by E. M. Brown
“What do you think happened?”
She thought about it, then shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t think he was… Well, I don’t think anyone did anything to him.”
“You mean murdered?”
“Mmm. You see, there was no evidence of a struggle at the house, nothing missing.” She shrugged. “It’s a mystery. His car was still in the drive, and the front door was unlocked. He just… vanished.”
Ella nodded. She’d read all the news reports; the coverage had been extensive in the first week or so, and then had died to nothing as the months elapsed with no trace of the missing writer.
Cindy began wiping the bar again, then stopped and looked up at Ella. “I just hope…”
“Yes?”
She shrugged. “Well, I just hope he didn’t do anything silly. He hadn’t lived with anyone for a few months, and he’d just finished a book, and he once told me that he always felt a bit down after working for so long on a novel, and the UK Front were doing well in the polls… I just hope it didn’t all get too much for him and he walked into one of the tarns. But surely they’d have found his body, wouldn’t they?”
“I’m sure they would have,” Ella said.
“In the weeks after Ed vanished, Shakespeare came in and he’d question me about that day.” Cindy smiled sadly. “Digby was so upset. They were great friends. They’d known each other since uni. He was desperate to find out what’d happened. He stopped coming in here after a month or so. I suppose it held too many memories.”
“I intend to drive over to see him this afternoon.”
“Say hi from Cindy at the Bull, and tell him to pop in for a pint on the house.”
“I’ll do that.”
“It’s strange,” Cindy said, “but Ed disappeared five years ago, and yet I still expect him to come striding in through the door and order his pint. The place isn’t the same withouthim, you know?”
Ella finished her coffee and made to leave.
“I’ll look out for your book,” Cindy said. “Good luck, and I hope you find out what happened to Ed.”
Ella thanked her for sharing her memories of Richie and left the pub. The air was still and freezing, and a milky grey sky was releasing its load of fat snowflakes. She hurried to her car and drove from the village.
She found the first turning on the left and accelerated up the steep lane, then came to the crest of the hill and braked. To her left, a low, double-winged barn conversion bulked against the louring sky. A light burned orange and welcoming in a front window, and Ella imagined Ed Richie sitting in his study, working on the novels that made him famous. She climbed from the car, waited for a pause in the snowfall, and then took a few snaps of the house and its surroundings on her wrist-com.
She drove west, overcome by a strange melancholy. She’d read a lot about Ed Richie the novelist over the years, but that had been mainly about his work and his politics; those commentators who had ventured to say anything about the man himself had quoted people calling him an introverted, rather dour character. It was gratifying to have spoken to someone who had known and liked the writer. She trawled her memories of the times she’d met Ed Richie, but she’d been very young, and not much interested in the dark, withdrawn young man with whom her sister had been in love.
A mile outside Gargrave, Ella was halted by a police road-block. She feared for a minute that the snow-swept road was impassable further on, and that she might have to turn back and find an alternative route. A body-armoured officer toting a black machine gun strode towards the car, making a negligent winding motion with his gloved right hand. Ella obediently wound down the window.
The cop met her smile with a blank look. “Identity.”
She reminded herself that she was in England now, where the police were armed and malefactors were as likely to be shot in the back as arrested.
She dug out her ID card from inside her parka and passed it through the window.
The cop slipped the card into a reader belted to his waist and examined the tiny screen.
“A Scottish national. What’re you doing down here?”
Ella shivered in the icy wind. “Visiting friends.”
“Who are?”
Herfirst impulse was to tell the prick to go take a flying fuck, but sherestrained herself. She gave Digby Lincoln’s name and address, and then the details of an editor friend in London.
A second cop, she noticed, was moving around the car, holding a device that looked like a mine detector and sweeping it under the chassis. The cops conferred over the car roof, their words whipped away in the wind.
“What seems to be the problem, officer?” she asked.
The cop returned her card. “No problem at all,” he said. “On you go.”
The barrier was lifted and Ella drove through, telling herself that security would have been ramped up after the terrorist bombing of Manchester airport six months earlier. Still, the sight of the machine gun had spooked her.
She drove on into Gargrave, then followed her satnav back onto the B-road that wound its way through the windswept hills towards Digby Lincoln’s converted farmhouse.
Ten minutes later she drove up a gravelled driveway and parked in front of the house. What had been the barn door was now a huge, arched plate-glass window, and beyond it an open fire burned, reminding Ella of the pub she’d just left. A hyperactive red setter pup bounced up and down at the window, barking to announce her arrival.
Ella saw a big, balding, pear-shaped man struggle out of an armchair before the fire. He peered through the window at her, then limped from the room. She approached the front door and waited.
Digby Lincoln would be seventy now, with a chequered career as a scriptwriter stretching back to the mid-’nineties. His satirical sitcom, The State We’re In, had been a huge hit and had run for five years. Following the attack on Heathrow Airport in August ’22, the UK Front government had imposed ‘temporary’ military rule and brought in draconian legislation that included press and media censorship. The independent production company that had made State was forced into liquidation, and Lincoln had found himself blacklisted. With the election of the Tories last year, Lincoln was working again, co-writing a bland sitcom set in a retirement home for vicars in the Channel Islands.
She heard a succession of bolts being drawn and chains slid back, and the door opened a grudging six inches. Lincoln’s beefy face peered out, his small mouth parenthesised by a drooping grey moustache. What few strands of hair remained on his bald pate were grey and hung to his collar.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, and I know I should have called beforehand to ensure you were available for interview…”
His eyes narrowed. “Interview?”
“I’m Ella Shaw, and I’m writing a biography of your friend, Edward Richie.”
The suspicious eyes widened a fraction at her name. “Shaw? Ella Shaw?”
“That’s right. I –”
“You wrote Corbyn’s biography?”
She smiled. “I did.”
“And you do pieces for ScotFreeMedia.”
“You’re well informed.”
“I read your column all the time,” Lincoln said, opening the door fully. “Hell, you can’t trust the BBC these days.” He hesitated. “Look, I can give you an hour. I have to set off at three for a meeting.”
“That would be lovely, Mr Lincoln.”
He stood back. “Digby,” he said. “Come in, you must be perishing.”
He led her into the lounge where she suffered the attention of the bouncing pup until Lincoln called it off. “Tea or coffee? Or would you prefer something stronger?”
“Black tea would be fine.”
He came back bearing a tray and poured two cups. She sat on the sofa while he resumed his place in an armchair before the fire, the dog curled at his feet. She glanced at the photographs of a smiling grey-haired woman lining the mantelpiece.
Lincoln said, “My w
ife, Caroline. Passed away last summer. She was sixty-eight. No age at all. Brain haemorrhage. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “We were in the garden, pruning roses. Died in my arms.”
Ella made futile noises of commiseration. “I’m sorry.”
“Nearly thirty-eight years, we were together. She made me a very happy man.” He smiled. “Still, we soldier on. I didn’t mope, threw myself into my work.”
“I see your latest is doing well.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Thanks, but it’s not up to much, between you and me. Typical of the stuff the Beeb’s putting out these days. Still, I was surprised the BBC would sully their hands with me, after what happened… Anyway, it keeps the old mind occupied. Also, I’m writing my autobiography for Canongate in your neck of the woods.” He sipped his tea and gave her a penetrating look. “I’m glad someone’s doing a book about Ed, and I’m glad it’s you. He deserves it.”
“How long did you know Ed?”
He pointed at her wrist-com, and said, “Are you recording this?”
“I’m not, but if I have your permission…?”
“Go ahead.”
She gave a voice instruction to her wrist-com to record their conversation.
“How long did I know Ed?” Digby went on. “Just under forty-seven years. Met at Cambridge back in ’78. We got along like a house on fire. We both wanted to write, change the world.”
He stared at the flames, then looked up at her. “Ed was a good man, Ella. The best friend a man could have. He had a great brain, wasted on TV: he didn’t have enough creative freedom. TV’s okay for third rate hacks like me, but it was too limiting for the likes of Ed.” He smiled. “But he proved that to the world when he wrote his novels.”
Ella was tempted to ask about the early days, but decided there would be plenty of time for that in subsequent interviews, if he agreed to them. “What prompted him to make the transition, so late in life?”
Lincoln smiled. “What else? The bloody awful political situation. This was in ’17. What with Brexit and the election of Trump the year before… He just couldn’t go on turning out soaps for the Beeb. He talked it over with me in the Bull one night. He wanted to take a year out to write a novel about a television scriptwriter set in the near future, charting the worsening political situation. The damned thing was, Ella, I tried to talk him out of it. I said no one reads serious novels these days. I tried to persuade him to do it as a TV script, try it with a few independents. But, bless him, he wouldn’t listen to me, took a year off and wrote the book… and look what happened. The first novel did okay, and his second sold a million copies in the first year.”
“I’ve read somewhere that you wanted to write novels when you were younger.” Ella hesitated. “How did you feel at Ed’s success?”
“I was honestly the happiest man alive when his novels became best-sellers. I was old enough, and wise enough, to rejoice in his success. The dedication in the first book… It still brings tears to my eyes.”
“I’m quoting from memory, but wasn’t it something like, ‘To Digby, the best friend a man could wish for: thanks for all those bull sessions in the Bull’?”
“That’s it, almost to the word. Ed ran the plots and ideas by me before he began writing – not that I’m taking any credit. It just quickened the process of gestation, that’s all.” He shook his head. “The exquisite irony of it was that, back in our twenties, I wrote a big, fat – and very bad – science fiction novel, showed it to Ed, and he pulled itto pieces – rightly so, I admit now. Not that I saw it like that at the time. I was livid, it almost ended our friendship. I was immature and egotistical back then…
“I can’t recall how we patched it up – I think Ed tracked me down and told me to grow up. Anyway, we sorted it out and later Ed introduced me to a producer at the BBC, who took some of my early plays. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“And then when you moved up north, you returned the favour by getting him work with Yorkshire TV?”
“He moved up here soon after Caroline and I left London, and we had twenty-odd years as near neighbours, and enjoyed thousands of pints at the Bull.”
Ella noticed Lincoln glancing at his old-fashioned wristwatch; she had about twenty minutes before he was due to set off.
“If you’re agreeable, Digby, I wonder if I could meet you again over the next few months? I have someone interested in the book, and there’s a chance that I could pay you for the interviews.”
“I don’t want paying, for God’s sake. I’ll do it for Ed. He deserves someone to write a good book about him, before… I was about to say before he’s forgotten. I know, I know… his novels are still in print, but for how much longer – and how much longer will it be before they’re banned? We’re living in a post-literate world, Ella, a post-intellectual, post-scientific world. The truth no longer matters. Or rather it’s swamped by lies promulgated by vast industries and governments with vested interests. There’s so much misinformationthat people don’t know what to believe nowadays. Is it any wonder that the electorate votes for fascist celebrities?” He stopped. “I’m sorry. I’m ranting.”
“No, I quite understand. And I agree.”
The silence stretched, filled only by the crackle of the fire. At his feet, the puppy whimpered in its sleep.
After a while, Ella said, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but do you think Ed killed himself?”
Lincoln stared into the flames for a long time, then looked across at her and said, “Do you know, Ella, I’ve asked myself that question on and off for the past five years. Ed’s books sold well, and were very well reviewed… But did they change anything; did they influence anyone? Ed wanted the books to change the world. To make people wake up and see what they were sleepwalking into. In those eight novels he outlined an affectless society more bothered about celebrity, possessions, and personal wealth than about culture, art, literature… or about a pluralistic, inclusive, caring society.” He lifted a hand and gestured through the window. “And look what we’ve got.”
“So… do you think this was what drove him to – ?”
“No,” Lincoln said. “No, on reflection I don’t think Ed took his own life. He… he wasn’t that kind of man. He was stronger than that. And anyway, he had an idea to turn his first three novels into TV dramas, and he wanted me to co-write them. Okay, the climate was against the project, what with the Beeb under the thumb of the UK Front, but we had plans to tout the synopsis around the few remaining independent production companies.”
“So… what do you think happened to him?”
Lincoln bit his bottom lip, regarding the fire. He was silent for a time. Somewhere a clock ticked. At last he said, “I don’t know, Ella. I honestly don’t know. But…” He hesitated, then went on, “In the last few months, before he vanished, he was in touch with someone we both knew at Cambridge. We were close, the three of us, which was a bit odd considering that Ralph Dennison was a scientist with not the slightest interest in literature or the arts. Anyway, we lost contact with Ralph after we graduated, went our separate ways… Only in the last few months, before Ed vanished, Ralph contacted him and they met up.”
“And?”
“They met three times, as far as I recall, and after every meeting Ed got back and was… He wasn’t himself, Ella. He was lost in thought, miles away. I’d ask how it went, how Ralph was, and he’d fob me off with some story about how they had a few drinks and nattered about their student days.”
“And you think… what?”
He shook his head. “That’s just it. I don’t know what to think. I do know that Ed seemed incredibly preoccupied after meeting Ralph, but he wouldn’t open up and tell me what was wrong, and I suppose I resented it. But whether it could have had anything to do with what happened to Ed, I honestly don’t know.”
He glanced at his watch again.
Ella said, “I mustn’t keep you. It’s been fascinating… I’ll be in contact, if that’s okay, to ar
range further meetings – entirely at your convenience, of course.”
Lincoln seemed not to have heard her. He was staring at the dog at his feet as if lost in thought. Surprising her, he struggled from his armchair and said, suddenly, “Come with me.”
He wheezed from the room, the puppy in hot pursuit. Ella followed them through the house, along a corridor to a book-lined room looking out over the snow-clad moorland.
Lincoln crossed the room and removed a landscape from the only patch of wall not covered by books, revealing a small safe. He turned the combination lock, swung the door open, and pulled out what looked like a fat, battered ledger.
He stood with it clutched to his chest, staring at her.
“A few days after Ed vanished,” he said, “I was getting worried. We were in contact almost daily, and met at the Bull two or three times a week… Then – nothing. He didn’t answer my calls, either to his mobile or his home number. So three days later I drove over to his place. The front door was unlocked and I went in, expecting to find him… Well, you can imagine what I expected. But there was no body, no indication of anything amiss, and no clues as to where Ed might have gone. I searched the garden but found nothing. The fact that the front door was unlocked worried me. I found the spare front door key where he kept it in the kitchen, made sure the place was secure, then contacted the police. A few days turned into a week, then two. I went over again, with Caroline this time, to really search the place, and go over the garden again. But no, nothing. I did come across this, however, on his desk in his study. A hand-written journal going back years, full of day-to-day jottings, names and addresses, story ideas… I began reading it, thinking it might shed light on…” He shook his head. “I found it too painful. It was Ed, speaking to me, his voice in my head, while the real Ed was… gone. I couldn’t take it, and had to stop reading. Anyway,” he went on, “I think you might find it invaluable if you’re going to write a book about Ed’s life. Please, take it.” He passed her the journal.