Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

Jackson rounded on me. “You’re still here? I thought I told you to butt out of this investigation?”

“When you pay my wages you can give me orders,” I said mutinously. “My client does not wish to accompany you to the police station, as is her right. She is willing to talk to you here, however. Do you have a problem with that, Inspector?”

Jackson looked around him. “There’s nowhere here to conduct an interview,” he said contemptuously.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Alexis loomed up at his elbow. “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Jackson. I’ve been doing interviews all over the place. Is there some kind of problem here? Is somebody being arrested?”

“What the hell is the press doing here?” Jackson exploded.

“Press?” the director yelped. “Suffering Jesus, this is supposed to be a closed set. Security!” she bellowed. She pointed at Alexis. “You, out of here.” Then she turned to Jackson. “The same goes for you. Look, we’ve got a people carrier over there. Plenty of room in that. All of you, just fuck off out of my sight, will you?”

Gloria started walking towards the big eight-seater van as two uniformed security guards appeared to escort an unprotesting Alexis back to her car. “Come on, Kate,” Gloria called over her shoulder. “I’m not talking to him without you there.”

“She’s got no right,” Jackson protested. “You’re not a lawyer, Brannigan.”

I shrugged. “Looks like you get to talk to Gloria with me present, or you don’t get to talk to Gloria at all. She is one determined woman, let me tell you.”

I watched Jackson’s blood pressure rise. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and stalked past Gloria towards the people carrier. She followed more slowly and I brought up the rear with Linda Shaw. “I thought Gloria was off the hook,” I said mildly.

Linda pursed her lips. Then, so quietly I could have believed I was imagining things, she said, “That was before we knew about the motive.”

She is critical, both of herself and others. She is driven to seek the answers to the world’s problems and has an analytical mind which she uses in her pitched battles against injustice. She has a great appetite for life, enjoying a vigorous lust in her sexual relationships.

From Written in the Stars , by Dorothea Dawson

I’d barely absorbed the impact of Linda Shaw’s bombshell when she delivered the double whammy. “Or the fingerprints on the murder weapon,” she added. There was no time for me to find out more; we’d reached the people carrier by then. Funny, I’d never suspected her of sadism before.

Gloria had already climbed into the front row of rear seats and Jackson, predictably, was in the driving seat. I went to sit next to Gloria, but Linda put a hand on my arm and motioned me into the back row before she slid into place next to my client. “I’ve already told you everything I know,” Gloria started before the doors were even closed. Bad move.

“I don’t think so,” Jackson said brusquely, twisting round to face us. I had a moment’s satisfaction at the sight of a painful razor rash along the line of his collar. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.

“I didn’t kill her. She was still alive when I left her.”

“You had reason to want her dead, though.” Jackson’s words seemed to materialize in the cold air, hanging in front of us like a macabre mobile.

“I beg your pardon, I never did,” Gloria protested, her shoulders squaring in outrage.

Jackson nodded to Linda, who took out her notebook and flipped it open. “We’ve had a statement from a Mr. Tony Satterthwaite—”

“That vicious scumbag?” Gloria interrupted. “You’re not telling me you wasted your time listening to that no-good lying pig?”

“Your ex-husband has been extremely helpful,” Jackson said smoothly, nodding again at Linda.

“Mr. Satterthwaite was distressed by Ms. Dawson’s death, not least because, according to him, it was his affair with her that precipitated the end of your marriage.”

I remembered that line about backbenchers resembling mushrooms because they get kept in the dark except when someone opens the door to shovel shit on them. I knew just how they felt. I glared at Gloria. She stared open-mouthed at Linda. It was the first time I’d ever seen her stuck for something to say.

“He suggested that you had never really forgiven Ms. Dawson for the affair, and that you were, and I quote, ‘the sort of devious bitch who would wait years to get her own back.’ We’d be very interested in your comments, Ms. Kendal,” Linda said coolly.

“You don’t have to say a thing, Gloria,” I said hurriedly.

“What? And let them go on thinking there’s a word of truth in what that money-grubbing moron says? My God,” she said, anger building in her voice, “you lot are gullible. I dumped Tony Satterthwaite because he was an idle leech. He couldn’t even be bothered to look further than his own secretary when he decided to have a bit on the side. Even though she looked like Walter Matthau. He never even met Dorothea, never mind had an affair with her. I’d kicked him out a good six months before she first turned up at Northerners .”

“So why would he tell us a pack of lies?” Jackson sneered.

“Because if he saw a chance to give me a bad time, he’d not let it go past him,” Gloria said bitterly. “Especially if he could see a way of turning it into a moneyspinner. You can bet your bottom dollar that the next call he made after he spoke to you was to the Sun or the Mirror . You’ve been had, the both of you. What you don’t realize is that if he had been having an affair with Dorothea, I’d have bought her a magnum of champagne for giving me a twenty-four-carat reason for ditching the sod. Ask my daughter. Ask anybody that was around me then. They’ll tell you the same.”

“You married the man,” Jackson pointed out.

“Everybody’s entitled to one mistake,” Gloria snapped back. “He were mine. Let me tell you, you’ll not find a single person can back up his tale and there’s a good reason for that.”

Linda and Jackson exchanged a look that said they both knew they were backing a loser here. I wasn’t so sure. I’d seen how well Gloria acted off screen. But even if the tale of the affair was true, I couldn’t see Gloria nursing her bitterness for all those years. She was far too upfront for that. If she’d had a bone to pick with Dorothea, it would have been lying bleached in the sun a long time since.

“At the end of the day, we don’t have to prove motive in a court of law,” Jackson pointed out. “Most people think detectives have to prove means, motive and opportunity. But we don’t. All we need is evidence. And we’ve got evidence against you. There’s circumstance — you’re the last person known to have seen her alive, and more often than not the last person to see a victim alive is also the first person to see them dead.”

I opened my mouth to speak and he waved a hand at me. “You’ll get your say in a minute. Let me finish first. But we’ve got more than that, Gloria. We’ve got fingerprints. To be precise, we’ve got your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

There was a long silence. Gloria stared impassively at Jackson, then lit a cigarette with a hand that showed no tremor. “The crystal ball?” she asked.

His smile was as thin as the line of the new moon. “The crystal ball,” he confirmed.

It was obviously my week for fingerprints. All I needed now was for one of DI Tucker’s merry band to find Gloria’s prints inside Dennis’s shop and then I could swap client for buddy behind bars. Then something occurred to me. “Excuse me, but I don’t remember anyone taking my client’s fingerprints. Where exactly has the comparison set come from?” I asked belligerently.