-2-

 

Jonathan walked to the front door.  It was the police.  Pippa’s phone performance had been a mere prelude of things to come.  She threw herself at one policeman, wailing and beating her fists against his chest.


After a few disoriented moments he stuttered, “T…take it easy Miss.   Take it easy.” The policeman was a tall corpulent man with a dishevelled mop of auburn hair and a face characterised by a constellation of freckles and coarse stubble.  Presently, his expression was one of bewilderment.  It took a few moments for him to compose himself.  “It will all be all right.  I promise.”

 

He signalled a policeman behind him who escorted her to a car in the driveway.  He entered the house with two other officers.  Jonathan decided not to follow Pippa, staying instead with the policemen. 

 

They will figure it out, Jonathan thought.  Because he wrote crime novels, Jonathan often researched crime and one thing his studies had told him was that it was almost impossible to commit a perfect crime.  Pippa had left many loose ends.  Jonathan watched, but as time passed his dismay increased.  For the next half an hour, the policemen stumbled straight into the web Pippa had spun.  On reading the excerpt from his story one of them exclaimed, “Lester check this out.”

 

 “Suicide note?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“What a way to do it.  I wouldn’t think that a person would have the will power to stab themselves in the neck with a knife, let alone a blunt object.  It’s pretty sharp edged.  I think its one of those calligraphy jobs but it’s still a fountain pen.”

 

“You’re right, though what are the other options.  That someone came in and attacked him with a fountain pen.  As for the will power thing, Gauguin, or was it Van Gogh, cut off his own ear to give to a prostitute”

 

 “It was Van Gogh, and that prostitute story is a myth,” Lester replied.  “He had severe migraines and he cut off his ear in an attempt to stop the pain.”

 

“Bet that didn’t work.  Maybe this dude was in pain killed himself to stop the pain.”

 

“That sound’s pretty far fetched but I can’t say for sure until an autopsy is done.” 

 

Is that it?  Surely they will check the wound and say something like, ‘The angle of entry does not indicate self infliction.’  Come on.

 

Instead, the words that broke the silence were spoken by the third policeman.  He had been checking the living room. “I found something.”

 

“What Kenneth?” Lester asked

.

“This.” Kenneth was holding ‘Slow Death by Hot Moonlight’, Jonathan’s second novel.  “He was a writer.”

 

“Yeah, I know, I read one of his books in high-school.”

 

“How was he?”

 

“Not very good, he was your typical adolescent crime thriller writer; lame, cliché, James Bond stuff.”

 

Oh wonderful.  Of all the policemen in Montreal, Pippa had to call the one bloody literary critic.

 

“Well, I was flipping through it and listen to this.”  Kenneth held up the book and read.  “‘Robby Fogonthal stepped away from the fat drug-dealer’s body.  He had emptied his whole magazine into the obese crime lord’s body.  He looked like a pincushion.  Despite the blood and gunpowder, the man still stank of Pizza.’”  Kenneth stopped reading.  “He was obviously a loon.”

 

Oh, even better.  A critic and a psychologist.

 

“And he had obviously never actually seen a gun-shot victim,” the critic interjected.  “Someone with multiple bullet wounds looks nothing like a pin cushion.”

 

“You read the suicide note?  Why’d he kill himself?”

 

“It says something about his being involved in some drug heist.”

 

“What?”

 

Jonathan brimmed with joy.  When they investigated and discovered that no such heist had occurred they would realise it wasn’t a real suicide note.

 

Lester spoke again.  “He says this heist occurred at the Ovingdale police station.  As far as I know, there’s no such place as 'Ovingdale'.”

 

Ovingdale was the alternate Montreal in which Jonathan had set all his novels.

 

“Wait a moment.  It says ‘Ovingdale’ here.”   The policeman holding the book said, staring at the page he had opened.

 

Jonathan jumped nervously again.  Surely they would realise the letter was fictional now.

 

“He evidently was so lost in his fictional world, eventually he killed himself for some imagined crime.  Poor bugger,” These words of course, were courtesy of the psychologist.

 

Jonathan was actually happy to see the policemen leave

.