Deadline for Murder (13 page)

"He doesn't do much for us these days. But he seems to do all right. He's still driving around in that big American gas-guzzler. "

"Does he still live in Pollokshields?"

"Far as I know. His number in the contacts book is still the same."

"Blair, I owe you one."

"You owe me several after this," he told her. "But I'll settle for dinner at the Koh-i-Noor."

"You're on. Can I add to my debt? Just a simple query this time."

Blair groaned. "Nothing's ever simple with you. Go ahead, what is it this time? Lord Lucan's phone number, maybe?"

"Where can I find Jimmy Mills these days?"

"I don't even want to know why you're asking me this, Lindsay. Jimmy's got a job in Motherwell. He's the sports editor of the local paper. He drinks in the pub opposite the office. You'll usually find him there between half past one and three. That do you?"

"Perfect. Thanks again. I'll give you a ring in a couple of days to fix up that meal. Okay?"

"Okay. And Lindsay... ?"

"Yes?"

"Be careful out there. Don't take chances with Barry Ostler. He's a nasty piece of work. He's obviously taken a lot of care to cover his tracks on this one. He's going to be very twitchy about you turning up and pointing the finger."

"Yeah, I know. Don't worry, Blair. I'll cover my back. And yours. Thanks again."

Lindsay put down the phone with a sigh of satisfaction. Things were starting to move at last.

The Printer's Devil was an old-fashioned workingman's pub. There were no modern frills--just a scattering of wobbly tables and chairs, a couple of fruit machines and a long wooden bar in front of shelves of spirits and glasses. When Lindsay walked in just before two, it was moderately busy. Half the clientele were dressed in grubby overalls stained with the printer's ink that betrayed their occupation. Lindsay walked straight up to the bar, looking neither right nor left, aware of the eyes appraising the stranger. She ordered a pint of lager, then slowly looked round the scruffy tavern. She was relying on the journalistic tradition of never showing surprise when a face from the past walked into a press pub. Unless the journalist in question operated in an area of direct competition, it was also regarded as bad form to pry too closely into what they were doing there. And if, when questioned, they hedged, it was an unwritten rule that you didn't carry on probing. She didn't think Jimmy would be too surprised to see her here. Any journalist doing a job in Motherwell would naturally gravitate to the Printer's Devil.

She soon spotted her target, sitting at a table with three other men, engrossed in a game of dominoes. Jimmy Mills hadn't changed much in the three years since she'd seen him last. With his build, he could have been one of the jockeys whose racing cards he'd sub-edited for years. As she watched him, he glanced up, feeling her eyes on him. His face registered uncertainty then surprise. He sketched a quick greeting with a handful of dominoes.

Lindsay walked across the room towards him. But before she reached the table, the hand came to an end, and Jimmy hastily got to his feet and met her half-way. "Lindsay Gordon, isn't it?" he asked with the lop-sided smile she remembered. Thank God for the instant camaraderie of journalists the world over. Once met, a contact for life, even if they can't stand the sight of each other! "What brings you to these parts?" Jimmy added. "Hot on the trail of some world exclusive?"

"Something like that," she said. "Let me get you a drink."

"Thanks. I'll have a wee goldie," he replied, walking back to the bar with her.

"A whisky, please," Lindsay said to the barmaid, before turning back to Jimmy. Close up, she noticed his straight dark hair was still free from grey hairs, though there were a few more lines round his quick brown eyes. "I didn't know you lived out this way," she said.

"I don't. I'm still living in Partick. I'm working across the road now. Sports editor, for my sins," he replied with a rueful grimace.

"Oh, I hadn't heard. I knew you'd left the
Clarion
, but I didn't realise you were in Motherwell," Lindsay lied, hoping she sounded convincing. The last thing she wanted was for him to suspect their encounter wasn't entirely fortuitous.

"It's not the kind of thing you shout about, is it? What about you? Still working for the
Clarion
?"

Lindsay shook her head ruefully. "No. They kind of fell out with me. And you know what they're like. Long memories. They don't give you a second chance."

"Don't I know it," Jimmy said bitterly.

"I heard you had a bit of bother too. Alison Maxwell, wasn't it?"

"Aye, Alison bloody Maxwell. Funny, isn't it? You'd read her work and think, what a bloody good journalist. And then you'd get to know her and find out she was the biggest bitch in town," he said with a bitter bark of laughter.

"Yeah," Lindsay agreed. "Mind you, if they kicked out all the journalists whose private lives don't match up to their talent, there would be a lot of empty newsrooms."

"I know, but Alison Maxwell was in a class of her own. If anyone deserved what they got, she did." Jimmy added some water to his whisky and took a sip. "I was surprised at Jackie Mitchell, though. Never thought she had it in her."

"If you push people hard enough, they'll do anything to get out." Lindsay said. "And when it came to pushing, Alison was the expert. As I found out the hard way."

"You?" Jimmy exclaimed, his face a caricature of astonishment.

"Me," Lindsay said. She expected that, like most people on the
Clarion
, Jimmy had always known she was gay, but he had seemed genuinely surprised about Alison. "I was young and daft, Jimmy," she explained. "And she really knew how to put on the ritz. I was completely dazzled by her. But when I finally saw what she was really like, I had a hell of a job to get her claws out of me."

"I wish I'd known that," he replied. "I could have done with a few tips. That bitch wrecked my career. Damn near wrecked my marriage too. I put out the flags when I heard that she was dead, I can tell you." He pulled a pipe out of his pocket and started poking viciously at it with a tool he took from another pocket. Lindsay couldn't remember him having this particular mannerism and wondered if he were using it to cover his nervousness at the way the conversation was going.

"It's kind of like Kennedy, isn't it? I bet anyone who had had a run-in with Alison could tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of her death," she probed.

"You're not wrong," Jimmy said, pushing tobacco into his pipe as if he were trying to suffocate it. "I was at home in my bed with the flu. I heard it on the local news at half-past ten. I tell you, it was the best cure I ever had. I felt like a new man, you know? While she was alive, there was always the threat hanging over me that she'd contact my wife and tell her the same poisonous lies she put round the office. Can you believe it? Me, a rapist? For God's sake, she was bigger than me!"

"I suppose a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief when Jackie was arrested, though," Lindsay said, refusing to be sidetracked by Jimmy's indignation.

"How do you mean?" Jimmy asked, draining the last of his whisky. "Another pint?"

Lindsay nodded. "Well, if the police hadn't got hold of Jackie so quickly, they'd have been picking over Alison's past in all its gory details. Every poor sod like us who'd had anything to do with her would have been put under the microscope. There would have been a few ruined marriages after that."

"You're not kidding. I never thought of it like that. I suppose the police did me a favour, really." He used several matches in a bid to light his pipe, realised he'd packed it too tightly and started prodding the tobacco with a spent match in an attempt to loosen it.

"Especially since being in your bed with the flu isn't much of an alibi," Lindsay added jocularly. "Mind you, I suppose your wife was your alibi."

"Well, she wouldn't have been as it happens. She'd taken the kids round to her mother's so they wouldn't catch it too. So she'd have been round there, giving them their tea. She probably wouldn't have been home till about eight o'clock. No, my alibi was the flu. It was that epidemic that went round. You must have written the 'Killer Flu Bug' stories. I could hardly walk to the toilet, never mind strangle anybody." Jimmy had finally got his pipe going, and he visibly relaxed as his head was engulfed in a cloud of blue, aromatic smoke.

Lindsay chuckled. "I can beat that, Jimmy. I was in Italy at the time."

"On holiday, were you?"

"No, I was working over there."

He grinned. "All right for some. Christ, you wouldn't catch me coming back here if I could get a job over there. A bottle of wine and a place in the sunshine, eh? What more could anybody ask for?"

Lindsay was content to let the conversation slip into more general channels now she had the information she wanted. When she finished her drink, she glanced at her watch and said, "I'd better be off. I've got to meet a punter in ten minutes. It was nice bumping into you, Jimmy. All the best with the new job."

"Thanks, Lindsay. If you see any of the boys from the
Clarion
, tell them I was asking for them."

Lindsay drove back down the motorway, thinking over what Jimmy had told her. It would have been easy enough to exaggerate his illness for the benefit of his wife and the doctor. But how would he have known he would find Alison alone, unless they were still on good enough terms for him to have made an arrangement to see her? And why kill her then? The crisis was over and he was clearly getting his life back together again, even if the
Motherwell Tribune
sports desk wasn't as well paid or prestigious as the
Daily Clarion
. Still, he'd said himself that while she was alive he'd had to live with the constant edge of fear that one day she might extract a crueller revenge. And all that displacement activity with his pipe could have disguised a multitude of emotions. No, she couldn't write Jimmy off just yet.

She glanced at the dashboard clock. Just after three. She should drop in at Claire's on the way back. Lindsay would have dearly loved to put off so potentially awkward an encounter, but she knew it would have to be faced sooner or later. Better sooner.

Lindsay rang the entryphone buzzer for Claire's flat. There was no reply. After a couple of minutes, she rang again. She was on the point of giving up and going back to Sophie's when the loudspeaker crackled incomprehensibly. "It's Lindsay," she shouted into it. The door release buzzer sounded, and Lindsay hurriedly pushed the door open. On the third floor landing, the door stood ajar. Cautiously, Lindsay pushed it open and walked in. "Hello?" she called out.

"In here," came a voice from the bathroom. But it wasn't the voice Lindsay expected to hear. It was, unmistakably, the voice of the woman who had been her lover for more than three years.

"It's Lindsay," she said.

"I know who it is," Cordelia replied, emerging from the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel that ended too many inches above her knees for Lindsay's peace of mind. Her black hair was damp and tousled, her shoulders glistening with drops of water. "I was in the bath," she said unnecessarily.

Lindsay stared at her with a mixture of astonishment and desire. Then anger and self-disgust quickly took their place. How dare Cordelia wind her up like this with Claire only feet away!

As if reading her thoughts, Cordelia let a slight smile appear on her lips. "Claire's not here," she said. "She had to go over to Edinburgh at short notice. Something about getting an injunction in the High Court on behalf of one of her clients. She tried to phone you and let you know, but there was no reply. She said, if you came, to apologise on her behalf."

"I see," Lindsay croaked through dry lips. Embarrassed, she cleared her throat and said, "I've been out working on the case. Interviewing suspects. You know the drill."

"I know the drill," Cordelia murmured, moving closer to Lindsay. "Who better? Now you're here anyway, why don't you come through and have a coffee?" She put her hand out to touch Lindsay's arm.

Lindsay flinched from her former lover's touch as if it had been a blow. "Thanks all the same, but I'd better get on," she replied. "After all, Claire is paying me. We don't want to waste her precious time, do we?"

"Oh Lindsay, stop being so prickly. Relax." She ran a hand through Lindsay's hair, sending an involuntary shudder through her body. "Come and tell me how you've been getting on. I can pass it on to Claire, and that'll save you having to come back later."

Cordelia smiled wickedly and walked confidently through to the kitchen. As if pulled by an invisible string, Lindsay followed, hating herself for her susceptibility. She stood in the doorway while Cordelia poured out two mugs of coffee from a jug and put them in the microwave. Cordelia leaned back against the kitchen unit, looking relaxed and, to Lindsay, unbelievably sexy. Although it was only hours since she had been lying in Sophie's arms, it might have been a lifetime ago for all the effect it had on Lindsay's reactions. "Have you made much progress?" Cordelia asked.

Lindsay shrugged. "Some. But if you don't mind, I'd rather wait till Claire's here. There are one or two things I want to ask her about, so I might as well save it till then. If she's got any queries, we can sort them out on the spot." Realising that she sounded churlish, Lindsay softened her tone and struggled for something to say that was emotionally neutral but offered some kind of olive branch. "Do you know if she's done anything about Alistair Anderson yet?" she managed.

Cordelia showed no reaction to Lindsay's words except a slight raise of her eyebrows. She took the coffees out of the microwave and said, "Here you are," holding one out to Lindsay, who came warily across the room to take it. "She's organised a small drinks party for this evening. Alistair's one of the guests. So we might have something for you tomorrow." She moved closer to Lindsay, penning her into a corner of the kitchen and put down her coffee. "Why are you so nervous of me?" Cordelia asked innocently. "You're acting like I'm the big bad wolf."

"Is it any wonder I feel a bit nervous?" Lindsay demanded. "Here I am, trapped in the kitchen with a half-naked woman. I mean, Claire could walk in at any minute. And the last woman who found herself in a compromising position with one of Claire's lovers ended up dead," she added, falling into the old habit of telling Cordelia exactly what she was thinking.

Cordelia laughed delightedly. "You're surely not suggesting that Claire killed Alison? Oh Lindsay, you really are something else again! But set your mind at rest. Claire won't be back for a couple of hours at least. She's not going to catch you in a compromising position. Besides, she's an adult. She's not the sort of woman who indulges in temper tantrums." Cordelia reached out and gently stroked the side of Lindsay's head.

Lindsay felt her defences dissolve under the familiar touch. "Meaning that I am?" she asked, desperately trying to fight her feelings and provoke a less intimate atmosphere. Being alone with Cordelia at such close quarters was uncomfortable, but she was determined that she wasn't going to let her former lover defeat her.

"You are a very passionate woman, Lindsay. And sometimes that passion shows itself in ways that are less comfortable than your stunning lovemaking," Cordelia teased.

"Yes, well, that's something you won't have to deal with any longer," Lindsay replied, feeling herself start to sweat.

"I never imagined I would, but I miss your temper, your passion, your arrogance. It's not too late, Lindsay. We could make up for lost time," Cordelia murmured persuasively, letting the towel fall away from her slim body and moving into Lindsay's arms.

As she felt Cordelia's lips on hers, Lindsay suddenly came to her senses. She turned her face away, saying, "Wait a minute."

With a puzzled look on her face, Cordelia stopped. "It's all right," she soothed.

"No it isn't," Lindsay protested, feeling confused. "It's all wrong. What about Claire? You made your choice, Cordelia, and it wasn't me."

"It wasn't so much a choice as a default. I was lonely, Lindsay. And I was confused. I still am, come to that. As soon as I saw you the other night in Soutar Johnnie's, I couldn't help thinking I'd made a stupid mistake. Maybe if I hadn't kept on running into you, maybe if we weren't living in the same city, I'd have been able to carry on with Claire without these doubts surfacing all the time. But every time I see you, I get all churned up again. I can't forget the way I feel about you. Oh Lindsay, let's give it another try."

Cordelia's voice held a note of pleading Lindsay had never heard before. But something was wrong. Lindsay couldn't put her finger on it, but something didn't ring true in Cordelia's words. She'd only started seriously seducing rather than teasing after Lindsay had voiced her suspicion of Claire. Did Cordelia genuinely want her, or was she simply trying to protect Claire from Lindsay's inquiries? In bed, with her defences down. Lindsay knew she'd believe anything Cordelia wanted her to. She felt torn. In spite of the peace she'd found the night before with Sophie, her body told her to ignore her doubts and follow her instincts into bed with Cordelia, but inside her head, a voice screamed "No!"

Lindsay pushed Cordelia away and moved back towards the door. "No," she said. "No."

"But why not?" Cordelia asked, her voice trembling. "We still care about each other. I can see you still love me, for God's sake!"

"But it's not just between you and me any more, is it? This is so dishonest, Cordelia. If you'd really wanted me back, why didn't you just leave Claire and come back to me? I might have believed you then. But this? Trying to seduce me in Claire's kitchen? Were you planning on bonking me in Claire's bed?"

Cordelia flinched at Lindsays words and took a tentative step towards her. But Lindsay shook her head angrily and Cordelia stopped in her tracks. "I didn't mean it to be like this," she protested. "It's just the way it happened, that's all."

The feebleness of her response fuelled the rage that had begun to burn in Lindsay. "Apart from anything else, I'm still working for Claire. How the hell can I carry on with that if I'm sleeping with you? I still don't hear you saying you're going to leave Claire and come back to me! After what we've had, do you really think I'm going to settle for being your bit on the side?" Lindsay demanded angrily.

"It doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to work for Claire. And I don't have to stay here, where Claire's still around to cause confusion. We can go back to London together. Start again. Give it another try," Cordelia pleaded.

Lindsay's heart sank. Cordelia's words served only to confirm her suspicions that her motives were suspect. Was Cordelia protecting Claire after all? "And just abandon Jackie?" she blurted out. "No way. I made a commitment. I've started, so I'll finish, like the man says. Besides, it's not just Claire who's involved," she blurted out.

Cordelia paled. "What do you mean?"

Lindsay silently cursed herself. She hadn't meant to tell Cordelia about Sophie. "Nothing," she mumbled.

"It's that bloody Helen, isn't it?" Cordelia demanded. "I always knew she fancied you. Couldn't wait to get her claws into you, could she?"

"It's not Helen. It's Sophie. And you've no room to talk about people who couldn't wait," Lindsay shouted, almost glad of an excuse to pick a fight. Anything to escape a situation that she was finding increasingly intolerable. "You knew I'd be back. You knew it wasn't you I was leaving. But you couldn't give me time, could you? I hadn't been gone six months when you were throwing yourself into Claire's arms. I never looked at another woman in all the time I was away. And when I did come back, it was straight to you. Or it would have been if you hadn't been too busy bedding your new girlfriend."

Cordelia scowled. "How the hell was I supposed to know when you were coming back? Or even if you were coming back?"

"How could I let you know? It's not as if I went away without a word. The whole point of me leaving the country was so the security forces would get off my back. I knew they'd be tapping your phone and checking your mail. The last thing I wanted was for you to have to suffer even more because of my pig-headed principles." Lindsay stood staring defiantly at Cordelia's naked body. She wasn't going to give in, she wasn't, she kept telling herself. She shook her head. "I think it's too late," she sighed. "I think it's too late for both of us. I'm sorry, Cordelia. But you turned your back on me when you started living with Claire. Now I'm turning my back on you. Sophie has made me feel good for the first time in months. And I don't believe any more that loving more than one person is a good thing multiplied. It's not. It's a good thing divided."

"But we need each other," Cordelia pleaded. "Don't be so stubborn. You know we belong together. Sophie can't give you what I can. Sophie won't be any use to you trying to track down a killer. Sophie doesn't know the way your mind works. She won't put up with your crazy working routines, all those unexplained absences." Her face was flushed and angry, her straight brows twisted in a frown.

"At least Sophie's loyal. Sophie never made a pass at me while she was still living with Helen, or while I was with you."

Cordelia flushed a deeper scarlet. "You'd better go," she said softly.

"That's the first sensible thing you've said today," Lindsay replied. "I'm sorry it had to end like this, Cordelia."

The cliche was still ringing in her ears as she stumbled blindly from the flat and ran through the streets to her car. It was fully five minutes before the shaking in her hands subsided enough for her to drive the car safely. Lindsay drove back to the flat like a maniac, desperate to shut the door on the world and lose herself in drink.