Quintin Jardine: Fatal Last Words

‘ Up with the bloody lark?’ she murmured. ‘I don’t hear the little bastard among that lot. He’s still sat on the nest, sensible bird that he is.’

She was on the move so early that the dawn chorus was still singing at full volume; robins, blackbirds, wrens, pigeons and even the occasional seagull, all doing their best to wake the elegant old grey city from its slumbers.

Not that Randall Mosley relied on nature for her morning call; like much of the developed world, she set the alarm on her mobile phone to haul her back to life. Back home in Murrayfield, Denzel would be making the most of her absence, grabbing an extra couple of hours’ sleep before switching on his computer and starting work on his project.

The morning was bright and the sky was a very pale blue, promising one of the dry, warm days for which she and her staff had prayed during the second half of August, those seventeen days around which her world had become focused, in what was the first year of her new role. She pressed the button to lock her car. If she had taken the direct route into Charlotte Square, through her basement office at Number 5a, it would have meant cancelling and resetting the alarm system, so instead she headed out of the park, shielding her eyes against the low sun as she turned into St Colme Street, and until she could turn out of its glare into North Charlotte Street. She saw not a single moving vehicle as she walked, only those in the residents’ bays, and the overnighters hoping to stay where they were for free throughout Sunday.

She was breathing heavily as she reached the top of the steep pavement alongside Number 1 Charlotte Square, and cursing the few spare kilos that made all the difference. Weight-watching had become a constant in her life, and it was made none the easier by the round of receptions and parties at which her attendance was an unspoken obligation. She liked to believe that she was a strong-willed woman, but she had discovered that her resistance was low when it came to the trays of canapés that seemed to pass constantly before her during the summer months. They had culminated in her own launch event, from which she and Denzel had escaped just after midnight. . six and a half hours earlier. . once the last trio of her journalist guests had headed off along Young Street, in the hope that the Oxford Bar would still be open.

The main entrance to Charlotte Square Gardens was still closed and under guard, but she used her key to open the small, squeaking gate in the north-east corner of the iron retaining fence. As she stepped inside, one of the night security staff, alerted by the sound, appeared from a small igloo-shaped tent; it served as the press pod during opening hours, and was pitched on the left of the wooden walkway on which she stood.

‘Morning, Randy,’ the man greeted her, with a Welsh lilt, as she approached him. He was clean-shaven, and his uniform was military sharp, but his spectacles failed to mask the dark circles under his eyes.

‘Hi, Gwyn,’ she replied, her accent flat and cosmopolitan. ‘All quiet during the night?’

‘Eventually,’ he told her. ‘Things never really settle down from the Saturday frenzy until about two in the morning, given all the pubs there are around here. We had no bother, though, unless you count a couple of drunks taking a piss through the railings on the far side of the site.’

Mosley frowned. ‘I count them; the smell tends to linger, unless it rains. Mind you,’ she conceded, ‘I suppose I’d rather have a mild smell of urine than the quagmire that I’m told my predecessor had for the last couple of years.’

‘So far so good then,’ said the senior guard. ‘Have you checked the long-range weather forecast?’

She smiled. ‘Every day, Mr Richards, every single day. Currently they’re promising warm and sunny for the first half of this week, with a good chance of it continuing through the month.’

‘Pray to God,’ he muttered.

The director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival did not believe in God, but she allowed herself a small compromise. ‘Amen,’ she muttered, as she moved on, towards the big rectangular module that served as her on-site office.

She knew that it would be empty; at that hour of the morning some of her people would be struggling into wakefulness, many would still be asleep, and one or two of the younger brigade might have just made it home from a night in the clubs. Still, she let herself in, moving methodically from desk to desk, checking that nobody had left without putting everything in place for the day to come. Everything was as it should have been; she knew that her fussiness was unnecessary, and that her morning ritual would upset her more senior staff had they known of it, but it was something she had to do if she was not to spend much of the day fretting about things that might go wrong.

When she had finished her round, she moved across to her own desk, took her laptop from her rucksack and pressed the ‘on’ button. When it had booted up, she logged on to the internet through the wireless network, and opened her mailbox. As usual it was stacked with incoming. She had banned the Festival staff from communicating with her by email, reminding them that the vocal method was still best, but that had only removed a small percentage of the total. Of the survivors, most came from authors, their publicists, their agents and, in a couple of cases, from the family members who managed their diaries. She worked her way through them as quickly as she could, forwarding the majority to the people who could deal with them best, until all she was left with were four, one from her chairman congratulating her on the success of the opening day and offering a far too belated apology for his absence from the Welcome Party, two others from people she felt were too important (or, in one case, who felt himself too important) to be delegated, and another that had caught her eye.

She opened the first and swore, yelling, ‘Now he tells me!’ loud enough to draw a quick glance from Gwyn Richards, as he passed by the window.

The message was from Micah Sodje, an African novelist who had won the previous year’s Man Booker and who was rumoured to be a hot tip for the Nobel Prize, soon to be announced. He was her top attraction for the following Sunday and his event had sold out within hours. ‘Dear Mrs Mosley,’ it began inaccurately, ignoring her doctorate, ‘I am afraid that I find that progress on my next work has been slower than anticipated, owing to the effect of my success last year. If I am to meet my delivery date and keep my editor happy, something has to go, and I fear that it has to be Edinburgh. Please accept my withdrawal, with regret.’

‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ she shouted, wondering whether she knew enough members of the Swedish Academy to turn the Nobel vote against the defaulting author. ‘Now I’ve got three hundred and fifty tickets to be refunded and event sponsors to be smoothed! Who the hell does he think he is?’

Fuming, she searched through her contacts list until she found the address of Sodje’s publicist, then forwarded the cancellation with no message other than a long black line of exclamation marks.

Controlling herself with an effort, she moved on to the next item. The screen name adma was showing. It gave little away, but she knew whose it was, and that it was personal rather than business. Aileen de Marco was Scotland’s First Minister, and a neighbour, as her official residence, Bute House, stood next door to the Book Festival’s more modest office. Not long after she had taken office, she had invited the equally newly appointed director for coffee, to canvass her opinion on the way the arts had been handled by the administration of her own inglorious predecessor. Mosley had been struck by the politician’s frankness, and de Marco by her guest’s global knowledge and evident enthusiasm for her subject; the two women had become regular correspondents. She opened the message.