Conferences are Murder Page 11

  “Of course, neither of us had any idea exactly how far your nose was already in. So I borrowed Helen’s car and agreed to keep her posted. You can imagine how I felt when I walked into the conference office and they told me you’d already managed to get yourself arrested! I thought you’d given up cozy chats with policemen.”

  “Be fair, Sophie, you know I never wanted to hear about another murder after Alison Maxwell. And I swear that if Tom Jack’s killer had chosen any other window to throw him out, I’d have given the whole thing a body swerve.”

  “But . . . ?” Sophie said, her heart sinking. “I hear a but in there, Lindsay.”

  “Well, I feel like I’m involved whether I want to be or not. Let’s face it, my love. Unless the police actually find out what went on in my room last night, there are going to be a lot of people wandering around convinced that Lindsay Gordon really had a lot more to do with it than she’s letting on. Besides, I’ve got my own suspicions.”

  Sophie moaned. “Oh, Lindsay. Can’t we just get in the car and go back to Glasgow? I mean, does it matter if the entire AMWU membership thinks you pushed Tom Jack out of the window? You don’t work in this country any more, you’ll never have to see any of them again. Who cares what they think?”

  “I do,” said Lindsay stubbornly. “I care. I’m sorry, Sophie, but I want to stick around long enough to see which way the wind is blowing at least. Besides, I’m on police bail. I’m not supposed to leave town without their say-so.”

  Sophie smiled and cuddled into her. “I had this feeling you were going to say something like that,” she said ruefully. “Oh, well, why worry? You’ve only got about 400 potential suspects to offend.”

  “Should be a piece of piss, then, shouldn’t it,” Lindsay said sweetly.

  Sophie gave a sigh of resignation. “In that case, I’d better ring Helen and check it’s okay to leave her without wheels for a few days longer.”

  “Just a minute,” Lindsay said, pulling Sophie back as she moved towards the bedside phone. “Helen can wait.”

  “Shouldn’t that be, heaven can wait?”

  “You want heaven? Then come back here.”

  7

  “Your Standing Orders Sub-Committee must advise you that we are extremely reluctant to accept emergency motions, which disrupt the smooth running of conference. Emergency motions will only be accepted if they relate to a genuine emergency. The definition of a genuine emergency is laid out in SO9(a)(ii), but in practice, it is “a set of circumstances about which the chair of SOS could not conceivably have had prior knowledge.” Delegates should bear in mind that the chair of SOS is not a registered psychic.”

  from “Advice for New Delegates”, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

  “Emergency Motion 17. This conference deplores the death of AMWU’s General Secretary and instructs the National Executive Council to express the union’s condolences to Tom Jack’s widow and family. It further instructs all delegates and officials of the union to extend their full and free cooperation to the South Yorkshire Police in respect of their inquiry into Tom Jack’s untimely death. It further calls upon any person involved to come forward immediately.” Lindsay read the words with a sense of unreality. Only a trade union could believe an emergency conference motion was the way to handle something like this, she thought, looking around to check there wasn’t a white rabbit or a hookah-smoking caterpillar around.

  She was standing in the shadows at the side of the stage with Sophie, reluctant to return to her exposed position among the other observers on their dais. She was going to have to face the questions of the mob sooner or later, but the longer she could postpone it, the happier she’d be. Silently, she handed the copy of the motion, currently being proposed by Central London Print Branch, to Sophie, who couldn’t keep a bemused grin from lips that felt bruised from their recent close encounter. Suddenly, a man Lindsay vaguely remembered having seen waiting for the lift on her floor of Maclintock Tower ran up the steps of the opposing podium and seized the microphone.

  “Jed Thomas, London Broadcast Journalists’ Branch, proposing an amendment to the motion.” In spite of the cries of “Out of order” from the handful of procedural bureaucrats on the floor, he persisted. For some reason, no one on the platform cut off his mike. Scarlet, he said, “This Annual Delegate Conference offers its congratulations to anyone who was involved in ridding this union of a man who was largely responsible for the dissent, disorganization, dishonesty and dissatisfaction he presided over. While we regret the undemocratic methods chosen for his removal, we applaud the result and the benefits that will accrue to the union as a result.”

  Jed Thomas stood defiantly at the podium, through a stunned silence that lasted longer than anyone who hadn’t experienced the earlier two-minute version would have believed possible. Then, as the room erupted into shouting, booing and even a few calls of “Hear, hear!” he turned and bolted, not down the stairs and into the body of the hall, but down the side of the platform, towards the doors at the rear.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Sophie asked. “I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Lindsay. “But I’m going to have a bloody good go at finding out.”

  Lindsay and Sophie’s attempts to catch up with Jed Thomas were thwarted as soon as they emerged from the side exit into the corridor. One of the delegates who had missed the outburst was hurrying back towards the hall clutching a handful of the now familiar flyer sheets of Conference Chronicle. When he saw Lindsay, he stopped short and said, “Lindsay Gordon, isn’t it? Charlie Dominic, Sunday Trumpet. I’m really glad they saw sense and released you. Have you got a minute?”

  “No comment,” Lindsay said. Turning to Sophie, she added, “You can have no idea how much I’ve longed to say that to a journo.”

  “Aw, Lindsay, just a word,” Charlie pleaded, eager beaver from head to foot. “Unless I get something to myself, I’m going to look a real dickhead to my newsdesk. I mean, here I am, right on top of the best trade union story of the decade, and the daily boys will have left me not a sausage.”

  Against her better judgement, Lindsay relented. She could still remember the pressures inside the hothouse of national newspaper journalism. Besides, Charlie was one of the few Fleet Street hacks at the conference who hadn’t tried to give her a bad time; and it was already too late to catch Jed Thomas.

  “Just a word it is, then. And if it makes you any happier, I won’t talk to the rest of the pack. All I ask is that you keep quiet about me saying a dicky-bird to you until I’ve left Sheffield. Deal?”

  “Deal!” he agreed fervently. She wondered how long it would take the hammer of newsdesk attrition to beat him into the cynical mold of his colleagues.

  “Five minutes, then,” she said. Sophie stifled a sigh and leaned against the wall. Lindsay threw her an apologetic look.

  “Who do you think killed Tom Jack?” he began, inevitably.

  “I don’t know that anyone did. I only know for sure that I didn’t. I arrived back in my room to find the window broken and Tom’s body lying in the car park below. It was one of the worst moments of my life,” she said, unconsciously slipping back into the tabloid prose that had earned her living for years.

  “But there was no love lost between you, was there?” Charlie asked.

  “No, but that didn’t mean I was glad to see him dead. Sure, we’d had our disagreements in the past, but not the sort you’d even swing a punch about, never mind push someone out of a tenth-floor window. If I went around killing everyone I thought was sexist or racist, that hall in there would be littered with corpses.”

  Charlie scribbled furiously on the back of one of the Conference Chronicles he was carrying. With a shock, Lindsay realized it was a different edition from the morning one she’d seen in the conference office earlier.

  “By the way,” he said, “rumor has it that the forensic lads have found traces of blood in one of the shower cubicles on the tent
h floor.”

  “Really? Do we know whose blood?” Lindsay asked eagerly.

  “No idea. But it sounds serious. The Daily Mail guy was saying that they’d found a couple of splashes on the shower curtains, traces between the tiles on the wall and some in the drains. So maybe they’ll have to get into DNA testing and take blood samples from all of us.” Charlie sounded like he couldn’t wait to get in the queue for the needle.

  “What do you think, Sophie?” Lindsay asked, adding, for Charlie’s benefit, “She’s a medic.”

  Sophie shrugged. “Depends how much blood they found. I suppose if Jack cut himself on a major artery as he went through the window it might have sprayed his killer with blood. More likely, though, whoever pushed him cut himself or herself on a shard of glass. Frankly, I can’t see them running DNA tests on anyone other than a prime suspect, though. The test costs far too much to run a screen through the whole conference. Besides,” she continued, “it could have nothing to do with the killing. Maybe someone who was having a heavy period had just used the shower.”

  Both women tried not to grin at Charlie’s look of shocked squeamishness.

  “Yeah, well, thanks,” he said unenthusiastically. “I don’t suppose you saw any blood-stained killers heading for the showers?”

  “No, I didn’t. Besides, everyone was either asleep or so pissed that a naked murderer covered in blood could probably have run from one end of the campus to the other without anyone noticing,” Lindsay said.

  “And you didn’t see anyone else who might have had anything to do with it?”

  Again, that niggling feeling of having noticed something she couldn’t quite get hold of came back to Lindsay. Not for the first time, she wished she’d stuck to her new habit of sobriety. “No,” she said hesitantly. “At least . . . as I came out of the lift, I had the impression of someone turning the corner, but nothing I could positively identify.”

  Charlie looked like a dog with two bones. “That’s tremendous,” he enthused. “That gives me a great line for Sunday—‘Prime Suspect Spots Mystery Figure.’ ”

  “Gee, thanks, Charlie. Couldn’t you really stitch me up instead?” Lindsay asked ironically.

  He had the grace to look sheepish. “Sorry. Just got a bit carried away. I’ll tone it down a bit, promise. Now, was it a man or a woman you saw? Think,” he urged.

  “No idea, really. It was something I caught out of the corner of my eye, that’s all. Is that a new Chronicle, by the way?”

  “Yup,” he confirmed. “A bundle of them just appeared in the bar. I grabbed a handful for my delegation, since they’ll vanish like snowflakes in a sauna soon as the word gets round. D’you want one?” He thrust a copy at her. “Wild, isn’t it? I wish I could get to whoever was doing it.”

  Lindsay ignored him, absorbed in the front page of the Conference Chronicle Ehening Supplement.

  Now that Lindsay Gordon’s been alibied by her mysterious stranger, who turns out to be yet another of the USA Meeja Studies Mafia, police will have to make at least a pretence of looking elsewhere for their killer. Unless of course Desmond Joyce changes his mind about the accuracy of his fake Rolex.

  Conference Chronicle’s spies report a signal lack of regret about the departure of Union Jack, a man whose recent popularity had plunged so low he made Arthur Scargill look like the Queen Mum. Street talk says Union Jack has left AMWU in administrative chaos. But the word is that deputy general secretary Handy Andy Spence is more than fit for the big man’s shoes, and now that Union Jack is out of the way and can’t throw any more spanners in the works or wobblers in the office, there is sure to be a complete and inescapable investigation of the Union’s troubled finances.

  So if you were one of the ones who felt safe from scrutiny while Union Jack was still holding the reins, better start sweating. Conference Chronicle knows who the guilty are. But since the guilty don’t know who Conference Chronicle is, there’s nowhere to post the used fivers, is there?

  Before she could finish reading, Sophie’s voice insinuated itself into her consciousness with its best bedside manner.

  “Lindsay, the man’s asking you a question. You’re wasting his five minutes.”

  “Sorry. What was that, Charlie?”

  “Will you be going to his funeral?”

  Lindsay mentally shook her head in disbelief. Now she was out of it, it was hard to fathom how she’d done a job like Charlie’s for so many years.

  “I shouldn’t imagine so for one minute,” she said. “I never chose his company when he was alive, so I don’t see any point in hypocrisy now he’s dead. Now, Charlie. Time for me to ask a question.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Who’s the clever money on now? I mean, leaving me out of the equation, of course.”

  He ran a hand through brown hair that was already beginning to thin, though his unlined face looked no more than early twenties. “You’ve got me there, Lindsay. I mean, there’s a million crazy rumors in the naked city tonight, but nobody seriously thinks he was bumped off because someone wasn’t happy with the merger, or because Andy Spence wants the job, or because Dick McAndrew wanted to get even for Union Jack closing down Socialism Today, or because he hadn’t delivered one of his thousands of broken pre-election promises,” Charlie rattled off, enumerating the suggestions on his fingers. “I don’t know, maybe he had a mistress he’d given the elbow to. You know his reputation with women.”

  Lindsay nodded. “If it moves, it’s there to be screwed. Unless it’s a member of the Equality Committee, in which case, it’s there to be put down.”

  “Charming,” Sophie muttered. “I know hospitals where he’d have walked into a consultant’s job.”

  “Word is,” Charlie added confidentially, “it might be cherchez la femme. Only nobody knows who the femme in question might be. Before the merger, the clever money said he was conducting very close negotiations with Maureen Sloane, the former deputy general secretary of the broadcasting union, but that was over months ago. And she moved in with one of the floor managers from Newsnight just after Christmas, so she can’t have been carrying that much of a torch. And there’s been no recent goss about Tom. So your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Oh well, thanks anyway, Charlie. And hey—don’t make me look a complete bitch, there’s a pal,” Lindsay said.

  He grinned and waved his copies of Conference Chronicle. “No way. Compared to this, I’m an amateur! See you.” He grinned and shot off back down the corridor to distribute the latest scandal among the other members of his delegation.

  “Nice to know I’m not the only victim of the bad-mouth brigade, isn’t it?” Lindsay said.

  “Don’t get too sanctimonious, Ms. Gordon,” Sophie responded. “Let’s not forget how many years you spent earning a living doing exactly what young Charlie and his fellow vultures do.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll leave the moral high ground to you people who’ve never lived in glasshouses.”

  “What next?” Sophie asked. “Do you still want to get hold of that guy who set the place by the ears just now?”

  “Of course I do. He’s got to have a hidden agenda behind that outburst. Even I wouldn’t have had the bottle to stand up on that platform and say out loud what so many of us are thinking.”

  “Bottle or stupidity,” Sophie observed. “By the way, what was all that about shadowy figures disappearing round corners? You never said anything to me about that.”

  Lindsay shrugged. “It was the vaguest of impressions. Just a flicker in the peripheral vision. But there’s something niggling at the back of my mind about it. I just can’t get a hold of it.”

  “Do you really want to get a hold of it?”

  “Of course I do. That’s a daft question,” Lindsay complained. “If I could get a handle on something definite, something factual, I’d be as happy as a pig.”

  “It’s not a daft question, smartarse. The point I’d like to make is, if you suddenly remember something you saw or heard that you di
dn’t tell the police earlier, they’re going to be deeply suspicious on two counts. One, are you deliberately trying to draw suspicion away from yourself and towards someone else? And two, did you deliberately suppress the information earlier for some twisted reason of your own?”

  “You mean, blackmail?”

  “Or just to pass it on to one of your old journo cronies. For a fee, of course.”

  “That’s evil,” Lindsay said. “I’ve lived with you for three years, and I never suspected you of possessing such a devious mind. Mind you,” she added, “I never was much good at spotting devious women.”

  “Water under the bridge, babe,” Sophie said, giving her a quick hug. “There’s nothing wrong with your judgement. So, are you sure you really want to dig up whatever it is you think you might have buried away in your few remaining brain cells?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. After all, I don’t have to tell the police right away, do I? I could just poke around till I found some more convincing evidence, couldn’t I?”

  Sophie groaned. “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. God, Lindsay, you’re incorrigible.”

  “I know. Good, innit?” Lindsay said with a wink. “So what did you have in mind?”

  “Well, hypno, of course!”

  “Oh no, you must be out of your California-crazed mind,” Lindsay groaned.

  Sophie pressed on regardless. “I use hypno all the time! I can get women to deliver their babies without drugs by using hypnosis, so I’m sure I can help you retrieve data that’s only filed away in the drawer marked ‘alcoholic oblivion.’ What do you think?”

  Lindsay closed her eyes. “My eyelids are growing heavy,” she intoned, then slumped backwards against the wall.