Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

“I came to see just how overdrawn I was at the bank,” Steve said wryly.

Kit crossed to Fiona and gave her a hug. “Steve wants more work done on the Susan Blanchard case,” she said.

Kit looked over the top of her head at Steve, his eyebrows raised in mild interrogation. “She blew you out, then.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Steve said.

“The Met are going to pay Terry Fowler to do the job,” Fiona said firmly.

“I hope,” said Steve. He got to his feet. “I’ll call you in the morning about the arrangements.”

“Don’t go, Steve,” Fiona urged. “Stay for dinner. We could have a Scrabble challenge match afterwards.”

It was an olive branch, he knew. The part of him that had hated to beg wanted to carry on walking, but he was uncertain what that would mean for the future of their relationship. His pride was a small sacrifice for the healing of the breach that had opened between them. Steve looked at Kit. “Depends what’s for dinner,” he said.

Kit frowned. “Lemme see.” He opened the fridge and stared into it. “I’ve got chicken breasts, shallots, fresh tarragon, fennel…What about chicken and tarragon pilaff?” He looked round.

Steve pretended to consider for a moment. “Pudding?”

“You don’t ask much, do you?” Kit complained. “There’s some homemade chocolate ice-cream in the freezer, a few strawberries and half a jar of mango could is in the fridge. That do you?”

“OK, you talked me into it.”

Kit shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over a chair then set to work. “How was your day?” Fiona asked as she watched him chopping and dicing.

“Very productive,” Kit said. “I went to see a contact. But I better not go into details in front of the law,” he added, grinning over his shoulder at Steve. “Tell you what, though. Georgia’s kicking up a storm in the papers. You seen the tabloids today? The Mail did a big piece comparing her disappearance with Agatha Christie’s vanishing act back in the twenties.”

“She’s still not shown up, then?” Fiona asked. She turned to Steve. “Georgia Lester, the crime writer? Have you been following the story?”

“I’ve seen it in the papers, yes. Didn’t you say she’d had a letter like yours, Kit? What do you think? Has she gone underground out of pique or out of fear?”

“The letter didn’t really scare her until she found out I’d had one too. She was edgy about it, definitely. I know she was pitching her publisher to send her out on the tour with a pair of minders, but I reckoned that was just Georgia trying it on. She can be a bit of a grandstander,” he added affectionately, reaching for a heavy cast-iron skillet hanging beside the cooker.

“One thing’s for sure,” Fiona said dryly. “The suicide option is a nonstarter with Georgia.”

“Why do you say that?” Steve asked.

“Suicides have low self-esteem. Georgia, on the other hand, is a woman entirely devoid of the slightest shred of self-doubt. On a scale of one to ten, the health of her ego would be somewhere around eleven.”

“She’s right,” Kit confirmed. “Most of us, we get a bad review, we kick the cat, we swear at the computer screen, we hurt. Even if we pretend we’re far too manly for that. But Georgia, she gets a bad review, she sends the reviewer flowers and a note saying she hopes they’ll be better soon.”

Steve snorted with laughter. “You’re making that up.”

“Swear to God, it’s a true story. Georgia could no more top herself than wear a shell suit.”

“So there’s only one alternative, is that what you’re saying? If she hasn’t staged this disappearance as a publicity stunt, then she’s been abducted?” Steve put into words what Kit and Fiona had been avoiding.

There was a long moment of silence. Then Kit tipped the diced chicken into the pan with the shallots. Steam rose in the air, carrying the cooking smells across the room. “I suppose that’s what we’re carefully not saying,” Fiona said.

“Which doesn’t mean you’re not thinking it. I would be, in your shoes. After Drew Shand and Jane Elias, it’s got to be in the front of your mind,” Steve said.

“But there’s no connection between those two murders,” Kit protested. “The Garda have arrested a local man for Jane. And you told me they haven’t found any threatening letters among her papers, which put the damper on my nerves a bit.”

“It doesn’t matter that there’s no connection,” Fiona said. “Psychologically speaking, that is. What we know is that two thriller writers have been murdered. So when a third goes missing, it’s inevitable that we start wondering if the same thing has happened to her. It’s the mind playing tricks, Kit. Subconsciously we always look for sequences. Even when they’re not there. So although your conscious mind is denying that Drew and Jane’s deaths could have any connection to Georgia, at a lower level, you can’t help picturing it as a sequence and worrying about it.”

“Nevertheless,” Steve interrupted, “and speaking purely as a copper, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that Georgia has been abducted.”

“And of course, if she has been, and there’s been a ransom note, then the police would have made sure that was kept quiet,” Fiona said thoughtfully. “They would be playing it exactly as they are. Making out they’re not unduly worried, acting like they’re treating it as nothing more than possibly suspicious.”

“I’d say so, yes,” Steve confirmed.

“So what you’re both saying is that it’s pointless to speculate,” Kit said.

“Pretty much, yes.” Steve inhaled deeply. “This smells wonderful, Kit.”

“It will be,” he said confidently. “I hope wherever Georgia is, she’s getting something half as good.”

Fiona smiled ironically. “I hope so too. Because if this turns out to be a put-up job, she’s going to be on bread and water for a very long time to come.”

The clock read 3:24. Fiona had no idea what had woken her, but her eyes had snapped wide open, her brain firing on all cylinders. No point in trying to get back to sleep, she knew that. Insomnia seldom afflicted her, but when it struck, she knew the only answer was to get up and keep her mind occupied until sleep felled her again.

She slipped out of bed. Kit grunted, turned over and began breathing rhythmically again. Fiona padded across the carpet, taking her dressing gown off its peg and moving out on to the landing. The distant hum of traffic was the only sound. She had no sense of another presence besides her and Kit. As she mounted the stairs, she looked out of the window to the garden below. The dim light of a three-quarter moon turned it into an eerie conglomeration of monochrome shapes. But none were unfamiliar. Whatever had disturbed her sleep, it wasn’t a stranger in either house or garden.

In her office, Fiona turned on the desk lamp and took a can of Perrier out of the tiny fridge by her desk, one of Kit’s more bizarre birthday presents. She’d been less than thrilled at the time though she hoped she’d disguised her disappointment but she’d come to appreciate its benefits since. He was good at that, coming up with things she’d never have imagined she needed. She popped the top of the can. It was so still in the soundproofed attic that she could hear the bubbles ping as they broke against the metal.

She switched on her computer and waited for it to boot up. Then she went straight on line. America was awake; there would be plenty of people up and about in the chat rooms to keep her amused. As she logged on, she remembered it was the night once a month when Murder Behind the Headlines had an on-line discussion that ran from ten till midnight. She pointed her browser at their site and waited to be connected.