Blood Read: Publish And Be Dead (The Capgras Conspiracy Book 1)

by Simon J. Townley

  “I should do the same,” he said.

  But she didn’t give him chance.

  Two hours later, he finally made it to the bathroom, exhausted and happy. She joined him, and it took another twenty minutes before he could dry himself off, get dressed and think about heading out for food. They walked arm in arm down the road towards the town, and ate in the first place they came to, a fish restaurant that had seen better days and had no other customers. But it was a Tuesday night in October, Kiera pointed out, and late now. Tom steeled himself and drank mineral water with his meal though he longed for wine and beer. But he still had driving to do, and he would not take Kiera with him.

  She yawned, louder and longer it seemed, with every other step they took on the slow walk to the hotel, her arm in his, her head on his shoulder, talking over how nice it would to come to a place like this at a better time, when they were here for pleasure only, to be together and away from the troubles of the world.

  Kiera slipped a hand into a pocket of his jacket, saying her hands were cold. She begged him not to visit Middleton’s house that evening, insisting they could do it together in the morning. She was too tired now, she said, she couldn’t stay awake, but she didn’t want him to go alone.

  They made it to the room and she flomped onto the bed and in moments she was asleep, her breathing slow and steady. Tom slipped off her shoes and kissed her face, brushed the hair out of her eyes. He ought to undress her, he thought, and tuck her in. But he knew his willpower was too weak for that. The sight of her naked would drive all virtuous thoughts of work clean out of his head. He pecked her cheek again, couldn’t help himself, and took the car keys from her bag.

  He drove the short distance to the bridge across the river, through the eastern side of the town towards Morval. Middleton’s cottage was dark, lifeless as a midnight graveyard after the drunks and the courting couples have staggered home. Capgras parked just off the main road, two hundred yards away. He walked slow and steady, listening intently. The only sound came from the sea in the distance and the wind shaking the last of the leaves on the autumn trees.

  He knocked on the door in case there was anyone home, sitting in the darkness. Then he moved around the back, out of sight. The windows were ancient, wooden frames, and it took only minutes to jemmy one open with the cold chisel he’d brought for the purpose. Capgras crawled through and dropped onto the floor of the living room, carpeted but sparsely furnished. He shone his torch around the room. A writing desk stood in one corner and a television in another. On the desk he found a family snapshot: Middleton and his wife, presumably, with a son and daughter aged around twelve to fourteen. But the photo must be twenty years old at least, judging by the clothes and the battered Ford Escort in the background.

  He fumbled for his iPhone to take a picture. It wasn’t in the usual pocket. Panicked, he scoured every pocket, over and over. It wasn’t there. He'd lost it. Where? Did Kiera use his phone in the car? When did he last have it? He hadn’t dropped it here, he was sure of that. It must be back in the hotel unless it was still on the table of that fish restaurant. Or on the seat of the Audi. Too many possibilities.

  He took the family portrait out of the frame, folded it and stuffed it in a pocket.

  The paperwork in the desk was mostly bills and local information, nothing that would help the investigation. He found a pack of batteries, a collection of keys, a box full of sea shells and another of marbles.

  He scanned along a bookcase: romance novels, some mysteries, a portable chess set, not even any Middleton crime thrillers.

  The kitchen was functional, the metal pans old and plain, the cupboards bare of food. The waste bin was empty, the fridge turned off, the door left open. No one had lived here in a long time.

  In the hallway he found a rack with coats and hats. He walked cautiously upstairs in case someone lurked up there, waiting to pounce. Still nothing. The cottage had three bedrooms: two of them had clearly belonged to the children, judging from the pop star posters in one and the footballers in the other. The third bedroom contained a double bed, with an alarm clock that had long ago given up ticking. Time literally stood still in the Middleton holiday home.

  He searched a chest of drawers and a wardrobe but found little of interest. Nothing but old shoes and a couple of jumpers. In a bedside cabinet he came across a box of medicines. Someone, probably Middleton, had been taking statins, perhaps for high blood pressure or cholesterol. In a notebook he found scribbled ideas that made no sense out of context but appeared to be jottings for potential stories.

  He scrabbled under the bed and pulled out a long wooden box. Inside was a double-barrelled shotgun and twenty or so cartridges. Middleton didn’t seem like the type for country sports. Tom picked up the gun – he’d never fired one, never even held one. He brought it to his eye, aimed at the wall, tested his fingers on the trigger. Horrible things. He wiped his fingerprints off the gun, put it in the box and shoved it back under the bed.

  He returned downstairs to continue his search and found an old typewriter in a cupboard under the stairs, a games console from the early 1990s and a stack of gardening magazines. It wasn’t much to go on when trying to piece together a life. One thing was for sure: this trip to Cornwall was a dead end. But not a waste of time. He’d never regret, or forget, the hours he’d spent making love to Kiera.

  He thought of her asleep in bed, or maybe lying awake worrying about him. He should leave all this behind, he told himself, go to her, and in the morning they could head back to London together, closer than before. Not a wasted trip. Thanks to her.

  Might he love this woman one day? Did he love her already?

  He fixed the window where he had broken in and let himself out of the front door. A vehicle went past as he was walking down the garden path but he had the torch turned off and no one could have seen him even if they had been staring hard.

  He had almost reached the Audi, the keys grasped in his hands when he heard the explosion. A ball of flame flashed across the sky. Was that out at sea? A boom followed, and another. That would wake Kiera. It had been loud enough to wake the dead. He jumped into the car and pulled onto the main road. A blast like that would bring police, fire engines, the works. Get back before all hell broke loose on the roads.

  But when he arrived in Looe, and drove up the hill, the Dunlevin Guest House was no longer there as though aliens had swooped down and whisked it away for a diabolical experiment. The cloud of smoke, the blazing timbers, the crowds of people running, shouting, screaming, and the pile of rubble all proved that this was indeed where the hotel had stood. He hadn’t taken a wrong turn or lost his way in the dark. Those were hopes his mind raced to in the first seconds as the truth of it dawned on him. But they were in vain. The guest house where he left Kiera sleeping was a mess of stone and brick, dust and metal and burning wood. A man thumped on the window and told him to get away fast. “Gas leak,” the man yelled.

  Gas? No, this wasn’t caused by gas. This was the work of Arthur Middleton, crime writer by day, master criminal, psychopath and serial killer as a profitable sideline.

  In a daze, Capgras got out of the car. Someone pushed him in the chest, shouting at him but he dodged them and stumbled towards the rubble. He climbed onto the heap, trying to figure out where their room would have been. Ignoring the heat and dust, the smoke and flames, he knelt and frantically tried to dig. His brain registered a frenzied screaming and he realised it was his own voice, yelling her name, over and over, calling to her, hoping she was alive somehow in there and could be pulled safe from the wreckage. In the distance, as if underwater, he heard the wail of sirens. Capgras kept going, pulling at bricks and stones, joists and slates, until strong arms grabbed him and pulled him away. The firemen dragged him off and thrust him at the police who pinned him down and refused to let him go. He struggled with what strength remained but it was no use, and though he lashed out they didn’t seem to mind or at least they didn’t fight back or handcuff him, as they mi
ght have done, but instead pleaded with him to see sense.

  He told them her name, over and over, urging them to find her. “She was sleeping. I left her in bed.”

  Maybe she got up. She’d gone out and wasn’t there. Hope sprang to his heart, though a dark thought looked it over and dismissed it, knowing it could never be true.

  There would no drive back to London together, no evenings in the pub and nights spent in her arms, no walks in the park or trips to the country. No getting to know each. No falling in love. That life would not be lived. “She can’t be dead,” he told the policeman. “She can’t be.”

  They bundled him into an ambulance, as much to get rid of him as anything, he guessed, though at the hospital they said he’d breathed in smoke and kept him in overnight and through the next day. He spent most of his thirty-third birthday alone on a dismal ward, clinging to vain hopes. No word came. Kiera Roche did not appear safe and sound to say it was all a false alarm and she’d gone for a walk or been thrown clear of the falling building by some mad miracle. When the doctors finally let him out he stumbled to a taxi rank and asked where he was.

  “Plymouth,” the man told him. Capgras paid him cash in advance to drive him to Looe. Her car was parked yards from where he’d left it, moved out of the way by a good samaritan or a fire chief desperate to get his trucks through. The keys were still in the ignition.

  Metal fences had been thrown up around the bomb-site that used to be a hotel where he and Kiera had made love and spent a few brief happy hours. He gripped the fencing like a gorilla staring through the bars of a cage, longing for the great outside world, dreaming of freedom and forests. He shook the fence panel and sank to his knees. A passerby stopped and asked if he was all right. Did he need help? The old lady wouldn’t go, concerned about him, she said, and did he lose someone? It was terrible, a gas leak according to the papers.

  Another accident. They happened all the time – whenever anyone got too close to Arthur Middleton.

  He drove back to Plymouth and sat in yet another cold, featureless police station waiting room. Finally an officer arrived and Capgras registered his suspicions, gave his details in case they needed someone to identify her body. He told them her name, her address, said he didn’t know next of kin. Hannah would find out. Hannah. He had to call her, give her the news.

  But there are some things you don’t do by phone. Besides, he had no phone and hadn’t thought to look for it. He’d go see her, tell her in person. Hannah could figure out what to do next. He was too numb to think.

  He steered the Audi back to London, barely awake or aware of what he was doing, blasting the darkest Dylan tracks he could find out of the stereo, all the stuff Kiera had refused to listen to on the way to Cornwall. The words, so familiar, rang around his head, numbing his pain. It was dark by the time he reached Kiera’s home. He parked the car in her spot, got on his bike and rode across London heading east to the mudflats of the self-build site and the sombre metal walls of his shipping container.

  Inside he found a pile of birthday cards, unopened, on the kitchen table. Ruby’s was on top: he recognised her handwriting. A bottle shaped present stood next to them. Half in a dream he tore open the wrapping paper, knowing what it would be – whisky, an Islay single malt, one of his favourites. Ruby couldn’t afford this. He’d tell her not to spend money on him again. Better still, he’d pay her something out of the Vronsky cash. Hell, he’d give her all of it. She deserved it.

  He opened the bottle and took a long swig, coughed, almost retched, and decided this wasn’t going to help. Not this time. He put the top back on, and for a moment considered throwing it against the wall, but that would be a gesture, nothing more, and he didn’t have the heart for that kind of drama. Besides, it would be unfair to Ruby. He left the whisky on the table next to the unopened cards and slumped onto the sofa, staring at the walls as they closed in, until they crushed him to a state of dreamless oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  An Unfee’d Lawyer

  Emma woke to the sound of goats fighting. Or, worse still, mating. She groaned and pulled the duvet over her head, imploring the world to leave her alone. The noise, she realised, was Mark singing in the shower. It was his usual tuneless rendition of Show Me the Way to San José, performed with gusto and generous dollops of misplaced confidence.

  There was something seriously wrong with that man.

  She thrust a hand from under the duvet and flailed it on the bedside table, knocking off a book and tipping a glass of water onto the carpet. Her fingers landed in the ashtray and brushed against the remains of a late night joint, only half smoked. Her hands flapped wildly, like a startled flounder on a dry deck, until finally she located her plastic alarm clock. She hauled her catch under the bedclothes and checked the time.

  Shit. She had to get up, get ready, get Ben off to school, and make it into town in time for that meeting. She crawled from under the duvet, dragged herself along on the carpet with her hands until her feet fell off the end of the bed, then eased herself upright. After rubbing her eyes she scratched her tangled hair. All Mark’s fault.

  She’d have to wash it, dry it. There wasn’t time, but it had to be done. Emma stumbled across the room and found a black cotton dressing gown on a hook. She slunk her arms inside and stepped into the glare of the hallway. Mark was still singing, but the water had stopped. She rapped on the door. “I need to get in there.”

  He emerged with a towel around his waist and long wet hair draped across his shoulder. They manoeuvred past each other in the doorway, her breasts brushing against his bare chest. He patted her buttocks as she turned but was gone into the hallway before she could clip him round the ear. How could a man so dedicated to the alternative lifestyle be such an old-fashioned pig? Somehow, though, she had learnt to live with it, over time, and not only from him.

  She showered in haste, then scurried around the house urging Ben to stop reading and get ready for school. Mark was already half way through his breakfast by the time she made it to the kitchen. “Where are you going today? Take me into town? Any chance?”

  “Sorry, babe, heading in the other direction.”

  She scowled at him. She hated him calling her ‘babe’ and had balled him out for it any number of times. But the words never stuck. “Drop Ben at school? And me at Tom’s?”

  “Sure thing,” he said, his eyes still fixed on his phone, eating on auto-pilot.

  Mark’s van belched black smoke all the way to the school and then on to the self-build site where her brother lived. She kissed Mark on the cheek as she got out, the stubble on his face irritating her lips. He tried to grab her again but she pulled away and shouted a breezy “see you later” as she slammed the door. She realised only then that she had forgotten to ask him when he’d be back. But since he so often lied, or changed his plans, or forgot about them entirely, it didn’t seem to matter much.

  When she reached Tom’s shipping container she knocked gently, aware that he might not yet be awake. There was no answer, so she eased the door open and let herself in. A bleary face appeared at the entrance to the bedroom. Emma waved at him cheerily, then noticed the knife in his hand. “Expecting trouble?”

  He grunted and tossed it towards the kitchen area. “What time is it?”

  “Can I borrow the bike? Got to get to a meeting with the lawyer. Happy Birthday, by the way. Belated. Guess you had a good time, you look terrible.”

  “Didn’t sleep well. It’s been a rough few days.”

  “I called round yesterday, you were out.”

  “Went to Cornwall.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Work. Listen, we should talk. There’s stuff going on.”

  “Later, I’ve got to go. I’ll be late. The Norton?”

  “Sure.” He waved an arm in the vague direction of a hat-stand. She found the helmet and goggles. He re-emerged from the bedroom and threw the keys across the room. She caught them, shouted her thanks and hit the road.


  It was good to be on the bike once more. She hadn’t ridden it for months, but Old Faithful still purred along, speeding past the traffic queues, weaving in and out of cars and lorries. It was faster than any bus, faster even than the tube. One day she’d have the money to buy this bike off Tom. Or, if he wouldn’t sell, she’d find her own, somewhere, somehow. Could Ben travel on the back? Her mother would have a fit at that. Whatever. Ben was a good kid. He’d cope. He always did. But then again, once he felt the wind in his ears he’d start wanting a bike of his own. She heard her mother’s voice in her head, moaning about the dangers, warning of the risks.

  She parked outside the solicitors’ offices in a side-road off Camden High Street. She read the blurb on the sign: they specialised in immigration work and human rights cases. Ollie had found them and done some sweet talking to arrange a free consultation and meeting. How long it would stay free was open to question.

  “They’re doing it because they like the cause,” Ollie had told her. “They’re not libel experts but better than me, for sure.”

  She was late. The woman in reception led her to a meeting room. The solicitor strode to the door and shook her hand, introducing himself as Peter Arbright. He was mid-thirties, thin and almost frail, with geeky glasses. His suit didn’t fit him, and he’d have made a better impression in jeans and a t-shirt. Behind him, sitting at a conference table, was her old friend John Potter. She didn’t recognise him at first. He’d lost most of his hair and his face had filled out, his beard had grown to cover half of it, and he was neater than she remembered. But it was eight years since she’d last seen him. He waved and grinned.

  On the table sat a computer, and the faces of Joe and Suzy, beaming at her through a video link. “Sorry we couldn’t be there,” Suzy said, “but it’s a long haul, all the way from Wales.”