Sonata of the Dead (20 page)

She laughed. It sounded as though her jaw had been oiled by a few glasses of Chardonnay. She told me that there were more grudges in publishing than there were in any other profession. And probably in the criminal world too. I couldn’t get a word in.

People wanted to be published, she went on. They saw the big deals and didn’t appreciate how rare they were, how difficult it was to make any money, even if you were a seasoned professional. They thought that you only needed a pencil and some paper: there was no high cost outlay for specialist equipment. They saw the appeal of working from home. In your pyjamas. In bed, if you wanted to. The launch parties, the five-star reviews, the adulation. All that to produce what? A new book every two years? Money for nothing.

‘Do—’

‘But it’s nothing like that,’ steamrollered the publisher. ‘Unless you’re a bestseller. There are a hundred thousand books published each year, across all genres, shared between all the publishing houses. There are probably a hundred times that number of manuscripts that land on the desks of the publishing houses. The vast majority of people will be disappointed. Most people will never be published, unless they do it themselves. And they’ll still not really be satisfied because, as pretty as you make it, it’s still DIY. It’ll cost you money. It’s vanity publishing.’

‘I just wanted to ask about the anthology. The Valentines to a Blah-blah Planetoid job.’

Her voice had grown spikes. ‘The title is
Green and Pleasant Land: Valentines to a Dying Planet
. And I’ve already spoken to the police,’ she said. ‘I’ve helped them, fully, with their enquiries.’

So I was on the right track. But there was a tickle in her voice – possibly that qualifier
fully
that seemed so eager to please – that suggested she was holding back on something.

‘So you know there’s a murder inquiry?’

‘I know that much. I don’t know any details. I don’t want to know any details.’

‘Did they take any materials away with them?’ I asked. ‘I’m presuming they came to see you.’

‘They did,’ she said. ‘They asked to see files. They wanted our computers, our hard drives. We said no. They told us they could get a warrant. Our legal team reckons that’s so much hogwash. Who are you anyway?’

‘Suffice to say that I’m in with the local constabulary – Ian Mawker ring a bell? The guy with the lip ferret who wears macs in the hope of a Columbo vibe but ends up looking like Frank Spencer – and they’ll not take kindly if they know you weren’t fully co-operative.’

‘I kept nothing from them,’ she said. ‘And you can’t prove it.’

‘I don’t need to. I just need to sow the seeds of doubt in Mawker’s brain. You don’t know him like I do. He’s thorough. If he thinks he’s missed something, he’ll take it as a personal affront. Do you want police cars keeping watch on you? Pulling you over half a dozen times a day for spot checks?’

‘He’d never dare—’

‘Okay. Well, my life is time sensitive even if yours isn’t, so I’ll get on the blower now and tell him you’re playing hide the evidence.’

‘It’s not evidence. It’s just the Valentines folder.’

‘Why doesn’t Mawker have the folder? What’s in it?’

‘Original manuscripts. Correspondence. Contracts.’

‘It sounds as if that’s the kind of thing they’d like to see.’

‘And they will. But I need to copy it first. I can’t risk it becoming lost. We’re going to sanction a second printing off the back of this.’

‘No such thing as bad publicity, eh?’

She seemed stung by that. ‘It wasn’t my idea, if you want the truth.’

‘I don’t care whose idea it was.’

‘Patrick Simm,’ she said, like the kid caught red-handed in the playground, desperate to pass the buck.

‘Who’s Patrick Simm?’

‘He’s an agent. One of his writers submitted to the anthology.’

‘Where’s he based?’ I said.

‘Albemarle Street,’ she said, super-fast, all too happy to get me off her back. ‘Patrick reckons we can all come out of this like cats in the cream.’

‘There’ll be stuff in that folder that the police can use. Evidence that could put somebody very dangerous away. Every minute you keep hold of that, with your thoughts full of cash, is another minute this lunatic is free. And another minute closer to another body. Let me come and take it off your hands.’

‘I don’t know who the bloody hell you are. You’re not police. You could be him for all I know. This killer. This lunatic.’

I lost my temper then and started yelling at her. When I calmed down I could hear that she’d killed the line.

I wanted bed and Radio 3 and mano-a-cato wrestling bouts laced with vodka and bowls of wasabi nuts. But my free time had fucked off again, like a thief with a swag bag.

Patrick Simm was based on Albemarle Street, a pleasant road off Piccadilly filled with art galleries. He worked on his own and had garnered something of an aggressive reputation, working late when everyone else had bunked off, refusing to take no for an answer where his clients were concerned. He was known as the Honey Badger. I’d assumed he wouldn’t be enamoured of this title, or at least be indifferent about it, but there, on a table after he’d buzzed me up to his first-floor office, was a stuffed honey badger in a glass case. The floor of this diorama was littered with bones, spectacles, bow ties and swatches of tweed. A shredded piece of paper with the word
CONTRACT
written at the top.

‘Come in, young chap,’ he said. ‘My PA, Polly, is off shedding babies or some such. So I’m making my own tea and answering my own calls. Right. So, how can I divest you of your shirt?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Apologies… force of habit. It’s my ice-breaker at meetings. What can I do for you? You mentioned on the phone something about cranks?’

‘It’s a little more serious than cranks,’ I said. He gestured to a Windsor chair with a comb back. I sat down and refused his offer of tea. I wanted to get out of here. I didn’t like his honey badger; it gave off a whiff of something chemical – formaldehyde, perhaps… naphthalene, I don’t know – that hung heavily in the stuffy room and turned my stomach. I didn’t like Simm either. I didn’t like his pinstripe shirt and white collar, nor the way he didn’t seem to blink at all, like a lizard.

‘How do you mean?’ he asked.

I didn’t like his questions either. There was something… compliant about them, as if he was indulging me. As if he knew exactly what was going on.

‘Two people are dead. We are assuming they were killed by the same person. The people who were killed were members of a writers’ group.’

‘A writers’ group.’ He couldn’t keep the disdain from his voice.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Based in London. A committed bunch of writers. What, that doesn’t please you? There could be a future literary star in their midst. Someone you could play sycophantic parasite to.’

The shutters lowered on those unblinking eyes. ‘It’s not all about money, my job, you know. I offer a certain level of pastoral care to my clients, all of whom, it should be said, are very happy with the services I provide.’

‘My apologies,’ I said. ‘I went for the theatrical perception of a ten-percenter, and I was wrong to do so.’

‘You were,’ he said. ‘I charge twenty per cent.’ The smile returned. It was like black poison spreading across his face.

‘I think the person who did this has got some kind of grudge. But it’s become this twisted, personal thing. Obviously the killer is a psychopath. If you’d seen the bodies…’

‘Spare me, please, Mr Sorrell,’ Simm said, holding up his hands. ‘I read a lot of unsavoury material during office hours. I don’t need to hear about the real-life unpleasantness.’

‘Something was found in the vicinity of both victims. A book. We don’t yet know if it was something in their possession, or whether it was planted by the killer.’

‘A calling card.’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘The same book at both locations?’

I nodded.

‘Seems unlikely to be a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Unlikely, yes,’ I said. ‘But possible. People read.’

‘Yes, but… what was this book?’

I told him.

‘Hmm,’ he said, and steepled his fingers, rested his bottom lip against them. His fingers were thin and long. ‘You’ve spoken to Tula Barnes I take it?’

‘Yes, she told me to speak to you.’

He smiled. It was the smile of a shark before it bites your leg off. ‘Delightful woman. Pissed as a nappy half the time, mind.’

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘This book.’

‘Commercially speaking, short stories aren’t the thing these days,’ he said. ‘Novels are where it’s at. Most people don’t read short stories, more’s the pity.’

‘So you’re saying it’s probably a plant. Because of current tastes.’

‘Well, a big name can sometimes carry what otherwise might be seen as a niche product.’

‘I think the killer might be one of the writers.’

‘Why?’ he asked. He was smiling. Again I got the feeling he knew more than he was letting on. I wanted to jab a finger at his face and get him to blink. I had the fear he might only do so when alone, and then with some kind of third eyelid.

‘I have no idea. But two of these writers in this group evidently did something to piss off this maniac. Maybe he was a member once upon a time. Maybe, when he asked for feedback, they gave it to him. And he didn’t like it.’

‘You think he killed people because his ego was bruised?’

‘Happens all the time.’

‘And he left a copy of the book with them to show that he had the last laugh? Difficult to enjoy that kind of victory when the reader is no longer capable of reading.’

‘It’s my understanding that he spent some quality time with them before he ended their lives.’

‘Ah,’ Simm said. ‘How pleasant.’

‘So I just wanted to talk with some industry professionals and see if they might have heard of any… strange goings on. I’m guessing you all have fingers in each other’s pies… You go to the same book fairs, you know the same people, the same names in the same publishing houses bid for your writers… Have you heard anything on the grapevine?’

‘No,’ he said. All too quickly. And with that little smile on his face. His stare dared me to contradict him.

I sighed and sat back. His desk was one of those beautiful old things with a leather top. Way too big for anybody, apart from maybe generals and majors pushing plastic tanks around a map. There was a penis substitute fountain pen, and an ostentatious bottle of violet ink. A letter opener. A tiny red laptop that was probably just blushing at the ridiculous proportional contrast. A handwritten note that was half concealed by a book on top. It was signed
Pol
. My eye lingered on what text I could read:

tand, Pat, I’m not

ed to come in under

ances. I fully accept

ind another PA. I need

hink things over. I had

shock, you must see that.

y mother’s until next week.

And then he must have noticed my scrutiny because he casually slid the book further over so that the entire letter was obscured. I’d seen the number, though. A Brighton number. I feverishly repeated it in my mind until I had it fixed there. I had no idea what I intended to do, but I knew Simm wasn’t sharing his sweets with me and I needed some leverage from somewhere. This so-called baby machine Polly – who had clearly been scared out of town by something – might provide it.

‘You’re always on the lookout for a fresh angle, I’d have thought. Is that right, Mr Simm?’

‘I’m always on the lookout for impactful writing. A strong voice.’

‘But the zeitgeist exists, and you must have an eye on its coat-tails, if you’re a successful agent.’

‘Is there a point to this? Christ,
you’re
not a writer are you? If you are I hope you can spin a story better than you vocalise one.’

‘My point is that this hack… if he is a disgruntled writer, you might be able to make some dirty coin off the back of his arrest. If, say, there was a manuscript that he’d written. If, say, he’d submitted it to an agency with a view to securing representation.’

Simm blinked at last. It was a slow blink, the kind one affords an imbecile just before one explains what it is about them that is so imbecilic.

‘We get a lot of manuscripts every week,’ he said. He indicated a pile four feet high in one corner of the room. ‘Those are submissions I received just this month. I’d say maybe one manuscript in every fifty is worth reading to the end. All those hundreds of manuscripts… I might take on two or three new clients a year. How many of those tomes are written by whackos? All of ’em. Some of my best clients are utter fruit bats. Writers, Mr Sorrell. All of them self-obsessed, paranoid pricks. They magpie feelings, emotions, episodes witnessed in other people’s lives, rehash it all and serve it up as original fiction, framed in a nice little plotty world. It’s all lies. Badly written lies at that. I polish turds for a living. That’s ninety per cent of what I do.’

‘So nothing out of the ordinary?’

‘Define “ordinary”.’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I can find my own way out.’

I resisted the urge to kick his stupid glorified weasel display across the room. I said, ‘Any more bloodshed it’s on your hands. And I will come for you. I’ll staple your eyelids to your fucking forehead and then you won’t be able to blink even if you want to.’

* * *

I called the number as soon as I was at street level. I walked towards Bond Street and shot a glance at his office window. He was there, behind the net curtains, like an etiolated revenant in a black-and-white horror film who did his own stunts and didn’t need make-up.

She picked up and she sounded raw, on edge.

‘Is this Polly?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

‘He’s killed twice, you know. Martin Gower in Enfield and Malachi Dawe in Shepherd’s Bush. That one was just today. He’ll kill again. How do we stop him, do you think?’

‘Are you police? Did you speak to Patrick?’

‘He told me you were having a baby.’

‘He what?’ There was a knocking, and a muffled thump; I thought she’d either dropped the phone or hurled it across the room. ‘The bloody bastard,’ she said, eventually. ‘The bloody fool bastard.’