The Circle

by Peter Lovesey

  'Why?'Jessie said. 'We've nothing to be ashamed of.' She hesitated and her expression altered. 'Have we?'

  'It's how it looks to an outsider that matters,' Thomasine said. 'We invited a speaker to our meeting and he was killed shortly after. Our new recruit Bob was caught in another fire and almost killed. And now our secretary is murdered. People are going to point out that the circle is the common factor. We're sure to come under the microscope.'

  'So what are you saying, that we'd better agree on how to deal with the jackals?' Tudor said.

  'In a word, yes.'

  'A spokesman?' Basil said.

  'A press officer.'

  'Cool,' Zach said. 'Like it'

  'Someone we can refer them to,' Thomasine said, encouraged by the support. 'If we're not careful they'll be picking us off, paying us bribes for titbits of gossip about each other.'

  'How ghastly!' Jessie said. You could see in her face the prospect of her reputation disintegrating.

  Naomi spoke up for the first time. She had been a brooding, unsettling presence until now. 'So who do you suggest for press officer?'

  'I can handle it,' Tudor offered.

  'We don't want him,' Naomi said to Thomasine. 'He can't keep anything to himself. We want someone who can stonewall.'

  Basil shook his head. 'Not me, my dear.'

  She said with contempt, 'I'm not talking about garden maintenance. You'd be useless. I propose Bob.'

  'Me?' Caught off guard, Bob trotted out his usual excuse. 'I'm not even a full member yet.'

  'That's neither here nor there,' Naomi said. 'If we appoint you, it's because you're well qualified.'

  'Me? I've never done anything like it.'

  'Personality-wise, you're the best we've got.'

  'That's a laugh.'

  'Don't you want to do this?'

  'I'd rather not, if we can find someone else.'

  'You see?' Thomasine said with the sweep of a hand, looking around the table. 'He's a born stonewaller.'

  This produced the first smiles of the evening.

  She rode her advantage like a surfer. 'Can we have a show of hands for Bob as our press rep?'

  Bob was the only one who didn't raise a hand.

  Zach said, 'Sorted.'

  'Outgunned,' Thomasine said with a smile at Bob. 'If any of us is approached by the media, refer them to Bob Naylor. Right, Bob?'

  'I guess.'

  Thomasine moved on. 'We can also be certain that the police will want to question some of us, if not all.'

  Jessie said in a strangled tone, 'Oh no!'

  Tudor said, 'What's your problem with that?'

  'I don't want a police car parked outside my house.'

  'Worried about curtain-twitchers, is it? Let's face it, we're all potential suspects now. They're going to put us through the mincer.'

  Jessie looked as if she'd been put through the mincer already.

  'The point I'm making,' Thomasine said, 'is that Bob can cope with the press, and I'm sure he'll do it brilliandy, but we can't ask him to fend off the police as well. Each of us is going to have to deal with them individually.'

  'Dangerous,' Anton said.

  'Which is why I raised the matter.'

  'Neat,' Zach said. 'A game plan.'

  'Something like that. We're awfully vulnerable. We give out a lot about ourselves at circle meetings, and that's to be encouraged. It's part of the writing process, using our life experiences. So we all know some pretty intimate details about each other from the things we read out. I, for one, wouldn't want my innermost thoughts passed on to the police.'

  'Nureyev's tights?' Tudor said.

  'Tudor . . . please.'

  Anton said, 'Our acting chair is speaking good sense. Let's agree not to pass on personal information.'

  'Fair enough.' Tudor eyed the youngest member, Sharon, at the end of the table. 'No tittle and no tattle, right?'

  'Certain people have a gift for it,' Anton said with a hard look at Tudor.

  Zach said, 'All okay on that? Fingers up to the fuzz.'

  Thomasine was quick to say, 'No, I'm not saying we shouldn't cooperate. Answer the questions they're entitled to ask, about your own movements, where you were on the night of the fire and so on. Just don't be tempted to comment on other members of the circle.'

  'Whatever your private suspicions may be,' Naomi said, leaving no doubt she had plenty.

  Dagmar said, 'I'm not bothered about talking to the police. What worries me is something far more sinister.'

  'What's that?' Jessie asked.

  'We're all potential victims now.'

  There was a moment while everyone took that in.

  'What - do you think he's going to pick us off one by one?' Tudor said. 'Why would he do that? We're just a bunch of amateur writers. No one is threatened by us.'

  'Miss Snow wasn't threatening anybody. I can't think of anyone less threatening than she was.'

  'We don't know why Miss Snow was picked.'

  'Well, I'm going to take precautions,' Dagmar said.

  'What can you do?'

  'Get a letterbox fitted outside my house. Then I can seal up the front door and sleep easy at night.'

  'While he lobs a firebomb through your front room window,' Tudor said. 'If someone really wants to get you, my love, they will.'

  'Oh my God!'

  'You're not helping,' Thomasine said to Tudor. 'Some of our members are extremely frightened.'

  Tudor raised a hand to acknowledge another gaffe. 'Sorry, people.'

  At this critical moment in the meeting another hand was raised. No one would have predicted that the usually silent Sharon had something to say.

  Thomasine said in a surprised tone, 'Yes, my dear?'

  'Are you going to ask if anyone's got a success to report?'

  If anything could relieve the tension, this was it. There were smiles and some gentle laughter.

  'I hadn't planned on it,' Thomasine said, 'but why not? We could do with some good news.'

  'Well, you know I've always got a pencil in my hand?' She held it up for all to see.

  'Right. We've seen the doodles you do.'

  'A little while ago I started doing pictures of the salon where I work, the people, I mean, and just for a laugh I put balloons out of their mouths with stuff they're saying, the funny things you hear when you're in the chair with your hair in curlers. Know what I mean?'

  'Captions,' Tudor said.

  Anton said, 'Wrong.'

  'What do you mean, "wrong"?' Tudor said.

  'Speech bubbles. She's referring to speech bubbles.'

  'Yeah, man,' Sharon said, looking up from the doodle she was working on and pointing a finger at Anton. 'Any road, some of my friends thought they was wicked and why didn't I take the best stuff round to that free newspaper that started up last year. So I did, and they liked them so much they want to print them.'

  'Marvellous!' Thomasine said, genuinely pleased. 'Congratulations!'

  'It's not real writing, so I didn't know if it counts, but I'll be getting twenty-five pound for each strip they use.'

  'Hey, that's brilliant, and don't play it down. Of course it's real writing. You'll have a regular income from your work, which is more than any of us can boast.'

  'That's what I wanted to say, then.'

  'Is it just the hairdresser's in this strip,' Tudor asked, 'or are you featuring other locations? From here some of the drawings seem to bear a close resemblance to members of the circle.'

  She slid her hand over the paper. 'No, I wouldn't do that. It's only about the salon.'

  'Pity,' he said, 'I wouldn't mind being in a strip cartoon.'

  Anton chose this moment to fire another broadside at Tudor. 'You're full of suggestions. If I remember correctly, it was you who urged us all to use the fire at Edgar Blacker's cottage as the inspiration for our writing. I'm so pleased I ignored you. Now that Miss Snow has died it would be in the worst possible taste.'

  Jessie said, 'Oh my word, yes
!'

  There was a rueful smile from Tudor.

  The biggest reaction came from Naomi. She jerked forward, frowning, and looked across at Zach. 'Inspiration for our writing?'

  Clearly uneasy, Zach said, 'I don't think you were there, Naomi. This was the evening we met in the pub and Maurice had just been released by the police.'

  Basil started to say, 'It was the evening you were trapped—'

  But Naomi cut in. 'I know which evening it was, Basil.'

  Anton wouldn't let it rest. 'I propose that we agree here and now that it would be deplorable for any member of the circle to use these tragedies as subject matter for our writing.'

  Jessie said, 'Hear, hear. I second that.'

  Naomi turned to see if Zach would say anything.

  After some hesitation he cleared his throat. 'Hold on. That sounds like censorship to me. There's a principle at stake here. Freedom of expression.'

  'I agree,' Naomi said.

  Dagmar said, 'Noted.'

  With all the experience of a thousand meetings in the Department of Ancient Monuments, Anton said, 'Madam Chair, I have made a proposal and it was seconded. I insist that it is put to the vote.'

  Thomasine was having a torrid time as the stand-in chair. For help she looked towards Bob.

  Caught again. Bob wasn't used to all this procedural stuff. He'd always avoided union meetings if he could. He dredged deep and said, 'There's one thing no one has mentioned.'

  'What's that?'

  'Tea break.'

  'Lovely suggestion,' Thomasine said. 'We can talk things over informally and come back to Anton's proposal later -if we really need to.'

  Bob was outside having a smoke when Thomasine found him.

  'Sorry about all that, springing it on you,' she said. 'You were great in there.'

  'I know sweet f.a. about the press,' he said, offering her a cigarette. 'I once saw a cartoon I liked. This woman has just come home and is saying triumphantly to her husband, "Only my second week at the writers' circle and they've made me treasurer!'"

  'Yes, and it's bloody unfair, but you'll do it in style, I know you will. What can I do in return - be your slave for a day?'

  'I'll think it over.'

  'A day and a night, then?'

  He looked. She was smiling, and the remark was joky, but there was something there he hadn't seen in a woman's eyes since Maggie died.

  In the Lewes Arms, opposite the law court and built into the ramparts of the castle, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond spilled some beer as he threaded a route through the tiny front bar. This was where lunch was being taken. Lawyers, witnesses and relatives needed an escape.

  DCI Hen Mallin was saving seats by the window, and that was where Diamond was heading. The pair of them had given evidence in what was known to the press as the Wightview Sands case, and it was over apart from the sentencing. The jury hadn't taken long over the guilty verdict.

  'Hope you wanted lemon in this,' Diamond said as he handed Hen her gin and tonic.

  'Always. It stops me getting scurvy. Are you staying another night?'

  He shook his head.

  'Duty calls?'

  'The Wasps.'

  'Sounds dangerous.'

  'Rugby. I'm a Bath supporter.'

  'All right for some,' she said. Til be checking in at Chichester.'

  'Why - do they have a team?'

  'Chichester nick. I took a call this morning. Series of arson attacks.'

  'I thought you were based at Bognor.'

  'I am, but Chi is up a gum tree. What are you smiling for?'

  'I was picturing it. Sounds like a panda.'

  She took a long sip of the G&T. 'Whatever. They're getting a new keeper.'

  When they returned to the meeting room and Thomasine called for order, Anton said, 'We're not all here.'

  'Who's missing, then?'

  'Zach.'

  'And Naomi,'Jessie said.

  'We can wait a few minutes,' Thomasine said.

  'I don't think Zach is coming back,'Jessie said. 'I saw him putting on his motorcycle clothes.'

  'He didn't say he was leaving.'

  'I saw Naomi get on her bike and ride away,' Dagmar said.

  Tudor said, 'It's a bit off, leaving like that without letting us know why.'

  'It's about what we were discussing before the break,' Dagmar said with her way of seeing to the heart of things. 'Zach was talking about freedom of expression. I think they expected to be outvoted.'

  'Did she say anything to you about leaving?' Thomasine asked Basil.

  'I'd be the last to know,' he said. 'Naomi is her own woman. But the two of them met the other day to talk about a project, so this may have something to do with it.'

  There was a pause while the others took this in.

  'Hoho. Sounds to me as if we've got a couple of dark horses in our midst,' Tudor said. 'It wouldn't surprise me at all if they're planning something. This wasn't about freedom of expression. They've done a deal with the papers - dishing the dirt on the rest of us.'

  Jessie gave a strangled cry and put her hand to her throat.

  Thomasine said, 'Tudor, you're at it again, letting your imagination run riot. We discussed talking to the press and they said nothing.'

  'Too guilty to own up.'

  'You're talking about two of our colleagues. Let's have some loyalty here. They probably each had other appointments they had to hurry away for.'

  'If you believe that, you'll believe anything.'

  'I'll speak to them later and find out.'

  Through his clenched teeth Anton drew in a long, audible breath. 'Madam Chair, before the break I put a proposal to the meeting. I now move that we put it to the vote.'

  'There are only nine of us here,' Dagmar said.

  'Eight if you exclude me,' Bob said. 'I haven't joined yet.'

  Thomasine said, 'I was hoping you wouldn't insist, Anton. Perhaps as temporary chair I shouldn't express a view, but I think Zach had a point about censorship. There is a larger principle at stake. It would be a pity if we painted ourselves into a corner.'

  'I agree,' Dagmar said.

  Without looking up from her sketching, Sharon said, 'Me, too.'

  'And me,' Basil said.

  'Looks as if we're far from unanimous,' Thomasine said.

  Dagmar said, 'And I think we need a two-thirds majority to change the constitution. There's something in it about freedom to write on any subject and in any style we choose.'

  'Sorry, Anton,' Thomasine said, 'you're out of order.'

  14

  Reading isn 't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paper work down to a minimum.

  Joe Orton, Loot (1966)

  A All right, boys and girls, settle down and be grateful it isn't my holiday pictures.'

  Detective Chief Inspector Henrietta Mallin - better known as Hen - from Bognor, had taken over as Chief Investigating Officer on what was being called the Chichester arson case. It was a pity the city's own CID couldn't handle this one, but Hen had a good clear-up rate, and it was agreed that the local man, DI Johnny Cherry, wasn't the brightest fruit in the basket. He looked blighted before meeting Hen, and bruised after.

  'This is the cottage on the Selsey Road where the publisher died,' Hen said, as the image of a burnt-out ruin appeared on the video screen. The entire CID team was watching, together with Stella Gregson, a DS from Bognor who had arrived with Hen. 'Victim was asleep upstairs and died in bed.'

  She took them quickly through a sequence showing the space where Edgar Blacker's front door had been. Nothing was left of it. The floor, walls and ceiling were black and disintegrating. 'The seat of the fire,' Hen said. 'Our perpetrator stuffs some oily rags through the letterbox and puts a flame to them. From here it spreads through the main room, which was lined with books wall to wall, and into the kitchen and bathroom.'

  It was difficult to make out one room from another in the blackened debris. She paused the videotape.

>   'We go upstairs now. People of a nervous tendency, look through your fingers.'

  They were shown the head and shoulders of the dead man, the face stained by smoke, yet untouched by flames. The skin was undamaged, the eyeballs still white. 'If you were expecting roast publisher, this will come as a surprise,' Hen said. 'The bedroom escaped the worst of the fire damage. He died of a cocktail of toxic fumes. Never even got out of bed.'

  The camera panned slowly around the bedroom. The used shirt draped over a chair was a touching reminder that its owner had gone to bed expecting a peaceful night's sleep. 'The thatch above this room caught fire and took out the roof, but fire burns upwards and outwards, and the door you see was closed. The fire service got here before the flames from downstairs could burn through, but the fumes seeped in through the cracks.'

  'Who raised the alarm, guv?' Stella Gregson asked.

  'A passing motorist with a mobile.'

  'No connection, I suppose?'

  'None, but you're right to mention it. The person who reports the fire is often the perpetrator. In this case, he wasn't. He was a local radio guy on his way in to present the breakfast programme.'

  Some close shots in the bedroom showed how little damage there was. A framed photo of two men still hung on the wall. 'Is one of those the victim, ma'am?' a keen DC asked.

  Hen referred the question to DI Cherry. 'Johnny?'

  'Er, apparently ... in his younger days.'

  Hen said, 'I didn't notice this when I visited the site this morning. Was it removed and bagged up?'

  'Must have been,' Cherry said.

  'I'd like to see it. I should have mentioned that Mr Blacker was fifty-two, and a bachelor.'

  'Say no more, guv,' the keen DC said with a grin.

  Hen's eyes flashed. 'Have a care, my beauty. I don't do homophobia, and in case you're wondering, I'm unmarried and I'm straight. What's your name?'

  'Humphreys, ma'am.'

  'No need to blush, Humphreys. Anyone can tell you're straight as well, straight back into uniform if you make another crack like that. But let's return to someone of more importance: Edgar Blacker. His publishing company is called the Blacker List, ha bloody ha. He spent his entire career in the industry, starting as tea boy. Worked up to packer in a Birmingham warehouse. Moved down to Essex and got some editorial experience producing magazines. Do we know any tides, Johnny?'