Murder by the Book (7 page)

By some miracle he made it back to the Austin without either arousing public alarm or falling over. He sat behind the wheel for ten minutes, then started the engine and set off.

He drove north slowly, grateful for the light traffic. His vision was only slightly blurred, and he convinced himself that the pain was abating. When he saw the red light at the last second, and halted with a squeal of brakes, he knew he wasn't going to make it home.

He was in Chelsea, perhaps a mile from Charles's office in Pimlico. Very well, then … he'd head there. He turned right, crawled along Royal Hospital Road, and willed himself to stay conscious long enough to reach the office.

He abandoned the car a couple of streets from the agency, his vision swimming. He pushed himself from the driving seat and staggered across the pavement. As he weaved his way west, he wondered why he was doing this … and then came to some understanding. Maria. He wanted to see Maria.

Or did he want her to see him?

What seemed like an hour later the glossy black door of the agency came into view, and with a last, supreme effort he climbed the steps, barged through the door and staggered up the stairs to the outer office.

When he pushed through the door and collapsed on to the floor, Maria screamed and ran around the desk. The last thing he recalled before passing out was the sight of her stockinged calves and her small hand as she reached out to touch his cheek.

When he came to his senses he was lying in bed in Charles's apartment, with a bandage around his head. Charles and Maria sat beside the bed, watching him.

Charles was gripping his hand. ‘My dear boy! I knew it, I knew! I should never have let you go. I curse myself for being such an abject, pusillanimous fool!'

Langham attempted a smile and squeezed Charles's hand.

Maria said, ‘We called a doctor, Donald. He stitched your head and said you must rest. You will be fine, but you
must
rest!'

Langham looked from Maria to Charles, who said, ‘I've told Maria everything, Donald. The whole sorry story.' He looked abject.

Langham whispered, ‘The delivery … it was worth it.'

‘Worth it? But my boy, the beastly man almost killed you!'

Langham recalled the gun to his head and wondered if the blackmailer had really been about to pull the trigger.

‘Worth it,' he managed, ‘because I learned two … two very important things. One, the blackmailer … he rides a motorbike, and he smokes … smokes Camel cigarettes.'

He drifted towards sleep, feeling more than wonderful, and the last thing he saw was Maria's pretty face staring down at him, her bottom lip nipped in concern between brilliant white teeth.

T
he newsroom of the
Daily Herald
was a maelstrom of noise and activity. Fifty typewriters set up a deafening cacophony of clacking keys and harried journalists called back and forth through a fug of cigarette smoke.

Langham sat on a swivel chair across the desk from Dick Grenville, filled his pipe from his tin of Capstan's Navy Cut and listened to the review editor's predictable monthly tirade against the standard of publishing in general and the woefulness of crime writing in particular. It was the price Langham paid for being the
Herald
's resident crime fiction reviewer.

‘I mean, some of the stuff they put out these days. … Listen to this.' Grenville snatched a hardback from a tottering pile on the desk, opened it and read the description on the front flap. ‘Another adventure featuring Tommy and Suzie Rogers – not forgetting their canine accomplice Bonzo – sees the intrepid trio thwart the evil doings of international jewel thieves. The fun begins when Bonzo …' He snapped the book shut in disgust. ‘Need I go on? How does this drivel see the light of day?'

Grenville sat back in his chair and glared at Langham as if he were solely responsible for the dire state of the genre. The editor resembled less a literary type than an officious town clerk, with his high, starched collar and impeccably snipped toothbrush moustache.

Langham gestured with his pipe. ‘I'll give that one a miss.' He pulled the pile of hardbacks from the desk and sorted through them.

Grenville said, ‘Why not cover it, Langham? Give it the pasting it deserves.' Grenville paused, then said, ‘And if you don't mind my saying, I think you've been rather kind of late. I recall your pieces from years ago, when you had real teeth. If something was bad, you said so. These days you dismiss a shocker with a few bland platitudes.'

‘Perhaps I'm becoming kinder in my old age.'

‘Well, how about reinvigorating your pieces with some real venom? If a book's bad, then say so, and state why it's so bad.'

Langham ignored the editor and concentrated on selecting four titles. The fact was that he
had
become kinder of late; or at least less inclined to dish out cutting criticism. Nowadays he was loath to make enemies, not so much because he feared earning retribution in the competing review pages for his own novels, but because he thought that most writers – despite Grenville's assumptions otherwise – were actually trying their best. The only time he allowed his spleen full ventilation was when he came across a lazy novel obviously hacked out by a writer who should have known better.

Grenville leaned forward, squinting at him over his half-moon spectacles. ‘If you don't mind my asking, Langham, what on earth happened to your head?'

‘Oh, this,' Langham said, touching the bandage that looped around his neck, partly concealed by the turned-up collar of his overcoat. ‘I was coshed by a blackmailer while delivering a ransom demand on behalf of a friend.'

Grenville snorted. ‘You've been writing too many Sam Brooke yarns, Langham. More likely you fell down the steps of a public house, hm?'

‘Are you accusing me of inebriety, Grenville? Perish the thought!'

‘Speaking of which …' the editor began.

‘Inebriety?'

‘No, Sam Brooke,' Grenville said. ‘The early titles were put out before the war by Douglas and Dearing, weren't they? Did you know an editor there – Max Sidley?'

‘He edited my first three,' Langham said. Sidley was an editor of the old school, a classical scholar with the sagacity and unruffled manner of a sleepy owl.

‘Well, the poor blighter topped himself yesterday. Can't say I blame him, some of the titles Douglas and Dearing made him work on. It must have been more than his good taste could tolerate.' He pointed across the room to the editor's office. ‘Nigel Lassiter's in there now, delivering the obituary.'

‘He killed himself?' Langham said, shocked. He'd last met Sidley just after the war, but had always harboured a fondness for the man who'd bought his first novel and thus set the course of his subsequent career.

‘He was seventy-five and still wielding the blue pencil. Poor sod should have got out years ago. A salutary lesson to us all.'

Langham squinted at Grenville, wondering if corrosive cynicism was a requisite for the post or the result of editing other people's tired copy.

‘I'll take these four,' he said, slipping the books into his briefcase and standing. ‘When do you need the piece?'

‘First thing Friday. And remember, do inject a
soupçon
of venom, hm?'

‘I'll see what I can do.'

He was threading his way through the tightly-packed desks when a stentorian summons sounded above the clatter of typewriters.

‘Donald! Hold on, old man!'

He paused by the door while Nigel Lassiter exaggeratedly mimed jogging the last few yards and arrived panting before him. He was a tall man in his fifties, running to fat from the good life provided by two-dozen best-selling titles, the proceeds of which afforded him a big house in Islington, a yacht in the south of France and a table at the Ivy perpetually reserved in his name.

‘Just the man. You busy?'

Langham held up his case. ‘Just collected some review copies.'

‘Still churning out the column?' He clapped Langham on the shoulder, his breath stinking of drink.

‘Well, it does keep the wolf from the door.'

‘You still with that pretentious old queer, Elder?' Lassiter asked.

‘I know you had your differences,' Langham said, ‘but Charles is a good man.'

Lassiter laughed without humour. ‘Differences? You'd have “differences” if he'd dumped you as he dumped me back in 'thirty-nine. Biggest mistake of his career – not that I'm worrying! Anyway,' he went on, ‘how're the Sam Brooke books doing these days?'

Langham pushed open the door, inviting Lassiter through before him. He followed and emerged into dazzling sunlight.

‘I'll forever be a stalwart of the mid-list, Nigel. But I can't complain.'

Lassiter paused on the busy pavement, lit up his habitual Pall Mall cigarette, and blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘Well, that's what I want to chat to you about. A business proposition.'

Langham was surprised. ‘Business?'

‘Over a drink?' Lassiter looked at his watch. ‘Three, dammit … How about Tolly's? Charge through the nose but I'll stand the pints.'

‘An offer I'd be a fool to refuse.'

They crossed the road and cut across Leicester Square. Lassiter peered at Langham's bandage. ‘Looks nasty. What happened there?'

‘Stupid accident. I fell down the front steps the other day. And before you ask, I was sober.'

They turned down a narrow alley to Lassiter's Soho drinking club, a subterranean dive sandwiched between a cheap Italian restaurant and a Chinese laundry.

‘Grenville told me about Sidley,' Langham said.

‘Just delivered the copy of his obit. Ghastly business.'

They descended a flight of greasy steps and pushed through into a twilit corridor. Lassiter signed them in and led the way to a small room packed with dedicated afternoon drinkers.

Tolly's was the haunt of indigent artists and writers, every square foot of the walls plastered with gaudy canvases traded for drinks in lieu of cash. The effect was claustrophobic and somewhat disorienting, Langham thought, a little like being trapped inside the nightmare of a crazed abstract expressionist.

Lassiter pushed his way to the bar. The only beer on offer was bottled Double Diamond or Guinness. Langham opted for the latter while Lassiter ordered a double whisky.

They found a table near the bar. Lassiter called out over the din of chatter and raucous laughter, ‘Fortuitous bumping into you, Donald. Just read your latest.'

‘Oh, dear …'

‘Don't be so modest, man. I loved it. Had heart.' He swallowed his drink, accounting for almost half the short.

‘Well, cheers,' Langham said, hoisting his Guinness.

Lassiter stubbed out his first cigarette and lit up a second. ‘How many have you done now?'

‘Twenty-two mysteries, twenty of them featuring Sam Brooke.' He didn't own up to the early westerns.

‘Feeling jaded?'

Langham shook his head. ‘Miraculously, I'm still enjoying the job.'

‘Then you're a better man than me.' Lassiter's broad, meaty face looked pensive. ‘How do you do it, Donald? I mean, keep up the enthusiasm? Your latest … Bloody hell, it was as fresh as your first. The writing … crisp, sharp. I could tell you loved writing it.'

Langham shrugged. ‘I did. I do. Each book is different.'

‘But bloody hell … Twenty books about the same private detective?'

‘Ah, but the trick is to introduce major new characters which Sam can bounce off in every book; learn things about himself as he works on the mystery.'

Lassiter listened silently, staring down at his drink. ‘I've just finished my fortieth thriller, Donald. Between you, me and the gatepost, it's sheer baloney. Every sodding day was a chore. Woke up thinking, Christ, do I really have to hack out another thousand words of this meaningless run-around?'

Langham shrugged. ‘How about taking a break? You're not short of a bob or two …'

Lassiter laughed; a sound utterly without humour. ‘Good idea. Only trouble is, I'm contracted to my publisher for another three of the wretched things. They take me three months to write, another couple of months to rewrite, and then I have some time off to recover my sanity. Christ, I'll be at it for another two years.' He rose to his feet, leaned over to the bar and called out, ‘Another double in this one, Rosie!' Then he slumped back down beside Langham, rocking the precarious table. ‘I had a nightmare the other night. All I could hear was someone reading out my prose … It was just: “He said, she said, he nodded, she opened the door and ran, he was aware of his heartbeat as he raised the gun …” Jesus Christ! I awoke in a sweat, terrified. Think it was my subconscious, telling me something.' He twisted his mouth around another slug of whisky and looked at Langham. ‘How do you do it, Donald? How do you wake up in the morning and face another ruddy day at the typewriter?'

Langham shrugged. ‘We're different people, Nigel. I …'

Lassiter focused on him blearily. ‘What do you mean by that? “We're different people”. I know that, man! But what do you
mean
?' He was tipsy, and a note of aggression had entered his studied Oxbridge tones.

Langham wondered how to explain what he meant without depressing, or insulting, the man. ‘I think it's something to do with our backgrounds, Nigel. I left school at sixteen. I never made it to university. To me, writing books was always something other people did, people with an education. So when I began writing and getting published … well, I didn't think it my
right
… And I still don't.'

Lassiter held up a fleshy hand. ‘Stop. I know what you're saying. You're saying … I'm privileged, Winchester, Oxford and all that. I tossed off my first novel when I was twenty-two and it did well, and since then it's always come easily. And now I'm still cranking them out without care or concern, and I hate myself for doing it … hate my lack of integrity. Is that what you're saying?'