Page 9

Nine

Monday 8am

“There is evidence that Ms Wildwood was on the radar of some nasty characters,” Murphy said.

Orianna stared at him in horror.

“I hate to say it but here are always threats, and hate mail. It gets worse every year. Women, people of colour, disabled authors and queer authors of every kind.”

“But why didn’t they tell me?” Orianna asked.

“What good would it have done if they had? It would just make you miserable, and ninety-nine out of every hundred haters never do anything but send an anonymous email. The threats against you were generic hate-stuff. Nothing about the Blue Wave Books event.”

Murphy fell silent.

“I want to see the threats,” Orianna said.

“You absolutely don’t,” Charlie said, mentally grinding his teeth at the idea. He’d seen enough hate mail to know that reading it was a whole world of misery. He was interested to learn that Murphy had been aware of the threats, enough to know that the book signing wasn’t mentioned.

“It might not be such a bad idea,” Murphy said. “You might recognise someone or something to give us a lead.”

“Or you might scare yourself shitless about nothing,” Charlie retorted.

“You should get some sleep,” Orianna said.

That she was right didn’t help at all. And suddenly Charlie was past caring. He stumbled along the corridor to the bathroom and scrubbed himself under the shower until the blood had washed away. He wrapped himself in a towel to walk down the wonky-floored corridor to the room he had shared with Tom, dropped the towel and got under the covers. The bed smelled of Tom, and of sex, and of the doughnuts they’d shared in the middle of the night. One of Tom’s shirts was draped over a chair, where he’d changed to go to the poetry reading. There was an empty coffee cup on the floor and towels hanging from hooks on the wardrobe door. The window was open letting in the noise of the street below: birdsong, shouting, music, shouting, sirens. Charlie laid his head on the pillow Tom had used and let the tears flow, and like a baby, cried himself to sleep.

Charlie woke to the same sounds from the street, and conversation from within the flat. It took him a few seconds to orient himself: the window was on the wrong side of the room and the rails of the four-poster bed loomed alarmingly above his head.

I’m in New York and I have no idea what time it is.

The conversation resolved itself into one female cut-glass voice and one generic male American one. Orianna and Brody Murphy then. His phone told him that it was four pm which didn’t make a lot of sense. He was also aching and sore from having slept without moving. Worse, his heart hurt like hell because along with the realisation that he was in New York came the memory that Tom was in hospital, fastened up to machines because some bastard had shot him.

The door opened and Orianna entered with a cardboard coffee cup and a paper bag.

“Breakfast, or afternoon tea, or whatever.” She put the coffee on the bedside table and looked at Charlie expectantly until he reached a hand out from under the covers to take the bag. “It’s a breakfast sandwich, which is better than you expect. There are doughnuts when you’ve eaten it.”

He put the bag, which was warm, on the bed beside him and dragged himself up against the headboard. “Thanks.”

Orianna sat on the end of the bed, clearly unbothered by his nakedness. “Eat it.”

Charlie opened the bag and exposed enough sandwich to take a bite. He wasn’t hungry, but he would try.

“Tom?” he said when he had forced it down. “Did you ring the hospital?”

“No, but I did speak to Ann. Tom’s parents should be on their way by now, kicking up a stink. He must have had them down as his next of kin somewhere. I tried the hospital, and they won’t tell me anything. Brody tried too, and got the same.”

He’s dead. They won’t talk to us because he’s dead.

Charlie threw the covers aside and ran for the bathroom regardless of his lack of clothes, where he threw up the small amount of food he’d managed, retching until all that was left was bile. He rose on shaking legs and bathed his face in cold water, washing away the sweat. Orianna was waiting.

“I’m going to go there, Charlie, to the hospital. The Pennants don’t like me, but when they turn up, they’ll talk to me, and I’ll ring you. I’m going right now, this instant, and you must drink coffee, eat something, and talk to Brody.”

Sometimes, Charlie thought, the generations of army officers from whom she sprang had left their mark on Orianna. She was giving orders.

“I want to come with you.”

“And I shall negotiate access. But for now, drink coffee and talk to Brody.” She held her hand up to stop him speaking. “I’ll ring as soon as I know anything. Tom’s parents will let me in. They don’t know you. They won’t know you even exist. Trust me, Charlie.”

Charlie and Brody Murphy faced each other across the coffee table in the living room. The piles of hate mail were neatly stacked on the table, along with a bag of doughnuts and their two cardboard cups of coffee.

Murphy hardly looked old enough to drink, Charlie thought, let alone to have made detective. He had pale skin and freckles and large, pale blue eyes. His hair had a reddish tinge Charlie hadn’t noticed before, but it went with the freckles. Charlie had no idea why Murphy was still around. So, he asked.

“I’m watching you,” came the answer. “Mainly Orianna, but you too.”

“Watching us? Why?”

“Because my bosses and the FBI think Orianna was the target of the shooting, and because the FBI aren’t sure about your history with Kaylan Sully. Not that anyone has explicitly said those things you understand …”

“My history with Kaylan?”

“He shot you. And now he’s been shot.”

Charlie felt his mouth drop open. He carefully put his coffee cup down on the table because the alternative would be to throw it at Murphy.

“Look,” Murphy said, “it’s a theory that’s all. The shooting in the bookstore was chaos — you said so yourself. It’s going to be a while before all the bullets are traced and accounted for. You can’t deny you’ve got a beef with Sully, and you’ve been in touch with him since arriving in New York.”

“No, I haven’t,” Charlie burst out. “The first time I saw him was in the bookshop when he was already dead.”

This time it was Murphy’s turn to pause. “I was told he’d met you somewhere,” he said.

“Me and Kaylan, here in New York?”

“That’s what I understood.”

They both drank some coffee. Murphy helped himself to a doughnut and focused on eating it.

“I haven’t seen Kaylan since he was in prison in the UK. I wouldn’t have seen him then except we needed his help. In my head, I think of him as a psychopath, and the definition seems to fit. Believe me, he isn’t someone I’d willingly spend time with. Also, if I did meet Kaylan, which I didn’t, how the fuck do you know about it?”

Murphy continued to chew. When he’d finished, he licked his sugary fingers and wiped them on a paper napkin.

“I kind of want to believe you,” Murphy said, “but you are obsessed with the guy.”