The Reaper (54 page)
McMaster stood and gathered her dignity and held out her hand. Brook shook it warmly. ‘Good luck, Damen.
The Force needs people like you. I’ll hold onto this letter for forty-eight hours…’
‘Why?’
‘It’s standard practice–unofficially. In case you change your mind.’
‘I won’t.’
Brook gunned through the lights and roared up the Uttoxeter Road. As he approached the flat, he saw old Mrs Saunders standing on the pavement, arms folded, looking up and down the road. She was just a tiny thing, barely five feet in height. She raised an arm when she saw him and watched as he slowed to a halt and jumped from the car.
‘Anything wrong, Mrs Saunders?’
‘I’ve already called the police, dear. Some lads kicked your door in. I rang straight away but they weren’t in there long. They only left a few minutes ago. I’m sorry, dear, but I didn’t dare come outside until they’d gone.’
‘You did the right thing, Mrs Saunders. Wait there.’
‘Oh, Inspector.’ Brook turned. ‘One thing. I know it’s a weird name but I definitely heard one of the young men call another one Jay or Jace. Is that a help?’
Brook nodded. ‘Maybe.’
He ran to the flat’s wrecked kitchen entrance and stopped in the doorway. The door hung from its hinges now and Brook had to lift it to go inside.
He looked down at his feet and stepped back. The floor was flooded with the water still spurting from where the sink had once been. It had been hammered into three large pieces and water was sluicing around the floor.
Various plastic food packets bobbed on the water. The fridge, which had had its door wrenched off, had then been pushed over. Brook could see a selection of cocktail dips and cooked chicken being showered by the fountain from the decapitated cold water pipe. The fridge door itself had been thrown at the kitchen window and lay half in, half out, of the shattered frame.
Brook lifted up his trousers and tiptoed across the sopping floor to the hall. From the living room, an acrid stench assaulted his throat forcing him to clench a handkerchief over his mouth.
He kicked open the door through which he’d watched Vicky brush her hair those many months ago. The smoke hit Brook in the eyes, so he bent low and forced his way through the room to the front door, satisfying himself that there was no heat from a blaze. He flung open the front door and stepped through to let his lungs pull in the fresh air. The acrid smouldering of Brook’s sofa began to dissipate and Brook was able to see into the room.
He looked at the devastation. The brand new TV and video recorder lay pulverised on the floor. His chair and table were blackened by the smoke but were otherwise intact. The telephone and answering machine had also been placed on the sofa, to share its fate. They had begun to melt but were still recognisable. Fortunately the Van Gogh was in his new house.
The smoke cleared somewhat and Brook headed for his bedroom. He opened the door to the words ‘OINK, OINK. YOUR GOING TO PAY PIG’ daubed on the wall in red.
‘Oh no.’ Brook stepped to the bed and sat besides the
remains of Cat. He placed a hand on its still warm body and stroked what was left. For once the cat didn’t careen itself around Brook’s hand. Its head was pulp though he could still identify the stub of pink tongue poking through broken teeth. Two grapefruit-sized splashes of dark red on the back of the door told its tale.
He closed his eyes to remember his only friend.
Sirens in the distance grew louder. He roused himself to look around. He reached to pick a towel from a hook and wrapped Cat reverently into a bundle.
He went outside to his car and placed the body gently in the boot. He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, Cat. I should have named you.’ He closed the boot and turned to face the squad car screeching to a theatrical halt behind him.
It was after midnight when Brook returned to his new house in Hartington.
He pulled up to the kerb and silenced the ear-splitting cacophony from the Sprite’s exhaust, oblivious to the disturbance it must have caused in this sleepy village. He opened the boot and removed a carrier bag and newly-purchased spade. He took both in the house and returned to the car. He picked up the bundle containing Cat and took it to the back garden.
In darkness, he dug a small hole in a corner of the garden and placed Cat down. He replaced the soil on top and patted it down before putting a large stone on top to discourage scavenging foxes. ‘Rest in Peace, little friend.’
Brook climbed the path to the house and sat down on the patio bench. He pulled the bottle of whisky and
two packets of cigarettes from the carrier bag, poured himself a large measure and lit up.
‘Cheers, Cat.’ He took a swig and flinched as the fiery liquid burned its way to his stomach. ‘Cheers, Charlie.’ He took another, smaller swig. ‘Professor.’ This time he merely held the glass aloft, declining to drink.
The next morning Brook was woken by birdsong. He was on the bench with a thin blanket for cover and a cushion for a pillow. He sat up and looked at his watch. Then he stepped into the kitchen and picked up the phone. He dialled, asked for an extension number and lit a cigarette in the pause to be connected. ‘Chief Superintendent McMaster. DI Brook, ma’am. About my resignation–I’ve been thinking it over…’
When did you start writing?
I began writing after I left university in Kent in 1979. The initial focus of my work was comedy. I became interested in the alternative comedy scene of the early eighties and decided to try my hand at both sketches and stand-up material. Performing comedy is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and though I had some limited encouragement from audiences I decided to stick to the writing. I wrote comedy with a university friend and we produced a TV play and subsequent pilot for a series for Channel 4 called
Not Enough Poodles
of which I was very proud. Unfortunately it didn’t pass the final hurdle after looking set for production and this, along with other fruitless approaches to outlets like
Private Eye
and
Spitting Image
, caused me to drift away from comedy.
My first paying job in writing was for the Latchmere Theatre Company in Battersea in 1990 when I was asked by the director to write the book for the Christmas Pantomime
Hansel and Gretel
, which won several fringe theatre awards.
In 1996, having spent the intervening years doing some freelance journalism and teaching, my wife and I moved to Derby and suddenly being able to work part-time I picked up the pen seriously again. I decided that the novel was where I wanted to direct my energies and I had the idea for
The Reaper
in 1999 and started the year after.
Where do you write? And what’s your routine?
I write as often as I can, work permitting, in a very untidy office on a laptop. At least it’s untidy when I leave it, covered in open
reference books with bits of paper containing cryptic notes that often I don’t understand the day after. Things get tidier when my wife works in there but then follows the inevitable search for all my resources and scraps of paper. Like Sherlock Holmes, I would prefer my ‘system’ to be unmolested by tidiness but this is probably sheer laziness.
I try to keep to office hours and rarely write at weekends–Saturday and Sunday are for leisure and I’m loath to do much but watch and play sport and indulge my love of cooking and walking in the Peak District.
What are the pros and cons of being a writer?
The pros are obvious. Although it’s hard graft sometimes it beats proper work and being at the behest of an employer. Control over the fruits of your own labour is also a big attraction. All a writer’s efforts belong to him or her, which sounds selfish, I know, but it means you are your own boss.
And there can be few finer times in a writer’s life than the cold and wet winter’s morning walking through to the office to inhabit your private world while the rest of humanity struggles into work against the elements. Obviously the reverse applies in summer to an extent. A major drawback for me is the sedentary and solitary nature of the activity. I am sociable and like to think I’m fairly sporty so writing doesn’t tick either of those boxes very well. Also I tend to snack through the day when writing, which is not good.
Which writers have inspired you?
In terms of thrillers my two favourite writers would be Thomas Harris and Michael Connelly. Both Americans. I’m not sure why that is but there’s something about the nature of reading which demands that you be transported to an unfamiliar place, either literally or metaphorically, and I suppose much of the backdrop for all English thriller writing is too familiar–an immediate disadvantage for me. This also explains my appetite for foreign travel. I want the unfamiliar, I like to be daunted by a journey then become comfortable with the destination and then I’ll move onto the next place. The same applies with reading. Familiarity breeds contempt and I will actively avoid reading anything past a fifth or sixth book in a series as too often characters and locations have become tired and uninteresting.
I also have a problem with the notion of thriller writing. Having grown up on a diet of John Fowles, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, I like to think that having written a story in 130,000 words that I’m a novelist first. The fact that my stories hopefully have thrills, shocks, twists and turns is a bonus, but those thrills will absolutely not be there unless I’m certain that they completely inhabit the landscape I’m trying to create.
How important is a sense of place in your writing?
It’s central. I like my stories to grow organically within a setting so the action feels as though it fits the place. It’s pointless trying to write any other way and I’ve got a big kick meeting readers who’ve told me how exciting it was to read a story that takes place in streets they think they know. Others have been appalled and offended to think that I can imagine such acts of violence in their city, but I’ve taken that as a compliment to the effectiveness of the action.
Do you spend a lot of time researching your novels?
Where necessary. I’m not slavish about it but there are certain aspects if you’re writing about murder and police procedure that you simply have to know. At other times educated guessing will suffice because there has to be a balance between artistic licence and the tedium of researching every tiny detail. Such encyclopaedic knowledge can and frequently does weigh the story down if you overdo it.
Do your characters ever surprise you?
This is a hard question because there is an absolute sense in which as the writer I am seeking to create and control the universe in which my characters interact. With an intricate plot such as
The Reaper
there has to be a certain amount of discipline from the characters, almost as if they’re actors performing a piece. In a different type of novel I’m sure writers can set their players adrift and see what happens to an extent, but for me relinquishing control is much more difficult within the confines of the story. Having said that I was aware when writing
The Reaper
how some characters were different from the way I had imagined them from the start. John Noble, for instance, was much brasher and raw at the start of writing and he turned out to be a much quieter individual and at times the equal of Brook in terms of his deductive abilities. Brook also was
much darker at the start of writing but became lighter with each re-write and he’s not above making jokes, albeit laced with the cynicism you expect from one so damaged.
How much of your life and the people around you do you put into your books?
Very little of real people goes into the book. What I take from people is not who they are but the things that they do and say that show certain things about them. Brook out of all the characters is the only one with small pieces of me in him but not much–the main trait being his inability to get animated or surprised about what’s going on around him. This gives him a stillness which I think helps define his essential being. He’s seen it all and would prefer not to see it again.
What drew you to putting your book up onto the authonomy website? And did you ever think anything would come of it?
I honestly can’t remember. I don’t think I actually discovered the site. I’ve a feeling that because I’d self-published
The Reaper
and spent a year networking the book and sending copies off to dozens of publishers, including HarperCollins, that I got myself an invitation.
I have to confess that not being as computer literate as most, I botched my first attempt to upload the manuscript onto the site and gave up on it. Fortunately I gave it another try and managed to get it right, not expecting anything other than maybe a few sales from interested fellow authors. When Avon asked for a full script I again thought little of it–I’d been sending off the script for a long time. When Maxine Hitchcock rang to talk about the possibility of a deal I was pleased rather than excited. It had been a long haul and I wasn’t going to get carried away until I saw my book rolling off the presses. I believed in
The Reaper
and deep down I knew it deserved to be read by a larger audience. Thanks to www.authonomy.com I’ve been given that chance.
AcknowledgementsI’d like to give special thanks to Jeff Fountain and Patrick Raggett for their unstinting support over a long period of time. Their practical help and, equally importantly, their editorial instincts and insights were a huge source of encouragement and helped to get
The Reaper
to this point.I’d also like to thank loyal friends and relations who acted as members of my informal promotions team and were happy to take copies of the self published version of
The Reaper
and put them in many people’s hands. Thank you for all your help and support Martin Bowen, Giles Newington, Chris Fisher, Keith Robertshaw, Alan and Sandie Staley and Dennis and Ged Lee.A big thank you must also go to Waterstone’s, and in particular Sean Heavens at the Derby Branch and Glenys Cooper at Burton-on-Trent, for believing in
The Reaper
and encouraging me to get stock into several Midlands branches. Their support helped make
The Reaper
a local bestseller.Obviously I’m grateful to HarperCollins for the chance to reach a wider audience with the new edition of the book and I’m indebted to Maxine Hitchcock and Sammia Rafique for their expertise and enthusiasm.
On that note, thanks also to Jeremy Thompson and all at Matador Publishing who produced such an attractive volume and generally steered me calmly through the nerve-wracking process of self-publication, and to Corin Page, my brilliant designer, for producing the original eye-catching cover which gave the self-published
Reaper
such instant appeal.Finally, a big salute to friends and customers in Derby and the Midlands, particularly staff and students of Murray Park School for their support and interest. The same goes for the guys in Camberwell and Weekenders Cricket Club, particularly Christopher Doughlas for his advice and encouragement.
