V. McDermid - Union Jack

‘Name, rank and serial number, that sort of thing?’

‘Name, address and fingerprints, more like. And you don’t get Red Cross parcels here, neither.’

The cell they took her to was cold and smelled stale. The solicitor had agreed to come soon, so she could interview Lindsay before the police decided she was sober enough for interrogation. She sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and stretched in a huge yawn. Then, elbows on her knees, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles. She had sobered up the moment she had realised what the jagged hole in her window meant. But that couldn’t stop the drink taking its physiological toll. Besides, it was nearly six in the morning. She was entitled to feel tired. She should be tucked up in bed, fast asleep, not locked up in some scruffy, dismal cell.

Lindsay began to wonder if leaving her to kick her heels was a deliberate ploy; perhaps they intended her to become more nervous and panicky the longer they left her. Then the voice of realism shouted down the paranoia. She knew how chronically understaffed the police always claimed to be. These guys were investigating what was either a highly dramatic suicide, a mystifying accident or a horrific murder. Maybe they simply had more pressing things to do before they were overtaken by events. After all, they knew she wasn’t going anywhere now.

A dull ache had started behind her eyes. The classic whisky hangover was starting to bite. Lindsay had learned at an early age the technique of drinking large quantities of whisky without becoming either aggressively drunk, maudlin or catatonic. She’d also learned that there was only one way of dealing with the after-effects. Two pints of cold tap-water. Then ten hours sleep followed by a substantial meal – preferably the traditional Scottish New Year’s Day dinner of steak pie, mashed potatoes and peas, followed by sherry trifle.

They did things very differently in California. Now, on the rare occasions when Lindsay had more than a couple of drinks, it was more likely to be white wine spritzers. And the morning after cure consisted of a handful of vitamins washed down with a litre of fizzy mineral water. Lindsay shuddered. She should be kicking down the door of this cell, demanding a lawyer right this minute. Somehow, she just couldn’t summon up the energy. Instead, she swung her feet up on to the bed and lay back. She closed her eyes, placed her hands palm down on the rough blanket and breathed deeply. Area by area, she deliberately relaxed her muscles, mentally repeating, ‘I love and approve of myself, right where I am.’ Within five minutes, the pain had eased.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes. The light in its mesh cage seemed painfully bright, so she closed them again. One of the reasons she’d left Britain was because she’d had one too many close encounters with police interviewing techniques. Because her investigative journalism had once poked the authorities in the eye with a sharp stick, it had become clear to her that she was always going to be top of the list when the command came to ‘round up the usual suspects’. It wasn’t a role she relished. Moving to California might have been a leap into the dark, but at least the cops wouldn’t be breathing down her neck every time something criminal happened within a mile of her.

Their relationship had only just begun to find its rhythm and shape when Sophie had been offered the sort of opportunity that comes along only a couple of times in a consultant gynaecologist’s career. A leading hospital in San Francisco was head-hunting an experienced team to staff a new unit, and Sophie’s work in Glasgow with HIV positive mothers-to-be made her the ideal choice. She had leaped at the chance and Lindsay, only too glad to escape the bitter memories Glasgow now held for her, had chosen to trust enough to go too.

They’d moved into a wood-framed house above the beach, an hour’s drive from the city, with a view of the Pacific that made Lindsay feel instantly at home. The best times in her life had been lived by the sea. First, growing up in a small Scottish village on the Atlantic coast. Later, learning to be a journalist in the cosy picture-postcard world of Cornwall. And later still, escaping from the security services’ awkward questions and restoring herself to sanity in a humble and repetitive daily routine on the Adriatic coast. For the first few weeks in America, she’d been happy to put her mind on hold again while she sanded and sealed floors, stripped and painted woodwork and walls, and learned the basics of surfing. She’d hardly even begun to get to know San Francisco in all its glorious charm. Then suddenly, she’d woken one morning, alert and restless, needing to find something that would give her the same fulfilment that Sophie found in her harrowing role at the hospital.

Strangely, she found it in passing on the very skills she’d declared redundant in herself. Although she knew she could never again be a working journalist, Lindsay had never doubted her abilities. Her background in mainstream newspaper journalism coupled with her single foray into enemy territory, treading on the toes of the security services, made her the ideal choice for the job she landed as a university lecturer in journalism and media studies. Although she’d been apprehensive about moving into the world of higher education, it had been less of a shock to the system than she had anticipated. University life in California couldn’t have been more different from the memories of her own student days at Oxford. Somehow, Lindsay couldn’t imagine her former tutors in Bermuda shorts, playing volleyball at a Sunday afternoon beach barbecue.

The one fly in the ointment was the pressure to pile up qualifications and publications. Publish or be damned was an expression that could have been coined for her new world instead of her old one, Lindsay often thought. But when she’d chosen to write a doctoral thesis researching women’s roles in the trade union movement, she hadn’t expected it to be a straight road back to a police interrogation.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Lindsay’s eyes snapped open and focused on the woman who had just walked in. She was tall to start with, but the three-inch stilettos she had chosen put her near six feet. Her hair was short and neat, emphasising the kind of bone structure that has generated the fashion industry’s demand for striking black models. Her skin was the colour of copper beech leaves in summer. Lindsay took in a pair of sharply tailored trousers in hounds-tooth check, a black matador jacket and a spotless white blouse open at the neck. Lindsay jumped to her feet. ‘You must be my solicitor,’ she said as the woman moved towards her.

The solicitor shook her hand and perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Right. I’m Jennifer Okido,’ she said.

Lindsay shuddered at the thought of how she must appear to this woman who couldn’t have looked less like she’d been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night. ‘Lindsay Gordon,’ she said. ‘Sorry you had to be called out so early.’

‘It’s no problem, Ms Gordon. I’m used to it. There aren’t many firms in the city who do criminal work any longer, thanks to the Legal Aid changes. We’re the largest, and I’m the senior criminal partner. By the way, I’m sorry about this, but we’ll have to talk in here. Since the Strangeways riots, our police stations are so overcrowded with remand prisoners that there are no more secure interview rooms. They’ve all become holding cells. Now, if I can just sort out some details?’ She took a pad from her briefcase and moved swiftly through the formalities. ‘So what brings you back to Britain?’ the solicitor asked.

Lindsay ran a hand through her hair and pulled a wry face. ‘I’m beginning to wonder myself,’ she said. ‘My doctoral thesis is a study of how women have worked within the trade union movement to achieve changes in media attitudes towards them. That’s why I came back for the Amalgamated Media Workers’ Union’s first annual conference. Years ago I used to be active in the Journalists’ Union, which has been swallowed up by the new union, and I needed to talk to people who were involved in the equality struggles of the seventies and eighties. I thought that coming to the conference would be a good way of catching several of them in the same place.’