Death of the Author

  by Alison Bruce

  Charlie Trace leant against the frame of his open front door and let the dregs of the guests squeeze out past him. He was aware that they turned back to wave, but his attention was only on the phone call now. “I don’t write anything that I’m not happy to own, and I don’t say it either,” he growled.

  Bill Hammond grunted in reply. He’d been Charlie’s agent for almost twenty years and that meant they knew one another well - well enough for Charlie to know what Bill really meant. Then, for good measure, Bill said it anyway, “Charlie, you’re full of shit.”

  Charlie let the words settle. He ran his tongue over his teeth and considered Bill’s perspective. “I’m standing in the doorway of my new house, you really should see the view Bill.” Charlie’s house faced onto Midsummer Common, which made it prime Cambridge property, and which, come to think of it, pretty much amounted to prime property nationwide. He glanced over his shoulder, the last two guests were undergraduates. Young enough to hang on to his every word, but comfortably old enough to count as legal. “Prime property Bill. That’s what I’ve earned for both of us.”

  “And is that,” snapped Bill, “the signal for me to kowtow to the best-selling Charlie Trace and just be thankful?”

  “You work it out.”

  “I have. I am severing our agreement. That interview went too far…”

  “It will blow over, it was a great piece.”

  “No, it was crass. You went too far and if you’re going down I’m not going with you.”

  Charlie still had the phone to his ear when Bill cut him off. “Bastard,” he breathed.

  He left the front door open and headed for the kitchen. Alesha and her friend leant close over their flutes of bubbly, they looked less keen and more cunning now. The night had rapidly turned sour. He took their glasses, poured them into the sink and asked them both to leave.

  * * *

  Each patient’s television viewing was displayed on a small, flat screen mounted like an anglepoise lamp so that it could twist and tilt its way across the bed. Miriam Lloyd’s had been pushed to one side but the screen was still in Goodhew’s line of sight and only a couple of feet from his chair near her bed. It silently displayed the BBC News channel, the same stories rotated every few minutes, flickering in the unmoving room and creating the impression that time had been trapped in a fifteen minute loop.

  Goodhew had been in the loop for six hours; since she’d left surgery and been stabilised enough for this bed. Before that she’d belonged to the paramedics as they’d fought to save her from dying on the tarmac of Maids Causeway. The driver who’d hit her had been a breath under the drink-drive limit but a breath under the speed limit too; driver and pedestrian both possibly saved by those two breaths.

  She’d run from nowhere, but then, the driver would say that. The call had come in at 11.42 but no other motorist on that perpetually busy stretch of road, or any occupant from any of those windows facing onto the street, had seen a thing. Just one student had come forward because she’d heard the bang of car on person. Like a small explosion.

  The road had been cordoned off, but the saturation of blue pulsing and bright white pools of light, would have been visible from the other side of Midsummer Common, drawing the curious until one of them noticed an open doorway and caught sight of the other body.

  Goodhew had arrived at five minutes before midnight. Now, at total of eleven hours later, his tired gaze settled back on the national news and he watched a repeat of the first news’ footage. A reporter stood in the dark, near a line of police tape, with floodlights and a police tent two hundred yards behind that. A red banner of text rotated at the bottom of the screen. CHARLIE TRACE MURDER. Celebrated but controversial author killed in Cambridge knife attack.

  Goodhew checked his phone; #CharlieTraceMurder was trending on Twitter too, along with #DeathOfTheAuthor, probably, he guessed, the gleeful creation of a first year English literature student. A new hash-tag had sprung up since he’d last checked; #TraceMurderSuspect followed by variations and re-tweets of woman being questioned by police.

  Being questioned wasn’t how he would describe it. He looked up from his phone, to Miriam Lloyd. She had been unconscious at the scene of the accident and remained so. He knew, from her notes, that she was 52 years old and an administrator for one of the many English Language schools in Cambridge centre. She drove an older model VW Golf and lived with her nineteen year old daughter in a rented house five miles out, in Barton. On the face of it she seemed to have had little in common with Trace, but the blood coated knife in her jacket pocket said otherwise.

  Just then her lips parted as she tried to form words.

  “Mrs Lloyd? Miriam?”

  She took a few seconds to respond, then her eyelids flickered. “Tony,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Kincaide had led them into the corridor and closed the door behind him. He continued to grip the handle as though he thought it might be pulled open from the other side. Unlikely, Goodhew thought, since Miriam Lloyd was still barely conscious, heavily medicated and attached to a drip.

  But, as PC Sue Gully had commented, it was all about effect with Kincaide. There were days when the way Kincaide answered the phone, held a pen and probably even breathed that irritated her too. It was a shame she wasn’t here right now; she always enjoyed the moments when Goodhew found it impossible to contain his distaste for Kincaide.

  “I’m not prepared to back you up on this,” Goodhew told him.

  “Gary, her eyes were open, it counts as an arrest.”

  Goodhew shook his head, “She’s not in a fit state.”

  “She spoke when I asked her if she understood and confirmed her name.”

  “You can’t ask her any questions when she’s drugged up like that.”

  “We would if she was an assault victim about to die. We’d get whatever we could from her and use it in court. I don’t see the difference.” Kincaide set his jaw and stared past Goodhew, along the corridor towards A and E and the exit. “I’ll be speaking to Marks in a few minutes, requesting that we charge her.”

  DI Marks wouldn’t go for it, at least not without more to back it up. Goodhew shook his head but didn’t reply, he knew his breath would be wasted and, instead, found himself studying the limp lapel of Kincaide’s knock-off suit and its pretentions of being the real thing.

  “Stay with her,” Kincaide instructed. A smile flickered in one corner of his mouth, “I know I can trust you to keep notes of anything useful.”

  Goodhew nodded, “I’ll grab a coffee and go back in.” He turned from Kincaide, he didn’t need a drink, just needed to be out of Kincaide’s orbit until he was sure that Kincaide really had left the building.

  * * *

  Miriam Lloyd thought she would have known nothing about the time she lay unconscious, but, as she adjusted to the stripes of sunlight that cut between the blinds, she knew that smells of the ward, the footfalls on the hard tiled floor and even her own immobility all made sense.

  She wasn’t alone either. She didn’t see anyone at first but instinctively knew that she only had to turn her head towards the shady corner of the room and she would find someone there.

  Not her daughter though. She would have spoken as soon as Miriam stirred, or pulled closer to reach for her hand. She turned her head a little, enough to glance at her fingers and make sure that no one was holding them. Then she looked at the man in the visitor’s chair.

  He looked almost too young to be there for any genuine reason, young enough to be looking to someone older for answers. She guessed therefore that he’d been told to sit there, to wait for her to wake then fill in whatever pedantic form he might be about to produce.

  “Mrs Lloyd?” His voice was firm and clear; her opinion of him wavered and changed almost instantly. “I’m DC Gary Goodhew. How are you feeling?”

  “Almost awake.” He held her in sharp focus and she could tell then that he’d come for information. She exhaled slowly, hoping to buy enough time to gather her thoughts. Her mind flashed to anecdotes of people in peril, their minds racing and constructing escape routes with only milliseconds to spare, but it flashed single image back to her; Charlie Trace. Dead. Curled on the floor as though he’d clutched his stomach, fallen to his knees then tipped to one side. He hadn’t reached out or attempted to crawl away, he’d just stayed still with his hands wasting their last seconds trying to hold back the blood that slipped effortlessly between his weakening fingers.

  The blood had pooled. Miriam blinked as she remembered the smell of his urine as it slid along the channels between the glossy floor tiles.

  Charlie Trace had deserved to die.

  “Mrs Lloyd?”

  She opened her eyes and studied him some more. He leant forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. “I need to ask you some questions about last night.” His physique was strong and he seemed serious beyond his years. She revised her estimate of his age up to late-twenties. “Do you know why you are in hospital?”

  “Something hit me. Feels like it could have been a bus.”

  “It was a car. The driver claims you ran into the road. What do you remember before the accident?”

  “Feeling crushed and elated all at once. I wasn’t the only one who hated him, and I felt as though the world had improved simply because he no longer breathed.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “For my notes.”

  “Charlie Trac e.” She expected Goodhew to react at hearing Trace’s name spoken so openly, but his expression gave away nothing. “He made a name for himself by humiliating others; I wanted to do something about it.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I visited his house.” She started her next sentence then paused, her head was rapidly clearing now. It was telling her that she needed to be careful. Say nothing.

  “Mrs Lloyd?”

  She pressed her lips together. Say nothing. Say nothing until she had worked out what had happened. And what they knew.

  He tried coaxing her with questions, but she succeeded in locking him out until his phone bleeped with an incoming text. He glanced at the screen and, finally, stood to leave.

  She relaxed, but a little too soon because he turned back at the door. “So, who’s Tony?” he asked.

  “My daughter.” And, for a moment, her mask slipped. “Has something happened?”

  “It was the name you spoke as you were coming round.”

  He hadn’t even realised it had been a female name, let alone her daughter’s. She managed a small smile; she was out of her depth already. “Toni, short for Antonia of course. She was Rudy’s sister, but she didn’t kill Trace.”

  * * *

  Before tonight Goodhew had known the name Charlie Trace, he’d never read anything he’d written and never planned to. In the last ten years Charlie Trace’s writing career had taken a backseat to his partying and rent-a-gob appearances on TV and radio, debating everything from the future of publishing to the future of the country’s youth. He still produced novels, still sold them to a loyal body of fans who seemed to stay with him no matter what scandal followed, despite the claims of plagiarism from a young writer, despite the suicide of that same writer.

  “Rudy Costello?” he asked her.

  “That was his pen name, Rudy Lloyd to us.” She sighed as her head sank back on the pillow. “He is why Charlie Trace deserved to die.”

  “And is that why you went to his home? To kill him?”

  She nodded slowly, “I suppose it is.”

  “And did you?”

  She looked straight at him but didn’t reply, no discernible emotion appeared on her face. Not fear, or satisfaction or guilt, just curiosity at what Goodhew might say next; she was clearly hoping that he had the answer to something.

  “It was his housewarming, but you weren’t a guest. So was it a co-incidence that you chose tonight or did someone tell you?” She held his gaze too solidly and he knew he was warm. “Did Toni tell you?”

  A small smile touched her lips, curling with an equally subtle tinge of irony. “I heard, that’s all.”

  He needed to find the right topic, and if her daughter was off limits perhaps her son wouldn’t be. He settled back in his chair. “So, tell me about Rudy.”

  The sharp tangent seemed to throw her, but her expression softened immediately. “Rudy?” She tilted her face towards the ceiling and closer her eyes, mouthing his name. She smiled as she remembered, “He was so talented. Funny too. And he adored his sister.” Her eyes reopened but her gaze slipped past Goodhew. “His father used to say that Rudy thought in rainbows, that nothing was dull or impossible to him. And I believed Andy, until close to the day Rudy died.”

  “When Charlie Trace accused him of stealing his work?”

  She looked back at him and to Goodhew’s surprise, she shook her head. “Not really, well I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have been so hard for Rudy to prove that the work was his; his writing was as good as his fingerprint. No, it was the betrayal, Rudy loved Trace, he considered him to be his ally and mentor but then Trace turned and humiliated him in public. People who had been his friends refused to speak to him. His agent and publisher dropped him and his career was over barely before it had begun. All Rudy wanted to know was why Trace had done it.”

  “Professional jealously perhaps?”

  “Maybe. But my ex-husband knew Charlie Trace back when he was plain Gareth Cooper, said he’d do anything for attention.”

  “So he thinks Trace wanted publicity?”

  Her eyes darkened. “I don’t know what he thinks. He cleared off after Rudy’s death. For Toni and me it was like we’d been bereaved twice.”

  “Does she know you’re here?”

  Miriam ignored the question and, instead, struggled up onto one elbow. “How could that bastard Trace think he had the right to hold up his head? To push himself right under our noses? The last thing we want is to risk seeing him, or having the press in our faces again, or to be left jumping at shadows in our own home town.”

  * * *

  PC Sue Gully found Goodhew in Addenbrooke’s Hospital’s main concourse. He sat alone with his coffee to one side and a sheet of paper directly in front of him, she glanced at it as she took the seat opposite.

  He’d only written two words, ‘WHY NOW?’

  “Prolific eh?” He glanced up, “What do you have?”

  “We’ve been in contact with the last couple of guests, Alesha Hart and her friend Emily Malik. They left after Trace had a telephone argument and became verbally abusive.”

  “To them?”

  “Yes and no. He was furious with the caller and continued to vent afterwards, shouting obscenities down the phone even after the man had hung up.”

  “So they saw a less charming side to him and cleared off ?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But they knew it was a man?”

  Gully grinned, “Yep, Bill Hammond, Literary Agent.” She passed a phone number on a Post-it note across to Goodhew.

  “Does Marks have this?”

  “He’s chasing down Miriam Lloyd’s daughter Toni, so I left him a message. And unfortunately I can’t seem to find Kincaide, so that’s all yours.”

  She watched Goodhew as he moved to a quieter area. He spoke for several minutes, turning his back on the concourse and facing a noticeboard each time he needed to concentrate. He seemed more thoughtful when he returned.

  “Well?” She asked.

  “Bill Hammond dumped him, he said wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and Trace before the shit hit the fan.”

  “What shit?”

  “What fan more like.” Goodhew drew his sheet of paper closer to him, “Trace made a documentary and it was due for broadcast next week. He refers to the aftermath of Rudy Costello’s death as a ‘career highlight’ and, according to Hammond, when the interviewer gave him the opportunity to show compassion, Trace claimed that the suicide was no more than Costello’s admission of guilt. He was unrepentant and Hammond wanted out before his client became a total pariah.”

  Gully nodded towards Goodhew’s two word question, “That answers that then. Now what?”

  Goodhew smiled, “Hammond told someone about the interview. We cross our fingers and hope he also tells them that we’re about to charge Miriam Lloyd.”

  “And are we?”

  “Only if she’s guilty.”

  * * *

  Miriam had said little since Goodhew’s brief reappearance, this time a policewoman in uniform came with him and it was she who now sat near the window. She was polite when she spoke but mostly silent.

  It was almost an hour since they’d spoken, when Miriam had asked again whether her daughter was on her way. PC Gully had promised to find out, had left the room for less than a minute, then returned with the message, she’ll be here soon.

  So this was a waiting game; Miriam could feel it. Her thoughts began to drift, picturing scenarios that filled her with fear, then calming herself a little when she imagined the words she might use if the time came to confess.

  Just then she saw PC Gully’s attention turn to the door, so she followed her gaze. Goodhew was back. “You have a visitor,” he said, “You have two minutes together. You are both under caution and I will be in the room the whole time. Do you understand?”

  Miriam nodded as PC Gully slipped quietly outside.

  Goodhew held the door a little wider and Miriam managed to push herself into a half-sitting position, expecting for her daughter, Toni, to appear.

  “How are you Miriam?”

  She froze with her cannula-free hand halfway through straightening the thin hospital blanket. “Andy?”

  He’d lost weight since she’d last seem him, but aside from that he hadn’t changed. He hadn’t changed much. He wore a blue shirt with narrow white stripes and it looked like one she’d bought him ten years ago.

 

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