Common Murder

Thinking back to that early summer afternoon, Lindsay found it hard to remember what she’d expected. What she had found was enough to shatter her expectations beyond recall. They had turned off the main road on to a leafy country lane. After about a mile and a half, the trees on one side of the road suddenly stopped. There was an open clearing the size of a couple of football pitches, bisected by a tarmac track that led up to a gate about 250 yards from the road. The gate was of heavy steel bars covered with chain-link fencing and surmounted by savage angled spikes wrapped with barbed wire. The perimeter fence consisted of ten-foot tall concrete stanchions and metal-link fencing, topped by rolls of razor wire. More razor wire was laid in spirals along the base of the fence. The gate was guarded by four British soldiers on the inside and two policemen on the outside. A sign declared “USAF Brownlow Common.”

In the distance, the long low humps of the missile silos broke the skyline. Three hundred yards inside the perimeter fence were buildings identifiable as servicemen’s quarters-square, concrete blocks with identical curtains. From beyond the wire, they looked like a remand centre, Lindsay had thought. They provided a stark contrast to the other human habitation visible from the car. Most of the clearing outside the forbidding fence had been a

Lindsay and Cordelia had been made welcome, although some of the more radical women were clearly suspicious of Lindsay’s occupation and Cordelia’s reputation as a writer who embodied the establishment’s vision of an acceptable feminist. But after that first visit, Lindsay had maintained contact with the camp. It seemed to provide her with a focus for her flagging political energies, and besides, she enjoyed the company of the peace women. One in particular, Jane Thomas, a doctor who had given up a promising career as a surgical registrar to live at the camp, had become a close and supportive friend.

Lindsay had come to look forward to the days she spent at Brownlow Common. The move to London that had seemed to promise so much had proved to be curiously unsatisfying. She had been shocked to discover how badly she fitted in with Cordelia’s circle of friends. It was an upsetting discovery for someone whose professional success often depended on that mercurial quality she possessed which enabled her to insinuate herself virtually anywhere. Cordelia, for her part, clearly felt uncomfortable with journalists who weren’t part of the media arts circus. And Cordelia was no chameleon. She liked to be with people who made her feel at home in the persona she had adopted. Now she was wrapped up in a new novel, and seemed happier to discuss its progress with her friends and her agent than with Lindsay, who felt increasingly shut out as Cordelia became more absorbed in her writing. It had made Lindsay feel uncomfortable about bringing her own work problems home, for Cordelia’s mind always seemed to be elsewhere. Much as she loved and needed Cordelia, Lindsay had begun to sense that her initial feeling that she had found a soulmate with whom she occasionally disagreed was turning into a struggle to find enough in common to fill the spaces between the lovemaking that still brought them together in a frighteningly intense unity. Increasingly, they had pursued their separate interests. Brownlow Common had become one of Lindsay’s favourite boltholes.

But the camp had changed dramatically since those heady summer days. Harassment had sprung up from all sides. Some local residents had formed Ratepayers Against Brownlow’s Destruction in an attempt to get rid of the women who created in the camp what the locals saw as an eyesore, health hazard, and public nuisance. The yobs from nearby Fordham had taken to terrorizing the camp in late-night firebomb attacks. The police were increasingly hostile and heavy-handed in dealing with demonstrations. What media coverage there was had become savage, stereotyped, and unsympathetic. And the local council had joined forces with the Ministry of defense to fight the women’s presence through the civil courts. The constant war of attrition coupled with the grim winter weather had changed the camp both physically and spiritually. Where there had been green grass, there was now a greasy, pot-holed morass of reddish-brown clay. The tents had vanished, to be replaced with benders-polythene sheeting stretched over branches and twine to make low-level teepees. They were ugly but they were also cheap, harder to burn and easier to reconstruct. Even the rainbow colours the women wore were muted now that the February cold had forced them to wrap up in drab winter plumage. But more serious, in Lindsay’s eyes, was the change in atmosphere. The air of loving peace and warmth, that last hangover from the sixties, had been heavily overlaid with the pervading sense of something harder. No one was in any doubt that this was no game.

It was typically ironic, she thought, that it needed crime to persuade the Clarion that the camp was worth some coverage. She had made several suggestions to her news editor about a feature on the women at the peace camp, but he had treated the idea with derision. Lindsay had finally conceded with ill grace because her transfer to the job in London was a relatively recent achievement she couldn’t afford to jeopardize. The job hadn’t quite turned out the way she’d expected either. From being a highly-rated writer who got her fair share of the best assignments, she had gone to being just another fish in the pool of reporters. But she remembered too well the years of hard-working, nail-biting freelancing before she’d finally recovered the security of a wage packet, and she wasn’t ready to go back to that life yet.

Jane Thomas, however, encouraged her to use her talents in support of the camp. As a result, Lindsay had rung round her magazine contacts from her freelance days and sold several features abroad to salve her conscience. Thanks to her, the camp had had extensive magazine coverage in France, Italy and Germany, and had even been featured in a colour spread in an American news magazine. But somewhere deep inside, she knew that wasn’t enough. She felt guilty about the way she had changed since she’d decided to commit herself to her relationship with Cordelia. She knew she’d been seduced as much by Cordelia’s comfortable lifestyle as by her lover’s charm. That had made it hard to sustain the political commitment that had once been so important to her. “Your bottle’s gone, Gordon,” she said aloud as she pulled off the motorway on to the Fordham road. Perhaps the chance for redemption was round the next corner.

As she reached the outskirts of the quiet market town of Fordham, her radiopager bleeped insistently. Sighing, she checked the dashboard clock. Nine fifteen. Forty-five minutes to edition time. She wasted five precious minutes finding a phone box and rang Cliff.

“Where are you?” he said officiously.

“I’m about five minutes away from the police station,” she explained patiently. “I’d have been there by now if you hadn’t bleeped me.”

“Okay, fine. I’ve had the local lad on again. I’ve said you’re en route, and I’ve told him to link up with you. His name’s Gavin Hammill, he’s waiting for you in the lounge bar of the Griffon’s Head, in the market place, he says. He’s wearing a Barbour jacket and brown trousers. He says it’s a bit of a stalemate at present; anyway, suss it out and file copy as soon as.”

“I’m on my way,” Lindsay said.

Finding the pub was no problem. Finding Gavin Hammill was not so simple. Every other man in the pub was wearing a Barbour jacket and half of them seemed to be alone. After the second failure, Lindsay decided to buy a drink and try again. Before she could down her Scotch, a gangling youth with mousy brown hair and a skin problem inadequately hidden by a scrubby beard tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Lindsay Gordon? From the Clarion? I’m Gavin Hammill, Fordham Weekly Bugle.”