“I have no idea. Someone with access to my flat.”
He flipped open a notebook. “The owners of the flat, Stewart and Lucy Cavendish, have not left Aberdeen for the last two months. I think I’m right in saying that Miss Amanda Paisley, your upstairs neighbour, also holds a key, but she is not a person of interest to us.” He looked up at me. “Am I missing out anyone else?”
Abruptly I remembered the intruder I’d surprised on my return from Cornwall. I said, “Yes! Someone broke into the flat yesterday. That’s to say, Amanda let them through the outside door. I don’t know how they got into the flat itself.”
“Did you report this to the police?”
“No – I forgot about it.”
“I see.” He gave me a sceptical look. “And did anyone else besides yourself see the person?”
“I very much doubt it.”
A disbelieving frown. “How inconvenient.”
“You can say that again.”
“And you’re saying this alleged break-in happened yesterday?”
“It wasn’t alleged – it happened! Ask Amanda.”
“This message pre-dates Mr Openshaw’s death. There can’t be any connection.”
“These things can be faked, can’t they? Anyway, have you checked Rob Openshaw’s own computer? Did he receive this message? I don’t see how he can have, because I never sent it.”
He looked slightly evasive. “We’re confirming that now.” Then he assumed his more confident frown. “It’s not the only message on this computer. There are several others in the same vein, all sent by you to Mr Openshaw.”
“Well I didn’t write any of them.” I was thinking fast. “What else is on this computer? Is there other stuff of mine? I bet there isn’t, because I’ve never seen it before in my life. Someone’s just planted those email messages on it.”
“The computer belonged to a Mr Joe Naismith, who I believe was your predecessor in the flat. It was apparently left behind when his other belongings were cleared out by his sister, Mrs Cavendish.”
My mind was racing to keep up with this. I’d never met Joe Naismith, but I knew he had been an investigative journalist – a more effective mainstream version of me, you could say. His investigations had eventually got him killed. Presumably he’d kept this computer concealed as a safeguard against the very kind of invasion I’d experienced.
Ratcliffe said, “You found this computer, didn’t you? And you realised it would be ideal for your purposes – a secret channel for your petty threats.”
I stared at him. “You found it, too. How did you manage that? If you found it, presumably anybody could.”
He said nothing. There was a long silence, then I said, “Am I allowed a phone call?”
The two detectives exchanged glances, then Ratcliffe nodded almost imperceptibly. He suspended the interview and led me out to a public phone. Fortunately I’d learned the number I wanted off by heart, but predictably the call went to voicemail. I began, “Dave, I’m sorry to bother you, but I really need your help.”
Chapter 28
I was kept in that interview room for hours, mostly on my own. I had to keep reminding myself that it was infinitely preferable to being put in a cell.
I knew my friend Dave Matthews was back from his summer break, and in my voicemail I’d told him as much as I could about my situation, but I had no idea when he would pick up my message, or what if anything he could do about it. I was beginning to think the answer must be nothing.
Finally Ratcliffe came in with suppressed fury in his face. He said, “Right, for now you can go, but you haven’t heard the last of this.”
I followed him down the corridor and out into the public area of the police station. Leaning against one of the barred windows was none other than Dave. He gave me a twisted smile as we walked in. “Mr Stanhope,” he greeted me. “What a surprise.”
Ratcliffe gave him a stern look. “I hope you’re happy now.”
“Delirious.” Dave shrugged himself upright. “Seriously, thanks Andy. Appreciate your good will.”
“I trust this will be the last time you ask for it.”
Dave reached round and scratched his neck, adopting an innocent frown. “Don’t be like that.”
Ratcliffe seemed about to say more, but settled instead for a hostile glare.
Dave said to me, “Shall we get going then?”
“Gladly.”
Ratcliffe said, “Hang on.” He walked over to the counter and picked up a laptop computer and a tablet. “These are yours, I believe.” He handed them to me. “Don’t ask for the tower unit – we’re keeping that for now.”
“Nothing to do with me. You can keep it forever if you like.”
“Sign here please.”
I did as he asked, and he watched wordlessly as we walked out.
Dave said, “I don’t know about you, but I need a pint. But not in there.” He pointed to a pub across the road. “Full of cops. Can’t stand them.”
“But you’re a cop yourself.”
“I work in south London. This is north London. You don’t think we socialise with each other, do you?”
He led me down the road and round a corner, where he marched confidently into a small oak-beamed bar. He declined to fill me in until he had a pint in his hand. I stood waiting beside him, noting that he hadn’t lost any of his excess weight during his sub-tropical break. If anything he seemed bulkier than when I’d last seen him, though he’d acquired a healthy-looking tan. Finally he turned to me.
“Another fine mess you’ve got yourself into, Mr Stanhope. And me as well, it seems.”
“I’m truly sorry, Dave. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Have you never heard of solicitors? They’re the people who are supposed to nursemaid you through this kind of thing.”
“I seem to have one, but he’s up in Banbury, and I don’t think he comes cheap.”
“Cheap shouldn’t enter into it if you’re looking at a murder charge. What the hell is all this about, Mike?”
I gave him an abbreviated run-down of my involvement with Rob Openshaw and his book promotion web site, concluding, “They brought me back in today because of these threatening emails I’m supposed to have written. I had no defence ready because I didn’t know anything about them.”
He put down his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re lucky,” he said.”
“Meaning?”
“They don’t have any proof that this Rob Openshaw person actually received these alleged emails.” He gave me a wry look. “I was able to point this out.”
“But?”
“I don’t really know the people at this station. I had to call in a favour from a guy I vaguely know upstairs, and he has no involvement in your case. If he hadn’t been around, you would still be in there.”
“So what happened?”
“He outranks these guys, so he asked a couple of questions for me, and realised DS Ratcliffe and his crew were winging it, hoping they would find the evidence they wanted while they were holding you. Clever, but it’s not the way things are supposed to work.”
“So if they can’t find the evidence, they’ll realise those emails are valueless, won’t they? It proves they’re fakes.”
“I don’t know, Mike, they weren’t exactly rushing to fill me in on their thinking. They might think Openshaw viewed the emails on a device that hasn’t been found.”
“But they won’t find one because I didn’t send them in the first place.” I stared indignantly at him. “Surely they can check that with my internet service provider – or Openshaw’s?”
“In the long run, maybe. It’s a murky area, and I’m no expert. Put it this way: those emails have heightened suspicions against you, and even if these folks get a court order to trace them and still can’t prove the messages are genuine, mud sticks.”
“Great.”
We wandered over to an alcove where we could speak more freely. As we sat down, Dave said,
“Tell me more about this computer. If it belonged to the guy who was in the flat before you, how come it still worked?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about that. There was already an internet connection in the flat when I moved in. It must have been Joe’s. His sister must have kept it going after he died. So nothing had changed in the setup. Assuming this computer was connected to the network when Joe was alive, it would still be working now.”
“But who would know it was there? A colleague of Joe’s, do you think? An enemy of his?”
“You’ve got me there.”
He nodded and said nothing, then downed the last of his pint. “Your round, I think.”
Returning to the table with two refills, I said, “How was Madeira?”
“Hot and sunny. Suzy loved it.”
“But you had reservations?”
“No, it was great, but I’m not one for lying around sunbathing.”
I smiled. Dave looked like someone who might enjoy lying around sunbathing very much, but appearances can be deceptive. I knew that despite his weight he was an enthusiastic squash player, and he also went jogging from time to time. His light hair was thinning slightly now, but his complexion, though ruddy, was relatively unlined. He’d been in his early forties when I’d first met him years ago, and he didn’t look much older now.
I told him more about Rob Openshaw and the history of my involvement with him, and eventually he said, “I suppose you have a theory about all this?”
“Well, I’m wondering if Openshaw was strapped for cash. I don’t have any real evidence for that, but it seems a reasonable guess. As to who killed him, your guess is as good as mine. It could have been some other disappointed author, or some bad people he owed money to. And it pains me to say so, but I can’t rule out Graham Bulwell, the writer I was telling you about. He was certainly angry with Openshaw.” I considered the idea. “Having said that, I must say I find it hard to see him as a killer.”
“But the cops here say there’s no CCTV footage of anyone else entering the house?”
“There’s no CCTV in the square – period. They don’t know if anyone else went in and came out or not.”
Dave nodded.
“Anyway, the bottom line is that someone must be setting me up for this.”
He looked judiciously at me. “So it would seem.”
“What I don’t understand is why they picked on me.”
“Convenience? Opportunism? You put yourself in the frame by turning up at Openshaw’s house on the wrong day at the wrong time. Someone wanted to deflect the police from looking anywhere else, and you made yourself the ideal target.”
“So how do I convince the police they’ve got it wrong?”
“They’ll get there in the end. They’re probably looking into Openshaw’s life already – checking to see who else might bear a grudge.”
“I bloody well hope so. Apparently he had a history of dishonesty.” I outlined what Annette Bradbury had told me about his murky past in the UK publishing business. “And who knows what he got up to in the United States?”
“So in due course they’ll pick up all this.”
“Let’s hope.”
As we prepared to leave, he said, “What’s this about a solicitor in Banbury?”
“Ah, yes. You remember Samantha Adams?”
“Is she the lady you secretly fancied last year?”
I gave him an awkward smile. “That’s the one. She’s getting married to a guy in Banbury, and when I told her I was being held by the police, her fiancé organised his firm’s solicitor to come and help get me out.”
Dave gave me a quizzical look. “Is it just me, or am I picking up some strange vibes here?”
“I haven’t figured that out myself yet.”
Chapter 29
Guy Dereham managed to surprise me when I turned up next day at the Smart Headings office near London Bridge. It wasn’t my day for working there, but I felt I needed a change of scene.
He began with his familiar low-level irony. “So you’re starting to spend more time at our humble enterprise,” he said.
I didn’t want to seem furtive, so I gave him an abbreviated account of what had been happening to me. I concluded, “To be honest, I decided to come here today for a blast of sanity.”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Not a lot of that commodity around here.” He gave me a long look, sizing me up. “You’re supposed to be reporting the news, not making it.”
“Huh! Tell that to the police.”
“Pity there isn’t a logistics angle, or we could make it our story of the day. We could do with something like that.”
He started to wander away, but then turned back. He said, “Have you considered offering a piece about this to Seismic Scene?” He was referring to the fast-growing mainstream news web site – highly regarded in media circles, but somewhat out of my league.
I shook my head. “I don’t know anyone there, and I don’t have a track record with them.”
“No need to put yourself down. Your stuff is as good as anything they have to offer.”
I attempted a modest shrug.
“I know a guy on their editorial team. We go way back. Have a word with him, and mention my name.” He took out his wallet. “I saw him just the other day.” He slid out a business card and handed it to me.
I was lost for words. I muttered something by way of thanks, and he gave me one of his inscrutable smiles. “Can’t have good writers going destitute for want of work.” He walked off without another word.
I sat there for a moment, bemused. The idea of Guy Dereham being as helpful as this was unfamiliar, and I was hesitant to take up his suggestion. Yet his good will seemed genuine. I studied the business card he’d handed to me. The contact’s name was Phil Reynolds, and there was a mobile phone number. Before I could lose my nerve, I rang it.
To my surprise he answered after the first ring. I explained why I was calling, and when he’d heard enough he said, “Let me check out some of your previous stuff, Mike, and get a flavour of your writing. If I like it, and if you have a solid story to tell, we’ll look at it. The self-publishing world doesn’t get much mileage in the mainstream, and you might have a bit of a scoop here.”
I said, “You realise I’m still under investigation?”
“I hear you, and we’ll need to watch out for contempt of court. But let’s worry about that when the time comes.”
I disconnected with a sense of awe. Potentially I’d found a new outlet for my work, and I also had a concrete reason for digging into Rob Openshaw’s world. I could spend more time on it without a sense of guilt.
* * *
At lunchtime, as America started to wake up, I logged on to one of the writers’ forums that I sometimes visited. My plan was to see if other members had been reporting anything untoward about The Magic Bookseller, and finally I did find a couple of relevant posts – mostly warnings that the company appeared to be on the wane. As one writer commented, “The magic seems to have faded.” I reflected bleakly that I should have searched these out before shelling out my money.
I started a new thread to report on Openshaw’s death in London. Within minutes a reply had appeared – some wag asking if Openshaw had been killed by “a delegation of disappointed authors”. Clearly the word about his faltering business had already spread.
For a few minutes there was no more action, then a response to the ironic posting popped up. “Shame on you for rushing to judgement. Rob Openshaw did good work when he was at The Spine.”
This was interesting on several levels. For a start, it was clear from these postings that the identity of the man behind Magic Bookseller was already public knowledge. It hadn’t been quite the mystery that I’d imagined. I should have looked more carefully when I placed my booking, instead of relying on a cursory search.
The mention of The Spine also seemed significant. It was among the big guns in the arcane world of online book promotion. I’d never used its servi
ce myself; the threshold for acceptance had always looked impossibly high. But I’d heard that if you were lucky enough to persuade it to feature your book, you could expect a significant surge in sales and downloads.
One other posting caught my attention. It was from a known self-publishing guru with the online moniker Bookish99. His comment read, “Rob Openshaw helped me a lot when he was at The Spine, but lately Magic Bookseller has been in decline. I didn’t know he’d shifted to the UK, but I read somewhere that he was in dispute with The Spine.”
I wondered what the dispute had been about. I opened The Spine’s web site, and was impressed to find that it was big enough to have a dedicated press section with its own phone number. Now that I had a commission to write an article, or at any rate the promise of one, I could announce myself as a mainstream journalist with a degree of conviction. I called the number.
It went to voicemail.
There was also a submission form, so I typed a message asking for information on the nature of Rob Openshaw’s dispute with the company. They might tell me or they might not. It was worth a try. I added my phone number and email address.
To my amazement, I received a return phone call later that afternoon. A young American woman’s voice greeted me with, “Hi Mike, this is Eliza from The Spine here. How may I help you today?”
I patiently repeated the message I’d put in my email.
“So, Mike, I can tell you a little about that, but you’ll appreciate that I’m not able to disclose any confidential or privileged information.”
“Of course not. Whatever is comfortable for you.”
“OK, so Rob Openshaw worked for The Spine for three years, then left to form his own online business.” She made the last part sound like a question.
“Right. I know about that.”
“Then some time after he left, concerns were raised that he might have accessed data from The Spine that he was not entitled to use. The Spine asked him to cease and desist, and told him he would face a law suit if he failed to comply. Fortunately we were able to resolve the matter amicably.”
The Concrete Ceiling Page 12