CHAPTER 16

 

Slater lit a cigarette and blew smoke over the top of his laptop, then began to type. The words came quickly and he had to make a conscious effort to slow himself down because the faster he typed the more mistakes he made. Writing had always come easily to Slater. He was able to picture a scene in his mind, movie-like, and then transfer that to a written description with next to no effort. He was rarely lost for a word and only occasionally did he have to resort to using a thesaurus. There were two books next to his laptop, a Collins dictionary and a Roget’s thesaurus, both well-thumbed because he’d had them for more than ten years. They were a Christmas gift from his mother, and she’d signed them both, “To Adrian, With Love For Ever. And Ever And Ever And Ever And Ever And Ever.” She’d had her third nervous breakdown just six months after giving him the books.

As he pecked away at the keyboard he heard soft footsteps on the pier and hushed voices. A man and a woman. He carried on typing, bending low over the keyboard as he worked. Something metallic tapped against the porthole behind him and he sighed and sat back in his chair. He ran his hands through his hair. It had taken him the best part of an hour to get into the zone, the place where the words came thick and fast, and now the spell was broken. He turned around. There was a man peering through the glass, holding up a detective’s shield. “Mr Slater?”

“Who wants to know?” asked Slater.

The detective waved his badge. “New York Police Department,” he said.

“I know, I was being ironic,” said Slater.

“Can we have a few words with you, Mr Slater?”

“How about filigree, octopus and snowflake?”

The detective frowned. “What?”

“You wanted a few words, there they are. You have a nice day.” Slater turned around and looked at his laptop screen. Slater knew that the detective wouldn’t go away, he was just messing with him. He smiled as the detective tapped on the porthole with his badge again. Slater turned around. “Now what?”

“We’d like a conversation, Mr Slater. Face to face. Can we come aboard?”

Slater pushed himself out of his chair and walked to the rear of the cabin and pulled back the hatch. He climbed up the stairs. It had been dark for a few hours but the marina’s lights were on. One of them was shining directly down onto his yacht and he shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand as he struggled to focus.

The detective who’d knocked on the porthole was in his late forties with graying swept-back hair and the look of a bloodhound whose best years were behind it – tired, watery eyes, broken blood vessels in his cheeks and heavy jowls. He showed his badge to Slater. “My name is Sergeant Mitchell,” he said. “Ed Mitchell. My colleague is Joe Lumley.”

Lumley was a decade younger, a few inches taller and a lot more feminine but she had the same world-weary eyes as if she’d long since given up hope of anyone ever telling her the truth. Her hair was sun-bleached blonde, cut shoulder-length, and she had a deep tan as if she spent a lot of time outdoors. She smiled showing gleaming white teeth and held out her badge.

“Short for Joanne?” asked Slater.

She smiled amiably as if she’d been asked the question a thousand times. “My dad wanted a boy,” she said. “Joe’s what it says on my birth certificate.” She put her badge away. She was wearing a charcoal grey suit over a pale blue polo-neck and as she slid the badge into an inside pocket he caught a glimpse of a large automatic nestled in a nylon shoulder holster.

“I thought detectives mostly kept their guns on their belts,” said Slater.

“We’re flexible,” said Lumley. “I find the belt holster ruins the line of the suit.”

“Good to know,” said Slater.

“Why?” asked Lumley. “Why’s that good to know?”

“I’m a writer,” said Slater. “Details like that, it helps with authenticity.”

“Can we come aboard and have a talk?” asked Mitchell.

“Do you have business cards?” asked Slater.

“Business cards?” repeated Mitchell.

“Yeah, cards with your names and stations and phone numbers and stuff. I always prefer business cards to badges. You give them out to contacts, witnesses, snitches.”

Mitchell smiled thinly, took out his wallet and gave Slater a card. Slater looked at it, then nodded at Lumley. “Can I have yours as well?”

Lumley looked across at Mitchell and the sergeant nodded. Lumley took a card from her wallet and gave it to Slater, her face a blank mask. The amiable smile had vanished along with the badge. Slater smiled brightly and slipped the cards into the back pocket of his jeans. “So how can I help New York’s finest?”

“Can we come aboard?” asked Mitchell.

“Do you have a warrant?”

“We just want a chat, Mr Slater. There’s no need for a warrant.”

“You don’t have anything to hide do you, Mr Slater?” asked Lumley.

Slater turned to look at the younger detective. The suit was expensive, the polo-neck looked as if it was cashmere and the shoes were Prada. There was a slim gold watch on her left wrist and the belt looked Italian. Slater doubted that she could afford clothes and shoes like that on a detective’s salary and the woman had the arrogance of an Ivy League education. “Did you go to Columbia, detective?” he asked.

Lumley frowned. “Yes,” she said hesitantly.

“Law?”

“Do we know each other?” asked Lumley.

“Just an educated guess,” said Slater. “Law is just about the only subject that would lead to a career in law enforcement and Columbia is local. But assuming you graduated then you’d know that it’s just not in my best interests to allow you onto my boat unless you’ve got a warrant. Suppose there was a body down there. If I let you on board and you see the body then I’m in trouble.”

“Do you have a body in there, Mr Slater?” asked the sergeant.

“It doesn’t have to be a body,” said Slater. “It could just as relevantly be a dozen illegal immigrants or a kilo of Colombia’s finest. My point is that I gain absolutely nothing by allowing you into my personal space.”

“Do you have something down there that you don’t want us to see, Mr Slater?” asked Mitchell.

“Now you’re fishing, Sergeant,” said Slater.

“We could come back with a warrant,” said Lumley.

Slater shrugged carelessly. “You could try, but I doubt that a judge is going to grant you a warrant just because you think there’s a body down there. He’s going to want to know what evidence you have.”

“There’s the book that you’re writing.”

“And you have copy of that, do you?” He grinned when he saw the look of annoyance on the detective’s face. “Of course you don’t. So what other evidence do you have that might persuade a judge to give you a warrant. The fact that you don’t like the cut of my jib?”

“The what?”

“The cut of my jib. It’s a nautical expression. And the cut of my jib is no reason for a judge to sign a warrant for you to go searching through my home. And that’s what this boat is. My home.”

“It’s the book that we want to talk about, Mr Slater,” said Mitchell. Sweat was beading on his forehead and he wiped it with his sleeve. “The university is concerned that…”

“The university?” interrupted Slater. “A university is an inanimate institution. It isn't capable of thought or concern.”

“Doctor Grose. The lecturer in charge of the creative writing course. He's told us about the book that you’re writing.”

“And?

“And like Doctor Grose, we're also concerned.

“It's the grammar, right?” said Slater.

Mitchell frowned. “The grammar?”

“Yeah, it's my grammar that lets me down. And the descriptive passages aren't as good as they might be.”

“It's not the grammar that concerns us,” said the sergeant. “It's the content.”

“Content?”

“He’s messing with us,” said Lumley, reaching for the handcuffs she had in a pouch on her belt. “He can talk to us downtown.”

“Are you going to arrest me, Detective Lumley? Because you’ll need probable cause and I don’t see that you’ve got that. What do you think, Sergeant Mitchell? A wrongful arrest suit isn’t going to look good on your record, is it?”

Mitchell looked over at Lumley and gave her a small shake of the head. Lumley let go of her handcuffs.

“Here’s the thing, Mr Slater. Doctor Grose is concerned that your book is some sort of blueprint. For a murder.”

Slater laughed. “It’s a novel. A work of fiction.”

“About killing a student.”

Slater shook his head. “It’s a book, sergeant. A book about a serial killer. But just because it’s written in the first person doesn’t mean that I’m a killer.”

“So what was that about having a body in the boat?” asked Lumley.

“That was me messing with you, detective. For which I apologize. It’s just my sense of humor.” He shrugged. “I’m a writer. Sometimes I play around with dialogue, just to see what effect it has.”

“You need to be careful with that, Mr Slater,” said Lumley. “You could end up in trouble.”

“I’ll be sure to bear that in mind, Detective Lumley. The last thing I want is trouble with New York’s finest.” His smile widened. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Who was it who decided that Courtesy, Respect and Professionalism was a sensible slogan to promote the NYPD.”

“Why?” asked Lumley.

“Because it spells CRAP. Why would they want police officers driving around with CRAP on their vehicles. Isn’t that weird?”

“It’s Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect,” said Mitchell.

“Really?” Slater nodded. “Well, you live and learn.”

“Do you have a driver’s license, Mr Slater?” asked Mitchell.

“Why would I drive in New York?”

“I didn’t ask if you drove, I asked if you had a driver’s license.”

“Because you want to know my date of birth. So you can run a check on me. It’s the one thing that never changes, but you know that of course. Your weight can go up and down, you can dye your hair, you can wear contacts, but your date of birth is the one constant that follows you throughout your life. Which is why it’s the lynchpin of any database.”

“So what is it, Mr Slater? Your date of birth?”

“I don’t have to tell you, sergeant. So I’m not going to.”

“We can get it from the university,” said Lumley.

“Then do that,” said Slater.

“You’re not being very cooperative,” said the sergeant.

“Why should I be?” asked Slater. “I’m on a creative course and the idiot who’s running the course takes a dislike to the book and calls in the cops. Whatever happened to my First Amendment rights.”

“This isn’t about your right to Free Speech,” said Mitchell. “It’s about you threatening to kill a fellow student.”

“It’s a book,” said Slater. “A novel. A work of fiction.”

“In which you threaten to kill a student on the course,” said Mitchell, folding his arms.

“And you know that, how?” asked Slater.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you read a copy? Because if you have, I’d be interested to know how you got hold of it.”

Mitchell looked uncomfortable but didn’t reply.

“So I guess you haven’t got a copy,” said Slater.

“You read out an excerpt in class,” said Lumley.

“Which was then reported to you second-hand by Doctor Grose,” said Slater. “Which makes it hearsay.”

“Have you studied law, Mr Slater?” asked Lumley.

“Would you treat me with more respect if I had, Miss Lumley?”

“You can’t go around threatening people, Mr Slater.”

“I didn’t. I read a few words from my work in progress.”

“About killing a student,” said Mitchell.

“It was hypothetical. What might be. Dozens of crime writers write books from the point of view of serial killers, there’s nothing new in that. What about Thomas Harris? Are you going to arrest him for getting inside the head of Hannibal Lecter?”

“If he threatened to kill someone, yes,” said Mitchell.

“I didn’t threaten to kill anybody,” said Slater. He looked at his watch. “Look, it’s getting late and I want to finish the chapter I’m on.”

“How about letting us have a copy of your novel, Mr Slater?” asked Lumley. “So that we can put our minds at rest?”

“I don’t think so,” said Slater.

“We could get a warrant,” said Lumley.

“And good luck with that,” said Slater. “You come back when you’ve got one.”

He turned to go back down below deck.

“Just one more thing, Mr Slater,” said Mitchell. “We’ll be watching you from now on. You make one false move and we’ll be coming down on you like…”

“A ton of bricks?” Slater finished for him.

“Don’t play the smart mouth with me, Slater,” said Mitchell.

“And don’t you play the hard cop with me, Sergeant,” said Slater. “Just show me the courtesy, respect and professionalism that you are supposed to and we’ll get along just fine.”

He turned his back on the detectives and went down the stairs into the main cabin. He lit a cigarette and watched through one of the portholes as they walked together down the pier. “Arse clowns,” he muttered to himself, then sat down in front of his laptop and began to type.