The Sentence is Death

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The Sentence is Death Page 15

by Anthony Horowitz


  ‘How well do you know Adrian Lockwood?’ I asked.

  She stopped mid-bite. ‘I thought I told you that the last time you were here. He was introduced to me as a client but he’s become a sort of friend. Why do you ask?’

  ‘No particular reason.’

  ‘I miss having a man in the house.’ She looked genuinely wistful. ‘I know I shouldn’t say it in this day and age but I’m absolutely useless without a man. There isn’t a moment I don’t miss Charlie. I never get anything right. I can’t work out the buttons on the TV remote control. Parking the car is a nightmare even though it’s only a Toyota Prius and it isn’t that big. I forget to put the clocks back and I wake up an hour early or an hour late or whatever it is. I hate taking the rubbish out, and you try putting on a duvet cover by yourself!’ She sighed. ‘Adrian was never happy with Akira. He never said as much to me, not in so many words, but I could tell. Women can, you know. We always know when something’s not right.’

  While she was talking, I was nervously listening out for Hawthorne. He probably wouldn’t be too happy, me being here without him. He hated me asking questions even when he was in the room and I certainly didn’t want to say anything that might undermine his investigation, not after what had happened before. So I glanced at the book on the table and asked conversationally, ‘Have you been reading these?’

  ‘Oh yes. Someone gave them to me because they knew I was friends with Adrian.’ She gestured at it vaguely. ‘I don’t really understand them, to be honest with you. She’s far too clever for me.’

  I picked it up. Like many books of poetry, Two Hundred Haikus was a fairly slim volume – only about forty pages long – and at £15 it wasn’t cheap either. But I suppose that’s fair enough. Poetry has limited sales and it’s rare that you’re going to find any poet’s work with a half-price sticker on the front table at Waterstones. It was a hardback with a tiny detail taken from a woodblock, I think by Hokusai, on the front cover. The haikus were arranged in groups of four or five on high-quality paper. There was a black and white photograph of Akira Anno on the back. She wasn’t smiling.

  I was introduced to haikus when I was at school. I wasn’t a particularly bright child and I remember liking them because they were so short. It was Matsuo Bashō in the seventeenth century who made them famous. An ancient pond / A frog jumps in / The splash of water. It’s one of the few poems I can still quote in its entirety, although in the original Japanese it has five syllables in the first line, seven in the second and then another five in the third. That’s the whole point.

  I cast my eye over Akira’s efforts, which were in English, though printed in curving black letters that imitated Japanese calligraphy. The book had been left open on haikus 174-181 (each one was numbered, with no title). On an impulse, I turned the page and my eye was immediately drawn to haiku 182 at the top of the page.

  You breathe in my ear

  Your every word a trial

  The sentence is death

  182.

  The number painted on the wall next to the dead body of Richard Pryce.

  My head was spinning. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Akira Anno hadn’t just threatened Pryce with murder, she had written about it in a book of poetry. No. That wasn’t fair. She had written a poem about the nature of murder … if that was what the haiku meant. I wasn’t completely sure. Even so, the words had to relate to what had happened in the room. The number couldn’t be a clearer signpost.

  But if she had killed Richard Pryce, would she have left a clue that incriminated herself so obviously? And if she hadn’t painted the number, who had and why? I wanted to ask Davina if she had read the haiku but she was looking at me completely innocently, wondering why I was so flabbergasted.

  It was at that precise moment that the doorbell rang and I realised Hawthorne had arrived. I was relieved. This was one of those few moments when I actually wanted to see him. He could deal with Davina and ask the questions that needed to be asked, and when we left he could make sense of what I had just discovered.

  ‘That’s your friend!’

  ‘Yes.’ The doorbell rang a second time. ‘You’d better let him in,’ I said.

  Davina seemed unwilling to leave me on my own but got up and drifted out of the room.

  I read the haiku three more times, turning all sorts of possibilities over in my mind. At the same time, I heard Davina’s voice out in the hall, explaining that I was already here, and I wasn’t surprised a few moments later to see Hawthorne glowering at me from the doorway.

  ‘You’re early,’ he said. Not a statement. An accusation.

  ‘I was waiting outside—’ I began.

  ‘I saw him and I invited him in.’ Davina came to my rescue.

  ‘We’ve just been chatting.’ I was trying to reassure him. ‘Mrs Richardson was showing me some poetry.’

  Hawthorne still looked suspicious. He sat down, folding his ever-present raincoat over the arm of the sofa. Davina offered him tea, which he refused, plunging straight in as if to make up for lost time. ‘Did you by any chance see Gregory Taylor last weekend? Possibly sometime late afternoon?’

  ‘Who?’ She looked perplexed.

  ‘The man who went caving with your husband.’

  ‘I know who he is. Of course I know who you mean. Why are you asking me about him?’

  ‘I don’t want to upset you, Mrs Richardson, but he died last Saturday … one day before the murder of Richard Pryce.’

  She wasn’t upset. She was shocked. ‘Gregory’s dead?’

  ‘He fell under a train,’ I said and immediately wished I hadn’t as it drew another baleful glance from Hawthorne.

  ‘You didn’t see it in the newspapers?’

  ‘I don’t really read the newspapers. It’s all so gloomy. I sometimes watch the news on the TV but I didn’t see anything. Well, they probably wouldn’t report it, would they? If a man falls under a train …’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure he fell.’ Hawthorne was sitting very straight, his legs apart, gazing at her with what might have been a sympathetic smile. With his hair cut so close around the ears and his black suit and tie, he managed to look both innocent and aggressive.

  ‘What? I don’t understand …’

  ‘He didn’t come here?’

  ‘No. I’ve just told you. I wasn’t here anyway. I went out at half past four. No. I mean half past three. I don’t know what I mean … I keep getting confused! It was half past three and I went over to Brent Cross. I took Colin with me. He’s growing so fast, he needed new football kit. What makes you think Gregory was here?’

  ‘One of the last things he did before he died was to send his wife a selfie he took on Hornsey Lane.’

  She thought about that. ‘That’s quite near here,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t imagine what he’d be doing there. He was still living in Yorkshire as far as I knew.’ She shook her head. ‘I hadn’t seen or heard from him for six years. He sent me a letter after the inquest, offering his condolences, but otherwise we’d had no contact and to be honest with you I’m not sure I would have wanted him to come into my home. I already told you. Richard wasn’t to blame for what happened that day, when Charlie died. But Gregory Taylor was supposed to be in charge. He was the one who decided they should go ahead even though the forecast predicted rain. I don’t think I’d have had anything to say to him.’

  ‘So what was he doing on Hornsey Lane?’

  ‘I have no idea. I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time coming over here today. I could have told you over the phone. I didn’t see him.’

  It hadn’t been a waste of time. I couldn’t wait to tell Hawthorne about the haiku.

  Hawthorne picked up his raincoat and got to his feet. ‘Thank you for seeing us,’ he said. Then, almost as an afterthought: ‘I’m sorry to have to ask this, Mrs Richardson, but I need you to tell me. What exactly is your relationship with Adrian Lockwood?’

  She blushed, just as she had when we were first with her, but this time it
was more anger than embarrassment. ‘I really don’t see what business it is of yours, Mr Hawthorne. Adrian is a client but he’s become a friend. A good friend. I tried to support him. He found the divorce proceedings very stressful and he was so angry with Richard. He came here to unwind. That’s all, really. He thought of me as someone he could trust.’

  ‘Why was he angry with Richard Pryce?’

  ‘Did I say that? I didn’t mean it. He was angry about the whole thing … the amount of time it took … Akira. He knew he’d made a mistake marrying her and—You really will have to ask him about it. Not me. I don’t think it’s right for me to talk about him behind his back.’

  That was the end of it. She showed us to the door and a few moments later we were back in the street, walking towards Highgate Tube. As soon as I was alone with Hawthorne, I told him what had happened. It seemed inescapable to me that the number 182, painted on the wall at Heron’s Wake, related to the poem. I recited it, emphasising the third line.

  ‘The sentence is death. She’s saying she has to kill him because she can’t bear living with him. I know it’s crazy but she wanted the whole world to know what she intended to do.’

  Hawthorne looked doubtful. ‘When was the book published?’

  ‘I don’t know. Earlier this year.’

  ‘So she could have written that poem a long time ago.’

  ‘She was still married to Lockwood. She still hated him.’

  ‘But she didn’t kill Lockwood. She killed Richard Pryce. At least, that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘She wrote a poem about death. And look at that second line! Maybe the trial she’s talking about is her divorce.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing.’ The rain was getting heavier. Hawthorne drew on his coat. ‘On the night of the murder, Akira wasn’t in Lyndhurst or anywhere near it. She lied to us.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘CCTV footage from the Welcome Break service station at Fleet. She was never there. And ANPR records on the M27 and the A31.’

  ‘What’s ANPR?’

  ‘Automatic number-plate recognition. Ms Anno drives a Jaguar F-Type convertible. There are cameras on both roads and unless she drove the entire journey cross-country, there’s no trace of her.’

  ‘Did DI Grunshaw tell you that?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I found that surprising. Grunshaw loathed Hawthorne. She’d allowed him to be present at a couple of interviews – probably because she’d been forced to – but would she share ANPR data with him? I doubted it. On the other hand, what other way could he have got the information?

  ‘Anyway, Grunshaw spoke to the yoga teacher,’ Hawthorne continued. ‘The man who owns the cottage. At first he said that he’d lent it to Akira but under the first bit of pressure he broke down and said he didn’t know if she’d gone there or not.’

  So what did that mean? Suddenly it looked as if the case had nothing to do with Long Way Hole in Yorkshire. We were back to the divorce, the husband and wife at each other’s throats. And the lawyer who had come between them.

  ‘What about the haiku?’ I asked.

  ‘How exactly did you come across it?’ He raised a hand, silencing me before I could answer. ‘Do me a favour, Tony. Write the chapter. That’s the easiest way. Describe what happened when you visited Mrs Richardson – without me – and maybe I can work out what actually happened.’

  ‘I don’t like writing out of sequence.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll never read the rest of it.’

  We had reached the escalators. There were a few people coming up but we were alone as we descended into what felt like the bowels of the earth.

  ‘Don’t forget the book club,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘Monday night.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m at the theatre Monday night.’

  ‘But you said you’d come. What were you seeing?’ In his mind, it had already slipped into the past tense.

  ‘Ghosts.’ It was a hot ticket. Richard Eyre directing Henrik Ibsen at the Almeida.

  He shook his head regretfully. ‘Well, I’ve promised them now. You’ll have to miss it.’

  I stood there, a few steps behind him. I wasn’t moving but I was being carried further and further down into the shadows and I remember thinking that I’d put that into Hawthorne’s chapter, right at the end.

  It was exactly how I felt.

  13

  Bury Street

  Who was Mike Carlyle?

  I spent an hour searching the internet but couldn’t find anything that related to the man who had come into the Station Inn in Ribblehead. He had been about the same age as Hawthorne – maybe a couple of years younger – and unless he had been on holiday, which seemed unlikely in late October, I guessed he must live in the Yorkshire Dales. What would that make him? A farmer? Something connected to tourism? Of course, it could have been Carlisle. I tried that spelling too. Michael Carlyle. Mike Carlisle. I was directed to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, to an office stationery supply company in Manchester and the Director of Missions at a Baptist church in Victoria, Australia. There were dozens of photographs to choose from but none resembled the man I had met.

  I couldn’t get the encounter out of my head. It seemed to tie in with Hawthorne’s strange mood, his nervousness as we left London. Carlyle had been quite sure it was Hawthorne even if he had referred to him as ‘Billy’. He had known him from somewhere called Reeth – a village in nearby Swaledale and ‘a well-known centre for hand-knitting and the local lead industry’, as Wikipedia helpfully informed me. Hawthorne’s behaviour hadn’t just been defensive, it had been borderline rude. I couldn’t be certain but it seemed quite possible to me that ‘Billy’ had lied to ‘Mike’. They had known each other once.

  I was thinking this over when the telephone rang. It was Hawthorne arranging to meet me at the Bury Street Gallery in Mayfair – which was where Stephen Spencer worked.

  ‘We can go on to Marylebone afterwards,’ he said.

  ‘What’s in Marylebone?’

  ‘Akira Anno is giving a talk in a bookshop.’ I heard the rustle of paper as he turned a page. ‘“Women of mass-destruction: sexual objectification and gender coding in modern warfare”.’

  ‘That sounds fun,’ I said.

  ‘We can talk to her and if you’re lucky you can get her book of haikus signed.’

  He rang off.

  I spent the next couple of hours working. I went for a walk. I wrote a quick draft of the chapter Hawthorne wanted. I know it all sounds a bit dull laid out like that but I’m afraid I’m describing very much my life as a writer. I spend at least half the day on my own and in silence. I flit from one project to another, channelling thousands of words – first with a pen and then with a computer – onto the page. That’s why I enjoy writing Alex Rider. Even if I’m not having adventures, I can at least imagine them.

  It was less satisfying writing about Hawthorne. I had become a prisoner of circumstance. For example, I would have loved to have opened a chapter with something surprising: Davina Richardson in bed with Adrian Lockwood, perhaps. Or Susan Taylor, dressed in black, being driven to her husband’s funeral in the Yorkshire Dales, the cortège slowly winding its way through those twisting country lanes. It would have been a real challenge to imagine myself inside Long Way Hole, describing the last moments of Charlie Richardson as he drowned, or I could have turned myself into a fly on the wall inside the room when Richard Pryce’s killer had struck. Sadly, none of these possibilities was available to me. I was stuck with the facts. My job was to follow Hawthorne’s investigation, setting down his questions and occasionally trying, without much success, to make sense of the answers. It was really quite frustrating. It wasn’t so much writing as recording.

  I was still glad to get out of the house. I took the Tube over to Green Park and walked into Mayfair. This time Hawthorne had arrived ahead of me. He was waiting outside an art gallery contained in a small
, elegant building, the sort of place that warned you to stay away unless you were well heeled. The name was spelled out in discreet lettering and there were just three works in the window, with no prices. I recognised a Wadsworth and a Paul Nash – a nice watercolour of a shingle beach. The glass door was locked but there was an assistant on the other side and he buzzed us in.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked. He was from the Middle East with very dark skin and a jet-black beard. He was in his late twenties, wearing an expensive, tailored suit that made Hawthorne’s look resolutely off the peg, but no tie. He had a gold chain around his neck and a gold band on the third finger of his left hand.

  Needless to say, Hawthorne had taken an immediate dislike to him. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ The assistant was quick to take offence.

  ‘I’d like to talk to Stephen Spencer.’

  ‘Mr Spencer’s busy.’

  ‘It’s all right, Faraz. I know these people.’

  Spencer had appeared from a back office, making his way across the thick-pile carpet that swallowed up any sound. He was also in a suit and looked much recovered from when I had last seen him. His fair hair was carefully groomed and he had the pink, clean-shaven looks of someone who has just stepped out of the bath.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked. ‘I take it you’re not here to buy art.’ He was being starchy with us and I could understand why. The last time we had seen him, he had been at his most vulnerable, in tears, and Hawthorne hadn’t exactly been sympathetic. There was a simmering hostility between them even now. Hawthorne was homophobic. It was his least endearing trait. I’m sure Spencer had picked up on it.

  ‘I want to know where you were last weekend,’ Hawthorne said. His voice and manner were unsparing.

 

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