Union Jack. V. McDermid L.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 1

      ‘Tempting though it is for fringe groups to regard conference as a captive audience, only authorised conference material may be distributed inside the hall itself. Any other leaflets, flyers, etc. will be removed and shredded, thus resulting in needless death to trees. Non-authorised material may be distributed outside the hall, though those distributing it should be warned that hung-over delegates who have unwanted bumf thrust upon them can often react violently. SOS and the Amalgamated Media Workers’ Union can accept no responsibility for any injuries thus caused.’

      from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

      The custody sergeant picked up his pen and gave Lindsay a shrewd look of appraisal. ‘Been drinking?’ he asked. It was the first indication he’d given that she wasn’t invisible. The two detectives who had brought her into the police station also turned towards her. She’d listened patiently while they’d informed the sergeant she was required for questioning relating to a suspicious death. The stocky detective sergeant had grumbled at her refusal to say anything, either at the scene of the death or in the car on the way to the station.

      In answer to the custody sergeant, Lindsay nodded. ‘I had a few whiskies earlier.’

      The custody sergeant nodded grimly. ‘Okay lads, no questions for a couple of hours. Give the lady time to sober up.’

      ‘No problem. We’ve got plenty to keep us busy back at the scene of the crime,’ the detective constable said.

      ‘Alleged crime,’ the custody sergeant corrected him absently.

      The two detectives shouldered their way past Lindsay. She heard the DS mutter, ‘Bollocks to that,’ as he opened the door.

      ‘A few details, if you please, miss,’ the custody sergeant said.

      ‘I’d like a lawyer,’ Lindsay said.

      ‘Do you know one locally? Or would you prefer me to call the duty solicitor?’

      ‘The duty solicitor will do fine,’ Lindsay sighed. ‘Thanks.’

      The custody sergeant picked up the phone on his desk and dialled a number. Almost immediately, he spoke. ‘Pager number 659511. Please call Sergeant Meadows, Central Police Station. End message.’ He paused. ‘That’s right. Thanks.’ He put the phone down and smiled at Lindsay. ‘Now, while we’re waiting, a few details.’

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ