Conferences are Murder Read Free Page B

delegation from her branch were at the table. One of them was fast asleep, head pillowed on his arms. Another two were reading the morning papers. That left two who actually seemed to be following the debate. Lindsay shook her head. For weeks, every chapel meeting had been dominated by the impending annual conference. They had
discussed their attitudes to motions, the importance of driving through certain policies, the crucial impact of decisions taken here in Blackpool. She’d spent the first morning taking notes on the debates and the results of the votes, until she had realized that she couldn’t see another soul in the hall doing anything with a pen except the Telegraph crossword. She could only assume that the real politicking was going on elsewhere, perhaps in those tight huddles that seemed to spring up all over the place every quarter of an hour or so. As she looked around, Lindsay spotted one of her own delegation coming away from a group clustered around the platform.
    Lindsay watched Siobhan Carter, a feature writer on the Sunday Trumpet , weave through the delegation tables and wondered how long it would be before she understood what the hell was going on around her. Siobhan seemed to fit in perfectly, yet it was only her second time at conference. She flopped into the seat next to Lindsay and fanned herself with an order-paper.
    â€œWhew! It might only be the second day of conference, but there’s already enough scandal going the rounds to keep a clutch of gossip columnists going for a month.”
    â€œIs that what you’ve been doing? Gossiping?” Lindsay asked.
    Ignoring the note of censure in her voice, Siobhan giggled. “What else? You surely don’t expect me to listen to this boring load of crap?”
    â€œI thought that’s what we were here for,” Lindsay said.
    â€œWhat? To die of boredom listening to some obscure, incomprehensible motion that’s only relevant to television journalists in the Republic of Ireland? No way! Listen, Linds, you stick with me. I’ll keep you on track. I’ll tell you when you need to be listening, okay? Trust me. I once screwed a doctor!”
    Lindsay looked dubious. “I don’t know, I feel guilty if I don’t get involved.”
    â€œFine. Get involved. But stick to the stuff that’s got something to do with you. I mean, tell me the truth. Did you enjoy SOS?”
    Lindsay pulled a face. “Enjoy. Now, there’s a word. You’d need to have a mind more twisted than a corkscrew to get off on
Standing Orders. I had to get out before my brain blew a fuse.”
    â€œExactly. You’re getting the idea. And you missed a wonderful bit of goss while you were gone,” Siobhan said eagerly, completely ignoring the passionate debate on the platform about whether the union’s perennially troubled finances could stretch to a major publicity campaign in Eire. Siobhan wasn’t the only one, Lindsay realized, glancing round the hall. She reckoned that less than ten percent of the delegates even knew which motion was under discussion. Why should she join yet another minority group?
    â€œTell me,” she asked, putting Siobhan out of her obvious misery. “What have I missed?”
    â€œYou know Jess, don’t you? Jess Nimmo, from Magazine Branch?”
    â€œHow could I not?” Lindsay said with feeling, recalling the braying upper-class voice that had dominated every meeting of the JU Women’s Caucus that she’d ever attended. “She thinks consensus is a head count the government takes every ten years.”
    â€œAnd you know Rory Finlayson, the Glasgow Broadcasting Branch heart-throb?” Lindsay nodded. Everyone knew ITN’s Scottish correspondent, who gazed lovingly out of their TV screens several times a week on News At Ten . It was obvious to anyone who had ever encountered Rory in the flesh that his biggest fan was himself.
    â€œWell, Jess has been trying