‘Like detectives, you mean?’
‘If you like.’
At that point, relaxed as he’d never thought he would be in the detective’s presence, Curle made a mistake.
‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘that note I gave you about Ali Fleming and her Classics Professor?’ Meldrum grunted. ‘Would it be possible to get it back?’
‘Why?’
Asked that, Curle found himself embarrassed to explain that he wanted to burn it as he had burned everything else. He was too afraid of seeming pretentious to tell the truth: that he wanted to protect her from the world’s ill opinion.
Instead he heard himself muttering, ‘It might come in useful.’
His heart sank as he saw the look on the detective’s face.
‘That isn’t right,’ Meldrum said.
‘I’m a writer,’ Curle explained, trying for a smile and losing control of it as he felt it slip into a smirk.
The big man contemplated him, rubbing a finger slowly down his jaw.
‘You think that’s an excuse?’ Meldrum asked.
About the Author
FREDERIC LINDSAY was born in Glasgow in 1933 and worked as a library assistant, a teacher and a lecturer before becoming a full-time writer in 1979. He served on the Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council, and was actively involved with PEN and the Society of Authors. He passed away in 2013.
By Frederic Lindsay
The Endings Man
Tremor of Demons
The Stranger from Home
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
12 Fitzroy Mews
London W1T 6DW
www.allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2005.
This ebook edition first published in 2014.
Copyright © 2005 by FREDERIC LINDSAY
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1768–2
The Endings Man Page 21