Report for Murder by Val McDermid (The Women's Press Crime 1987)

 

Lindsay Gordon put murder to the back of her mind and settled down in the train compartment to enjoy the broken greys and greens of the Derbyshire scenery. Rather like home, she decided. Except that in Scotland, the greens were darker, the greys more forbidding. Although in Glasgow, where she now lived, there was hardly enough green to judge. She congratulated herself on finishing the detective novel just at the point where Manchester suburbia yielded place to this attractive landscape foreign to her. Watching it unfold gave her the first answer to the question that had been nagging her all day: what the hell was she doing here? How could a cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist (as she mockingly described herself) be on her way to spend a weekend in a girls’ public school?

Of course, there were the answers she’d been able to use to friends: she had never visited this part of England and wanted to see what it was like; she was a great believer in ‘knowing thine enemy’, so it came under the heading of opportunities not to be missed; she wanted to see Paddy Callaghan, who had been responsible for the invitation. But she remained unconvinced that she was doing the right thing. What had made her mind up was the realisation that, given Lindsay’s current relationship with the Inland Revenue, anything that had a cheque as an end product couldn’t be ignored.

The fact that she cheerfully despised the job she was about to do was not a novel sensation. In the unreal world of popular journalism which she inhabited, she was continually faced with tasks that made her blood boil. But like other tabloid journalists who laid claim to a set of principles, she argued that, since popular newspapers were mass culture, if people with brains and compassion opted out the press would only sink further into the gutter. But in spite of having this missionary zeal to keep her warm, Lindsay often felt the chill wind of her friends’ disapproval. And she had to admit to herself that saying all this always made her feel a pompous hypocrite. However, since this assignment involved writing for a magazine with some credibility, she was doubly pleased that it would avoid censure in the pub as well as provide cash, and that was enough to stifle the stirrings of contempt for Derbyshire House Girls’ School.

Think Fast, Mr. Peters by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1987)

Jeremy, who had placed himself between Lorre and the glass doors, nodded and said, “I suggest we move away from these glass doors into a more protected area. It is one thing to accept our fate and quite another to tempt it.”

“But,” said Lorre, surreptitiously pulling out a silver case and removing a cigarette, “if our fate is written then we cannot tempt it, only fruitlessly seek to avoid it, in which case we become a source of amusement for the gods.”

“But,” Jeremy said solemnly, “as Schopenhauer said, ‘We must live and act as if we have a choice, a control over our futures, or we will simply sit in the corner and wait for death.’”

“Or,” said Lorre blowing out a puff of smoke, “enter into a state of meditation like certain Buddhist priests who attain the blissful state of Nirvana.”

“Hey, guys,” I said. “This is great, fascinating, but until that great come-and-get-it day, I’d like to keep my client alive, save a dentist, and eat regular. Let’s get this going.”

“As you wish,” said Lorre.”

Dangerous in Love by Leslie Thomas (Penguin Books 1987)

There were moments when it seemed to Detective Constable Dangerous Davies that mayhem moved into his path, marking him purposefully out, isolating him, and then engulfing him, like those small individual whirlwinds that travelled around in parts of America and which he had seen on television. It was so on this ordinary damp night in early October as he and Mod Lewis, the unemployed Welsh philosopher, were walking to their lodgings at 'Bali Hi', Furtman Gardens, London NW, from an evening at The Babe In Arms public house. They were humming as they walked.

At the Neasden end of Power Station Lane, under the drizzle of the cooling towers, they heard the distant but unmistakable sounds of a fracas. Davies halted like a troubled dog. 'A punch-up,' he said. Mod stood, his face damp and moon-pale in the drizzle. His heavy head rolled to one side as he listened.

'Singing,' he ventured. 'They're only singing. Tuesday's not a fighting night.'

A crash like cannon fire came from the far end of the street. 'Somebody going through a door,' said Davies.

At once, the singing became louder, less enclosed. 'Irish,' he added. 'I suppose we'd better have a look.'

'You're the policeman,' said Mod, standing still.

Davies sighed: 'All right. I'll go. You ring the law. It sounds like a three-dog job to me.'

'Do you happen to have ten pence?' asked Mod.

'You have to ring 999,' Davies said. 'It's free.' Mod went off into the windy drizzle. Tentatively, Davies went along Power Station Lane to where he could see the riot . . .

A Masculine Ending by Joan Smith (Fawcett Crest Mystery 1987)

Loretta had decided to forgo a starter to give herself plenty of time to recount what had happened in Paris, as Tracey tucked into broad beans and artichoke hearts she gave him a bald account of everything she remembered about the weekend. Apart from a rather feeble joke about the Fem Sap conference—Tracey found any manifestation of organized feminism positively terrifying—he heard her out in silence. When she finished, he pushed away his empty plate and thought for a moment. Above their heads, the rain still drummed on the canvas of the canopy and splashed off on to the pavement.

"There really was a lot of blood?" he enquired at last. "Too much for the sheets to have been used to clean up after an accident? More than if someone had been having, er, a period?" He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Loretta suppressed an urge to smile. "Much more," she said.

Dangerous In Love by Leslie Thomas (Penguin 1987)

'I had a think about it when I got home,' went on the undertaker. 'And I believe there's a chap who might give you some more on it. He came to one of our meetings too. Last year. Gave us a talk on the Black Death. His name is Kinlock, Dr Christopher Kinlock. He's a medical historian. He lives somewhere in the docks area - the bit they've all smartened up. You should be able to find him all right.'

Dr Kinlock himself answered the door. There was an oddly shaped knocker. 'This house,' he said, 'was used by an apothecary two hundred years ago. I'm very pleased to have it now.' He indicated the curved steel knocker. 'That,' he said proudly, 'is a third-generation artificial hip, a prosthesis; makes a wonderful bit of door furniture, don't you think?'

Davies said uncertainly that he did. The doctor led the way through a panelled hall, beyond glass doors into a room where a gas fire was burning boldly.

Around the walls were showcases containing items of human anatomy. Davies could see a library through another door with an encased skeleton grinning at nothing. There were other skulls, bones and nameless things in jars. The death mask of a bald man occupied another container. 'Unusual room,' mentioned Davies, accepting the doctor's Scotch.

'An unusual facet of Dockland development,' smiled Kinlock. 'It's not all fancy former warehouses.' He was a small Scot with ginger eyebrows. 'It's been a fine opportunity to gather interesting specimens from medical history. I'm adding to it all the time. The death mask is of Mikhail Bakunin, the father of modern anarchy, one of only twelve made. One day, I would love to buy Napoleon's testicle.'

'That,' agreed Davies vaguely, 'would be worth having.'

'Now, you had a little poser for me,' said Kinlock. 'Not much of one because, even from your telephone conversation, I think I know what we are talking about.'

These,' said Davies. He had taken a further two screws from Lofty's box and reclaimed the first from Walter Pitt. He held the three wooden screws out in the palm of his hand.

Kinlock picked up one with a musing smile. 'Cunningly made, aren't they,' he said. 'You'd have a job having something like this turned today. They needed to be the hardest wood, and of course, non-toxic'

'What,' asked Davies, 'were they for?'

'Orthopaedic,' said Kinlock brightly. 'Screwing together bones.' He twisted one of the screws as he turned and led the way into the further room. From a shelf he eased a heavy red book and, perching a pair of rough glasses on the ridge of his nose, turned the big pages. 'Developed,' he paraphrased, 'in the nineteen twenties. A revolution in orthopaedic surgery.' Once more he twirled the wooden spiral. 'Cunning,' he said again.

Davies asked cautiously, 'How ... common were they, at the time?'

'Not so very. It wasn't long before a stainless steel screw was developed, obviously an advantage because this little lady was very finicky and very costly to make.' He looked quizzically at Davies. 'I have, incidentally, only a very vague idea why the Metropolitan Police should want to know. Is it very secret?'

Sideswipe By Charles Willeford (St. Martin's Press 1987)

"It's a peculiar thing, old-timer, but a man your age can learn something from me, although it should be the other way 'round. First I'll tell you something about me, and then I'll tell you about you."

"A man can always learn something new." Stanley filled his pipe. "There's an extra pipe if you want to smoke. I don't have no cigarettes."

"I don't smoke."

"Smoking is a comfort to a man sometimes. I like to smoke a pipe sometimes after dinner, but I don't smoke during the day--"

"Smoking comforts ordinary men, but I'm not an ordinary man. There aren't many like me left." Troy drew his lips back, exposing small even teeth. "And it's a good thing for the world that there isn't. There'll always be a few of us in America, in every generation, because only a great country like America can produce men like me. I'm not a thinker, I'm a doer. I'm considered inarticulate, so I talk a lot to cover it up.

"When you look back a few years, America's produced a fair number of us at that. Sam Houston, Jack London, Stanley Ketchel, Charlie Manson--I met him in Bakersfield once--Jack Black. Did you ever read You Can't Win, Jack Black's autobiography?"

"I been a working man most of my life, Troy. I never had much time for reading books."

"You mean you never -took- the time. I've just named a few men of style, my style, although they'd all find the comparison odious. Know why? They were all individualists, that's why. They all made their own rules, the way I do. But most of us won't rate a one-line obit in a weekly newspaper. Sometimes that rankles." Troy paused, and his brow wrinkled. "There was a writer one time... funny, I can't think of his name." Troy laughed, and shook his head. "It'll come to me after a while. What I'll do is pretend I don't want to remember it, then it'll come to me. Anyway, this famous writer said that men living in cities were like a bunch of rocks in a leather bag. They're all rubbed up against each other till they're round and smooth as marbles. If they stay in the bag long enough, there'll be no rough edges left, is the idea. But I've managed to keep my rough edges, every sharpened corner.

"But you, old-timer, you're as round and polished as an agate. You've been living in that bag for seventy-one years, man. They could put you on TV as the perfect specimen of American male. You're the son of a Polish immigrant, and you've worked all your life for an indifferent capitalistic corporation. Your son's a half-assed salesman, and you've had the typical, unhappy sexless marriage. And now, glorious retirement in sunny Florida. The only thing missing is a shiny new car in the driveway for you to wash and polish on Sundays."

"I've got a car, Troy! A new Escort, but Maya took it when she left."

"I'm not running you down, Pop. I like you. But life has tricked you. You fell into the trap and didn't know you were caught. But I'm a basic instinctive man, and that's the difference between us. Instinct, Pop." Troy lowered his voice to a whisper. "Instinct. You've survived, but mere existence isn't enough. To live, you have to be aware, and then follow your inclinations wherever they lead. Don't care what others think about you. Your own life is the only important thing, and nothing else matters. Want some more coffee?"

More Beer by Jakob Arjouni (Melville International Crime 1987)

"OK. chief, I see what you're driving at. Not a chance. I have nothing to do with any of it, I don't know any fifth man, and I'm not the least bit interested."
He crossed his arms and looked me up and down. More down than up. He was about thirty-five, lived in a run-down apartment, and knew that his train had been and gone. It was obvious that he felt somewhat illegal because he knew the fifth man's name but did divulge it, and he was proud of that, without having the faintest idea who it was he was protecting. He was the kind of guy who walks down the street with you and at some point, a tear glittering in his eye, points at a window and whispers, "That's where Ulrike Meinhof hid for a while."

Misterioso by Alan Plater (Methuen Paperback 1987)

Fantasy had always come easily to Rachel.

As a very little girl, she had wanted to be Her Majesty The Queen when she grew up. When she discovered the title was not vacant, other possibilities began to haunt her imagination: Judy Garland, Bambi, any one of The Beatles' girlfriends, Ann Jones, Miss Piggy, Lucinda Prior-Palmer and Mrs Hodges, the PE teacher. In her late teens, the onset of political fervour and a semblance of maturity produced a new set of role models: Sylvia Pankhurst, Emma Goldman, Pat Arrowsmith and Nina Simone.

Once upon a happy time in bed, Will had summarized her fantasy life with his customary gentle astringency: 'You really want to be a Greenham woman with an electric blanket and a voice like Ella Fitzgerald's'

Zoo Station by Ian Walker (Abacus 1987)

P. 27-28
Walking to the party. Tommy was describing a gig he had recently attended at the Church of Our Saviour in Rummelsburg, a few miles away. Gigs in churches were always unofficial, advertised by word-of-mouth only. Although the security police never arrested anyone inside the church grounds, there were always plenty of Staasis at such events, mingling with the audience and maybe taking photographs.

'In the front row of pews there were about twenty Staasis,' said Tommy, 'You know how they always stick out a mile in their tight white T-shirts and moustaches? Well there was this group playing a mixture of R & B and soul and one of the Staasis got really into it, jumping up and down and singing along. The other cops kept trying to restrain him, but eventually they had to escort him from the church.'

P. 319-320

I thought about the nightshift, the international community of nightshifts, all the metropolitan people toiling at nights to earn enough money for the basics plus one annual family holiday and maybe a car and some new furniture now and again if they were lucky. The driver had asked what freedom was. What was freedom for the nightshift? What was freedom for the women nightcleaners vacuuming office blocks in cities all across the west? The freedom to work all night and wait for the bus home at dawn? The freedom to fix breakfast and get the children off to school? The freedom to clean up the house and maybe catch a few hours' sleep before the children came home for their tea? The freedom to wait again for the bus that will return them to the deserted empires of the company headquarters that must be spick-and-span by morning for all the secretaries, clerks, accountants, PR people, designers, marketing and personnel managers, salesmen, lawyers and company directors, especially the place must be spick-and-span for the company directors, for all these armies of people busy making and selling useless things for fun and profit, the freedom to be part of this grand design? The freedom to enter polling booths, to inscribe twelve crosses during the course of a voting lifetime? I was thinking that people like the driver of this Trabant, people anywhere working on the nightshift, had neither the energy nor the inclination for silent bicycle protests of the kind described by the graphic designer of Köpenick. East and west, the same kind of people did these things. Dissent was also a kind of luxury. The driver of the Schwarzetaxi didn't give a fuck about freedom.

He would have felt out of place at the party in Köpenick. I had felt at home there. There was an international community of big-shots, of dissenters, of nightshift workers, all these little western worlds and eastern worlds holding up clean mirrors to each other. Big-shots in West Berlin lived in Dahlem. Big-shots in East Berlin lived in the suburb nicknamed Volvograd. Big-shots in West Berlin were capitalists. Big-shots in East Berlin were communists. Big-shots said we and spoke for all their nation. I felt drained and drunk. I wanted to shout things from the rooftops, but the things got so complicated and the words just blew around like dust in the wind.

What can I say; a writer I love so much that I had to inscribe two passages rather than the usual one for a book just (re)read to give you a flavour of his humour, humanity and sense of anger at the injustice of the world. For the millionth time on the blog, I'll recommend the following articles by Walker that originally appeared in the pages of the New Society magazine:

Anarchy in the UK

Skinheads: the cult of trouble

Also check out the comments on this old blog post which gives more background on Walker.

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1987)

- We'll ask Jimmy, said Outspan. - Jimmy'll know.

Jimmy Rabbitte knew his music. He knew his stuff alright. You'd never see Jimmy coming home from town without a new album or a 12-inch or at least a 7-inch single. Jimmy ate Melody Maker and the NME every week and Hot Press every two weeks. He listened to Dave Fanning and John Peel. He even read his sisters' Jackie when there was no one looking. So Jimmy knew his stuff.

The last time Outspan had flicked through Jimmy's records he'd seen names like Microdisney, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Otis Redding, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Scraping Foetus off the Wheel (- Foetus, said Outspan. - That's the little young fella inside the woman, isn't it?

- Yeah, said Jimmy.

- Aah, that's fuckin; horrible, tha' is.); groups Outspan had never heard of, never mind heard. Jimmy even had albums by Frank Sinatra and The Monkees.

So when Outspan and Derek decided, while Ray was out in the jacks, that their group needed a new direction they both thought of Jimmy. Jimmy knew what was what. Jimmy knew what was new, what was new but wouldn't be for long and what was going to be new. Jimmy had Relax before anyone had heard of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and he'd started slagging them months before anyone realized that they were no good. Jimmy knew his music.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin (Orion 1987)

'Fight Imperialism, fight Racism,'

A young girl wearing a mock-leather coat and little round glasses stood behind Rebus. He turned to her. She had a collecting tin in one hand and a pile of newspapers in the other.

'Fight Imperialism, fight Racism,'

'So you said,' Even now he could feel the alcohol working on his jaw muscles, freeing them of stiffness. 

'Who are you from?'

'Workers Revolutionary Party. The only way to smash the Imperialist system is for the workers to unite and smash racism. Racism is the backbone of repression.'

'Oh? Aren't you confusing two entirely different arguments there, love?'

She bristled, but was ready to argue. They always were.

'The two are inextricable. Capitalism was built on slave labour and is maintained by slave labour.'

'You don't sound much like a slave, dear. Where did you get that accent? Cheltenham?'

'My father was a slave to capitalist ideology. He didn't know what he was doing.'

'You mean you went to an expensive school?'

She was bristling now all right. Rebus lit a cigarette. He offered her one, but she shook her head. A capitalist product, he supposed, the leaves picked by slaves in South America. She was quite pretty though. Eighteen, nineteen. Funny Victorian shoes on, tight pointed little things. A long, straight black shirt. Black, the colour of dissent. He was all for dissent.

'You're a student, I suppose?'

'That's right,' she said, shuffling uncomfortably. She knew a buyer when she saw one. This was not a buyer.

'Edinburgh University?'

'Yes.'

'Studying what?'

'English and politics.'

'English? Have you heard of a guy called Eiser? He teaches there.'

She nodded.

'He's an old fascist,' she said. 'His theory of reading is a piece of right-wing propaganda to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat.'

Rebus nodded.

'What was your party again?'

'Workers Revolutionary.'

'But you're a student, eh? Not a worker, not one of the proletariat either by the sound of you.' Her face was red, her eyes burning fire. Come the revolution, Rebus would be the first against the wall. But he had not yet played his trump card. 'So really, you're contravening the Trades Description Act, aren't you? Do you have a licence from the proper authority to collect money in that tin?'

The tin was old, its old job-description torn from it. It was a plain, red cylinder, the kind used on poppy-day. But this was no poppy-day.

'Are you a cop?'

'Got it in one, love. Have you got a licence? I may have to pull you in otherwise.'

'Fucking pig!'

Feeling this was a fitting exit line, she turned from Rebus and walked to the door. Rebus, chuckling, finished his whisky. Poor girl. She would change. The idealism would vanish once she saw how hypocritical the whole games was, and what luxuries lay outside university. When she left, she'd want it all: the executive job in London, the flat, car, salary, wine-bar. She would chuck it all in for a slice of pie. But she wouldn't that just now. Now was for the reaction against upbringing. That was what university was about. They all thought they could change the world once they got away from their parents. Rebus had thought that too. He had thought to return home from the Army with a row of medals and a list of commendations, just to show them. It had not been that way, though . . .

Milk, Sulphate & Alby Starvation by Martin Millar (4th Estate 1987)

I make it out of hiding across the road to the park one Saturday because there is a festival being held there, it is organised by CND and I feel I should support it on principle besides I wanted to see the bands and I suppose that in amongst all these thousands of people I'll be safe-enough.

So I wander over and the park is absolutely full of millions of young people all not minding too much that the weather is threatening to wash us away and taking advantage of the occasion to show off their new hair colours to everyone including the police with binoculars high above on the surrounding rooftops.

The festival is fun with foodstalls and badges and kiddie entertainments and old clothes and books and small political parties and everything would seem not too bad were it not for the fact that all those young people make me feel old, I'm sure some of them are laughing quietly as I go by.

I keep my head rotating as if constantly looking for someone so no one can focus on my wrinkles and when the DJ plays old records from my childhood I pretend convincingly to myself that I've never heard them before, in fact I deliberately look puzzled as each record comes on so people will see I don't know what it is.

The Great Profundo and other stories by Bernard MacLaverty (Penguin Books 1987)

After I had finished my first painting under his direction he went up to it and looked all over its surface from six inches. He nodded with approval.

'I'll call you my drapery man.'

'What?'

'An eighteenth-century caper. Portrait painters got a man in to do the time-consuming bits - the lace and the satin stuff. The best of them was Vanaken. Hogarth drew this man's funeral with all the best painters in London behind the coffin weeping and gnashing their teeth.' [From 'The Drapery Man']