Spine

Torquil reached out a hand towards the bookcase, to a book on the middle shelf, and slowly ran an index finger down its spine, pausing on the embossed shapes that were the letters of the author’s name. It felt good to do this; his finger, his name.

The office door flew open and Danny Steel hurtled in. Torquil’s publisher was portly, wore expensive yet ill-fitting suits, always seemed to be sweating, always hurried and was always late. Torquil pulled his arm back from the spine of the book and felt himself blushing guiltily, like a schoolboy caught smoking behind Maths Hut B.

‘Sorry I’m late, Torky, got held up - meetings, eh? Marian look after you, offer you coffee and all that?’

‘Er, no, she didn’t, actually…’

‘Good, good,’ said Danny, avoiding eye contact and rummaging amongst the mess of paper on his desk, ‘have to look after the talent, eh? Ah!’ With a triumphant exhalation he picked up a piece of paper with a few paragraphs printed on one side.

‘What’s this, Danny?’ said Torquil, ‘Is it Code Violation?’

‘Well, yeah, kinda,’ said Danny, ‘You know, you’re some guy, Torky. I mean, you’re one of our most, er, prestigious authors. All those challenging, uh, literary novels. You earn us a lot of, er, good reviews. And when we ask you to try something different, something popular, more commercial, you come up with the best thriller we’ve ever seen. It’s gonna be huge! But…’

‘There’s a but?’

‘No, nothing like that, Torky. We sorta decided you needed a new pen name for this, something to distinguish Code Violation from your, er, other work.’

‘So that it doesn’t harm the credibility of my serious novels?’

‘Absolutely. Yeah. Kinda,’ said Danny. ‘Well, no, not really. We just figured that if your real name went on it, it might put Joe Skybox off, make Hollywood less keen to film it. You know how people hate brainy stuff.’

‘Do they?’

Danny’s sweaty brow glistened in the sun streaming through the window. Torquil rested his chin in his hands and thought. Then he noticed that Danny was still clutching the sheet of paper and he asked, ‘What’s on the document, Danny?’

‘Ah, that,’ said Danny, ‘It’s a name; your nom de plume for the thriller. And, er, a little biography we’ve drafted.’

‘A biography?’

‘Yes. We felt - me and Solly - that it might be better to make up a new identity to go with the new name. You know, some entirely new guy who writes mystery thrillers with action and car chases and shooting and stuff.’

‘Solly.’ said Torquil, pensively. ‘One of these days I might switch to an agent who consults me about things. So tell me, who am I?’

‘You’re Chester Ridgeway - good name, huh? Strong. Masculine. Have a look.’

He took the paper, thinking that ‘Chester Ridgeway’ was, indeed, a long way from ‘Torquil Grant’. He read the brief passage, breathing more heavily as he got closer to the end.

Chester Ridgeway is an IT consultant from Surrey and Code Violation is his first book.

Chester is 35 and has always been interested in espionage and counterespionage. He has worked as a cybersecurity consultant for the British Secret Service. As such, it is important to protect his identity. Chester Ridgeway is not his real name.

[Well, thought Torquil, that bit is true at least]

Chester lives near Chertsey with his long-term civil partner and is active in a number of gay causes.

‘I’m gay? You’ve made me gay?’

‘Well, yeah.’ Danny frowned. ‘I hope you’re not homophobic, Torky?’

Torquil paused, composed himself, and said, ‘I’ve asked before, Danny, please don’t call me “Torky”.’

‘Hey, no need to get sore, Tork… Torquil. Now, you see the stuff about Chester being an ex-spook? That explains why he never makes public appearances and stays outta sight. Clever, huh? And you get to rake in the money but everyone still thinks you only write… well, the kind of stuff you do write.’

Code Violation was published amid an explosive publicity campaign from which the author was strangely absent. Sales were impressive. Within a few months the paperback edition came out; great piles of it appeared on the shelves of WH Smith and just as quickly disappeared. The eBook became Danny’s company’s biggest ever electronic seller.

Torquil’s wife, Ilona, was a Lecturer in Transcultural Intertextual Studies. She showed little interest in his literary work and was even more dismissive about his new popular success. Torquil tried to ease the tension by being apologetic about Code Violation, while pointing out how the royalties would ensure they were even more financially comfortable. And he refrained from asking, again, what ‘Transcultural Intertextual Studies’ actually was.

‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that with the money we’re saving now, we could manage a holiday in Strathspey this summer.’ He pictured a few weeks spent relaxing and hillwalking and visiting friends and family.

Ilona looked up from the pile of books and journal articles she was consulting for her in-progress PhD and snorted, ‘Scotland? Not bloody likely. Never again. If you’re loaded you can take us to the Caribbean. What would Isla do in those bloody Highlands of yours?’

Torquil sighed. Brad McQueen, the hero of Code Violation, would get more respect than this from his wife, if he had one. This, he pondered, was a moot point; was he married? In the limited space available for backstory in Code Violation such details had not been explored. Perhaps in the sequel?

Just a few days later, Torquil was back at his publishers, in the contracts department, discussing the advance for the Brad McQueen sequel and the terms for his next literary work. Solly was good at these things but it didn’t do to let him too far off the leash, as Torquil had learned over the Chester Ridgeway affair. After the meeting he decided to pop upstairs to see Danny.

He emerged from the lift and was greeted by Marian, Danny’s smilingly capable PA. ‘He’s in a meeting, Torquil,’ she said, ‘but he shouldn’t be long. Have a seat.’

‘Who’s with him, Marian?’

Marian smiled an uncomfortable smile, ‘I think I’d better let him tell you.’

The tense silence was broken when Danny’s door opened. The first person to emerge was a tall, muscular man in his mid-thirties, dressed in clean but rustic tweeds with an AIDS ribbon on one lapel. He was followed out by two other men, younger, darksuited, but even taller and more muscular. The two younger men walked on either side of the tweedy one, who looked like he was under arrest. None of the three spoke.

‘Who was that?’ asked Torquil, once he was inside Danny’s office.

Danny smiled uneasily. ‘The chap in tweeds? That was Chester Ridgeway.’

‘What?’

‘Bit of a situation came up, Torky. People in the security community read the author bio on Code Violation and contacted us. They said that if the story was true, Ridgeway needed protection in case his cover was blown. What were we supposed to say? Tell the secret squirrels that it was all a lie, that there is no Chester Ridgeway and risk it all coming out? No, so we hired an actor to play him, and these chaps will protect him when he’s out and about.’

Torquil’s head swam. He wrote fiction, but he wasn’t used to being in it.

‘I’m Chester Ridgeway,’ he said, ‘and I don’t exist!’

‘I know,’ Danny smiled, ‘Crazy thing, huh?’

The following day Torquil was at home in London, working at his desk. He heard a noise at the door and turned to see his daughter Isla standing there, looking at him with a sullen expression.

‘I thought you wrote that Code Violation crap?’ she said.

‘You’ve read it?’ said Torquil with genuine surprise.

‘Of course not! Mum said it sucked. Totally. And, anyway, she says writers don’t matter. Their work is just,’ and here she paused to get the words right, ‘socially constructed.’

‘Thanks for your support, Isla.’

‘Anyway you lied. You didn’t write it. The guy who wrote it is dead.’

The story had even made the half-hourly summary on the BBC News Channel and was running along the ticker on the bottom of the screen - ‘Gay Ex-spook Thriller Writer Dies in M-way Pile-up’. There had been a multiple car smash and the hapless actor playing his last role had been killed instantly. The car behind his - with the two men from the security services, Torquil guessed - had also been involved and one occupant had been killed. Somehow, in the post-crash confusion, it must have got out that one of the victims was Chester Ridgeway, and the media had gone public with it.

Torquil texted Danny, and texted him again when he didn’t reply, and then again and again. The Chester Ridgeway brand was dead - unless, perhaps, Torquil could assume another name and ‘complete’ some story ideas allegedly found among Ridgeway’s papers? He tried phoning. According to the switchboard, Danny wasn’t available.

The following evening, Ilona and Isla went off to a Transcultural Intertextual Issues Seminar at a local college. Torquil was enjoying the quietness, tapping away happily at his keyboard, when the doorbell rang. On the doorstep, wrapped tightly in voluminous raincoats, like characters in bad spy fiction, were Marian and Solly.

‘You’re in trouble, Torquil,’ said Marian as soon as the door was open, ‘Let us in and we’ll explain.’

They sat facing each other, Torquil on one sofa, Solly and Marian on the other. The visitors left their raincoats on, didn’t even unbutton them.

‘You’ve heard about Chester Ridgeway?’ said Solly.

‘I’ve heard about the actor playing him.’

‘Poor man,’ said Marian, ‘It was his biggest ever role.’ ‘Well, he played a policeman in Emmerdale, once,’ corrected Solly. ‘So what’s the problem?’ said Torquil. ‘The spook who survived seems to have blabbed about Ridgeway while he was dopey on painkillers,’ said Solly, ‘Some weasely journalist picked it up. Chester Ridgeway can’t write any more. He never lived, but now he’s dead.’ ‘That’s OK. I can write thrillers under another name.’ ‘Hold on, Torquil, let Marian tell you what she knows.’ ‘Torquil,’ said Marian, reaching out and taking his hand, ‘Danny’s hired a contract killer to rub you out.’ ‘Contract killer? Rub me out?’ ‘Obviously I don’t want to alarm you, but…’ ‘Marian, this is publishing, it’s not the mob!’ ‘Torquil, publishing is the mob. Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House, they’re all in the pockets of organised crime. People are murdered all the time in publishing. Up to now you’ve been shielded from it because you’re in literary fiction, books that no one buys or reads. You’re no use to Danny now. Your literary books lose money and you know about Chester Ridgeway. He needs you taken out. ‘Danny’s my friend, Marian, my publisher. He wouldn’t do anything bad.’ ‘Publishers can do whatever they want,’ said Solly. ‘Are you suggesting that some other publisher might have caused the crash that killed the guy they thought was Chester Ridgeway?’ Solly shrugged his shoulders slyly. ‘It might have been an accident, but some guys in publishing think that if another writer at another company is selling loads, people must be buying less of their stuff so… who knows?’

You have to run, Torquil,’ said Marian, ‘In some ways it’s the chance you’ve been waiting for. You and Ilona need to split up. You’re a writer, a creator; she doesn’t understand that. You’re a Presbyterian boy, she’s an atheist. You earn most of the money and she resents it. You wish you could move back in Scotland, Ilona doesn’t recognise any life outside the M25…’

‘Yes and Isla hates me as well, said Torquil, ‘I hope you’re going somewhere with this.’

‘Go back to Scotland, Torquil, find somewhere quiet, somewhere they won’t find you. Change your name. Write - Solly will find deals for both the literary stuff and the thrillers. And this conversation never happened, OK?’

The money from Code Violation funded Torquil’s move north and Ilona and Isla seemed happy to see him go, and happy to accept the handsome royalties he made over to them. Yet even months later, Torquil struggled to believe that publishing really was a blood-drenched gangster demi-monde. He moved to a small cottage on the southern slopes of the Monadhliath, a couple of miles north from Kingussie on a narrow road.

The new thriller was almost complete, now, a rollicking affair where a mildmannered novelist hired an actor to carry out his personal appearances. Then the actor was murdered, everyone believed the novelist himself was dead and his publishers sent hit men after him.

Solly was coming north by the Highland Chieftain from King’s Cross to discuss the novel and the author’s new persona. Torquil’s cottage was too small to take guests, so they had booked rooms in the Duke Hotel in Kingussie. Torquil, who didn’t drive, packed a holdall, his laptop and a document case and travelled to town by taxi. The drivers all knew him by now. Some remembered him from his youth, but the younger ones, and the Poles who had moved into the area, were fascinated by this affable, mysterious newcomer. He must have seemed like some donnish retired spymaster from a le Carré novel. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t so far from the truth.

He checked into the Duke and unpacked. He looked at his watch - nearly ten past seven. If it was on time, the Chieftain would already be rumbling towards Kingussie. He put on his jacket and patted his shoulder. The gun felt snug and comforting in its holster. Solly had warned him that some of the big London publishers might be tailing him as he headed north, and so Torquil should pack heat.

Torquil strode out into the sharp autumn evening, whistling. It was just a short walk to the station and when he arrived he found it was quiet, just a few people waiting for the Chieftain. ‘Sam Power’ was the author name he favoured for his new thriller strong, crisp, easy to remember. He hoped Solly would like it.

The rails sang and the headlights of a substantial train appeared at the end of the long straight from Newtonmore. Torquil was no longer the spineless writer he’d once been. He faced the lights and waited patiently for the train, for Solly, and for whatever else might accompany them.