Page 21 of A Slow Fire Burning

The young man, clearly intensely uncomfortable and at the same time filled with the desire to impart top secret information, leaned toward Theo. “She does have a history,” he said quietly.

“A history?”

“Of violence.” Theo shrank back, aghast. “Look, it’s nothing to panic about. She’s just... she’s unstable. That’s all I’m telling you. That’s all I can say. Look, I want to reassure you here, I do—we’re dragging the canal again this afternoon. We’re still searching forthe weapon and once we’ve got that, then Bob’s your uncle. Once we’ve got that, an arrest has got to be imminent.”

Back at his desk, feeling somewhat reassured, Theo sorted through his mail, including the few fan letters forwarded from his agent’s office. Time was there were dozens of these a day, and accordingly they were dealt with by one of his agent’s minions, but the flow had stemmed somewhat over the years. Theo didn’t do social media, he didn’t reply to emails, but if someone bothered to put pen to paper, he tended to reply to them personally.

Dear Mr. Myerson/Miss Macfarlane,

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, I am a big fan of your crime novelThe One Who Got Away,and I was wondering where you got your ideas from?

Theo released a groan of exasperation.Good God.Wereideasreally such a hard thing to come by? Putting them into words, onto paper, that was another story, but ideas were ten a penny, weren’t they?

Specifically where did you get the idea for this book? Was it from a newspaper report or from talking to the police? I am thinking of writing a crime thriller myself and I enjoy reading crime reports on the internet. Do you sometimes ask the police for help with plots, specific crimes, working things out etc?

Also I was wondering why inThe One Who Got Awaythe characters aren’t given names. That is quite unusual isn’t it.

Please could you reply to me by e-mail because I am eager to hear your answers to my questions.

Yours sincerely,

Henry Carter [email protected]

PS I disagreed with the reviews that said the book was “misogynist” and “pretentious,” I think they didn’t understand the story properly.

Theo laughed at that as he slid the letter onto the top of his in-tray, promising himself that he’d get to it tomorrow. He stood up, reaching across the desk for his cigarettes, and as he did he looked up and out the window, across the garden toward the towpath, where, standing stock-still and looking right at him, was Miriam Lewis.

“Jesus Christ!” He jumped backward, almost falling over his desk chair in fright. Swearing loudly, he hurried down the stairs, rushed out into the garden, flung open the back gate, looking desperately around. She was gone. Theo walked up and down the towpath for a few minutes, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, passersby skirting around him, expressions nervous. Had she really been here? Or was he seeing things now, was this where he’d got to?

Without his wife, his son, his work, Theo became desperate, and in desperation he wrote a crime novel. It was his agent’s suggestion. When I said write anything, he said, I meant it.Anything, just to get back into the habit. Try sci-fi, romance, whatever—you won’t believe some of the swill that gets published under the banner ofcommercial fiction. It doesn’t matter if it’s any good; it doesn’t need to have worth. We’ll slap someone else’s name on it. Just writesomething. And so he tried. Romance was a bust and he didn’t have the brain for sci-fi, but crime? Crime he could see working. He loved Morse, he’d read Dostoevsky. How hard could it be? All he needed was the right hook, the right concept, and he’d be away. And then an idea came to him, landed right on his doorstep, and he took it and ran with it; he worked with it, crafted it, made it into something distinctive.

The One Who Got Away, published under the pseudonym Caroline MacFarlane, was a highly experimental book, the plot unfolding backward in some sections, forward in others, with the point of view occasionally swinging 180 degrees so that the killer’s innermost thoughts were revealed to the reader. It was a book that exposed the way the sympathies of the reader might be manipulated, laying bare how quickly we jump to conclusions about guilt and innocence, power and responsibility.

The experiment was not anunqualifiedsuccess. Although Theo had carefully hidden his identity, using a woman’s name for his pseudonym (Women love crime!his agent told him.They enjoy the catharsis of victimhood.), the secret didn’t keep. Someone let the cat out of the bag, which meant of course that the book became an instant bestseller, but it also had the critics sharpening their knives (some of the reviews were quite vicious), and it brought all the crazies out of the woodwork (You stole my story!). It achieved its central aim, however. It got Theo writing again. That was the thing: when the muse fell silent, Theo refused to give up, he seized upon a scrap of a story, and he made it his own. That was the truth of it.

The One Who Got Away

Anticipation. Sometimes it’s the best part, because things don’t always turn out like you want them to, but at least you should be grateful, shouldn’t you, for the sunshine, hot on your back, and the girls going out in their short skirts and crop tops?

At the pub he sees a girl sitting with her ugly friend and she’s wearing a skirt, not a crop top but a white T-shirt and no bra and she’s beautiful.

She hitches up her skirt to give him a better look and he’s grateful for that, so he smiles at her, but instead of smiling back she makes a face and says to her ugly friend, As if.

As if.

He feels all wrong, like he’s being hollowed out from the inside, like something’s eating him up, and he feels a terrible craving, a longing left by the place her smile should have been.

TWELVE

Miriam thought she might not make it back to the boat. She thought she might pass out right there on the towpath; she could feel it coming, the crashing wave of panic, her field of vision narrowing, darkness crowding in, chest tight, breath coming in gasps, heart pounding. She crashed down the stairs into her cabin and collapsed onto the bench, head hanging, chin to chest, elbows on her knees, trying to regulate her breathing, trying to slow her racing heart.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should never have gone over there to see him—who knows what might have happened? He might have called the police, he might have claimed she was harassing him—she could have ended up jeopardizing everything she’d been working toward.

She had given in to her desire, her impatient desire to see Myerson, just to catch a glimpse. She was getting no joy at all from the news: two days had passed since her call to Detective Barker and she’d yet to hear anything about anyone new being questioned in connection with Daniel’s death.

She had started to wonder—perhaps they hadn’t taken her seriously? It wouldn’t be the first time someone had claimed to have her interests at heart, had pretended to listen to her and then had dismissed her out of hand. Perhaps Myerson had said something about her, something to discredit her? That was why she needed to see him, to see his face, to see written on it fear or stress or unhappiness.

And she knew exactly where to direct her gaze: up at the window looking out over the garden. That was the window to his study, in front of which stood the stout mahogany desk at which Theo Myerson toiled, head bent over his laptop, cigarette burning down in the square glass ashtray as he crafted sentences and conjured images. As, in an affront that felt like an act of violence, he wrote Miriam out of her own story.

---