Booked for Murder (15 page)

“It also makes the agents look good,” Lindsay said.

“How do you work that one out?”

Lindsay shrugged. “If the only time you hear from your agent is when she's calling to tell you about the great deal she's got to offer, you don't know how many approaches she's had and fucked up, do you?”

“How did you get this cynical?” Helen demanded, full of mock outrage.

“I hung around with you at a crucial age. What kind of money are we talking about, by the way?”

“For the options, say five grand a book, and there's how many books?”

“Twenty-six, twenty-seven, something like that.”

Helen's eyes swivelled up at an angle as she did the mental arithmetic. “About £130,000? Then for each one that gets made, say fifty grand. For the first series, we'd be talking options for the lot, plus rights for six—call it £450,000. And these are not high end figures, by the way. For US and UK rights, you could easily be talking double that.”

Lindsay whistled softly. “So we could be looking at a million-pound scenario where your mate Kes made Penny's agent an opening offer she couldn't refuse. Catriona Polson—that's the agent—knows how Penny feels about TV and film deals, but she decides that this is too good to miss. She figures that she'll go with it and see if she can talk it up into a deal that's so wonderful that even Penny will abandon all her artistic principles and bite their hands off. How does that sound?”

“So far, so good. I like it. Nothing makes me happier than the sight of one of life's Ms. Ten Percents getting stitched up,” Helen said enthusiastically.

“Only problem is, Penny throws her hands up in horror and says she'd rather eat razor blades than betray her readers and her masterworks in such a tawdry, money-grubbing way. And bearing in mind that agents usually charge more for TV and film deals, Catriona sees the thick end of 150 grand flying out of the window,” Lindsay theorized.

“Whereas, with Penny dead . . .” Helen interjected.

“The deal is even sweeter. She can probably screw more money on the notoriety basis, plus she's got the added bonus of increased sales on the books that are currently out there. When I saw her, she said that she'd be crazy to kill Penny for a short-term gain when Penny alive would write more books. But if there's TV in the pipeline, that means
she'd get long-term benefit anyway, because all the books would be reissued as TV tie-ins. And Catriona Polson's a really big woman. She'd have no trouble grabbing Penny and stabbing her in the neck.” Lindsay finished her beer in a single swallow, suddenly feeling dry-mouthed. “Same again?”

When she returned with fresh drinks, Helen was looking sheepish. “Spit it out,” Lindsay sighed.

“You just made out a great case against the agent. It's a good motive. And it's just about credible that the agent would use the murder method in the book as a kind of poetic justice, almost to make herself feel like it wasn't real, just something in a book. Only you can't tell the police about it, can you?”

“I'm not with you. Why not?”

Helen swallowed a gulp of beer and said, “You told me Meredith is Penny's residuary legatee, yeah? Well, if it plays as a motive for the agent, it works as an even better motive for Meredith. About ten times better, in fact. You need something more solid before you pass this info on to the bizzies.”

Lindsay closed her eyes and cursed silently. Helen was absolutely right. If Catriona had told Penny about the talks, the chances are that Meredith would know it was a possibility. Even if she hadn't, if Helen had heard it on the grapevine it was entirely possible that Meredith had too, Lindsay thought, remembering with a lurch that Meredith's best friend from college worked in Los Angeles, writing machine code to produce computerized special effects for Hollywood. And there would be plenty of special effects in any films of the Darkliners novels. It would be almost impossible for Meredith to establish her ignorance. Proving a negative was always the hardest thing in any investigation, Lindsay knew from her long journalistic experience. “I can't think about this any more today,” she said. “I need to sleep on it. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, my subconscious will have had the chance to work out where I go for proof.”

“You're probably right,” Helen said. “And I know just how to help you put it right out of your mind.”

Warning bells rang like a smoke alarm in Lindsay's head. “Oh, yeah?” she said warily.

“Yeah. You can advise me on my little problem.”

Lindsay groaned and raised her hands as if to fend off a blow. “I already gave you the only advice I know. Dig the dirt, then dish it.”

“Can't you do the digging for me?” Helen asked plaintively. “I don't have your experience. I'm just a simple TV producer. I don't even know where to start.”

“And you think I do?” Lindsay said, amused in spite of herself by Helen's attempts at pathos. “I know nothing about this woman. I don't know her surname, her age, what she looks like, where she lives, what she drives or what kind of clothes she wears. I don't know who her friends are, what she does on her days off or anybody she's ever shagged. If anybody's going to get something on Stella, don't you think you're a bit better equipped?”

Helen shook her head. “Her surname is Piper and she's thirty-two.” She rummaged in her bag and came out with an A3 brochure promoting Watergaw Films. She flicked it open to the back cover. There, beneath Helen and Guy, was a head-and-shoulders shot of Stella Piper. Straight dark hair cut close to her head, liquid brown eyes accentuated with eyeliner and mascara, a pert, upturned nose and a rosebud mouth.

“She looks like Bambi,” Lindsay said.

“Knowing her, it wouldn't have been the hunters who shot her mother,” Helen said darkly. “She drives a metallic green Fiat Punto and she lives in some trendy warehouse conversion on the canal behind King's Cross station when she's not round Guy's flat in Stoke Newington. She wears that skin-tight fashion that looks great on Kate Moss and would make you and me look like sausages that need to go on a diet. As for friends, I shouldn't think she's got any.”

“Fine, but I still don't know where to start digging,” Lindsay insisted firmly.

“You could start by following her.”

“Helen, I haven't even got a car,” Lindsay protested.

“That's no problem. We use a hire firm just round the corner when we need some extra wheels. I'll take you round there and sort you out with something right now.” She finished her beer in one swallow and looked expectantly at Lindsay.

Lindsay closed her eyes and sighed. In the long years of their friendship, Helen had only ever asked for Lindsay's help once before. It had seemed straightforward that time too, but it had led Lindsay into a confrontation with a murderer that had forced her into the hardest decision she'd ever taken and had altered the course of her life irrevocably. It wasn't an experience she'd willingly repeat. But even putting the most pessimistic of glosses on Helen's present request, it was hard to see how it could get her into the kind of trouble she'd been trying to avoid ever since that bitter tragedy in Glasgow.

She opened her eyes and shook her head with an air of fatalism. “I have a horrible feeling that I'm going to regret this,” she said, picking up her glass and following Helen's example. “Let's go and get me a set of wheels.”

Chapter 11

L
indsay fiddled with the radio tuning buttons again. She'd been parked across the street from the industrial unit that housed Watergaw Films for the best part of an hour. So far, she'd grown irritated with one presenter's attempts at controversiality, bored with a magazine program that seemed to cater for the prurience of people without a life of their own, and infuriated to discover a play she'd been listening to was the first of three episodes of a serial. Now she'd never know why Prunella had taken the Old English sheepdog to the archbishop's consecration. Giving up on talk radio, she settled for a station that played oldies with minimal chatter between records.

It was at times like this that she missed smoking. It was one of the few pastimes observers could indulge on a stakeout without having to take their eyes off the target. And of course, Lindsay realized with a shock, surveillance was something she had only ever done as a smoker. Since she'd quit, she'd been doing the kind of respectable job that didn't involve spying on complete strangers. It wasn't something she'd missed, especially on a baking afternoon in a car with no air conditioning. Already her whole body felt slick with sweat. Wondering why she'd let herself be talked into this, Lindsay rooted in her backpack for a tissue and wiped the perspiration from her palms again.

Just after four, the metal-sheathed side door opened and a woman appeared wearing a short, sleeveless dress and low-heeled Greek
sandals with thongs that criss-crossed half-way up her calves. She was so short that it should have looked absurd, but slender enough for it to seem sexy. She had a boxy leather bag slung across her body and she carried a small holdall that looked virtually empty. As she turned to check that the door had closed behind her, Lindsay caught a momentary glimpse of her face. “Bambi,” she said aloud, turning the key in the ignition of the anonymous hatchback Helen had hired for her.

Stella crossed the car park, walking more briskly than Lindsay would have cared to in that heat. When she came level with a metallic green car, she slipped into the driver's door. She reversed out of her space and drove straight towards Lindsay. At the gate, Stella turned left and headed towards the tube station. Lindsay was caught facing the wrong direction and had to pull round hastily, amazed at the bus driver who let her out with a courteous wave. Maybe some things in London had changed for the better after all.

At the traffic lights by the station, Lindsay was two cars behind Stella. As they swung across into Greenland Road, one car peeled off towards Kentish Town, leaving only one as a barrier. “Perfect,” Lindsay muttered as they swung right into Bayham Street. The narrow roads were hot and dusty, choked with cars and delivery vans, motorbike couriers dicing with death as they slalomed through in the canyons between tall houses grimed with a century of metropolitan pollution. Stella clearly knew where she was going, zigzagging through back streets whose bleakness was unrelieved by the afternoon sun, weaving a course that took her behind St. Pancras and King's Cross stations, past dozens of struggling small businesses crammed under cheap flats.

A couple of times, it had been touch and go staying close to Stella through traffic that was heavier than Lindsay remembered it being when she had lived in the city. But she'd always managed to keep her in sight at the junctions where crucial decisions were taken. Once they'd cleared the Angel, they picked up speed on City Road, where the traffic was lighter and houses gave way to tall warehouses, old buildings where light industry had lodged since the bricks were first laid, offices nudged in among them down side streets. When they hit the big roundabout by Old Street tube, Lindsay was forced to sit on
Stella's back bumper as the van between them peeled off into the middle lane. A quick left and a half right brought Lindsay on to unknown territory. All she knew was that she was heading in the general direction of the City, though she suspected they were going to skirt its eastern edge rather than penetrate the canyons of commerce themselves. Wherever they were headed, it wasn't home.

She wasn't happy with being slap bang in the middle of Stella's rearview mirror, but she was torn between fear of losing her in unfamiliar streets and fear of being spotted as a tail. The decision was suddenly taken from her when a Porsche shrieked out of a side street, cutting in between her and Stella without even a wave of gratitude. “Pillock,” Lindsay muttered, but her heart wasn't in it.

They carried on in the same direction, past streets she'd only ever heard of. Whitechapel Road from the Monopoly board. Cable Street, scene of the anti-Fascist riots of the thirties. Just when Lindsay was convinced the next junction must bring them hard up against the Thames, Stella swung left into a wide street. The Porsche roared off to the right, leaving Lindsay a gap to make up. As she turned, she saw the green car a few hundred yards down the road turning right into a narrow street. Swearing, Lindsay shot down to the turning and swung the car across the oncoming traffic in a blare of horns. She was in time to see Stella turn again. When she made it to the junction, Stella was gone, the green car somewhere in a maze of narrow streets. “Shit, shit, shit!” Lindsay yelled, smacking her hand hard against the steering wheel.

She pulled in to the curb while she considered. If Stella had spotted her and deliberately shaken her off, there was no chance of catching her now. She'd be back on the main road and miles away within minutes. But she'd shown no signs of trying to shake off pursuit, so the odds were that she'd turned off the arterial road because she was near her destination. Logically, Lindsay decided, if she drove around the nearby streets, she'd come upon the Fiat.

As she drove slowly through the twisting narrow corridors of Wapping, she remembered the one and only time she had been here before. It had been a Saturday night, so cold her breath had puffed in clouds before her. She'd been on foot, one of hundreds of journalists and print workers who had come to demonstrate against the mass
sackings of their colleagues by Rupert Murdoch's News International to make way for cheap new technology and the de-skilling of their craft. They'd come to protest but had ended up fleeing through the streets, driven ahead of mounted police gung-ho as Cossacks and with as much concern for those they pursued. The clatter of hoofs, the swish of police batons through the air, the screams of terror and the plumes of steamy breath from the horses' nostrils were still lodged in Lindsay's brain, erupting occasionally as nightmares. Somewhere in the mêlée, Lindsay had become separated from her lover, Cordelia. They hadn't found each other until they'd both arrived home in the middle of the night. Terrified of losing each other in a more permanent way, they'd never gone back on that particular picket line.