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

by Simon J. Townley

  John must have come up from Brighton specially, she thought, and he made it here on time. It was embarrassing to be the one who was late when she’d only come across town. She slid into a seat next to John. “What did I miss?”

  “We were talking about Rob,” John said.

  Oh, Rob. Of course, Rob.

  “His name is on the pamphlet as well,” Arbright said. “But he’s not named in the proceedings. Your friends said he can’t be found. I wondered…”

  “I’ve not heard from him,” she said, “and I’ve looked, hard. He’s the father of my son. Social services tried to find him, way back, to get him to pay towards costs. No luck. My brother tried, he’s a journalist.”

  “Tom Capgras?” Arbright said.

  “You know Tom?”

  “By reputation.”

  “He couldn’t find him, no trace. Even my dad searched. He works for the civil service, government stuff. Nothing. He disappeared off the face of the earth. Like he never existed.”

  “The lawyers for McTavey probably couldn’t find him either,” Arbright said, “so they chose to target the four of you and leave him out of it. But they have the right, and it won’t help you to shift the blame onto him. Your names are on the pamphlet, so there’s not much you can do, other than fight to prove your allegations are correct. Or settle in advance. And I have bad news on that front.”

  The room went quiet. “On your behalf I did approach the law firm representing McTavey Foods. They seem to want exemplary damages, to scare people, make sure no ever tries to accuse them of anything. Ever again.”

  “We can’t afford to fight a case, never mind pay out compensation,” John said.

  “They know that. They may not get the money. But a large award will stop anyone else from going near them. And, as they see it, it will clear their name.”

  “Could we win?” Emma asked. “If we fought it?”

  John pulled a bag out from under the table. He took out five cardboard files stuffed with paper. “Evidence,” he said.

  Emma saw Arbright’s face flicker with fear at the sight of so much paperwork.

  “We’ll have to read it,” she said. “Fight our own case.”

  “I should also warn you,” Arbright said, “this will take years to come to court. It might be three, four, five years from now. And all that time, this will be hanging over you. It’ll take over your lives.”

  “What choice do we have?” John sat back in his chair, his arms folded.

  “Their lawyers did hold out one possibility,” Arbright said. “You may not like it.”

  Emma and John looked at each other. On the screen, John and Suzy appeared agitated and withdrawn.

  “They detailed a list of demands, there’s no other way of looking at it. It includes payment of damages, signing affidavits promising you won’t repeat these allegations, or make any more in the future, signing full and frank apologies, agreeing to co-operate with press coverage of your apology.”

  “How much are the damages?” John asked.

  “I’m not apologising,” Suzy said. “We were right.”

  “Tell them to stick it,” Joe said.

  “We can’t fight this and win,” said John. “How much?”

  “One million pounds,” Arbright said. “Between you. So, a quarter each.”

  The silence was thick enough to cut with a cake knife. It could have been smothered with cream, too, and packed in grease-proof paper to take on a long day out.

  “There’s no way,” Joe said over the video-link. “Where do we get that kind of money?”

  “No way for any of us,” Emma said. “They know it.”

  “Could you raise it somehow?” Arbright asked. “From friends and family perhaps? From parents, brothers and sisters?”

  “Nope,” John said. “I’ve got no one to ask.”

  Emma had people to ask. But she wouldn’t go to her father begging to be baled out over this. Or Ollie. “If we fight and lose and can’t pay, what happens then?”

  “Complex,” Arbright said. “The judge would take it into account, and adjust the damages accordingly. But you could expect to be paying out for the rest of your lives.”

  “To these bastards?” Joe said. “The conditions in that abattoir. I saw them. It was disgusting. The way they treated animals. I’m not giving them a penny, not ever.”

  Arbright said nothing but Emma could tell from his expression what he was thinking. It was futile to fight a judge, or the legal system. Once you owed money, they’d get it out of you, one way or the other.

  “If we do contest it,” Emma said, “what would the legal fees come to?”

  “Impossible to say,” Arbright said. “But it’s not your own legal fees you have to worry about. It’s theirs. If you lost, you’d have to pay that as well. It could be more than a million for that alone, easily.”

  “So we’re screwed, whatever we do,” John said.

  “I’ll have to go back with an answer, soon,” Arbright said. “They indicated this was a ‘take-it-now-or-else’ kind of offer. They’ll push ahead with the case.”

  “How long do we have?” Emma asked.

  “A few weeks. No more.”

  “We’ll think about it,” John said. “We need to talk it over.”

  Emma felt a numbness creeping across her soul. There was no way out. No escape from this.

  Arbright moved on to pleasantries, clearly trying to wind up the meeting. She exchanged contact information with the others, agreed to keep in touch, and discuss all this once it had sunk in. In the street outside John hugged her, told her it would be all right, somehow, but he didn’t believe that, she could see it in his desperate eyes. He headed off to get a train home, and she climbed onto the bike, kicked the engine into life and pulled out into traffic. A car horn blared at her. She hadn’t seen the car. She’d been lost in her thoughts. And her fears. She swore at the driver, but cursed herself, and wished she could find a hole to hide in. Or concoct a crazy plan or insane scheme that would make all of this madness go away.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lend me a Looking Glass

  Tom watched from the doorway of his shipping container as his younger sister roared across the muddy self-build site on his beloved motorbike. He was too numb to worry about the Norton. Nothing seemed to matter this morning. Nothing, except the fact that Kiera was dead. The truth and the pain of it were becoming all too real. Since the explosion, he had stumbled from moment to moment as though in a nightmare. In the cold grey light of an east London morning there was no escaping the finality of it. Her life was gone, never to come back and not a thing that could be done about it.

  Other than take revenge.

  If he owed Joanne justice, how much more so Kiera? It was his fault she was in that hotel in Looe. His fault that Middleton had targeted them. His fault she had been blown to pieces in her sleep. He should have listened to Hannah and left it to the police.

  But he had followed the lure of a story, of intrigue and mystery. He could tell himself he’d gone seeking justice. Or to earn Evelyn Vronsky’s money and respect. But in reality was, he had pursued a twisted version of truth that that could be told in black and white and that made sense in three hundred words or less. And preferably, came with a cute headline and a clever intro.

  What kind of man did that make him?

  His sister steered the bike around a corner leaving only a trail of dust.

  He turned and stared at the shipping container that had somehow become his home. How did he come to live here? Had he stumbled upon it in a dream?

  He went inside, headed for the bathroom intending, at last, to brush his teeth and see if that could get the taste of grief and guilt out of his mouth. He jammed himself into the cramped space barely wider than his shoulders and stared at his own bloodshot eyes.

  Some men put up a mirror to shave in, or to practice a nonchalant smile. Others to admire their own features or inspect for spots. Some do it in the hope that a girl will s
tay the night and need to fix her hair after a session of wild love-making. Tom Capgras had a mirror for one reason only: it gave him someone to talk to.

  In a park, years before, he’d met a mother and son, sitting next to him on a bench while he ate his sandwiches. The boy, autistic according to the mother, talked incessantly to his ‘imaginary’ friend – the computer voice Siri inside his mobile phone. He would hold hour-long conversations, she said, and never seemed to mind that the person behind the voice wasn’t ‘real.’ The lad preferred Siri’s company to that of boys his own age because Siri had answers, a sense of humour, patience, and an understanding nature.

  Tom was glad his mirror couldn’t talk back. He was in no mood for a conversation. There were too many things in life left unresolved, unsatisfactory and unsettled.

  “He should pay,” he told it. “Middleton will suffer for this. Whatever it takes.”

  But how? What next? He could tell a far-fetched tale to DI whatshisname at Charing Cross, with all the latest developments and deaths, so the police could once again ignore him. They’d write him off as another loony and laugh behind his back. All the same, he’d have to go through the motions, follow the procedure. Then move on.

  He would report to Evelyn, for what it was worth. She was paying his bills, after all. But she wouldn’t get involved, even though her own friends and colleagues were among those in the firing line. Who would be next? He had to raise the alarm. How? He was a reporter. That was the world he understood. News was the weapon he could use. Live by it, die by it. And give no quarter.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Strange News

  The terror threat level was now merely ‘substantial’ according to a press release issued by the London Metropolitan Police in conjunction with MI5. Loitering in the newsroom of a major national newspaper, Tom Capgras studied the announcement that had flashed up on the scrolling news feed and nodded sagely. A lowering of the level was, of course, good news. And since good news is no news (as the Met’s press office knew all too well) it would go unreported. Then, tomorrow, or maybe the day after, it would be raised once more, putting the nation on full alert. Headlines would shriek of imminent danger, ensuring no one would sleep soundly at night, except for the top brass at MI5 and GCHQ, who could rest easy knowing their budgets would be increased and their empires would grow.

  “Any update on that investigation?” Jon Fitzgerald, news editor, returned to his chair clutching a cup of tea in one hand and a Danish pastry in the other. He had balanced the cake on top of the mug where it would be warmed gently by the steaming liquid and set them both down beside his keyboard.

  Tom had almost forgotten that he was supposed to be working an undercover exposé into exploitation of illegal immigrants. He had given it little thought for weeks. “Nothing as yet. Working on it.” He preferred not to say it was on hold, indefinitely, while he grieved for a woman he’d known for less than a fortnight.

  Fiona McAverty, deputy editor of Books, waved at him from across the newsroom and pointed towards a meeting room. Tom followed her and took a seat, leaning forward on the table but staring out of the window at the bleak concrete of London on a rainy day.

  “Something new?” McAverty asked hopefully.

  “You ever hear of Kiera Roche?”

  She hadn’t. Tom told her what he knew, most of it from Wikipedia. “Anyhow, she died, tragically, a gas explosion in a Cornish hotel.”

  McAverty’s eyes lit up.

  “I’m not offering to write the story. I’m too close. I was there, when it happened.”

  The gleam of interest in Fiona’s eyes turned rapidly to a mix of compassionate sorrow (faked) and genuine curiosity.

  “We were…. lovers. For a while. I didn’t know her well.”

  “You weren’t injured?”

  “I wasn’t there. I’d gone out. On business.”

  “Reporting business?”

  He nodded.

  “Anything I should know about?”

  “Best not.”

  “But she has only the one significant book, non-fiction? I’m not sure, to be honest. Maybe obits…”

  “There’s more. You may not like this. It’s a bit… sensitive.”

  She sat back in her chair, waiting to hear the tale.

  “You could make something out of the tragic coincidences around her death.”

  “Coincidences?”

  “We shared the same agent. Joanne Leatherby.”

  “The one who hung herself?”

  “We met at her funeral. Tony Haslam was there, who published Kiera’s book. He died too…”

  “Food poisoning.”

  “That very night. And Arthur Middleton was there though I don’t think you should mention that. But, you know, three deaths, all connected, short space of time.”

  “What were you doing in Cornwall?”

  “Romantic getaway.”

  “Don’t bullshit me Tom. I’ve worked with you.”

  “It’s true that Arthur Middleton has a holiday cottage a few miles down the road from the hotel. But that’s a coincidence. Nothing more. And probably not something you should mention in the piece.”

  “Because accusing someone of murder with no evidence is about as libellous as you can get?”

  “And because I was there to break into his house. Looking for the evidence.”

  “I didn’t hear that. You didn’t tell me.” She fumbled with the iPad she was using to record the conversation, rewinding and deleting his comment.

  “You want quotes, for the article?” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk.

  She scanned them rapidly. “I don’t know…”

  “It needs to go in.”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “That’s where I’m going next. To ask a favour. If he asks to see the story, best to have it ready.”

  She glared at him.

  He shook the sheet of A4. “Quotes from me, facts, names and contact details of people from the agency, the publishers. They’re good for a quote.”

  “Relatives?”

  “Distant. An aunt in Edinburgh. Cousins in Geneva.”

  “Police?”

  “Plymouth. They’re sure it was an accident.”

  “But you’re not?”

  “I’m not that stupid. This will all come out. Soon. Get this in now and you’ll look like a genius.”

  “I can’t write this,” she said. “I do book reviews. Author interviews. This is your world.”

  “I have every confidence in you.” He got up to leave. “Besides, it’ll get rewritten, in any case.”

  It would get rewritten, for sure. From on high. He left her fumbling once more with her iPad as he crossed the newsroom floor and knocked, firmly, on the editor’s door.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Catgut

  ‘Catgut,’ ‘Capgun,’ ‘Cutgrass,’ ‘Craparse’: Tom had heard them all and more before he’d even left primary school. And though the other boys got bigger over the years, their sense of humour never changed.

  The policeman on the reception desk of Charing Cross station looked up from his computer and smirked. Clearly, he knew the name, knew the man and his reputation as a scribbler and trouble maker. “Take a seat Mr. Cuparse,” the copper mumbled, audible enough to be insulting but sufficiently muffled to provide deniability. “DC Lock will be along in a minute.”

  The minute in question was likely to be one of indeterminate length, containing many more than sixty seconds. Capgras took the proffered seat and opened his copy of the newspaper. The news of Kiera’s death, heavily rewritten by the paper’s deputy editor, appeared on page thirty-six. It might as well have been written in hieroglyphics and scrawled on a wall inside Wandsworth prison for all the attention it would get. Not even thirty-seven, a facing page. Tom shrugged inwardly. It was better than nothing. And the subs had done a good job on the text.

  Tom had told them the whole story. They weren’t convinced, not utterly. But the news of t
he tramp’s death, and the confirmation that the US police were treating the Charlotte MacInnes case as murder had been enough for them to take him seriously. For now. They needed more before they would name names or leap to conclusions. Or put this on a news page where it belonged. So the Books section would have to suffice.

  The tone of the piece was matter-of-fact, in a straight-forward reporting style. It was little more than a list of facts: Kiera’s death in the explosion in Cornwall, an event that had made the news pages in its own right the day after the event, when those missing were still unnamed; her publishing credits; plaudits from professionals in the book world; mention of her friendship with former staff reporter Tom Capgras, himself something of a celebrity thanks to his conviction for possessing stolen state secrets; and finally, almost as an afterthought, the eery coincidences around the recent death of both her agent and one of her publishers.

  The newspaper even contacted Arthur Middleton, to ask if he knew Kiera well, and if he’d be prepared to offer his thoughts on her tragic passing. But he wasn’t answering his phone.

  “Find him,” the editor had told Tom. “Tail him.”

  He didn’t need to be told. It was already on his list. But first, the formalities of the police procedure: DC Graham Lock appeared in the doorway of the waiting room and waved Tom through. The man’s face told Capgras everything he needed to know. Exasperation was writ large. He was bored with Capgras, angry at the interruption, and fed up with the meaningless conspiracy accusations.

  Tom folded the newspaper and placed it on the desk with the article about Kiera’s death facing upwards. Lock scanned it, then looked up at Tom with a blank face.

  “We were there to check on Middleton. He has a holiday home a few miles inland. This, the tramp, his agent, his publisher. Put two and two together, officer. I’m getting four. Unless you want to add the book blogger and make it a nice round five.”

  “I’ll bring it to the DI’s attention.” Lock pushed his chair back and waved the newspaper in the air. “Can I keep this?” The interview was over already.