A Murder of Magpies

by Flanders, Judith

  I shoved in my contacts, grabbed my keys, and went. I don’t do anything that they say you should, like eating or drinking something healthful and nutritious first. The idea of food on an empty stomach is nauseating. Until I’ve got a good layer of caffeine down, I’m not ready for health. The five minutes it takes me to get from home to Primrose Hill on the posh side of the tracks is what I call my warm-up when I feel in need of rationalization—which is when I write a check for £55 at the end of a visit to the physiotherapist to repair the damage this marvelous exercise produces.

  All this is private. In public I simply say, grandly, “I run,” when exercise and gyms are under discussion. I leave people to imagine that I do a brisk ten miles on Hampstead Heath every weekend after interval training all week (oh, yes, I have the vocabulary), although you only have to look at me to realize this cannot possibly be the case. However, in publishing most people’s preferred sports are drinking and smoking, so by comparison my life looks healthy.

  I normally try hard to think of things when I’m running, because if I allow my mind to focus on the activity itself, all I can think of is how much it hurts. If I can focus instead on a book, or a problem, or a conversation I need to have with someone, I can usually get a couple of miles under my belt without brooding on the pain. This morning, though, I was nearly through before complete paralysis of the lungs made me think how much further I had to go. The rest of the run I spent worrying about Kit.

  It was absurd. The man hadn’t shown up for a meeting, and he hadn’t called. That was it. If it had been any other author I would have been pissed off, not worried. I wouldn’t have tried to reach them endlessly. One brisk, firm message pointing out that they had missed the meeting was all they would have received—then let guilt settle in and do its job. But—and this repeated itself in time to my footsteps—Kit wasn’t like that.

  He was, however, an early riser, so it was possible there would be a message when I got home, or on my voice mail at the office. Our body clocks were, unusually for both our industries, set early, although mine was from necessity whereas he just liked getting up early. I hated it, but hated not having an hour or so to myself first thing even more.

  I staggered home, therefore, with more than my usual speed, even finishing up with a slight flourish, as though to say to invisible watchers, See? Easy. Nothing on my voice mail. I showered and was out the door in half an hour, eager to get to the office. There was no real reason not to just ring through and check from home, but it seemed better to be physically there. I don’t know why. I suspect it was because I wanted to postpone the moment when I found there was no message.

  It wasn’t even eight when I reached the office. Nothing from Kit. Nothing from his typist, either. He’d said he’d get her to send me the details of the manuscript dispatch, and it was unlike him to forget in the normal course of events. Even less likely given his burglary.

  I had no idea what office hours CID officers kept. It was still early but I could always leave a voice mail: It was obviously routine. Then neither he nor I would have to think about it again. I dialed the number on the card he had given me, staring out the window—now it was raining, of course—while I tried to work out a message that didn’t make it sound as if I’d given barely any thought to his visit from the moment he left my office. Normally a real live CID officer appearing in a publishing house would have been a talking point, but Kit’s manuscript, and then Kit himself dropping out of sight, had sidetracked me. A man’s soft “Hello?” startled me, therefore.

  “Oh. I was expecting your voice mail.” Waves of patience wafted down the line and I pulled myself together. I’m not nearly as foolish as I had been making myself sound for past two days. “Inspector Field, it’s Samantha Clair, from Timmins and Ross. I haven’t got any definitive suggestions for your missing parcel, but there is something else. I don’t know, it’s probably nothing, but I thought it might be worth telling you about.” I trailed off.

  “Anything is worth hearing. What have you got?”

  “Well, it’s nothing concrete. No one has rung to say, ‘Didn’t you get my parcel?’ But I may know what it was.” I told him about Kit’s burglary, and how it might link to the courier. Then I went on: Kit not turning up for our meeting, the “workmen” at my flat, even the call from Vogue. I’d thought that when I’d said it out loud, it would dissolve, but as I put it all together, it no longer sounded nebulous.

  Field didn’t seem to think so, either. His voice was crisp. No fooling around now. “Will you be in your office this morning? I’ll try and get to you by eleven.”

  He was there at ten thirty, which said either that cops had nothing to do, which I didn’t think was the case, or that there was more happening in the background than I’d been told. I’d spent some time after I called making notes on everything that had happened over the past few days, so I was more coherent than I’d been on the phone.

  I repeated what I’d told him on the phone, fleshing out the detail. I repeated the conversations I’d had with my mother and Selden’s about libel, and highlighted Kit’s findings. I also gave him Kit’s contact information, which wasn’t really any more than his agent’s name and phone number, Kit’s landline and mobile, which weren’t answering, and an address. Kit and his partner of several years had split about a year before, but I passed on his ex’s name. I’d only met him a few times, and had no contact information, but he worked for the EU, or had then. He should be relatively easy to find. I had no idea about Kit’s family—he had a sister in Devon, but I didn’t know her married name, or where exactly she lived. Inspector Field made notes, but I could see he was not really focused on this part of the story. I stopped speaking, and just waited.

  He put on that face men have when they think women are making impossible demands, half-aggrieved, half-truculent. And his voice was so patient I wanted to scream as he said, “I’ll pass the information on to missing persons, and they’ll speak to his family. But you do realize that not much will happen, even if his family files a formal missing persons report?” He cut off my indignant reply before it had left my mouth. “He’s a grown man and he didn’t show up for a meeting. There are—” he looked at his notebook—“there are circumstances that mean we’ll look into it, which otherwise those bare facts would not warrant, but—” hunted/aggrieved again—“but I suspect you will think it’s not enough. I’ll do what I can. That’s all I can say.”

  He waited. Finally, tight-lipped, I nodded.

  He did, too. “If we can go back to the manuscript.”

  I’d spoken to David and to Robert again at Selden’s after my call once Inspector Field said he was coming to see me again, and we all agreed that while confidentiality was one thing, if our author had gone missing we had to do whatever we could. Even so, David had told me to make the police understand about serialization, and the need to keep the material under wraps. I’d agreed I would, but I was lying. I couldn’t bring myself to let anyone think we were more worried about losing a serial deal than we were about losing an author.

  “What I don’t understand, though, is why anyone would think that a messenger would have the one and only copy of a manuscript. Before computers, before photocopiers, or typewriters even, that would make sense, but now?”

  Field looked bland. “If that was what it was about. First, we have no evidence that it was anything but an accident. And then there’s your hacker.”

  “Hacker?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Didn’t you hear? I thought everyone in this building heard everything even before it was thought. Your IT people had to take all the e-mail servers offline. A fairly serious hacking attempt. That’s why your system was down all day. There were a couple of attempts at the security code. The firewall was breached, and there was an attempt to hack several accounts, a fairly sophisticated one, apparently. Of course, that may just be a way of explaining why it was so nearly successful.”

  “Do we know that this is connected? Couldn�
�t it be someone trying to get our sales figures or something?” Even as I said it, I knew how feeble it sounded.

  Inspector Field thought so. “It could. But would they have the skills? And publishing doesn’t seem to operate like that. Wouldn’t it just be easier for one of your friends to ring you up and ask you? You people seem to spend all your time talking, and confidentiality isn’t a word you use a lot.” It was true, but it was clever of him to work that out after one visit. I thought we did a better imitation of appearing, if not being, professional. He went on. “How does Lovell produce his work? Longhand?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t use a computer. He gives a manuscript to some woman and she types it up.”

  He asked me for her contact details, and then added, almost as an afterthought, “What are your locks like at home?”

  I had that feeling you get when you take a step in the dark and it isn’t there. “Average. Enough to stop the casual thug. Nothing so complicated that a professional will get pissed off and total the whole door. If someone is searching for this manuscript, wouldn’t it be better to let them burgle the place, and find out there’s nothing there?” I backtracked at his quizzical look. “I’m not aiming for a break-in, but I’d rather it happened when I was out, and I’d rather they knew I had nothing there.” I paused, trying to control myself. No dice. “I really, really don’t like this,” I snapped, as if he had tried to persuade me differently.

  “You’re not supposed to.” If he hadn’t been a cop, I’d have assumed he was laughing at me, but looking closer I saw that he was being sympathetic. “Maybe you should go and stay with friends for a while.”

  I flinched, as if he’d leaned over and slapped me. This was much more real than I was prepared for. “What are you suggesting? That there’s danger? Or that I should just clear out and let some stranger come and vandalize my house?” Despite my best efforts, my voice was rising to a whine. I’d suggested the very same thing only a minute before, but when he agreed, I was outraged.

  Field looked gently at me, and said, “Wouldn’t you rather be out of the way, if that’s what’s going to happen?”

  “Well, stop it happening. You’re a policeman. Do something.”

  He very kindly pretended not to hear.

  * * *

  By evening I had stopped feeling whiny and had moved on to mutinously aggressive. I was supposed to move myself out of my house so it could be burgled, wait for my manuscripts to be stolen, and just generally sit around while Kit was done away with? I didn’t think so. I’m not particularly even-tempered at the best of times, and this was making me very, very crabby. Not adding to the general gaiety of the nation was the thought of dinner at my mother’s. But if I didn’t go I’d never hear the end of it, so I hauled on my good suit and stamped off to St. John’s Wood, feeling martyred.

  My mother looked her usual bandbox self. I always hope that, with her hectic schedule, one day I’ll see her when her hair needs cutting, or with the hem on her skirt coming down, or at least, dammit, that she’s sewn a button on with the wrong-colored thread. Today wasn’t going to be that day. Helena’s tiny, no more than five feet two inches, and a very fragile five feet two inches at that. She wears very neat, very tailored clothes, which somehow make her look irresistibly feminine, and her short, curly dark hair, still with only a few threads of gray, always looks as if she has just stepped out of the hairdresser, although I know it takes her barely five minutes in the morning.

  She looked at me and carefully didn’t sigh. “What’s up?”

  We had a few minutes before the guests came, so I filled her in on the last few days. She’s good at real trouble.

  “Well, you’d better come and stay for a while, hadn’t you. And warn your neighbors.”

  “Warn them? Warn them about what? That I’m expecting burglars, and they should see that they’re comfortable? Maybe make them mugs of cocoa while they’re tearing my place apart?”

  “Don’t be silly and don’t be histrionic.” Maybe she’s not so good if there’s real trouble. She’ll solve my problems, but I’d love a bit of sympathy along the way as well. She went on, disregarding my look of scorn. “The old man upstairs, he really has to be warned, and the police need to know that he’s up there. Did you mention him to your inspector?”

  “No, Mother, there were more important things to discuss.”

  “What is more important than making sure an old man isn’t frightened out of his wits?”

  “Making sure that I’m not! For God’s sake, I’m petrified.”

  “Well, you’re young, you’re strong, and you’re forewarned. He’s none of those things. So do it first thing when you get home this evening. Then go through everything, make sure there’s nothing locked, nothing hidden. Why deal with damage as well as trespass?”

  “Why not just hang a sign outside? Come on in and take what you want.”

  “Sam, are you trying to miss the point? It’s clear that whoever it is is not trying to steal the manuscript to prevent publication. If that were the case, they would have moved on Kit earlier, or at the typist, and dealt with it when there was only one copy. And they would be looking further afield for the notes and invoices and so on when they didn’t find them at Kit’s. What they want is to see the book, to see what the problem is, and how they can protect themselves.”

  She was right. I hadn’t thought it through, just thought how silly they were being not to know that a manuscript wasn’t a single thing that could be taken and destroyed. And they obviously weren’t silly.

  “But if it’s a fishing operation, then maybe it’s not the mafia.” My mother raised an eyebrow at the slightly dramatic word, but what else should I call them? “I mean, Alemán’s family and Vernet also want to stop publication, one for family pride, one for trade reputation. Kit thinks the French police will, too, even if they haven’t been connected to the money laundering, because they won’t want it coming out that the inquest was rigged, even if not by them.”

  “Well, the police know how to hack into a computer. Certainly a computer with as little security as most publishers have. Would Alemán’s family? Who are they?”

  “His father is a dentist, I think,” I said, dredging up the information from Kit’s manuscript. “Small town, prosperous. Not the kind to have underworld connections.”

  My mother was more skeptical. Being a tax lawyer makes you very cynical. “No one with a bit of cash is too far away from underworld connections.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Mother. When was the last time you went to have a tooth filled, and while you were at it arranged a little bit of B and E?”

  “That’s not what I mean. All an upstanding citizen has to do is go to a detective agency, preferably one where the owner is an ex-policeman who is well below retirement age. There’s usually a reason he’s not in the force.”

  The first guest arrived, cutting short her exposition on How to Become a Criminal in Three Easy Steps. I was pleased, because by the time we spoke again, I could pretend that I’d known it all along. I was also sobered. My mother was much more devious than I’d ever imagined.

  * * *

  Dinner was a pleasant break. As I’d guessed, “that nice judge” was a senior high court judge. The rest of the guests were a good mix. As well as the promised actors, there was the couple who were my mother’s oldest friends, a lawyer from New York who was here for a few months on a case, a medical researcher and her husband, the judge—in fact, a reasonably good sampling of professional London. By the time I headed home, refusing my mother’s repeated invitation to stay, I was feeling much better.

  As I came up the road, I saw a light in Mr. Rudiger’s windows. My mother was right, and I should have thought of it myself. He needed to be warned, so I continued up to his landing, noting on my way that the lightbulbs lower down had blown. The three flats together own the house, so the common parts are a joint responsibility. Since the Lewises have a small child and erratic work patterns, and Mr. Rudiger hasn’t seen the comm
on parts in years, it tends to be me who replaces bulbs, waters the horrible cheese plant an old tenant left behind and no one has the heart to murder, tidies away Bim’s forgotten toys, and cleans the passageway when I do my own flat.

  I tapped gently on the door. “Mr. Rudiger? It’s Sam, from downstairs.”

  I heard him moving toward the doorway, slowly but without a pause. Good. I hadn’t woken him up.

  He opened the door and gestured me in without surprise, as though I were a regular caller just before midnight.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you so late, but I thought perhaps this shouldn’t wait until morning.”

  “It’s no trouble.” He has a faint foreign accent. I’ve never been sure where he’s from. Central Europe, I think. I’ve always assumed he was a refugee before the War, but I’ve never asked. His formality is charming, but it sets up a barrier that is not to be breached. I like it—publishing is a tiny world, and we all know everything about everyone. It’s nice to find someone who doesn’t immediately want to bleed all over you.

  He offered me a drink, or coffee, as though we had the night ahead of us. I was already feeling that, whatever I had to say, it could easily have waited. I didn’t want to put him out further.

  “No, thanks. I just wanted to tell you, there’s a bit of a problem at my office that may spill over here.” He listened impassively while I quickly sketched in the details, although I skipped out the money laundering and Kit’s disappearance. I made it sound like a piece of industrial espionage, and left it at that. I didn’t want to terrify the man, just put him on his guard about opening the door to strangers.