Common Murder

“Okay,” she said mildly. “Cut the lecture. But take it from me, Dick, something very nasty has been going on, and I’ve got to get to the bottom of it before it costs any more lives. If I have to use my terrifying bit of paper to get there, I’ll do it. There’s nothing wrong with my bottle.”

“I never said there was. That’s the trouble with you, Lindsay-you don’t know when it’s sensible to get scared.”

By silent consent, they changed the subject and spent half an hour gossiping about mutual friends in the business. Then Lindsay felt she could reasonably make her excuses and leave. She got back to the three-storey house in Highbury at half past two, with no recollection of the journey through North London streets. The answering machine was flashing, but she ignored it and went through to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. She had the frustrating feeling that she had all the pieces of the jigsaw but couldn’t quite arrange them in a way that made sense. While the coffee dripped through the filter, she decided to call Rigano.

For once, she was put straight through. As soon as she identified herself, he demanded, “Where are you? And what have you been up to?”

Puzzled, she said, “Nothing. I’m at home in London. I visited Deborah this morning and since then I’ve seen a couple of friends. Why?”

“I want to know what you make of your friend’s remark when you saw her in the hospital. My constable thought it might be significant.”

“I told him then I didn’t understand it,” she replied cautiously.

“I know what you told him. I don’t believe you,” he retorted.

“That’s not my problem,” she replied huffily.

“It could be,” he threatened. “I thought we were co-operating, Lindsay?”

“If I had any proof of who attacked Deborah, do you think I’d be stupid enough to sit on it? I don’t want to be the next one with a remodelled skull, Jack.”

There was a heavy silence. Then he said in a tired voice, “Got anything for me at all?”

“These bikers who have been terrorising the camp-I think Warminster and Mallard are paying them.”

“Have you any evidence of that?”

Briefly, Lindsay outlined what she had learned the day before. “It’s worth taking a look at, don’t you think? I mean, Warminster and Mallard both wanted Crabtree out of the way. Maybe they used the yobs they’d already primed for the vandalism.”

“It’s a bit far-fetched, Lindsay,” he complained. “But I’ll get one of my lads to take a look at it.”

Having got that off her chest, Lindsay got to the point of the call. “Has it occurred to you that there might be a political dimension to this situation?”

His voice became cautious in its turn. “You mean that RABD is only a front for something else? That’s nonsense.”

“I mean real politics, Jack. Superpowers and spies. The person you’re looking for didn’t really kill for personal reasons; I think we’re looking at a wider motive altogether. Somebody doesn’t want us to do that. And that’s why I think this investigation has got bogged down in trivial details about peace women’s alibis.”

“That’s an interesting point of view, but that sort of thing is all out of my hands. I’m just a simple policeman, Lindsay. Conspiracy theories don’t do much for me. I leave all that to the experts. And you’d be well advised to do the same.”

Simple policeman, my foot, thought Lindsay. “Is that a warning, Jack?” she asked i

“Not at all, Lindsay. I’m just telling you as simply as I know how that this case isn’t about James Bond, it’s about savage responses to petty situations. It’s about people carrying offensive weapons for mistaken notions of self-defense. Anything else is out of my hands. Do I make myself clear?”

“So who is that blond man who keeps following me? Special Branch? MI5?”

“If you mean Mr. Stone, he’s not Special Branch. There’s no SB man around here, Lindsay. And no one is following you. I’d know about it if they were. If anyone’s being followed, it’s not you. You should stop being so paranoid.”

Lindsay almost snarled. “Haven’t you heard, Jack? Just because you stop being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

15

Lindsay raked around in her desk drawer until she found a blank cassette. Going through to the large L-shaped living room where the stereo system with the twin tape decks occupied a corner, she set it up to make a copy of the computer tape and sprawled on one of the elegant grey leather chesterfields while she waited for the recording to finish. It was wonderful to lie back on the comfortable sofa surrounded by the restful atmosphere created by Cordelia’s unerring talent for interior design, though she felt a pang of guilt when she remembered the squalid conditions back at Brownlow. Lindsay ruefully recalled her feelings when she had first entered Cordelia’s domain two years before. She had been overwhelmed with the luxurious interior of the tall house by the park, and it had been months before she got out of the habit of pricing everything around her with a sense of puritanical outrage. Now, it was her home, far more than her Glasgow flat which she rented out to students at a rent that covered her overheads.

She turned over again what Rigano had said. As far as the blond man was concerned, it seemed plain to Lindsay that he was something to do with intelligence, since Rigano had denied so vehemently that he was SB while pointedly ignoring her MI5 allegation. And if Stone wasn’t following her, that didn’t leave many options for the focus of his interests. And that in turn meant she wasn’t barking up the wrong tree as far as the existence of wider political implications was concerned. What she couldn’t understand was why Rigano was just sitting back and letting it happen without pursuing the same person that she was interested in.

Unless, of course, she was completely wrong, and the two strands were unrelated, leaving the murder as a purely personal matter. That would leave the ball firmly in the court of Warminster, Mallard and the putative biker, or Alexandra Carlton. The interest of the security forces could then be explained away as concern about police action jeopardizing some operation of theirs. Since Lindsay was still far from clear about the point of killing Rupert Crabtree, either option seemed possible. However, the attempt on Deborah’s life seemed logical only if one assumed that it had been made to silence her. And if that was the case, Lindsay argued to herself, how did the murderer know that Debs hadn’t already spilled whatever beans she possessed? And if she hadn’t, then was she likely to do so now, especially since her silence must have come not from fear but from a failure to recognize what she knew or its importance? Lindsay shook her head vigorously. She was going round in circles.

She mentally replayed her conversation with Rigano again. Something he had said as a throwaway line came back into sharp focus. “It’s about people carrying offensive weapons for mistaken notions of self-defense,” he had remarked bitterly. Suddenly the jigsaw fell into place. Lindsay jumped to her feet and went to the phone. If Cordelia had been accessible, she would have outlined her theory then and there and waited for the holes to be picked in it. Failing that, she punched in the number of Fordham police station and drummed her fingers impatiently till the co

“Hello… Can I speak to Superintendent Rigano?” she demanded. The usual sequence of clicks and hollow silences followed. Then the switchboard operator came back to her and reported that Rigano was out of the building. But Lindsay was not to be deflected.