Fatal Last Words

Sixty-two

Fred Noble stood, his right hand grasping the high mantelshelf of the Victorian fireplace in his drawing room, so hard that his knuckles shone white, contrasting sharply with its black marble, and with his customary dark clothing. ‘Henry?’ he murmured. ‘You have to be kidding me.’

‘I wish I was,’ Sammy Pye told the author, watching as his wife, Amanda, handed him a large malt whisky. She waved the bottle at the DI and at Ray Wilding, but they both declined the unspoken offer. ‘One of our colleagues happens to be in Australia; he’s in Melbourne right now, he’s seen the body and he’s established the cause of death, subject to autopsy confirmation.’

‘What was it?’ asked June Connelly, from an armchair.

‘Before I go into that,’ Pye replied, ‘I must stress that what’s said here has to stay here, within this room.’ He looked up at Noble. ‘But the time has come for you to be fully in the picture. . especially you, sir. I know that you were friends with Mr Mount, but did that extend to reading his work?’

‘Of course. I’ve read the lot, I think.’

‘In that case, do you remember a book called Havana Death, and how one of the characters is murdered?’

The tall man frowned for a second, then his eyes widened. ‘The old CIA trick, with the bullet in the cigar? That’s how Henry died?’

‘So it seems.’ Pye turned to Connelly. ‘You were Mr Glover’s agent,’ he said, ‘so you’ll be familiar with a story called Black Sugar.’

She nodded. ‘I’m familiar with it, but I confess I read a hell of a lot of crime novels; not all the details stick in my memory.’

‘The victim’s a diabetic,’ Wilding explained. ‘He’s drugged, and then killed by a massive injection of glucose. That’s what happened to Ainsley Glover. That information’s been withheld from the public, and we’ll be asking the Australians not to go into too much detail about Mr Mount’s death. We don’t have too many cards in our hands in this investigation. That degree of confidentiality might help us along the way.’

‘Plus’ Pye added, ‘the last thing we need is a press contest to see who can write the most garish headline.’

Noble lowered himself into the empty chair that faced Connelly across the hearth, taking his wife’s hand as she came to sit on the arm. ‘First Ainsley, now Henry,’ she said. ‘This is like Agatha bloody Christie, Ten Little What-nots. Are you telling us that Fred’s next on the list?’

‘I hope we’re not,’ the DI replied, sincerely. ‘But we don’t need to spell out the need for caution. I’ve been authorised to offer you both protection at any level you’d like. You could move to a safe house, we could move a personal protection officer in here, or we could have uniforms outside, round the clock. Everywhere you go, they’ll go, although, Mr Noble, you should probably think about cancelling your public engagements.’

‘I won’t do that,’ the author declared instantly. ‘I’ve got two gigs at the Book Festival and I’m doing them both.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Amanda Noble retorted. ‘This is no time to be going all macho on me.’

‘I’m not turning chicken on you either, though. We’ll have protection on the doorstep, fine, but I won’t be made a prisoner. My first event isn’t till Sunday; maybe the police will have caught this nutter by then.’

‘We might, we might not,’ said Pye. ‘Think about it, please. In the meantime, I’ll have a protection team organised.’

‘But won’t that give the media the hint that there’s a link?’

‘Mr Noble, as soon as the Victoria State Police announce Henry Mount’s identity, and the fact that he was murdered. . at the moment their media seem to be assuming that some bloke had a heart attack, so no big story. . the most downmarket tabloid will assume that there’s a link, and your phone will start ringing to melting point. It’s the connection between the methods used in each case that we hope to keep under wraps.’

‘Point taken.’ He paused and looked up at his wife. ‘Switch on the answer machine, love, as soon as we’re done here, and turn off our mobiles.’ His eyes swung back to the DI. ‘I’ll think about pulling out of those events. . the first one’s a panel discussion anyway: it can go on without me. . but even as we speak, I’m thinking about this too. Ainsley and Henry both liked to go in for dead clever murders. . so to speak.’ He grinned. ‘In one Jecks book there’s a female Egyptian bank manager called Cleo who’s poisoned by the bite of an asp. My homicides aren’t that prosaic or elaborate; they usually involve sharp objects, blunt instruments, or the occasional firearm, and they’re nearly all committed at close range. The most sophisticated thing I’ve ever done was have a bloke,’ he glanced at the detectives ‘. . a police officer actually. . walk in front of a bus, under hypnotic instruction.’

‘In that case, don’t go crossing the street on your own,’ Amanda told him. ‘At the best of times, you’re the most accident-prone man I’ve ever known.’

‘Maybe Fred isn’t next in line,’ June Connelly murmured. ‘Maybe this person was only after Ainsley and Henry.’

‘But why?’ Wilding asked. ‘As I understand it, of the three of them, Mr Noble’s the biggest seller. If you’re going to start knocking off Edinburgh crime writers, surely he’d be at the top of the list.’

‘Or maybe it’s one of my readers,’ the dark figure brooded as he nursed his whisky in the depths of his armchair, ‘thinking that he’s doing me a favour by taking out the opposition.’

‘Or maybe it’s you yourself, Fred,’ said the woman opposite, mischievously. ‘That’s the question these gentlemen are being too delicate to ask.’ She glanced at them. ‘Isn’t it?’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘When Mr Glover was murdered, Mr Noble was appearing live on the BBC2 Edinburgh Festival review programme. Even at that time of night, I reckon he has a few witnesses to his alibi.’

‘Then perhaps it has to do with the project,’ Connelly persisted, her voice thick. Wilding found himself wondering how big a share of the bottle of malt she had consumed.

‘Hey, that’s a point,’ Noble agreed.

The DI looked at them surprised. ‘What project?’

‘Ainsley and Henry had a joint thing going,’ the agent told him. ‘I have no idea what it was, only that it was contemporary, non-fiction. I asked Ainsley what it was about, more than once, but he’d only smile and mutter, “Due course, due course,” in his most infuriating tone.’

‘But just the two of them?’

‘They approached me,’ Noble confessed. ‘In January, I think it was. They said that there was something they wanted to do together and that it would involve a lot of investigation. They felt that it wouldn’t be right not to offer me the chance to join them. . Henry did say they reckoned they’d need a third person anyway. . but I said to them that I was going to be way too busy this year to think about taking on anything else.’

‘Did they tell you what it was about?’

‘I wouldn’t let them. I told them that if I didn’t know, there was no chance of me getting too comfy at a writers’ festival somewhere and blabbing about it.’ He looked at Pye. ‘So what do you reckon? Am I off the hook?’

‘It’s a line of inquiry,’ the young inspector conceded, ‘and we’ll follow it up; but off the hook? No. Those officers will still be at your door, front and back, until this investigation is over.’