Ten Year Stretch

by Martin Edwards

  The day before he was due to leave for England his French publisher took him for lunch in a good restaurant where he consumed a bottle of Burgundy with no ill effects and walked back to the hotel feeling mellow. If there were going to be repercussions from the incident in the Marais, he would surely have heard by now. Perhaps the similarity to the murder in his book was just a coincidence. Perhaps she had been killed by a lover who came in, found him there asleep, jumped to conclusions, and killed her in a fit of jealous rage. The French were reputed to be very forgiving about crimes of passion.

  He returned to his room intending to shower and pack before that evening’s session in the bar, and as he helped himself to a bottle of water from the minibar, he noticed a large brown envelope lying by the door as though someone had pushed it underneath. Curiosity made him tear it open and his heart hammered as the photographs slithered onto the bed. He stared at the coloured images and felt sick. She was lying there in the bath, her chest a mass of crusted blood. The photographs had been taken from different angles, like crime-scene pictures, some close-ups and others taking in the whole bathroom. There were others, too—Barney slumped on the sofa with his eyes closed, a bloody knife clasped in his hand.

  Then there was the accompanying note, written in neat capitals on deckle-edged note paper:

  DO AS YOU’RE TOLD OR THESE GO TO THE POLICE.

  Barney was so preoccupied with his problem he hardly noticed time passing as he journeyed back on Eurostar. Could he have killed Suzy without remembering a thing? He wasn’t a violent man and he had absolutely no recollection of it. Besides, why would he kill her? The pictures were hidden at the bottom of his case and he couldn’t wait to destroy them; a symbolic act because he knew they were only copies.

  The sender of the letter had ordered him to do as he was told but there’d been no more communication. Perhaps it was some sort of frame-up. But who had taken the pictures?

  Once back at the flat in the centre of Manchester he’d bought with the publisher’s extremely generous advance for his first novel, he ripped up the photographs and pushed them into the waste disposal. He needed to resume work on the manuscript he’d abandoned to go to Paris. It was a second draft, an untamed mess of a plot that needed sorting out. But when he sat at his desk staring at the words on the paper, his mind refused to focus.

  His debut novel, In My Flesh, had taken the world of crime fiction by storm, been awarded the CWA Gold Dagger, and had made his name and his fortune. The book had been translated into forty languages, a film had been made of it with a major Hollywood star in the leading role, and his agent frequently fielded requests for TV interviews and festival appearances. In My Flesh had changed his life, but since then he’d found it difficult to produce anything as noteworthy. His agent had assured him that ‘second novel syndrome’ was common. But that didn’t stop the sleepless nights and the increasing feeling of hopelessness.

  Over the next days he found it hard to concentrate on work. Instead he found himself trawling the Internet for reports of a body found in a Paris apartment. But there was nothing. Perhaps she hadn’t been discovered yet, he thought. Perhaps she wouldn’t be found until the neighbours noticed an unpleasant smell. The thought disgusted him but it was the most likely explanation. Surely somebody, her colleagues perhaps, would notice her absence, but then he realised she hadn’t told him what she did or where she worked. He knew nothing about her, apart from the fact they’d been at school together.

  He had some old photo albums stuffed in the back of the sleek, pale wood sideboard in the living room. He wasn’t normally the sentimental type, but he’d felt a need to have something from his past in the sterile modern flat in the glass tower. After a brief search he pulled out an album filled with pictures from his childhood. Then there were the school photographs, teenagers lined up in rows wearing smart uniforms and forced smiles. The name of the school ‘Bilson Hall’ was printed at the bottom of the cardboard frame in embossed gold letters along with a date—2004. He turned it over and saw a list of names printed on the back, row by row and left to right—but none of them was Suzy. There was, however, a Susannah listed, but when he studied the photograph he saw that the corresponding girl was black. He remembered she’d been deputy head girl and had gone on to medical school. She definitely wasn’t his Suzy…and neither, on close inspection, were any of the others.

  Perhaps she’d been away that day but he hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from school, so there was nobody he could ask. When he’d gone to Oxford, he’d discarded his old friends like a butterfly shedding a chrysalis.

  Then three days later the second letter arrived.

  The postmark on the envelope was unreadable and Barney held it for a while before slitting it open with the dagger given him by a fan which now served as a paper knife. His hands shook as he unfolded the note written on the same thick deckle-edged paper as the one that had accompanied the pictures. Although the bloody image of the dead woman still disturbed his sleep, his memories of the Paris incident were beginning to fade. But the words on the paper brought them flooding back, raw and fresh:

  DEAR MURDERER,

  MEET ME IN THE READING ROOM.

  CENTRAL LIBRARY.

  3 P.M. TUESDAY.

  TELL NO ONE.

  It was Tuesday already so he didn’t have much time to brood on it. He spent the morning trying to edit his manuscript but the increasingly meaningless words swam in front of his eyes. His flat was open plan and from where he was sitting he could see a bottle of wine squatting on the kitchen worktop. He needed a drink. Dutch courage. Giving silent thanks to the inventor of the screw top, he opened the bottle, pouring the ruby liquid into a large glass. If he was going to face his nemesis that afternoon, he needed to take the edge off his fear.

  Creeping into the Central Library’s magnificent circular reading room, he barely noticed the huge dome above his head and the elaborate clock in the centre. He’d always loved the room, a temple to reading created by a proud industrial city, but now the place seemed tainted by this new association with his Paris experience. He looked round, scanning the faces. His letter-writer had to be there somewhere.

  None of the people there appeared to be the type who’d send those photographs, although he was sure blackmailers came in all shapes and sizes. And was it blackmail? There had been no mention of money in the first note delivered to his hotel room, just ‘do as you’re told or these go to the police,’ But what was he supposed to do?

  He sat down at a table and waited, his eyes fixed on the entrance. Nobody had reacted when he’d walked in, so he was as sure as he could be that his letter-writer hadn’t yet arrived. He looked at his watch. Five minutes to go.

  At three o’clock on the dot, a man appeared in the doorway and looked around. He was thin, almost emaciated, with a long face and, even though his mousy hair was thinning, he was a similar age to Barney, he guessed. And there was certainly something familiar about him, although he couldn’t place what it was.

  The man was circling the room, studying faces. Barney picked up a newspaper and hid himself behind it, although this meant he couldn’t keep an eye on the newcomer. He was aware of someone sitting down on the chair next to him and he sneaked a glance at his new neighbour. It was him.

  As the man leaned towards him the sense of familiarity increased. Then he spoke, in hushed library tones.

  ‘Hello, Barney. Long time no see.’

  Barney put the paper down and twisted round to face him, his heart beating fast. ‘You’ll have to remind me.’

  ‘School days. Sixth form at Bilson Hall. Luke Vardey. Remember?’

  Barney stared at him. He remembered all right. They’d been best mates, sharing each other’s hopes, dreams, and secrets until they’d gone their separate ways—although Luke had changed a lot in the intervening years, almost beyond recognition.

  ‘So…er, what have you been doing with yourself
since school?’ Barney asked, feeling a sudden nag of guilt that he’d made no effort to keep in touch. Luke had gone through a bad time when he was eighteen. He’d suffered some sort of breakdown and failed his A-levels, while Barney had swept off to Oxford without giving his old friend a second thought.

  ‘This and that,’ Luke whispered. ‘You got my letter?’

  Barney saw desperation in Luke’s eyes—and suddenly felt afraid.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Luke opened the shabby old briefcase he was carrying and drew out some photographs, copies of the ones Barney had received in Paris.

  ‘How did you get these?’ Barney pushed them away. He didn’t want to be reminded.

  ‘Never mind how I got them. If you don’t do as you’re told, they go to the police.’

  ‘You want money?’

  ‘It’ll do, for starters.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Luke hesitated for a moment. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said before picking up his briefcase and hurrying away.

  It was obvious that Luke had endured hard times since leaving school and Barney supposed that when he’d heard about his literary success he must have decided to try his luck. Although this didn’t explain how he came to have the photographs.

  After leaving Oxford, Barney had taken a series of dead-end jobs while he struggled to establish a career in writing. He’d failed at first, receiving rejection after rejection, until he’d found an old synopsis amongst a load of old school books in his parents’ loft and set about transforming it into In My Flesh, which rapidly became a best seller. He’d been lucky and as he’d moved on with his life, he’d put Luke out of his mind. Now he had the uneasy feeling that maybe he owed him something. Perhaps paying him to keep quiet about Suzy’s murder would be the right thing to do.

  A few days later he received another letter, suggesting a meeting at Luke’s address, naming the time and place. What he had to say to Barney needed to be said in private.

  Luke lived in a large Victorian house in a run-down area favoured by students. Barney’s nose wrinkled as he passed the wheelie bins lined up for collection in the once prosperous tree-lined road that had plummeted down the social ladder over the course of the twentieth century. There was a row of plastic buzzers beside the front door, some broken and mended with peeling tape, and Barney was struck by the contrast to Suzy’s Marais apartment building.

  As Luke led the way up the uncarpeted staircase, Barney could smell drains and stale cooking. The bedsit was a small, seedy room with a tiny kitchenette at one end and an unmade bed at the other. There was an old gas fire and the wallpaper was peeling. The only thing of interest, as far as Barney could see, was an old-fashioned typewriter on a desk in the large bay window.

  ‘This Suzy…did you know her?’ Barney asked as he took in his surroundings.

  ‘She was a friend of mine,’ Luke answered. ‘She helped me.’

  ‘So you were in Paris when I was?’

  ‘What if I was? It’s you we’re talking about.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Suzy.’

  ‘You were holding the knife. Your prints were all over it. And there was blood all over your shirt.’ He made for the kitchen and rooted in a cupboard. Barney immediately recognised the carrier bag he produced. It was the one he’d dumped in the bin at the Gare du Nord.

  ‘How the hell…?’

  There was a look of triumph on Luke’s face. ‘For a crime writer you’re not very good at this sort of thing, are you?’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘This isn’t about money. It’s about truth.’

  The seed of suspicion that had been growing in Barney’s mind suddenly sprung to life. ‘It was you who killed Suzy? You stabbed her while I was asleep and left her body in the bath like in my book?’

  ‘What makes you think you didn’t kill her? I don’t expect you remember much about that afternoon.’

  ‘I think I was drugged. It’s the only explanation.’

  ‘Or drunk. You drink too much, Barney. You didn’t know what you were doing.’

  ‘How do you know all this? Were you following me?’ Barney felt himself sweating with panic. Luke was right. He didn’t know what he did that afternoon. He might be a killer. Then he noticed Luke’s hands shaking as he fidgeted with the hem of his shirt.

  ‘I’ll offer you a deal. I’ll destroy all the photos, provided you tell the truth.’

  ‘I don’t know the truth. I can’t remember what happened.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Suzy now. I want you to tell the truth about In My Flesh. The idea was mine. I wrote that synopsis and the first two chapters in the sixth form—I gave you a copy, remember? Asked your opinion about it. I kept a copy, so I can prove you’re a fraud.’

  There was a heavy silence while Barney took it in.

  ‘I want you to call your agent and tell her,’ Luke continued. ‘Then you’ll make a public announcement—tell the world the story was mine.’

  ‘Did you kill Suzy because of this?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘I didn’t kill her. You did. And I want half the royalties you’ve earned so far from my idea because I need to get out of this shithole. If you haven’t announced it by the end of this week, the pictures go to the police.’

  Barney gaped at him, his fists clenched. What Luke said was true. His inability to write wasn’t due to second novel syndrome; it was because he hadn’t produced the idea for the first. He’d put Luke’s detailed synopsis into decent English, tweaking it so that the narrative flowed and the tension built. But the story hadn’t been his, and he couldn’t see how he was going to create the follow-up. His mind didn’t work that way. Maybe he had no choice but to give in and do as Luke asked.

  But what else did he have in his life? In My Flesh had brought him everything he’d longed for—fame, money, security, a purpose. And what was to stop Luke from demanding the remaining half of his royalties, using the threat of being named as Suzy’s murderer to wield power over him for the rest of his life?

  Barney had a sudden bitter vision of the life he’d built on the lie vanishing, of being forced to hand over everything until he and Luke eventually swapped their lives. He saw a vegetable knife amongst a heap of apple peelings on the stained table a couple of feet away and, on impulse, he grabbed it and lunged at Luke, thrusting the blade in once, twice—just as he must have thrust it into Suzy’s body that day.

  He’d heard it said that murder is easier the second time around, but it didn’t feel that way as he stared down with horror at the thin, shabby man lying lifeless at his feet. He felt as though he was in the middle of a nightmare but this was real and he knew he needed to eliminate all evidence that they’d ever had any contact. There was no sign of a computer in the flat and Barney was grateful for Luke’s old-fashioned habit of communicating by letter. But then Luke had always been different.

  After wiping everything he might have touched, Barney crept back down the stairs, listening for telltale noises in the silent house. When he reached the front door he covered his hand with his sleeve before touching the handle.

  Then he heard the scrape of a key in the lock so he sprang back, but there was nowhere to hide. The door swung open and he saw a blond woman standing in the doorway, staring at him in astonishment.

  It’s not often people return from the dead.

  Susan Vardey was the chief witness for the prosecution and she admitted to the court in hushed tones that she’d persuaded her brother, Luke, to claim what was rightfully his by blackmailing the man who’d stolen his idea all those years ago. She lived in Paris and when she’d read that the defendant was to attend the crime convention, she’d thought up the idea of drugging him and staging the murder scene in the bathroom—she’d worked in the theatre for years—and her brother had taken the photos.

  Luke had been duped by Barn
ey Tollemache, an arrogant boy she’d never liked when he’d visited their home. She’d been in the year below the boys, but she’d been plain then with mousy hair and braces on her teeth, so it was no wonder Tollemache hadn’t recognised the girl he’d ignored. Luke had suffered problems for years and Susan had wanted justice for him—but now she realised her deception had been wrong. She’d thought it would force Tollemache to tell the truth. How could she have foreseen his violent reaction?

  After Luke’s funeral she postponed her return to Paris to clear out his Manchester flat. It was a filthy dump and the thought of him living out his last sad years there depressed her. Poor Luke had had nothing, not even a computer. He’d lived in his own narrow world of fantasy. But he’d been her brother and she’d loved him.

  As she slid his sparse possessions into black plastic sacks, she came across five fat manuscripts, all typed on the little manual typewriter on the desk in the window. Five novels.

  She placed them carefully into the suitcase she’d brought with her. With all the publicity about Tollemache’s deception, she was certain there’d be a lot of interest. It was the least she could do for Luke.

  Normal Rules Do Not Apply

  Peter Guttridge

  ‘Nobody wants to see a boob frowning,’ Bridget Frost bellowed.

  I looked down at my friend, the former Bitch of the Broadsheets, now a TV celebrity of sorts. And at what the Daily Mail would call her ‘ample assets.’ They didn’t seem to be frowning. I glanced at the crowd of people around us. Until this crime festival in this labyrinthine hotel in Cathedral Gardens in Bristol, I hadn’t seen her for ten years. However, age didn’t seem to have withered her nor affected the loudness of her voice one iota.