Free MURDER BRIEF by Mark Dryden Page A

information. "Yes, of course."
    "Alright. But if you try to
involve me, I’ll deny telling you anything. Understand?"
    Robyn didn’t even blink. "Of
course."
    Beverley leaned forward and said
quietly: "Well, yes, Alice had an affair. Like I said, we talked
about everything. For a few years before she died, she saw a
guy."
    Eureka. Robyn tried to slow her
heart and control her breathing. "Who?"
    "One of the writers she
handled."
    "Who?"
    "Guy called Terry Torkhill?"
    Robyn regarded herself as well
read, but didn’t know the name. "OK. And were they serious?"
    Beverley shrugged. "I don’t
think so. I got the impression it was just nice and uncomplicated,
which is what they both wanted."
    "And how was the affair going
when she died?"
    Beverley shrugged. "OK, I think.
I mean, she never complained about it."
    "Have you met Torkhill?"
    "Yes, quite a few times, and I
quite like him."
    "Why?"
    She shrugged. "He’s no oil
painting. But he’s intelligent, funny and quite nice."
    "Single?"
    "Yes. A bit of a loner, like
many writers."
    "What does he write?"
    "Crime thrillers."
    "Good ones?"
    Beverley grinned. "Question of
taste, I suppose. I’ve only read one. It was brutal, violent and
misogynistic. But I rather enjoyed the lack of artifice. His style
comes from within the story, rather than outside, if you know what
I mean."
    She didn’t. "And Alice liked
them, I suppose?"
    "I don't know. We didn’t really
discuss them. They don’t provoke much critical reflection, and she
didn't like him because of his command of the long sentence, if you
know what I mean."
    "What do you think about her
sleeping with one of her novelists? Sounds a bit unprofessional to
me."
    Beverley smiled. "Maybe. But
book industry people aren’t professionals. We’re in a small dying
trade with lousy pay. That’s probably why there’s so much bonking,
to compensate for the rotten conditions."
    Robyn giggled. "OK. And tell me,
have the police talked to you?"
    Beverley lifted her eyebrows.
"No. Should they?"
    "Yes."
    "Maybe they decided they’d
charged the right man and there was no point."
    "Maybe. Oh, and one last thing:
do you have Terry Torkhill’s telephone number?"
    "Sure. Let me get it."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    "I understand you write crime
thrillers," Robyn said as Terry Torkhill led her down a short
hallway to his living-room.
    "Yeah. They’re variously
described as splatter novels, blood ballets or nihilistic
noir."
    "What are they about?"
    "I usually bring together a
group of violent criminals who commit a dirty deed, like rob a bank
or kidnap a wealthy industrialist. But, of course, the biggest
crimes they commit are against each other."
    "No good guys?"
    Torkhill smiled. "The bad guys are the good guys."
    "Any women?"
    "Only if they like shootin’ and
rootin’." Torkhill smiled. "So, as you can guess, when I write a
novel, I don’t unlock the great mysteries of life or tear out a
chunk of my soul and give it to the reader. I assume you haven’t
read any of my books?"
    "I’m afraid not. I’m out of
touch with nihilistic noir, though I sometimes read detective
novels, mostly Scandinavian."
    "You mean novels about depressed
policemen written in Ikea prose?"
    She laughed. "Yeah."
    The living-room was neat and
clean as a dental surgery, with modular furniture on sea-grass
matting. Glass doors fronted a balcony overlooking Bondi Beach.
Hundreds of brown bodies lay scattered on the sand like the
casualties of an invasion force. Swimmers bobbed about in the surf;
wet-suited surfies scrawled on the front of waves. In the distance,
two oil tankers crawled along the horizon like black slugs.
    They sat and faced each other
over a glass coffee-table. He was in his early forties, quite tall,
with thinning brown hair and plain features. If she stood next to
him on a bus, she wouldn’t remember anything about him when she got
off, except maybe for his twinkling eyes.
    He said: "Do you know the real
difference between a so-called literary novel and