Witch Hunt

Chapter Thirty-Two




The next day I sat down to my book. Despite my conviction the previous evening, some of Joe’s words had impacted on me. Particularly what he said about putting the mad stuff into my writing. It was preying on my mind as I tidied up my first chapter on Matthew Hopkins. I entered some of the details I ‘saw’ at the Hopping Bridge. It certainly brought it to life, but it could be construed as fantasy and undermine some of the solid evidence I had amassed to support some of my claims.

In the end, about eleven o’clock, I decided to run the whole thing past Felix himself and picked up my phone.

I went through to a voice I recognised to be Delphine, who told me that she’d see if Felix was free. After a short wait, he came on the line. He was breathless, like he’d been running, and told me he had only a few minutes to spare.

‘Important meeting?’ I asked.

He laughed out something that sounded like a hybrid of a chortle and snort. ‘Have you not seen the news today?’

I told him I hadn’t.

‘We’ve had some damn leak about Robert.’

I assumed he meant Cutt.

‘The press are up in arms about a book he’s halted. There’s a reference to a Russian deal he brokered a couple of years back. The writer’s hinting at large scale involvement with the mafia. Quite ridiculous.’

I expressed surprise that this was a Portillion book.

‘Oh God, no. It’s a minor press we acquired last week. Obviously as soon as we found out about the content we then had to pull the book. Now there’s speculation that Robert bought the outfit purely to stop the publication.’

Ha ha, I thought. ‘Oh dear,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘So I’ve got to go into a damage limitation meeting in a sec.’

‘Okay, I won’t hold you up,’ I said, and asked him how much of my ‘experiences’ he wanted me to put in. And would that affect the credibility of the book?

He didn’t seem to think so. So I told him, rather guardedly, about the Hopping Bridge section.

‘Go for it,’ was his conclusion. ‘Spices up something that’s otherwise quite dry.’

I took his advice and after hanging up wrote the scene into the chapter. Then I attached the document to Felix’s email.

‘Please like it,’ I muttered and hit ‘Send’.