The Bestseller

by Stephen Leather

  “I think he’s going to confess,” said Mitchell. “Look at the tears. He’s sorry. He’s going to have to get it off his chest, sooner or later.”

  Lumley folded her arms. “And we’re sure, we’re sure that he did it?”

  “What’s the alternative? You think Slater could have set the whole thing up? Look at the evidence, Joe. We’ve got him on a plate.”

  Lumley nodded. “I guess so.”

  “Let’s see what Grose says after he’s had time to get his thoughts together. My bet is that he’ll tell us everything. If he doesn’t, okay, we can have another look at Slater. But my money is on the cry baby in there.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Grose sat with his head in his hands. His life was over. Finished. He hadn’t killed Jenny but that didn’t matter. There was a chance that a jury might believe he was innocent, but that didn’t matter either. Even if he could convince a jury that he hadn’t killer her, she had been his lover and she had been carrying his baby. They were facts, and they were facts that Karen would never forgive. Neither would the university. And neither would his readers, the few that he had left. The tabloids would have a field day. Lecturer murders pregnant student lover.

  He’d need a top legal team and that would cost money. Serious money. Probably every penny that he had. And Karen wouldn’t forgive his infidelity, especially when she discovered that Jenny had been carrying his baby. She’d never forgive him for that, not after all the years that she’d tried so hard to bear a child. She’d divorce him, he was sure of that. He’d lose the house, and she’d take whatever money he had left after paying his lawyers. Guilty or innocent he’d lose his job. The University had a zero tolerance policy when it came to staff getting involved with students. And no other educational establishment in the country would hire him.

  Grose groaned like an animal in pain. He’d never be published again, no matter what the result of the trial. Even if he managed to avoid the murder charge, no one was going to publish a book by a lecturer who got a student pregnant, a student who was then brutally killed and her body dismembered. No one would remember his Pulitzer nomination, or the glowing reviews of Snow Birds, the awards that he’d won and the lectures that he’d given. All anyone would care about is that he was Dudley Grose, the dirty old man. The pervert. He began to sob and tears rolled down his cheeks. His life was over. No matter what happened, he was finished. Worst possible scenario he’d spend the rest of his life behind bars. Best possible scenario he’d be penniless, homeless and alone. He wasn’t sure which was worse, but he knew one thing for sure – he couldn’t face either scenario. He would be better off dead.

  He sat up straight and wiped the tears from his eyes. He didn’t have long, they still hadn’t charged him so they hadn’t searched him and taken away his belongings. He patted his pockets down and smiled to himself when he felt the hardness of the pen in the top inside pocket of his jacket. He took it out slowly. It was his black Mont Blanc, a gift from his wife. He held the pen in his right hand and brushed it against his cheek. She’d given it to him on their wedding day. He’d replaced the nib countless times over the years and had fitted a new one only three weeks earlier.

  He took a deep breath, and then wiped his nose with the back of his left hand. He wanted to leave a note, but he knew that there wasn’t time. To say what he wanted to say would take too long, require too much thought. There was so much he had to say. Regret, of course. Regret for betraying his wife. Regret for not spending more time writing and less time fooling around with a girl young enough to be his daughter. Grose felt his cheeks redden with shame. What had he been thinking? When he first started talking to Jenny as anything more than a teacher addressing his student, what the hell had been going through his mind? There was anger too, and he’d need time to express that anger properly, time that he didn’t have. He wanted to blame Slater, because he was sure that it was Slater who had killed Jenny, killed her and framed Grose for the murder. But even more he wanted to blame Dean Martin and the Head of Faculty. They had forced the course on to him, and they had refused to back him up once it became clear that Slater was becoming a problem. If they had simply shown Slater the door when Grose had first raised the matter then none of this would have happened. Jenny wouldn’t have been murdered and Grose wouldn’t have been…. He shuddered. There was no point in thinking about what might have been. The past was the past, dwelling on it wouldn’t achieve anything. All that mattered now was the situation that he was in, and how he dealt with it.

  He slowly unscrewed the cap off the pen and placed it on the bunk beside him. The gold nib glinted under the fluorescent light overhead. He stared at the pen and smiled at the irony of it. He’d lived to write, his whole life that was the only thing that he’d wanted to do, and so it was only fitting that it should be a pen that ended it. He took another deep breath and exhaled slowly as he prepared himself to do what had to be done. It would hurt, he knew that, but it wouldn’t hurt for long. He gripped the pen tightly with his right hand, so tightly that his knuckles whitened. He pressed the nib against the flesh, about two inches below the wrist, close to where a thick blue vein branched into two. He looked up at the ceiling and then closed his eyes. He gasped as he pushed the pen hard and then twisted so that the gold nib tore through the skin. He bit down on his lower lip, twisted the pen and pushed harder as blood gushed over his hand.

  CHAPTER 44

  ONE YEAR LATER

  The line ran for a hundred yards outside the book store, threading its way past the front of Rite-Aid and Burger King and a beauty parlor and an office supplies store and down the road and around the corner. The line went through the front door of the book store, up a flight of stairs and ended at a large desk which was piled high with hardback copies of a book. THE BESTSELLER. The cover was jet black with a gleaming stainless steel knife in the center, its tip bloody. Above the blade was the title and below it the name of the author. ADRIAN SLATER.

  Slater was grinning as he signed a copy of his book with a flourish and passed it to the pretty brunette on the other side of the desk. “I hope you enjoy it,” he said. He was wearing a black Armani suit and a grey shirt and a gold Rolex glinted on his wrist.

  “Oh I’m sure I will,” she gushed. “I saw you on The Tonight Show and Jay Leno made it sound so good. Are you doing a sequel?”

  “I’m planning one as we speak,” said Slater.

  One of the glossy PR girls that the publisher had sent to help organize the signing gently led the brunette away. The next buyer stepped up to the desk and Slater took a book off the pile at his elbow. “Who shall I make it out to,” he said for the hundredth time. He looked up and then did a double-take as he recognized the girl standing in front of him.

  She smiled. “Kirsty,” she said. “And maybe you could write “with love” or something like that. Make it more personal.”

  She was wearing her hair long and as he stared up at her she slowly tilted her head to the right and brushed her hair over her left ear, revealing a thick rope-like scar across her neck. There were scars on her hand, too, deep cuts that had healed badly.

  “It’s a great book,” she said. “I read it as soon as it came out. I’d pre-ordered it on Amazon.”

  “They provide a great service,” said Slater. He started to sign the book but his hand trembled and he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself.

  “There’s no need to be nervous, Adrian,” said Kirsty, dipping her head and allowing her hair to fall back to cover the scar.

  A PR girl reached out to touch Kirsty’s arm but Kirsty shook her away. “I’m an old friend. Tell her Adrian. Tell her I’m an old friend.”

  Adrian nodded at the PR girl. “I know her,” he said. “Just give us a minute.”

  The PR girl flashed him a professional smile but he could see that she wasn’t happy. “Let’s get a coffee later,” Slater said to Kirsty.

  “A coffee would be nice,” she said.

  “Cool,” said Slater. He scrawled �
�For Kirsty, With Love” across a page and underneath it scrawled a lazy signature. He closed the book and handed it to her, but she didn’t take it.

  “It’s everything you said it would be,” she said.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He offered her the book but she stood with her hands holding the strap of her shoulder bag.

  “I didn’t say that I enjoyed it, Adrian. I said that it was everything that you said it would be. A true bestseller. Not quite the same as the version I saw back in LA, but a gripping read. And the plot twist where it turns out that the lecturer is the killer. Well, I never saw that coming. That was inspired.”

  Slater said nothing. He swallowed and the back of his throat was so dry that he almost gagged. He put down the book and reached for a glass of water.

  “Where is it in the bestseller lists? Number seven?”

  Slater took a sip of water. “Six this morning.”

  “On the way to number one,” she said. “After Leno you’ll be selling a million, I’m sure.”

  “Hopefully,” said Slater. He put down the glass. “But nothing’s ever guaranteed.” He looked at his wristwatch. “I’m going to have to get on with signing,” he said. “There’s a hundred or so in the line and I have to be out of here by two.”

  “I was surprised at the name. Adrian Slater. Is that a pen name?”

  “No. That’s me.”

  “So Eddie Wilson was what? A dry run? Was that what I was, Adrian? A dry run? Practice?”

  “What do you want, Kirsty?” He took another sip of water and then put down the glass. His hand trembled as the glass touched the table and water slopped over the side.

  Kirsty smiled. “What happened to your ePublishing idea?” she asked. “I thought you were going to bypass the publishers and sell it yourself.”

  “It’s hard to turn down a seven-figure deal,” said Slater. “And let’s face it, there’s nothing to compare with the feel of a real book. The smell of it. At the end of the day an eReader is just a small computer, and where’s the romance in that?”

  “That’s so funny. In LA I was the one who said that eBooks were an abomination and that paper was all that mattered. Funny how thing’s change. Like your name. Who knew that Eddie Wilson wasn’t your real name? And who knew that before you were Adrian Slater you were Adrian Henderson? How’s your foot, by the way?”

  “It’s fine.”

  She waved her scarred right hand in front of him. “I wasn’t so lucky. Well, I suppose I was in that I didn’t die. A truck driver took me to hospital but I passed out and by the time I could talk you’d long gone. I see from the book that you’ve still got the boat?”

  Slater nodded.

  “No trace of it in LA,” said Kirsty. “The cops looked. Or at least they said they did. I suppose you changed the name.”

  “Thought it might be best.”

  “You know that’s unlucky, don’t you? Changing the name of a boat.” Kirsty’s eyes had gone cold. Lifeless. Like glass. “How did you get the boat from the West Coast over to New York?”

  “Sailed it,” said Slater. “All the way down to the Panama Canal and all the way back up again.”

  “Single-handed?”

  “Always. It gave me time to think.”

  “No wonder the cops couldn’t find you,” she said. “Towards the end I think they stopped believing that I was attacked. One of the cops even asked me if I’d hurt myself. Can you believe that?”

  “Cops are stupid,” said Slater. “The world over.”

  “The ones in your book certainly are,” said Kirsty. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing with myself these days?”

  Slater looked over at the two PR girls but they were deep in conversation with their backs to him. He looked back at Kirsty and forced a smile. “Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “What are you doing with yourself these days, Kirsty?”

  A middle-aged woman in a cheap cloth coat coughed pointedly behind Kirsty. Kirsty turned and glared at the woman. “I won’t be much longer,” she said. “Mr Slater and I are old friends. Up until the point where he tried to kill me.” She smiled frostily at the woman and then turned back to Slater. “I’ve written a book,” she said. “A novel.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And do you have a publisher?”

  She smiled. It wasn’t a very nice smile, Slater realized. He picked up the book again and offered it to her, but she still refused to take it from him. “Aren’t you going to ask me what it’s about? My book?”

  Slater sighed and looked at his watch again.

  “Come on now, Adrian, you can spare me a minute or two, can’t you? After all we’ve been through.”

  Slater put the book back on the table, linked the fingers of his hands and looked at her expectantly. “What’s your book about, Kirsty?”

  “It's an everyday story of boy meets girl, boy screws girl, boy tries to kill girl, girl escapes, boy runs off to New York to kill another girl and write a best-seller.”

  “It sounds… interesting.”

  “It is.”

  “Are you thinking about self-publishing ?”

  She shook her head. “Oh no, it’s too good for that. One of the big six will take it, I’m sure. It’s going to fly off the shelves.”

  “Well, I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  “That’s nice of you, Adrian.” She tapped her lips with the first and second fingers of her right hand. “Silly me, I forgot to tell you about the twist.”

  “The twist?”

  “Well there’s got to be a twist, hasn’t there.” She slipped her hand inside her bag. “If there’s no twist, the reader feels cheated. There has to be a twist. And once I’ve got my twist, then the book will sell itself.” Her hand emerged from the bag holding a chrome snub-nosed revolver.

  Slater pushed himself back in his seat, his palms face down on the table. “Kirsty, don’t do this.”

  “It has to be done, Adrian. The writer in you knows that.” She smiled. “So here’s the twist. Girl kills boy. Then writes her own best-seller explaining why she did it and makes a million bucks.” She grinned. “And not a vampire or a werewolf in sight.”

  Slater shook his head. “It’s just a story,” he said.

  “Oh no, Adrian. It’s so much more than that.” She smiled again. It was the smile of someone who really didn’t care about anything.

  “Kirsty, please…”

  She shook her head sadly and pulled the trigger, shooting him just below the heart. She was still smiling as she pulled the trigger again. And again. And again.

  THE END

  If you enjoyed The Bestseller, why not try my detective story set in Thailand - Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon?

  Long-term Bangkok resident and former New Orleans cop Bob Turtledove has the knack of getting people out of difficult situations. So when a young man from Utah goes missing in Bangkok, his parents are soon knocking on Bob’s door asking for help.

  But what starts out as a simple missing person case takes a deadly turn as Bangkok Bob’s search for the missing Mormon brings him up against Russian gangsters, hired killers, corrupt cops and kickboxing thugs. And he learns that even in the Land of Smiles, people can have murder on their minds.

  Here are the first few chapters:

  ****

  CHAPTER 1

  She was wearing a lurid Versace silk shirt, had a diamond-studded Rolex watch on her wrist, diamante Gucci sunglasses perched on top of her head and a Louis Vuitton handbag on her lap. She pretty much had all brand name bases covered but she still looked like a sixty-year-old woman with more money than taste. She had brought her large Mercedes to a stop next to a fruit stall and she wound down the passenger side window and waved a ring-encrusted hand at the fruit vendor. I was sitting behind her in a taxi that had only just managed to avoid slamming into her trunk.

  The fruit vendor was also in her sixties but had clearly had a much harder life than the woman in the Mercedes
. Her face was pockmarked with old acne scars and her stomach bulged against her stained apron as she weighed out mangoes for a young housewife. The fruit vendor pocketed the housewife’s money and waddled over to the car and bent down to listen to the woman, then nodded and hurried back to her stall. The driver tapped out a number on her cellphone and began an animated conversation.

  “Hi-so,” said my taxi driver, pulling a face. He wound down his window, cleared his throat, and spat a stream of greenish phlegm into the street.

  Hi-so.

  High society.

  From a good family. But in Thailand being from a good family didn’t necessarily equate to good manners. The woman in the Mercedes almost certainly wasn’t aware of the dozen or so cars waiting patiently for her to get out of the way. And even if she was aware, she wouldn’t have cared. After all, she had the Mercedes and the diamond-encrusted Rolex and we didn’t so it really didn’t matter that she was holding us up. It was the natural order of things.

  There was no point in getting upset. She would move when she was ready, and not before and there was nothing that I or the taxi driver could say or do that would change that. Acceptance was the only option.

  The Thais have an expression for it.

  Jai yen.

  Cool heart.

  Don’t worry.

  Be happy.

  Sometimes, for emphasis, they say jai yen yen.

  Real cool heart.

  I settled back in my seat and turned to the letters page of the Bangkok Post. A reader in Chiang Mai was complaining about the air quality. The farmers around the city were carrying out their annual field burnings and the mayor had warned the population to stay indoors with their windows closed. A Manchester City fan was complaining that he could only get a Thai commentary for his team’s last match. A reader in Bangkok was complaining about his erratic cable wi-fi service. For many people Thailand was the Land Of Smiles, but the average Bangkok Post reader seemed to spend most of his time complaining about the state of the country.