Val McDermid - Report for Murder

PART ONE: OVERTURE

PART TWO: EXPOSITION

PART THREE: FUGUE

PART FOUR: FINALE

PART FIVE: CODA

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

report for murder . Copyright 1987 by Val McDermid. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McDermid, Val.

Report for murder / Val McDermid.

p. cm. ISBN 0-312-03888-7

I. Title.

PR6063.C37R47 1990

823'.914-dc20 89-8560

CIP

First published in the United Kingdom by The Womens Press Limited, London.

First U.S. Edition

10 987654321

St. Martins Press New York

L indsay Gordon put murder to the back of her mind and settled down in the train compartment to enjoy the broken greys and greens of the Derbyshire scenery. Rather like home, she decided. Except that in Scotland, the greens were darker, the greys more forbidding. Although in Glasgow, where she now lived, there was hardly enough green to judge. She congratulated herself on finishing the detective novel just at the point where Manchester suburbia yielded place to this attractive landscape foreign to her. Watching it unfold gave her the first answer to the question that had been nagging her all day: what the hell was she doing here? How could a cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist (as she mockingly described herself) be on her way to spend a weekend in a girls public school?

Of course, there were the answers shed been able to use to friends: she had never visited this part of England and wanted to see what it was like; she was a great believer in knowing thine enemy, so it came under the heading of opportunities not to be missed; she wanted to see Paddy Callaghan, who had been responsible for the invitation. But she remained unconvinced that she was doing the right thing. What had made her mind up was the realisation that, given Lindsays current relationship with the Inland Revenue, anything that had a cheque as an end product couldnt be ignored.

The fact that she cheerfully despised the job she was about to do was not a novel sensation. In the unreal world of popular journalism which she inhabited, she was continually faced with tasks that made her blood boil. But like other tabloid journalists who laid claim to a set of principles, she argued that, since popular newspapers were mass culture, if people with brains and compassion opted out the press would only sink further into the gutter. But in spite of having this missionary zeal to keep her warm, Lindsay often felt the chill wind of her friends disapproval. And she had to admit to herself that saying all this always made her feel a pompous hypocrite. However, since this assignment involved writing for a magazine with some credibility, she was doubly pleased that it would avoid censure in the pub as well as provide cash, and that was enough to stifle the stirrings of contempt for Derbyshire House Girls School.

Paddy, with the contacts of a life membership of the old girls network, had managed to persuade the features editor of Perspective to commission a piece from Lindsay about a fund-raising programme about to be launched by the school with a Gala Day. At that point, Lindsay was hungry for the cash and the prestige, so she couldnt afford the luxury of stopping to consider if it was the sort of project shed actually choose to take on. Three months ago shed reluctantly accepted redundancy when the Daily Nation discovered it needed fewer journalists so that it could pay its print workers their pound of flesh. Since then, she had been applying for unlikely jobs and frenetically trying to make a living as a freelance. That made the call from Paddy all the more welcome because it meant a relatively quiet weekend away from the demands of the telephone which would soon stop disrupting her life altogether if she didnt earn enough to pay the last quarters bill.

At that unwelcome thought, Lindsay reflected with relief on the money she would receive from the Derbyshire House job. It seemed poetic justice that such a bastion of privilege should stake her. Good old Paddy, she mused. Ever since theyd met in Oxford six years before, Paddy had not only been a tower of strength in emotional crises but the first to offer help when life got Lindsay into one of its awkward corners. When Lindsays car staged a breakdown on a remote Greek mountainside it was Paddy who organised the flying out of a spare part. When Lindsay was made redundant it was Paddy who found the cousin who told Lindsay the best thing to do with her less-than-golden handshake. And when Lindsays lover died, it was Paddy who drove through the night to be with her. The daughter of two doctors, with an education begun at the best schools and polished off at Oxford, Paddy Callaghan had shaken her family by deciding to become an actress. After four years of only moderate success and limited employment, however, she had realised she would never make the first rank. Always a realist, and fundamentally unaffected by four years of living like a displaced person, she reverted to type and decided to make sure that the rising generation of public schoolgirls would have a better grounding on the stage than shed had. When the two women first met, Paddy was half-way through the teacher training that would take her back to her old school in Derbyshire to teach English and Drama. It had taken Lindsay quite a long time to realise that at least part of her appeal for Paddy was her streak of unconventionality. She was an antidote to the staid world Paddy had grown up in and was about to return to. Lindsay had argued bitterly with Paddy that to go back to her old environment was copping out of reality. Though the argument never found a solution, the friendship survived.

Lindsay felt sure that part of the reason for the continuation of that friendship was that they had never let their separate worlds collide. Just as Lindsay would never drag Paddy off to a gay club, so Paddy would never invite Lindsay to one of her parents weekend house parties. Their relationship existed in a vacuum because they understood and accepted the gulf that separated so much of their lives. So Lindsay was apprehensive about encountering Paddy on what was firmly her territory. Suddenly all her fears about the weekend crystallized into a panic over the trivial issue of what she was wearing. What the hell was the appropriate gear for this establishment, anyway? It wasnt something that normally exercised her thoughts, but she had gone through her wardrobe with nervous care that morning, rejecting most items on the grounds that they were too casual, and others on the grounds that they were too formal. She finally settled on charcoal-grey trousers, matching jacket and burgundy shirt. Very understated, not too butch, shed thought. Now she thought again and considered the vision of the archetypal dyke swaggering into this nest of young maidens. God help her if St George hove into sight.

If only shed brought the car, she could have brought a wide enough selection of clothes to run no risk of getting it wrong. But her crazy decision to opt for the uncertain hands of British Rail so she could get some work done had boomeranged you could only carry so much for a couple of days, unless you wanted to look like the wally of the weekend tipping out at the school gates with two cabin trunks and a holdall. As her paranoia gently reached a climax, she shook herself. Oh sod it, she thought. If Im so bloody right-on, why should I give a toss what they think of me? After all, Im the one doing them a favour, giving their fund-raising a puff in the right places.