Fatal Last Words

Twenty-nine

‘This is a pretty exclusive neighbourhood,’ said DC Sauce Haddock, looking along the terrace of substantial grey stone houses. ‘This writing game must pay pretty well.’

‘For some,’ Sammy Pye told him as he stepped out of the driving seat and closed his car door. ‘I have a cousin who’s trying to make a living at it. She’s had three books published, but she’s still teaching and not expecting to be giving up any time soon.’

‘Would I have heard of her?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘What does she write?’

‘Intense novels about women having a hard time.’

‘Ah. No, I probably won’t have heard of her.’ He looked at the number on a low iron gate. ‘Seven. This must be the house.’

‘Yes.’ The DI led the way up a pathway between two rose beds. As the detectives reached the front door, it opened to reveal Fred Noble. He was still dressed all in black, but the T-shirt he had worn earlier had been replaced by an open-necked shirt, and he had shaved.

‘Inspector,’ he began.

‘And Detective Constable Haddock,’ Pye continued; an introduction. ‘You didn’t meet earlier.’

‘Haddock, eh. You’ll have had all the “battered or breadcrumbs” jokes, I suppose.’

The young constable drew an imaginary line a few inches above his head. ‘Right up to there,’ he replied with a smile. ‘But if you think you know a new one, I’m all ears.’

‘That’s not something you should say too often. Come away in; June’s waiting for you.’ He opened a heavy panelled door, and showed them into a drawing room. Pye had a quick glance around, taking in a high fireplace with a mirror above the mantelpiece, sash-cord windows, with secondary glazing, and a ceiling cornice that was a work of art. He wondered how many books his cousin would have to sell to attain such a lifestyle.

The woman they had come to interview swung round slowly to face them, in a red leather captain’s chair, but she remained seated. She was middle-aged. . she and Glover might have been contemporaries, the DI surmised. . with expensively managed honey-blonde hair, not a telltale grey root in sight. She wore a trouser suit in a pale colour that might have been described as peach, over a tight white sweater that made no attempt to downplay a formidable bosom. And she was still clearly in shock. Her eyes seemed to be somewhere else as Fred Noble made the introductions, seated the detectives, then left to fetch a pot of coffee.

‘I didn’t know,’ said June Connelly, with a crack in her voice. ‘I thought it was funny that Ally hadn’t called me while I was on the train, but I supposed he must have been busy. I expected him on the platform when we got to Waverley, and even when I saw Fred waiting, it never occurred to me that there was anything wrong. Not until I saw his face. .’

‘We are very sorry to have to intrude, Ms Connelly,’ Pye told her. ‘We understand that your relationship with Mr Glover was more than just professional.’

She nodded. ‘Ally called us a New Age couple. We both had earlier marriages, him widowed, me divorced. . it’s Mrs Connelly, by the way. . and our arrangement suited us. Occasionally he would talk about moving down to London, but Carol and Wilkie, still being youngish and single, tied him to Edinburgh. My son Mike flew the coop a while back. He’s in America now.’

‘Did you ever think of moving north?’ Haddock asked.

‘That was never an option, the publishing industry being what it is.’ She paused. ‘But that’s only an excuse; I’m a Londoner, and I always will be.’

The DC was about to comment that his usual boss, DI Becky Stallings, had made the move for reasons that were more personal than professional, when Sammy Pye cut across him. ‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ he asked.

‘I’m ready for anything that will help you, Inspector.’ As she spoke, the door creaked quietly as Fred Noble shouldered his way into the room, carrying a large tray. He poured mugs of coffee for each of them and then stood, eyebrows raised, as if waiting to be invited to remain in his own front room. The DI nodded, and he sat.

‘When was the last time you spoke to Mr Glover?’ Pye began.

‘Yesterday,’ she replied. ‘Yesterday afternoon. He called me to check on the arrival time of my train.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘Same as always. Cheery.’

‘As always, you say. So he hadn’t been concerned about anything lately?’

‘No, he’d been very up, excited even. He had a lot going on in his life; he had all sorts of new responsibilities as an MSP, he was getting to the end of the latest Strachan book. . that always pumped him up. . and then there was his new project. Actually, he was on such a high I was worried about him; he was overdoing things and. .’ She hesitated, and her eyes dropped to her lap. ‘To be honest,’ she continued, more quietly than before, ‘when Fred met me at the station, and I saw the expression on his face, my instant thought was, “My God, Ally’s had another heart attack; please let him be all right.” But then he told me that he was dead, and that you believed he had been murdered.’ Her eyes renewed contact with the inspector, locking on hard. ‘You really do think that?’

‘That’s what the pathologist says, Mrs Connelly.’

‘And I know him, June,’ Fred Noble interjected. ‘He’s the top man in Scotland, probably in Britain.’

‘So how did he die?’ she asked.

‘That’s information we have to keep to ourselves for the moment.’

‘You’re not telling anyone?’

Pye winced, involuntarily; she picked it up.

‘Nobody at all?’ she persisted.

‘The immediate family have been told,’ he admitted. ‘Mr Glover junior, and Miss Glover.’

‘What about Ed?’

Sharp, the DI thought, noting a subtle change of expression. ‘Yes, him too.’

‘But he’s a journalist.’

‘Something we found out after the event. It’s OK, though; there will be no leak from that source.’

‘You don’t know Ed Collins; I’m assured he’s a shifty young chap. Ally wasn’t at all keen on him, but he’s Carol’s choice, and he had to live with it.’

‘Collins will behave himself from now on if he wants to go on collecting a salary at the end of the month. Turns out that his boss is more honourable than he is.’

‘Are you going to tell me, in confidence?’

Fred Noble reached across and touched her on the shoulder. ‘June,’ he murmured, ‘think about this. I’m happy to leave you to hear this on your own if you want, but do you want? You’re going to be quizzed by half the journos in Scotland, and one of the things they’re going to try to find out will be the cause of death. If you don’t know, and if I don’t know, we can’t have it tricked out of us, can we?’

She took a deep breath and nodded. ‘I suppose that’s true,’ she admitted.

Pye seized the moment, and moved on quickly. ‘Was Mr Glover’s diabetes a continuing problem?’ he asked.

‘It worried me from time to time, but he managed it pretty well. It presented in his early thirties, and he’d been on insulin since then. He knew the long-term risks, so he was careful with his diet. He still enjoyed fine wines, though, and knew how to adjust his daily dose to allow for different levels of consumption.’

‘Was his condition generally known, or did he keep it to himself?’

‘No, no, no; he didn’t keep it a secret at all. Far from it, in fact; he referred to it often and he was a big supporter of diabetes charities. If you look at his website you’ll find several links to them.’

‘OK. Now, a few minutes ago, you said that Mr Glover was working on a new project. What did it involve?’

For the first time, June Connelly gave a hint of a smile. ‘This might sound strange,’ she replied, ‘given our dual relationship, but I honestly do not know. Ally wouldn’t tell me. He could be like that. He was open in every other respect, but when it came to his work he was often secretive. Some writers involve their agents in the creative process; they talk over ideas for stories and some let them see their work for comment every step of the way. Ally never did that; he’d work away on his own and when he was done he’d email me the finished novel, but it would go to CJ at the same time.’

‘CJ?’

‘CJ Carver, his editor at Smokescreen Publishing.’

‘What contracts did he have with the publisher?’

‘He was working on the third Walter Strachan story in a four-book deal. Once he’d delivered it, I’d have been sitting down with CJ to discuss terms for another four.’

‘We’ve been told that he wasn’t too happy with his publisher,’ said Pye, ‘over the way his books were being sold.’

‘You’ve been talking to Sandy Rankin, haven’t you?’

Pye nodded, with a small grin.

‘She was Ally’s other great sounding board. Well, it’s true he wasn’t ecstatic with the way the market’s been moving, but he wasn’t alone in that. Stop ten authors in the street. . you could in Edinburgh at this time of year. . and nine will tell you the same story. But the fact is that he was more successful than most, and his political exposure wasn’t doing him any harm either; it got him on to a lot of chat shows. He was even on Question Time two months ago. Believe me, that would have counted in the discussions over the next Strachan deal.’

‘But this new project, whatever it might have been, wasn’t contracted?’

‘Not yet. Ally was well in with Smokescreen but not even they would buy something without having the faintest idea what it was.’

‘He hadn’t given you any clues?’

‘I had the impression that it was political.’

‘To do with his role as an MSP?’

‘Possibly.’

‘To do with Trident?’

‘Given his obsession with the subject, that would be a reasonable guess, but guess is still all it would be. Maybe I’ll find the answer on his computer. More important, though, hopefully I’ll find the whole of the Strachan novel. He told me a few days ago that he was pretty much finished with it. For sure, it’ll be a best-seller; Smokescreen will want to milk every last penny out of it, so they’ll put a big budget behind it.’

‘That may be a problem,’ said Pye heavily.