The Writer (20 page)

“I even hate saying hello to
people in the morning,” he added.

Paul was more than happy to
be given his chance to say what he knew, and it didn’t matter where
it was. He was more disgruntled over the fact that the two cups of
coffee that Dan carried were both meant for Dan and weren’t
shared.

“I don’t care who you tell,”
said Paul. “Or that I told you.”

“Go on,” said Dan, not
liking the sound of any of that since it was exactly how crazy
people talk. They can’t wait to tell the world their private
revelations. People who have the truth tend to be a little more
careful with it.

“It took a while to put the
pieces together.”

“Pieces?” Dan asked, trying
to appear interested, while he was more focused on his coffee and
how fast he can get rid of this guy. He did go to the trouble of
placing his notebook on the table and holding his pen like he was
ready to write something down. That tended to help people say what
they wanted to say and leave out the small talk.

“Together, yeah.”

“How so?”

“I know a guy, Max Marshall,
and he’s writing something, a novel or something, whatever. Don’t
really care about it, and don’t care about him that much. My wife’s
friends of his wife, and I get dragged into talking to him. You
know how that goes. What are you going to do, ignore him while the
women get locked into conversation? You have to say something,
right? I’m the one who always has to get the conversation going,
every time, and I always try to talk about sport and whatever, what
most people are interested in, to pass the time. I honestly don’t
think I’ve ever had a real, genuine conversation with the
man.”

“And the
pieces
?” Dan
asked, not minding that he sounded impatient.

“There was a murder, up in
Gendry, some postal worker, and no one knew who did it. It took me
a while to put it together. But now I think about it, it should
have been obvious.”

Dan tapped his pen on the
table, waiting for more.

“So, this guy I know,”
continued Paul, “Max Marshall, he’s talking about this book he’s
doing. We were all laughing at him, telling him how to write it,
giving him a hurry-up, in a friendly manner, but he went all
defensive over it, like our criticism was some sort of personal
attack on him. What about that? It wasn’t like any of us actually
cared what he was writing. We all knew none of us would ever read
it, and probably no one else either. He hardly wanted to say
anything about it to us, so how was he meant to share it with the
world?”

Dan stopped tapping and
leaned back in his chair. “The pieces fitting together,” he said,
not really asking now.

“The what?”

Dan tried to be patient.
“You said the pieces came together for you. Wish to
share?”

“The murder, I mean. He was
writing about the murder.”

“Saw it in the
news.”

“This was weeks before the
murder.”

Dan leaned forward and he
felt his shirt tighten. “He told you about the murder weeks before
it happened?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly,” Dan
repeated.

“He wrote about Gendry. The
people and all that.”

“Then he didn’t tell you
about the murder weeks before it happened?”

“That’s the thing. When we
told him his story lacked interest, to us, to anyone as far as we
could tell, he said something that stuck with me. He said he should
add in a murder.”

“Was he specific about this
murder?”

“Not really.”

Dan was doing his best to
remain patient, but now he just started thinking about how he could
take an early lunch. “What, if anything, was he specific
about?”

“Gendry, the people there,
that sort of thing.”

“Longbottom?”

“Excuse me?”

“The victim, Longbottom, was
he specific about him? Did he write his name or talk about him? Did
he say anything about him at all?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t
think so.”

“Thanks for coming
in.”

“No, you need to check him
out. Read what he wrote. Something’s not right with him. I know it,
from talking to him. You get a feeling for people, you
know?”

Dan placed a friendly hand
on Paul’s back and walked him out from the interrogation room and
to the main door, being polite and agreeable.

“Do you have any other
leads?” Paul asked as he was guided through the main door. “I heard
the case wasn’t solved.”

Dan smiled and firmly shook
his hand. “Thanks for coming in.”

Duncan Moore was a good
boss, one of the guys, and as long as they kept producing good
results he continued to be their best buddy. He would slap everyone
on the back and continue where they had left off with their last
conversation, no matter how long ago it was. His memory was uncanny
and he never forgot the name of any of his worker’s relations and
significant anniversary dates. He was the sort of boss he wasn’t
really a boss. Unless he got a little bit angry. No one liked to
see his bad side, the raging Irish monster he could become at the
drop of a hat. He disliked his first name and preferred “Dun”, but
that made him hate his nickname even more. As with any nickname,
the more it’s protested the more people will enjoy using it. They
knew not to call him “Could’ve” to his face while on the job. At
the local bar it was a different story, and once he was loosened up
with two or sixteen beers, everyone enjoyed giving it to him, from
the lowest street cop to his own bosses. He would dissolve into a
mass of laughter and the next day feel like he should be angry and
not remember why. That was the only time his memory would let him
down.

“This is nothing,” Dan said
after he invited himself into Dun’s office. He moved a few old
newspapers off the chair by the desk so he could sit. “Guy thinks
he heard something suspicious in the midst of jovial dinner
conversation. Public finds out we’re open for discussion on that,
we’d be swamped. The facts stand; Dale Gant didn’t find anything
suspicious, but you already knew that. Anyway, Gendry’s not part of
our jurisdiction.”

“Check it out,” said Dun,
not looking up from his computer screen. He was busy typing an
email and he hated both things equally. After years of practice he
averaged ten words a minute with his rigid two-finger technique and
he was proud of it. After he kept knocking his fruit juice on the
keyboard, the G and H were particularly sticky and sometimes filled
the whole screen up with the one letter. Whenever that happened Dun
knew of no other solution to stop it other than turning the
computer off at the wall.

“There’s nothing to this
one,” Dan protested. “What do you want from me, rabbits springing
from hats? There was no new lead. Just misguided gossip. Dale did
all that could be done up there. It’s a no-brainer.”

“Just to do your
job.”

“How is this my job? Dale’s
had this case and there’s nothing there.”

“Dale’s not here right now,
is he. But you are. See how luck works? What was his name, Paul
Evans? He knows someone who knows someone else. And both of them
aren’t trying to make my life easier.”

“So you’re putting that on
me?”

“That’s right. Look, Dan,
just check it out, get quotes, something in writing, you’re good at
that, and it’ll all go away.”

“And I get to personally go
up to Gendry for this? You’ll owe me,” was Dan’s way of
agreeing.

“Think of it as an
expenses-paid holiday.”

“But all that way? For
that?”

“If you want to do your job
and make your boss a happy man, you will.”

“You’re sending me all the
way to Gendry for what now, I’ve forgotten?”

Dun sat back in his chair, a
brief look of relief that he was taking a break from that horrible
machine. He gave Dan a short glare that said that the Irish monster
was lurking at the door. “To see what Dale missed, what their
excuse-for-police missed. To see if Paul Evans—was it? To see if
Paul Evans had anything. And most important, to make me happy. Can
you do that for me, pretty please? For your bossy-wossy? Can
you?”

Dan knew that was a sign he
should leave. “Now you put it that way …” he said sarcastically,
wondering if there was anything else he could do to get off the
case.

It took him a good two hours
before accepting that he would give it a go. He thought of a way of
getting out of the travel by proving that Paul Evans had no reason
to be suspicious. When he made that decision he had a good laugh
and then needed to buy a muesli bar from the office food
dispenser.

Dan’s devious plan was to
contact this suspicious author and get an explanation that would
make everyone happy and so he would not need to go near any place
named Gendry or anything like it. The author was Max Marshall, and
Paul Evans had claimed that he was well known. Everyone Dan asked
had never heard of the man, and he asked all the people in the
office building who liked to read. Even an internet search revealed
nothing but dead links. Unless this author was Max Marshall the
famous Jamaican golfer who had fallen off the pace some years back,
or Max Marshall the television soap actor who was now in his
nineties. Maxine Marshall was moderately successful in writing
poetry and liked to live in the jungles of South America, but Dan
guessed it wasn’t her.

The Max Marshall he wanted
lived in a scruffy apartment block that had an elevator that didn’t
much care for Dan’s body size. When Dan knocked on his door he
hoped to be offered a cup of coffee, and if not, he would be making
some obvious suggestions that he should be. The door opened with a
loud clack of a heavy chain that stopped it from opening more than
enough for one eye to look out. When Dan said who he was and showed
his identification, the man relaxed. But Dan noticed that he didn’t
relax as much as he should have, which alerted his
radar.

“No, that’s ok, come on in,”
said Max. “What did you say you were looking for again,
sorry?”

“Just following up on an
incident down at Gendry,” Dan said as he made a careful sweep of
the apartment without being obvious about it. He noted three
bookcases all overflowing with books and papers.

“Gendry? How does that
concern me? I don’t understand. What would that have to do with
me?”

Dan noticed how his
nervousness increased with the name of the town. He would not admit
it, but he loved seeing such signs in people as he talked to them.
Signs of guilt, most likely. “Have you been there recently,
sir?”

“I don’t remember the last
time I was at Gendry.”

Dan registered the
non-answer. “You’ve been there a few times?”

“Yes, well, not really.
Doesn’t everyone go there at some time? Good trout, right? That’s
what they say, don’t they?”

“You go there for the
fishing?”

“No, I don’t
fish.”

“Then why do you go
there?”

“I didn’t say I’ve ever been
there. Can I ask what this is about?”

Dan almost smiled; this guy
was making it easy for him. “Certainly you can ask,” he said as he
invited himself to sit at the dining table and throw down his
notepad. He knew that doing an elaborate search through his pockets
for a pen would make any nervous liar more nervous. It was the
breaks in conversation that made them sweat the most, and sometimes
they would blurt out the strangest things. The mind would race,
trying to think of answers to questions not even asked, and that
was how Dan would catch them in a lie. Max sat at one of the other
table seats and tried to act nonchalant.

“There was an incident at
Gendry,” Dan explained, drawing it out, watching for more signs
that Max was getting rattled, “and your name came up. Seeing
they’re a bit behind the times up there, the local police I mean,
they never followed up on it, and so it’s been left to me to do the
tidying. What am I, a maid, that I’m called in to tidy up after
their mess? But that’s the hand I’ve been dealt, and it’s up to me
to play it best as I can. You know, I’ve been on this job for
nearly twenty-two years, but do I get respect deserving someone
who’s been at the job for that long—and with very good results too,
I might add—of course not. Old Dan gets to be the maid on this one.
With a hand of deuces and clubs no less.”

He paused as he found a pen
and then spent a few seconds staring at it, hoping that Max would
be confused by his last comment.

“Where was I?” Dan asked as
he looked up. “Sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought. Been happening
a lot lately. I don’t want to get paranoid about these things but
you never know what it could be. To forget basic things, I mean. I
don’t know if it’s my mind going or that I’m just bored. Could be
both, of course. They’ve got pills for that, don’t they? They have
pills for everything these days. More drugs are legal than on the
streets, you know. Should I ask my doctor about it, you
think?”

“Your doctor?” Max asked,
struggling to follow him. “Depends, I suppose.”