Conferences are Murder

  Jed shook his head. “We’d had some music on. Not very loud, but just loud enough to drown out any noise we were making. And then we went to sleep.”

  “How are you going to explain your outburst this afternoon?” Lindsay asked.

  He shrugged. “I’ll just say that I’d had a few drinks at lunchtime, and I was furious because I’d just discovered that Jack had vetoed our submission for funding for GALA. You know us media types. There’ll be a new scandal by dinner time.”

  Sophie picked up the Conference Chronicle. “Unfortunately, it looks like the new scandal they’ve got is going to give you even more headaches. You and Andy are going to have to talk to the police again.”

  His jaw set obstinately once more. “I’m saying nothing until Andy asks me to. They don’t seem very interested in him so far, so I reckon we can just keep our heads down and it’ll blow over. They’re bound to come up with the killer eventually. If there really is a killer.”

  “Oh, I think there’s a killer all right. Just pray that after they’ve seen Conference Chronicle, the cops don’t decide it’s Andy. Because if you wait till they’ve got their claws into him, it’s going to be a lot harder to convince them that your alibi’s for real and not just something you’ve cooked up to get him off the hook.”

  9

  “As this is the first conference following the formation of AMWU, there are bound to be procedural confusions. We recommend that all delegates study the new conference standing orders carefully. Then restrain all urges to raise points of order, sit back and let it all sink in at a subliminal level. If doubts remain, SOS members will be happy to answer any queries in exchange for a bottle of Appellation Contrôlée.”

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

  As they stood waiting for the lift to grind its way back up to the fourth floor, Sophie said, “It’s funny how hanging out with journalists kills the myths stone-dead.”

  “What do you mean?” Lindsay asked defensively, convinced she was about to be impaled on the rapier of Sophie’s wit.

  “Well, I always had this romantic notion that the BBC hired only the brightest and the best of our young British journalists. But frankly, if Jed Thomas is a typical example of the breed, I’m beginning to see why the Tory party feels it’s time the BBC started operating in the real world of market forces,” Sophie replied, stepping into the lift.

  Lindsay grinned as she pressed the button. “I see what you mean. He isn’t going to do too well on Mastermind, is he?”

  “It’s his lack of self-control I found so worrying. I suppose we can reluctantly assume he won’t persuade Andy to trot along to the police with him and tell them the truth?”

  “No chance. Did you see the look on his face when I suggested it? He looked like I’d just asked him to jump out a tenth-floor window without a parachute. No, if anyone’s going to persuade Andy Spence that his only chance of avoiding being banged up in a police cell is to come clean, it ain’t going to be Jed.”

  Sophie sighed. “Let me guess. We’re going off to talk to Andy?”

  “Well, you don’t have to come along,” Lindsay said reasonably as she strode out of Pankhurst Tower and headed back towards the conference hall.

  “Wild horses,” Sophie muttered as she followed.

  Andy Spence was sitting on the platform next to AMWU’s president. He was leaning back in his chair, giving every appearance of listening to the delegate who was standing at the podium proposing a stultifyingly boring motion urging the union to protest strongly about the lack of human rights in Burma. Lindsay could just imagine the military junta quaking in their boots at the prospect of being condemned by the AMWU. Lindsay ripped a page out of her notebook and scribbled, “I have just come from Jed. I need five minutes of your time. I’ll be waiting in the corridor behind the stage. Lindsay Gordon.” She handed the note to Sophie and said, “Can you take that up to Andy? It’ll be a bit obvious if I do it.”

  “Whereas most people here don’t know me from a hole in the ground,” Sophie finished. Lindsay waited till she saw Sophie slip up the stairs at the rear of the stage, then she went through to the corridor.

  Sophie had only just found her when Andy appeared. He was wearing the scowl that had made dozens of newspaper managers wish they’d taken up a quiet, uncontroversial career in nuclear waste. His blue eyes looked as cold as an Arctic sky. “What’s the game?” he grated in a Glaswegian accent that fifteen years in England had done nothing to temper.

  “Nice to meet you, too, Andy,” Lindsay said.

  “Don’t give me that. There’s no way you and me are gonnae be pals, so gonnae no’ play at it, eh? Now, what’s the meaning of this?” He waved the note in Lindsay’s face, so close she had to lean back to avoid it hitting her eyes.

  “I would have thought it was obvious,” Lindsay said. “Even to a printer,” she added, deciding that in his state of agitation it was easier to wind him up further rather than try to calm him down.

  “I’ve had you smartarse hacks up to here,” he growled. “Oh, youse were all our best pals when you were trying to get my union into bed with yours. Turns out all you wanted was the dowry. Union Jack and his pals thought they could muscle in on AMWU and run everything their way.”

  “It seems to have been what the rank and file wanted. After all, they voted Union Jack in.”

  “What the rank and file seemed to forget was that it was their way that had landed the JU in the cart in the first place,” Andy said. “And it had to be stopped before AMWU ended up as bankrupt as those clowns made the JU.”

  “I wouldn’t go around shouting my mouth off like that if I was in your shoes, Andy,” Lindsay said. “There’s some who would think that would do as a murder motive for a man like you, a man married to the union in the absence of a wife.”

  Andy looked disgusted. “You make me sick, so you do. I’ve got nothing to say to you.” He turned on his heel and started to walk away.

  “Jed’s scared,” Lindsay called after him. “Scared people do very stupid things, Andy.”

  He turned back to look her in the eye. “Any more out of you, lady, and you’ll be finding that out from bitter personal experience.”

  In that brief moment, transfixed by his cold gaze like a butterfly on a pin, Lindsay understood why the print union had won so many seemingly impossible victories over their years of confrontation.

  Sophie stepped forward from the shadows and touched Andy’s arm. “It might not look like it, Andy, but she is trying to help.”

  He looked searchingly at Sophie, as if trying to find the weakest point at which to target his next attack. “And who the hell might you be?” he challenged.

  “My name is Sophie Hartley. I’m an obstetrician and gynecologist. And before you ask, it’s got fuck all to do with me, except that I’m with her and when you kick her, we both limp. Which rather seems to be the case with you and Jed.”

  “What’s with this Jed stuff ? You talking about that heid-the-ba’ that got up to bury Tom Jack? What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Enough to make you come out of the hall to talk to me, evidently,” Lindsay said. “Look, Andy. Jed’s told me the whole story. How you met, what happened last night, and the bits in between. Conference Chronicle’s chosen you as suspect of the day. I don’t know what if anything you’ve told the police, but sooner or later, they’re going to be kicking your door in and shining the spotlight in your bonny blue eyes.”

  “You’re fu’ o’ shite,” Andy said disgustedly. But his eyes had grown wary, and his body had unconsciously shifted into “fight or flight” mode, balanced on the balls of his feet, hands bunched loosely at his sides, shoulders slightly hunched forward.

  “Am I? Please yourself, then. But Jed’s too scared to do the sensible thing, which is to persuade you to go to the cops with him, now, before they come to you. You need to get in first, and tell them what you were really up to when somebody shoved Union Jack through my window
. Face it, Andy, chances are they might just believe you, and the pair of you can walk away and nobody else will have to know the truth. Whereas, if they do take you in and you try to pull your nuts out of the fire with what looks like a pretty crap alibi, the whole world and its dog will know within the hour, the way the tabloids have got the cop shop staked out. And if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to lose you any credibility you’ve got in this union, it isn’t that you’re gay. It’s that you’re a liar who was scared to tell people you’re gay.”

  His eyebrows dropped into a heavy frown. “You’re no’ real, you,” he growled.

  “I’m real, all right. Don’t forget, Andy, I’ve been in the frame for this too. And I can’t go home till the police have cleared all this mess up. It would be hellish easy for me to tell them that now I’ve had time to think, I remember Andy Spence being on the scene before anyone else. Almost as if he’d been waiting for something to happen.”

  “Jesus Christ, that is all I need. Painted into a corner by the fucking gay activists. Come out or we’ll fit you up for murder.” He shook his head, looking strangely vulnerable in his baffled anger.

  “I always knew you printers were past masters at twisting the truth, but that takes the biscuit. Don’t you understand? I’m trying to help you, not threaten you. I’m trying to show you what could happen, not what I’m going to make happen,” Lindsay was almost shouting in her exasperation.

  Seeing that Lindsay’s words were having no effect other than to make Andy look more hunted, Sophie chipped in again. “Andy, if you can’t bring yourself to do this on your own account, do it for Jed. After his performance this afternoon, the police are bound to take an interest in him. His room’s only half a dozen doors away from Lindsay’s. Without you telling the truth, he hasn’t got an alibi either, and once the police start investigating him, it’s not going to be too long before they make the link between the pair of you. No matter how discreet you’ve been, someone somewhere knows you’re lovers. And that gives Jed a motive for killing Tom Jack.”

  There was a brief silence, while Andy considered Sophie’s words. “Did you say you were a doctor?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I bet your patients come out of the hospital thinking it was their idea to have the hysterectomy,” he said bitterly, turning on his heel.

  Sophie stepped back as if she’d been slapped.

  “You bastard,” Lindsay hissed, taking a step towards him.

  Andy looked back over his shoulder. “You think I got where I am today by being nice? Go take a flying fuck at a bag of nails, the pair of you.” He stormed back through the swing doors in the hall, leaving the pair of them standing in shocked silence.

  It was Lindsay who spoke first, moving over to Sophie and hugging her close. “I’m sorry, my love. You didn’t deserve that.”

  Sophie kissed Lindsay’s ear. “I know that. But at least he might go to the police off his own bat now. I get the feeling that the only kind of fight Andy Spence understands is the dirty stuff.”

  “Only happy below the belt, eh?” Lindsay chuckled.

  “He’s not the only one, is he,” Sophie teased, pinching Lindsay’s bottom. “Now, do you want to go back to the hotel and try this hypnosis, or do you feel the need to make someone else’s day?”

  “Let’s go back. And if the hypno doesn’t work, I’m sure you can think of something else to make me feel good.”

  “Colonic irrigation, perhaps?”

  “I’m not convinced, you know,” Lindsay said, lying back on the hotel room bed.

  “You don’t need to be. You just need to be cooperative and willing,” Sophie told her. “Now just do what you’re told, for once.”

  Lindsay grinned. “Okay, boss.”

  “Now close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax.” Lindsay let Sophie’s voice wash over her. Her tone was warm, her voice even. “Imagine you’re on a tropical beach. It’s just before daybreak, and you can still see the stars in the dark blue sky. You can hear the gentle sounds of the waves lapping the shore and the distant cries of the sea-gulls. Picture the scene as the sun starts to rise, turning the sky pink. The stars slowly fade, and you can see the palm trees waving in the soft breeze. You’re relaxing here on the beach, as the sky turns from pink to gold, and the first rays of the sun start to warm your body.

  “Now, while you’re enjoying the new day, I want you to relax. Starting with your toes, let those muscles go, and relax.” Her voice fell on the final word, and she paused momentarily. “Now your feet and ankles, release all the tension and relax.” Pause. “Move on up into your lower leg, and let those muscles go, and relax.”

  Sophie continued, working up Lindsay’s body, but she was only half-way through the initial induction when a change in Lindsay’s breathing pattern signalled she had already slipped over into an altered state of consciousness. Sophie continued with the relaxation, then said, “I’m going to count backwards from five, and with every number, you will go deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. Five, four, three, two, one, zero, zero, zero.”

  Lindsay’s body became even more limp. Sophie did a few reflex tests to make sure Lindsay really was as deeply under as she thought, then she began to work. “I want you to imagine you’re in a video library. In this video library, there are shelves of tapes, and they’re all videos of your life. What you’re going to do now is choose a video to watch tonight. I want you to find the tape from last night. I want you to take down the video that has the Scots-Irish night on it. Have you got that tape in your hand?”

  Lindsay grunted.

  “Okay,” Sophie continued in a soft, measured monotone. “I want you to put that tape in the video and press play. Now, I want you to tell me what you can see.”

  “Can see the band playing, in front of me. I’ve got a bottle of White Horse.” Lindsay sounded defiantly proud of herself. Her voice was slightly blurred, as if she were half-asleep or half-drunk.

  “What can you hear?”

  “Can hear the band. They’re playing an eightsome reel, but nobody knows how to dance it properly. Or else they’re like me, they know but they’d rather be drinking. I can hear a lot of voices, talking, shouting, but I’m not listening to them, I’m listening to the music. It’s not bad, though the fiddler’s a wee bit slow on the key changes.”

  “What can you smell and taste?” Sophie was checking which senses had been most important to Lindsay the night before.

  Lindsay’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Cigarette smoke. Stuffy. Sweaty bodies. The band doesn’t smell nice. Somebody’s got a pipe.” Then her face cleared and she gave a half-smile. “I can taste the peat in the White Horse. ’S from Islay. Proper whisky.”

  “What can you feel?”

  “Hot.”

  “I want you to press fast forward now, and I want you to take us forward. You’re outside now, you’ve been talking to Desmond, the Irishman who’s going to Minnesota. What can you see?”

  “Fountain. ’S boring. Lots of lights gone off. Big blocks of darkness against the sky. No stars out, just black.”

  “What’s happening?” Sophie probed.

  “I told him I’ve got to go, it’s late and I’ve got stuff to do. He’s standing up and saying he’s going back to the ceilidh, and I laugh because I think it’s funny because he can hardly stand after that last swallow of Jameson’s. Don’t like Jameson’s, doesn’t taste of anything proper. So I watch him stagger off, and I go back to Maclintock Tower. I’m really tired. I want to go to sleep and the room not go round and I’m sort of talking to myself and I wish Sophie was here because then I wouldn’t be drunk because, ’s funny, but I don’t get drunk when Sophie’s here, not because she makes me not, just because I don’t feel the need.” Lindsay stopped.

  “What’s happening now?” Sophie prompted her.

  “I’m waiting for the lift,” Lindsay said in the irritated tone of a child who has just been asked a question they knew how to answer when they were a year youn
ger.

  “Okay, let’s move forward. The lift’s come to a standstill on the tenth floor, and you’re stepping out. Can you see?”

  “’S hard. They’ve only got those stupid blue nightlights, and you can hardly see to the next corner. I look to my right, then I look to my left, and I sort of see somebody moving fast round the corner.”

  “Look carefully at the picture. Take it back, look at it frame by frame. What can you see?”

  “’S all a bit blurry. I’m a bit pissed, you know,” Lindsay said confidentially. “Let me see. ’S not wearing shoes. ’S a leg. A leg going round the corner. The bottom bit of a leg. It’s not wearing clothes. Just a leg.”

  Sophie checked that Lindsay’s mini-cassette recorder was still turning. “Keep looking at that frame. Now, is it a man’s leg or a woman’s?”

  “Don’t know. Quite slim. Nice leg. Probably a woman, because I think it’s nice.” Lindsay giggled.

  “What can you hear?”

  “The lift shutting and going down.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Sweaty and tired and drunk.”

  “Can you smell anything?”

  Lindsay sniffed loudly. Her face changed, and she frowned. “Perfume. Faint, but I know it. I know what it is.”

  Sophie felt a thrill of excitement. This was completely new. “What is it, Lindsay?”

  “Cartier. Le Must de Cartier.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” Lindsay’s voice had grown hard and cold. She no longer sounded like an amiable drunk. “I bought it often enough. For Cordelia. Perfume for treacherous bitches. She wears it too.”

  “Who wears it too, Lindsay?”

  “Laura Craig, of course. ’Nother treacherous bitch.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Nobody I know,” Lindsay said.

  “I want you to carry on, frame by frame, until the moment when you open the door, then I want you to press stop. Okay?” Lindsay nodded. Sophie listened patiently for another five minutes, but there was nothing else of any significance in Lindsay’s story. Gently, Sophie brought Lindsay back into full consciousness.