‘That’s the man,’ Randall Mosley confirmed. ‘Well, he’s on the point of retirement and he’s been signed up for a book that’s not only going to lift the lid on his entire career, but it’s going to attack the entire culture of criminal prosecution in Europe. I’ve seen his agent’s synopsis and it’s going to be powerful stuff. Best of it is that Denzel will have front cover accreditation. That means he won’t be anonymous; the author billing will be “Claus Blackman, QC, with Denzel Chandler.” It’ll make his name properly and lead on-’
‘To an uncertain future, as with all authors,’ Sandy Rankin interjected.
‘You sound bitter.’
She glowered at the inspector. ‘Call me a cynic, a professional cynic.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m a journalist, so that’s what I’m supposed to be. Isn’t it?’ Her gaze switched to Chandler. ‘Or shouldn’t it be, Denz? Should I have assumed that Claus Blackman would write his own fucking memoirs, and be shocked when I find out that he won’t? Nah, of course not. Because the whole fucking publishing business is sick, sick unto fucking death.’
‘Oh, come on, Sandy,’ Mosley protested. ‘Look out there, look at all those people; we’ll have up to a quarter of a million of them though this site over the next few weeks. That doesn’t speak of a sick industry.’
‘Randy, this is your first year, so you’ve still got to learn; that doesn’t speak of anything. They’re consumers; they’re not driving anything any more. They’re being fed what the retailers tell the publishers will sell best, and the publishers are nodding like fucking donkeys and going along with it. The whole fucking industry’s about volume sales now; the big retailers and the online companies are screwing ridiculous discounts out of the producers, small booksellers are being driven out of business because they’re not being offered the same deals so can’t compete, and the people at the start of the supply chain, the authors, the essential creatives, are being screwed worst of all. They’re being devalued. Randy, there’s lots of seriously good work out there, more of it than ever before, with no fucking chance of ever being published. You know that as well as I do, but do the punters? No they don’t. You go on about the size of your crowds, but you must have noticed that the people who sell out your big tent mostly aren’t the proper authors, they’re the celebs, like that girl with the ridiculous tits that calls herself a novelist, or the monosyllabic footballer of the month, or the tired old political has-beens like that wanker Bruce Anderson you had on last night. Yes, Director, you look out there, and you know what you’ll see? People who shed tears about the plight of Nicaraguan coffee producers and always buy the Fair Trade range at fucking Starbucks, but who wouldn’t dream of buying a hardback book unless it was remaindered or discounted down to less than the cover price of a paperback!’
Her voice had risen to a pitch just short of a yell; all work had stopped in the office, and its occupants were staring at her, but she was oblivious to their attentions. ‘No wonder poor old Ally was so fucking worked up about it,’ she ranted. ‘Only two things ever got him close to mad, in all the time I’ve known him. One was Trident, and the other was what he called the conspiracy between the big-volume booksellers and the publishers’ bean-counters to cut the balls off authors and their agents.’
Pye sensed that the time had come to channel her anger. ‘Ms Rankin,’ he said, ‘I wonder if DC Haddock and I might carry on this discussion in private. We’re interviewing all of Mr Glover’s friends as part of our investigation.’
His intervention put an end to her tirade. ‘How long will it take?’ she asked. ‘I’ll need to do an obituary on Ally for tomorrow’s paper. If I don’t file it soon, the editor will give the job to one of the feature people or, worse, to one of the political staff.’
‘We won’t keep you long.’ The two detectives led the journalist through to the makeshift investigation headquarters. As she looked around, they sensed her professional instincts coming back into play.
‘This is where Ally died, isn’t it?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yes. He was found lying in the area that’s been taped off.’
‘Isn’t that a first, having the murder room in the crime scene itself?’
Pye raised an eyebrow. ‘My idea was that we’d be doing the interviewing.’
Rankin returned his gaze. ‘If I’m on the record with you, so are you with me.’
‘In that case, I’ll let you speculate about that, because I honestly don’t know. However, we will ask all the questions for now. Beginning with, how close were you and Mr Glover?’
‘We were friends of long standing.’
‘How long exactly?’
‘Twenty years; twenty years and one month, to be even more accurate. Earlier in my career, I worked on the Saltire, as a business reporter. I was on a story that needed an objective quote from an eminent accountant. Somebody suggested him; I got in touch, and he did the needful. After that, every time I needed that sort of involvement, I went to him.’
‘How old were you then, Miss Rankin?’ asked Haddock.
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with it?’ she retorted.
‘It’s one of the things we’re supposed to ask interviewees,’ the young DC replied, unruffled. ‘You know, occupation, date of birth, and so on.’
She softened. ‘I see. And that was you being subtle, son, was it? Fair enough; it’s a standard journo question too, although I’ve never really understood why. For the record, I’m forty-eight years old, but my birthday was last week, so if I’d answered your original question and you’d done your wee sum, you’d have got it wrong. People like you and me, we must always be precise. If we’re not. . journalists can get sued, detectives can get their arses kicked by defence counsel and judges.’ She smiled. ‘Like Claus Blackman, for example,’ she mused. ‘Imagine Denzel landing his biography; can’t get over that.’
‘So,’ Haddock continued, ‘for the sake of clarity, what was the precise nature of your relationship with the deceased?’
‘That’s better, son. Latterly, pure friendship, but there was a time, after Ally’s wife’s death, it was more than that. Not for long, though. It was never going anywhere on his part, and as for me, well,’ she caught the detective’s eye, ‘I bat for both teams, as they say. You can note that down as “bisexual” in your wee book. Eventually we drifted back to being pals again, closer than before. Ally’s writing career started to motor properly, I moved to the Herald, June Connelly came on the scene, and everything settled into a nice wee rut.’
‘You say his career was motoring,’ Pye pointed out, ‘yet when you were talking to Dr Mosley you implied that he was unhappy with the way it was going.’
‘He wasn’t alone. Ally did all right, no mistake about that; as well as Mount, not as well as Noble, but all right. He was successful in Scottish terms, but down south, he was a name but not at the top of the A list, not by quite a way. It’s those fucking supermarkets, y’see. A while back they decided to sell books, but not in a considered way, as just another commodity. So now they stock new titles and they’ll sell them discounted. They don’t keep an author’s back catalogue and they only handle the top tier of authors, but that’s enough to make a big hole in the profits of the proper booksellers. So they shout for discounts too, and they get them.’
‘But don’t authors get a percentage of cover price?’
‘Yes, but that percentage declines with the discount, and unless you’re lucky enough to be a supermarket author, it’s never made up by increased sales.’
‘And that frustrated Mr Glover?’
‘That’s putting it mildly.’
‘Was he in financial difficulty?’
Rankin shook her head. ‘No, he was well fixed, but not only from writing. His book sales were fine, and yet he could see his royalty income declining, the market being as it is. There’s a bottom line, though; his advances were big enough for him to be able to forecast minimum income for a few years ahead. And, of course, for the last few months he had an MSP’s salary coming in. Ach, Ally was rolling in it, truth be told, but he wasn’t a man to get angry for himself. Last time we had dinner, he went on at some length about the silent majority, the authors who are being driven back to part-time writing or out of the business altogether. They were his. . his second constituency, you might say.’