Hostage to Murder by Val McDermid

like to foster good relations here at CCD.”
    I bet you do , she thought. “I’ve got a witness statement from Mr. David Keillor that says you spent the evening before last dining at his house. Would that be correct?”
    â€œSpot on, Detective. A lovely evening it was too. But why are you interested in my social engagements?” Now there was a note of caution.
    â€œI’m trying to eliminate Mr. Keillor from an inquiry into a road traffic accident. Could you tell me what time it was when you and your lady wife left the Keillors?”
    â€œLet me see . . . I paid off the babysitter just before midnight, so we must have left there somewhere between half past eleven and twenty to twelve.”
    â€œAnd Mr. Keillor was with you all evening?”
    Wayne chuckled. “Naturally. David’s always a very good host.”
    â€œThank you very much, Mr. Wayne. I’m sorry to have taken up your time.”
    â€œNo problem. Glad to be of help.”
    Lindsay pressed the stop button on the recorder as she hung
up. She plugged in the headphones and listened with satisfaction. It couldn’t have been better. A little judicious editing of the conversation to eliminate any reference to her subterfuge and she was home and dry. Not only did she have Wayne’s admission that he had dined with David Keillor, she had the implication in his last statement that this was far from the first time the men had met socially. It would be fun watching Keillor try to wriggle his way out of this one. A pity it would be Rory doing the showdown. But she was going to have to get used to this way of working, alien as it was to her natural instincts. She’d spent years guarding her exclusives against her rivals; it wasn’t going to be easy to trade that for sharing.
    Rory was already online in her booth when Lindsay arrived at Café Virginia. Rory raised one finger to indicate she was in the middle of something so Lindsay booted up her own laptop and started writing up the notes of her conversations with Keillor and Wayne. Before she could finish, Rory folded her screen down and raised her eyebrows. “Well?” she said. “How did it go?”
    For one crazy moment, Lindsay thought she was referring to the previous evening’s insemination. She was about to open her mouth and say, “Gruesome,” when she realised the topic under discussion was the story. She outlined her progress to Rory, whose grin spread wider as she grasped the full implications of what Lindsay had established.
    â€œYou are fucking outrageous,” she spluttered. “They didn’t call you Splash Gordon for nothing, did they?”
    â€œI think you’ll find it was more ironic than admiring,” Lindsay said, remembering the less than supportive atmosphere of the newsroom. “And I wasn’t exactly on the ball. I didn’t tape my little chat with Keillor.”
    Rory shrugged. “Irrelevant. You got Wayne on tape, which is even more damning. We’re going to have to wait a couple of weeks before I hit Keillor, though. If we’re really, really lucky, he won’t make the connection with your thespian activities.”
    â€œWe’ll keep my name off the finished piece, all the same,” Lindsay said firmly.
    â€œAye. There’s time enough for glory.”

    â€œI sincerely hope so.”
    Â 
    Bernie stood outside the school gates, chatting idly to a couple of the other waiting mothers whose children were in Jack’s class. The bell sounded, the doors opened and children of all shapes, sizes and colours began to pour out of the building. After a few minutes, the stream had slowed to a trickle. The other mothers were gone, one with a chattering daughter, the other with a son interested only in the collection of football cards he’d pulled out of his pocket as soon as he’d cleared the school entrance. But still there was no sign of Jack.
    She felt a strange