Deadline for Murder (2 page)

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."

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 sweatpants, 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 11 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 cafe 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."