A Conjurer of Tales

When it began, we couldn't really say. These things have no real beginning as such. You could say it began when we first met. But then we do meet so many people over the course of our lives. Not many end up as we ended up, here, huddled together, listening to the sirens drawing closer bringing with them the end of all we hoped for, bringing an end to our futures together.

She was married, of course. I wasn't looking for anyone. I had given up on all that, which is often – according to the stories – when it is most likely to happen, love comes when you don't expect it.

I, though, had given up believing in stories. I had written too many of them to believe in them any more. I knew how they worked. I was like some religious leader who knew how to manipulate happenstance into miracles to fool those who need to believe, I was the magician who knew the secrets of all the illusions.

Love too, I thought at the time, was an illusion, a trick we play on ourselves, or some trick that nature performs so life can go on living.

Anyway, there I was sitting at a desk at the back of a bookshop, a pile of my latest sitting next to me. There was a queue, for which I was grateful. After all, you cannot be a writer without readers, and I liked to think I was a writer, some magician who could weave the stories out of airy nothing. Not much of a magician compared to the greats who came before me and those yet to be, a simple conjurer, nothing more. I could do a few simple card tricks and pull the rabbit from the hat, but nothing beyond that. But, it seems people – well, some people – think that was enough. So the smile I smiled upon each and every one of those readers was one of genuine gratitude.

Or, at least, I like to think so.

You would think someone in that position, A well-established crime writer would be able to pull off the perfect crime, or as close to perfect enough for him and his beautiful accomplice to get away with it.

At least, we thought I could.

But, now, like the last pages in so many of my stories, the sirens are coming for us.