Free Deadline for Murder by Val McDermid Page A

drove along Glasgow's urban motorway, she could never accustom herself to its vagaries. It had to be the only motorway in the world where you entered and left in the fast lane! Her nationalistic friends were convinced it was all part of an evil English plot to reduce the Labour-voting Scottish population in hideous road accidents, but Lindsay preferred to believe in the Department of Transport's incompetence rather than conspiracy theory.
    She flicked the switch that put her engine into overdrive and turned the heater up full. Thundering down the motorway betrayed every draught in the elderly car's hood. At least it wasn't too far from Glasgow to the women's prison near Stirling where Jackie was being held. Claire had pulled strings to arrange an early visit for Lindsay, who had been instructed to say she was working for Jim Carstairs, Jackie's lawyer.
    Just after ten, Lindsay pulled off the motorway and drove down the quiet country roads that brought her to the prison gates. A fifteen-foot-high fence of spiked metal stakes was topped with barbed wire, stretching as far as the eye could see in both distances. The gate was equally forbidding. Lindsay parked her car in the visitors' car park opposite the gates and crossed over. She rang a bell by the gate, and a woman in prison officer's uniform emerged from a small gatehouse. She opened a panel in the gate. "Can I help you?" she asked pleasantly.
    "Good morning," said Lindsay. "I've come to see Jackie Mitchell. Mr. Carstairs arranged the appointment."
    "You're the woman from her lawyer's, are you? We were expecting you. Have you any identification?"
    Lindsay produced her driving licence and a covering letter from Jim Carstairs which she'd collected en route. The officer examined them, then opened a small door set into the gate and indicated that Lindsay should enter. "Just walk up the path to the first building and through the doors marked reception. Someone there will sort you out."
    Thanking her, Lindsay set off up the tarmac path. Her destination was a modern, three-storey block, like all the other buildings. Apart from the bars on the windows, it could have been a block of students' residences. The path was flanked by neat lawns. There was no one else in sight as Lindsay reached a pair of sturdy wooden doors with a black and white plaque that stated simply "Visitors' Reception." Lindsay tried the right-hand door, which opened on to a small room divided in two by a wide counter. On her side, there were several institutional plastic chairs. Behind the counter were two prison officers, whose conversation stopped abruptly as Lindsay entered.
    Her bag was efficiently searched, then she was led through another door, down a cream-painted corridor lined with amateurish watercolours of the Stirlingshire hills, and finally through another door into a tiny interview room. The room had one large, barred window overlooking the lawns and a distant stand of mixed conifers. Its only furnishings were a small deal table and two plastic chairs. The vinyl floor was pocked with cigarette burns, doubtless as a result of the inadequate little tinfoil ashtray on the table. "Sit there," the officer said, pointing to the chair nearest the door. "You must not touch the prisoner," the officer said. "If you want to offer her a cigarette, you should place the packet and the lighter on the table and let her pick it up. Is that clear?"
    Lindsay nodded and immediately lit up, leaving the packet on the table beside her lighter. She had smoked less than half the cigarette before the door opened and another officer brought Jackie in. If she hadn't been expecting her, Lindsay would never have recognised the woman she used to know. When Lindsay had first met Jackie, she had been cheerful and vivacious. Her shapely figure, bordering on the voluptuous, had always been immaculately turned out in the height of fashion. Her copper hair had been cut and styled regularly. She could never have been described as