Kit gave him a good-humoured punch on the shoulder. “You haven’t got a fucking clue how the grown-ups live, have you? Listen, Nigel, if you are ever lucky enough to meet a woman with half the brains, the wit and the looks of Fiona, do yourself a favour. Go on a training course before you ask her out.” Without waiting for a reply, Kit squeezed through the crowd and enveloped Mary Helen in a bear hug. “How’s the queen of the glens?” he demanded, landing a resounding kiss on her cheek.
“All the better for seeing you and Fiona. If I’m honest, the main reason I came to this do tonight was in the hope of seeing a few cheerful faces. This business with Drew Shand has cast a terrible pall over the Scottish crime-writing community. We’ve all been phoning each other every day for the last two weeks, making sure we’re still alive.”
“You’re such a drama queen, Mary Helen,” Kit teased her.
“I’m serious, Kit,” Mary Helen protested. “It came as a terrible shock to all of us.”
“But surely there’s no threat to any of the rest of you?” Fiona asked. “I thought the police were pretty much convinced he’d been killed by somebody he picked up that night in the gay bar, what’s it called?”
“The Barbary Coast,” Kit supplied. “So unless you’ve got a secret life in sadomasochistic society that we know nothing about, the chances are you’re safe,” he continued, putting a reassuring arm round Mary Helen’s shoulders.
“Would that I could lay claim to anything so exciting,” Mary Helen said dryly. “But it’s not that straightforward, is it? I mean, Drew was killed in the precise manner in which he’d murdered one of his fictional victims. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that whoever killed him had some sort of morbid fascination with the genre. You know about these things, Fiona. Wouldn’t you agree with me?”
Put on the spot by Mary Helen’s sharp blue stare, Fiona shrugged. “Hard to say. I know no more about the case than anybody else who’s read the papers and surfed the Net.”
“You must have some sort of theory,” Mary Helen pressed her. “After all, this is your field. Come on, don’t be shy, you’re among friends here.”
Fiona pulled a face. “To my mind, it has all the hallmarks of a stalker murder. Someone who became obsessed with Drew and his work to the point where the only way he could resolve his compulsion was to destroy its object. And the fact that Drew had provided him with the perfect script was simply the most unfortunate element in the whole scenario. If I’m right, then the rest of you are as safe as you ever were before Drew died. Stalkers don’t by and large transfer their obsession to another target.”
“There, Mary Helen. Now you can sleep safe in your bed at night,” Kit said.
“You’re a patronizing wee shite, Kit Martin,” Mary Helen said, giving him a mock-punch on the shoulder. “Thank you, Fiona. I do feel better for hearing that, and I’ll pass it round my colleagues north of the border.”
“Wait a minute, Mary Helen,” Fiona protested. “I don’t know anything for sure. What I said was nothing more than guesswork.”
Mary Helen beamed at her. “Maybe so, but it makes more sense than the platitudes we’ve been getting from the police. Now, I’m going to love you and leave you because I need to go into a huddle with my publicist, if she can tear herself away from Adam for a minute.”
They watched her go, Fiona shaking her head in exasperation. “I fall for it every time. She just fixes me with the twinkle and the dimple and twists me round her little finger.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. She does it to everybody,” Kit said, reaching past her for a fresh glass of wine. “We’re all suckers for Mary Helen’s ‘little old lady’ routine. Anyway, I think she really needed the reassurance. She’s not joking about people being wound up by Drew’s death. Adam’s editor has just been telling me that Georgia is refusing to go out on her book tour next month unless her publisher provides her with a bodyguard.”
Fiona snorted. “The only way Georgia Lester would miss an opportunity for blatant self-promotion is if someone sewed her mouth shut. You know that. Don’t you remember her turning up at Waterstone’s in Hampstead with a sniffer dog in tow after the Docklands IRA bomb?”
Kit grinned. “You’ve always got the knife into Georgia, haven’t you?”
“That’s because I don’t get the benefit of the charm like you do. I’m the wrong gender.”
He spread his hands. “She can’t help herself, love. You know Georgia. She gets an idea in her head and she gets carried away. Anyway, according to Adam’s editor, she’s giving them hell. Threatening to move her next book to another house, threatening to tell the press that she’s in fear of her life because her publisher won’t protect her.”
“I know she’s your mate, but if she devoted half as much energy to writing as she does to self-promotion, her books would have got better instead of worse over the years,” Fiona said cynically.
Kit put a finger to his lips. “Ssh. Don’t say that so loudly. You might give her publisher ideas. After all, there’s nothing like a dramatic death to boost your sales figures. I hear the advance orders on Drew’s new book have more than doubled since his murder.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Fiona sighed. “Maybe you should mention that to the cops. For all we know, Drew might have been planning to move publishers. An editor who was going to lose him anyway might well have considered giving her balance sheet one final hike.”
Kit shook his head sorrowfully. “Such a low opinion of the publishing trade. I can’t imagine where you got that from.”
“I’ve been hanging out with writers too long. It sours the milk of human kindness.”
Kit acknowledged her barb with a faint smile. “So, you really think Drew’s killer won’t strike again? Or were you just being kind to Mary Helen?”
Fiona shrugged. “If I could predict the future that well, we’d have won the lottery by now. I honestly don’t know. But if he does, he won’t go for someone who writes cheerful cosies like Mary Helen. He’ll be looking for someone on the noir side of the street.”
Kit’s face froze. “Someone like me, you mean?”
“Are you seriously telling me it hadn’t crossed your mind?”
Ignored by those around him, the man in the tweed jacket watched Kit Martin from the other side of the room. Whatever he was talking about with his girlfriend, it had shaken him up, that much was obvious. His eyes had widened and his normally mobile face had turned into a still mask. Good, the man thought with deep satisfaction. He liked the idea of Martin’s discomfiture.
If everything had gone according to plan, Martin should have had good reason to be worried. The man’s lip twitched in a tiny sneer, hidden from view behind his beard and moustache. He watched Martin take his girlfriend by the elbow and steer her through the crowded bookshop to the door. He’d barely paused to say farewell to his cronies, the man observed. The woman’s words had clearly made him very uncomfortable.
With the principal object of his hatred gone, the man slipped through the press of bodies to the table that held the wine. He held his glass out for a refill, nodded his thanks and faded into the background. There were a few authors left, but they were beneath contempt, unworthy of his attentions. His opinion of himself was such that he was only interested in the very best. That, of course, had been the problem all along. He saw that now. They were the ones under pressure to come up with the goods, which explained why they’d done what they had to him.
But that was history. What he was interested in now was retribution.