Conferences are Murder (19 page)

 

“Blackpool,” Lindsay muttered sleepily.

“Sorry?” Sophie yawned. “I thought you said Blackpool.”

“I did. What time is it?”

Sophie rolled over and picked up her watch. “Ten to nine. If we're quick, we'll make breakfast. I don't know about you, but I'm ravenous. Must be all that passion last night.” She turned to cuddle Lindsay, but clutched at empty air as her partner rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. “Hey,” Sophie yelled in protest. “What happened to ‘I'll respect you in the morning'?”

Lindsay grinned. “I can still respect you from the shower, can't I? We need to get a move on if we're going to get to Blackpool this morning.”

If she said anything more, it was drowned in the hiss of the shower. “What did I do to deserve this?” Sophie groused amiably as she followed Lindsay into the bathroom. “What is all this about Blackpool? Does this mean you've given up hunting for Union Jack's killer? Are we going for a ride on the big dipper? Do I get to wear a kiss-me-quick hat? Will you smother me in candy-floss and lick it off slowly?”

Lindsay tilted her head back to rinse the shampoo out of her hair. “We're going to see a man about an inquest. Or at least, I am. You don't have to come if you don't want.”

“How could I resist?” Sophie asked, gloomily picking up her toothbrush and squeezing an inch of toothpaste on to it. “At the risk of sounding dense, why Blackpool?”

“Because that's where Ian was murdered.”

Sophie cast her eyes heavenwards. “Me and my big mouth,” she muttered. “You'd think I'd know better by now.”

Lindsay lathered herself with shower gel and said, “Well, it stands to reason, doesn't it? If what you said about asthma was right, then Ian's death obviously wasn't accidental, was it? We could have a serial killer stalking AMWU, you know.”

“Has anyone ever told you you were born at the wrong time? You'd have made a great Victorian melodrama writer. What about suicide?” Sophie said through a mouthful of foam.

“Nah,” Lindsay said definitely. “Not Ian's speed at all. No, mark my words, it was murder. And unless my nose is mistaken, Ian's killer has struck again. What a grade A bitch!”

“Hang on a minute,” Sophie said, climbing into the shower as Lindsay swilled the last of the suds from her body. They embraced briefly, bodies slippery under the stream of water. “I know how unlikely it is that Ian didn't have an inhaler. I also believe you saw someone—possibly Laura—leaving the scene of Tom Jack's death. But where's the evidence that either of them was murdered? And if they were, where's the link? And what's the connection to Laura?” Sophie watched her lover's jaw set stubbornly. She sighed. “All right, Gordon, tell me what your famous nose says about the woman.”

“You mean, apart from the fact that she's a snotty, patronizing, fashion-obsessed careerist who probably secretly votes Tory? Oh, and a heartless homophobe to boot? This is the woman who told me that one less dyke in the world was no great loss. That was, oh, about six weeks after Frances died.”

Sophie raised her eyebrows. “So it's just possible you might be a tiny bit biased?”

Lindsay couldn't fight the smile. “Never let the facts get in the way of a bit of honest prejudice, that's me. But I bet you a bottle of the Islay malt of your choice that it
is
her.” She shrugged. “All I have to do now is prove it.”

Sophie sighed. “So why are we delving into ancient history? Surely it's going to be a lot easier to come up with evidence of something that happened a couple of days ago rather than
a nine-year-old death that everyone thinks was accidental anyway?”

Lindsay stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a white fluffy bath towel. “Theoretically, you're right. But there's a signal lack of motive here. I can't think of any reason why Laura Craig would want to off Union Jack. Maybe the answer is buried in the past, along with poor old Ian. Just call it a hunch, as Quasimodo said to Esmerelda.”

Sophie's heart sank. This wasn't the time to remind Lindsay that hunches weren't her strong point.

 

Blackpool looked more like a ghost town than a holiday resort. A salty fog swirled patchily through the streets, adding gothic emphasis to the eerie emptiness of the pavements. Sophie followed the signs that led to the prom. “And this is the famous Golden Mile, is it?” she remarked as she pulled up on double yellow lines. The neon signs from the amusement arcades and seedy hotels barely penetrated the mist. Every few minutes, ancient trams loomed out of the gloom like strange hallucinations from the past and hurtled on towards Fleetwood or the South Shore, their clatter muffled by the fog. “Do you mean to tell me that it's for this that thousands of Glaswegians desert their native city for a fortnight every July? Dear God!”

“Tell me about it,” Lindsay said. “Don't forget, I once spent a week here at a JU conference. At least in Torremolinos you tend to get decent weather.”

A traffic warden materialized out of a thick patch of fog. “Wouldn't you just know it?” Sophie complained, starting the engine of Helen's tinny Toyota.

“No, wait!” Lindsay said, opening the door and climbing out on to the pavement. “Thank goodness you've come along!” Sophie heard as the car shook to Lindsay's resounding door slam.

A few moments later, Lindsay jumped back into the car, clutching a sheet from the traffic warden's notebook. “Natural charm, that's all it takes. Even traffic wardens like to feel needed. Okay, straight ahead, then take the second right
by the Balmoral Bar and Grill,” she said with a slight shudder.

Ten minutes later, Lindsay was forced to admit she'd chosen the one traffic warden who either hated all visitors or didn't know her left from her right. Furious, she stomped into the nearest newsagent's, where she borrowed their telephone directory then bought an A-Z. It took a further ten minutes to zigzag through the one-way system to the sixties office block that housed the coroner's office.

As they stood waiting for the lift to carry them to the fifth floor, Lindsay said casually, “I still haven't come up with a good cover story for this little exercise.”

Sophie grinned. “I love you, Lindsay Gordon,” she said.

“Why? Because I wrecked your UK trip by getting arrested, I can't keep my nose out of other people's business and I'm not even smart enough to think up good excuses for it?”

“No, actually, it's because you've got endless bottle.”

“Some would say stupidity,” Lindsay remarked.

“Then they'd be wrong.”

“I'm not so sure. I suspect it's pretty dumb to rely on the tradition that coroner's officers are generally the nicest guys on the force. That's why they get the job—because they have to spend their time dealing with bereaved families.” The lift arrived, and they got in. “I guess I'll think of something when I'm staring into the whites of his eyes,” Lindsay added with a nervous grimace.

“He really will be Mr. Nice Guy, will he?” Sophie asked.

“Probably,” Lindsay said gloomily. “Which will make me feel like a real shit. Lying to the bad guys is no problem. But taking advantage of the good guys always leaves my self-respect in shreds.”

“Have you got any university ID with you?” Sophie asked. “Something that attaches you to the university without being specific as to subject or faculty?”

Lindsay patted her shoulder bag. “My library card and my researcher's pass for the stacks. Never leave home without it.”

The lift shuddered to a halt and the doors opened. “Good. Just in case. For once, you follow my lead, sweetheart,” Sophie said. “Busk it.”

“You play glockenspiel, I'll play drums,” Lindsay muttered as she followed Sophie out of the lift. At the end of the short corridor was a half-glazed door with “Coroner's Officer” stencilled in gilt Olde Englishe lettering. Sophie tapped on the glass and they walked in. Three walls of the room were lined with filing cabinets that stretched to the ceiling. The fourth wall was a window, its view blanked out by the mist. Behind a cheap, chipped desk, a burly middle-aged man sat, flanked by precarious heaps of files. He looked up from the form he was filling in, and a broad smile lit up a creased, wind-burnt sailor's face. Lindsay suppressed a groan.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said in a gruff voice, his Lancashire accent noticeable even in those few words.

“Good morning, officer,” Sophie said, returning the smile with interest. She produced her wallet and flipped it open to the pass that revealed her to be a member of the medical staff of the Grafton Clinic, San Francisco. “I'm Dr. Sophie Hartley from California. I wrote to you about six weeks ago regarding a research study that my colleague and I are currently doing the groundwork for.”

The policeman's smile faded and a look of surprised bafflement took its place. “I'm sorry, love,” he said, “but I don't recall any letter like that.”

Lindsay couldn't help admiring Sophie's matching look of bewilderment. “I don't understand,” she said. “It was one of a batch that were all sent out together. The letter explained what the project was about, and asked for your cooperation, and said I'd visit one morning this week while I was in the UK, if that was convenient.”

He got to his feet, and produced two wooden folding chairs from the narrow gap between a pair of filing cabinets. “Well, it's not inconvenient,” he said, unfolding the chairs and waving the two women to them. “I was just doing me paperwork, nothing that can't wait a bit. Mebbe you could tell me what it's all about?” He plonked himself back down in his own battered typist's chair.

Lindsay cringed as Sophie launched into an elaborate
explanation, heavily larded with medical, statistical and sociological jargon. What it boiled down to was that she and Lindsay were allegedly researching causes of death among national newspaper journalists, to see if there were any statistically significant changes following the introduction of computer technology in the eighties. To Lindsay's ears, it sounded so outrageously silly it could only be true. Certainly, it seemed to impress the coroner's officer.

“I see,” he said slowly. “And that would mean going back a few years, I take it?”

Sophie nodded. “We need to go back ten years before the introduction of new technology, which, in most cases, means going back between fifteen and eighteen years.”

“You'll be after that lad that died during the union conference in 1984, then?” he asked.

Lindsay hoped her face didn't betray the shock she felt. Sophie's eyebrows rose. “You remember the case? That's extraordinary,” she said.

“We don't get many conference delegates popping their clogs,” he said. “You tend to remember, on account of how the tourist information lads get their bowels in a right confusion over it. If they had their way, we'd hold inquests at the bottom of a coalmine at midnight whenever they involve a holidaymaker or a conference delegate. They've never forgiven Neil Kinnock for falling in the sea before the Labour Party Conference. They said he made it look like Blackpool beach was a life-threatening place to go on holiday. I ask you!” He got to his feet. “The lad's name?”

Sophie pretended to consult her personal organizer. “Ian Ross,” she said.

He went straight to one of the cabinets flanking the door, and stood on a set of library steps to reach the top drawer. He pulled out a bulky file and climbed down with it. “Here we are,” he said.

“I'm impressed,” Sophie said.

“I like to keep things methodical,” he said. “You never know when somebody's going to need to take another look at a file.
Things can take on a different perspective down the years, can't they?” he added, almost wistfully.

“You're absolutely right,” Lindsay chipped in. “I wish all your colleagues were as organized. Now, will it be possible for us to make a copy of this file?”

He looked doubtful. “I thought you'd just be wanting to have a look at the inquest report.”

Sophie shook her head. “We really do need to examine the whole file, I'm afraid.”

He tapped his fingers on the edge of the file. “I'm not right sure about that . . . I mean, whether the rest of the stuff's confidential or not.”

“The other officers we've dealt with in London and Manchester didn't have a problem with that,” Sophie said soothingly. “I suppose they felt that enough time had elapsed to remove any possibility of an invasion of privacy. And of course, the study won't be identifying particular cases by name.”

His face brightened. “Well, if they thought it was okay, I suppose they'll know best, being more at the heart of things. I haven't got a photocopier in this office, but I use the one in the county council office down the hall. If you don't mind waiting, I'll pop down and do it now.”

As his footsteps receded down the hall, Lindsay leaned over and planted a kiss on Sophie's neck. “You are a bloody genius!” she said. “Pathology, epidemiology, epistemology: you didn't leave an ology unturned. Eat your heart out, Maureen Lipman!”

Sophie studied her fingernails in a pose of mock modesty. “Elementary, my dear Watson. When in doubt, blind the buggers with science, that's what I always say. After all, it's been good enough for the medical profession for centuries. Why change a winning formula?”

“There's just one thing niggling me,” Lindsay said.

“What's that, sweetheart?”

“The fact that he knew right away who you were talking about. And his explanation didn't ring true to me. Methinks the laddie doth protest too much, and all that. Once you've got your
mitts on our ‘research material,' I'm going to have another go at our local friendly copper,” she said.