Conferences are Murder

  “Quit clowning,” Sophie said. “You know it works.”

  Lindsay straightened up and pulled a face. “I know. I just don’t like that whole thing of handing over control. You could tell me to do anything you wanted.”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times, you don’t lose control. Your subconscious is in charge, not me. I can’t get you to do anything that goes against your basic personality or principles. If you’d let me practice on you when I was training, it would be second nature by now.”

  “Oh, all right,” Lindsay said grudgingly. “Only don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.”

  Sophie smiled. “I won’t.”

  “And don’t tell anyone, okay?” Lindsay scowled.

  Sophie struggled to straighten her face. “Your reputation is safe with me. You won’t regret it, I promise you.”

  Lindsay looked doubtful. “Huh,” she said. “But if I catch myself doing your ironing, there’ll be trouble, I’m warning you.”

  8

  “Head Office staff are present to ensure that SOS has the clerical and administrative back-up it needs to keep the wheels of conference turning. The staff are not there to meet your every need and solve your problems. This is not the time to ask for one of those yellow forms to apply for a Press card—if the staff don’t cave your head in, rest assured that the nearest member of SOS will.”

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

  As they walked towards the conference office, Lindsay finished reading the Chronicle’s latest contribution to the troubles of the Amalgamated Media Workers’ Union. She let out a soft whistle and said, “Hey, Sophie. Listen to this.

  Handy Andy’s commitment to change in the union is pointed up by the close eye he was keeping on Union Jack and his yes-men cronies throughout the conference. As well as being overheard taking Union Jack to task about the amount of AMWU’s limited cash flow the big man was putting across the bar in the course of his ‘legitimate’ conference expenses (in other words, buying drinks for everyone he could hope for support or favours from), the deputy GS somehow managed to be one of the first on the scene after Lindsay Gordon discovered her late general secretary had bequeathed her Yorkshire’s answer to air conditioning—‘Open t’ bloody window’.

  One imagines the police are inquiring just what Handy Andy was doing at three in the morning on the tenth floor of a building that’s a good 200 yards away from the bedroom where he should have been catching up on his beauty sleep. Perhaps they should remember that sometimes the alibi looks like provoking more trouble than the offence, especially now they don’t string ’em up any more.

  “Bloody hell! Someone’s really got their knife into Andy.”

  “No more than they did into you in this morning’s edition. Now you seem to be in the clear, I suppose they’ve got to find someone else to sling their mud at. And who better than the one man who stands to gain most,” Sophie said.

  “Well, he does and he doesn’t,” Lindsay said. “He’ll only take over the top job on a temporary basis, till they can organize an election for a new general secretary. And there’s no guarantee he’ll win. Union Jack beat him last time, but even if he does do a good job as caretaker, there will be a lot of people who see him as being tarred with the brush of Tom Jack’s appalling administration. I’ll obviously need to talk to him, though. Maybe I can collar him this evening in the bar.”

  They turned into the office. Most of the harried staff didn’t even look up as they entered. Eyes were focused on word processors, duplicating machines and photocopiers as AMWU’s administrative staff struggled to generate the mountains of paperwork that had to be reprinted because of the disruption Tom Jack’s death had brought to the agenda. Brian Robinson from the Standing Orders Sub-Committee stood by one of the word processors, dictating an order-paper to a clerk who looked as if he would have sold his soul to the Employment Minister in exchange for half a dozen hours of sleep. Brian sketched a cheery half-wave in the direction of the two women, before returning to his dictation. He’d already abandoned his black leather waistcoat for a more flamboyant paisley-patterned one.

  Lindsay spotted Pauline threading a stencil on to the drum of a duplicating machine and crossed the room to her. Sophie dawdled behind, as always fascinated by other people’s worlds, glancing idly at the computer screens as she passed.

  Pauline snapped the metal strip over the bottom of the stencil and turned away to start the machine running. She jumped at the touch of Lindsay’s hand on her arm.

  “God, Lindsay,” she gasped. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”

  “Sign of a guilty conscience,” Lindsay teased.

  “You’re not wrong,” Pauline replied, managing a tired smile. “This stuff should have been ready half an hour ago. I completely forgot about it with all the aggro that’s been going on. I thought you were the long arm of the SOS come to give me a bollocking for taking so long. What’re you after this time? It can’t be my body, now Sophie’s here,” she added in a half-hearted attempt at their usual banter.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Lindsay said. “I just need a bit of information. Can you tell me what Jed Thomas’s room number is? He’s with London Broadcasting Journalists’ Branch, if that helps.”

  Pauline pulled a face. “What kept you, Lindsay? We’ve already had half a dozen hacks in here chasing him. I told them it was confidential information. A guy who manages to say up front what so many people are thinking deserves a bit of protection, don’t you think?”

  Lindsay shrugged. “You know I’m not after the same thing as them.”

  Pauline cocked one eyebrow. “Do I?”

  “It’s been a very long time since I stopped being a cardcarrying bloodsucker,” Lindsay was reproachful. “As you well know.”

  Pauline checked the copies rolling off the machine. “Wait there,” she said, walking away and opening a cardboard filing box. She fished out a dog-eared bundle of paper stapled together and quickly flicked through it. She shoved the list back in the box and came back to the duplicator. “Maclintock Tower. 1005. Just round the corner from you. Satisfied?”

  “Fascinated. I owe you one,” Lindsay said. As she walked back across the office, she heard Brian say, “Thank you, George. You’ve coped magnificently, as usual. Four hundred and fifty copies, please, by four o’clock. Thanks again, team.”

  Sophie followed Lindsay out into the corridor. “Got what you need?” she asked.

  “More than I expected, actually. Our man also has a room on the tenth floor.” Before she could say more, Brian Robinson emerged behind them.

  He touched Lindsay lightly on the shoulder. “Word to the wise, my dear.”

  “I believe I owe you a vote of thanks, Brian. My brief says you did me sterling service this morning,” Lindsay said.

  “The least I could do, my dear. Let me tell you, you deserve some decent service from this God-forsaken union after all the work you and your colleagues did in the eighties.” He turned to Sophie. “Your lady and her cohorts deserve the undying gratitude of all the old queens like me for the work they did in forcing some of those dreadful tabloid hacks to acknowledge the existence of our Ethics Code. Not to mention that marvellous pamphlet you produced on reporting AIDS. My dear, young Lindsay here got up at conference and positively lambasted them for their narrow-minded anti-gay hysteria. And of course, when AIDS turned out not to be the gay plague visited by God on the sons of Sodom, they all had to eat their words and go right back to the guidelines that Lindsay and her intrepid team on the Equality Committee had drawn up in the first place.”

  “Yet another thing you never told me,” Sophie said drily.

  “One has to keep the mystery alive, dear lady,” Brain said. “But enough of that. I couldn’t help overhearing what you were asking Pauline. I take it you wanted to talk to Jed about his little tantrum in the hall?” Lindsay nodded. “I thought so. Might one ask why?”

  “Because I don’t think the po
lice are going to make fast progress unless they have someone on their murder squad who’s experienced in the internecine warfare of trade unions. Not only do I want to clear my name, I also want to be on a plane back to San Francisco next Tuesday.”

  “So you’ve taken your investigative skills out of mothballs? Well, I wish you every success, my dear. Just don’t tread on so many toes that you have to leave the country in rather more of a hurry than you’d anticipated! As for young Jed, you won’t find him in his room. I collared him as he came out of the hall and told him to lie low for a few hours. He should be in my room, which is in Pankhurst Tower, room 403. Tell him I sent you. He’s worked himself up into a real old tizzy, so be gentle with the boy.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of being otherwise, Brian,” Lindsay said, with rather less than complete honesty. “I don’t suppose you’d like to make things any easier for me by suggesting a line of questioning I might benefit from pursuing?”

  Brian’s mouth twitched as he looked consideringly at her. Then he cocked his head to one side and scratched his stubbled head, rather like a de-crested parakeet. “I don’t honestly know whether I should tell you this,” he said wistfully.

  But you’re going to, you old gossip, Lindsay thought affectionately. “If you can’t trust me, Brian . . .” She added a conspiratorial smile.

  “Well, my dear, one certainly can’t trust the police, can one? Not in a city where they arrested thirteen men in a raid on public toilets only last week. Ask him about Handy Andy.”

  “Andy Spence?” Lindsay demanded incredulously.

  “You absolutely didn’t hear it from me. Nice to see you again, Lindsay,” he added over his shoulder as he walked away.

  Lindsay stood staring after him, open-mouthed. Sophie jogged her arm gently. “One of life’s little surprises?”

  Lindsay shook her head, still with the kind of look she’d have had if someone had offered her documentary evidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury was a cocaine baron.

  “One of life’s complete gobsmackers,” she said. “Well, I definitely think we need to talk to Jed Thomas. And right now. Desperately sorry, darling, but the hypno will just have to wait.”

  Pankhurst Tower was a mirror image of Maclintock, right down to the scuffed paintwork and the slow lifts. In the middle of the afternoon session of conference, it was deserted. Room 403 seemed no different, for Lindsay’s knock met with silence. She looked a question at Sophie, who shrugged eloquently, and tried the handle. The door was, unsurprisingly, locked. Lindsay cast her eyes upwards and hammered loudly on the door. Still there was no response. Exasperated, she took a quick look around to check they were still alone, then bellowed, “Jed! I know you’re in there.”

  Her voice echoed in the corridor, but the door remained obstinately shut.

  “Jed, open up!” Lindsay yelled through the keyhole. “Brian sent me. I’m on your side, for God’s sake! Come on, Jed.”

  “Dear God, you sound like the Sweeney. Let me try,” Sophie said. She stooped and called softly, “Jed, please open up and listen to what we’ve got to say. We’re not going away until we’ve spoken to you, so why don’t you just open up and we can have a quiet chat face to face rather than screaming through the door so the whole world can hear.”

  She stepped back. For a moment, nothing happened. Lindsay had got as far as, “So much for softly, softly . . .” when they heard the key turning in the lock.

  “You were saying?” Sophie murmured as the door opened a couple of inches.

  Jed couldn’t keep his eyes still. They flicked between the two women nervously. “Who are you? What do you want? I’ve got nothing to say,” he gabbled.

  “I’m Lindsay Gordon. And this is my girlfriend, Sophie Hartley,” she said. “It was my window that Union Jack was pushed out of this morning. I need to talk to you, Jed.”

  “I’ve already told the police all I know. I was asleep. I’d gone to bed drunk and I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Can we come in for a minute, Jed?” Sophie asked gently. “I really don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interests to have this conversation in the corridor. Anybody could step out of the lift, and we genuinely don’t want to cause you any more awkwardness.”

  Lindsay couldn’t help admiring Sophie’s style. Considering she was the one who’d made her living out of persuading the reluctant to talk, it was remarkable how much she still had to learn from her lover. Slowly, Jed opened the door and stepped back. Before he could have second thoughts, Lindsay was past him and sitting in the armchair.

  Jed perched on the edge of the bed, his left leg twitching like a daddy-long-legs round a lampshade. His right hand fiddled with the dark blond curls on the back of his head. He had the kind of Greek god looks that become gaunt and raddled in the middle thirties. He looked as if he had maybe seven or eight years to go. His brown eyes still moved restlessly around the room.

  “I don’t understand why Brian told you I was here. I don’t know what you want with me,” he said. Without the amplification of the conference hall, his voice sounded reedy, the traces of a West Country accent still audible in his vowels.

  “I heard you propose your amendment. I need to know what made you do it,” Lindsay said.

  “I don’t see what it’s got to do with you,” he said, his lower jaw jutting obstinately.

  “Union Jack was murdered this morning. Whoever did it chose my bedroom window to throw him out of. From what I’ve seen of the police so far, and believe me, I’ve seen more than enough, they don’t understand the situation anything like well enough to get the right person in the frame. And until they do, I’m one of the people the fingers are pointing at. That’s not a situation I’m comfortable with,” Lindsay explained forcefully.

  “So you think you can come along and play at being V I Warshawski,” he sneered. “Well, excuse me if I don’t fall at your feet and confess.”

  “Jed, if I was in your shoes, I’d think twice about alienating me with your smart mouth,” Lindsay said. She tossed the afternoon edition of Conference Chronicle across to him. She waited for the words to sink in, then added, “I could go to the cops right now and tell them exactly how Andy Spence came to be on the scene so quickly. Okay, I’d also be telling them that you and Andy had given false statements and wasted police time during a murder investigation, but if that’s the way you want it, that’s how I’ll play it. I foolishly thought that talking to you first was a way of showing a bit of solidarity. Clearly I was wrong. Come on, Sophie, we’re wasting our time here.” She got to her feet.

  Jed looked up and caught her eye for the first time. “You’re a hard bitch,” he said. “Wait.” He sighed. “I’ll talk to you.”

  “No bullshit?” Lindsay asked.

  “No bullshit,” he agreed.

  Lindsay lowered herself into the uncomfortable chair again. “Andy was with you in your room last night, wasn’t he?”

  Jed nodded. “I’d been waiting for him since eleven o’clock. It was nearly two when he managed to get away. But I didn’t mind, I was just pleased to see him.”

  “How long have you two been lovers?” Lindsay asked.

  “Just under three months. I work for the BBC, and I was researching a Panorama feature about the use of illegal immigrants in printing sweatshops, and I interviewed Andy. Like everybody else, I thought he was the archetypal macho man of the print unions. He suggested going for a drink afterwards, and I thought he’d made a mistake when we ended up in this little back bar in Islington that was wall-to-wall denim and leather.”

  Oh God, thought Lindsay. It’s always the same. First they won’t talk, then they want to tell you their life story. At least it had stopped him twitching.

  “Anyway,” Jed continued, “he started asking how I’d come to be involved in setting up AMWU’s Gay And Lesbian Action group. I didn’t know he’d even heard of GALA, but he seemed really interested, you know, not taking the piss, or being embarrassed. Then a couple of days later he rang me at the BBC a
nd asked if we could have dinner to carry on what we’d been discussing. Over dinner, he told me he was gay, that he’d been in the closet for twenty years because of his career in the union, and he asked if I was involved with anyone. Well, I wasn’t and that night, he came back to my flat, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since. It’s been really difficult sometimes, because he’s so paranoid, and that’s hard for me to reconcile with my politics, but it’s been worth all the hassle,” he ended defiantly.

  “Wasn’t it a bit of a risk for him, sleeping with you at conference?” Sophie asked.

  “Not really. I mean, if you’re not in your room, people assume you’re having a legover with someone. And in Andy’s case, they’d always assume it was a woman. He’s very attractive to women, you know.”

  Lindsay found it hard to imagine the beefy Scottish deputy general secretary fighting off women. His thick pepper-and-salt hair was cut in the straight lines favored by Japanese tourists, his skin was scarred with the remains of teenage acne, his smile had always reminded her of the grin of a barracuda. Then she remembered those china blue eyes with their deep laughter lines. Maybe Jed wasn’t so far off the mark after all.

  “So what exactly happened this morning?” she asked.

  “Like I said, he arrived about two. We had sex, then we fell asleep. I woke up when you started screaming. Andy leapt out of bed and started scrambling into his clothes. His first thought was to get out of there fast before anyone found him with me. He usually got me to check the corridor before he left, but this time he just shot off. Then the police hammered on my door, and I pretended they’d just woken me up.”

  “And you’re sure Andy hadn’t already left and come back before I started screaming? I’m sorry, but I have to ask.”

  “I’m sure. He was sleeping next to the wall. It’s only a single bed, don’t forget. He’d have had to climb over me to get out, and I would have woken up,” Jed said. There was no hesitation in his voice.

  “And you didn’t see or hear anything else that might indicate what happened? You didn’t hear any voices in the corridor outside or anything?” Lindsay asked.