Common Murder

Her luck was still with her. Dick was at his desk, and she arranged to meet him for lunch in a little pub in Clerkenwell. That gave her just enough time to go home and swap her bag of dirty washing for a selection of clean clothes. She made good time on the motorway, which compensated for the time she lost in heavy West London traffic. Being behind the wheel of her MG relaxed her, and in spite of the congested streets, she was almost sorry when she turned off by Highbury Fields and parked outside the house.

She checked her watch as she walked through the front door and decided to make time for herself for a change. She stripped off and dived into a blessedly hot shower. Emerging, she carefully chose a crisp cotton shirt and a pair of lined woollen trousers still in the dry cleaners’ bag. She dressed quickly, finishing the outfit off with an elderly Harris Tweed jacket she’d liberated from her father’s wardrobe. In the kitchen, Lindsay scrawled a note on the memo board: “12:45. Thurs. I intend to be back by eight tonight. If emergency crops up, I’ll leave a message on the machine. Love you.”

She pulled on a pair of soft grey moccasins, light relief after her boots, and ran downstairs to the street. There she picked up a passing cab which deposited her outside the pub. She shouldered her way through the lunchtime crowds till she found Dick sitting in a corner staring morosely at a pint of Guinness. “You’re late,” he accused her.

“Only ten minutes, for Chrissake,” she protested.

“It’s the job,” he replied testily. “You get paranoid. What you drinking?” In spite of Lindsay’s attempts to buy the drinks, he was adamant that he should pay, and equally adamant that she had to have a pint. “I’m no’ buying bloody half pints for an operator as sharp as you,” he explained. “If I’m on pints, so are you. That way I’m less likely to get conned.”

He returned with the drinks and immediately scrounged a cigarette from Lindsay. “So,” he said, “how’s tricks? You look dog rough.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, McAndrew. If you must know, I’m in the middle of a murder investigation, my ex-girlfriend is recovering from a homicidal attack, Cordelia’s in a huff, and Duncan Morris expects the moon yesterday. Apart from that, life’s the berries. Howsabout you?” she snarled.

“Oh well, you know?” He sighed expansively.

“That good, eh?”

“So what have you got for me, Lindsay? What’s behind this meet? Must be good or you’d have given me some clue on the phone and chanced the phone-tap guy not being sharp enough to pick it up. Hell mend them.”

“It’s not so much what I’ve got for you as what you can do for me.”

“I’ve told you before, Lindsay, I’m not that kind of boy.”

“You should be so lucky, Me Andrew. Listen, this is serious. Forget the Simon Dupree of the gay repartee routine. I’ve got a computer print-out that I’m told might be coded signals traffic. Could you identify it if it was?”

Dick looked alert and intent. “Where d’you get this from, Lindsay?”

“I can’t tell you yet, Dick, but I promise you that as soon as it’s all sorted, I’ll give you chapter and verse.”

He shook his head. “You’re asking a lot, Lindsay.”

“That’s why I came to you,” she said. “Want to see it?” He nodded and she handed him the print-out. He helped himself to another cigarette and studied the paper. Ten minutes later, he carefully folded it up and stuffed it back in her handbag. “Well?” she asked cautiously.

“I’m not an expert,” he said warily, “but I’ve been looking at intelligence communication leaks for a wee while now. As you well know. And that looks to me like a typical pattern for a US military base. Somewhere like Upper Heyford, Mildenhall.”

“Or Brownlow Common?”

“Or Brownlow Common.”

“And what does it mean?”

“Oh Christ, Lindsay. I don’t know. I’m not a bloody expert in codes. I’ve got a source who might be able to unscramble it if you want to know that badly. But I’d have thought it was enough for you to know that you’re walking around with a print-out of top secret intelligence material in your handbag. Just possessing that would be enough for them to put you away for a long time.”

“It’s that sensitive?”

“Lindsay, the eastern bloc spend hundreds of thousands of roubles trying to get their hands on material like that. Quite honestly, I don’t even want to know where you got that stuff. I want to forget I’ve ever seen it.”

“But if you know what it is, you must have seen other stuff like it.”

Dick nodded and took a long draught of his pint. “I’ve seen similar stuff, yes. But nothing approaching that level of security. There’s a system of security codes at the top of each set of groups. And I’ve never encountered anything with a code rated that high before. It’s the difference between the official report in Hansard and what the PM tells herself in the mirror in the morning. You are playing with the big boys, Lindsay.” He rose abruptly and went to the bar, returning with two large whiskies.

“I don’t drink spirits at lunchtime,” she protested.