“Nevertheless, that’s not all that’s in here. I didn’t actually get round to telling you what I was after today, did I? Well, the thing is, Julie, I came here with a theory about who killed Tom, only I wasn’t sure if I had any motive for that person to kill him.” Lindsay closed the notebook and tapped it against the edge of the table. “Now I have. The only question is, what do we do about it?”

Chapter 15

15

“Time limits will be strictly adhered to. When your time is up, there’s no argument about it. You will be cut off in your prime.”

from “Advice for New Delegates”, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

Lindsay glanced over her shoulder, checking that Sophie was still on their tail. Her attempts to persuade Julie Jack to stay out of the impending confrontation had resembled water dripping on a stone; carrying on for a thousand years might have had an effect, but in the short term, there was no visible change. Now all Lindsay could hope for was damage limitation. Which was why she was sitting in the passenger seat of Julie’s Land Rover, bucketing through the Yorkshire lanes, with Sophie struggling to keep up on unfamiliar roads.

When Lindsay had dropped her bombshell, Julie Jack had seized Tom Jack’s notebook from her and flicked frenziedly through the pages, desperately trying to find something that would make sense of Lindsay’s monstrous words. Frustrated by his neat shorthand, she’d thrown the notebook back at Lindsay, shouting, “Show me! You just bloody show me were it says owt about getting hissen killed! Don’t tell me he knew he were for it and he did nowt to stop it!” She raised a fist as if to strike Lindsay.

Swiftly, Sophie gripped the frantic woman by the shoulders, moving her away from Lindsay and into a chair. Julie glared at them both, then suddenly dropped her head on to her folded arms and bawled like a calf taken from its mother. Sophie patted her shoulder, making “there, there” noises. The storm of weeping stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and Julie looked up at them both, wiping her nose on her sleeve like the defiant child she must have once been. “Time you told me what’s been going on, Lindsay Gordon. I’d rather hear it from t’horse’s mouth than get it second hand on t’telly.”