The Sentence Is Death

There was another silence. I don’t know who was more shocked: me because I had never suspected it or Dawn because he had guessed.

‘Are you going to deny it?’ Hawthorne demanded.

I looked at Akira, who was sitting in her chair looking like a puppet that had been thrown aside, its limbs disconnected. On the sofa, Dawn Adams looked genuinely afraid. ‘You can’t tell anybody,’ she whispered.

‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed. ‘Akira Anno wrote Excalibur Rising and Prisoners of Blood and . . .’ I’d forgotten the title of the first one.

‘The Twelve Men of Steel,’ Akira muttered, still not meeting my eyes.

‘But that’s impossible. They’re full of pornography.’ I searched for the worst thing I could say about them. ‘They objectify women!’

‘They sell millions of copies.’ Despite everything, Dawn had leapt to the defence of her friend. Now she got to her feet and walked over to her desk, taking her place on the other side. That put her closer to Akira, back in control. ‘It was my idea. I met Akira at Dubai, just like I told you. She’s a wonderful writer. Her books have won a great many prizes and there was even a film. But you know the market for literary fiction, Anthony. It’s tiny, almost non-existent.’

There was a bottle of water on the desk. She poured herself a glass. ‘This wasn’t Akira’s idea. It was mine. I had to persuade her, but I knew there was a huge market in sword and sorcery.’

‘And sex,’ I added.

‘Whatever you want to call it. Game of Thrones was already huge . . . before the TV series. The two of us were having a cocktail by the pool and I suggested it to Akira almost as a joke, really. If someone like George R. R. Martin could make a fortune out of fantasy fiction then it would be easy for a writer as talented as her.’

‘But it’s everything she despises!’ I insisted. It was almost as if Akira wasn’t in the room. She had been banished, replaced by Mark Belladonna who had come down from Northumberland, somehow overcoming his phobia.

‘There isn’t a writer in the world who doesn’t want to sell!’ Dawn countered.

‘Of course that’s true!’ I agreed. ‘But she . . . !’ I pointed at Akira. ‘She’s a complete hypocrite!’

Akira looked up. ‘Nobody must know,’ she whispered and even behind the tinted glasses I could see the panic in her eyes. ‘You can’t tell them! It will finish me!’

Dawn nodded. ‘If people found out that Akira was the author, it could do enormous damage to her reputation. And it certainly wouldn’t help my business either!’ She was more reasonable than Akira, more pragmatic. But then she was a publisher, not a writer. ‘You don’t know how hard we’ve had to work to keep Mark Belladonna out of the public eye,’ she went on. ‘It’s true that Akira, in her other work, has a completely different profile but lots of writers have used an alias.’ She sighed. ‘When I suggested the idea, it was just a joke. Neither of us had any idea how huge the series would become.’

So this was the income stream that Stephen Spencer had mentioned, the earnings that Akira had kept from Richard Pryce. Dawn was right, of course. Once the public found out how they had been tricked, Akira, Mark and Kingston Books might well be finished.

But Hawthorne was in an unforgiving mood. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think it’s going to be very difficult to keep this from Detective Inspector Grunshaw.’

Akira said nothing.

‘Anthony, I’m sure you understand the situation here.’ Dawn had decided to bypass Hawthorne and appeal directly to me. ‘I’ve put my life into this business and Doomworld is what holds it all together. And Akira hasn’t done anything wrong.’ She leaned forward. ‘Her series is loved. It’s being filmed for TV. Why ruin her life?’

‘That’s a haiku!’ I exclaimed.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What you just said.’ I glanced at Akira, who had folded herself up, in the depths of misery. Despite everything, I felt sorry for her. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

Next to me, Hawthorne stirred. ‘That’s not usually very much,’ he said.

He was actually laughing when we went back out into the street. I’d seen Hawthorne’s sense of humour, which was subtle and a little devious. But I don’t think I’d ever heard him laugh.

‘How did you know?’ I asked. ‘About Akira Anno and Mark Belladonna?’

‘It’s pretty straightforward.’ He took out a cigarette and we set off, walking back towards Holborn station. ‘To start with, we knew Akira was hiding money. Stephen Spencer had told us. How else could she have been earning it apart from writing? And then there was the way she lied about meeting Dawn Adams. Why make up all that crap about a cottage in the middle of nowhere? Having dinner with a publisher is about the most natural thing in the world for a writer – unless they’re up to something pretty unusual together.