One Good Turn

“Probably.”

It had proved to be an odd kind of conversation (“I’m not dead, Chris, the police made a mistake”) that hadn’t gone well. Christopher was still driving home. “I’m just passing Haddington,” he said as if his geographical location were relevant. “Wait a minute, I’m not on the hands-free.” This was followed by the noise of fum-bling, a curse that seemed to indicate the phone had been dropped, scrabbling, and, finally, “Wouldn’t want to get pulled over by a fucking policeman.” Martin wondered if Sutherland, sitting across a desk from him, heard this slur.

Christopher proceeded to run through a range of emotions- disbelief, shock, disappointment, and finally an irritable “For fuck’s sake, Martin,” as if Martin had committed some kind of de-ranged prank. Martin supposed his brother had spent the previous couple of hours of bereavement getting used to the idea of being in possession of Martin’s copyright for the next seventy years, to say nothing of the Merchiston house.

Thank goodness they hadn’t phoned his mother down in East-bourne. He tried to imagine how his mother would have responded to the news of his death. He expected she would have been underwhelmed.

The anonymous civilian came back on the phone, and Clare rolled her eyes at the news that they were still having trouble finding him a room for the night.

“You would think,” she said, a sentence that apparently didn’t need completing. Martin sighed and said, “I think I know a place that will have vacancies.”

“This woman I’m looking for,” he enunciated each word slowly and clearly, “this woman is dead.” Jackson made a slashing move-ment across his throat. The girl shrank away from him. He wasn’t very good at miming. He could have done with Julia’s help, no one played charades with as much enthusiasm as Julia, except per-haps for Marlee. How did you portray dead? He crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the Housekeeper was standing in front of him, regarding him quizzically. “He says he’s courier,” the girl at the computer said sarcastically. “Does he?” the Housekeeper said. “I’m looking for someone,” Jackson said stoutly, “a girl who’s

It’s all been a bit of a cock-up, hasn’t it?” Clare said cheerfully to Martin. “It made the papers, you know.Your death.”

“My death,” Martin echoed. His death had been pronounced. A murder is announced. It was like a witch doctor laying a curse on him, dooming him to invisibility or death. Isn’t that what happened? The witch doctor told you that you were going to die, so you did, by the power of suggestion rather than any actual ability on his part to hex, but the means were moot when the result was certain.

Martin asked Clare to stop at a newsagent on George Street, one good thing about being in a police car, perhaps the only good thing, was the fact that they could stop anywhere they wanted. LOCAL WRITER MURDERED, he read out to her from the Evening News as he climbed back into the car. “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” he added.

“Well, yes,” she said, puzzled, “because you’re not actually dead, are you?”

“No, I’m not,” he agreed. There was a photograph beneath the headline, it looked like some kind of poor- quality holiday snap that Martin couldn’t recollect ever seeing before, and he wondered where on earth they had got it from.

The traffic forced them to a halt outside the Assembly Rooms, where a poster announcing a gala benefit for Amnesty still displayed Richard Mott’s name, in smallish print near the bottom of the bill.

Clare took the opportunity to scan the newspaper. “You’re quite famous,” she said, sounding surprised. “Alex Blake, whose real name was Martin Canning, trained for the priesthood before becoming a religious studies teacher,” Clare continued, “… turned his hand to writing late in life.”

“I was never a priest,” Martin said, “that’s disinformation. And forty-two,” Martin said, “I hardly think that’s late in life, do you?”

She said nothing, merely smiled in that sympathetic way again. He wondered how old she was, she looked about twelve.

He opened a packet of Minstrels he’d bought in the newsagent and tipped some into her palm. “What kind of books do you write, then?” she asked.

“Novels.”

“What kind of novels?”

“Crime novels,” Martin said.

“Really? That’s ironic, isn’t it? Fiction stranger than truth and all that.”They set off again, plowing through the clotted traffic as far as the next zebra crossing, where a seemingly endless line of peo-ple trailed in front of them. “They go slow on purpose,” Clare said, “gives them a false sense of power, but at the end of the day, they’re on foot and I’m in a car.”

“The author of seven novels based on private detective Nina Riley,” she continued to read relentlessly. “It’s good you have a woman heroine,” she said. “Is she a real kick-ass?”

Martin pondered the question, he liked the idea of Nina Riley being kick-ass, it elevated her out of the tweed- and-pearls postwar world into something more dynamic. She knew how to fly a plane and climb mountains, she had driven a racing car, she could fence, although the opportunities for swordplay were few and far between, even in the forties. “The blighter’s getting away, Bertie. I need a weapon-throw me that hockey stick!”

“Well, in her own way, yes, I suppose she is.”

“So do you make a living from it?” Clare asked.

“Yes. Better than most people. I’m lucky. Do you read much?” he added, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from him-self.

“No time.” She laughed. Martin couldn’t imagine a world where there was no time to read.

“His agent, Melanie Lenehan”-wow, there’s a tongue twister- “was quoted as saying,‘This is a tragedy in every sense of the word.Martin was just beginning to enjoy the fruits of his phenomenal success. He was writing at the top of his game.’” Martin felt a pang of disappointment that Melanie had not bothered to come up with any-thing better than banal platitudes. Or perhaps that’s what she believed he merited.

Clare accompanied him into the Four Clans and rang the brass bell on the counter. The thing about the police, Martin was beginning to notice, was that they behaved like people who didn’t need to ask permission, because, of course, they didn’t. Paul Bradley had possessed the same authority, it was something natu-ral and unstrained. These people didn’t spend their lives being apologetic.

A woman appeared reluctantly from the room at the back of the reception. She wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth and gave them both an unfriendly stare. She had a bulky figure, and her ill-fitting gray suit and severe hairstyle, not to mention her de-meanor, reminded Martin of a prison governor. (Or rather his idea of a prison governor, never having met one in real life. Not yet, anyway.) She was wearing a badge that said MAUREEN, but she looked too formidable to be addressed with such intimacy. He caught a glimpse of a table in the back room, on which was a well-thumbed copy of the Evening News and a plate containing a half-eaten toasted sandwich. Even from where he was standing, Martin could see the blaring headline LOCAL WRITER MURDERED and make out his own grainy features in the photograph.

“Maureen” checked him in, unfazed by the fact that he was accompanied by a police officer. No mention was made of how he was going to pay the bill. He was handed the key to his room as if he were a prisoner who was allowed to lock himself into his own cell.

“Right, I’ll be off now, then,” Clare said. “Good luck, with the writing and…everything.”

On his weary way up the stairs, Martin caught the eye of the stag. It regarded him mutely, an expression of moody indifference on its moldy features.

30

“Murdered, Jackson!” Julia said, her face a pantomime of round-eyed horror, but she couldn’t keep the