"I'm not saying I'll do it."

"What's the problem, Dolly? You've got the job."

"But we haven't even talked about a contract."

"There isn't one," Ash said. "There's only one thing you have to promise, apart from doing the book, and that's to keep your mouth shut. Like I said, we're pa.s.sing this off as Raven's book. If anyone asks, there wasn't no ghost. She done the whole thing herself. I wasn't born yesterday and neither was you. We're paying well over the odds and buying your silence."

"How soon do you expect this book to be written?"

"How long do you need? Six months?"

This seemed reasonable if it was all on tape already. I wouldn't wish to spend more than six months away from my real writing. Heaven help me, I was almost persuaded. "And if I needed to meet Raven again to clarify anything, is that allowed for?"

"Sorry. Can't be done," Raven said. "I'm doing reality TV in Australia for the next few months and no one can reach me, not even Ash."

"So you want the book written just from these tapes, without any more consultation?"

"It's the best way," Ash said. "Raven is so big that it's sure to leak out if you keep on meeting her. You won't be short of material. There's loads of stuff on the internet."

"What happens if you aren't happy with my script?"

Raven answered that one. "It won't happen. That's why I chose you." She fixed her big blue eyes on me. Her confidence in me was total.

I warmed to her.

"But I'm sure to get some details wrong. Anyone would, working like this."

"She'll straighten it out when it comes in," Ash said. "Let's agree a date."

I must be honest. I'd been persuaded by the money. At home over the next six months I set about my task. The tapes were my source material. Raven had dictated more than enough for a substantial book, but she had a tendency to repeat herself. With skilful editing I could give it some shape. Such incidents as there were had little of the drama I put into my own books. I would have to rely on the reader identifying with "Falcon" and her steady rise to fame and fortune.

The first objective was to find a narrative voice closer to Raven's than my own. I rewrote Chapter One several times. The process was far more demanding than Ash had predicted. "Knock out the long words," he'd said, as if nothing else needed to be done. Eventually, through tuning my ear to Raven's speech rhythms, I found a way of telling it that satisfied me.

The absence of a strong plot was harder to get over. Her story was depressingly predictable. A romantic novel needs conflict, some trials and setbacks, before love triumphs. I had to make the most of every vestige of disappointment, and the disqualification from the beauty contest was about all she had provided. In the end I invented a car crash, a stalker and a death in the family just to "beef it up", as Ash had suggested.

The biggest problem of all lay waiting like a storm cloud on the horizon while I worked through the early chapters: what to do about Ash. How could I make a romantic ending out of a relationship with an elderly sc.r.a.p dealer, however rich he was? If I took thirty years off his age he'd probably be insulted. If I changed his job and made him a brain surgeon or a racing driver, he'd want to know why. He was justly proud of becoming a legend in refuse collection, but it wasn't the stuff of romantic fiction.

And I have to admit that he frightened me.

Deliberately I put off writing about him until the last possible opportunity. By then I had shaped and polished the rest of the book into a form I thought acceptable, though far from brilliant. Ash was the last big challenge.

In desperation I researched him on the internet. Being so successful, he was sure to have been interviewed by the press. Perhaps I would find some helpful insights into his personality.

I was in for a shock.

In 1992 Ash had been put on trial for murder and acquitted. His first wife, a young actress, had gone missing after having an affair with the director of a play she was in. Her family suspected Ash had killed her, but her body had never been found. The word "landfill" was bandied about among her anxious friends. Before she disappeared, she had written letters to her lover telling of mental and physical cruelty. A prosecution had been brought. Ash had walked free thanks to a brilliant defence team.

All of this would have greatly a.s.sisted the plot of the book. Of course, I dared not use it. I felt sure Ash didn't want his dirty washing aired in Raven's romantic novel. Nor was I certain how much Raven knew about it.

After reading several interviews online, I concluded that Ash was a dangerous man. He had defended his empire of landfill and dustcarts against a number of well-known barons of the underworld who had threatened to take over. "You don't mess with Ash," was one memorable quote.

For the book, I called him Aspen, made him a grieving widower of forty-nine, called his business recycling, gave him green credentials and charitable instincts. He fell in love with Falcon after meeting her at a fund-raising concert and they emigrated to East Africa and started an orphanage there. The book was finished with a week to spare. I was satisfied that it would pa.s.s as Raven's unaided work and please her readers.

At nine on the agreed day in March, I walked to the end of my street with a large bag containing the ma.n.u.script and Raven's tapes and stepped into the Daimler. Even after so many years of getting published I always feel nervous about submitting a script and this was magnified at least tenfold by the circ.u.mstances of this submission.

As before, the front door of the mansion was opened by Raven herself, and she looked tanned and gorgeous after her television show in Australia. "Is that it?" she asked, pointing to my bag, echoing the words Ash had used when we first met in the train.

I handed over the ma.n.u.script.

"I can't tell you how much I've been waiting to read this," she said, eyes shining.

I warned her that I'd made a number of changes to give it dramatic tension.

"Don't worry, Dolores," she said. "You're the professional here. I'm sure whatever you've done is right for the book. Coffee is on its way and so is Ash. I'm going to make sure he reads the book, too. I don't think he's read a novel in the whole of his life."

"I wouldn't insist, if I were you," I said quickly. "It's not written for male readers."

"But it's my life story and he's the hero."

"I took some liberties," I said. "He may not recognize himself."

"What's that?" Ash had come into the room behind me, pushing the coffee trolley. "You talking about me?"

"Good morning," I said, frantically trying to think how to put this. "I was explaining that for the sake of the book I had you two meeting at an earlier point in life."

"So?"

"So you're a younger man in the story," Raven put it more plainly than I had dared.

He frowned. "Are you saying I'm too old?"

"No way," she said. "I've always told you I like a man who's been around a bit."

"So long as he's got something in the bank. Speaking of which," he said, turning to me, "we owe you ninety grand."

"That was what we agreed," I was bold enough to say.

His eyes slid sideways and then downwards. "Will tomorrow do? The b.l.o.o.d.y bank wanted an extra day's notice. They're not used to large cash withdrawals."

"But you promised to pay me when I delivered the ma.n.u.script," I said.

He poured the coffee. "I'll make sure it's delivered to you."

"A cheque would be simpler."

He shook his head. "Cheques can be traced back. Like I told you before, this has to be a secret deal."

I have to say I was suspicious. It had been in my mind that Ash could easily welsh on the agreement. True, I'd been paid ten thousand pounds already, but I wanted my full ent.i.tlement.

As if he was reading my mind, Ash said to Raven, "Is the message from the bank still on the answerphone? I'd like Dolly to hear it, just to show good faith."

"What message?" she said.

He got up and crossed the room to the phone by the window. "The message from the bank saying they wouldn't supply the cash today." He pressed the playback b.u.t.ton.

Nothing was played back.

He swore. "Must have deleted it myself. Well," he said, turning back, "you'll have to trust me, won't you?"

"But I don't even have the address of this house, or a phone number, or anything."

"Better you don't."

"But you know where I live."

"Right, and so does my driver. He'll deliver the money tomorrow afternoon."

At that moment I acted like a feeble female outgunned by an alpha male. I left soon after, without any confidence that I would ever receive the rest of the payment.

Three days later I read in the paper that Ashley Parker, the landfill tyc.o.o.n and husband of Raven, was dead. He had apparently overdosed on sleeping pills and lapsed into a coma from which he never emerged. He was aged seventy-two.

Raven inherited his forty-million-pound estate, and went on record as saying that she would gladly pay twice that amount to get her husband back.

The inquest into Ash's death made interesting reading. There was some gossip in the papers that Raven had overplayed the grieving widow to allay suspicion that she had somehow administered the overdose. This was never raised at the inquest. There, she melted the hearts of the coroner and the jury. She said Ashley had always been a poor sleeper and relied on a c.o.c.ktail of medication that "would have knocked out most men". He had been happy to the last, a man with a clear conscience.

A clear conscience indeed. I never did receive the second payment for my work on the book. In fact, I have never heard from Raven since. However, she had enough sense not to publish. I believe she worked out the truth of what happened that morning I visited the house.

You see, when Ash told me I wouldn't get paid that day, I became suspicious. I'd delivered the book and they had no further use for me, but I remained a risk to Ash's scheme. While I was alive I could pop up any time and earn a fat fee from the papers by revealing that I had ghosted the masterpiece supposedly written by Raven. I had become disposable, ready for the landfill. Easier still, I might succ.u.mb to an overdose and no one would ever know how it happened, or connect me with Raven and Ash. I'd heard of doctored drinks known as Mickey Finns, and I could believe that some slow-acting drug might sedate me until I got home and finally kill me. And that was why after the coffee was poured I took the sensible precaution of switching my cup with Ash's. The opportunity came when he acted out his little charade with the answerphone.

What neither of them knew is that as well as romantic novels I write whodunits.

TEXAS IN THE FALL.

R. J. Ellory.

"GENTLEMEN, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE, we're off-track again. This isn't a specific thing ... this is a mult.i.tude of things. It's no longer a question of political allegiance, it's a matter of national allegiance. It is simply a matter of taking responsibility for the consequences of our decisions ..."

"Which is easy for you to say. You're not the one who'll have to clean up the mess afterwards."

"We're all going to have to deal with that, believe me."

"No, not all of us ... when did you last have your dinner guests stay to wash dishes?"

"What happens afterwards is what happens, gentlemen ... we cross those bridges as they come. Certain agreements have been made, and those agreements have been compromised. It has happened before, it will happen again."

"OK, back to the point here. The first questions to answer are how and when-"

"I think the most important question is who, wouldn't you say?"

"That question we have answered already, you'll be pleased to know. We have someone. We have the who for this project."

Later, considering the details, I realized I had felt nothing at all.

You would think that such a thing would hurt ... but for some considerable time I felt nothing at all.

Perhaps some small comfort not for myself, but for others. I was without pain. I was without fear.

And then, ultimately, I was without myself.

We had to go down there. No choice really. We'd taken Texas by a little more than forty-six thousand votes; knew we had to secure it or we wouldn't stand a chance in the fall, and we had those two troublemakers Connally and Yarborough at each other's throats.

No one writes off twenty-five electoral votes, even if it means flying a thousand miles into redneck country to patch things up. Didn't want to go, but h.e.l.l, I didn't have a choice.

I had a premonition that day. We came in at Fort Worth a little after midnight as I recall, went straight to the Hotel Texas. During those hours, it seemed at least to me that things were fine between us. For sure, they had been a little awkward for a few weeks prior, but they seemed to have straightened out OK. I wasn't worried about her ... tell you the truth, I never really worried about her.

Thinking back I reckon that was half the problem right there: that I didn't worry about her enough. She was being what the world expected her to be, being what she imagined I wanted her to be. But always there were questions. There must have been. If she was perfect, then how come I saw so much imperfection? How come the world that we had created was not the world within which I wished to reside?

I know better now. Now it is too late.

Hindsight, as always, is the cruellest and most astute advisor.

"So tell us ... who is this guy?"

"He's ex-military, Communist affiliations ... all the right credentials."

"Sounds like a candidate for the Senate."

"Very funny ... very funny indeed."