Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“My favorite of yours is Off the Rails,” Majors said (this is, for those who don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of McTavish’s work, his third Morbund novel).

Brooke nodded along. I dimly remembered the book, in which a couple staged a car accident with a commuter train to cover up the murder of their son. There was a particularly sordid scene involving the setup to the collision, in which the parents substituted two freshly dug-up corpses as their own in the front seats, designed to be pulverized beyond identification, but other than that I remembered little of the overarching plot.

“I recall a news story that was somewhat similar actually,” Majors added. “So, on top of colors and mood boards, you must find inspiration from”—she stole Royce’s trick of faking effort into word choice—“elsewhere.”

“Nae.” McTavish shook his head. His accent came out more heavily now, as his tongue tired and slipped around his consonants. “I don’t really take stock of much news. Of course the world around me sinks in every now and then, and I have to keep up with policing and technology, but if I paid too much attention to the news I’d never have an original idea for a book. You know what they say: truth is stranger than fiction.”

“There was a similar story though. In my hometown actually,” Majors said. “When I was a kid.”

Someone cleared their throat loudly in the audience. I looked over and saw Wyatt coughing into his hand. His focus was locked on to Majors, the expression on his face clear: Watch it. I saw Jasper roll his eyes at Harriet, as if the tension was her fault for asking a question.

“Was there?” McTavish asked, interested.

“You don’t remember? Lisa, you’d know the story. It was thirty-two years ago. Nineteen ninety-one.”

Lisa shrunk into her shoulder blades. “I don’t think I want to—”

“That’s a long time ago, lass,” McTavish cut in. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Out here,” Majors said. “We’ll cross right past it, actually. The train line, that is. About a hundred kays out of Alice Springs.”

“Aye. And the odds of me stumbling on an article from regional Australia, when I’m over in Scotland—well, it’s slim I’d say. I’m sorry if the book touched a nerve. If you knew someone who died or was hurt in a similar way as I imagined in my book, I imagine it would be painful to read about. But every one of us here”—he picked up his cane and scanned it across us all—“has killed an infinite number of people in an infinite number of ways. It’s inevitable that, somewhere, real life mimics it.”

“You don’t think—” Majors pressed.

McTavish laughed. “Thank God we’re just inventing it! If one of the six of us was to die right now, you’d have five suspects who all know how to get away with murder.”

Majors blanched. Her eyes flickered over to Lisa but found no hold. Lisa was busy tracing circles in the dirt with her toes.

“If each of your books is a color,” I said, trying to rescue the conversation, “what color is The Dawn Rises?”

“Red.” He delivered this with relish. “Blood red.”

This got a round of applause from Brooke, as it was clearly a reference to Detective Morbund’s fate. Even Wyatt smirked. How’s that for media training, I thought, looking over at Wolfgang. Maybe it was just being out of practice; I shouldn’t have doubted McTavish was anything but a pro.

Majors cut back in. “And, Henry, Off the Rails?”

If words could hammer nails, McTavish could have driven in a railway spike with his sharp reply. “Green.”

Majors made a great show of checking her watch and stood, creating a rustle of movement in the crowd, less of excitement and more in anticipation of a bathroom break. Bladders are the opposite of writers’ egos—finite—and many had been tested by our discussion. The morning champagnes hadn’t helped either. Thinking back, the alcohol had probably fueled the argumentative streak in us writers as well: normally literary talks aren’t so combative.

“It’s been a lively hour. To round out our morning’s program, we have a very special treat for you all.” Majors walked over to the easel on display. “We’ve had special permission from Penguin Random House to unveil to you, today, exclusively”—she gripped the corner of the black cloth draped over the easel—“the cover of Lisa Fulton’s new novel, The Fall of Justice, over two decades in the making.” She whipped the cloth off like a magician, revealing a large cardboard printout.

The cover showed a regal building, assumedly a courthouse, lit by the blood-red of a setting sun, the silhouette of a city behind it. Lisa’s name was in bright gold letters, lanky and stretched, bigger than the title itself. But most noticeable of all, in stark white type against the blacksmith’s forge of a sky, were four words.