Deadline for Murder

  DEADLINE FOR MURDER

  Val McDermid

  Bywater Books

  Ann Arbor

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  Glasgow, Scotland, December 1989

  Jackie Mitchell stared down at the murdered body of Alison Maxwell, fear and horror mingling in equal measure. Alison was sprawled on the familiar bedroom carpet, limbs crooked, blonde hair spread round her head in a jagged halo. The ravages of strangulation had left her face barely recognizable. The scarf that was wound into a tight ligature round her neck was, however, only too easily identifiable. Jackie would know her own distinctive yellow tartan muffler anywhere. Slowly, with an enormous effort of will, she forced herself to look up.

  Jackie gazed round the crowded courtroom, only too aware of the accusing eyes that had already made their judgment about her guilt. The photograph she clutched in her sweating hands was her first sight of Alison Maxwell’s corpse. But she knew that the number of people in the stuffy courtroom who genuinely believed that could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Certainly the fifteen members of the jury, who were flicking through the prosecution’s photograph album with looks of shock, horror, and disgust that mirrored her own emotions, were not among them.

  The wiry figure of Duncan Leslie, the Advocate Depute charged with presenting the prosecution case against her, paced to and fro across the wood-paneled courtroom as he gently drew every last scrap of damning information from the pathologist in the witness box. “And in your opinion,” Leslie probed in his soft Borders accent, “are the features of this case consistent with strangulation by a male or a female?”

  The pathologist paused momentarily, glancing toward the dock, refusing to meet Jackie’s pale green eyes. His mouth tightened in disapproval. “In my view,” he said in a clipped voice, “I would say that this method of killing would suggest either a woman, or a man who was not very strong.”

  “Would you explain that opinion to the court?”

  “Well, strangulation with a ligature like this scarf requires considerable strength. But the need for brute force is avoided by using a lever with the ligature. In this case, as you can see from Photograph Number Five, the killer used the handle of a strong hairbrush to twist the ligature tighter. That implies to me that the strangler was not sufficiently strong to perform the act manually, thus suggesting either a woman or a weak male.”

  Another nail in my coffin, thought Jackie in despair, her hands involuntarily gripping the wooden rail of the dock. As the evidence droned on around her, she looked despondently round the courtroom. In her seventeen years as a journalist, she’d had little experience of the courts. While she’d been a young trainee on a weekly paper in Ayrshire, she’d occasionally covered routine cases in the Sheriff Court. But after that, she had become a feature writer and had never even crossed the threshold of the imposing High Court building by the Clyde.

  It wasn’t an environment she felt comfortable with, unlike the crowd of news reporters crammed into the press bench. All men, for crime reporting was still a male preserve in Glasgow. They sat there, hour after hour, like eager jackals, taking down every detail in their meticulous shorthand. And tomorrow, she knew, the bricks of evidence that were slowly building a wall round her would be reassembled to provide the foundations of sensational stories that would strip all her privacy from her. She knew most of these men. That was the hardest part of all. For ten years, she had been a leading freelance feature writer in the city, working for all the major newspapers and magazines. These were men she’d laughed with, gossiped with, drunk with. Now, as she studied them intent on their task, they looked like strangers. Familiar features seemed to have shifted, hardened, changed somehow. She wasn’t their pal Jackie any more. She was a brutal bitch, an animal with a perverted sexuality who had killed one of their number. In life, Alison Maxwell had been a talented Scottish Daily Clarion feature writer with a dubious personal reputation. In death, she had been promoted to the Blessed Martyr of Fleet Street.

  When she could no longer bear to look at her former colleagues, Jackie turned her eyes to the jury. Nine men, six women. A spread of ages from early twenties to middle fifties. They looked for the most part like solid, respectable citizens. The sort of people for whom her first crime was being a lesbian, a state from which any other crime might naturally flow. When she’d been led into the dock on the first morning, they had looked at her curiously, weighing her up as if calculating the likelihood of her guilt. But as the prosecution had steadily built its case, they had shown an increasing reluctance to look at her, contenting themselves with furtive glances. She began to wonder if she’d been right to listen to her solicitor’s advice about her clothes. The series of smart, feminine suits and dresses she’d chosen for the trial made her look too normal, she feared. Almost as if she were one of them. Perhaps they’d have been more open-minded about the evidence placed before them if she hadn’t disturbed them with that subtle threat. Maybe they’d have been less unnerved by her if she was standing there with her copper hair cropped short, wearing a Glad to Be Gay sweatshirt. Then they could have treated her more like Exhibit A.

  Wearily she sighed, and tried to raise her spirits with a glance at the one person she could be certain still believed in her innocence. In the front row of the public benches, her fine, white-blonde hair falling round her head like a gleaming helmet, Claire Ogilvie sat taking notes. Her neat, small features, dwarfed by the huge glasses she wore, were fixed in concentration, except when she looked up at Jackie. Then she would give a small, encouraging smile, which against all odds and logic kept a flicker of hope alive in Jackie’s heart. In the five years they’d been together, she’d never had to rely so much on Claire. Whatever happened at the end of the trial, she’d never be able to repay that debt.

  As soon as the police had arrived that October evening to arrest Jackie, Claire had been on the phone to one of Glasgow’s top criminal lawyers, who had responded to the call of a fellow solicitor with a speed astonishing to anyone familiar with the procrastinations of his breed. Jim Carstairs had actually been waiting at the Maryhill Police Station when they’d brought her in to charge her with the murder of Alison Maxwell. Although Claire Ogilvie’s flourishing commercial law practice never dealt with criminal law, she always sent any of her clients who needed a good trial lawyer to Macari, Stevenson and Carstairs, so Jim had pulled out all the stops for Jackie. But it had made little difference. Because of the gravity of the charge, bail had been refused, and she’d spent the last eight weeks on remand in the women’s prison near Stirling. In spite of the demands of her clients, Claire had somehow contrived to visit her almost every day. It had been the only thing that had kept Jackie going when she felt the walls closing in and heard the voices of madness in her head. There had been times when she’d even begun to wonder herself if she’d killed Alison in a moment of insanity that she could no longer recall.

  But through it all, Claire had been there, practical, indomitable, supportive. Although Claire concentrated on commercial and contract law herself, she had many friends with criminal practices, and she knew only too well the c
osts of mounting a first-class defense. So, the morning after the bail hearing, she’d put their fashionable three-bedroomed first-floor flat on the market. Because of its size and its position on a sunny corner near the University it had been sold within days, thanks to the efficient processes of the Scottish property laws. Claire had dutifully paid all the proceeds into Jackie’s bank account to fund her lover’s defense. She had promptly bought herself a new home, free from all past associations, in a newly renovated block in the heart of the Merchant City, the yuppified district in the city center where property developers were busily cashing in on the aspirations of the suddenly rich. Claire told herself she had no doubts about Jackie’s innocence; but she was nobody’s fool when it came to the law. She’d had enough discussion with Jim Carstairs to realize that Jackie’s chances of walking away from this murder indictment were so slim as to be negligible. Although Jackie was unaware of it, the ever-practical Claire Ogilvie had already started to rebuild her life.

  Part of that rebuilding took the shape of the attractive, dark-haired woman who sat next to her during the trial. As far as Jackie was concerned, Cordelia Brown was simply a friend who had done her best to help the defense in the buildup to the trial. In her despair at ever clearing her name of the charge, Jackie had dredged up the name of one person that she believed might be able to find out the truth. When Claire had gone looking for Lindsay Gordon she had quickly discovered that Cordelia was their only hope of finding her. But their efforts had been fruitless. Like everything else that had happened to Jackie since her last visit to Alison’s flat, things hadn’t worked out according to plan. But for Claire, it was a very different story.

  Duncan Leslie got to his feet and slowly surveyed the jury. The trial was almost over, and he was filled with a quiet confidence. He had spun his web around Jackie Mitchell. Now, all he had to do was to draw the threads together to present her to the jury as a tightly wrapped cocoon with no prospect of escape.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began, pacing slowly backward and forward in front of the jury box. “This has not been a pleasant case for any of us. A woman has been brutally killed in the one place where she could reasonably hope to be safe—in the bedroom of her own flat, in the arms of her lover. The defense have tried to cloud your judgment with tawdry allegations about the victim of this particularly horrific crime. But I’d like to remind you that it is not Alison Maxwell who is on trial here today—it is her killer, Jackie Mitchell.

  “You have heard how, on the afternoon of 16 October, Jackie Mitchell visited Alison Maxwell in her flat, thus betraying her own live-in lover. The two women went to bed together and had sex. A quarrel followed. Jackie Mitchell then left the flat. Within minutes of her departure, Alison Maxwell’s strangled body was discovered, still warm. None of these facts is in dispute.” Leslie stopped walking to and fro and turned to face the jury, fixing them one by one with an unblinking stare that, more effectively than any histrionics, gave force to his words.

  “My colleague for the defense is asking you to believe that in those few short moments, a third party managed to enter a block of flats protected by security entryphones and contrived to get into Alison Maxwell’s flat, leaving no signs of any break-in. Then this unknown assailant strangled her with Jackie Mitchell’s own scarf—a method of killing, incidentally, which does not lend itself to speed. This mysterious murderer then managed to make a clean getaway. And during all this, our killer was never seen, never heard.

  “If you believe that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, then I expect you will also believe that the moon is made of green cheese.

  “The truth is far, far simpler.” Leslie turned away from the jury and stared at Jackie. At the end of his dramatic pause, he turned back to the jury, who looked mesmerized by a performance that was outshining every courtroom drama they’d ever watched on television. “Forget the mysterious stranger. Alison Maxwell’s killer is sitting before you now, ladies and gentlemen.

  “Jackie Mitchell wanted to end her affair with Alison Maxwell. Now, Alison’s sexual preferences might be alien to most people, but her emotional responses were identical to ours. She didn’t want Jackie to depart from her life. Like most of us, faced with losing someone we care about, she used emotional blackmail in a bid to hold on to her lover. What she didn’t realize was that she was trying to blackmail a killer. The threat of losing the things that mattered to her drove Jackie Mitchell over the edge.

  “Jackie Mitchell was the only other person in that flat on the afternoon of 16 October. Jackie Mitchell was overheard quarreling angrily with Alison Maxwell. And Jackie Mitchell’s scarf was the weapon that choked the life out of Alison Maxwell. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is an open and shut case. On the basis of the evidence before you, the only possible verdict you can bring in this case is guilty.”

  The defense advocate did his best. But his emotive pleas clearly had less effect on the jury than the short, measured address of Duncan Leslie. As the judge summed up, Jackie felt as if a door had been slammed in her face. There was no escape, she realized. Her worst fears were about to become her new reality. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the room fixed on her, but she could meet none of them. She stared straight ahead at a point on the wall above the judge’s head, a creeping numbness filling her. She felt cold sweat trickling uncomfortably down her spine, and she suddenly became aware that the simple act of breathing needed conscious effort. As the jury filed out, the slow shuffle of their feet reminded her of the prison sounds that had filled her ears for the last weeks, and would now be part of her life for as long as she could imagine. It was all over.

  The verdict came as no surprise to Claire. Her faith in the ability of the legal system to achieve justice had diminished as the circumstantial evidence had piled up against Jackie. Nevertheless, she felt tension grip her chest, forcing the breath from her, as the foreman of the jury got to his feet, carefully looking only at the judge, and delivered the inevitable sentence. “We find the panel guilty.”

  The judge’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. The words “life imprisonment” boomed hollowly in Claire’s ears. Her notepad fell to the floor with a soft rustle and her head dropped into her hands.

  Cordelia immediately put her arm round Claire, comforting her, a complicated mixture of emotions bringing her close to tears. She glanced up to the dock, where Jackie was being led away to begin her sentence. Then she turned back to Claire and murmured softly, “It’s all over.”

  Claire raised her head. There were no tears, just a coldness in her eyes that had not been there before. She gazed over at the empty dock and slowly said, “No, Cordelia. It’s only just begun.”

  1

  Cavallino, Italy, January 1990

  Death would be a welcome release. That was her first conscious thought. Behind her eyes, a dull pain throbbed. It seemed as if an iron band constricting her forehead were being slowly, continuously tightened. Her throat was so dry that it felt as though she were forcing down a lump of cold potato each time she swallowed. The last time her stomach had been as bad as this was on a long ferry crossing in a force ten gale. A sheen of sweat covered her body. She stirred tentatively and wished she hadn’t. Her limbs were stiff and aching; her legs and feet in particular protested. Bloody grappa, she thought. Bloody, bloody grappa.

  She forced herself out of the camper van’s double berth and stumbled to the stove. The coffee pot was sitting ready. She had known before she went out the previous evening exactly how she’d feel now and had taken precautions. She turned on the gas and headed straight for the van’s shower compartment. Under the stream of warm water, she gradually began to feel less like the living dead. Two mugs of coffee later, her body began to feel restored. She pulled on a pair of sweat pants, a sweatshirt, and a pair of trainers and emerged into the daylight.

  New Year’s Day had brought a watery sun to the grassy grove quartered by pine trees that had been her home for the last eight months. For most of t
he year it was a thriving campsite, choked with the caravans and tents of northern Europeans determined to extract the maximum return from the delights of the Veneto and the Adriatic. But now, in the off-season, the only vehicle left was the one from which she carried out her limited tasks as on-site watchdog and caretaker. She jogged slowly round the ten-hectare site, checking that all the toilet blocks, shops, and restaurants were still properly locked up and shuttered.

  She carried on to the site’s private beach, part of the shoreline that curls round like a crescent moon from Trieste to Venice. She slowed down as she made her way through the heavy sand to the water’s margin then, turning her back on the tower block hotels of Lido di Jesolo, she started to run the hangover out of her system. It had been a hell of a party.

  The family who owned the site, the Maciocias, had accepted her for no better reason than that her hairdresser in the UK was their niece. When she had turned up with her life in shreds, looking for a place to hide and heal, they had asked no questions. Instead, they had persuaded her to occupy her time by working for them. In the summer months, she’d been the ideal candidate for dealing with the English families whose Italian never seemed to encompass more than “Arrivederci Roma,” and whose demands caused constant chaos at Reception. And when the end of the season arrived, she had decided to stay on, living in her van, earning a few thousand lire a day for keeping an eye on things.

  Last night’s New Year celebration should have reinforced her decision. The Maciocias had taken over a trattoria owned by someone’s brother-in-law, and she couldn’t remember ever having been at a party like it. The food had been lavish, delicious, and deeply traditional. Cousin Bartolomeo had brought his dance band along and the singing and dancing had enveloped her like summer sunlight. The kindness of these strangers who had become her surrogate family meant her glass was never allowed to become empty. It had taken the full resources of her Italian, her diplomacy, and her determination to persuade all the male relatives that she’d be safe to return to her van without an escort. But as she walked home alone with the desperate concentration of the mortally drunk, she had been overwhelmed with homesickness.