V. McDermid - Hostage to Murder

‘What about a car?’ Michael asked.

Patrick raised one finger and smiled approvingly. ‘There’s a British driving licence in the envelope. You can use it to hire a car if you need one.’

Michael pocketed the envelope without looking at the contents. ‘Daily calls?’

‘At least. You’ve got a clean mobile, haven’t you?’

Michael’s grin would have put Red Riding Hood’s wolf to shame. ‘Clean, not cloned,’ he said.

‘Any questions?’ Patrick asked, his voice a silky challenge.

‘What are we supposed to do when we find her?’ Kevin asked, oblivious.

‘Whatever Patrick tells us,’ Michael sighed. He got to his feet. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.

Patrick inclined his head. ‘I can’t wait.’ If they’d seen the look in his eyes, anyone with any sense would have already left town.

Lindsay stared out of the window of the cab, taking in nothing of the late-morning bustle of Great Western Road. Normally, she’d have used the Clockwork Orange, Glasgow’s underground system, to go into the city centre, but her ankle was stiff and swollen and today she cared more about comfort than being environmentally friendly.

It had been a long night. They’d talked for more than an hour after Sophie’s bombshell, and it hadn’t got any better from Lindsay’s point of view. The revelation that had shocked her most of all was that Sophie had already identified a possible donor, had approached him and had secured his agreement. Fraser Tomlinson was a researcher in Sophie’s department, a gay man in a steady relationship. He and his boyfriend Peter had been to the house for dinner, and Lindsay had found them pleasant company. According to Sophie, Fraser was HIV negative, his family medical history gave no grounds for serious concern and he had no desire to play any role in the life of any child that might result from the donation of his sperm. It was so cut and dried, it had left Lindsay lost for words.

‘And when were you thinking of starting?’ she’d managed at last.

‘I’m due to ovulate in a couple of days’ time,’ Sophie had said. ‘The best chance is to bracket the ovulation. I was planning to have the first go tomorrow night, then again two nights later.’

Lindsay swallowed hard. ‘I can see why you wanted to bring it up now.’ Involuntarily, she moved so her body no longer touched Sophie’s.

‘I’m sorry to spring it on you like this. But we’ve talked and talked and got nowhere. I realized that we were never going to get anywhere unless I did something about it. Lindsay …’ Sophie’s voice was a plea. ‘Every time I bleed, it feels like a lost opportunity. I can’t afford to wait. I’ve done the blood tests. So far, my hormone levels are OK. But every month that goes past takes me nearer the point where they’re not going to be OK any longer. I’ve got a donor now, I’m not prepared to hang on until you come round to feeling positive about this.’

‘Fine. So we do it tomorrow night. What’s the drill? Is there an etiquette here? Our place or theirs?’

‘Fraser and Peter will come round here. What I hoped was that you would be here for me.’

‘You want me to do the thing with the turkey baster?’

‘It won’t be a turkey baster, for God’s sake. It’ll be a sterile syringe.’ Sophie reached for Lindsay’s hand. ‘Please, Lindsay. I need you now more than I ever did.’

Lindsay, who had always found it impossible to hold out against Sophie for any length of time, let her hand be held. ‘Fine. Whatever. Now, can I go to sleep?’

The end of the conversation had not led directly to sleep. Lindsay had lain awake long after Sophie’s breathing became deep and regular. There was a hollow feeling in her stomach, a nameless grief that ached insistently. Something had shifted inside her tonight with the knowledge that she could never give Sophie enough to satisfy her. She had thought their life together was good, their relationship solid. Now, it felt as if her house was built on sand. Maybe it was true that she hadn’t been hearing Sophie. But it was equally true that Sophie hadn’t been hearing her.

She’d mooched around the house after Sophie had left for work, unable to settle to anything. She couldn’t be bothered answering the morning’s e-mails. She was impatient with the newspapers and their flood of irrelevancies. Finally, stir crazy, she’d decided to pay a visit to Café Virginia. Perhaps Rory McLaren had something to offer that would make her feel better about herself. But first, she had a couple of phone calls to make. Lindsay might have been out of the game for a long time. But she still knew one or two of the faces that counted. She wasn’t going to hitch her wagon to Rory McLaren’s star until she had confirmed that the world’s estimate of the young freelance bore some relationship to Rory’s own pitch. In her early years as a national newspaper journalist, she’d wasted too much time chasing the fantasies of freelances keen to make an easy buck to take any of the breed at their word.

On the other side of the city centre, Rory was swanning into the offices of the Scottish Daily Standard . The security men didn’t care that she’d stopped working there six months before. They figured she’d had a better motive to blow the place up when she was on the staff than she ever could have as a freelance. She took the lift up to the editorial floor and walked into one of the side offices off the features area.

Giles Graham, lifestyle editor and secretly agony aunt of the Standard , was stretched out on his sofa, reading the pained letters of his correspondents and eating very low-fat cottage cheese and chives from the tub with a plastic spoon. Rory could never figure out how a man who managed such fastidious elegance in every other area of his life that he could be taken for a gay man still managed such disgusting eating habits.

‘That’s revolting,’ she said, crossing the room to sit in the swivel chair behind a worryingly tidy desk.

‘I know. You’d think people would have the good sense not to go exploring their gay side with their brother-in-law, but they never learn,’ he drawled in the English-accented speech of the privately educated Scot. He put his lunch down on the coffee table and carefully gathered the letters together before sitting up and brushing down his immaculate navy linen shirt for invisible crumbs. ‘How delightful to see you, Rory. Are we having social intercourse or is there a sordid financial motive behind your visit?’

‘You want social intercourse? OK. How’s Julia?’

Giles smiled fondly. His wife was the Member of the European Parliament for Central West Scotland. Julia’s frequent absences, he maintained, were what rendered her capable of putting up with him. ‘She’s on a jolly in Oslo.’

‘That’s a contradiction in terms,’ Rory observed. ‘Give her my love next time you pass in the night.’ She leaned back in the chair and hitched her Gap-clad legs on to the desk. ‘I’ve got a very good tip for you, babe.’

Giles groaned. ‘Why not copy? Why do I have to do all the work?’

‘Because it’s not my kind of story. I do investigative journalism, remember? Stories like this are the reason I quit working for the newsdesk.’

‘That and the thick end of a hundred and fifty grand,’ Giles said cynically.

‘The lottery was the means, not the reason, as well you know. Now, do you want this story, or do you want me to toddle round to the Sun ?’

Giles stretched his arms along the back of the sofa, languid as a trout stream on an August afternoon. ‘As if,’ he said. ‘So tell me what you know.’

‘Madonna’s people are having hush-hush talks with estate agents about her buying a property on Loch Lomond. In the Drymen area.’