The Writer (23 page)

Dan was about to tell him he
could be incriminating himself by talking like this, but he decided
that he won’t since he just didn’t like him.

“Can you tell me when you
wrote it?” he asked.

“Last couple of months,”
said Max. “I can’t say for certain. I write a lot of different
things. And I need to warn you again, it’s just a draft, so excuse
the typos. I just can’t spell to save myself. Never could. The
trick is making people think you can. Truth is, not many people can
spell, and no one can spell every word, except one of those strange
little kids you see on TV now and then. You can keep that copy
there. But please, whatever you do, don’t let anyone else see it.
Anyone can copy it and put their name to it and publish it on the
net. It’s copyrighted to me and to me only.”

“Makes me feel like it’s top
secret,” Dan said, only half joking.

“Guess it’s just my natural
writer’s fear of seeing his work leave his house in the hands of a
stranger. Unfinished work especially, makes me ten times more
worried. Like one of your children leaving home when they’re too
young to see the world. Would you let one of your children leave
home with some man off the street? That’s how I feel about my draft
you have there. I don’t expect you to understand, and I’m not
saying it has any logic. At least I’m not asking to go with you and
stand over your shoulder when you read it. But it has crossed my
mind.”

“Your work is safe with me,
sir,” Dan said as he got up and head to the door. “Thank you and
good night.”

As he walked to his car he
had two uneasy feelings. The first was a result of too much rushing
around after his dinner, which was not helped by the addition of
cream rolls and fruit slices. The other was that he was starting to
suspect that this entire case was a pointless wild goose hunt and
whatever was on the disk was nothing but a big waste of his
time.

Dun Moore noticed that Dan
had been staring at his computer screen for a good hour. This was
unusual. It wasn’t like Dan to spend much time on a computer and he
hardly ever saw him on the internet. But there he was staring at it
and hardly moving. Every now and then he reached for the mouse, and
aside from the constant sipping of his coffee, that was his only
movement. Dun considered having someone walk past to sneak a look
and then report back to him, but then he thought that he should
have his staff be doing something more important.

Then Dan got up and headed
to the kitchen, probably for more food, and Dun nodded. There was
the old Dan, still with them. Dun returned to his own desk where he
was trying to write a report for his boss which was not going well.
But after looking at the computer screen he knew that he couldn’t
relax without knowing what Dan was up to. He went to Dan’s desk
which was still free, and looked at the screen. Words filled it up
and at first Dun thought it was a letter. As he looked at it he saw
that it was fiction, with a few glaring typos. Was Dan reading a
book?

Dan came up behind Dun and
ignored him as he placed a small box of pastries on the desk, and
then went to get more coffee. Dun helped himself to a pastry and
followed him.

“How’s the Longbottom case
coming along?” Dun asked him in the kitchen.

“It’s not,” Dan replied as
he filled his cup, sounding like he wasn’t feeling too
chatty.

“How’s that?”

“Paul Evans and his wife
Sarah, they’re chasing ghosts. All it’s about is this Max Marshall
and his little story about Gendry.”

“Story? What story’s
this?”

“You were looking at it just
a second back. Some odd thing about some girl who goes to live with
her grandmother. It seems to be set in Gendry, but it’s not really
like Gendry if you ask me. More like one of those quaint versions
of Gendry you’d see on TV. Think that’s just the way the guy
writes; not really my style. I prefer action; exploding
helicopters, that sort of thing. Those Bruce Willis action ones
from the eighties, they’re my favourites.”

“Max Marshall wrote a story,
you’re saying? About the murder?”

“Yeah, and he gave me a
copy,” Dan said as he went back to his desk. “I’m sitting here
reading through it, like I should, and I find that it’s true, that
he talks about Longbottom being found dead. He’s got the reaction
of the locals and how the whole town is shocked. Usual stuff you’d
expect.”

“He says how Longbottom
died?” Dun asked as he followed. “Say who did it?”

“I haven’t got that far, but
I’d doubt it. None of it seems real to me.”

“Then it’s all just
fiction?”

“Some of it’s true,
maybe.”

“True? What’s
true?”

“He’s got Handisides in it,
and a couple of others I recognise. Sal, who owns
Sal’s.”

“He’s got real people in
there? Then it’s not fiction. What do you call it when it’s not
fiction?”

“Non-fiction.”

At the neighbouring desk,
Benny Taylor leaned back in his chair. “Real life,” he
offered.

“The main stuff about the
girl,” Dan said to Dun, “that can’t be real. I think she’s the main
character. It’s all from her point of view. As far as I could tell,
Max isn’t a young woman, so that’s kind of weird, why he’s writing
about her.”

“Think she could be a
substitute for Max?” asked Dun. “Like he was there and he’s using
her character as cover for what he did?”

“It’s possible, I guess, but
I don’t know,” said Dan. “Her grandmother runs a boarding house up
there. Perhaps Marshall stayed in the same place.”

“What do you mean, her
grandmother runs a boarding house?”

“She’s a real person, this
granddaughter. Everyone up there’s still talking about her even
though she hasn’t been there for a while. She lives here in the
city and I’m trying to track her down. Not having much luck
there.”

“You’re telling me this Max
Marshall has a real person as his main character? I thought you
just said it wasn’t real.”

“Fiction,” said
Benny.

“The story isn’t real but
the people in it are,” said Dan.

“Non-fiction fiction,” said
Benny.

“Shut up,” Dun said to Benny
without looking at him. “Tell you what, Dan; check out exactly how
much of it is real and how much isn’t. If there’s real people
amongst all that poetry then I want to know who and what they’re
doing there. If not, then I think we can pull the plug on
it.”

“Pull the plug?” Dan asked,
shocked at the thought.

“Unless you find anything we
can actually use in the book,” said Dun, not knowing why that would
upset him, “I think you’re done on this one.”

“He was lying to me, I know
that much.”

“Who was? Marshall? How do
you know?”

“His left eye was twitching.
No, Dun, honestly, something wasn’t right with him. And if anything
in his book is real I’m going to nail him to the floor with
it.”

“Dan, you think everyone’s
lying to you, don’t you.”

“Everyone lies to us,” said
Benny.

“Just concentrate on the
book, said Dun, ignoring Benny, “before calling any of the
fictional characters in for questioning. Real people,
okay?”

Dan rubbed his eyes before
he settled back into his reading. The chat with Dun had come too
early, before he had settled on a conclusion, and it put him off
his rhythm. Yes, some was real and some was fiction. He knew the
boarding house in Max’s story was a real place and called Trent
House, and he also knew that a woman from the city named Sophie had
recently stayed there. He could feel that much more was real
too.

The phone was sitting right
there and he knew he could get some answers with one call. He
looked up the number for Trent House and called and asked the owner
about her granddaughter. As much as Dan tried, he could not
convince Susan Tyle that his questions were official police
business. The only way to do it was to go back.

Sam knew that Dan was
sneaking secret food stashes into the house. Under the bed on his
side (for night snacking), up in the top kitchen shelf behind the
good plates, under the seat of his easy chair (that was his
favourite), inside a locked safe under the wood pile, and in a
little nook behind the bathtub. She suspected he had other places
but she was yet to find them. It was always a giveaway when he
would emerge from a room emitting satisfied sighs. Food must be in
there somewhere.

She knew that he would eat
more than usual when his job started to get the better of him.
While she didn’t want to be a controlling type of wife, she was
worried about it. He was on his own diet plan, which was entirely
up to him to watch his food intake, and he had made promise after
promise that he would not go too far. But there again were the
warning signs; suddenly happy for no reason, or agitated and
restless. It was one of those rare cases that he would want to talk
about over dinner, and no matter where their conversation went he
would bring it back there again.

Sam didn’t know anything
about Gendry. Aside from a couple of brief ventures out of the city
when she was in High School, she had no interest in going near such
a place again. From what Dan described, it sounded like the last
place she would want to go if she did want to leave the city.
Although the thought did amuse her, that if they did live there
then he would probably eat all of Sal’s food and put her out of
business.

“There’s something strange
about this one,” Dan said from their lounge computer. “I can’t put
my finger on it. I’ve gone through this book three times now and I
can’t get to the bottom of it. Probably one of those things that’s
obvious, right out in the open, and the more you look into it the
further you get away from the answer.”

He was printing out Max’s
story and giving each page a quick re-read, highlighting the
interesting parts. He had three marker pens; green for good, red
for bad and blue for uncertain. An orange one would have been
better but blue was good enough. He wanted to know exactly which
people were real and which weren’t. The blue was used so much that
it was starting to run dry.

“Danny, I’ve been meaning to
talk about your diet,” said Sam. Seeing she had his attention she
muted the television. One of her favourite reality shows was on but
this was important enough to miss part of it. Dan never bothered
with the shows, saying he preferred his reality to be
realistic.

“Not now, if you don’t
mind,” said Dan, knowing why she was saying that. “Not with
this.”

“We agreed we’d discuss your
diet when you put more weight on. Are you working on a big case? I
thought you were still doing the Gendry one.”

“It’s still the Gendry one,
but it’s like no other I’ve ever been involved with. It’s more than
some backward town. Now I’ve got this writer, and he lives here in
the city, and he’s written all about the case.”

“How is that
unusual?”

“It’s unusual if he wrote it
before
the crime happened. Sam, I hate to admit it, but I’m
starting to wonder if this is not something supernatural. The more
I look at it, the more weird it gets.”

“Supernatural
how?”

“It’s just that I saw one of
this guy Marshall’s books, and it was all about ghosts or
something. And now we get this prediction-thing
happening.”

“What are you saying?” she
asked with a light laugh. “You think he’s psychic? I thought you
didn’t believe in psychics. If I recall rightly, you said they’re
all con artists.”

“I did and I don’t. I’ve
come across a few in my work and I know they’re all kooks. But how
else do I explain this?”

“Wouldn’t it help you solve
your case if he actually was psychic?” She saw he was considering
that, so she added, “You know, I think you need to take a break. I
know you’re eating a lot more lately, and we both know it’s because
the case is getting to you. If it’ll help, I’ll give the book a
read through, see if I can see anything psychic in it. See if I get
any weird vibes.”

“Sure, have a go, see what
you think. Don’t go changing anything; leave it as it is. I know
you like to correct everything as you go. This could be evidence.
I’ve printed it off so I can refer to it when I get there. The
highlighted stuff is mine, so don’t change any of that
either.”

“What? When you get where?
Are you going somewhere?”

“I have to give Gendry
another visit.”

“Are you serious? Didn’t you
just go up there? I thought you hated it.”

“You’re welcome to come
along.”

“As much as I love you,” she
said as she turned her TV show back on, “you know that’s not going
to happen.”

He watched her relax back
into her chair and resume with her show. It was said in jest, they
both knew that, but secretly he wished that yes, she would
accompany him to that place and quell his growing fears. Such fears
were unknown to him. The very fact that he felt them at all made
him more nervous. He wondered if he should just straight-out ask
her to go with him, but when he saw her laughing over one of the
contestants falling off a log and into muddy water, he realised
that maybe she was better not going. He then felt better after he
returned to the computer and dug out that half-muffin that he had
kept hidden in his trouser pocket since mid-afternoon. He knew that
she never thought of checking the clothes he was wearing, and he
could carry a good dozen muffins or pastries at any one time. In
two bites it was gone.