Val McDermid - Common Murder

She had barely finished it when she heard the front door slam. Alerted by the music, Cordelia superfluously called, “I’m home.” Pink-cheeked from the cold outside, she stopped in the doorway. “Welcome back,” she said. Lindsay picked up the sheaf of paper on the desk and proffered it.

“I promised you an explanation,” she said. “Here it is. The uncensored version. It’s probably quicker if you read it rather than listen to me explaining it.”

Cordelia took the papers. “I missed you,” she said.

“I know,” Lindsay replied. “And I’ve missed you, constantly. I’m not very good at being on my own. I tend to get overtaken by events, if you see what I mean.”

Cordelia gave a sardonic smile. “I’ve heard it called a lot of things, but that’s a new one on me.” There was a silence, as they met in a wary and tentative embrace. Cordelia disengaged herself, saying, “Let me read this. Then we’ll talk. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen when you’ve finished. The idea of cooking dinner in a real kitchen is strangely appealing after the last few days.”

It took Cordelia half an hour to work through Lindsay’s account of her investigations. When she had finished, she sat staring out of the window. She could barely imagine the stress that Lindsay had been operating under. Now she could understand, even if she could not yet forgive, what she instinctively knew had happened between Lindsay and Deborah. But the most important thing now was to make sure Lindsay’s natural inclination to the defense of principle was subdued for the sake of her own safety.

Cordelia found Lindsay putting the finishing touches to an Indian meal. “I had no idea,” she said.

Lindsay shrugged. “I wanted so much to tell you,” she said. “Not just at the end, but all through. I missed sharing my ideas with you.”

“What about Deborah?”

“It’s not something you should be worried about, truly.”

“So what happens now? I don’t mean with you and me, I mean with Deborah. Do we wait till Simon Crabtree is dealt with and then everything returns to normal?”

Lindsay shook her head. “No. Those bastards didn’t keep their word. They tried to follow me-you read that, didn’t you? So as far as I’m concerned, I’m not just sitting back till I get the all-clear from Rigano. The best way to make sure they deal with Crabtree is to force the whole thing into the open. Otherwise it could be months, years till one side or the other decides Crabtree has outlived his usefulness. I don’t see why we should all live under a shadow till then. Besides, the guy is a murderer. He’ll do it again the next time someone gets close to the truth. And next time it could be me. Or someone else I care about.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to give the whole story to Duncan. And if he won’t use it, I’ll give it to Dick McAndrew. Either way, it’s going to be published.”

“You’re crazy,” Cordelia protested. “They’ll come after you instead of Crabtree. They’ve got your signature on the Official Secrets Act. And the first journo that fronts Crabtree with your story points the finger straight at you. If our lot don’t get you, the Soviets will.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Lindsay replied crossly. “I know what I’m doing.”

“And did you know what you were doing when you ended up in Harriet Barber’s clutches the other night? I’d have thought you’d have learned more sense by now,” said Cordelia bitterly.

“Point taken,” Lindsay replied. “But there’s no use in arguing, is there? We’re starting from different premises. I’m operating on a point of principle as well as self-defense. All you care about is making sure nothing happens to me. That’s very commendable, and I’d feel the same if our positions were reversed. But I think the fact that people who have committed no crime are hounded into hiding to protect a spy and a killer is too important to ignore simply because revealing it is going to make life difficult for me. I wish I could make you understand.”

Cordelia turned away. “Oh, I understand all right. Rigano set you up to do his dirty work, and you fell for it.”

Lindsay shook her head. “It’s not that simple. But I do feel utterly demoralized and betrayed. And I’ve got to do something to get rid of these feelings, as well as all the other stuff.”

Cordelia put her arms round Lindsay. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. When you get wound up about something, you completely disregard your own safety.”

“Well, I’ve learned my lesson. This time, I’m going to make sure my public profile is too high for them to come after me,” Lindsay retorted. “Trust me, please.”

Cordelia kissed her. “Oh, I trust you. It’s the other nutters I worry about.”

Lindsay smiled. “Let’s eat, eh? And then, maybe an early night?”

In the morning, Lindsay smiled reminiscently about their rapprochement the night before as she gathered all her papers together and prepared to set off for an early briefing with Duncan at the office. Before she left, Cordelia hugged her, saying, “Good luck and take care. I’m really proud of you, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll see you later.”

“I’m afraid I’ll be back quite late. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be home. I promised William we could work on the script rewrites for the new series tonight,” Cordelia apologized.

Lindsay smiled. “No problem. I’ll probably be late myself, given the importance of the story. I might even wait for the first edition to drop. I’ll see you whenever.”

Outside the house, Lindsay hailed a cab and headed for the office. She had barely stepped into the newsroom when Duncan ’s deputy told her to go straight to the editor’s office. His secretary had obviously been briefed to expect her, for Lindsay was shown straight in, instead of being left to cool her heels indefinitely with a cup of cold coffee.

Three men were waiting for her- Duncan, Bill Armitage, the editor, and Douglas Browne, the Clarion group’s legal manager. No one said a word of greeting. Lindsay sensed the intention was to intimidate her, and she steeled herself against whatever was to come. “I’ve brought my copy in,” she said, to break the silence. She handed the sheaf of paper to Duncan, who barely glanced at it.

Bill Armitage ran his hands through his thick grey hair in a familiar gesture. “You’ve wasted your time, Lindsay,” he said. “We’ll not be using a line of that copy.”

“What?” Her surprise was genuine. She had expected cuts and rewrites, but not a blanket of silence.

Duncan replied gruffly, “You heard, kid. We’ve had more aggravation over you this weekend than over every other dodgy story we’ve ever done. The bottom line is that we’ve been made to understand that if we fight on this one it will be the paper’s death knell. You’re a union hack-you know the paper’s financial situation. We can’t afford a big legal battle. And I take the view that if we can’t protect our staff, we don’t put them in the firing line.”

Armitage cut across Duncan ’s self-justification. “We’ve got responsibilities to the public. And that means we don’t make our living out of stirring up needless unrest. To be quite blunt about it, we’re not in the business of printing unsubstantiated allegations against the security services. All that does is destroy people’s confidence in the agencies that look after our safety.”

Lindsay was appalled. “You mean the security people have been on to you already?”

The editor shook his head patronisingly. “Did you really think the mayhem you’ve been causing wouldn’t bring them down about our ears like a ton of bricks? Jesus Christ, Lindsay, you’ve been in this game long enough not to be so naïve. You can’t possibly have the sort of cast-iron proof we’d need to run this story.”