Booked for Murder (7 page)

“My God,” Catriona said, voice dripping contempt, “I didn't know private snoopers like you knew
cui bono
from Sonny Bono. Ms. Gordon, to kill Penny Varnavides for the income generated by one short burst of sales would be akin to killing the goose that laid the golden eggs in the hope of pushing the market price of gold higher. I stood to earn a lot more cash from Penny Varnavides alive than I could ever hope to gain from her death.”

“Maybe so. But it would still make a nice tale in the tabloids. I'm not asking you to breach commercial confidentiality. All I want is some answers to a few innocuous questions. I'm not the one who got heavy here.”

“I despise blackmail,” Catriona said, lighting a second cigarette.

“Me too,” Lindsay said cheerfully. “It doesn't half get results, though.”

“You must go down like a cup of cold sick in a euphemistic society like America.”

“They love it. Penny used to call me a breath of fresh effluvium. They think all the Scots are brutally frank. They've been watching too many historical Hollywood epics. So, are we going to talk to each other, or am I going to talk to the tabloids? Did I mention I used to be a national newspaper journalist?” Lindsay's smile alone would have been accepted by any court in the land as sufficient provocation for GBH.

Catriona fiddled with her cigarette. “There's so little to say that it's not worth arguing over. I'm far too busy to have to deal with muckraking journalists as well as interfering busybodies.”

It wasn't a graceful climbdown, but Lindsay wasn't proud. “Thanks,” she said. “I know Penny would have wanted you to help.”

Catriona looked as if she'd bitten into a profiterole and found a slug. “Such convenient knowledge,” she muttered.

“You've been Penny's agent right from the start, am I right?”

“Since before she was ever published. She brought
The Magicking of Danny Armstrong
to me after it had been rejected by all the major American houses and her agent in New York had let her go. I was able to place it for her over here, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Lindsay took out her notebook, more for show than necessity, and scribbled a note. “This latest book? Very different, I hear.”

“Penny decided she wanted a challenge. She was doing three Darkliners titles a year, and she wanted to break out of what had started to feel like a rut.
Heart of Glass
was going to be her first adult thriller. It was very
noir
, very passionate and very powerfully written. I had great hopes of it.”

“How much of it was actually finished?”

“Penny had written about three-quarters of it. She came over here to do some research she needed for the last part of the book, and to finish writing it. I read what she'd completed before she arrived. But within days of getting to London, she announced she was doing a major rewrite. I was surprised, because what I saw was very good. But Penny was adamant that it needed some substantial alterations.”

Lindsay frowned. “She wasn't going to change the murder method in the book, was she?”

“Not as far as I'm aware. From what she said to me, it was the characters she planned to work on, not the plot or the structure.”

“Was there anything in particular that she mentioned?”

Catriona stubbed out her cigarette. “Nothing specific,” she said.

“Have you got a copy of the manuscript?”

Catriona sighed heavily. “Unfortunately not. Penny took it away with her. She said she wanted me to come to the rewrite with as fresh an eye as possible, not to be able to compare it with what had gone before. She was always quite fussy about retrieving first drafts. Almost neurotic.”

“She was a perfectionist,” Lindsay said sadly, stricken by the memory of her friend. “She hated the idea of anyone revealing her early drafts to the world after she'd gone. I remember her talking about it one night.”

“I don't even have a current synopsis,” Catriona said, sounding
more cross than sad. “If Meredith should come across the manuscript of
Heart of Glass
, or the computer disk it's on, I'd really appreciate it if she could pass it on to me.”

“Why?” Lindsay asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.

“The 300 pages I saw were publishable quality,” Catriona answered, confirming Lindsay's guess. “If they came with a synopsis, her editor could probably cobble together an ending in an appropriate style.”

“Oh, great, just what Penny would have loved,” Lindsay said sarcastically. “A load of cobblers.”

“I think I have more right to be the judge of that,” Catriona said stiffly. “If Penny had doubted my judgement, she would hardly have granted me so much power as her literary executor. Penny wanted to show the world that she was more than just a writer of teenage fiction. What I've seen of
Heart of Glass
demonstrated a formidable talent, and she deserves to have that credited to her reputation. That's what she really wanted, Ms. Gordon. She wanted it so badly she could taste it.”

Lindsay looked away, realizing that Penny had wanted it so badly she had even been prepared to jeopardise Meredith's career just to generate more publicity. That indicated a raw ambition Lindsay had never recognised in Penny before. She could understand her desire for acknowledgement; what she couldn't relate to was her willingness to sacrifice her emotional happiness and security for the fickleness of reputation. “Yeah, well,” was all she said.

“I'm not really the person you should be talking to about this,” Catriona added casually as she lit another cigarette. “Penny spent a lot more time with her editor than she did with me this trip.”

“And her editor is?”

“Belinda Burton. Baz to her babies. Baz would have had a much clearer idea of where she was up to and where she was going. They were very close. It was a large part of the reason behind Penny's success. The relationship between an editor and a writer is crucial. Different people work in different ways. When you link an editor and writer whose minds run along the same tracks and who like to work at the same level of detail, you've got a match made in heaven. A mismatch and everybody's life is an absolute bloody misery. It's part
of my job to marry up writers with appropriate editors. Baz and Penny fit like a matching plug and socket,” Catriona said expansively.

“You wouldn't be trying to divert me, would you?”

Catriona laughed. “No. But if you're still fixated on the profit motive and you think that Penny dead is an appealing moneymaker, you really would be better employed talking to Baz. Penny's royalty is ten percent, so my cut is around one and a half percent of the retail price. Monarch Press, on the other hand, are picking up between ten and forty percent on every book sold. As they say on your side of the Atlantic, go figure.”

Lindsay stood up. She wasn't entirely convinced she'd got everything out of Catriona Polson that there was to be had, but she didn't have the right questions to elicit more. Perhaps after she'd spoken to Baz Burton, she'd have more ammunition to fire at the agent. “Fine,” she said. “I'll talk to her. Now, wasn't that painless?”

“Painless but not a terribly productive use of my time,” Catriona said dismissively, leading Lindsay out of the room and down the corridor. “I'm bound to say, I hope your client is paying you up front. I suspect she may end up wasting all her available cash on defense lawyers. I think you're backing the wrong horse, Ms. Gordon. Always a mistake to let sentiment stand in the way of reality, however unpalatable that may be.”

For once, Lindsay refused to let herself be wound up. She contented herself with, “As Arnie says, hasta la vista, baby.” On her way out of the front door, she took out the card she'd put in her shirt pocket earlier. It was about ten years old, but that didn't matter. She flicked it across the desk to the receptionist. “Have a nice day, cher,” she said in her best Bayou accent. She didn't wait to register the response to a card that read, “Lindsay Gordon, Staff Reporter,
Daily Nation
.”

Chapter 5

W
hen she left Catriona Polson's office Lindsay felt a strange sense of dislocation, a combination of sleep deprivation and an awareness that there had been changes in the street ambience of Soho in the six years she'd been away. Seedy sex tourism had given way to café bars with fashion victims spilling out on to pavement tables, braying loudly. Surely, Lindsay thought, there couldn't be
that
many jobs for film critics? What she needed was a space to call her own, somewhere she could spread her things around her and feel grounded. Meredith had offered her the second bedroom in her apartment, but Lindsay didn't want to be constantly bound to Penny's death.

She found a phone box near Tottenham Court Road, checked her personal organizer and punched in a local number. “Watergaw Films, how can I help you?” she heard in a bright Scottish accent.

“I'd like to speak to Helen Christie,” Lindsay said. “The name's Lindsay Gordon.”

“One moment please.” Then what sounded like
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
played on penny whistles. Lindsay gritted her teeth and waited. It would be worth the assault on her eardrums if this call gave her what she needed, and she didn't anticipate denial. Helen had lived with Sophie for years, but she'd been Lindsay's friend long before that. The two women had linked up years before at Oxford, the only two working-class women in their college's annual intake. The recognition had been instant, forging an immediate friendship
that time, distance and lovers had never threatened. They had discovered their common sexuality in tandem, been paralytically drunk and terminally hung over together, wept over broken hearts and celebrated famous victories by each other's side. No matter how long the gap between their encounters, Lindsay and Helen invariably fell straight back into the easy camaraderie that had marked their relationship right from the beginning.

“Lindsay?” It was Helen's familiar voice, Liverpudlian crossed with Glaswegian, untouched by anything south of the M62. “How're you doing, girl?”

“Off my head with jet lag, but otherwise okay. Listen, Helen, I need a bed a few nights sooner than we anticipated.”

“What do you mean, jet lag? Are you here in London already?”

“Yes. Just me. I'll explain when I see you, it's too complicated over the phone. Is your spare room free?”

“Course it is. The whole house is a total tip, though, on account of I wasn't expecting the pair of you till next week, but if you don't mind a bit of chaos and no milk in the fridge, move on in. Sophie'll go nutso when she sees the state of the place, but I've had more important things on my mind than tidying and Kirsten wouldn't notice if the council started emptying bins into the living room, bless her,” Helen gabbled.

“Sophie's not with me,” Lindsay cut in as soon as Helen paused for breath.

“Aw, Lindsay, you've not done one, have you? I know you, first sign of trouble and you're off over the horizon. You should stay and talk it over, you know you should. You're a million times better for her than I ever was.”

Lindsay laughed. “Give me some credit. I have grown up a wee bit in the last half-dozen years. There's nothing wrong between me and Sophie, I swear. The reason I'm here early is something else entirely. Look, I'll explain when I see you, okay? I'm running out of money here.”

“All right. Listen, can you get yourself round to the office? Only I've got to leg it to an important meeting, but I can leave the spare set of keys with reception, and you can sort yourself out, is that okay?”

“That's fi–” The money ran out and Lindsay found herself talking to
dead air. She hailed the first cab that passed and asked him to wait outside the warehouse in Camden occupied by Watergaw Films while she picked up the keys. They stopped at Meredith's to collect Lindsay's luggage, then carried on to Helen's terraced house in Fulham. As the black taxi juddered through the early afternoon traffic, Lindsay pondered her next move. Collecting keys and luggage had reminded her that she needed to check out the flat where Penny had been living.

Dredging her memory for details of a half-forgotten dinner conversation with Penny and Meredith, Lindsay recalled that Penny had swapped her house for a flat in Islington belonging to a friend of Sophie. An academic, Lindsay recalled. A philosopher? A psychologist? A philologist? Something like that. The Rubik's cube of memory clicked another turn and the pieces fell into place. A palaeontologist attached to the Natural History Museum. Called . . . She pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to awaken her protesting brain as the taxi rattled along Fulham Road. They turned into a side street wide enough for cars to double park without obstructing the road, then rounded the corner into a street of three-storey terraced villas, their stucco in varying states of repair that reflected whether they were single residences or split into rented flats. As the taxi squealed to a halt, Lindsay suddenly realized she didn't really need to remember his name. He was the man living in Penny's house, at the end of a phone whose number she knew almost as well as her own.

Feeling triumphant, she paid off the taxi and staggered wearily up Helen's short path with a bag that felt heavier with each step. She unlocked the three mortises that fastened the front door of the sparklingly painted house and keyed the last four digits of the phone number into the alarm pad to silence the high-pitched squeal of the warning klaxon. Then she stumbled into a living room that could have been sold to the Tate Gallery under the title of
Installation: Millennium Chaos
. There were piles of newspapers and magazines in a haphazard array by the chairs and the sofa. The coffee table was invisible under an anarchy of used crockery. A spread of CDs was strewn in front of the stereo and tapes were tossed randomly on the shelves to either side of it. Books teetered in tall pillars against the
wall. The only remotely ordered area in the room was a cabinet of videos that seemed to be arranged according to some system, though there were gaps in the rows and half a dozen unboxed tapes were piled on top of the TV. A tabby cat sprawled on one of the two video recorders, barely registering Lindsay's arrival with a flicker of one eyelid.