The Writer (10 page)

“Nope. I was too busy
fighting the bike. Nearly lost control.”

“What about the make and
colour? Any identifying marks?”

“It was white, that’s all I
remember.”

“Where did this
happen?”

“Kent Bridge.”

“Kenny, that’s a one-lane
bridge,” Sal said with amusement. “You weren’t fighting that van
for the right to go over first, were you? Sorry sir, but he does
that. You ask him why, you go on!”

“Now, Mr Giblett,” said
Dale, ignoring Sal, “I need to ask you to tell the whole story
here. What actually happened to you regarding this white
van?”

“This van came speeding,”
said Ken, “as I came to the bridge. Now, I was there first; I’m
sorry Sal, but I was, and I have my right as a road user to go over
first. Now, they tried to overtake me, went way out onto the grassy
part by the roadside there. But you can’t do that, there’s lots of
big rocks back there, left over from when they built the bridge. So
then he gets all mad and starts shouting at me.”

“You heard the driver’s
voice?” asked Dale, his mouth feeling dry and needing coffee. “Did
you see him?”

“I heard him but I didn’t
want to hear him, if you know what I mean.”

“Did you see him enough to
identify him?”

“Not really. These
youngsters all seem the same to me.”

“It was a man, then? A white
male? He was young?”

“Yeah, that’s right, and
real young.”

“Okay, that’s good. Go on,
please.”

“Well, when I saw he was in
a right state of agitation I tried to wave him away, but he paid no
heed.”

“You should have let him go
past, Kenny,” Sal interrupted again. “He sounds dangerous to me.
Just pull over and let him go on through.”

“I can’t let anyone go past
me like that,” Ken said to her. “You know what sort of bad luck it
is?”

“Bad luck?” asked
Dale.

“It’s never wise to overtake
an undertaker.”

“Yes, and you’ve never let
anyone go past you in your life!” said Sal.

“Please, madam!” Dale
snapped at her.

“Well, so I went over the
bridge first,” said Ken, “as I was entitled, and when it was their
turn to cross it, they came at me so close and fast they nearly
caused me to crash. It was like they were trying to get
me.”

“This is very interesting.
Was the van leaving town?”

“Yes sir, it was on the
direction out of town, and good riddance to it.”

“Has anyone here heard of
this speeding white van?” Andy asked the room.

“Can see you’ve found your
murderer, right there,” Two-Tooth announced.

“Lock him up and throw away
them keys,” agreed Elbow. “We don’t need those city-types speeding
through here, abusing our respected and trusted.”

“Didn’t think it’d be that
simple, did you, Dale?” Andy asked him.

“Can’t say I did, no,” Dale
said with a sigh, and then felt a very strong urge for coffee.
“Sal, I think I’ll take that drink now.”

“That’s my boy,” said Andy.
“The body won’t get any colder, but the beer might get
warmer.”

Dale sat on a stool to the
bar and became transfixed by a fresh cup of coffee provided by
Sal.

“Guess that does it,” Andy
said to the room. “Mystery solved. Thank you for
coming.”

“You’re not serious?” asked
Sophie, who was standing near to him. She had heard about how Dale
had bossed everyone around at the murder scene, and yelled at
people for no reason. She knew that such manners might influence
people of Gendry, but not anyone from the city.

“What was your name?” Dale
asked her.

“Sophie. I’m the
granddaughter of Susan Tyle.”

“She’s staying at the
boarder place,” Andy said to Dale. “She’s from the
city.”

“You’re not in the habit of
speeding, are you Sophie?” Dale asked her before he took a
heart-warming sip of his coffee. “How fast you like to go? Like to
push that pedal down, do you?”

“I’m not answering that,”
Sophie said, indignant at their attitude.

“She doesn’t even have a car
to drive,” Andy said with a dismissive laugh. “Let alone a white
van.”

“But I’m sure, if she did,”
said Sal, “she would drive carefully. A nice girl is our Sophie.
Susan never stops talking about her, and always good
news.”

“I’m satisfied with Mr
Giblett’s testimony,” Dale said to Sophie, now a great deal
calmer.

“These city drivers,” agreed
Andy, “always on the run, think of our town just as some nuisance,
some blot on the landscape where they need to drop their speed, and
even that’s not a good enough reason to be here. We need tougher
measures to slow them down.”

“Surprises me that you don’t
already,” said Dale.

“I’ll get onto that when I
can,” said Andy. “Talk to the mayor about soon as he gets back from
his holiday.”

Dale laughed at that,
feeling more relaxed. “Where does someone from Gendry go for their
holidays? You wouldn’t like the city. Do you go visit other towns
similar?”

Gene Best walked up to them,
as if signalled to do so by the conversation mentioning the town
mayor. The ex-mayor with still a lot of popularity, he commanded a
strong presence wherever he went, and people still respectfully
moved out of his way.

“Don’t you go building any
more street signs, Handisides,” Gene said with a croaky yet strong
voice. “The place is full of those eyesores already. We need to get
rid of half of them, which I will do as soon as I’m
re-elected.”

“Cool down, Gene,” said Sal.
“You’ve had your chance as mayor, and I didn’t see you tearing down
any signs back then. Let Andy and Dale sort out this latest
fracas.”

“But you are going to check
all the cars in town for any evidence, right?” Sophie asked, not
sure if they were actually being serious about finishing their
work. She had assumed that they were going to talk to everyone
there, like they said they would, but from what she could see now,
they had changed their minds.

“Soon as I finish one of
Sal’s famous custard creams,” Dale said. “Andy’s been talking about
them ever since I arrived. Make it a small one, would you, Sal?
Trying to watch my figure.”

Those around him laughed,
except for Sophie.

“But you’ve only talked to
one person,” she protested. “And you say you’re closing the
investigation?”

“Sophie, the people aren’t
going anywhere,” chided Andy. “This is Gendry, remember? Where else
would they go? It was a hit and run by someone travelling through,
and a marvel he didn’t clip anyone else by the sound of
it.”

“And if he did, he wouldn’t
get far,” agreed Dale and he ate the custard cream and knew it
would not be his last that day.

Sophie watched them with
amazement and decided to leave and go back to her room. She
consoled herself that perhaps she could add into her story someone
like Dale Gant, a person who did not really seem to care about
anything except himself and his own opinion, and was rude to anyone
who might not see things his way. Then she realised that she
already met one of those and his name was Craigfield, and he was
about the only living person in Gendry not at the
meeting.

Night and day. At times
their relationship was normal, when they could chat freely and
laugh at each other’s jokes. Then they would not talk at all, for
days on end, and be content to let the other be out of the house
for long periods and not ask where they went. Max went from
enjoying her company to wondering why they were together at all,
sometimes within the time of a conversation. There would be no
warning to the mood swings of either one, but they seemed to be
synchronised, and know when to not bother even trying to make small
talk. During her good moods Jill would encourage Max’s writing, and
be happy to read through some pages for him, and give useful
advice. They both knew there was no point in her going anywhere
near his work when she was in a down mood, when she was almost
anxious to find something to criticise. If she didn’t find
something wrong then she would manage to pick up from where she
left off in their last argument. Max had no idea how she did
that.

Jill’s job had recently lost
its interest. It was unusual for her to stay at the same retail
place for more than a year. Her latest was an up-market woman’s
fashion store down at the local mall. The good part about it was
that most of the stock was a style she liked. She preferred to see
herself as a model for each dress, and the manager never noticed
that every other day she was sampling one. The trick was in
removing the tag, or hiding it, without anyone getting wise. But
then they changed some of the designers and she just didn’t like
much about the newer stock. As a protest she refused to steal
anything else and began to look for a better place to work. It
didn’t matter how far away a new job was, so long as it sold
dresses that looked good on her.

“There’s another mistake,
right there,” she said as she walked into his writing room without
knocking. He took off his headphones and asked her to repeat
herself. He welcomed the fact that she was willing to discuss it,
even if he knew she was probably going to have him make changes.
The fact that she wanted to talk at all was a welcome
change.

“If the police are
interviewing people about a murder,” she said as she showed him the
text on the page she was holding, like he could not remember
without seeing it, “they would do it in a private room someplace.
Not out in the open. Not at the local eatery. What’s that, a town
gathering?”

“What if that was the way it
really happened?” he asked knowingly. “It’s a small town and they
like doing things in a communal way. Everyone knows everyone else,
like a big family.”

“What is this, something
from the Fifties?” she replied bluntly.

“Did you think that maybe it
was, before you decided to start trying to shred it to
ribbons?”

“Have you not seen how they
show criminal investigations on TV shows?”

“TV shows? That’s exactly my
point. Those shows aren’t based on reality. Do you think they’re
based on reality? They’re TV shows!”

“And you know about reality,
do you?”

“I know more about reality
than you’d think.”

“Meaning what?”

Max looked away, saddened at
how quickly they had started fighting, but not wanting her to see
his reaction. It occurred to him that she may not be able to read
much more of his book, and that may be a good thing.

“Meaning what, Max?” she
asked again.

Max was reluctant to say it,
but knew that he had to. “Craigfield.”

“What about Craigfield? What
do you know about Craigfield? There’s nothing to know anyway. What
are you talking about?”

“Forget it.”

“You’ve been acting strange
lately, you know that? Craigfield’s my gym instructor; you know he
is. For me and five thousand other people.”

“Forget it, I
said.”

“I think you need to change
this scene. And while you’re at it, change the name Craigfield.
Call him Bob or Steve, or something boring like that, but not
Craigfield.”

“He has a name and I’m not
changing it.”

“I don’t know what you’re
getting at.”

“What makes you say
that?”

“Craigfield’s a nice guy. He
happens to be my friend and he’s helping me with my fitness
program. But if you’re trying to cause a riot over him then you’re
by yourself. Well? Are you going to do it?”

“Am I going to do
what?”

“Take his name out of
there?”

“Why is it such a problem?
Does his name being there bother you that much that you’re all in
my face over it?”

“Suit yourself, then. The
way it’s going, no one’s going to read it anyway.”

The typewriter sat
untouched. When she arrived in Gendry she thought she almost had
the entire story already written in her mind. She could see every
chapter and paragraph, and all she had to do was put it on paper.
Distractions were making it impossible. Part of the point of coming
out to Gendry was for the relaxing air of laziness that the town
was famous for, and in the peaceful atmosphere she could write. Not
only had she wasted time by talking to a man she didn’t even like
and who wasn’t even a local, but she had let herself become caught
up in a bit of drama that had never happened in the town before but
was common in the city. At first the news of the violent murder had
made her feel sad, in the realisation that the Gendry she had known
as a child had disappeared, replaced by more of the real world she
was familiar with. The more she thought about that the more she
realised that it was impossible to keep such things away from the
town forever, and they were very lucky that this was only the first
such incident in their history.