Blood Read: Publish And Be Dead (The Capgras Conspiracy Book 1)

by Simon J. Townley

  He swore as the truck reversed at him, threatening to crush his legs. He scurried from under the wheels with seconds to spare and clung onto the truck while he got his breath back.

  The cab door opened, the driver leapt down, saw Capgras and yelled something in Romanian or Finnish or outer Mongolian. Or Klingon, for all he could tell. A burble of words, but a greeting, from the tone of it, rather than a shout of alarm. He waved in a non-committal, friendly kind of way and flashed a smile. The man unlocked the back of his van and raised the tailgate. Capgras jumped up beside him as if to help.

  The two men in overalls reappeared and spoke to the driver in yet another language. They resorted to a broken English and began unloading boxes of cleaning materials, linen and freshly washed uniforms for the catering staff. Capgras carried a box into the bay, put it on the pile. There was no time for this. He had to get inside. Kiera must be there already. But a security guard stood watching. He would have to keep carrying loads until the man left.

  When would Kiera strike? She might have planted her bomb by now. Would she wait for the event to start? Or for the lifetime awards to be announced? He picked up another box from the back of the truck. He still had no plan for how to stop Kiera, or to find the bomb. Or clear the building. They were running out of boxes. It was time to make his move.

  He picked up the last box, carried it inside, kept going. He turned a corner, dropped it, hurried down a corridor and through an open doorway.

  Running feet approached from the loading bay. He grabbed at a door. A cupboard. He forced himself inside along with a mechanised floor polisher and an array of buckets, mops and brooms. He pulled the door shut and heard a security guard in the corridor talking into his radio.

  “Possible intruder, lost sight of him. He came in with a delivery truck. Did a runner. Driver says he doesn’t know him.” The radio crackled an inaudible response. “All right, will do.”

  Capgras waited until the man moved away then slipped out into the empty corridor. He walked tall, hoping to bluff his way through if he encountered any more guards. He found the stairs and headed for the upper floors where the guests had gathered.

  He moved aside to make way for a group of catering staff heading down. None of them spoke to him, or looked at him, but he heard them chattering in a language he guessed to be Polish. Or Vulcan. Or high Elven for all he knew. The last of them was a woman, ancient and stooped low from years of toil, her face hidden by a mixture of shadows, a head shawl and thick black hair.

  Kiera. Had to be. He wasn’t falling for that. She’d tricked him that day at Joanne’s office, again at her own wake. And at her flat. But not again. No one made a fool of Tom Capgras five times in a row.

  He waited until she was level with him, then grabbed her and ripped the covering from her head. The old woman screamed and kicked at him. It wasn’t Kiera. He’d been sure. He'd been wrong. Now he found himself surrounded by outraged catering staff, defending one of their own.

  “I didn’t mean anything, false alarm, thought she was someone else.”

  A younger women prodded him with a bony finger. “You be careful.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought it was a different....”

  “Leave woman alone, she not hurting you.”

  “All right, I get the message. Oh, by the way. There’s a bomb. Run away, all of you.”

  “Sure there is.” She turned away from him, headed off downstairs with the others. He caught the word “madman” flung in his direction.

  Now, to find Kiera. Perhaps she was with the guests, in all her finery. That would make a sight. But she’d be recognised, surely. By Hannah if no one else.

  At the top of the stairs a door led into the public areas. He opened it and peeked through at a blizzard of posh frocks and bow-ties, women in their finest cosmetics, hair perfected, and men looking confident but relaxed. A few misfits who clearly couldn’t dress neatly no matter how much time and money was thrown at the effort, loitered uncomfortably clutching complimentary alcohol, their eyes boggled like rabbits in a headlight. Writers.

  Drinks and nibbles were being served in the reception rooms. No sign of Kiera.

  He pulled the door shut and headed towards the backstage area. He found steps that led onto the platform where the awards announcements would be made. A row of chairs stood ready for the VIPs along with a microphone wired up to the PA system. In the grand hall, dozens of tables were set with white tablecloths and wine glasses, flowers and finger-bowls. Catering staff bustled around the room making final preparations. A pair of burly men in dinner jackets, clearly security, loitered near the entrance. One of them looked his way. Capgras backed into the gloom, away from the lights. Too late, they had seen him.

  A female security guard appeared on stage, hat pulled low over her face. He pretended to be busy with something, casting around for an excuse to be there. He turned, and as he did so he saw a fire alarm in the wall next to him. Stupid. That option had been there all along. Break the glass, set off the alarm. Everyone would leave.

  But the female security guard was staring straight at him.

  He stared back. It couldn’t be. But it was.

  He raised his arm, pretended to rub his temple, his elbow poised to smash the glass. “Good to see you again. You’re looking well. For a corpse.”

  Kiera took off her cap, shook her hair free, and produced an insouciant smile. She took a step towards him. From nowhere, a gun appeared in Kiera’s right hand. And a phone in her left. A remote detonator. “Don’t make that call.”

  “Move.” She gestured him offstage, away from the prying eyes.

  He didn’t move.

  He stared into her eyes, wondering if he could take her down and stop her setting off the bomb or firing the pistol. It seemed unlikely. Impossible even. But there was nothing for it.

  She took another step closer.

  He smashed his elbow into the fire alarm. Bells screeched and wailed as he lunged at Kiera, aiming for the phone. He grabbed her arm, but she swung him around in a judo move that would have felled a rhinoceros, pushed him off-balance back against the wall and kissed him hard and mercilessly, not even letting him up for breath, until he thought she might intend to kill him, there and then. Murdered by a kiss.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Kiss, Kiss, Boom, Boom

  Kiera was still kissing him, with a handgun stuck in his ribs, when the bomb went off, BOOM, and hurled them both spinning across the stage like dervishes in a washing machine, leaving Capgras crumpled beneath the serial killer he even now, despite everything, somehow, loved.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Kill Me If I Lie

  Kiera’s lips squirmed and wiggled as if forming words, but there was no sound other than a bubbling, underwater murmur, like mermaids nagging their husbands to take out the garbage. Tom shook his head, the explosion still ringing in his ears. Kiera levelled her handgun at his face and waggled it, ordering him to his feet.

  Capgras tried to get up but a wave of pain knocked him back down. Kiera grabbed his collar and pressed the barrel of the gun into his neck. “Move,” she yelled.

  His stomach heaved. He’d been too late. Or too early. Or too rash. He’d done something wrong, that was for sure, because the bomb had gone off.

  The room was filled with dust and smoke. He coughed, choking on it.

  Above them a chandelier groaned and grizzled in its death throes. A sharp snap, a moment of silence and it hit the floor with a stab of tearing wood and a prolonged tinkling of shattered crystal. Broken glass sprayed into Tom’s face. He touched his ear and felt blood pouring down his cheek.

  From across the room came screams of terror, pain and shock. Shouts of alarm. Somewhere, someone was trying to take charge.

  As his hearing cleared, Capgras realised the fire alarms were still ringing.

  “You’re insane,” he yelled at Kiera. “If you’ve hurt Hannah…”

  She stuck the gun in his face. “Don’t worry about your girlfriend
. They’ll be alive, thanks to you, spoiling everything.”

  She gave him a kick. “Move it.”

  He pressed an arm to the wall and pushed himself upwards. Should he run for it? Get help? Find Hannah? Heal the injured? But if he tried any of those things, Kiera would shoot him, he was sure of it.

  And besides, there were plenty of people here to deliver first aid. But he was the only one who could stop this madwoman. Or who even knew she was to blame.

  He tottered to his feet, glanced at the Glock. Could he snatch it from her hands?

  She took a step back, waving the muzzle menacingly. “Down the steps.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Try me and find out.”

  She shoved him in the back and he felt the barrel press against his shoulder blades.

  He moved into the backstage area. She ordered him along a corridor. “Keep moving. Say one word and I’ll shoot whoever it is you talk to.”

  She walked close behind him as they headed for the loading bay. Two guards passed them, running up, but they can’t have seen the pistol. They didn’t stop to question Tom and Kiera, or ask where they were going.

  The trucks were gone from the loading bay and the security hut appeared empty.

  She jabbed the gun into his ribs threateningly. “Look hurt. Lean on my shoulder.”

  He half draped himself on her, staggering as though injured by the blast upstairs. Could he take her down?

  She pressed the barrel hard into his side. “Don’t even think about it. I will shoot you.”

  “I believe you. Where are we going?”

  She didn’t answer, or pause until she was through the gates and out into the backstreets.

  He slowed and took his arm away from her shoulder. “Leave me here. Or kill me now. You take me any further, I swear I’ll take that gun off you.”

  She gave him one of her most inscrutable smiles. Her eyes sparkled, but she kept the Glock trained on him. “Stay if you want.” Her lips pirouetted into a grin. “Or... you could come with me. I have a boat. The Caribbean. You and me.”

  Was she serious? Her lips still flickered playfully. He stared at them, entranced. He longed to kiss her. So much, so badly. To thank her for being alive. But he also wanted to punch her in the mouth and knock her cold before she killed anyone else. “You’re insane.”

  She bit her bottom lip, raised one eyebrow and watched him intently. “Maybe, but I’m also rich, and free. Come along, for the hell of it.”

  She meant it. She was offering him a life. A life on the run, forever a fugitive. But a life with her, waking up every day to that face, that body. Hiding from the world and spending the ill-gotten gains of Middleton’s books.

  “If you loved me,” she said, in her most guileful voice, feminine and devious, “if you really loved me, then you’d understand all the things I’ve done. They weren’t so bad. Not when you understand why.”

  “I saw your paperwork about the court case and the payments. But it doesn’t justify all this. Or explain it.”

  “Endless lies, Tom. They don’t know how to tell the truth. Not one of them.”

  “How many have you killed back there?”

  “With the bomb? None, probably. Though there’s ricin in the nibbles so that’ll get a few. It’s random, of course, but the greediest die first.”

  “You mean the starving writers, trying to feed themselves up. I don’t see the fat-cat publishing execs tucking in to the canapés much.”

  “I’m sure your new girl will be fine. Watching her weight I expect.”

  “Were you born this catty, or do you practice?”

  “I was made this way by people like them, cheating me, using me, laughing behind my back while they built fortunes from my work.”

  She waggled the gun at him once more, trying to get him to walk, but he wouldn’t go. She’d find it hard to shoot him out here on the street. Sirens blared in the distance.

  “It could be a good life, fishing on the reefs, swimming in deserted coves. Those books will fly off the shelves and pay for a long, long trip, you and me, on a boat, going where we want.”

  “You killed off your main character don’t forget. Not that he was ever really yours.”

  “Oh he isn’t dead. It’s fiction, remember. He can come back anytime. Be all the more dramatic for that. And he was mine. I did all the bits that mattered. He was a cardboard cut-out before I took over. Middleton couldn’t write a story to save his life. But he got all the plaudits. And you know why the agency wouldn’t back me? Or my own work? Because my face didn’t fit. My accent. I didn’t have the right attitude.”

  “They might have had a point there.” He looked at the gun that poked through her clothing, then back at the building where smoke still poured from the windows. “What about all the others? The people at the hotel, the tramp, the butler? What had any of them ever done to you?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. The couple who ran the B&B had it coming, believe me. He was a child molester. She was a friend of my mother’s. Long story. They were carefully chosen. And the vagrant was an ex-soldier, murdered three children while on duty in Iraq. It means nothing to me, of course. But he wasn’t innocent.”

  “You’re a proper avenging angel, aren’t you?”

  “And the butler was behind Vronsky’s business dealings, the kind of things she didn’t want to trouble her little head about. And his job was to protect her. That made him fair game.”

  “Is there anyone you don’t mean to kill?”

  “I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Yet.”

  “We could be good together. Once you get to know me. And what’s keeping you here in this rain and misery, living in a metal box? There’s a life in the sun, if you want it.”

  He’d held to that same dream once – having enough money to never work again, live somewhere warm all year round away from politics and newspapers, crime and coppers and authority figures. But not like this. Not with blood on his hands, which it would be, if he sailed with her. “You have to answer for the lives you took.”

  “I never realised you were so conventional.”

  “Turn yourself in. You need help. This isn’t normal, killing all these people, just because they didn’t want your book.”

  “The lies, the stealing – that’s why they had to die. And the ‘business, business, it’s only business’ of it all. As if that makes it all right to cheat someone for years on end.”

  “You’ve had your revenge. But you’ll never get away.”

  “They think I’m dead, don’t forget.”

  “I told them otherwise.”

  “And they didn’t believe you. You warned them and they didn’t listen. You’re like me, Tom, you’re an outsider in this world and always will be. Doors don’t open for people like us. They stay slammed shut. What does our writing mean to them? What do our books matter? Or our lives. You know what we are? Torn pages, ripped out of the book of life, thrown away, discarded. The words that represent our truth are never heard, not printed. Never spoken.”

  “There are better ways to deal with rejection.”

  “None that are so fulfilling.”

  The sirens grew louder, howling from every direction. “The wolves are coming,” he said.

  “Last chance Tom. Come with me now. Or…”

  “Or what? You kill me?”

  “No, worse. I leave without you, and we never meet again.”

  “It’ll be too soon, believe me.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that. Not a word. But so be it.” She stepped closer to him, the gun out in the open now. She reached up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek. He felt her left hand, exploring his pockets. She took his phone. “Sorry,” she said. “Insurance. Don’t want you calling for help.”

  She backed away from him and started walking, the Glock still pointed at his chest. “If you follow me, I’ll shoot. Have a good one, Tom. Take care.” She blew him a kiss then crossed the narrow street, her eyes fixed on him.
A fire-engine rounded the corner, sirens blaring, and raced between the two of them. In the seconds it took to pass, she had gone. He glimpsed her running down the street, pursued her as far as the next turning where he saw the killer he sought, the woman he loved, leap onto a Vespa. Like an errant princess on a Roman holiday, she waved at him gleefully then pulled out into the traffic and accelerated hard.

  Ambulances converged from all directions. Police and firemen poured towards the stricken building. There was nothing to be done here. No way past the lines of blue uniforms in any case. No way to help Hannah or any of them.

  His job was to stop Kiera.

  Or was it?

  He starred in the direction in which she had fled. He was a reporter, not a cop. Why not let her go and file copy, live from the scene? It was the scoop of a lifetime, the inside story, all of it out in the open. He should be first with this story. He’d earned it.

  But did the story matter that much? Words in print. Pixels on a screen. Barely read. Never remembered. And no one saw the byline, or cared. There was professional pride, driving him on. But was that enough? No. Fuck the exclusive, the kudos in the newsroom. Fuck the background features and the book deal that might come from it all.

  The story wasn’t everything.

  He ran for his motorbike and set off, breakneck and reckless, heading the way Kiera had gone, making his best guess for her fastest route out of here in all this chaos. He rode hard weaving through the traffic while he searched his pockets for his second iPhone, the old one that Kiera left in Middleton’s pockets the day she hung him up to dry.

  She should have known he had a spare.

  He pulled it from the depths of his Belstaff jacket, while his eyes hawked at the road ahead searching for any sign of the Vespa. She was gone. She had too much of a head start. But she could be traced.