11

Karen arrived home to find Daisy in the thick of a Zoom call with Jason. ‘You did say first thing, boss,’ Jason said, looking wounded.

Daisy turned and flashed her a grin. ‘Yeah, we were here on the dot of nine.’

Karen shrugged out of her coat and booted up her laptop. ‘Sorry. I had to see to something and it took a wee bit longer than I expected.’ She found the Zoom link and connected to the call. ‘Morning, Jason. How are you doing?’

‘Not bad, boss. It was good having something proper to do. I mean, it’s OK having gaming time and time to spend with Eilidh, but it gets kinda boring, not being able to go out and about.’

‘I know. I miss it too.’

‘But you have been out and about this morning,’ Daisy butted in from the borderline of chippiness.

‘I’ve been out of the house on police business, Daisy. Not on a whim.’ The temperature dropped a few degrees. ‘How did your researches go, Jason?’

He studied his notebook with a frown. ‘Jake Stein was one of the top-selling UK authors until the year before he died. He published fifteen bestselling crime novels. I think. It’s hard to be clear because some of them have different titles in America. According to the wee bit about him in his books, he’d sold more than ten million copies worldwide and his books were translated into seventeen languages. He took a bit of stick over the years for the way he wrote violence against women. Like he relished it. But he used to say he was highlighting the way society allowed those attitudes to persist in so many men. Not him, obviously, according to him anyway. Plus he said he was reflecting reality.’

Karen sighed. ‘I don’t think his particular brand of gruesome voyeurism had much to do with highlighting male attitudes. More about pandering to them. You said he stopped being such a bestseller the year before he died. What happened? Did he just write a couple of really bad books? Or what?’

‘There was a massive scandal,’ Daisy interrupted.

‘I was getting to that,’ Jason muttered, mutinous.

Karen nodded encouragement, then realised that on Zoom, neither of her junior officers could know who she was encouraging. ‘On you go, Jason.’

‘It started in the book world but it spilled out into the mainstream media. His latest book got pretty poor reviews. Readers turned on him on the socials about sadistic violence and sexual degradation. But what totally scuppered him was that this woman, Marga Durham, turned up at his publication party and walloped him in the middle of the celebrations. Boss, she totally went for it. A massive skelp then floods of tears. Turns out, Stein had an affair with her that went sour and he thought he’d get his own back by putting her in the book. People in the business would read between the lines and figure she was a masochistic slut, and he’d have got his own back.’

Daisy, clearly impatient at the pace of Jason’s narrative, cut in: ‘Except he didn’t do a good enough job of disguising her. Everybody spotted who the character was based on, and Marga Durham was trolled mercilessly. Stein was publicly humiliated. His wife filed for divorce and he had to pay Durham a good-sized wedge to stop her suing the arse off him. And his wife’s lawyers argued that the payment should come out of Stein’s share, not out of the common pot. So he got stung both ways.’

Grimly, Jason grabbed the action back. ‘And his publishers dumped him. He’s with a wee Scottish imprint called Stooshie now.’

Daisy scoffed. ‘Stooshie by name but not by nature. They haven’t got the cash to stir up a publicity storm for their books. So Jake Stein suffered twice over with his next book.’

‘OK. So much for the public scandal. What’s the word behind people’s hands?’ Karen genuinely wondered how much Jason had been able to garner online.

‘The wife of the guy who runs the book festival is a client of Eilidh’s. They get on like a house on fire. Eilidh says she loves a good gossip, so she gave her a ring. She pretended another client was thinking about writing a biography of Stein, and Eilidh said she’d ask around to see whether anybody thought that was a good idea.’

‘Nice idea,’ Karen said. ‘Might not work in normal life but in lockdown, everybody’s desperate for a good blether.’

‘No kidding, they were on the phone for nearly an hour, talking about all kinds of nonsense. But in the middle of it all, she said some interesting stuff about Stein. They always had to keep the good-looking young women away from him, apparently. It wasn’t so much that he was handsy or that, it was just that he was very good at making them feel special and whisking them off into the night. The flings never lasted long, and he could be brutal when it came to dropping the lassies once he’d got bored with them.’

‘Not so different from plenty of other guys,’ Karen mused.

‘Except most of them haven’t got the gloss of wealth and celebrity that Stein had. He had more effective armour against the knock-back,’ Daisy pointed out.

‘He was lucky that he’d never come up against one as gutsy as Marga before.’

‘Maybe he’d just never been stupid enough to point the finger at them publicly,’ Jason said. ‘It must have been horrible, knowing that everybody was acting like they were grossed out, and they couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. Like, “Fancy thinking a cool dude like Jake Stein would be interested in the likes of you, Marga Durham?” ’ He slipped into a worryingly accurate impression of a young Edinburgh woman. It wasn’t flattering to the breed.

‘What else? Second homes? Hobbies? Pastimes?’

The flicker of notebook pages again. ‘When he was still married, they had the big house in Ravelston Dykes. No holiday homes or weekend cottages. He said in one interview, “Why would I take on the bother of a second home? If I want to go somewhere for a weekend away, or to hide away and write, I’ll rent someone else’s place and let them have all the hassle.” Hobbies were fast cars and eating out. He used to play rugby but he quit four years ago after he did his knee in. He was a chess champion when he was at school but there’s nothing about him playing in recent years.’

Karen thought for a moment. ‘Did he do any teaching? Any mentoring?’

Jason shook his head. ‘Nothing recent. About five years ago, he taught a course up at Moniack Mhor in the Highlands. He said – give me a minute . . . ’ Jason frowned and peered into his screen. He’d clearly moved away from Zoom and forgotten they could still see him as he searched for his notes. Karen and Daisy exchanged a smile. Then his attention shifted back to them.

‘Got it. “I had a perfectly pleasant time. There were a couple of promising writers there. But I came away firmly convinced that you can’t teach people to write. You can help them become better if they’re willing to listen, but that’s about the size of it. And that’s really the job of an editor, not a teacher. But it’s a profitable racket for universities and colleges, so good luck to them. I don’t see fleecing people of their life savings as being part of my role.” ’

‘Mister Nice Guy,’ Karen said. ‘If he’d been murdered, there would have been no shortage of suspects. Is there anything at all that even hints at a connection between him and Lara Hardie?’

Jason hesitated. ‘Maybe not a connection, as such?’

‘Tell me.’ Karen felt the frustration of not having direct eye contact with Jason. Two screens mediating their conversation did not allow her to fix him with her beady eye, she realised.

‘I managed to access the photos the CSIs took of Lara Hardie’s bedrooms. Her flat and her parents’ home.’

‘How did you manage that?’ Karen butted in.

He flushed. ‘I asked Tamsin.’

Tamsin Martineau was a feisty Australian who had somehow managed to worm her way into every department of the forensics unit at Police Scotland’s Gartcosh campus. She knew everybody and they all seemed to owe her favours. Karen was torn between admiration for Jason’s chutzpah, and annoyance that he’d dared to suborn her personal contact. ‘Since when have you been on terms with Tamsin?’ she grouched.

‘I always stop for a blether when you send me over there.’

‘He takes her very chocolatey biscuits,’ Daisy revealed.

Karen laughed. ‘Fair enough.’ Biscuits were the currency of the forensics unit; Tamsin was the equivalent of the Governor of the Bank of England. ‘Good for you, Jason, I like a bit of initiative.’

He squirmed in his seat. ‘It’s what Phil would have done.’

But Phil had far more charm than you, Jason. What you did took courage too. ‘So what did you spot in the pix?’

‘She was a big reader, boss. Bookshelves all along one wall of her bedroom, and a bookcase in her room in the flat. One of those IKEA ones, by the looks of it. Anyway, I zoomed in as close as I could get. It was hard to make out all the titles, but she was really anal about how she sorted out her books. Eilidh organises hers by colour, which I think is mental because you can never find what you’re looking for unless you already know what colour it is. But Lara was dead sensible. She arranged them alphabetically. Obviously, she liked some writers more than others. But in her shelves at home, there’s a gap where Jake Stein would fit. There’s not any other obvious gaps. And in her student flat, there’s a whole block of Jake Stein. All his novels, in a row. She must have brought them to uni with her when she started there. Like she didn’t want to be parted from them.’ Jason looked triumphant. ‘She was a real Stein nut.’