Deadline for Murder (8 page)

"Big words, Gordon," Lindsay muttered to herself as she drove away from the prison. "And how the hell are you going to deliver this time?" In spite of her sympathy for Jackie, Lindsay had been only too glad to get away from the depressing encounter, especially after it became clear to her that Jackie knew nothing of Claire's affair with Cordelia. That would be a pleasant surprise for her to come out to, Lindsay thought angrily. No home, no job, no lover.

Lindsay thrust the thought of Claire and Cordelia away and reviewed what Jackie had told her as she drove back to Glasgow. No leads there, she mused. But she still had one or two cards up her sleeve. And maybe Jim Carstairs could give her some pointers that would be worth chasing up.

Less than an hour after she had left the prison, Lindsay was ensconced in the lawyer's secretary's office, ploughing through a thick file of all the case papers relating to Alison's murder. The police statements were interesting, as much for what they did not contain. They had been led straight to Jackie because of a name tape stitched into her scarf. In Jackie's statement, she'd revealed that it was a scarf she'd had since schooldays, hence the presence of the faded tape. Once they had Jackie in custody, she'd been picked out of an identification parade with no hesitation by Alison's mother, who had passed out cold as soon as she saw the woman she believed to be her daughter's killer.

Because they were certain they had the murderer, and because they were convinced it was an open-and-shut case, the police had not pursued any other lines of enquiry with much vigour. Judging by the statements from Alison's friends and colleagues, the questioning had been superficial in the extreme. By the time the papers had been passed on to the Procurator Fiscal for his decision as to whether there was enough for a successful prosecution, the case against Jackie looked overwhelming. And there were no other obvious suspects.

There was only one tiny piece of evidence which did not actually confirm Jackie's guilt. On the bedside table there had been a high-ball glass containing the remains of a whisky and water. There was a smudged lip-print on the glass, and faint traces of fingerprints. Only one was clear enough for the forensic scientists to lift a usable print. But it did not match Jackie's prints in any respect. Nor did it belong to Alison. They had half of a thumbprint from the glass, and the owner of that print was still unknown. Three hours later, that was still the only discrepancy that Lindsay could find in the case against Jackie. With a deep sigh, she closed the file and asked to see Jim Carstairs.

Lindsay was shown into a comfortable office, whose size was disguised by the piles of books, files, and loose papers stacked everywhere. "Come in, come in," Carstairs greeted her. He was a tall, thin man in his early thirties, with narrow shoulders and bony wrists that stuck out of his fashionable double-breasted suit. "Sit down, sit down," he added. "Sorry about the mess. The joiners have been promising to put my shelves up for months now, but they never appear. Now, how did you get on with the case papers?"

"They were heavy going," Lindsay admitted. "And I have to say there's not much there to lend support to the theory of Jackie's innocence. Apart from one thing."

Carstairs nodded encouragingly. He reminded Lindsay of her Latin teacher, another ugly, skinny man who'd been nicknamed Plug because of his lack of physical charms. But he'd been a kind teacher, who had always managed to draw out even those most lacking in confidence. Feeling reassured, Lindsay went on. "The glass," she said. "It doesn't fit."

"Well spotted," Carstairs said with an air of genuine delight at her perspicacity.

"And the police don't seem to have bent over backwards to try to find out who the mysterious thumbprint belongs to," she went on.

"Good. Of course, I needn't tell you that pursuing that course of inquiry was virtually impossible for us. After all, I have no authority to go round fingerprinting people. With the whole population of Glasgow to go at, and no real suspects other than Jackie, we couldn't begin to unearth the owner of the print. If there had been someone else who had been an obvious suspect, we could have got their prints by some subterfuge, I suppose. But neither Claire nor I had the foggiest idea where to begin," he apologised. "However, from what I'm told, which squares with what I understand about fingerprinting techniques, it's likely that the print had been made that day. They certainly weren't the sort of residual prints that might have been left after the glass had been washed," he continued enthusiastically.

"Who did the police fingerprint?" Lindsay asked, mildly irritated by Carstairs' failure to pursue the one lead that he and Claire had to the real culprit. God preserve me from falling into the hands of lawyers, she thought to herself.

"No one, really. They had no evidence apart from the glass that anyone else had been there. No one else had been seen or heard. Mrs. Makaronas from the flat upstairs heard Jackie and Alison quarrelling, but that was all she admitted to having heard."

"Would that be Ruth Menzies? The gallery owner?" Lindsay interrupted.

"That's right. A friend of the dead woman. Retains her maiden name professionally. Not a very helpful witness from our point of view. Now, as I was saying, the only direct evidence was the glass, and they didn't fingerprint all her friends and associates. In fact, they didn't even look too hard for her friends and etceteras, as you'll probably have picked up from the case file."

Lindsay shook her head doubtfully. "It's not much to go at. But at least it's a start. I was beginning to wonder if we were all wrong, and that maybe Jackie had actually done it, in spite of everything my instincts tell me about her and about this crime."

Carstairs nodded. "I know what you mean. I think we've all felt that momentary doubt. Including Jackie. I think there have been moments when she's wondered if she suffered some kind of brainstorm. The only one who's never doubted her innocence is Claire. She really has kept the faith."

Pity she couldn't have managed faithful as well, thought Lindsay sourly. But she kept her thoughts to herself and got to her feet. "Right," she said. "I'm off in pursuit of the missing thumb. I can't promise that I'll be able to get to the bottom of this, you do realise that? The trail I'm trying to pick up is very stale. Getting people to remember what happened four months ago is a tall order. Especially if one of them has something to hide."

"I appreciate that," Carstairs said, showing her to the door. "But we owe it to Jackie to try, don't we?"

"I'll be in touch if I need anything," she said on her way out.

Lindsay kept her word to the lawyer sooner than she expected. For when she returned to Sophie's flat, she found two men waiting for her.

"Miss Gordon?" Inspector Ainslie of the Special Branch asked as he and his colleague fell into step beside her. "We'd like you to accompany us to the station. We've got one or two questions for you about Miss Campbell's burglary."

How many times do I have to tell you? I don't know anything about it!" Lindsay protested. She was sick of repeating herself. Ainslie ignored her denial and continued to put the same question, like a record with the needle stuck in the groove.

"What have you done with the draft report?" he asked her yet again.

Lindsay was bemused. When the two policemen had stopped her in the street, she had demanded to know what they wanted and why they thought she could help them. Ainslie had refused to answer any of her questions and had brought her to Maryhill Police Station, where she had been hustled into a small interview room, furnished with a table and two chairs. The room was hot and stuffy, and her head had begun to throb. It was all frighteningly reminiscent of another interview room she'd been interrogated in once before. The memory made Lindsay's palms sweat and the blood pound in her ears.

Neither police officer had attempted to explain what was going on. Ainslie had simply repeated his question over and over again. She had asked to call her lawyer, but her request had been ignored as completely as if she had never spoken. An hour had passed in this inconclusive but, for Lindsay, deeply unsettling pattern. Then, without warning, Ainslie got abruptly to his feet and walked out, slamming the door behind him. His junior sidekick followed him moments later, after fixing Lindsay with a long, hard stare.

She got to her feet and stretched her legs. It never crossed her mind to try leaving. She felt sure there would be someone outside the door. Lindsay rotated her shoulders and shook her wrists vigorously to loosen up her muscles. For some reason, they had decided she knew more about Ros's burglary than an innocent bystander should. But she was determined to give nothing away. Something told her she was in for a long session.

A few minutes later, the door opened and a stranger walked into the room. His face looked as though he'd spent too much of his youth in a boxing ring. "Miss Gordon?" he enquired mildly.

'That's right. Who are you?"

'Chief Inspector Fraser. Mr. Ainslie tells me you're not being very cooperative,' he replied, lowering his bulky frame onto a plastic chair that didn't look equal to the task.

"Mr. Ainslie might have earned my cooperation if he'd given me a clue as to why you've brought me here," Lindsay said.

Fraser pulled a copy of the Scottish
Daily Clarion
from the inside pocket of his rumpled grey suit. "Come on, Miss Gordon," he said with an air of weariness. "Don't tell me you haven't worked it out. We're not all daft in the force, you know. Your reputation has gone before you. So when we get a burglary involving politically sensitive information, followed by a press leak, and you're on the spot, you can't really be surprised if our fingers get round to pointing at you."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anything about a press leak. I haven't even seen today's papers. I left the house early this morning, and I've been running around all day. I've not had a chance even to look at the front pages," Lindsay explained.

Fraser shook his head sorrowfully. "I'd hoped you could do a wee bit better than that. You must think I came up the Clyde on a biscuit. After my twenty-two years on the force d'you really expect me to believe that?"

"Whether you believe it or not, it's the truth," Lindsay said stubbornly. "Look, Chief Inspector. I'll happily answer any questions you want to put to me if you'll only do me the courtesy of either telling me what this is all about or letting me speak to my lawyer. I have rights, and I intend to exercise them."

The Special Branch officer tossed the paper down on the table. The headlines screamed off the page at her. "TOP TORY TO CASH IN ON PRISON PLAN," the main banner said. Underneath, a smaller headline read, "Jail sell-off means fat profits for Jedburgh." Lindsay's heart sank. Whoever had stolen Rosalind's report hadn't hung around. The byline on the story read "By Bill Grace,
Clarion
Chief Reporter." She knew Bill, and knew he was one of the best journalists in Scotland. He'd obviously used his extensive and varied contacts to turn a run-of-the-mill leak story into a major political scandal.

Appalled, she read on.

A top-secret plan to privatise Scotland's prisons will make the minister responsible a rich man.

Mark Jedburgh; the Scottish Office minister in charge of prisons, has an extensive shareholding in a security firm that has been gearing up to meet the challenge of running a top-security prison on the taxpayers' behalf.

According to a secret government report, revealed exclusively to the Scottish
Daily Clarion
, plans are well advanced to sell off Scotland's jails to the highest bidder.

The plans include armed guards, strict punishment regimes, increased security, drastic cuts in social and educational opportunities for prisoners, and an end to all rehabilitation programmes for long-term violent offenders.

Vigilando Security Group is hotly tipped to win the first contract to run a private prison.

One of VSG's major shareholders is Mark Jedburgh, Tory MP for Central Borders. He owns fifteen percent of VSG. His wife Christina owns another seven percent.

Former prisoner Davey Anderson, who served three life sentences for murder and now works for a charity which helps to resettle ex-prisoners, said last night, "This is diabolical. Jedburgh should resign at once. This plan is a recipe for riot."
Continued p. 3)

Lindsay looked up from the paper, hoping that her feelings of shock were reflected on her face. "I knew nothing about this," she protested. "Ask Bill Grace. He'll tell you he didn't get it from me."

"We've already spoken to Mr. Grace," Fraser replied. "I bet you can guess exactly what he told us."

"He refused to reveal his sources, I suppose. But surely if you asked him to confirm that it wasn't me, he'd tell you that, at least?" Even as she asked the question, Lindsay knew it was a vain hope. In Bill's shoes, she'd have admitted nothing.

"We did ask him, believe me, Miss Gordon. He simply said that he was not prepared to answer any questions at all relating to the source of his information. He made the perfectly reasonable point that if he started cooperating with us to the extent of eliminating people, we could go right through the names of every working journalist, civil servant, and politician in Scotland till we got to a name he wasn't prepared to eliminate. So I'm afraid you're still very much in the frame."

Lindsay sighed. "Look, Chief Inspector. A year ago, I had a very bad time with the forces of law and order. So bad that I ended up leaving the country till the fuss died down. I'm sure your extensive enquiries will have already told you that. I've only just come home. Believe me, I'm looking for a quiet life these days. Do you really think I'd want to put myself in the same position all over again just to drop some junior Tory minister in it?"

Fraser pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Lindsay, who accepted gratefully, having smoked the last of hers twenty minutes before. He lit up, puffed for a few moments, then said, "I'm not a psychologist. I don't pretend to understand what goes on in the minds of people like you. I'm a policeman, and what I'm trained to do is investigate crime. That means acquiring as many facts as possible and then making logical deductions. Now, the facts I have before me are these. A story based on a report stolen in a burglary yesterday has surfaced in a newspaper. A journalist who has a track record of writing this sort of anti-establishment story, who used to work for the very paper which carried the story, was on the spot. Not only in the building itself, but carrying a set of keys to the very flat that was burgled. Do you not think that I'd be failing in my duty to the taxpayers who pay my wages if I didn't pull that journalist in for questioning?"

Lindsay cursed silently. She'd been praying that Rosalind hadn't told the police that she had the spare keys to the flat. She'd have to try something else if she was ever going to get out of there. "Come on, get serious," she mocked. "Rosalind Campbell's a friend of mine. Do you really think I'd stage a break-in and reduce her flat to a shambles just so's I could get a story? If that's how you think friends behave, you must have a bizarre personal life."

Fraser shrugged, his beefy shoulders straining his suit seams. "I've only got your say-so for this bosom friendship. You might have been stringing this woman along all the time. And besides, if you hadn't made a shambles of the place, we'd have been all the more certain it was you, wouldn't we? On the other hand, maybe you and Miss Campbell were in it together."

Lindsay shook her head incredulously. "I just don't believe you guys. Byzantine doesn't begin to describe your thought processes. For God's sake, why would Rosalind conspire with me to wreck her own flat?"

"We know one or two things about Miss Campbell too," Fraser said flatly. "We know, for example, that she's an active member of the Labour Party. Maybe she wanted this story to get out. I mean, what could be more damaging to the Tories?"

Lindsay stubbed out her cigarette angrily. "If Rosalind had wanted the story to get out, don't you think she could have used her Labour Party contacts to leak it that way? She's not stupid, she could have covered her tracks easily enough."

"Maybe she wanted her flat redecorated on the insurance. Like I said, I'm not a psychologist. And all my years in the force have taught me that nine times out of ten, the obvious answer is the right one. You were on the spot. You had keys to the flat. And you've got the contacts to place that story," Fraser summed up, ticking off the points on his short, thick fingers. "Either you start to cooperate, or I'm going to charge you."

"Fine. At least that way I'll get to see my lawyer."

He smiled in a way that sent a chill down her spine. "Eventually. I wasn't planning on charging you for a wee while yet. I'd like you to have every chance of showing your willingness to help us out."

Fraser had backed her into a corner. She'd have to cooperate if she was to have any chance of getting home tonight. "Okay," she said. "Thank you for finally telling me what all of this is about. I suppose I'd better keep my end of the bargain. I'll answer your questions now."

Fraser nodded. "Very wise. Let's start from the beginning. When did you get the keys of the flat?"

"Rosalind gave them to me the night before the break-in."

"Why?"

"Didn't she explain that to you?"

"It's you I'm asking. Why did she give you the keys?"

"I wanted to take a look at the block," Lindsay said, aware of how feeble her story sounded.

"Thinking of buying a flat, are you?"

"No. A friend of mine was murdered there last year. I've been asked to make some enquiries relating to her death," Lindsay said defensively.

"So you think the police didn't manage to get the right person for Alison Maxwell's murder?" Fraser demanded.

He'd done his homework, Lindsay thought. "Something like that," she said.

"And you decided to come along on your white charger to show the woodentops how it should really be done, eh? I thought you said you were looking for the quiet life these days?"

Lindsay shrugged. "I'm just doing a favour for a friend, that's all."

"And I suppose that while you were there, you thought you'd just pop in to Miss Campbell's flat for a cup of tea, since you had the keys burning a hole in your pocket. Seeing that report on her computer screen must have been a hell of a temptation. I can't say I blame you. Any journalist worth their salt would have been hard pressed to ignore it."

"I didn't go near Ros's flat. I was never on the eighth floor. I went straight to the sixth floor, had a look round, then I left," Lindsay stated.

"Surely you don't expect me to believe that?" Fraser asked incredulously. "Missing out on the chance of a nice little earner like that? Come on, admit it, Miss Gordon, it happened just like I said. I've heard all the excuses. Now, how about coming up with the truth? It would save us all a lot of time in the long run."

Lindsay shook her head vigorously. "You're way off beam. Look, even supposing I had let myself into Rosalind's flat and seen the report, I wouldn't have needed to stage a burglary. I know about computers, for God's sake. All I would have had to do would have been to make a copy of the file on to another disc and walked out of there with it in my pocket. No one would have been any the wiser. When the story broke, no one would have been able to trace it back to me or to Rosalind. Like I said, Rosalind is a friend of mine. I wouldn't have wrecked her flat just to cover my back, not when I could have protected both of us by quietly copying the disc."

For the first time, Lindsay thought she saw a flicker of doubt in Fraser's blue eyes. "I don't know," he finally said. "Maybe all that sophisticated logic didn't occur to you on the spur of the moment. Maybe you just saw the chance and acted on it."

"Look, apart from anything else, I wasn't even in the building long enough to make such a thorough job of it," she protested.

"Protesting a wee bit too much, aren't we?" Fraser asked sarcastically. "Just run through your movements yesterday afternoon for me. Let me work it out for myself."

"I was with a lawyer called Claire Ogilvie until about quarter past three. Then I drove straight to Caird House. I walked up from the garage to the sixth floor, stood on the landing for about three or four minutes, then travelled down in the lift with Ruth Menzies from Flat 7B. Then I drove to Wunda Wines on Dumbarton Road, bought two bottles of Italian wine, and drove back to my friend's flat. Where your boys picked me up today. I arrived there about four. A woman called Cordelia Brown, who's staying with Miss Ogilvie, was waiting for me in the street. I spoke to her for a few minutes, then went upstairs. My friend Helen Christie told me about the burglary, and we went round to Rosalind's flat. Inspector Ainslie saw me there later."

"I'll want a statement to that effect," Fraser said, getting to his feet. "Do you want to call your lawyer before you commit yourself to paper?"

Lindsay nodded, and at last she was escorted to a phone. She caught Jim Carstairs just as he was leaving his office, and he promised to come right away. To her surprise, Lindsay found her hand was shaking with relief as she replaced the receiver. Being in the hands of the police again had clearly frightened her more than she was prepared to admit to herself.