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First published in Great Britain by The Womenâs Press Ltd 1991
Copyright © Val McDermid 1991
Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007191765
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007301829
Version: 2014-12-08
Glasgow, Scotland, December 1989
Jackie Mitchell stared down at the murdered body of Alison Maxwell, fear and horror mingling in equal measure. Alison was sprawled on the familiar bedroom carpet, limbs crooked, blonde hair spread round her head in a jagged halo. The ravages of strangulation had left her face barely recognisable. The scarf that was wound into a tight ligature round her neck was, however, only too easily identifiable. Jackie would know her own distinctive yellow tartan muffler anywhere. Slowly, with an enormous effort of will, she forced herself to look up.
Jackie gazed round the crowded courtroom, only too aware of the accusing eyes that had already made their judgment about her guilt. The photograph she clutched in her sweating hands was her first sight of Alison Maxwellâs corpse. But she knew that the number of people in the stuffy courtroom who genuinely believed that could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Certainly the fifteen members of the jury, who were flicking through the prosecutionâs photograph album with looks of shock, horror and disgust that mirrored her own emotions, were not among them.
The wiry figure of Duncan Leslie, the Advocate Depute charged with presenting the prosecution case against her, paced to and fro across the wood-panelled courtroom as he gently drew every last scrap of damning information from the pathologist in the witness box. âAnd in your opinion,â Leslie probed in his soft Borders accent, âare the features of this case consistent with strangulation by a male or a female?â
The pathologist paused momentarily, glancing towards the dock, refusing to meet Jackieâs pale green eyes. His mouth tightened in disapproval. âIn my view,â he said in a clipped voice, âI would say that this method of killing would suggest either a woman, or a man who was not very strong.â
âWould you explain that opinion to the court?â
âWell, strangulation with a ligature like this scarf requires considerable strength. But the need for brute force is avoided by using a lever with the ligature. In this case, as you can see from Photograph Number Five, the killer used the handle of a strong hairbrush to twist the ligature tighter. That implies to me that the strangler was not sufficiently strong to perform the act manually, thus suggesting either a woman or a weak male.â
Another nail in my coffin, thought Jackie in despair, her hands involuntarily gripping the wooden rail of the dock. As the evidence droned on around her, she looked despondently round the courtroom. In her seventeen years as a journalist, sheâd had little experience of the courts. While sheâd been a young trainee on a weekly paper in Ayrshire, sheâd occasionally covered routine cases in the Sheriff Court. But after that, she had become a feature writer and had never even crossed the threshold of the imposing High Court building by the Clyde.
It wasnât an environment she felt comfortable with, unlike the crowd of news reporters crammed into the press bench. All men, for crime reporting was still a male preserve in Glasgow. They sat there, hour after hour, like eager jackals, taking down every detail in their meticulous shorthand. And tomorrow, she knew, the bricks of evidence that were slowly building a wall round her would be reassembled to provide the foundations of sensational stories that would strip all her privacy from her. She knew most of these men. That was the hardest part of all. For ten years, she had been a leading freelance feature writer in the city, working for all the major newspapers and magazines. These were men sheâd laughed with, gossiped with, drunk with. Now, as she studied them intent on their task, they looked like strangers. Familiar features seemed to have shifted, hardened, changed somehow. She wasnât their pal Jackie any more. She was a brutal bitch, an animal with a perverted sexuality who had killed one of their number. In life, Alison Maxwell had been a talented Scottish