V. McDermid - Hostage to Murder

‘Is it instant?’

Rory turned, her eyebrows raised in a teasing question. ‘What if it is?’

‘I’ll have tea.’

‘I was only bothering you. It’s proper coffee. I get it from an Italian café in town.’

She busied herself with beans and grinder. When the noise subsided, Lindsay said, ‘You were going to tell me how you got started.’

‘So I was.’ Rory poured the just-boiled water on the grounds she’d spooned into a cafetiere. ‘I decided I needed to be visible. So I had a word with the guy who owns Café Virginia. You know Café Virginia? In the Merchant City, down by the Italian Quarter?’

Lindsay nodded. It hadn’t been a gay venue when she’d lived in the city. It had been a bad pub that sold worse food, called something stupidly suggestive like Pussy Galore. But she was aware that it had been reincarnated as the city’s premiere gay and lesbian café bar, although she hadn’t paid it a visit yet. Sophie hadn’t had much time for hitting the nightlife; she’d been too busy getting her feet under the operating table. Most of the socializing they’d done had been at dinner parties or in restaurants. Another sign of ageing, Lindsay had already decided. ‘I know where you mean,’ she said.

‘I told him my idea, and we did a deal. Three-month trial basis. He’d let me use one of the booths in the back bar as a kind of office. And I’d do bits and pieces of PR for him. So I wander down there most mornings and set up shop in the bar. Pick up the papers on the way, take my laptop and my mobile and get to work.’

‘And people actually bring you stories?’

Rory poured out the coffee and brought two mugs across to the table. She sat down opposite Lindsay and met her questioning gaze. ‘Amazingly enough, they do. It was a bit slow to start with. Just the odd gossipy wee bit that made a few pars in the tabloids. But then one of the lunchtime regulars who works in the City Chambers dropped me a juicy tale about some very dodgy dealing in the leisure department. I got a splash and spread in the Herald , and I was away. People soon realized I could be trusted to protect my sources, so everybody with an axe to grind came leaping out of the woodwork. Absolute bonanza.’ She grinned. It was hard not to be seduced by her delight.

‘I’m impressed,’ Lindsay said. ‘And it’s not a bad cup of coffee, either.’

‘So what are you doing back in Glasgow? Last I heard about you was when you got involved in Union Jack’s murder at the Journalists’ Union conference. The word was that you were living in California, that you’d given up the game for teaching. How come you’re back in Glasgow?’

Lindsay stared into her coffee. ‘Good question.’

‘Has it got an answer?’ There was a long silence, then Rory continued. ‘Sorry, I can’t help myself. I’m a nosy wee shite.’

‘It’s a good quality in a journalist.’

‘Aye, but it’s not exactly an asset in the social skills department,’ Rory said ruefully. ‘Which would maybe be why, as you rightly pointed out, I live alone.’

‘I came back for love,’ Lindsay said. The kid had worked hard for an answer. It seemed a reasonable exchange for a decent cup of coffee and some pain relief.

Rory ran a hand through her hair. ‘God, what a dyke answer. Why do we ever do anything demented? Love.’

‘You think it’s demented to come back to Glasgow?’

Rory pulled a rueful face. ‘Me and my big mouth. I mean, for all I know, California’s not what it’s cracked up to be. So, what are you doing with yourself now?’

Lindsay shook her head. ‘Not a lot. Mostly waiting for the love object to come home from the high-powered world of obstetrics and gynaecology.’

‘You don’t fancy getting back into deadline city, then?’

Lindsay leaned back in her seat, trying to ease her T-shirt away from her shoulder blades now that the sweat had dried and stuck it to her skin. ‘I’ve no contacts. I’ve not written a news story in seven years. I don’t even know the name of my local MSP, never mind who’s running Celtic and Rangers. It’d be like starting all over again as a trainee reporter on the local weekly.’

Rory gave her a speculative look. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said slowly.

‘Meaning what?’ Lindsay couldn’t even be bothered to be intrigued.

‘Meaning, you could always come and work with me.’

2

Morning rain on the Falls Road, grey sky only half a shade lighter than gunmetal; a comparison that still came too easy to too many people in Belfast. Ceasefires, peace deals, referendums and still it caught people by surprise that the disasters on the news were happening some other place.

A black taxi pulled up outside a betting shop on a street corner. These days, sometimes a black taxi was just a taxi. This one wasn’t. This one was bringing Patrick Coughlan to work. To his official work. When he went about his unofficial work, the last thing he wanted to be seen in was IRA trademark wheels. In the days when he went about his unofficial work rather more frequently than of late, he had always gone under his own steam, in any one of a dozen nondescript vehicles. Of course the security services had almost certainly known Patrick Coughlan was a senior member of the IRA Army Council, but they’d never been able to catch him at it. He was a careful as well as a solid citizen.

The cab idled for a full minute by the kerb while Patrick scrutinized the street. If someone had asked what he was looking for, he’d have been hard pressed to answer. He only knew when it wasn’t there. Satisfied, he stepped out of the cab and across the pavement. A man in his early fifties, obviously once very handsome, his features now blurred with slightly too much weight and high living, his walk betrayed a sense of purpose. His hair was a glossy chestnut, suspiciously so at the temples for a man who had lived his particular life. In spite of the laughter lines that surrounded them, his eyes were dark, shrewd and never still.

He pulled open the door on a gust of stale air and stepped inside. To the uninformed eye, just a busy Belfast betting shop, nothing to differentiate it from any other. Odds were chalked up on whiteboards, sporting papers pinned to the walls, tiled floor pocked with cigarette burns. The clientele looked like the unemployed, the unemployable and the retired. Every one of them was male. The staff were working hard behind metal grilles, but not so hard that they didn’t all glance up at the opening of the door. The smoke of the day’s cigarettes already hung heavy in the air, even though it was barely eleven.

Patrick crossed the room like the lord of the manor, nodding affably, waving a proprietary greeting to several regulars. They returned the greeting deferentially, one actually tugging the greasy brim of a tweed cap. It had never struck anyone as odd that so avowed a Republican should behave quite so much like an English patrician.

Patrick continued across the room towards a door set in the wall by the end of the counter. One of the staff automatically slid a hand beneath the counter and the sound of a buzzer followed. Without breaking stride, Patrick pushed through the door and into a dim corridor with stairs at the far end.

A door in the wall opened and a young woman with hair like a black version of Ronald McDonald and skin the blue white of skimmed milk stuck her head round it. ‘Sammy McGuire was on earlier. He said would you give him a call.’

‘I will, Theresa.’ Patrick continued down the corridor and up the stairs.

It would be hard to imagine how the office he walked into could have been more different from the seediness downstairs. The floor was parquet – the real thing, not those pre-glued packs from the DIY superstore – with a silver grey Bokhara occupying what space wasn’t taken up by a Regency desk that looked almost too much for its slender legs. The chair behind it was padded leather, the filing cabinets that lined the wall old mahogany buffed to a soft sheen. Two paintings on the wall, both copies, one of a Degas and one of a Stubbs, both featuring horses. The only thing that let the room down was the view of the Falls Road.