ew assignments appealed less to Lindsay than royal visits. To be stuck with the rest of the pack, trailing behind some lesser scion of a monarchy she despised, festooned with badges of different colours to tell the security guards where one could and couldn't go, was not her idea of a good day's work. And as a common freelance she could not even complain as bitterly as the rest of the press were doing, for she was glad of a day's work, tedious though it might be. And on that Tuesday, tedious it certainly was, particularly after the excitements of her weekend in Derbyshire. A children's hospital, an art exhibition and a new youth club on a housing estate had all been superficially visited and the correct rituals observed. The photographers had taken their pictures, the reporters had scrambled their words together, every¬one had kept in their rightful places. So, as she stood watching the royal jet take off through the rain in the late afternoon, Lindsay felt an enormous sense of relief. Another day, another dollar.

She said goodbye to her photographer and found a phone. It was after five by the time she had finished dictating copy, but she was nevertheless surprised when the newsdesk told her not to bother coming into the office for the last couple of hours of her shift and to call it a day. 'See you tomorrow, then', she said, quickly putting down the phone before they could change their minds. There was a spring in her step as she walked over to the car park and climbed into her MG. Being in love made a difference, she thought wryly. Even with a possible murderer.

Twenty minutes later she was unlocking the front door of her top-floor tenement flat. She sighed with pleasure as she closed the door behind her. There was something on the answering machine, she noticed, but she ignored it, went through to the living-room and poured herself a generous whisky. She took her glass over to the window, sat down and lit a cigarette as she gazed over the trees to the distant university tower which stabbed the skyline to her left. She always relished returning to her eyrie, and loved the view that had nothing to do with the Glasgow of popular mythology; that hard, mean city composed of razor gangs and high-rise slums was not the city that most Glaswegians recognised as their home. Sure, there were bits of the city that were barely civilised. But for most people Glasgow now was a good place to live, a place with its own humour, its own pride.

After a while, she got to her feet with a sigh and went back through to the hall to listen to her messages. She switched the machine to playback and rewound the tape. The voices came through. 'This is Bill Grenville at the Sunday Tribune. Can you do the eleven o'clock shift for me on Saturday? Ring and let me know as soon as possible.' Bleep. 'Lindsay, Mary here. Fancy a pint tonight to get the royal dust out of your throat? I'll be in the bar about nine.' Bleep. 'This is Cordelia Brown. I'm catching the six o'clock shuttle. Meet me at Glasgow Airport about quarter to seven. If you're not there, I'll wait in the bar.'

'Hellfire!' Lindsay exclaimed. 'It's five past six now. What the bloody hell is she up to?' There was no time to shower, but it took only five minutes to change from her working uniform of skirt, shirt and jacket into a pair of jeans, a thick cotton shirt and a clean sweatshirt, and to give her face a quick scrub. Then she was running down the three flights of stairs, shrugging into a sheepskin jacket and into her car again. She had deliberately not allowed herself to wonder what was bringing Cordelia to Glasgow for fear that hope would betray her. To keep her mind off the subject, she turned the car radio on to hear the tail-end of the news. She drove fast down the expressway and over the Kingston Bridge, trying to convince herself that the day's financial report was truly fascinating. Then, in the middle of the news headlines, she had her second shock of the hour, a shock so acute it caused her to take her foot clean off the accelerator momentarily, to the consternation of the driver behind her, who flashed his lights as he swerved convulsively into the outside lane.

Lindsay could hardly believe that she had heard correctly. But the newsreader's words were branded on her brain: 'Police investigating the brutal murder of cellist Lorna Smith-Couper at a girls' boarding school at the weekend have today made an arrest. Patricia Gregory Callaghan, aged 32, a housemistress at the school, has been charged with murder and will appear before High Peak magistrates tomorrow morning.' Now she understood why Cordelia had jumped on the first plane to Glasgow. Lindsay threw the car round the bend in the airport approach road and parked illegally outside the main entrance, grateful for the royal visit sticker which still adorned her windscreen.

The arrival of Cordelia's flight was being announced as she ran up the escalator. She resisted the temptation to slip into the bar for a quick drink and headed for the Domestic Arrivals gate. She could see the first passengers in the distance as they walked up the long approach to the main concourse. They were only about twenty yards away when she spotted Cordelia. Then Cordelia was through the gate; without pause for thought, the two fell into each other's arms and held on tight. 'You've heard, then?' asked Cordelia. 'Yes. Only just now, on the radio in the car.' 'I thought you would have heard at work.' 'No, I've been out on the road all day. Look, we can't talk here. Let's go back to my flat.'

Lindsay picked up the leather holdall which Cordelia had dropped when they met and led the way back to the car. Cordelia was silent till they were roaring back down the motorway. Then she said, 'I'm not just here off my own bat. I did want to come up to see you because I know you love Paddy as much as I do, but I wouldn't have had the nerve to do it without being prodded. Pamela Overton rang me not long after the police took Paddy away. She wanted to enlist your help, and mine, in trying to find out what really happened. Can you believe it? She put it perfectly, though - just enough flattery to pull it off. "With Miss Gordon's talent for investigative journalism and your novelist's understanding of human psychology, you might be able to ensure there is no miscarriage of justice." You see, she knows Paddy couldn't have done it.'

'She's got a way of making people do things, hasn't she? I can't imagine why she thinks we'll be able to succeed where the police have made an absolute cock-up,' said Lindsay. She was focusing on the road ahead and talking about Pamela Overton, but her thoughts were on Cordelia and the nagging fear at the back of her mind.

'I suppose she thinks that our personal interest in Paddy will make us that bit sharper,' Cordelia replied. There was silence as they swung off the motorway on to the Dumbarton road. Lindsay pulled up alongside an Indian grocer's. The street was as busy as midday, with people shopping, gossiping and hurrying by to keep out the cold of the raw autumn weather.

'Won't be a tick,' she promised, hurrying into the shop. She returned a few minutes later, clutching a cooked chicken, some onions, mushrooms and natural yoghurt. 'Dinner,' she muttered as she drove off again.

Lindsay pulled up outside her flat. 'But this is beautiful,' Cordelia exclaimed. 'I didn't know Glasgow was like this!' She gestured in the sodium-lit darkness at the crescent of trees outside Lindsay's door, at the Botanic Gardens and the River Kelvin beyond, at the newly sandblasted yellow sandstone tenements elegant under their dramatic lighting.

'Most people don't,' Lindsay replied defensively as she led the way upstairs. 'We've also got eighteen parks, some of the finest art collections in the world, terrific architecture and Tennents lager. It's not all high-rise flats, gap sites and vandals. But don't get me started on my hobby horse. Come on in and have a drink and something to eat.'

Lindsay lit the gas fire in the living-room and poured them both a drink. She said, 'Now, come through to the kitchen with me while I get some dinner together and tell me exactly what you know.'

As Lindsay put together a quick chicken curry, Cordelia spoke, pacing up and down the kitchen floor. 'The first I knew about it was when the phone rang this afternoon. It was Paddy. She used her one permitted phone call to ring me because she knows I have a good solicitor and she wanted either her or someone local recommended by her. She wasn't able to tell me much except that she'd been arrested and charged, and that somehow the police had found out she had some sort of motive.

'So I called my solicitor who put me on to a firm in Manchester who got someone out there right away. It's a very bright-sounding young woman called Gillian Markham who specialises in criminal work. I'd just got all that organised, plus phoning Paddy's parents to break the bad news, when Pamela Overton rang.

'She told me they'd had Paddy in for questioning for most of last night. Obviously, she doesn't know all the details of why they've arrested Paddy, but she did tell me this much. You see, no one saw or heard anything of Lorna after Paddy had left her. And now they've got a couple of other bits of evidence which, as far as they're concerned, tie the murder to Paddy. They have statements from several people, saying Paddy was hanging around in the music department for ages for no apparent reason. And the toggle on the garrotte comes from Paddy's own duffel coat. It normally hangs in the cloakroom just outside her rooms.'

'How can they be sure?'

'It's got special horn toggles, not ordinary wooden ones.'

'Oh God, they've tied her up well and truly, haven't they? It's all circumstantial and I doubt if they'd get a conviction before a jury if that's all they've got. But it hangs together, especially since, from what you said about motive, they obviously know all about the drugs business,' said Lindsay, slicing onions savagely.

'What drugs business?' Cordelia interrupted, bewildered.

'Paddy's supposed motive. I thought from what you said that you knew all about it,' Lindsay replied, and proceeded to tell Cordelia the depressing tale. As she led the way back to the living room, she added, 'So what are we going to do? How do we go about making this mess any less chaotic?'

They sat down. Cordelia stretched out on the faded chintz sofa and looked appraisingly round her at the spacious, high-ceilinged room. Lindsay had painted the walls chocolate brown, with cream woodwork, picture rail and ceiling. The room was big enough, with its huge bay window, to stand it. On the walls were Lindsay's black and white photographs of buildings and street scenes in Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow and London. Book cases stretched the length of one wall; along another was a massive carved oak sideboard which Lindsay had inherited when she bought the flat and which she feared she would have to leave behind if she ever left as it was so enormous. There was a stereo which Lindsay had built into a series of cupboards under the bay window, with shelves for records and cassettes alongside. She said, 'I like this room. But it seems very heartless of me to be relaxing here while Paddy languishes in some spartan bloody cell. How could they be so stupid? Any fool can see that Paddy couldn't hurt a fly. She might demolish people verbally, but violence is something she'd simply find beneath that dignity of hers. Not her style at all.' 'So what are we going to do about it?'

'Will you come back to Derbyshire with me? When we were talking on Sunday night, you seemed to have one or two ideas about other people with motives. We can see Paddy and find out if there's anything she can tell us. If we can get people to talk to us, maybe we can find out things the police have missed. I know it all sounds a bit School Friend and Girl's Crystal stuff, but perhaps we can just pull something off. After all, we're starting from a different premise. We know Paddy didn't do it.'

Lindsay thought for a moment. 'I can't go anywhere till tomorrow night. I've got to work tomorrow. I can cancel Thursday and Friday, but I can't afford to let the Clarion down tomorrow. We could go down then.'

Time. A few hours can't make that much difference. Besides, I've no idea how to go about this. What should our plan of campaign be?'

Lindsay shrugged. 'I've no experience of these things. Usually on investigative stories, you have a source who tells you where to look for your information. Or at least you have an idea where to find some background. This is a very different set-up. It always seems so easy for the Hercule Poirots and Lord Peter Wimseys of this world. Everyone talks their head off to them. But why should anyone want to talk to us?'

'Because people love being interviewed. It makes them feel important, and besides, no one who knows Paddy would want her to go to prison.'

'No one except the murderer. And I hope whoever it is can sleep easy tonight. Because he or she won't have many easy nights once I get after them, that's for sure.'