Common Murder (6 page)

Lindsay sighed. “Easier said than done.”

“I know that. But you've got to try. It's obviously not too late. If you were diving into bed with me to prove you still have enough autonomy to do it, I'd say you were in deep shit. But at least you're not that far down the road. Now, come on, drink up and let's get to bed. You can have Cara's bunk if you can't cope with sharing a bed with me and keeping your hands to yourself.”

“Now who's being arrogant?”

Lindsay stood by the kettle waiting for it to boil, gazing at Deborah who lay languidly in a shaft of morning sunlight staring into the middle distance. After a night's sleep, the clarity she had felt after the conversation with Deborah had grown fuzzy round the edges. But she knew deep down she wanted to put things right between her and Cordelia, and Deborah had helped her feel that was a possibility.

She made the coffee, and brought it over to Deborah. Lindsay sat on the top of the bed and put her arms round her friend. Lindsay felt at peace for the first time in months. “If things go wrong when it comes to court, I'd like to take care of Cara, if you'll let me,” she murmured.

Deborah drew back, still holding Lindsay's shoulders. “But how could you manage that? With work and Cordelia and everything?”

“We've got a crèche for newspaper workers' kids from nine till six every day. I can swap most of my shifts round to be on days and I'm damn sure Cordelia will help if I need her to.”

Deborah shook her head disbelievingly. “Lindsay, you're incredible. Sometimes I think you just don't listen to the words that come out of your mouth. Last night, you were busily angsting about how to get your relationship with Cordelia back on an even keel. Now today you're calmly talking about dumping your ex-lover's child on her. What a recipe for disaster that would be! Look, it's lovely of you to offer, and I know she'd be happy with you, but I hope that won't be necessary. We'll look at the possibilities nearer the time and I'll keep it in mind. What counts is what's going to be best for her. Now, let's go and get Cara, eh? She'll be wondering where I am.” They found Cara with Jane, and after a bread and cheese lunch the four of them went for a walk along the perimeter fence. Lindsay and Cara played tig and hide-and-seek among the trees while Jane and Deborah walked slowly behind, wrangling about the business of peace and the problems of living at Brownlow.

They made their way back to the camp, where the adults settled down in the meeting bender for a long session. Three hours later, it had been agreed that the women charged the day before should, if they were willing, opt for prison for the sake of publicity and that a picket should be set up at the gate of Holloway in their support. Jane offered to organize the picket. Lindsay thought gratefully that at least that way her friend could make a small escape without offending her conscience. It had been a stormy meeting and Lindsay was glad when it was over. Even though she had by now experienced many of these talking-shops, she never failed to become slightly disillusioned at the destructive way women could fight against each other in spite of their common cause.

Deborah went off to collect Cara and put her to bed and Lindsay joined Willow and Jackie and their friends in their bender. There were a couple of guitars and soon the women were singing an assortment of peace songs, love songs, and nostalgic pop hits. Deborah joined them and they sat close. Lindsay felt she couldn't bear to wrench herself away from the sisterhood she felt round her. Sentimental fool, she thought to herself as she joined in the chorus of “I Only Want To Be With You.”

Just after ten the jam session began to break up. Most of the women left for their own benders. Lindsay and Deborah followed. “I'm going to have a word with Jane about the Holloway picket,” said Lindsay. “You coming?”

“No, I'll see you at the van.”

“Okay, I'll not be long.”

Deborah vanished into the darkness beyond the ring of benders to where the van was parked near the road. Lindsay headed for Jane's makeshift surgery and found the harassed doctor sorting through a cardboard box of pharmaceutical samples that a sympathetic GP had dropped off that evening. She stopped at once, pleased to see Lindsay in spite of her tiredness, and began to explain the picket plans. Although Lindsay was itching to get back to Deborah, it was after eleven when she finally set off to walk the fifty yards to the van.

The first thing that caught her eye as she moved beyond the polythene tents was bright lights. Now that the army had cleared the ground round the perimeter fence, it was possible to see the temporary arc lights from quite a distance. That in itself wasn't extraordinary as workmen occasionally sneaked in a night shift to avoid the picketing women.

She stopped dead as she caught sight of three figures approaching the camp, silhouetted against the dim glow from the barracks inside the fence. Two were uniformed policemen, no prizes for spotting that. The third was a tall, blond man she had noticed in the area a couple of times before. Her journalistic instinct had put him down as Special Branch. She was gratified to find that instinct vindicated. She glanced around, but the only other women in sight were far off by a campfire. Most of them had already gone to bed.

Lindsay had no idea what was going on, but she wanted to find out. The best way to do that was to stay out of sight, watch, and listen. She crouched down against the bender nearest her and slowly worked her way round the encampment, trying to outflank the trio who were between her and the lights. When she reached the outer ring of tents, she squatted close to the ground while the three men passed her and headed for Jane's bender with its distinctive red cross. Lindsay straightened up and headed for the lights, keeping close to the fringes of woodland that surrounded the base. As she neared the lights, she was able to pick out details. There were a couple of police Landrovers
pulled up on the edge of the wood. Near by, illuminated by their headlamps and the arc lights, were a cluster of green canvas screens. Beyond the Landrovers were three unremarkable saloon cars. A handful of uniformed officers stood around. Several people in civilian clothes moved about the scene, vanishing behind the screens from time to time.

Lindsay moved out of the shelter of the trees and approached the activity. She had only gone a few yards when two uniformed constables moved to cut off her progress. Her hand automatically moved to her hip pocket and she pulled out the laminated yellow Press Card which in theory granted her their cooperation. She flashed it at the young policemen and made to put it away.

“Just a minute, miss,” said one of them. “Let's have a closer look if you don't mind.”

Reluctantly, she handed the card over. He scrutinized it carefully; then he showed it to his colleague who looked her up and down, noting her expensive Barbour jacket, corduroy trousers, and muddy walking boots. He nodded and said, “Looks okay to me.”

“I'm here writing a feature about the camp,” she said. “When I saw the lights, I thought something might be doing. What's the score?”

The first constable smiled. “Sorry to be so suspicious. We get all sorts here, you know. You want to know what's happening, you best see the superintendent. He's over by the Landrover nearest to us. I'll take you across in a minute, when he's finished talking to the bloke who found the body.”

“Body?” Lindsay demanded anxiously. “What is it? Accident, murder? And who's dead?

“That's for the super to say,” the policeman replied. “But it doesn't look much like an accident at this stage.”

Lindsay looked around her, taking it all in. The scene of the murder was like a three-ring circus. The outer ring took the form of the five vehicles and a thinly scattered cordon of uniformed police constables. Over by one of the Landrovers, a policewoman dispensed tea from a vacuum flask to a nervous-looking man talking to the uniformed superintendent whom Lindsay recognized from the demonstration outside the police station. She crossed her fingers and hoped the victim was no one from the camp.

The temporary arc lights the police had rigged up gave the scene
the air of a film set, an impression exaggerated by the situation, part of a clear strip about fifteen yards wide between a high-chain link fence and a belt of scrubby woodland. It was far enough from any gates to be free of peace campers. The lamps shone down on the second ring, a shield of tall canvas screens hastily erected to protect the body from view. Round the screen, scene-of-crime officers buzzed in and out, communicating in their own form of macabre shorthand.

But the main attraction of the circus tonight was contained in the inner circle. Here there were more lights, smaller spotlights clipped on to the screens. A photographer moved round the periphery, his flash freezing for ever the last public appearance of whoever was lying dead on the wet clay. Could it be one of the women from the camp lying there? Superintendent Rigano said a few words to the man, then moved back toward the scene of the crime. The constable escorted Lindsay across the clearing, being careful, she noted, to keep between her and the tall canvas screens. Once there, he secured the attention of the superintendent, whom Lindsay recognized from their earlier encounter outside Fordham police station. “Sir, there's a journalist here wants a word with you,” the constable reported.

He turned to Lindsay, fine dark brows scowling over deep-set eyes. “You're here bloody sharpish,” he said grudgingly. “Superintendent Rigano, Fordham Police.”

“Lindsay Gordon.
Daily Clarion.
We met at the demonstration after Deborah Patterson's arrest. I happened to be at the camp,” she replied. “We're doing a feature comparing the peace camps at Brownlow and Faslane,” she lied fluently. “I saw the lights and wondered if there might be anything in it for me.”

“We've got a murder on our hands,” he said in a flinty voice. “You'd better take a note. It would be a pity to screw up on a scoop.” Lindsay obediently pulled out her notebook and a pencil.

“The dead man is Rupert Crabtree.” The familiar name shocked Lindsay. Suddenly this wasn't some impersonal murder story she was reporting. It was much closer to home. Her surprise obviously registered with Rigano, who paused momentarily before continuing. “Aged forty-nine. Local solicitor. Lives up Brownlow Common Cottages. That's those mock-Georgian mansions half a mile from the main gate of the camp. Bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument, to wit, a chunk
of drainage pipe which shattered on impact. Perhaps more to the point, from your side of things, is the fact that he was chairman of the local ratepayers' association who were fighting against that scruffy lot down there. It looks as if there was a struggle before he was killed. Anything else you want to know?”

Lindsay hoped her relationship with “that scruffy lot down there” was not too obvious and that she was putting up a sufficiently good performance in her professional role as the single-minded news reporter in possession of a hot exclusive. “Yes. What makes you think there was a struggle?”

“The mud's churned up quite a bit. And Crabtree had drawn a gun but not had the chance to fire it.”

“That suggests he knew his life was at risk, doesn't it?”

“No comment. I also don't want the gun mentioned just yet. Any other questions?”

She nodded vigorously. “Who found the body?”

“A local resident walking his dog. I'm not releasing a name and he won't be available for interview in the foreseeable future.”

“Any suspects? Is an arrest likely within the next few hours? And what was he doing on the common at this time of night?”

Rigano looked down at her shrewdly. “No arrest imminent. We are actively pursuing several lines of inquiry. He was walking the bloody dog. He usually did this time of night. Well-known fact of local life.”

“Any idea of the time of death?” she asked.

Rigano shrugged expressively. “That's for the doctors to tell us. But without sticking my neck out, I can tell you it was probably some time between ten and eleven o'clock. I hope you've got an alibi,” he said, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Come and have a quick look.” He strode off, clearly expecting her to follow. She caught up with him at the entrance to the screens.

“I'd rather not, if you don't mind,” she said quickly.

His eyebrows shot up. “Happy to dish the dirt, not so happy to see the nastiness?”