Dr. Yes by Colin Bateman (Headline 2010)

 

I have never in my whole life actually physically pursued a case, because any kind of activity requiring increased motor function is something I have to be wary of, but I could hardly help myself. Of course I didn't know it was a case then. Then it was just a man walking past my window - but what a man! You see, in my field of crime fiction, Augustine Wogan was an enigma, a myth wrapped up in a legend, a barely published novelist and screenwriter who was known to so few that they didn't even qualify as a cult following, it was more like stalking. He was, nevertheless, Belfast's sole contribution to the immortals of the crime-writing genre. His reputation rested on three novels self-published in the late 1970s, novels so tough, so real, so heartbreaking that they blew every other book that tried to deal with what was going on over here right out of the water. Until then, novels about the Troubles had invariably been written by visiting mainland journalists, who perhaps got most of their facts right, but never quite captured the atmosphere or the sarcasm. Augustine Wogan's novels were so on the ball that he was picked up by the RUC and questioned because they thought he had inside information about their shoot-to-kill policy; shot at by the IRA because they believed he had wrung secrets out of a drunken quartermaster; and beaten up by the UVF because they  had nothing better to do. He had been forced to flee the country, and although he had returned since, he had never, at least as far as I was aware, settled here again. I occasionally picked up snippets of information about him from other crime- writing aficionados, the latest being that he had been employed to write the screenplay for the next James Bond movie, Titter of Wit, but had been fired for drunkenness. There was always a rumour of a new novel, of him being signed up by a big publisher or enthusiastic agent, but nothing ever appeared in print. The books that made up the Barbed-Wire Love trilogy were never republished. They are rarer than hen's teeth. I regarded the box of them I kept upstairs as my retirement fund. In those few moments when I saw him pass the shop, I knew that if I could just persuade him to sign them, their value would be instantly quadrupled. They say money is at the root of all evil, but I have to be pragmatic. I am devoted to crime fiction, but I am also devoted to eating, and Augustine Wogan was just the meal ticket I was looking for.