6

Lindsay emerged from the public toilet on the outskirts of Fordham a different woman. Before they left the camp she had retrieved her emergency overnight working bag from the boot of her car, and she was now wearing a smart brown dress and jacket, chosen for their ability not to crease, coupled with brown stilettos that would have caused major earth tremors at the peace camp. Cordelia wolf-whistled quietly as her lover got back into the car. “You’ll get your lesbian card taken away, dressing like that,” she teased.

“Fuck off, she quipped wittily,” Lindsay replied. “If Duncan wants the biz doing, I will do the biz.”

At the police station, Lindsay ran the gauntlet of bureaucratic obstacles and eventually found herself face to face with Superintendent Rigano. They exchanged pleasantries, then Lindsay leaned across his desk and said, “I think you and I should do a deal.”

His face didn’t move a muscle. He would have made a good poker player if he could have been bothered with anything so predictable, thought Lindsay. When he had finished appraising her, he simply said, “Go on.”

Lindsay hesitated long enough to light a cigarette. She needed a moment to work out what came next in this sequence of unplanned declarations. “You had Deborah Patterson in here for twelve hours. I imagine she wouldn’t even tell you what year it is.

“They’ll all be like that,” she continued. “They’ve gone past the ‘innocents abroad’ stage down there, thanks to the way the powers that be have used the police and manipulated the courts. Now, they have a stable of sharp lawyers who don’t owe you anything. Several of the peace women have been in prison and think it holds no terrors for them. They all know their rights, and they’re not even going to warn you if your backside is on fire.

“So if you want any information from them, you’re stymied. Without me, that is. I think I can deliver what you need to know from them. I’m not crazy about the position I find myself in. But they trust me, which is not something you can say about many people who have a truce with the establishment. They’ve asked me to act as a sort of troubleshooter for them.”

He looked suspicious. “I thought you were a reporter,” he said. “How have you managed to earn their trust?”

“The women at the camp know all about me. I’ve been going there for months now.”

He could have blustered, he could have threatened, she knew. But he just asked, quietly, “And what’s the price?”

Glad that her first impression of him hadn’t been shattered, Lindsay replied, “The price is a bit of sharing. I’m a good investigative reporter. I’ll let you have what I get, if you’ll give me a bit of help and information.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” he complained.

“I’m offering something you won’t get any other way, Lindsay replied. She doubted she could deliver all she had promised, but she reckoned she could do enough to keep him happy. That way, she’d get what she and the women wanted.

He studied her carefully and appeared to come to a decision. “Can we go off record?” he asked. Lindsay nodded. His response, at first, appeared to be a diversion. “He was an influential man, Crabtree. Knew most of the people that are supposedly worth knowing round these parts. Didn’t just know them to share a pink gin with-he knew them well enough to demand favors. Being dead seems to have set in motion the machinery for calling in the favors. I’m technically in charge of the CID boys running this at local level. But CID are avoiding this one like the plague. And other units are trying to use their muscle on it.

“Our switchboard has been busy. I’m under a lot of pressure to arrest your friend. You’ll understand that, I know. But I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that you get your evidence before the arrest, not vice versa. That wouldn’t have been hard in this case, if you follow me.

“I happen to think that she didn’t kill him. And I’m not afraid to admit I’ll need help to make that stick. You know I don’t need to make deals to achieve that help. Most coppers could manage it, given time and a bit of leaning. But I don’t have time. There are other people breathing down my neck. So let’s see what we need for a deal.”

Lindsay nodded. “I need access to the family. You’ll have to introduce me to them. Suggest that I’m not just a newspaper reporter. That I’m working on a bigger piece about the Brownlow campaign for a magazine that will feature an in-depth profile of Crabtree-a sort of tribute.”

“Are you?”

“I can be by teatime. Also point out to them that it will get the pack off their back and end the siege. I’ll be taping the conversation and transcribing the tapes. You can have full access to the tapes and a copy of the transcripts.”

“Are you trying to tell me you think it was a domestic crime?”

“Most murders are, aren’t they? But I won’t know who might have killed him till I’ve found out a lot more about his life. That means family, friends, colleagues, and the peace women will all have to open up to me. In return, any of the peace women you want to talk to, you tell me honestly what it’s about, and I’ll deliver the initial information you need. Obviously, you’ll have to take over if it’s at all significant, but that’s got to be better for you than a wall of silence.”

“It’s completely unorthodox. I can’t run an investigation according to the whim of the press.”

“Without my help, I can promise you all you’ll find at the camp is a brick wall. Anyway, you don’t strike me as being a particularly orthodox copper.”

He almost smiled. “When do you want to see the family?” he asked.

“Soon as possible. It really will get the rest of the press off the doorstep. You’ll have to tell my colleagues at the gate that the family asked expressly to talk to a Clarion reporter, or you’ll get a load of aggravation which I’m sure you could do without.”

“Are you mobile?”

“The BMW cabriolet outside.”

“The fruits of being a good investigative reporter seem sweeter than those of being a good copper. Wait in the car.” He rose. The interview was over.

Slightly bewildered by her degree of success, Lindsay found her way through the labyrinthine corridors to the car park, feeling incongruous in her high heels after days in heavy boots, and slumped into the seat beside Cordelia, who looked at her enquiringly.

“I think perhaps I need my head examined,” Lindsay said. “The way I’ve been behaving today, I think it buttons up the back. I’ve just marched into a superintendent’s office and offered to do a deal with him that will keep Debs out of prison, get me some good exclusives, and might possibly, if we all get very lucky indeed, point him in the right direction for the real villain. Talk about collaborating with the class enemy. Mind you, I expected him to throw me out on my ear. But he went for it. Can you believe it?”

Lindsay outlined her conversation with Rigano. When she’d finished, Cordelia asked, “Would he be the one who looks like a refugee from a portrait in the Uffizi?”

“That’s him. Why?”

“Because he’s heading this way,” she said drily as Rigano’s hand reached for Lindsay’s door. Lindsay sat bolt upright and wound down the window.

“Open the back door for me, please,” said Rigano. ”I believe we may be able to do a deal.”

Lindsay did as she was told, and he climbed in. A shadow of distaste crossed his face as his eyes flicked round the luxurious interior. “Drive to Brownlow Common Cottages,” he said. “Not too fast. There will be a police car behind you.”

Cordelia started the car, put it in gear, then, almost as an afterthought, before she released the clutch, she turned round in her seat and said, “I’m Cordelia Brown, by the way. Would it be awfully unreasonable of me to ask your name?”