Stealth Read Free Page B

it was over I congratulated him.
    â€˜Thanks – but what happened to the big man?’ was the blushing response.
    â€˜Size isn’t everything,’ I told him and went off to look for Patrick, not expecting to find him and more than a little desperate to know what was going on. True enough, I failed to locate him, met Alan and we went in to lunch together.
    He looked ghastly, the once tubby and frankly, sleek and self-satisfied man now gaunt and hollow-eyed. Despite his assurances – he has always been a very positive soul – that he was recovering after two major operations, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, I feared for him.
    â€˜You’re with Berkley Morton now, aren’t you?’ he enquired after some general conversation, not really eating what was on the plate in front of him.
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Never did like the man. A whole brass band of self-blown trumpets.’
    â€˜You have a point there,’ I said, amused by this neat vignette. It was Alan who had helped me immensely when I had first started writing, taking me on when I had not had so much as a short story published. Our relationship had been a slightly stormy one – my fault, especially when Patrick had come back into my life and I was going through emotional turmoil – but Alan had always been able to make me laugh.
    â€˜Tell me, what do you know about Clement Hamlyn?’ I requested.
    â€˜Nothing repeatable in the present company,’ was his immediate response.
    â€˜Censorship isn’t important to me.’
    A glimmer of the old gossip-junkie appeared. ‘May I ask why you want to know?’
    â€˜He was supposed to be on a panel with me and a couple of others this morning but didn’t show up.’
    â€˜I’m not surprised. He drinks heavily. Probably sleeping off his breakfast.’
    â€˜And? Come on, I’m curious. What have you heard through the agents’ grapevine?’
    Alan took a deep breath and then said, ‘That he served an apprenticeship for crime writing in London by hitting old ladies over the head to steal their pension money, acted as a paid thug for a couple of minor crime barons as well as having his own little gang on the side. One of his hobbies is rape, both sexes, isn’t fussy. Uses it as a weapon to settle old grievances or as a threat to extort money out of one-time partners in crime. Or if he just happens to feel like it.’
    â€˜That last bit was in the present tense.’
    Alan nodded. ‘But for God’s sake, don’t quote me as it’s rumoured he has admirers, even eyes and ears, in the world of crime
and
crime-writing. I have enough problems as it is without that bloody monster knocking on my door.’
    I rather got the gist of that and changed the subject.
    The afternoon passed. To a modest audience – true enough almost everyone seemed to be in the bars – I had given the reading from my latest novel,
Death Calls on Friday
, which seemed to be well received, and then attended a debate on the subject of:
Will Ebooks Mean the End of Libraries?
Still no sign of Patrick or Hamlyn. This was not what I had expected at all, the plan having been that I would monitor the author while he was attending various functions and inform Patrick accordingly via my mobile. I had been rather hoping that this would have allowed him some rest, sleep even, and thus go towards enabling him to draw a line under what had taken place at that farmhouse in Sussex. I found myself wondering what had happened to it: the Keys Estate that had belonged to the Woodleys, a long-established local family.
    I was also finding it difficult to get the episode off my mind. Commander Greenway had commended Patrick, and he had been cleared by the subsequent inquiry of any wrongdoing. He had been engaged, as Greenway had emphasized, on account of his Special Forces experience for situations exactly like this. What he had done – and he