LITMIR.BIZ

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already facing the pounding waves.

      She got out of the car and ignored the hard-packed path that led from the car park to the beach. Instead, the woman walked about half a mile north across the scrub before she chose another route down to the beach. She didn’t go all the way down, halting at a point where, if she hunkered down, she would be invisible both from the beach and the flat scrubland above. She settled behind an outcropping of gritty sandstone and surveyed the long sweep of the strand. She’d never seen so spectacular a beach that wasn’t scarred with serried ranks of sun loungers, parasols, cars and bars. The beach was wide and flat, sweeping round in a long white arc. From the air, it would look more like a crescent than a half moon, scything a thick line between the dark blue sea and the brown land.

      She took a small pair of green rubber binoculars from her satchel and scanned the beach from north to south. Luckily for her purpose, there were surprisingly few people, and those there were clearly didn’t belong to the bucket and spade brigade. Every time the woman’s binoculars picked out a dog, she paused and took a careful look at the animal and its owner. There was no sign of her target.

      The woman lowered her binoculars and waited five minutes before repeating the exercise. On the third sweep, she picked out the black Labrador frolicking in the waves. In spite of his playfulness, he was clearly no puppy. She felt a frisson of excitement. Forcing herself to be patient, she continued her slow scan. A couple of hundred yards behind the dog, a figure jogged slowly. A finger nudged the focus wheel and the face came into sharp focus. There was no doubt about it. It matched the pictures supplied by her client. The dog was a six-year-old Labrador cross called Mutton. The woman was a thirty-seven-year-old journalist with a reputation for stirring up trouble. Her name was Lindsay Gordon. If the observer was successful in her mission, tomorrow someone else would have to walk the dog.

      With infinite care, the watcher returned the binoculars to the backpack. It was time to do the business.

       1

      Lindsay Gordon jogged gently along the hard sand at the edge of the Pacific surf on Half Moon Bay. Against the rhythmic beat of Air Nikes on wet sand and the thud of blood pulsing in her ears, the waves crashed less regularly. Ahead of her, Mutton chased the foaming surf as it retreated across the sand to be sucked back into the vast body of water, occasionally pausing to bark a deep protest as some bubbles he’d been particularly attached to disappeared. Other joggers might have Walkmen clamped to their heads, shutting out everything except their chosen sounds. Lindsay preferred a more natural music, particularly on a day like today when she had death on her mind.

      The day had given no indication that it was going to bring tears before bedtime. She’d got up with Sophie and they’d eaten breakfast on the deck together – peaches, bananas, grapes and walnuts chopped up and sprinkled with Grape Nuts, freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juice and, for Lindsay only, the industrial-strength coffee she still needed to kick-start her day. It didn’t matter how healthy her diet and her habits became; she had grown up on a high-voltage caffeine jolt first thing in the morning, and herbal tea was never going to boot her synapses into activity. Later than usual, because it was Sunday and she was only on stand-by, Sophie had headed north to the hospital in the Bay Area where she worked with HIV-positive mothers, leaving Lindsay to her computer. She preferred to work when Sophie was on duty so she could enjoy their time off together without guilt. Consequently, she didn’t mind settling down with more coffee and a pile of photocopied newspaper cuttings next to her keyboard.

      Six years before, she’d stopped practising journalism and started teaching it. Not a day had gone by when she hadn’t congratulated herself on her decision. Now, thanks to the ‘publish or be damned’ demands of her boss at Santa Cruz, she’d been catapulted into her past life. A persuasive editor had talked her into a publishing contract for a book on the decline of British tabloid journalism from 1980 to 1995. It was supposed simultaneously to be a penetrating political analysis and an entertaining romp for the general reader. ‘Define oxymoron,’ Lindsay muttered as her machine booted up with its usual mechanical grumbles. ‘The demands of a publisher’s editor. On the one hand, deep and insightful. On the other hand, shallow and superficial.’

      Today, the Falklands conflict. Not the battles between the Argentinian and British soldiery, but the rows that raged between government censors and militant journalists betrayed by proprietors who caved in under pressure. And the Sun’s shameful ‘Gotcha!’ headline on the sinking of the Belgrano. It was more than enough to keep her absorbed in her screen until late afternoon, apart from a quick break at noon to walk Mutton around the scrubland and eat a chicken Caesar salad.

      By five, she’d had enough. Whistling the dog, Lindsay had fired up her battered black Caddie and headed inland to a grocery store a few miles away that carried a stock select enough to satisfy the most discriminating California foodie. Lindsay’s freezer was empty of bread, and she needed to stock up on ciabatta with olives, with artichokes, with sun-dried tomatoes and just plain. The challenge was always to get it home without tearing lumps out of it en route. While she was there, she raided the deli counter for grazing material for the evening. It was that once-a-month night when Sophie would be out with her doctor friends putting the world to rights, so Lindsay could veg out on the sofa and watch the Inspector Morse episode she’d taped the week before, with occasional trips to the kitchen to stack up another plate of nibbles. Bliss.

      Her plans died when she got back to the house and finally got round to opening the morning paper. She idly flicked over the front page, breaking off a piece of artichoke ciabatta. Darkliners Author Dies in Freak Accident seemed to separate itself from the rest of page three and rise towards her like a macabre magic carpet.

      ‘No,’ Lindsay breathed as she started to read.

       (London, AP)

      Penny Varnavides, best-selling author of the Darkliners series of novels, died yesterday as the result of a freak accident while on a trip to England. She was killed when a bottle of beer exploded in the kitchen of the apartment in London, where she was living temporarily.

      The body was discovered by a neighbor, alerted by the open door of her apartment. It is thought Ms Varnavides had just returned home when the accident occurred.

      According to police sources in London, Ms Varnavides bled to death when a shard of glass from the explosion penetrated her carotid artery. The unusually prolonged hot summer weather this year in England, where some areas have not had rain for over five weeks, is being blamed for the accident.

      A police officer said, ‘The beer in question was apparently a kind which contains live yeast. In the warm weather, it must have started a secondary fermentation, and so the pressure inside the bottle would have increased enormously. The slightest vibration could have triggered the resulting explosion.

      ‘It was a freak accident. Ms Varnavides was alone when it happened. If someone else had been present, it’s possible she might have survived. But there are no suspicious circumstances.’

      Ms Varnavides was in London to complete research on her latest book, said to be a departure from her award-winning Darkliners series of fantasy novels for adolescent readers. She was rumored to be working closely with her British publishers, Monarch Press, on a ‘women in jeopardy’ thriller aimed at the adult audience.

      A member of the Monarch editorial team said, ‘We’re all devastated by Penny’s death. She was in the office only hours before she died. It’s a tragic loss.’

      Ms Varnavides, 42, grew up in Chicago and studied at Northwestern and Stanford. After graduating, she worked in the computer industry. Her debut Darkliners novel, The Magicking of Danny Armstrong, was first published in England because she couldn’t find a US publisher. But its runaway success was repeated all over the world and she became a full-time novelist ten

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