Haterz (27 page)

Jarvis Chapman left KetCrimeCon without another word.

I
WASN’T THE
only person sticking around to witness this triumph. At the back of the lobby hung a downlit pencil drawing depicting a thatched cottage and water wheel, with a lonely miller making his weary way home to his dumpling wife, his footsteps weaving through scratching graphite chickens. Underneath the art was a sofa that no-one had ever put their feet up on to read the Sunday papers. Perched on the sofa—you could only really perch on it, not sit; it was pretty much a bus-stop bench clad in the minimum of blue leather—perched on the sofa was a little nothing of a man making a great play of checking his phone on the hotel’s free-in-the-lobby wifi.

As I sauntered past he was looking at me. I nodded, and, for something to say, managed, “Funny day, isn’t it?”

He gave that sort-of-grunt that people do when they don’t want to talk, but don’t want to seem exactly rude, and carried on checking his phone. Tap, tap, swipe. Tap, tap, swipe. But he was still watching me. I carried on walking, aware of his gaze not quite on me. Was he someone working for my mysterious Killuminati? Was that it?

Someone else busied past me, one of the tireless convention martyrs, jammed into an unflattering gilet printed with the convention name. She was all about the lanyard, flacking it about as though she was both Mulder and Scully. She plonked herself down on the sofa, which gave a little plastic fart, and tumbled speech at the man. “What a day I’ve never known a KetCrimeCon like this I’ve been picking up guests from the station since seven but mind you I didn’t get to sleep till two but then I never do at CrimeCon you don’t do you and the press so demanding so awful and they took my picture and asked me what I thought they won’t use it of course but I hope I did the right thing I said the committee had worked hard and the awards would go to the winners and isn’t Vampantha marvellous she is ever so marvellous isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said the man without looking up from tap, tap, swipe. “She is.”

I wandered away, his eyes boring into me. It took me two minutes to discover he was the chair of the judging panel. And then I remembered him. I’d seen him in pictures on a mantlepiece. He was the man Vampantha had been having lunch with in Nando’s. Her husband.

I
N THE WHIRL
of being a media darling, Vampantha hadn’t got around to unfriending me on Facebook, so I was able to see that she was friends with Derek Ayres. At first glance Derek only shared his Facebook with friends, but there was still a surprising amount to see about Derek and Vampantha.

Up until a few years ago Derek had combined being regional sales executive for Sodobus with running a reasonably successful ebook imprint as a hobby. In 2012 that had all changed.

Vampantha had gone to Kettering CrimeCon in 2012 looking for a publisher, and ready to do anything to acquire one. During the debacle over the reviews of
A Rubber Of Velvet
, before Vampantha became a feminist hero, various blog-posts had made catty remarks along the lines of, ‘It seems anyone can stuff themselves into a basque these days and call themselves an author. This book reads like the kind of thing written by someone who handed out backrubs and handjobs to get where they are.’

A notably owlish and monkishly asexual critic who also ran an imprint had popped up on quite a lively thread to announce, ‘My dears, even I got one. And I’m rather gay. But you know, never one to turn down a freebie. Chin-chin.’

Derek Ayres had been Vampantha’s ‘mission accomplished.’ He was the first one to offer her a publishing contract at his ebook imprint. Derek was also the head of KetCrimeCon’s award committee.

V
AMPANTHA WAS CLEARLY
a genius at pulling things off. She’d rehabilitated her reputation, she’d engineered an award for herself, and she’d managed to do it in such a blaze of publicity that she’d completely cast into the shadows any question of how she’d managed to win the award. She was the justly-lauded authoress who had somehow been abused by the vile Jarvis Chapman.

And the whole thing was a hoax, one that had smeared Jarvis, and done real harm to his career and his family.

But I knew enough to smash it all wide open.

O
NE THING
I
’D
forgotten though. The quiet eyes of Derek Ayres watching me as I walked away.

V
AMPANTHA HAD A
final tug the next day. As Kettering CrimeCon hadn’t booked any leading female crime authors that year, she’d been invited onto lots of panels in order to make sure they weren’t all slightly wizardy men with beards. Vampantha didn’t mind being the token woman on a panel. In fact, she thrived on it. Until her recent sainthood, many people muttered “oh, God, not HER again” while bemoaning that more established female crime authors ran a mile from being on a panel with Vampantha. As one put it in an interview, “You know, I’ve written a dozen bestsellers translated into a dozen languages and one was even made into a god-awful film in Japan. I think I’m doing quite well for myself. So it’s a bit hard being lectured on How To Succeed As An Author by a pamphleteer” (after Vampantha’s award, she had to apologise, and the two were later pictured having a particularly grim tea).

T
HE
S
UNDAY MORNING,
Vampantha was on a panel about ‘Murder International.’ In the middle of it all, having mentioned her award a dozen times, Vampantha suddenly announced, “The secret of anyone’s success is to have good publicity. A lot of people will say that, in order to do that, you need to have a publicist. Well, up until recently, I had one. And let me tell you. He did no good, seriously. His name is Brian McMullen, and let me tell you all to avoid him like the plague...”

This was only the start of the diatribe. It went on for eight minutes and thirty-four seconds, with frequent stops for applause. It was a masterful bit of character destruction that I wasn’t even aware of (apart from wondering why I was getting a few odd looks in the lunch queue). But it neatly ensured how formidable Vampantha and Derek were. Had I suddenly rushed forward to expose them both, it would simply have appeared to be sour grapes by Brian McMullen, the recently sacked publicist who had told her, and I quote, “Girl authors should suck it up.” There was also a t-shirt made of that. Christ, who makes these t-shirts?

I
LEFT
K
ET
C
RIME
C
ON
in a hurry after someone threw a glass of wine over me. At twelve quid for a glass of house red, they must really have hated me.

I
WENT HOME,
chalking up Vampantha as a failure. I’d met my match.

I couldn’t expose her. It was too late to switch horses and try and bump her off—Brian McMullen was an obvious suspect and an investigation of him could lead back to me.

M
Y GOD LADY,
I thought, you’re worse than me, and I’m a murderer. But fine. Vampantha was utter poison, but that was okay. I’d bide my time and try again in a bit. After all, there was no shortage of awful people.

CHAPTER NINE

THREE LITTLE PIGS

T
HREE PEOPLE WALK
into a room.

If they were interesting people, and this were a joke, then they would be an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman. The Englishman would say something sensible, the Scotsman something mean, and the Irishman would say something stupid. If the joke were working at a slightly higher level, then the Irishman would still say something stupid, yet walk away the winner.

Or perhaps the three are a priest, a vicar and a rabbi walking into a bar. Oddly enough, it’s never a priest, a rabbi and an imam, which implies rather unfairly that imams don’t have a sense of humour or can’t order a soda water.

Actually, one of the three walking into the room was a woman and another Jewish, but it honestly has nothing to do with the tale. By even mentioning it, I’m skewing how you perceive the tale, because it’s not a joke, it’s about money. And everyone knows that money is serious.

A
S
I
SAID,
the three weren’t that interesting. Annette Gough had a bird-like alertness, but, put together with the black dress, it was the alertness of a raven. Her face was settled into a small near-smile, one that you just knew was only waiting to be alone so that it could switch off completely.

Jamie Beaston looked like a cheap boiled ham served up with the string still tightly wrapped round it. At some point he’d been an athlete, but he’d now gone to seed, wearing an expensive suit that didn’t look it, his face flushed as though the central heating was on too high. His nicely striped shirt didn’t even try to hide his expansive waistline. He was a man who entered a room as though acknowledging delighted applause.

Wilson O’Reilly exuded the air of an unpopular headmaster who, following the mysterious death of a relative, had found himself enormously wealthy. He had a shifty alertness to him, as though already preparing an answer to exactly what had become of the skiing trip money.

The only thing the three of them had in common was something that none of them could hide. They were all enormously pleased with themselves.

Well, except when they noticed each other. Then the three’s faces became hard and wary. Each suddenly adopted the expression they used when appearing on the news to say things like, “That’s a good question, David, but...” “What you don’t seem to understand here, Michael...” or, “If I may, the thing I’ve actually come here to talk about today, Samira, is...”

They all, as one, pocketed their smartphones and looked each other shiftily up and down. This wasn’t what they were expecting. They nodded to each other, but said nothing more. None of them wanted to be drawn. Each was feeling a little disappointed, but wouldn’t show it. Each had thought themselves the only person invited to this meeting, but, realising the other was there, was already accepting it. This was business. The invitation had seemed too good to be true, and, as they all knew, there’s very little in life that is good or true.

They helped themselves to coffee, fingered the biscuit plate for chocolate ones, then settled down into a harrumphing silence which went on just long enough. Any longer and one of them would ask the other about holidays, family, the news, or the journey down. The one thing that they didn’t talk about was business. Occasionally one would sneak a hopeful look at the door, expecting a fourth person to come in, but no-one did. Fingers tapped the formica desks, chairs rocked back, and the smartphones came out again. But annoyingly, there didn’t seem to be a network.

Without any fanfare a projector sprung into life. For a moment it glowed blue and flashed ‘NO SIGNAL’ as it paged through its connections. Then it went to a PC desktop. A disembodied mouse pointed at a file on the desktop labelled ‘Presentation.PPT.’ It double-clicked.

The presentation started to load up. As it did so, some anti-virus software popped up to recommend an update, and then Java Updater joined, in along with Adobe. The mouse shifted across the screen and dismissed all three with a trace of annoyance.

Then the presentation began.

LEVERAGE:

A PROPOSAL

Monday July 13th

In attendance

Jamie Beaston,
MooLaLa

Annette Gough,
BettyPoke

Wilson O’Reilly,
Ubanker

SLIDE TWO: AGENDA

• Thank you for coming.

• A brief introduction to

why I’ve called you here.

• An offer you can’t refuse.

• Coffee.

SLIDE THREE: THANK YOU FOR COMING

• Firstly, apologies for not being here in person

• The reason for this will soon become clear

• Anyway, if I were here

• I’d simply be reading these

bullet points aloud to you

• And don’t you just hate that?

• We could all read by the age of 8,

couldn’t we?

• So why waste time? After all...

• TIME IS MONEY.

SLIDE FOUR: MORE INTRODUCTION

• Forgive the slightly unusual

nature of this presentation

• What I’m about to offer all of you

is well worth your while

• But I need your absolute

discretion within this room

• Instead of making you sign a

blah blah blah NDA

• I’ve blocked all mobile

signals during the presentation

• And locked the door.

• Don’t worry about the last part!

• As soon as we’re done it’ll open.

SLIDE FIVE: EVEN MORE INTRODUCTION

• So, there we go. That’s the

introduction over with.

• Apart from a health and safety note.

• We’re four floors up, so don’t