Hostage to Murder

In memory of Gina Weissand (1946–2001)who was everything a friend should be.You blessed us all, babe, and we miss you.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.

‘Of Marriage and the Single Life’

Francis Bacon

Title PageCopyrightDedicationPart OneChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenPart TwoChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty OneChapter Twenty TwoChapter Twenty ThreeChapter Twenty FourChapter Twenty FiveChapter Twenty SixEpilogueKeep ReadingAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorBy the Same AuthorAbout the Publisher

PART ONE

1

A murder of crows swore at each other in the trees that lined the banks of the River Kelvin. A freezing drizzle from a low sky bleached the landscape to grey. Nothing, Lindsay thought, could be further from California. The only thing in common with the home she’d left three months before was the rhythm of her feet as she ran her daily two miles.

On mornings like this, Lindsay found it hard to remember that she’d once loved this city. When she’d come back to Scotland after university and journalism training, she’d thought Glasgow was paradise. She had money in her pocket, she was young, free and single and the city had just begun the process of reinvigoration that had, by the millennium, made it one of the most exciting cities in Britain. Now, fifteen years later, there was no denying it was a good place to live. The cultural life was vibrant. The restaurants were cosmopolitan and covered the whole range from cheap and cheerful to glamorous and gourmet. There were plenty of beautiful places to live, and more green spaces than most cities could boast. Some of the finest countryside in the world was within an hour’s drive.

And all she could think of was how much she wanted to be somewhere else. Seven happy and successful years in California had left her feeling that this long narrow land was no longer full of possibilities for her. Partly, it was the weather, she thought, wiping the cold mixture of sweat and rain from her face. Who wouldn’t long for sunshine and the Pacific surf on a morning like this?

Partly, it was that she missed her dog. Mutton had always accompanied her on her runs, his black tail wagging eagerly whenever she walked downstairs in her jogging clothes. But she couldn’t contemplate putting him in quarantine kennels for six months, so he’d been handed over to some friends in the Bay Area who’d guaranteed him a happy life. He’d probably forgotten her already.

But mostly it was not having anything meaningful to do with her days. Lindsay would never have described herself as someone who was defined by her job, but now that she had none, she had come to realize how much of her identity had been bound up in what she did for a living. Without some sort of employment, she felt cast adrift. When people asked, ‘And what do you do?’ she had no answer. There were few things she hated more than the sense of powerlessness that provoked in her.

In California, Lindsay had had a response, one she felt proud of, one she knew carried a degree of respect. She’d reluctantly abandoned her post lecturing in journalism at Santa Cruz to come back to Scotland because her lover Sophie had been offered the chair of obstetrics at Glasgow University. Lindsay had protested that she didn’t have anything to go back for, but Sophie had managed to convince her she was mistaken. ‘You’ll walk into a teaching job in Scotland,’ she’d said. ‘And if it takes a while, you can always go back to freelance journalism. You know you were one of the best.’