Val McDermid - Common Murder

Lindsay heard the sound of her MG’s engine starting, familiar enough to be recognizable even inside the Transit. Then it was drowned as the van’s engine revved up, and she was driven off. She had to hold on to the bench to keep her balance as the van lurched. At first, she tried to memorize turnings but realized very quickly that it was impossible; the darkness was disorientating. With her one free hand, she checked through the contents of her pockets to see if she had anything that might conceivably be useful. A handkerchief, some money (she guessed at £30.57), a packet of cigarettes, and her Zippo. Not exactly the Count of Monte Cristo escape kit, she thought bitterly. Why did reality never provide the fillips of fiction? Where was her Swiss army knife and her portable office with the scissors, stapler, adhesive tape, and flexible metal tape measure? In her handbag, she remembered, on the floor of the MG. Oh well, if she’d tried to bring it, they would have taken it from her, she decided.

The journey lasted for over an hour and a half. Debs would be wondering why she hadn’t appeared, thought Lindsay worriedly. And Cordelia would soon start getting cross that she wasn’t home when she said she’d be. They’d probably each assume she was with the other and feel betrayed rather than anxious; no hope of either of them giving the alarm. She was beginning to wonder exactly where she was being taken. If it was central London, they should have been there by now, given the traffic at that time of night. But there were none of the stops and starts of city traffic, just the uninterrupted run of a motorway or major road. If it wasn’t London, it must be the other direction. Bristol? Bath? Then it dawned. Cheltenham. General Communications Headquarters. It made a kind of sense.

The van was behaving more erratically now, turning and slowing down at frequent intervals. At 8:12 p.m., according to the luminous dial on Lindsay’s watch, it stopped, and the engine was turned off. She could hear indeterminate, muffled sounds outside, then the doors opened. Her eyes adjusted to the surge of light and she saw they were in an underground car park. The MG was parked opposite them, the red Fiesta next to it. Stone climbed into the van and unlocked the handcuff linking Lindsay to the van. He snapped it round his left wrist and led her out into the car park.

The four of them moved in ill-assorted convoy to a bank of lifts. Stone took a credit-card-sized piece of black plastic from his pocket and inserted it in a slot, which swallowed it. Above the slot was a grey rubber pad. He pressed his right thumb to the pad, then punched a number into a console. The slot spat the black plastic oblong out, and the lift doors opened for them. Curly Perm hit the button marked 5, and they shot upwards silently. They emerged in an empty corridor, brightly lit with fluorescent tubes. Lindsay could see half a dozen closed doors. Stone opened one marked K57 and ushered Lindsay in. The other two remained outside.

The room was almost exactly what Lindsay expected. The walls were painted white. The floor was covered with grey vinyl tiles, pitted with cigarette burns. A couple of bare fluorescent strips illuminated a large metal table in the middle of the room. The table held a telephone and a couple of adjustable study lamps clamped to it. Behind the table stood three comfortable-looking office chairs. Facing it, a metal-framed chair with a vinyl-padded seat and back was fixed to the floor. “My God, what a cliché this room is,” said Lindsay.

“What makes you think you deserve anything else?” Stone asked mildly. “Sit in the chair facing the table,” he instructed. There seemed no point in argument, so she did as she was told. He unlocked the cuffs again, and this time fastened her to the solid-looking arm of the chair.

A couple of hours had passed since she had been really frightened, and she was beginning to feel a little confidence seeping back into her bones. “Look,” she said. “Who are you, Stone? What’s going on? What am I here for?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Too late for those questions, Lindsay. Those are the first things an innocent person would have asked back in that alley in Fordham. You knew too much. So why ask questions now when you know the answers already?”

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “You people have got minds so devious you think everyone’s part of some plot. When you hemmed me in that alleyway, I was too bloody stunned to come up with the questions that would have made you happy. Why have I been brought here? What’s going to happen to me?”

“That rather depends on you,” he replied grimly. “Don’t go away, now,” he added as he left the room.

She was left alone for nearly half an hour, by which time, all her determined efforts to be brave had gone up in the smoke of her third cigarette. She was scared, and she had to acknowledge the fact, although her fear was tempered with relief that it was Rigano’s masters rather than Simon Crabtree’s who were holding her. She wouldn’t give much for her chances if it had been the other way round.

Lindsay had just lit her fourth cigarette when the door opened. She forced herself not to look round. Stone walked in front of her and sat down at one corner of the desk, facing her. He was followed by a woman, all shoulders and sharp haircut, who stood behind the desk scrutinizing Lindsay before she, too, sat down. The woman was severely elegant, in looks as well as dress. Her beautifully groomed pepper-and-salt hair was cut close at the sides, then swept upwards in an extravagant swirl of waves. Extra strong hold mousse, thought Lindsay inconsequentially; if I saw her in a bar, I’d fancy her until I thought about running my fingers through that. The woman had almost transparently pale skin, her eyes glittered greenish blue in her fine-boned face. She looked about forty. She wore a fashionably cut trouser suit in natural linen over a chocolate brown silk shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. As she studied Lindsay, she took out a packet of Gitanes and lit one.

The pungent blue smoke played its usual trick on Lindsay, flashing into her mind’s eye a night in a cafe in southern France with Cordelia-playing pinball, smoking, and drinking coffee, and listening to Elton John on the jukebox. The contrast was enough to bring back her fear so strongly she could almost taste it.

Perhaps the woman sensed the change in Lindsay, for she spoke then. “Mr. Stone tells me you are a problem,” she said. “If that’s the case, we have to find a solution.” Her voice had a cool edge, with traces of a northern accent. Lindsay suspected that anger or disappointment would make it gratingly plaintive.

“As far as I’m concerned, the problems are all on your side. I’ve been abducted at gunpoint, threatened with a knife, the victim of an act of criminal damage, and nobody has bothered to tell me by whom or why. Don’t you think it’s a little unreasonable to expect me to bend over backwards to solve anything you might be considering a problem?” Lindsay demanded through clenched teeth, trying to hide her fear behind a show of righteous aggression.

The woman’s eyebrows rose. “Come, come, Miss Gordon. Let’s not play games. You know perfectly well who we are and why you’re here.”

“I know he’s MI6 division, or at least I’ve been assuming he is. But I don’t know why the hell I’ve been brought here like a criminal, or who you are. And until I do, all you get from me is my name.”

The woman crushed out her half-smoked cigarette and smiled humourlessly at Lindsay. “Your bravado does you credit. If it helps matters any, my name is Barber. Harriet Barber. The reason you’ve been brought here, in your words, like a criminal, is that, according to the laws of the land, that’s just what you are.