Dylan Thomas; W.B. Yeats; Ezra Pound... The carriage fills, but no one sits next to me. Perhaps I’m giving off the wrong signals. Perhaps no one wants to check if I’m dead. I feel dead, it’s almost true, as we reach our destination and emerge into the same grey, grubby weather of twenty minutes ago. He walks across Hungerford Bridge, collar pulled up to protect his shaven skull. I follow some way behind. My hair is plastered to my head, and rainwater pours down my neck. Everyone I pass has the same expression stamped onto their features: a look that says stay out of my space. On the South Bank he veers left, and heads towards Tate Modern. Before reaching it he turns from the river, and without ever looking behind him — as if he enjoys a clear conscience — leads me to an office block, into which he disappears.
Forever, I wait in an alley opposite. Ages of unrecorded time, whose silence spools into nothingness.
When he emerges, it’s long past office hours. Perhaps he’s compensating for his morning’s absence, or perhaps his office role is important enough to spill into the evening shift. He seems tired when he appears at last, talking into his mobile phone; shaking his head and waving his free hand around in a pointless underlining of his words. This conversation lasts way up the South Bank, where he stops at last at a pub beyond the Globe.
From a corner table I watch as he drinks his way through three large scotches.
Outside, it is full-on dark. The rain is back with a vengeance, and has cleared the evening streets. I nurse a single pint until he rises to leave, then follow him along the unwatched river, heedless of the switched-off cameras we pass. He is somewhat drunk, I expect. I’m mildly wobbly myself, after beer on an empty stomach.
What happens next — the sudden acceleration, the blow to the head, the heave into the water — seems both familiar and surprisingly straightforward. For a minute afterwards I stand there, hardly able to believe that such a large problem can vanish so instantly. In the morning, I expect, it will feel like another strange dream.
And then I catch the last train home, to find Emma waiting, anxious.
“You’re so late!”
“I went for a drink. Sorry.”
“You could have called.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “How was your day?”
“Same old, same old,” she tells me.
The papers make great play of the irony: The murder of the London head of a global security outfit captured on his firm’s CCTV. There are shots of me trailing him halfway up the river. Even I recognise myself in the blown-up footage. But at the trial I don’t mention Maurice’s subterfuge about the system being shut down because — as both he and Emma point out — last thing I need is another drowned body surfacing. Even a twenty-year-old murder would muddy the waters. One life sentence is enough.
They send me a photo from the wedding. This takes place the week after our divorce comes through. Maurice looks fit and spruce, but then he has no further need to play down-at-heel, and the extra £15K for stepping into the boss’s shoes can’t hurt. He’s maintained his predecessor’s habit of holding brunch meetings at the Victoria, I gather. Its conference room is ideal. I sometimes think about Emma killing three hours in the cafe there, and wonder if she drank as much coffee as I did while waiting for suspicion to harden.
In the photo, she looks beautiful.
Blog Bytes
by Bill Crider
© 2007 Bill Crider
The idea of the “group blog” seems to be catching on lately. Instead of one writer doing all the posts, writers band together to share the load. A fine example, and one that should be of particular interest to readers of this magazine, is Criminal Brief (www.criminalbrief.com/), which is a blog devoted to discussion of the writing and marketing of short stories. Saturdays are devoted to a “Mystery Masterclass” with “distinguished guest contributors,” the first of whom was Ed Hoch. It would be hard to find anyone who knows more about the short story than Ed. Regular contributors are James Lincoln Warren (on Monday), Melodie Johnson Howe (Tuesday), Robert Lopresti (Wednesday), Deborah Elliott-Upton (Thursday), Steven Stein-bock (Friday), and Leigh Lundin (Sunday).
Another entertaining group blog is Poe’s Deadly Daughters (poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com/), property of Julia Buckley, Sandra Parshall, Elizabeth Zelvin, Sharon Wildwind, and Lonnie Cruise. Sandra’s recent post on “book lust” really hit home with me. Lonnie often does interviews with other writers, and there’s plenty of discussion of writing and personal things. Sharon might reprint one of her reminiscences of Vietnam, or Julia will talk about a favorite poem. Guest bloggers show up occasionally, too. Reed Farrel Coleman put in an appearance just the other day.
Murderati (www.murderati.typepad.com/) has the largest group of the three. Mondays belong to Pari Noskin Taichert, and on Tuesday either Louise Ure or Ken Bruen takes over. Wednesday brings Robert Gregory Browne or J. D. Rhoades, whereas Thursday belongs to Simon Wood. J. T. Ellison has Friday, and Alexandra Sokoloff gets Saturday. Sunday Mike McLean has the floor. Guest bloggers Naomi Hirahara and Toni McGee Causey give the others an occasional break. As you can see, there’s bound to be lots of variety, and topics have included a review of the first season of Freaks and Geeks, a report on the Romantic Times conference, and a report on Malice Domestic, with photos.
Bill Crider’s own blog, Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine, can be found at billcrider.blogspot.com.
A Rat’s Tale
by Donna Andrews
© 2007 by Donna Andrews
Agatha Award-winner Donna Andrews is the author of two mystery series, one published by Berkley, featuring an artificial intelligence as the sleuth, and the other from St. Martin’s Press, featuring amateur sleuth Meg Langslow. The latest in that series is The Penguin Who Knew Too Much. “A Rat’s Tale” was inspired, says Ms. Andrews, bu the fact that she herself is a packrat.
I had a bad feeling when the doorbell rang. Of course, I never like hearing the doorbell. I’d known for a while that someone could file a complaint with social services or the health department at any time. As soon as they stepped through the door, the game would be up. The old man would be off to some home and I’d be out in the cold.
And I kind of like the old man. Maybe I should resent him for killing off the rest of my family, but that was a long time ago. And he’s mellowed since. It’s been ages since he put down any poison. Could be he’s realized I know better than to eat it, but I think these days he enjoys the company. He still mutters “Goddamned rats!” whenever he sees me, but there’s no venom in it anymore.
So when the doorbell rang, I scuttled over to the door and got there before he did. He has to follow the paths, and I can run along the top of the magazines, in the places where they don’t quite reach the ceiling or where I’ve gnawed tunnels through them.
By the time he reached the door, I was already perched in one of my observation points — a nice, comfortable nest I’d hollowed out in the old National Geographics that flanked the door, with a couple of convenient peepholes.