeting her? In a block this big, you’d have to be dead unlucky if the one car that came in while you were turning a flat over actually belonged to that flat’s owner. It looks to me as if they came here with a particular goal in mind and they knew exactly who to keep watch for. This was no random opportunist burglary,’ Lindsay said.

Rosalind paled. ‘You mean, they were actually spying on me? Surely not! I don’t have anything valuable.’

‘Did they steal those papers you brought home?’

Miserably, Rosalind nodded. ‘They walked off with the lot. And the disc from the computer with the finished report. They took all my other discs as well. Luckily, I’ve got back-ups of most of them safely stowed in Helen’s flat.’

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