The Writer (24 page)

Dan stopped at a roadside
coffee place and took all of the pages in with him. Three cups
later he was part of a group of four, including two overweight
tattoo-covered truckers, discussing the possibility of Max’s story
being true. The locals knew Gendry better than Dan and he busily
made notes of what they said. The boarding house sounded accurate,
they said, and the writer was probably there recently. Sal’s was a
well known stopping place for the truckers, and they knew some of
the locals like Elbow and Two-Tooth. When Dan made it back to his
car to resume his journey it was early afternoon and he faced a
night drive to get back home. The three bags of fruit pies were
finished within the next hour.

His stomach was crying when
he drove into town and he had no doubt in his mind that he was
going to clean out whatever Sal was going to serve him for his
dinner. But first things first, he resolved, and he almost ran up
the steps into Trent House. He used far too much force to ring the
dainty little bell on the counter and then started to walk through
to the next room to see if he could find anyone. Susan was walking
down the stairs when she saw him and she greeted him
politely.

“Dan Ironwright,” he
introduced, “up from the city. We spoke on the phone
yesterday.”

“Indeed, we did,” Susan said
with a polite smile as she slowly made her way around the counter.
“I’m only too pleased to help with your investigations. How long
will you be staying?”

“Hopefully no more than a
couple of hours,” he said as he looked at the rough collection of
papers that were Max’s story. Now mostly out of order, they all had
notes scribbled over both sides.

“Oh, you are not after a
room? From your call I thought you were saying you had a lead in
your case and wanted to meet some of Gendry’s folk.”

“That I do.”

“I had my twin boys fix up
my main guestroom; new towels and such. Are you sure you don’t need
to stay at least overnight?”

Dan sorted through the
papers on the counter, to Susan’s confusion. “The twins, that would
be Kerry and Jerry?”

“Do you know them? Are they
in trouble? What have they done now? They have a habit of causing
trouble like you wouldn’t believe, but I assure you they haven’t
got a malicious bone between them.”

“And you have a daughter,
Rebecca?”

“How would you have known
that? Yes, I do. Why do you ask?”

“And a granddaughter,
Sophie?”

“My first daughter, from my
first marriage, died when she was young, but she gave us our lovely
Sophie. May I ask you what this is about?”

“Certainly you can. Have you
recently had a boarder by the name of Craigfield?”

“I can tell you without
looking at my book, the answer is no. I have never heard of anyone
with that name, I’m sorry.”

“Mind if I take a look at
that guestbook?”

“Actually, there’s no need.
We seldom have guests. It’s coming up to a year since our last.
There are no recent names there.”

“What is real and what is
not …” Dan said to himself as a couple of pages dropped to the
floor. He felt a very strong sense of hunger, almost like a kick to
his side.

“Pardon?”

“No matter. Sophie is the
one I have the most interest in seeing. She’s not still here, by
any chance?”

“I can take you to see her
now if you wish.”

“She is actually here?” he
asked, far more amazed than he should have been.

“She’s helping in the
kitchen, last I saw of her. If you don’t mind my asking, this is
official police business?”

“This is part of a homicide
investigation, yes ma’am.”

Susan was shocked to hear
that and she became subdued as she took Dan through to the kitchen.
Sophie was helping Simona prepare vegetables and they were both
startled to see Susan bringing in a stranger. The smell of the
cooking food hit Dan like a smack to the head. Sophie was nothing
at all like what he was expecting, being very short and with dark
features, not the way he had pictured her when reading Max’s
story.

“Sophie, my name is Dan
Ironwright,” he introduced as he showed her his badge, “and I am
from the city homicide.” He had trouble putting his badge away
while still holding onto the pages. He could not take his eyes off
a pot of the sweetest smelling soup he had ever encountered, and
wondered if they would mind if he grabbed a spoon and took a
taste.

Sophie turned pale. “It’s
not about someone I know, is it? Who is it?”

“Come, Simona, let’s give
them some privacy,” said Susan and they left the
kitchen.

“Someone you know?” asked
Dan, putting the pages on one of the few spaces available on the
table. He wondered if he should ask first before trying some of
that soup or just go ahead and find a spoon for himself.

“Yes, someone I know. Has
someone I know died? I assume you’re here to tell me someone I know
has been murdered. Who is it? Not Clarke? Or Nancy? Please, not
Nancy?”

“No, it’s not like that at
all.”

“Okay,” she said without
really believing him. “Then what is it about?”

“Actually it’s a little
difficult to explain. Have you heard of Max Marshall, a writer from
the city?”

“Why do you ask?”

“This is not easy for me to
describe, but it seems he has been writing about this town. More
specifically, about your family. Even more specifically, about
you.”

“Writing what about me?” she
asked slowly.

“You’re his main character,
in a book he’s written,” he said as he pointed to the crumbled
collection of pages. “This is a copy. The original’s tucked away in
his computer.”

“I’m a main character in a
book? What kind of book?”

“I don’t know exactly; some
sort of novel. Melodrama, really. Not my style. Actually, I prefer
movies. But this is one book I can’t wait for the movie to come
out.”

“What was your name again?
Dan? Well, Dan, this must be some sort of joke. Are you a real
police officer?”

“I assure you I didn’t
travel all the way up here on account of a joke.”

“You have it wrong. I’m
writing his story. Did the twins send you some of my
pages?”

“Say what? I didn’t quite
catch that.”

“I said, I am writing his
story
and he, Max Marshall
, is the main character
of my
book
.”

Dan looked at her and then
the soup. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“Okay, let’s start this
over,” he said as he tried to put the food out of his mind. “The
investigation concerns the Longbottom murder. Since it is still an
ongoing case, anything out of the ordinary will be looked at. This
is no time for flippancy.”

“There is nothing flippant
about what I am telling you,
Dan
,” she replied sternly. “The
fact of the matter is it is not Max who is writing about me,
I
am writing about him
. How did you know about that? I haven’t
shown anyone my pages.”

“How much have you written?”
he asked, humouring her. As far as he could tell, she was
confessing her guilt.

“That’s easy. I can show
you.”

She left the kitchen and at
first Dan didn’t know if he should follow. He saw a spoon sitting
by itself and he began to reach for it but he stopped himself, and
then almost bumped into Simona who knew what he was up to and gave
him a nasty glare. When he left the kitchen Sophie was already
going up the stairs, stepping heavily on the creaking steps. When
he got to her room she had already collected some of her most
recent pages, together with what was being kept in a small
shoebox.

“I will have this
photocopied,” Dan said when she handed it all to him.

“Just take it all,” she said
as she folded her arms. “I have no further interest in it.
Especially if I’m going to be questioned about it like
this.”

“No, I have no need to
confiscate your property. I’ll get it copied and the original
returned. And if I may ask, how is it you know Max,
exactly?”

“I never said I knew
him.”

“But you know enough to
write about him.”

“He’s a character I
invented. And how do you know about that?”

“He’s a real person. He
lives in the city. I’ve met him. You expect me to believe you
plucked his name out of the thin air?”

“Where else do you get names
from? The phonebook?”

“Why are you writing about
him, specifically?”

“Why write
anything?”

“No, seriously, Sophie. Why
are you writing about Max Marshall?”

“I’m just using a name. It’s
all fiction. If it’ll help, I’ll change his name in the next draft.
Something less controversial.”

“You still haven’t told me
why you’re using his name.”

“Do you know how hard it is
to think up new names?”

“That’s the only
reason?”

“Read what I’ve written and
you’ll see it isn’t anything to get worked up about. As if I’m that
good a writer.”

He looked at the shoebox and
realised that she may be telling him the truth. And it was a truth
he did not want to face.

“Have you read any of
Marshall’s books?”

“I don’t know he had any
books, since I didn’t know he was a real person. Honestly, it’s not
that rare a name. There’s probably many Max Marshalls in the world.
I vaguely remember some golfer named that.”

“What about
Anger
Angel
? Heard of that?”

“What? What-angel? Is that a
name of a book? I don’t know what to think about this. You say he’s
written about me? What is it, can you tell me? It is true, he has
really written about me? How could that be possible? Do you think
he’s been following me? Why would he do that? I’m finding this a
little difficult to take.”

“Do you know anything about
psychics?”

“I don’t know anything about
any psychics. Why ask me that?”

“This is a very unusual
case.”

“Yes, I can see that.
Detective, all I have done wrong, is write something using his
name, and I’m sorry if it’s caused confusion. I didn’t know that
was a crime, and if it was I would have called him Bruce Balderdash
or something.”

Dan took a breath and
realised that he was rushing it. Here was this Sophie telling him
that she was doing the same as Max, writing about him, when he was
writing about her. This would take time to figure out, and
certainly not while standing in a hallway holding an old shoebox
with pain in his stomach.

“The only crime in writing
is bad writing, I guess,” she added.

“I will get these originals
back to you as soon as I can,” he said formally. “Is this your
present address?”

“No, I live in the city.
I’ll be going back home next week.”

“I can send it back here
first thing tomorrow,” he said, before heading down to the dining
room to get ready for the evening meal, ignoring her trying to tell
him to just throw the pages away since she had no interest in ever
looking at them again.

Dan’s night was sleepless.
After arriving home at two in the morning he tried to sleep but
then had to get up and start reading Sophie’s story. He found the
style and storyline worse than Max’s, but that was because he had
expected too much. When he finally crept back into bed without
waking Sam, he fell asleep quickly but his dreams were of yet more
of Sophie’s story. When he woke up a mere two hours later he had
trouble remembering what was real and what came from his own
imagination. He arrived at the office before anyone else in his
shift and began to read it again, if anything but to remember what
wasn’t in his dream.

Gregory Retter came in, in
the lumbering way he always walked. The oldest of the detectives,
he was a perennially lazy man, widely known as having the worst
record for any detective in the city’s history. But he was a nice
guy and he had several old friends amongst the brass, so no one
really minded his work record so long as he had no important cases.
When he heard him, Dan looked up with a start. Then he started
yelling at him.

“One’s writing about the
other, who’s writing about them! One is writing about the other
writing. Can you believe that? They’re both writing!”

“You do what?” Gregory
asked, not expecting to encounter hostility at such an early hour
and it baffled at him. He went to take a look at the collection of
papers on Dan’s desk and scratched his head when he saw how much of
a mess it all was.

“This girl Sophie Trent,”
Dan explained in a calmer voice, “she’s writing a novel about a man
called Max Marshall. And in her story Max is writing a story.
Problem is, Max Marshall is writing a story about a girl named
Sophie Trent, who is writing a story. They’re both doing this at
the same time. Something supernatural’s going on here, I’m telling
you. This is way out of my league. This is like that Pink Floyd
album matching with that film
Gone With The Wind
. Some
things no one can explain.”