Ten Year Stretch

by Martin Edwards

  ‘She does cut-up poetry,’ I said. ‘She takes random lines from newspapers then shuffles them until she gets something.’

  ‘Something that makes sense?’ Bridget said.

  ‘Depends what you mean by sense,’ Myles muttered.

  ‘She performs with another poet with a disability but nobody likes to ask what his disability is,’ I said.

  ‘Well, he can’t write poetry,’ Liz chipped in. ‘Does that count?’

  ‘Does she knit?’ Bridget said. We all shrugged.

  ‘What about the knitting needle lady?’ I said.

  ‘Margot?’ Adrian said. ‘She’s being interviewed now. Can’t see how she would do something like that.’ His phone rang. He listened and nodded then ended the call. ‘They’ve found a name tag under the body. It might be open and shut.’

  They all went off, leaving Bridget and me alone. We went back into the bar and surveyed the scene. It was packed and the noise level made even Bridget sound timid. Over there was a gang of hard-boiled writers, men in their thirties and forties, one of them wearing shades despite the gloom, drinking beer out of bottles. They were regulars here, but some of them never went to panels, preferring to stay in the bar, sometimes late into the night. A couple of them, I believe, had learned to exist without any sleep at all for the length of the weekend.

  There were excitable groups of men and women in their twenties chattering together—a mix of writers, editors, and PRs. There would be a certain amount of pairing off later. And some broken hearts and marriages when texts sent to arrange an intimate late-night rendezvous with a new acquaintance went in error to the wife or husband back home.

  There was a small gaggle of committee members of the Crime Writers Association. (The CWA had just recently decided to drop the apostrophe from Writers’. That apostrophe, only introduced by a syntactical purist some fifteen years after the association was founded, had been the bane of sub-editors in the national and local press for decades and now troubled the work-experience tykes who produce those newspapers these days.)

  A temporary guardrail had been put along the space between the bar and the corridor beyond it. A policeman stood there, currently bending to speak to a tiny, elegant woman wearing what looked like enormous ear muffs or headphones.

  Over in the far corner I could see a bunch of familiar, friendly faces from America, a mix of readers and writers, all of them into cosy crime. I led Bridget over there, figuring they would know about Margot, the knitting needle lady.

  An energetic woman with neat clothes and hair was saying: ‘My bookmark is currently in a cat quilter novel but I’m afraid it will be a DNF book.’

  Bridget glanced my way as we hovered behind their chairs.

  ‘Did Not Finish,’ I murmured.

  ‘The two cat characters are a ragdoll and a savannah. Excellent casting but I’m not sure the author actually knows cats. I mean she puts clothes on the cats so they can model them—which is fine—except that she does it in front of strangers. I can’t see cats being comfortable with that. In addition, it’s proselytising. If I want to be “saved” I know where my local church is.’

  The woman next to her, hugging a bag of books, said: ‘I’m reading a book about Graycie, the killer parrot. It’s called Winging It and it’s very funny. And next up is one about Diesel, the Maine Coon.’

  Bridget started to move away. I put my hand on her arm—very lightly—and leaned in. ‘This is pet noir—the latest thing.’

  ‘The latest thing is my need for another exorbitantly priced drink,’ Bridget said, shrugging my hand off and manoeuvring back to the bar.

  ‘Hello ladies,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you knew whether Margot was okay?’

  A white-haired older woman in a tracksuit looked up at me. She had a sweet face.

  ‘You should ask her friend, Diane. They’re the knitting bee here this weekend.’

  ‘And where might I find her?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Follow the clews of wool.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Were you at the craft-based mysteries panel this morning?’ the sweet woman said. ‘Diane was on the panel.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘What kind of crafts?’ I asked.

  ‘Knitting, miniatures, and cheese.’

  ‘Cheese?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Lots of cheese recipes,’ she said. ‘Rather than B and G.’

  It took me a second to get that one.

  ‘And miniature what?’ I said.

  ‘Houses.’

  ‘Oh, you mean like dolls’ houses? So are these just small crimes?’

  She gave me a quick smile in response to the ‘small crimes’ but I noticed it didn’t reach her eyes.

  ‘She doesn’t like to call them dolls’ houses because she doesn’t much like dolls or people in them—though she does put miniature dirty dishes in the sinks of her houses, as if people do live there.’

  As I was digesting that, I thought I should introduce myself.

  ‘I’m Nick, by the way,’ I said.

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘Even without your name tag. Your reputation precedes you.’

  I decided not to follow that up—I’ve been bitten that way before. Especially as her sweet face was suddenly not looking quite so sweet.

  ‘Well, I’ll go in search of Diane,’ I said, waving good-bye to the group, most of whom had ignored me anyway.

  Bridget was at the bar with two drinks in front of her, a man either side of her. That figured. I started to go by but she gestured at me to come over.

  ‘This guy has written this novel which, if I’ve got it right, is the conscious evolution of the staid three-act horror narrative.’

  I looked at him and nodded. He looked normal enough—but then so do most serial killers.

  ‘It’s a savage indictment of the corporate mentality,’ he hissed. ‘A challenging, twisted book that assails the underpinnings of modern society and does so much more than spit in your face.’

  So much for normal. I turned to the other man. Ditto, normal looking.

  ‘I was just saying that I write crime reviews for one of the nationals, though I’ve got a book deal,’ he said. He showed a lot of teeth beneath a curled lip as he talked, which reminded me of some ancient TV series about a talking horse called Mr Ed. ‘I just had a falling out with a sub-editor. You may not understand this, but I know Bridget will. He made so many mistakes. And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittiest of all, he removed the unstressed “a” so that the stress that should have fallen on “dosh” is lost and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable.’

  He looked at me fiercely.

  ‘Terrible,’ I agreed, singing to myself a bit of the theme song from Mr Ed (‘a horse is a horse, of course, of course’ if you must know). He nodded vigorously.

  ‘When you’re winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Couldn’t he hear? Couldn’t he hear that it’s wrong? It’s not fucking rocket science. It’s fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 crime reviews and I have never ended on an unstressed syllable.’ He took a swig of his beer. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  Bridget picked up both her glasses and leaned in to whisper in my ear: ‘Can we go back to Planet Earth, please?’

  I smiled cheesily at the two men, saying: ‘Really got to go now.’

  I steered Bridget away.

  ‘This is Planet Earth,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you noticed how the world has gone bonkers since we last saw each other?’

  We went back outside and Bridget handed me one of the wineglasses, which was unusually unselfish of her. I wondered briefly what she was after. But she just lit another cigarette, so I looked on my laptop and saw that every person and their dog had been tweeting from the festival about Randall Spear’s death. I imagined the press would be a
rriving in force any time now.

  Usually, the crimes Bridget and I had got involved with had been away from the police, but here the police were on the spot so there was nothing for us to investigate. Even so…

  I Googled Randall Spear. Wikipedia had no photo, of course, and scant biographical details. Internal evidence from his novels apparently suggested he was familiar with Nebraska thirty years ago. He’d looked to be in his forties when I’d caught sight of him—I’m pushing fifty, which these days is about the only exercise I get, aside from a less rigorous yoga than I used to do, a couple of times a week.

  Each of his novels were set in different parts of America so it was hard to pin down where he lived. His novels were gruesome—more Thomas Harris than Michael Connelly—but he definitely nailed the psychopathic mind and, globally, readers responded to that. Personally, I didn’t think there was a posse of writers behind the brand because the consistency of the darkness of vision and gruesomeness seemed to suggest a single viewpoint, or at most, two people who were very close. All of it sick, of course.

  ‘A knitting needle—is that a weapon of deliberation?’ I said.

  ‘He’s off,’ said Bridget, from behind her phone as she was busy tilting her head this way and that to take selfies.

  ‘I mean if you were going to commit an impulsive act wouldn’t you be a bit more…savage? This was so precise, from what we could see—straight into the throat below the Adam’s apple.’

  ‘I didn’t see,’ Bridget said, showing me the screen of her phone. ‘Which is best?’

  I looked at the images of Bridget she paraded before me.

  ‘They’re all great. So this was planned. And, assuming Margot didn’t do it, was that part opportune for the killer, nicking the needle from her quiver?’

  Bridget was still fiddling with her phone.

  ‘Well, here’s a thing,’ she said. ‘Randall Spear has just tweeted that the announcement of his death is fake news.’

  Back in the bar, there was a hubbub among all the Twitterers. The hapless policeman on the makeshift barrier at the bar had to confirm that, yes, there was a dead body in the lift but, no, he couldn’t confirm that person’s identity.

  ‘He’s supposed to be a writer, for goodness sake,’ someone was grumbling. ‘Why couldn’t he quote Mark Twain about the news of his death being greatly exaggerated? “Fake news”—hate that expression.’

  ‘You go to the trouble of killing someone and you don’t get the right person,’ said some woman with a strong Birmingham accent. ‘That’s a bummer.’

  Viz, the Found poet she was talking to, nodded her head in vehement agreement, which made all the metal piercings in her face and ears sway and jingle.

  I saw the coven of quilters and cosy crime aficionados all atwitter—in the old-fashioned sense of the word—on the other side of the room. The sweet-faced, white-haired woman looked quite put out.

  ‘So the guy was an imposter,’ I said to Bridget.

  ‘If you mean he pretended how good he was in bed beforehand, I don’t fall for that anymore.’

  ‘I meant not really Randall Spear at all.’

  ‘Any of them?’ Bridget said.

  That was a point. If I was wrong and there was actually a Randall Spear posse, maybe the victim was one of them officially or unofficially masquerading as him.

  ‘Bridget, is there anything about him that struck you as odd?—no, I don’t mean anything sexual.’

  ‘Not really. Though I did think he was from Birmingham when I met him in the car park.’

  ‘He had a Brummie accent?’

  ‘I thought so. It was only when I realised I was wrong I let things go further.’

  ‘You mean you wouldn’t sleep with a Brummie because of the accent?’

  ‘Would you?’

  I thought of the woman in the bar with the Birmingham accent I’d heard a few minutes earlier. I’d never seen her before but she wasn’t wearing a name tag so I hadn’t known who she was. She was a bit of a looker with her Louise Brooks bob and ripped jeans.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course,’ Bridget interrupted, ‘you’re so desperate you’d sleep with anyone.’

  Ordinarily I would have protested, especially as these days I rarely got up to any shenanigans, but I was thinking about the Brummie woman in the bar and who she was with. All kinds of conspiracy theories were forming in my head.

  ‘Nick, what is it?’ Bridget said.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ I said.

  ‘Thank God. I thought from your expression—well, let’s just say you’re still a bit young for incontinence pads.’

  ‘I think I’ve got it,’ I said. I saw Bridget start to speak. ‘No cheap comments.’

  ‘I don’t do cheap,’ she sniffed.

  ‘Let’s suppose he was from Birmingham.’

  Bridget grimaced. ‘I don’t want to hear that.’

  ‘He conned everybody—nothing easier when you’re pretending to be somebody no one has ever seen or met.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘For the fun of it. The prestige. The sex.’

  Bridget grimaced again.

  ‘But supposing he’s married or has a partner and she finds out about it and follows him here?’

  ‘I heard a Birmingham voice in the bar a minute ago,’ Bridget said slowly.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I knew that city wasn’t to be trusted.’

  I let that go.

  ‘That woman in the bar was with the Found poet.’

  ‘Where’s she from?’

  ‘Richmond-upon-Thames. Her daddy was a banker,’ I said.

  ‘Fucking figures. But you said you’d seen her with the Spear character. You think wife and poet were in cahoots?’

  ‘Works for me,’ I said, looking over to the policeman. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Nick, it’s a bit thin,’ Bridget said as we headed towards the copper.

  ‘Wafer thin,’ I agreed as Adrian led in two plainclothes and two uniformed policemen and looked round the bar.

  ‘They’ve figured it out, too,’ I said. ‘Must be the name tag Adrian said they’d found.’ I looked to where the Birmingham woman and Viz were, and gestured Bridget to move aside so we weren’t in the policemen’s path. As I did so, I tried to catch Adrian’s eye and point out where the culprits were.

  Bridget and I ended up beside the cosy crime ladies as my gestures to Adrian and the police got increasingly large. They saw me, the lead plainclothes policeman frowned, and they all headed towards me.

  ‘They’re over there,’ I said to Adrian as the policemen barged past me and surrounded the sweet-faced, white-haired lady sitting in her chair behind me.

  ‘Matilda March, would you come with us please,’ the lead policeman said.

  ‘Method, means, and opportunity,’ Matilda said, smiling, well, sweetly. ‘I stole the knitting needle from Margot’s bag when I was standing behind her waiting to go to the craft event; I was staying on the same floor as that man; and I seized the opportunity as we both got into the lift.’

  ‘But why?’ I blurted, earning a scowl from the policemen.

  She stood, holding her wrists out in front of her as if expecting to be cuffed.

  ‘I told you—I don’t like B and G in crime novels. It’s abhorrent to me. And his were full of it.’

  B and G: blood and gore.

  ‘You stabbed somebody in the throat and left him bleeding to death because you didn’t like the blood and gore in his novels?’ I said.

  ‘You look puzzled,’ she said as the police began to lead her away.

  ‘No, no. If it makes sense to you, it makes sense to me.’ I turned to Bridget. ‘Right?’

  She shrugged and watched Matilda March leave the bar.

  ‘My starting point is that you’re all fuck
ing nuts, so normal rules do not apply,’ she finally said. She looked around. ‘Now where’s that Lee Child?’

  Ask Tom St Clare

  Sophie Hannah

  Tom St Clare is a pathological liar.

  Normal, occasional liars—a category that would include most of us, perhaps—use deceit to make our lives run more smoothly, to avoid trouble or spare loved ones’ feelings. We generally only do it when we think there’s a chance it will work. Pathological liars are different. They lie even when there is no chance of fooling anybody, and when it will cost them everything.

  Why do they do it? Does anyone yearn to be described as the least trustworthy, most startlingly sociopathic person all their acquaintances have ever known?

  Don’t ask me. Ask Tom St Clare.

  ‘He’s been missing for six days. I’ve heard nothing,’ I explained, pressing the phone against my ear harder than I needed to, gripping it so tight in my hand that my arm ached. ‘I’m worried something awful’s happened. Look, when I say “missing”…his friends or family might know where he is—maybe it’s just me who thinks he’s disappeared off the face of the Earth. We were texting each other all day long for months, then suddenly, silence! He’s not replied to my last three messages, he’s not at work…I keep getting his auto-reply, which tells me nothing!’

  ‘Okay,’ said the calm voice on the other end of the line—calmer than mine, thank goodness. Someone needed to think straight here. ‘So you’ve been dating this guy for, what, three months?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve put all the relevant information in a draft e-mail, which I’ll send you. His e-mail, mobile number, address, work address, family’s names, addresses, workplaces. Literally, everything I know is in this e-mail—what he’s told me, anyway. For all I know, he’s made up his entire life story! Still…hopefully it’ll give you some leads.’

  I couldn’t believe I’d just said, ‘leads.’ I even more couldn’t believe that I was on the point of employing a private detective. What else could I do? Going slowly crazy didn’t appeal to me. The police wouldn’t have cared. His auto-reply message had said, ‘I’ll be away from the office for the next fortnight, unable to access e-mails.’ Any policeman—anyone not paid to indulge me—would have said, ‘He doesn’t have to tell you where he’s gone, does he?’ No, he didn’t. That didn’t make me any less desperate to find out.