Common Murder

12

As Lindsay joined the tight group round the smoky fire, the conversation faltered. Nicky glowered at her and turned away, but Willow moved to one side of the crate she was sitting on and offered Lindsay a place. “We were just sorting out an action for tonight,” Deborah said, rather too brightly.

“So you’d better rush off and tell your tame policeman,” Nicky muttered loudly.

Lindsay ignored the hostility with difficulty, since it triggered her own qualms of conscience about dealing with Rigano, and asked what was planned. Willow explained. “A few of the women were in court yesterday for non-payment of fines, and they’ve been sent to Holloway as per usual. So we’re having a candle-lit procession and silent vigil round the wire tonight. There’s a couple of coachloads coming down from London. It might be quite a big action-we’ve tipped off the TV and radio news, so we’ll get some publicity.”

“And with all you journalists kicking round looking for titbits about that creep Crabtree, we might even get some decent newspaper publicity for a change,” added Nicky bitterly.

“I shouldn’t think so,” Lindsay replied acidly. “Why should a candle-lit procession alter all our preconceived notions? You don’t still believe in Santa Claus, do you, Nicky?”

“Oh, stop it, you two,” protested Deborah. “You’re like a pair of kids. If you’ve nothing constructive to say to each other, then don’t waste your breath and our time.”

Lindsay got to her feet. “I’ve got to do some work now, but I’ll be back for the demo. What time’s it all starting?”

“About seven,” Deborah answered. “Meet me at Gate Six, near Brownlow Common Cottages. Will you pass the word on to the other reporters if you see them?”

“Sure,” Lindsay said. “If that’s not too much like consorting with the enemy.”

Deborah gave her a warning look, and she grinned back at her as she set off for the van. Lindsay dumped her notebook on the table that dropped down and slotted into the long L-shaped bench at night to form the base of the bed. She opened the tiny fridge set next to the two-ring gas cooker and grill, and took out a pint of milk. She swigged a couple of mouthfuls, then sat down to work. She felt comfortable in the van, a big Ford Transit conversion with enough room to stand up and move around in.

She started to scribble down the outline of her story about the infighting in RABD with a sneaking feeling that she’d be lucky to get it into the paper. At the end of the day, it was just a rather silly story about a bunch of grown men behaving like schoolboys, and she suspected that Duncan ’s sharp news sense would come to the same conclusion. Her growing suspicion that William Mallard was somehow implicated in the murder of Rupert Crabtree was not something she could commit to paper yet. Till then, the RABD story was all she had. At least it was exclusive.

She set off for Fordham, in the MG, on a search for a phone box from which to file her copy. As she drove, she remembered the computer tape she’d thrust into her briefcase. It occurred to her that she’d have to find out what computer system Simon Crabtree worked with so she could unravel the contents of the tape, since he’d sorted out Mallard’s computers in the first place. The obvious way to find out was to pay a visit to his lockup garage. But that meant another fencing session with Rigano first.

Finding an empty phone box on the outskirts of the town, she read her copy laboriously, silently wishing for the next phase in computer technology that would reduce the transmission of stories to a few seconds of telephone time, thanks to portable remote terminals. The copy transmitted, she spoke to Duncan, telling him about the evening’s procession at the base and squeezing from him agreement that she should file copy on it later.

She rang Rigano. After a long delay that involved explaining her identity to the switchboard, the duty officer, and Rigano’s sergeant, she was finally connected to her contact. He was abrupt to the point of rudeness. “What is it?” he demanded.

“I need some help,” Lindsay replied.

“So what’s new? What do you need?”

“Just an address. Simon Crabtree’s computer workshop. I want to talk to him on his own territory.”

“Try the phone book. I thought you were supposed to be full of initiative.”

“I can’t try the phone book if I don’t know what the company’s called, can I?”

There was a brief pause. “Okay. I’ll leave a note for you at the front counter. I want to talk to you about what you’ve been up to. I suspect there’s a lot you could tell me that you haven’t been passing on. Ring me tomorrow morning before ten,” he said and put the phone down.

Puzzled and irritated at having to make a detour to the police station, Lindsay set off. Why didn’t Rigano just give her the address over the phone? Why go to all the bother of leaving a note for her to pick up? It surely couldn’t be an excuse to get her into the station so he could interview her, or he wouldn’t have made the arrangement for the next day’s phone call. Unless that was a red herring… there seemed to be no easy answer.

The envelope she collected from the reception desk in Fordham police station fifteen minutes later, contained the address neatly hand written: Megamenu Software, Unit 23, Harrison Mews, Fordham. Lindsay checked the index on the street map she’d bought. No Harrison Mews, but a Harrison Street on the seedier side of town, near the industrial estate. The mews would probably be an alley round the back, she speculated.

She put the car into gear and routinely checked her rear mirror. What she saw nearly caused an accident. The red Ford Fiesta, driven by the man whom she had labelled Special Branch, was right behind. Lindsay shot into the traffic without signalling and cursed her lack of familiarity with the terrain. While she concentrated on finding her route across the town centre, she was aware of the Fiesta two cars behind her, and an explanation for Rigano’s perplexing telephone manner dawned on her. The man now on her tail might have been with Rigano when she called, which begged the more disturbing question: had Rigano lured her into the station just so that the Special Branch man could follow her? And if so, why was the SB interested in a routine murder? And more importantly, why the hell were they so interested in her?

The heaviness of the traffic and the search for her destination forced her to shelve the question. But as she pulled into a back alley with a roughly painted signboard saying “Harrison Mews: Megamenu Software This Way,” she noticed the red hatchback drive slowly past the narrow entrance. She parked the car up against the wall opposite Unit 23 and pondered. If the blond man was SB, then it went a long way towards explaining why a uniformed copper like Rigano had been left in charge of a major murder investigation instead of a plain-clothes CID officer. But since the powers that be were so firmly convinced that Brownlow Common women’s peace camp was a nest of subversives with sufficient resources to undermine the whole of western democracy, Lindsay supposed it wasn’t really so amazing that the SB were taking such a keen interest in a murder that seemed to have some of its origins in the camp.

Lindsay got out of the car and surveyed Megamenu Software’s premises. They scarcely inspired confidence. The double doors had been given a cheap and cheerful coat of pale green paint which was already beginning to flake off. There was a large sign in the same style as the one at the mouth of the alley, proclaiming “Megamenu Software: We Turn your Needs into Realities.” Plenty of scope for a good PR officer, thought Lindsay cynically, when the budget eventually ran to it. But as she rang the bell beside the small door set in one of the larger pair, she noted with some surprise that no expense had been spared on security. The several locks all looked substantial and in spite of the peeling paint, the doors were solid. She didn’t have time to speculate further, for the door was opened abruptly by Simon Crabtree.

He frowned and demanded, “What do you want?”

“A few words,” Lindsay replied. “Won’t take long, I promise.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to the press,” he retorted angrily. “You’ve had enough mileage out of my mother. Bloody vultures.”

Lindsay smiled wryly. “Fair enough. But I’m not really here in my role as bloody vulture. Think of me as a seeker after truth. Your father has been murdered and the police seem keen to put one of my oldest friends in the frame for it. I know she didn’t do it, and I’m trying to prove that. All I want is a bit of information.”

“Why should I help you? You and your bloody friends are no business of mine.” He started to close the door, but Lindsay leaned gently against it.

“You don’t owe me anything; but I’d have thought you owe your sister,” she replied.

He was clearly taken aback. “Ros? What’s she got to do with it?”

“I spent yesterday evening at Rubyfruits. She understood the importance of what I’m trying to do. If you rang her, I’m sure she’d tell you to help. And from what I hear, you’ve got a few debts to pay in that area.”

His frown deepened. “You’d better come in, I suppose.”

She followed him inside. It was her turn to be taken aback. Inside the shabby lock-up was a complete high-tech environment. The walls were painted matt grey. There was sound-absorbent carpet tile on the floor and the ceiling was covered with acoustic tiling, relieved only by discreet, low-level lighting. One wall was lined with filing drawers. There were four desks, each with a different type of computer terminal on it, including a small portable one, and two expensive-looking, ergonomically designed desk chairs. Several other pieces of equipment, including a standard cassette player and three printers, were sitting on the desks. In the background, baroque music played softly. Simon stood looking truculently at her as she walked round, desperately trying to memorize the names on the computers.

“Quite a set-up you’ve got here,” she said admiringly. “You must be doing well to afford all this.”

“I’m good with computers,” he said.

“What sort of software do you produce, then?”

“Mainly programs for managers. So they can interpret what’s going on in the business. Now, what did you mean about my sister?”

“People like me and Ros live our lives on the edges of society. That makes it that little bit harder to achieve things. Ros has managed to get something together. And you blew it out of the water for her by telling your father what the score was. In my book, that means you owe her. And because she perceives herself as being part of a group, that means you owe the women she identifies with. Like my friend Deborah. If you don’t agree with that analysis, ring up Ros and ask her yourself.” Lindsay stopped abruptly, challenging him to make the phone call she knew would have her thrown out instantly.

Her gamble on his sense of guilt paid off. His scowl didn’t lift, but he said grudgingly, “And what would you want to know?”

Lindsay hastily searched for a question that would justify her presence. “I wanted to know about his routine with the dog-was it something he always did at around the same time? Would someone have been able to rely on him being on the common with the dog at that time?”

Simon shrugged. “Not really. Rex always gets a walk any time between ten and midnight, depending on all sorts of things like the weather, what’s on the box, who’s at home. It wasn’t always my father who took him out. I did sometimes, too. So if someone had been lying in wait, they might have had to hang around for hours on more than one occasion. If I’d been home earlier on Sunday, it could just as well have been me that walked him.”

“So you think it’s more likely that he met someone by arrangement?”

“Not necessarily. It might have been a chance meeting that turned nasty.”

Lindsay recalled Crabtree’s distinctive figure. “Your father would have been easy to recognize at a distance and chase after if you were looking for a chance encounter. After all, Deborah thought she spotted him from quite a way off on the night he died, when he was walking the dog,” she added. “And she wasn’t even on the common. She was walking back from the phone box.” Simon shrugged. “But he was carrying a gun, Simon,” Lindsay continued. “Surely that suggests he was expecting trouble?”

Simon paused to think. “Yes, but maybe he was just expecting trouble in a general way and had started carrying the gun when he took Rex out last thing.”

Lindsay shook her head in disbelief. “This is rural England, not the New York subway. People don’t wander round with guns just because they think someone might give them a hard time. If he was genuinely afraid of being attacked, if he’d been threatened in any serious way, surely he’d have gone to the police?”

Simon shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It would probably have given him a buzz to confront someone with his gun and then turn them over to the cops. And I think he was genuinely frightened by those peace women. Especially after that one attacked him.”

Lindsay shook her head. “I can’t believe he thought the peace women were coming after him,” she said. “It must have been something else. He said nothing?”

“No. And if you’ve no more questions, I’d appreciate the chance to get back to work,” he replied.

“Okay. Thanks for the time. I’m sure Ros will appreciate your solidarity,” she threw over her shoulder as she left.

Back in the car, she scribbled down the names of the computers she had seen and drove off, keeping an eye out for the red Fiesta. But her rear-view mirror was clear, so she stopped at the first phone box she came to. Typically, it was prepared to allow 999 calls only. Three boxes later, she found one that would accept her money, and she dialed an Oxford number. She was quickly connected with a friend from her student days, Annie Norton, a whiz kid in computer research.

After an exhaustive exchange of gossipy updates while she pumped coins into the box, Lindsay wound her way round to the point of the call. “Annie, I need your help on an investigation I’ve got tangled up with,” she tossed into a gap in the conversation.

“If it’s anything to do with Caroline Redfern’s much publicized love-life, my lips are sealed,” Annie replied.

“No, this is serious, not chit-chat. It’s about computers. I’ve acquired a cassette tape that I think is a computer program. It could have been made on any one of four computers, and I need to know what it says. Can you help?”

“A cassette tape? How extraordinary. We’re talking real computers here, are we, not video games?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Hmm. No indication of what language it’s in?” Annie asked.

“English, I suppose.”

“No, no, what computer language-BASIC, FORTRAN, ALGOL, etc., etc.”

“Oh,” said Lindsay, bewildered. “No, nothing at all, unless there’s a computer language called Sting: The Dream Of The Blue Turtles‘:’

“What? Are you serious?”

Lindsay laughed. “No, that’s what’s written on the cassette, that’s all.”

“And what computers are we talking about?”

“An Apple Macintosh, an IBM, an Apricot, an Amstrad, and a Tandy.”

“A Tandy? Little lap-top job, would fit in a briefcase? With a flip-up screen?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Annie sighed in relief. “That explains the tape. It’s probably been transferred from one of the other machines,” she mused. “It should be fairly simple to run it through our Univac and read it for you. When can you get it to me?”

“I could drop it off in an hour or so-I’m only down the road in Fordham.”

“Tremendous. We could have dinner together if you fancy it.”

Lindsay was tempted. She had reached the point where she wanted more than anything to walk away from the conflict of interests with the peace camp, the police, and the job. She felt guilty about two-timing Cordelia and was unsure how she felt about Debs. But she had promised to be at the vigil, and she had to keep that promise. She could just fit in the round trip to Oxford if she didn’t hang about too long with Annie. “Sorry,” she said. “But I’m working tonight. Maybe when I pick it up again, yeah? How long will it take you?”

“Hard to say. A day? Two, maybe, if it’s not something obvious. If the person who’s made it is a real computer buff, which he or she presumably is, if they really use those four systems to their full potential, then it could be a bit subtle. Still, a nice bit of hacking makes a pleasant change. I’ll see you again in about an hour, then. You know where to find me?”

“Sure, I remember. I’ll be with you soon as possible.” Lindsay rang off and was about to leave the box when she realized she hadn’t spoken to Cordelia since her angry departure on Monday. Her mind had been too occupied with Crabtree and Debs for her to pay attention to her lover’s needs. It wouldn’t be an easy call, for Lindsay knew she’d have to lie about what had happened with Debs. The phone wasn’t the place for confessions. And Cordelia would be quite justifiably hurt that Lindsay hadn’t made time for her. Especially with Deborah Patterson back on the scene. The stab of guilt made her rake through her pockets for more change, and she hastily dialed their number. On the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up the call. “Oh shit,” she muttered as she listened to her own voice instructing her to leave a message. After the tone, she forced a smile into her voice and said, feeling foolish as she always did on their own machine, “Hello, darling, it’s me. Wednesday afternoon. Just a check call to let you know I’m okay. Duncan ’s leaving me here on the murder story because of my peace camp contacts, so God knows when I’ll be home. Probably not till after the funeral, or an arrest, whichever comes first. I’ll try to ring tonight. Love you. Bye.” She put the phone down with relief and set off for Oxford.