The Writer (12 page)

“Girl you meaning is Susan’s
girl?” Gene asked them. “Sophie, was it?”

“From her first marriage,
I’m guessing,” said Two-Tooth.

“Granddaughter,” said
Elbow.

“Sophie’s her
granddaughter?” asked Two-Tooth. “Must have been young when she
popped her out.”

“Something like ten, is the
rumour,” said Elbow, trying to remember if that story was about
Susan or some other woman.

“Now, she wasn’t ten,” said
Gene. “I remember Susan was married and everything when she had her
first, and that would have been Sophie. Not long out of school she
was, but still old enough for it to be legal. What’s Sophie been
saying, Two?”

“Sophie who?” asked
Two-Tooth.

“Girl you’ve been talking
about, isn’t it?” asked Gene. “Susan’s granddaughter. What’s she
been saying around town? She’s been creating a stir? She was
impolite to the city detective, which reflected on us all. No need
for that.”

“Saying Andy Hand wasn’t
doing his work,” said Two-Tooth.

“That’s just not right,”
Gene responded indignantly, as a knee-jerk reaction to defend his
town and the people in it, regardless of the accusation.

“Saying Andy Hand wasn’t
doing his work?” agreed Two-Tooth. “Got no one to put the crime on
not his fault.”

“Not his fault, no sir,”
said Elbow.

“How can he go arrest when
he got no one to arrest?” asked Two-Tooth.

“Can’t be his fault,” said
Elbow. “No can do put that on him.”

“Gets that city copper in,”
said Two-Tooth. “Don’t know what for. We all know what happened.
Van nearly hit Kenny Coffins. Just find the van.”

“Not hard to figure,” said
Elbow. “Not for the city girl, though.”

“Tell me, Two,” said Gene,
“for argument’s sake, if not the speeding city van that nearly got
Kenny Coffins, who do you put up as the killer?”

“I knew Al Longbottom,” said
Two-Tooth. “Knew his family since way back. His uncle was Bob, and
a fine man. He died slow of a long illness but never complained.
Didn’t care for Bob’s two sons. They were no good from the womb,
those pair. Plain evil.”

“Both dead, I hear,” said
Elbow, and then questioned himself if it was some other people he
was thinking of. Over the years there had been a few families
around with two bad sons. It was something of a Gendry trait. Not
many of the older generation held much hope for Susan’s twins
turning out normal and respectable, although no one would ever say
anything like that to her face. That they were twins and already
showing signs of trouble only fuelled such thoughts.

“If you mean Bob Bartner,
both the son’s are dead now, that’s right,” said Two-Tooth. “Some
luck for that family. But then, some families are like that; cursed
from the start and lucky to get as far as they do.”

“Know who I should think the
finger should be pointed at?” asked Gene. “They call him Craig
Field, I believe. Staying at Susan’s, apparently. One of her
boarders, I’d say.”

“Susan has boarders?” asked
Two-Tooth.

“She gets some in the
springtime,” said Elbow. “And when the trout come up.”

“Did Andy Hand,” asked Gene,
“or that other city copper talk to him, this city
fellow?”

“I wouldn’t think he’d miss
him, being another one from the city,” said Two-Tooth. “Hardly
looks anything like Gendry folk.”

“Got to say,” said Gene, “I
don’t think much of him, that Craig Field fellow, from what I’ve
seen. Even if Andy Hand gave him the third degree, I’d not be
surprised to hear he’d worm his way out of it and come up smelling
of roses.”

“How do you come to that
idea of him as the murderer, Gene?” asked Elbow.

“When have we ever had a
murder in Gendry?” asked Gene. “Hardly never. This man turns up
from the city, we never seen him before, doesn’t socialise, doesn’t
say more than a few words here and there, or try to fit in with
perfectly reasonable conversation, and next thing we know we’ve got
a murder happening.”

“From the city,” agreed
Elbow, like that was the only evidence that he needed.

“He’s doing lot of talking,
too, last I saw him,” Two-Tooth said like he was only just
realising it. “Talking to that Sophie girl. Those two went walking
through town, almost kissing, they were so close. That can’t be
right.”

“Kissing?” Gene asked as he
leaned back from the bar and nodded with satisfaction. “Well, then,
they can go finish their fancy conversation and whatever else they
want to do, back in that city of theirs.”

“
As I was saying to Elbow
here,” said Two-Tooth. “City ways not needed in Gendry.”

“This is Gendry,” agreed
Gene, “not the city. Gendry ways should stay Gendry ways, and I’ll
fight to my dying days to protect it.”

They drank to that. A couple
of times.

Craigfield’s room was left
unlocked, the door a little ajar. When Sophie saw it she realised
that if she took a little look inside then she would know, one way
or the other, if she was right to be suspicious of him. No one else
was there, on the entire top floor, but she double-checked anyway.
Both her heart and mind raced as she hurried into the room and she
found it exciting. She knew that she needed to add such emotion
into her writing.

It came as a huge
disappointment that his room was so tidy that it looked like no one
was staying there. So much for her opinion that all men were untidy
by nature. It confirmed for her the idea that something was not
right with the guy. No man is that tidy, especially a married man
all alone in a small town.

The more she looked the more
she began to suspect she had the wrong room. Not helping the idea
was the fact that two remaining guest rooms besides were just as
sparse. The only trace that anyone had been in there at all was a
few shirts hanging in the wardrobe. There was no trace of any
laptop or papers to indicate that he had been writing. Then she
noticed a small ball of paper behind the door. Feeling she was
doing no more than tidying, she picked it up and unravelled it. An
A4 with a few lines of blue writing, it had probably been roughly
tossed away. At first she worried about looking at it, but then
knew that she couldn’t resist. Her heart raced as she looked and
saw it was upside down. As she turned the paper around the reality
came like a slap to the face. It was her own writing, a few notes
on where she wanted her story to go. The paper must have come from
her room. She crunched it up even smaller and thrust it into a
pocket, feeling stupid and embarrassed.

Exiting the room with
nothing to help her, Sophie hit upon a better plan. The twins were
already geared up by the police murder investigation, so a little
subtle nudge in the right direction should not be too
hard.

“I have come across a
suspicious man,” she told the twins with an exaggerated serious
manner that few ten-year-old boys could resist. “He may or may not
match identities with a number of people being watched by Interpol,
and yet he is here in our quiet town. I need to send out some spies
to check him out. Do you know where I can find any?”

“We’ll do it,” Kerry or
Jerry said without hesitation.

“You know we’ll do it,” said
Jerry or Kerry.

“I’m not sure,” she hedged.
“These spies need to be good. I don’t want just any spies. These
ones have to be at the top of their game.”

“You know we’re good at
spying,” said Kerry or Jerry. “There wouldn’t be anyone better in
Gendry.”

“Or the city,” said Kerry or
Jerry.

“That’s a big statement,
young man,” she said. “The city is very big, very dangerous, and
I’m sure has many spies in it, waiting for an assignment as special
as this one.”

“Because it’s a true
statement, it’s true,” said Kerry or Jerry.

“Who’re we spying on?” asked
Jerry or Kerry. “What’s the assignment, ma’am?”

“Craigfield,” she said.
“Find all you can on him. And-Don’t-Get-Caught. Seriously, guys,
don’t let him see you, or know you’ve been there. And if by any
chance you get captured, we never had this
conversation.”

“You sound like you’re in a
movie, Sophie,” laughed Kerry or Jerry.

“I have to talk like this,”
she said. “It’s important to me. I want to know what he’s doing in
town. What’s his job in the city? Is he really married, or is that
not true either? And see if he has a car, and if it has any
damage.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jerry or
Kerry, “he won’t know we’ve been there. We’re that
good.”

“And we know you have it for
him,” said Jerry or Kerry.

She just about screamed at
them for being so cheeky.

“Any dirt, we’ll get it,”
said Kerry or Jerry, not realising what his brother
said.

“And you’ll be pleased with
your decision to use us,” said Jerry or Kerry.

“Never had an unsatisfied
customer, ma’am,” said Kerry or Jerry.

She shook their hands in a
formal manner and they ran away outside. It was only then that she
realised that maybe she should not have done that, and made them
party to her curiosity. Then she consoled herself in the knowledge
that if Craigfield were harmless then nothing would come of it. And
if he was a threat then they would have caught him before anything
else happened.

She looked at the discarded
page again, and laughed at the thought of him reading it. She would
not have laughed had it been an actual page of her writing, since
he would have seen a character with more than a few similarities to
himself.

Max didn’t go back to his
car, but kept waiting under the tree and watching Craigfield’s
house. As the rain alternated from ever-present drizzle to the
occasional hard drop, the evening turned to night and Max felt
colder and colder. After two more hours he knew he had to do
something; either go home or go do some confrontation. He gave
himself a countdown, from ten to one, without knowing what he would
do when he got to one but that it would be something. When he got
to one he started walking to the house, amazing himself but not
feeling scared. He opened the little gate and went through, then
carefully up the little steps. The silly little knocker was lifted
and tapped six even times, nice and assertive. He then heard the
sound of someone moving toward the door. When it opened Max didn’t
feel ready, but was instead drained of any of his
confidence.

The tall figure of
Craigfield seemed much taller to Max since he was standing a step
below. He was slowly chewing a mouthful of his dinner and when he
saw Max he was puzzled.

“Hi?” he asked as he picked
something out of his teeth, “You’re Max Marshall, aren’t
you?”

“You know me, do you?” Max
asked, more forthright than someone would normally do after
knocking on someone’s door.

“I know your wife,” he said
like Max would be pleased to hear that. He then looked out to the
street like he was expecting her to be there.

“I know you do. Very well,
it turns out.”

Craigfield realised that Max
was not being courteous. “What are you doing here, Max? Is there
something you want?”

“You can’t see my wife
anymore.”

Craigfield was now finished
his mouthful. He rubbed his chin and looked Max up and down, seeing
that he was way out of shape and no kind of threat. Then he took
note of his crutch and didn’t try to disguise his disdain. “That’s
really not up to you, I’d say.”

“Is she here?” Max asked as
he went to move inside the house.

“That is none of your
business, I’m afraid,” Craigfield said nonchalantly. He did not
bother to look at him as he backed up and went to close the
door.

Max took a breath and then
started to recite some of what he wanted to say that moment. But he
was too shaky and it came out wrong, with his voice getting too
high pitched.

“My wife is not another
woman of yours. Think you can take her? You weren’t at my wedding.
I didn’t see you getting married, that was me. You think I put up
with all that, and her, for all those years, for you to waltz in
and play your games?”

“That’s good,” Craigfield
said as he started closing the door. “You’re going to have to leave
now, okay? Shut the gate on your way, would you?”

“Is she in
there?”

“She’s not, so you can
leave.”

“Jill?” Max shouted into the
house. “I know you’re there. He’s no good for you. This creep’s no
good. You can’t do this to me, do you hear?”

Craigfield re-opened the
door and this time it was his turn to be aggressive. “Wait on,” he
said with a stronger voice and a finger pointing at him. “If your
wife wanted to leave you and come here, that’s up to her. You can’t
go talking about me like that, especially in my house, right in
front of me. All my neighbours can hear you. Who do you think you
are?”

“You can’t have my wife, all
right?”

“I will if she wants—not
that I’m saying she’s here, but if she does, that’s that way it is,
that’s the way everything is. Now get off my property before I hurt
you.”