An Artful Conspiracy is now published.
A case of suspected forgery…a celebrated abstract painting, a spectacular murder, an art world riven by rivalry and grand conspiracies… It’s the sort of case the detective craves, but it’s going to be his last, if the writer, distracted by the revealing journals of his great-aunt, Gertrude, can just find a way to pen Dexter Cathcart a fitting farewell…
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In the foyer of the Ospedale Borgo Roma, crime writer Mack Hannah steps up to the information desk. He’s in luck, someone speaks English.
‘What did you say the name was, signore?’
‘Dexter Cathcart. C-A-T-H-C-A-R-T.’
The clerk shakes her head. ‘No-one of that name here. What is he in for, an operation?’
‘He had a bullet removed from his leg.’
‘Aaah!’ That information is in a different database. ‘Signor Dexter Cathcart… Santo cielo! It seems that this Signor Cathcart has been implicated in some criminal entreprise. Poliziotti have already been to interview him. I am sorry, but a visit is out of the question.’
‘Signor Cathcart is not a criminal, he is the victim of a crime. Someone shot him in the leg.’
‘Yes, someone shot him in the leg…in the street! Who do you think gets shot in the street in Verona? And has their suitcase stolen! Respectable people?’ She glares at him. ‘What was in that suitcase? You have any ideas?’
Mack still has his old University of New South Wales business card in his wallet. He hands it to the clerk. ‘Signor Cathcart is a valued colleague, he does not deal in drugs.’
The clerk examines the card, turns it over, twice. She does not want to be convinced, but there’s not much she can do, universities are still respectable in Italy.
‘You will find Signor Cathcart in recovery ward 44, bed 8, fourth floor. But you can have only fifteen minutes with him. That is understood?’
Mack nods.
‘The lifts are over there, Professor.’
Mack waits at the lifts, but doesn’t step in when the doors open. Too many people. He will take the stairs instead. He needs time to think, anyway. It seems ages ago now… Everything was fine. Working on his fourth detective novel, the writer sends his private detective off to Italy on a new case, and then Dexter Cathcart just goes missing. Not in Verona, where he’s supposed to be, but in Vicenza, pursuing a case of his own about a mystery journal.
Then it turns out that Cathcart has his own ideas of what makes a good detective story. He starts arguing with the writer, he tries to upend the narrative, he threatens to sneak murders into the plot. So a week in Italy turns into weeks and weeks, the writer struggling to get his character back in line, desperate to bring the novel to completion, all the while distracted by Cathcart’s ‘case of the mystery journal’. Writing detective stories was not meant to be this difficult.
Meanwhile, back in Sydney, Danni has pulled the plug on their on-again off-again relationship and Poirot has probably died of starvation. Okay, he cannot accuse Danni of starving the cat. Poirot will have been fed occasionally, even if the windows have been left open and the mail uncollected. Offers of writers festivals and residencies in exotic places left to languish in his overflowing post office box. Mack Hannah has to get home, back to the serenity of his desk, back to being the writer again. Whatever that still means.
The stairs are endless. A good thing, too, it delays the confrontation a little longer. He will have to behave himself at the bedside – no bad jokes, no bleak stories about shooting victims, no talking about ‘anything but’. Private detective Dexter Cathcart has been shot in the leg. It’s not terminal, but it’s not nothing, either. He warned Cathcart about the dangers associated with Gabriele Massimo’s journal, but the detective, in one of his thanks-but-I-already-know-everything moods, dismissed the warning, zipped the journal into his suitcase, and strode off across the Piazza dei Signori with an air of invulnerability.
Having reached the fourth floor, Mack proceeds along the corridor. What makes a hospital immediately recognisable isn’t the smell, it’s the sounds – the ambient buzz of hushed voices, the metallic clatter of the trolleys, the gentle squeak of soft-soled footwear on linoleum floors. He finds something comforting in that, a hospital going about its business in an orderly manner, everyone at some sort of peace.
He pauses at the entrance to ward 44. It’s full. A dozen beds, family crowded around all but one. This is Italy, everyone seems to be eating. They stare at the foreigner with those you-don’t-belong-here eyes, watch in silence as he crosses the ward. They will know about the visit of the police, the patients will have told their families, now it’s probably their main topic of conversation.
Dexter Cathcart has a bed at the far end of the ward next to a large window. A view over the car park and the hospital’s other wing, a few crumbs of privacy. The detective extends his hand as Mack approaches the bedside, struggles to force a smile. He looks shithouse.
‘You are…?’
‘As well as can be expected.’
‘It hurts?’
‘It’s not exactly painless.’
It’s only three days since they said goodbye to each other in the Piazza dei Signori. The detective has aged ten years since then. Gone is the I-can-do-anything Dexter Cathcart, his face is hospital white, his hair has thinned out, his voice is threatening to become a croak. Tubes sprout from his arm and his nose and the lead from a monitor is taped to his index finger. He probably needs a nurse to help him piss.
Danni is always badgering him about Cathcart, how the character should ‘learn some humility’, but even Danni would be shocked. He can already hear the astonishment in her voice. ‘You let him get shot! What the hell did you think you were doing?’ But Mack Hannah had nothing to do with this, Dexter Cathcart got shot all on his own.
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linzi murrie 