‘Chasing Boyle?’
He’d looked at her for a long time. A few seconds too long. ‘Yeah, among other things. I’ve put in a good word for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Yeah, sis. Rate you highly. You’ve got real talent. Want you on board. Part of my team. You could work down here. Be close to that boyfriend of yours. What do you reckon?’
What did she reckon?
That was the question. Salter didn’t trust her, that much was clear to her. He wanted to keep her close. For her part, the thought of working alongside Salter repulsed her. Whether or not he was bent, he was an odious bastard. But if he was bent, he was something else as well. If he really was bent, if he really was on Boyle’s payroll, then that meant he was the one who’d betrayed Jake Morton. He was the one who, in the end, was responsible for Jake’s death.
Shit. She knew then that she couldn’t let this go. That she had to stick close to Salter. She had to finish this off.
She told herself that it was about justice. But she knew that, really, it was about revenge.
She told herself that it was about Liam. That, if she took this job, she could carry on living with Liam, looking after him, making sure he was all right. That was what she told herself.
But she knew that, really, it wasn’t about Liam.
It was about Jake.
So now, here she sat, in this sterile, depressing ward, with Liam in front of her, his body surrounded by drips, monitoring equipment, piles of paperwork and dressings. Not knowing what the future held. Not knowing what she wanted. Not even knowing what was driving her. Trying to decide.
She reached out and took Liam’s quivering hand and held it tightly for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ she said finally. ‘I can change the job. I can do that.’
Read on for an exclusive interview from a new star in the crime and thriller arena, Alex Walters
An Interview with Alex Walters
When did you start writing?
I’ve written fiction for as long as I can remember. I started writing mainly because I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader – of anything and everything. As a child, my parents thought it was a good thing for me to be reading anything at all – Enid Blyton, comics, science fiction, horror stories, the backs of cereal packets – just so long as I was reading. The result was that I developed a passion for books, and then tried to produce my own versions of the stuff that I most enjoyed. So, as a teenager, I used to fill notebooks with short stories in virtually every genre – all of them awful (I’ve been back and looked, but only once!). I read English at university, and always carried on writing mainly for my own pleasure, although I did have some non-fiction books and the odd story and poem published. I kept starting novels that never got beyond the first two or three chapters, partly because it took me a long while to find the stories that I really wanted to tell.
Where do you write? And what’s your routine?
I have what I rather grandly call a study at the top of the house – a really nice airy room which on a good day (we get a few in Manchester) has the sun streaming in through the skylight. It’s an ideal mix because I can see the blue skies and the tops of the trees, but I can’t see the glorious views of the Pennines properly unless I stand up, so most of the time I can avoid being distracted. I do most of my writing there, and I fit it in around the other work that I still do as a management consultant. I’ve discovered from experience that I’m not very productive at writing in the mornings, so I tend to deal with less interesting work then. But once I get into a rhythm, I tend to lose contact with the world around me and can work as late into the night as I need to.
I’m always slightly astonished by writers who still work in longhand – possibly because my own handwriting is so awful. I love writing on the computer because it means I can make changes as I go – changing wording or dialogue, or moving scenes around to accommodate new ideas or developments. Once I’ve got an outline plan in place, I tend to just start at the beginning and write till I reach the end of the first draft, but I’ll also juggle the content as I go so that I can try to give the story the best shape.
The other advantage of writing on a computer is that I can do it more or less anywhere. I’ve discovered that, oddly, I can be very productive writing on trains (I spend far too much of my life commuting between Manchester and London), as long as I can shut out the rest of the world with my laptop and iPod. That seems to work well, though I’ve occasionally noticed other passengers peering worriedly over my shoulder as I tap out a murder scene . . .
What are the pros and cons of being a writer?
When it’s going well, it’s the best job in the world. And even when it’s going badly, it’s better than most other things. I really enjoy losing myself in the world I’m creating, and I particularly love it when that world and its characters start to take over. It’s a strange but exhilarating feeling when the life that you’re creating starts to seem more real than the life outside. That means that you’ve got to be comfortable spending a good proportion of your day working on your own, living largely inside your own head. I’ve occasionally suspected that you have to be at least slightly mad to want to write, but I hope it’s an entertaining form of madness.
And of course the writing doesn’t always go well. Sometimes you just feel that a story or a scene isn’t working, or that you’ve reached a dead-end or lost your way with the plot. That can be nerve-racking, particularly if you’ve already invested a lot of time and emotion in what you’ve produced – but so far, I’m relieved to say, it’s generally come good in the end. Usually the dead-end turns out not to be that at all, but just a sign that it’s time to change direction and that something even more interesting is waiting up ahead. The worst thing is that, when you hit those difficult patches, it’s very difficult to put the work aside, so it ends up dominating your mind for days until it sorts itself out. I suspect I’m probably not the easiest person to live with at those times.
Which writers have inspired you?
Countless writers have inspired me in various different ways. I grew up in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire which is famously D H Lawrence’s birthplace, and I went to the same primary and secondary schools that he did. So his work was an indirect inspiration in the sense that it proved that it was possible for someone from a very similar background to my own to become a writer.
As a teenager, my first inspiration was for science fiction – not so much because I wanted to write it myself, but because writers like Samuel R Delany and Philip K Dick showed me just what the imagination was capable of. I came to crime fiction at around the same time, managing somehow to get mildly addicted to both Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler! I remember also discovering ‘literary’ writers who happened to be terrific story-tellers, like Stevenson, Dickens and Wilkie Collins. That gradually led me to discover the wealth of great crime writing that’s out there. My enthusiasm for crime fiction is now very diverse – including ‘golden age’ English writers like the extraordinary Margery Allingham, Americans like Donald Westlake and Ross Macdonald, the best British writers such as Reginald Hill and John Harvey, and newer writers like Jo Nesbo.
How important is a sense of place in your writing?
Very important. I almost always have a particular place in mind when I’m describing a scene, even when I might have fictionalized it to suit my needs. My earlier books had exotic settings – even more exotic than Manchester – so I had to work hard to supplement my own direct experience with research to make sure I got the details right. It’s been a pleasure writing about Manchester and its surroundings because I can use the books to
