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

by Simon J. Townley

  “But Arthur Middleton couldn’t do that?”

  “Not on his own.”

  “He wasn’t so great with boats?”

  “He had the heart for it,” Bill said, “but not the brains. Always off in some dream world. Guess that’s where he got his ideas for stories and such.”

  Most of those came from Kiera Roche, and the agents, and the publishers as far as Capgras could make out. But he said nothing. He put his empty pint glass on the bar on his way out and headed for his motorbike. He had planned to stay a second night in the south west, but there seemed little reason, other than sentiment. Part of him longed to revisit Looe, to stare at the rubble of the hotel where Kiera had died. He reckoned most of her remains were still stuck to the bricks and dust of the ruined building. It wouldn’t do him any good though, or her. Better to stick to the present, let the past take care of itself. He steered his motorbike eastwards. Hannah was waiting for him in London. He’d stop for petrol, send her a text, let her know when he’d be home. He opened up the throttle and roared by a stream of cars, revelling in the flow of the cold air, the balance, the control and the recklessness of it all.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Breaking and Entering

  The locks on Kiera’s flat were old, insecure, and easily defeated. Capgras pushed the door open, stepped inside and eased it closed behind him. He stood motionless, listening. There was no reason for anyone to be here but he wasn’t taking chances. Besides, someone could be watching and breaking and entering was still a crime, even if you were investigating murder. Even if the owner was dead. And even if she was the woman you loved.

  Enough light filtered through the closed curtains for him to find his way around without resorting to a torch or turning on the lights. He slipped off his shoes and padded quietly across the carpet of Kiera’s living room.

  The flat was still in her name. It hadn’t been put up for sale, or even touched by the looks of it. He had contacted the only relatives he could find but none of them had ever been here. No one had a key or knew who did. And they no longer cared about her things. It wasn’t their problem, he heard it in their voices, and when he asked them straight he learned that they had inherited nothing from her estate. It had all gone to a trust fund registered in the Virgin Islands. Who would benefit? They didn’t know and pretended not to care, but the anger, clear even across a bad phone line, told a different tale.

  In the corner of the living room stood a desk where Kiera used to work. There was no computer. Her laptop was missing. Did she have it with her in Cornwall? Was it blown up in that hotel? He couldn’t remember.

  On one side of the desk stood a bookcase. On the top shelf stood hardback and paperback editions of several of her books: a biography of the master criminal Adam Worth; a traveller’s guide to the smaller, rarely visited islands of the Caribbean and three ‘how to’ manuals on the fundamentals of sailing.

  On the other side, a wooden chest of drawers looked just the place to keep valuables and essentials. He said a silent apology to the ghost of Kiera Roche and opened the top drawer. He found paperwork, most of it old and irrelevant, but no passport or driving licence. She must have had them with her at the hotel that fateful day.

  In the second drawer he found pens, coins and assorted stationery, a USB data stick which he slipped into a pocket, an old computer mouse, an iPod with a cracked screen and a prehistoric iPhone.

  In the third drawer he found a manuscript: an unpublished novel by Kiera Roche. A literary thriller, dog-eared and stained with coffee cups. A rejection letter, four years old, had been paper-clipped to the front, signed by Joanne Leatherby on behalf of the agency. The letter was hand-written, apologising profusely, but saying they could not sell Kiera’s fiction, though they had all enjoyed reading it and acknowledged that, yes, she wrote well. But there was no market and they couldn’t see where to place it and in the current climate it was all about name and platform and having a ready-made audience. The kinds of things Arthur Middleton had been good at: shaking hands and knowing people at the right newspapers and journals.

  He slipped the manuscript into his backpack and opened the bottom drawer.

  He found a box, of stiff cardboard, with a flip lid, and inside it a collection of letters. At first he paused, wondering if this was correspondence with a long-lost lover. He whispered an apology and probed deeper. On top he found a letter from a lawyer, concerning Kiera’s hopes of suing her agents, and Arthur Middleton and his publishers. And half of the London book-world.

  He sat cross-legged on her carpet and spread the letters out around him, sorting them into a chronological order so he could follow the trail from the start. There were angry letters from Kiera - she had kept copies - written years before to Evelyn Vronsky and then to Joanne Leatherby, demanding she be paid what she had been promised. She wanted the money she was owed and accused them of lying to her, repeatedly.

  The agents and publishers wrote back, pointing out clauses in contracts which meant they could do as they wished, or at least there was no wrong and no recompense and nothing she could do. She wrote to Middleton, urging him to see sense and make things fair and right. As far as Tom could tell, he hadn’t even replied.

  Finally, after giving up hope of being paid for the success of the Middleton books, she engaged a law firm. Sue them all, she urged the lawyers who were positive at first. But subsequent letters warned that the contracts were legal, and the interpretations were probably correct. They told her there were avenues to explore, that a judge might see the clauses as unfair or unenforceable. The bills came in, they mounted. They looked terrifying. How did Kiera pay them? Maybe she never did. Some were recent, demanding over fifty thousand pounds in fees, even though the case didn’t came to trial. In the end, they advised her to give up and move on and write more books, some of her own perhaps.

  He imagined her despair. He pictured her face, with tears on her cheeks. Or maybe a look of defiance. She was not a woman to be cheated like this. Or lied to. She wouldn’t stand for that. But it had all gone away, the day she died.

  Capgras sat on the carpet of her living room, staring vacantly at the paper-storm he had created. Was there a motive here, for her murder? It had all gone away. So had the law firm’s bill: they would not now be paid, unless it was out of her estate. Did that explain the trust fund? But who was the money for? Who did she care for so much that she would go to all these lengths to protect their inheritance?

  Who had her last will and testament? She was no fool, Kiera Roche. She would have used a different law firm, not the one to whom she owed money.

  He lay on the carpet and stared at the ceiling. What did it mean? Why had nobody mentioned this legal dispute? Did Hannah know? Was that talk at Kiera’s funeral nothing more than the chattering classes of London making everything look right, as if there was no conflict, that no one had been cheated or deceived?

  Where did Middleton fit in? Capgras was lost in his thoughts, oblivious to the world, trying to work out how this changed things: Vronsky, Leatherby, Haslam, even Hannah. Could any of them be trusted to tell him the truth?

  He didn’t hear the footsteps in the corridor outside. Only when the door swung open did he leap up in alarm. A face appeared in the doorway to the living-room, shocked and afraid. “Cleaning, cleaning,” the old woman said in a strong foreign accent. She might be Romanian or Bulgarian for all he could tell. The woman backed away.

  “It’s all right,” he shouted to her, but she was already in the hallway.

  “Only cleaning,” she said, “try later, leave you alone.”

  She had her back to him, rushing towards the stairs as if he meant to murder her.

  “Wait,” he called, fumbling with his shoes. “Who pays you to clean here? When were you last here?”

  She was gone.

  He left the door open and ran to the stairwell but she was already at the bottom and out the front door. She might call the police. Or alert neighbours. He gathered up the letters, thrus
t them into his backpack, looked around the flat. He longed to search more thoroughly, to find out more about the woman who still haunted his dreams. But that cleaner got a good look at him, even if he could barely make out if she was human under all those clothes.

  He leapt down the stairs three at a time and onto his bike, kicked her into life and was still fumbling with the helmet as he pulled out into traffic. After sweeping past a line of cars queuing at the lights he disappeared into the chaos and confusion of London’s roads. He had driven the best part of a mile before his brain finally flipped into gear: who was that woman? A cleaner? Did they all look the same? Did they all wear shawls over their heads and too much make-up? Was it only coincidence?

  Or was he the world’s biggest fool?

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Better In A Grave

  Distant thunder rumbled through his mind, suggestive of an oncoming storm. Thoughts wrestled like crabs in a bucket, dragging each down. Who killed whom and why and when, what did they stand to gain? When the dust settled, who was left standing? Anyone still alive must be a suspect. There was something important he had missed, staring him in the face.

  He sat on the sofa in the front parlour of his shipping container, with a laptop on his knees. Ruby had the table and chair because she was doing more intensive work, researching legal cases and the whereabouts of boats and half a dozen other tasks he’d asked her to look into, while all the time trawling for news of whatever might be going on with Douglas. It was a long shot, but if anyone knew, the dark net was where they would go.

  His phone rang. He’d left it on the table next to Ruby’s keyboard. She threw it to him and he caught it out of the air.

  He glanced at the caller ID: “Hi Jon.”

  “Need you to rush me an article,” said Fitzgerald, “with this press release I’ve got in front of me as a starting point.”

  “I don’t write stories from press releases. And you don’t run them.”

  “All the same, you’ll want to see this. Arrived the old-fashioned way, in the mail. On paper, if you’ll believe it. I’ve scanned it, and it’s on its way to you now.”

  “Give me a clue.”

  “Why spoil the surprise?” Fitzgerald hung up.

  Capgras opened the scan on his phone and zoomed in to read the text.

  “Something fun?” Ruby asked.

  “You could say that.”

  His phone rang again.

  “Hi Hannah,”

  “You’ll never guess what.” She sounded breathless with excitement.

  “I might, if this is about Middleton’s latest novel.”

  “That’s two novels in a week,” she said. “He’s been storing them up.”

  “You got the book? Is it on Amazon?”

  “Available for pre-order. Won’t come out for a couple of days.”

  “No way to get hold of it, if you’re in the trade?”

  “I’ll try but I don’t think so. There’s no publisher. Not a proper one.”

  “Gotta go,” he said, “another call coming in.” It was Fiona in the Books section. “Let me guess,” he said. “You need a piece on the new Middleton?”

  “I’ve got an advanced review copy here,” she said. “Yours if you want it?”

  “Hardback? Ebook?”

  “Paperback.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  ✬✬✬

  Tom held the paperback in his hands staring at the cover illustration. It showed Inspector Lear standing by a tomb. If you looked closely you could just about make out the name of the deceased: Arthur Middleton.

  Better In A Grave would be the last Inspector Lear book, the blurb proclaimed. The explosive finale to the best-selling series. Capgras turned to the epigraph and read the quote in full:

  “Why, thou wert better in a grave than to answer

  with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.

  Is man no more than this?”

  “It’s King Lear,” Fiona said, reading over his shoulder. “Act 3, scene IV. He’s on the heath, in the storm.”

  “I’ve seen the play, I know what happens.”

  “Do you think he’s trying to make a point?”

  “Someone is.”

  “He set this up, before he died.”

  “Maybe.” Capgras placed the book into his bag.

  “When will you file?”

  “In time,” Tom said.

  “These aren’t the news pages. We put the books section to bed late afternoon.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll read it in the pub and be back in a few hours.”

  “Fast reader?”

  “I skim the boring bits.”

  Ten minutes later he sat in the public bar of the Cloak and Dagger, sipping beer slowly and devouring the murder mystery. The book was a thinly veiled threat.

  Here at last was the true tale. Lear investigates a string of seemingly random murders, mostly in holiday homes across the South West, but all linked to the literary world. Writers, editors, publishers, agents, swatted like flies. All dying on Lear’s patch, and he takes it personally. So much so, he ends up romantically involved with a suspect who soon becomes one of the victims. His professionalism questioned, he’s taken off the case, suspended from duty. Determined, more than ever, to find and punish the killer, he leaves behind his beloved Cornwall and heads for London, sure the murderer operates from the capital, home of the publishing elite.

  Lear explores the city while pursuing clues. He meets beautiful, alluring and enigmatic women, is threatened by thugs and fellow detectives and finally gets beaten up, dumped in a skip, his phone stolen. But he keeps going, undaunted by adversity. Soon his investigation throws up new fears. The killer is not finished, far from it. Angered at his treatment by the literati, spurned by agents, cheated by publishers, abused by reviewers, the villain taunts Lear, threatening one ultimate act of revenge.

  Capgras sipped the dregs of his first pint. He had made it last almost two hours as he poured over the novel. But there were still fifty pages to go. He went to the bar for a refill. All the time he was ordering, watching the barman pour, waiting for change, he mulled over the meaning of the new book. When was it written? What was Middleton trying to say?

  Capgras took his drink back to the table and picked up the paperback, turning it over in his hands. The cover was flimsier than a traditionally published novel, but other than that, there was little to tell it apart. He flipped it open to the place he’d marked with a beer mat and resumed reading.

  The great and the good of the London book world were gathering for a conference on the future of publishing. Everyone would be there: everyone who mattered. All of them in one spot, at the mercy of a maniac longing for revenge.

  The killer taunts Lear, teasing the detective with snippets of his plan. All the time, the intrepid inspector is searching for a name, an identity and a way to stop the man. But the time for the publishing conference is upon him, and still he has no answers. He tries to warn them, urging the organisers to cancel the event, alerting the London police to the dangers, but no one will listen. They dismiss him as crazed - an attention seeker unbalanced by his fateful love affair and suspension from the job he loves so dearly.

  As Capgras neared the conclusion of the book, and the bottom of his second pint, Lear was plunged into a dilemma: whether to act alone to stop the killer and risk the wrath of the Metropolitan CID, or to disrupt the event and force the organisers to cancel. In the end he stakes out the venue, and discovers his killer’s plan: a bomb has been planted, big enough to blow half the building to pieces. Of the killer, though, there is no sign. Gunshots are exchanged with an unseen assailant. Police rush to the scene. The device explodes and Lear… Lear is killed. His killer escapes, unharmed and the police blame Lear himself, convinced he had gone rogue, or mad.

  The end. Lear dead. His reputation ruined. His murderer sailing away into the sunset - literally – fleeing westward on a stolen yacht.

  Capgras slammed the
book shut and went to swig the last of his beer but the glass was already empty.

  Someone was playing games with him. It was a powerful ending, but unsatisfactory. The detective should always win. The villain should be caught and punished. Order must be restored… until the next episode at least, until a killer strikes again. But this was against all the rules. And why kill the golden goose? Why defeat Lear at the last and leave him dead? So there could be no sequels? Or was Middleton making sure the detective went to the grave alongside his author?

  He grasped the book in his hand, slipped out of a side door and strode towards the newspaper offices, muttering to himself like a mad tramp after too much sherry, composing a review with one half of his mind, while the other rattled through a news story for the front pages, complete with dire warnings of impending doom and plenty of not-so-subtle hints that something about all of this was very, very wrong.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  A Curious Tale

  Emma Capgras sat at the table in the kitchen-diner-workshed-living-space of her ramshackle, rough hewn terraced house in east London with her head in her hands, groaning softly and rocking back and forth on her chair. Sounds of warfare filtered from the front room as Ben fought off a battalion of German tanks conjured into existence by his PlayStation.

  Tom filled the kettle. His sister had not yet offered him coffee, so he had taken matters into his own hands.

  Emma groaned. In front of her, scattered across the table lay piles of paperwork: letters and notes and ancient scribblings, forms and invoices and court orders, cuttings from newspapers and Tom’s own folder of research on Ben’s mysterious father, who somehow vanished into thin air, although there was a good case for making out he’d never existed in the first place. Plenty of people remembered him, Emma most of all, of course. But the only concrete evidence that he’d ever walked the earth was Ben himself, and the libellous pamphlet written years before.