1989, page 2
And she’d seen enough of Ace Lockhart at close quarters to know quite how much of a bully he could be. She’d been happily running the investigations unit of the Sunday Globe when Lockhart had bought the Globe & Clarion group in the wake of Rupert Murdoch’s breaking of the print unions. Lockhart had decreed that investigations were a waste of money – too much time spent for too little return, he said. Because he only counted return in cash terms, not respect or moral authority. Then he’d decided the paper’s northern operation was a waste of money too. Lockhart had fired all the journalists apart from Allie, two football reporters and a single photographer. The rest could be handed over to freelances.
He’d added insult to injury by giving her the meaningless title of northern news editor. Boss of sweet fuck all. A herder of freelances, a harrier of contacts, a chaser of headlines and no time at all to do the kind of stories Allie lived for. He’d stripped her of the job she’d clawed her way up to, then handed her a poisoned chalice and dared her to react with anything but magnanimity. Because what he’d done to all her colleagues had been worse. Allie knew it, and still despised herself for going along with Lockhart’s dark-hearted game. Sorry, restructuring plan.
So she turned up her coat collar and cooried in against the cold, glad of the fleece lining of her slouched mid-calf boots. They’d been a freebie from a fashion shoot her partner Rona had been running for She magazine; Allie had benefited from the disdain Rona showed any footwear (apart from walking boots) with less than a two-inch heel.
It wasn’t idle waiting. It never was with Allie. Her eyes were busy, ranging over the crowds, the police, her fellow hacks. Her ears were alert too, ready to pick up anything that might add colour or texture to whatever she’d end up writing for Sunday’s paper. Or that might provide a lead she could pass on to one of the freelances she used now instead of colleagues. She might not be an investigative journalist any longer, but the instincts she’d cultivated over a decade refused to lie down and die.
The service was impossible to avoid, hymns wavering on the air, the indistinct sound of prayers and readings and eulogies carried from the church and from the live transmissions that leaked around them. The minister spoke of the importance of valuing forgiveness over revenge. As if there were anyone obvious to wreak revenge on, Allie thought.
At last, the doors opened and the mourners emerged. Heads down in grief or against the weather, their shades of black rendered them almost indistinguishable. All but Lockhart, who made his way down the path, head held high, elegant eyebrows raised, scanning the crowds. As he reached the street, he peeled off and made for Allie. He leaned over her and spoke, his treacle tones at odds with the steel in his words. As usual. ‘Burns.’ A pause. ‘Make sure you include me in whatever your story is on Sunday. There’s a couple of photographers here from the Clarion, they’ll let you have some shots to choose from.’ Then the smile, bestowed on the crowd around her as much as on Allie herself. One hand twitched upwards, as if he’d been about to give them a gracious wave then thought better of it. How very unlike him.
Only four days into the new year, and already Allie was despising herself for being at the beck and call of Ace Lockhart’s monstrous ego. Not for the first time, she wondered how her dreams and ambitions had slumped so low.
2
The sound of Enya’s Watermark greeted Allie when she opened the front door, rapidly followed by the insanely happy arrival of their Border terrier Germaine, her tail wagging like a stubby metronome. Allie bent to scratch her ears, then headed for the source of the music. It was only a Wednesday, but when Allie walked into their kitchen after the gloom of Lockerbie, it was as social as a Saturday-night dinner party. The remnants of a cheese course were scattered round the table and Rona was holding court, close to the punchline of an anecdote Allie had heard before but still relished. Her purple silk shirt shimmered in the lights, adding even more drama to her tale. Around her sat three of their friends, rapt and already chuckling. For a moment, no one noticed Allie and she drank in the room. These were some of the people who had embraced them since their arrival from Glasgow half a dozen years before. The people who had made them feel less like exiles.
Alix Thomas, rock drummer and record producer, passionate, innovative and provocative, her halo of glossy black curls an inheritance from her Barbadian father, her sharp features and startling green eyes from her Manc mother, relaxed in a black knock-off Sergio Tacchini shell suit; Jess Jones, research chemist with a pharmaceutical giant, whose blonde blue-eyed innocent English-rose prettiness masked an intelligence that took no prisoners and a cynical wit that cut the feet from under anyone who tried to write her off, in her usual uniform of pressed white shirt and jeans; and Bill Mortensen, a private eye whose fair Viking appearance couldn’t have been less noir and whose brilliance with computers was matched only by his restless quest to find the right woman, probably hampered by his fondness for primary-coloured polo shirts and wrinkled chinos. They’d arrived severally in Allie and Rona’s lives and now it was hard to remember the enforced narrowness of their life in Glasgow. There, it had been hard enough to be taken on anything like equal terms as a woman; to be out would have been professional suicide for both journalists.
They’d managed to stay under the gaydar for a few years, each maintaining their own homes but spending the nights together in one or the other. But it had all become too much for Allie when she’d been handed a story by the newsdesk about a social worker who’d abandoned her four children to the care of her lorry-driver husband so she could move in with another woman. A former client to boot, just to add to the tabloid salaciousness. Allie had done some digging and uncovered evidence that the husband had a history of violence towards his wife. But when she’d explained this to the deputy news editor, he’d literally rubbed his hands in glee. ‘That’s even better, Allie. The heartless bitch leaves her kids with a violent husband. Ya beauty!’
She couldn’t get out of writing the story, so she’d made it as dull as she could manage – woman forced to abandon her children to escape brutal husband – but what had appeared in the paper had been transformed by the subs’ desk into a half-page sensation whose homophobia was matched only by its misogyny.
And so she’d put the word out that she was looking for a job in Manchester, a city variously known in tabloid terms as Gaychester, Gunchester and Madchester. It took only a couple of months before she heard that the Sunday Globe was seeking to expand its investigative team in the North. It felt like a miracle – Allie’s dream job opening up in the very city where she wanted to live. Her only concern was what it would mean for her relationship with Rona.
She should have known better. Rona had responded with a gleeful whoop, a chest-crushing hug and the bottle of Lanson Black Label that had been sitting in the fridge waiting for a celebration. ‘Manchester! Bloody amazing,’ she’d said, toasting Allie. ‘A feature round every corner. With my contacts, I’ll be in clover.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Freelance, Allie. I can jack in the tramlines of the Clarion women’s page and finally cover all the stuff I love. Fashion, design, music, theatre. Coronation Street.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘We’re moving up in the world, Allie.’
And so it had seemed. Allie had sold her flat, Rona had rented out her mews cottage with its Alasdair Gray mural, and they’d bought the house in Chorltonville with a mortgage that still felt immense to Allie. But the money came flowing in, thanks to her new improved salary and Rona’s apparently endless stream of articles. They’d made forays into the city’s gay subculture, tentative at first, but more openly as their anxieties subsided and they made new friends.
Now Allie watched her partner, animated and self-assured, blond hair glinting in the bright light of the kitchen, and felt the familiar surge of pride and love, still as strong after nearly a decade since their first kiss. ‘But Chaz had misremembered the room number,’ Rona said, filling her voice with suspense. ‘Instead of 354, he’d told the night porter 345. And that, my friends, is how I was wakened at four in the morning by a naked photographer in my hotel room.’ And as everyone laughed, Rona jumped up and crossed the room to pull Allie into her arms. ‘You’re back,’ she murmured into her ear, then gently kissed the corner of her mouth. She drew Allie to the table, where Alix had already poured her a glass of red.
‘How was it?’ Jess asked as Allie shrugged out of her coat and took a deep draught of wine.
‘Draining. I feel like I’ve been swimming in other people’s sadness.’ Allie sighed. She caught a concerned look from Rona. ‘But they did it all with so much dignity.’
‘I’ve been amazed by the lack of strident calls for revenge,’ Bill said.
‘I do think people are still in shock. As soon as the intelligence services identify for sure who’s behind it, you can bet there’ll be reprisals.’ Jess reached for the grapes and broke off a small bunch, putting them on a plate with a few oatcakes and placing it in front of Allie. ‘Eat,’ she said, pushing the remains of the cheese towards her.
‘Sorry, we finished the beef stroganoff,’ Alix said.
‘I’m not that hungry.’ Allie carved a chunk of crumbly white Lancashire and a wedge of Camembert. ‘As if the funeral wasn’t hard enough, bloody Ace Lockhart had to make a point of monstering me.’
‘What do you mean, Burns?’ Alix leaned forward, frowning. Everyone knew the stories about Lockhart and his war of the tabloids with Rupert Murdoch. Being friends with Allie had let her friends feel they had the inside track on the larger-than-life figure that the rest of the media maintained a love-hate relationship with. They despised him but they couldn’t resist him; he was perpetually good copy.
Allie sighed. ‘The usual ego trip. He spotted me on his way into the church then hit me up afterwards with a demand that I include his presence in whatever I write for Sunday’s paper. It’s so galling. He destroys my career then expects me to join his fan club.’
‘He probably thinks he’s made your career, not wrecked it,’ Jessica observed. ‘After all, he made the whole of the northern team redundant except for you. I bet he’s convinced you owe him big time.’
Rona opened another bottle and topped up the glasses. ‘If he spares you a thought at all. The likes of us, we’re just dust beneath his chariot wheels.’
Allie grimaced. ‘Enough about Lockhart. I’m sorry I brought him up. Cheer me up, guys. Somebody must have had a better day than me. Jess, what have you been up to?’
‘It’s actually been an exciting week, believe it or not. My group is prepping for a clinical trial of a combined therapy to prevent HIV-positive people from developing pneumocystis. We’re excited about it, because it’s such a major life-threatening infection for patients with AIDS. And I also heard today that one of the research groups reckons they’ve got some promising leads towards a vaccine against HIV.’
‘That’d be a game changer,’ Bill said.
‘No kidding,’ Jess said. ‘I’m thinking of applying to join the team. But it’s probably going to be based at our research facility in Groningen and I’m not sure I want to move to Holland.’
‘Very flat, Holland,’ Rona said. ‘You’d miss the hills.’
‘More importantly, I’d miss evenings like this.’ She grimaced as the music changed to the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. ‘Though maybe not the background music.’
Allie shrugged. ‘It’s only dinner-party wallpaper. But Jess, we relocated and it’s the best thing we ever did.’
‘Second best, surely?’ Rona said with a cheeky little smile. ‘Jess, you really should go for it. You’d miss us and we’d miss you, but there’s flights every day to Amsterdam and we’d visit. And there are plenty lovely dykes out there to change your life with.’
‘Not to mention that it’d be so exciting to be out there at the leading edge of research that could change the world,’ Allie said drily.
‘And God knows this is one bit of it that needs changing,’ Alix sighed. ‘Bill, do you remember Matt Singleton?’
Bill tugged at his beard. ‘Bass player? Used to be with Trudge? Were you not in the Anarcho-Syndicalists with him back in the olden days?’
Jess sniggered. ‘Catchy name.’
Alix shrugged. ‘Catchier than our tunes, trust me. Hence the past tense. Somehow Mattie always ended up being the best musician in an average band, so when I started the studio, I got back in touch with him. Always need good session players, you know?’ She pulled a leather tobacco pouch out of her pocket and began skinning up with a casualness born of long practice. ‘I knew he was doing heroin, but for a long time it looked like he was running the game, not the drug.’ She crumbled some dope into the tobacco. ‘But sometimes the need beats your good sense, and he shared his needles.’ She sighed. Allie knew what was coming. ‘And boom, HIV ambushed the boy.’
‘High price to pay for a moment of stupidity,’ Rona said. HIV, they all knew, was the death sentence. The only question was how long it would take AIDS to reach you. But it didn’t matter if it was a crawl or a gallop, the end result was the same.
‘Yeah. So what I was doing today, Allie, was a little bit of personal grief. I went to see poor old Mattie who isn’t dead yet but is literally at death’s door, finger poised above the bellpush.’ She forced a smile that went nowhere near her eyes then licked the adhesive on the Rizla, closing the joint with neat expertise.
Allie reached out and covered Alix’s free hand with hers, just as Bill put an arm round her thin shoulders. ‘That’s shit,’ he said.
Alix faked a laugh. ‘Yeah, no idea where I’m going to get a decent bass man now.’ She withdrew her hand from Allie’s and sparked up her lighter. She took a deep drag on the joint, then passed it to Bill.
‘Is he being looked after?’ Jess asked.
‘He’s in the rehab unit out at Prestwich. Well, they call it rehab, but these days it’s more like a warehouse for the dying.’ Alix gave herself a little shake. ‘That’s not fair, I’m sorry. The staff are great. And they’re running clinics for the patients who are HIV positive but haven’t developed full-blown AIDS yet. Helping them to get clean and stay off the smack.’ She looked straight at Allie. ‘You know what the funny thing is? This fifteen-bed unit in north Manchester? More than half the guys there are your lot.’
Genuinely puzzled, Allie asked, ‘What do you mean, my lot?’
‘Scotchies. It’s not just whisky you’re exporting these days. It’s junkies too.’
3
There was nothing outside the tinted windows of the Jaguar to distract Genevieve Lockhart. The grey sweep of the motorway that whisked her from the airport to her father’s house was dull enough in daylight; after dark, she could have been anywhere. What, she wondered, lay behind Ace Lockhart’s latest summons? He’d groomed his only child from her earliest years to inherit the empire he’d built with single-minded determination; there had been no choice but to give in. And besides, he’d always painted it as an exciting prospect. But he liked to keep her guessing and she had no idea why she’d been called away from supper with friends to board the Ace Media private helicopter. That ignorance provoked a niggle of anxiety.
They left the motorway and drove down a wide street lined with tenements. Suddenly those gave way on one side to tall spiked railings, behind them a line of mature trees, bare now but in the summer a colour chart of green – limes, sycamores, oaks, beeches, birches, alders and rowans side by side, their trunks obscuring the parkland beyond. A quarter of a mile passed, then the car swung into a wide driveway. The driver pressed a button on a remote control and the elaborate wrought-iron gates stuttered open.
Every time she arrived here, Genevieve couldn’t resist a wry smile. If anything was a tribute to her father’s deal-making, it was Voil House. The Palladian mansion had been built on the proceeds of the slave trade, and stuffed with valuable furniture, paintings, ceramics and silver. The extensive parkland had been designed to showcase an unrivalled collection of rare plants. The rhododendron collection alone was world class. The last of the Voils, Sir Alexander, had died childless in 1956 and he’d left a will of infuriating idiosyncrasy. The house and grounds were left to Glasgow City Council with the proviso that the plant collection should be maintained and open to the public for the same price as a ticket on the city underground. The house and its contents were to remain intact and were not to be open to the public. If the council failed in its obligations, the whole estate was to be sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds donated to the Royal Horticultural Society. In vain, the city council had gone to court to vary the terms of the bequest. They were stuck with the off-white elephant.
Their unlikely saviour had been Wallace Lockhart. In exchange for a peppercorn rent, he agreed to maintain the mansion. There was nothing in the will to say the contents had to remain in the exact spot where they’d been when Sir Alexander Voil had died, so Ace had moved everything he disliked upstairs to the attic floor. The dining room and one of the drawing rooms remained in their full magnificence to impress visitors, but in the rooms he and Genevieve routinely used, he’d installed comfortable modern furniture. The one thing he hadn’t been able to budge them on was installing a helipad in the grounds.
That evening, she found him in the room he called the den. Half the size of a football pitch, it was furnished with vast sofas, marble-topped tables, a lavish drinks cabinet and the biggest TV screen Genevieve had ever seen. Instead of gilt-framed portraits, the walls were lined with photographs of Ace in the company of heads of state and film stars. He was sprawled in the only armchair, designed to his own specification, his feet up on a wide leather pouffe. His shoes lay askew where he’d kicked them off and his tie was a crumple on the rug by his chair. On his kettledrum stomach, he balanced a tumbler with a thin meniscus of what she knew would be an absurdly expensive rare malt whisky. Its rarity was his excuse for his sparing measures; Genevieve suspected it had more to do with his need always to be in control. She had never seen him drunk.
