‘Are you taking the piss?’ Grunshaw demanded.
‘It was haiku number one eight two.’
That surprised her. She waited for Hawthorne to continue but in fact I was the one who recited it.
‘Your breath in my ear / Your every word a trial / The sentence is death.’
‘What does that mean?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘What do you think it means?’ Akira returned.
Hawthorne shrugged, unfazed. ‘It could mean all sorts of things. If it was about Richard Pryce, it could be that you didn’t like what he said about you. He was going to lie about you in court. That’s what you told us. So you decided to kill him.’
There was a brief silence. Then Akira laughed. It was strange because there was absolutely no humour in it at all. If she had grabbed hold of a stinging nettle and gasped in pain, it would have sounded much the same.
‘You have not understood a single word I wrote,’ she said. She turned to me. ‘And the first line is You breathe in my ear. If you’re going to quote my work, you could at least get it right!’ She was pleased with herself, scoring a point. ‘Do I really have to explain it to you?’ she continued. ‘The haiku was not about Richard Pryce. I wrote it before I knew of his existence. It’s about my marriage. It was written for Adrian Lockwood. I read it to him! He was the one who demeaned me, who humiliated me with his self-regard and his indifference to my needs. The imagery is obvious.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘The first line is sexual. It is Claudius with Gertrude. He is lying next to me in bed, close enough for me to feel his breath. It is not just what he says. It is what he is. I have come to realise that by marrying a second time, I have placed myself in the condemned cell. I use the word “trial” in two senses. It refers to my day-to-day suffering but also to the fact that I am legally his wife, that this is my status in a court of law. And I am not sentencing him to death. In fact, it is exactly the other way round. I am the one who is dying, although the last line is of course a paraprosdokian, with the double entendre in “sentence” – which gives rise to the suggestion that, despite all the evidence, I will survive.’
All of this had come out in a flat sort of whisper but she raised her voice for the last three words, adding a touch of Gloria Gaynor. Grunshaw was uninterested but Hawthorne ploughed on anyway.
‘Were you aware that Richard Pryce was investigating you?’
‘He was fascinated by me. He wanted to understand me.’
‘That’s not what I mean. He had employed a forensic accountant called Graham Hain to look into your finances. He thought you were fiddling him.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘But it’s true.’
‘He would have found nothing. I have nothing to hide.’ But both her eyes and her lips had narrowed and her body language was defensive.
‘I’d like a contact number for Dawn Adams,’ Grunshaw said, taking over the interview once again.
‘You can reach her at Kingston Press.’
Kingston Press was an independent publishing house. I’d vaguely heard of them.
‘She works there?’
‘She owns it.’
‘Thank you, Ms Anno.’ That was Grunshaw talking. I got the feeling that she had come to her own conclusions about Akira and the verdict was ‘Not guilty’.
We stood up and made our way back to street level. Akira went first, with Hawthorne next to her and then Cara Grunshaw a few steps behind. I was last and so I was isolated, with nowhere to go, when Grunshaw suddenly stopped and turned on me, halfway up the stairs.
‘You didn’t tell me you were coming here,’ she said. Her body seemed massive, blocking the stairwell, and her eyes behind those chunky black spectacles were extraordinarily aggressive.
I looked for Hawthorne but he had disappeared ahead. ‘I was going to call you this evening,’ I said. ‘It’s a complete waste of time trying to get information out of me. Hawthorne never tells me anything.’
‘You’ve got ears. You’ve got eyes. Use them.’ She glared at me. ‘This is your last warning.’
‘You blocked Foyle’s War—’
‘If you find out who killed Pryce before me, you’ll never shoot a frame of your fucking television series again, I promise you.’
She swivelled round and with her black-clad thighs and buttocks waddling in front of me, continued up to the entrance.
I thought my adventures at Daunt Books were over but there was still one more twist to come. Darren was waiting for us and as I reached the ground floor and hurried over to Hawthorne, he bumped into me, almost knocking me off my feet. ‘Sorry,’ he said, making it quite clear that he had done it deliberately.
Akira Anno was standing at the door. Hawthorne was in front of the sales desk with one of the managers behind. The door to the street was open and it was raining yet again, the rain tapping at the windows. I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I thought we’d have to call a taxi.
I took a step towards the exit and it was then that Cara Grunshaw called out to me, her voice rising in indignation. ‘Excuse me!’
I turned round. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Aren’t you going to pay for that book?’ She said it so loudly that everyone in the shop must have heard.
My head swam. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I saw you pick up a book just now. You put it in your case.’
It was true that I was carrying my black shoulder bag. Jill had given it to me as a birthday present and I nearly always have it with me. Was it heavier than it had been when I came in? My hand dropped to my side and felt the leather. There was something in the outer compartment and, I noticed, the straps had come loose.
‘I didn’t—’ I began.
‘Can I help?’ The manager had come out from behind the sales desk. I had met her before when I had come to give talks at the shop and she had always been very friendly, a bit like a schoolteacher with her closely cropped grey hair and bright, blue eyes.
‘Do you run this place?’ Grunshaw asked.
‘Yes. I’m Rebecca LeFevre. Who are you?’
‘Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw.’ She gestured at her partner, giving me his full name for the first time. ‘DC Darren Mills.’
LeFevre looked at me with astonishment. ‘Do you mind if we look in your bag?’ she asked.
I glanced at Hawthorne but he wasn’t in any hurry to help. If anything, he was amused. I already knew what had happened. Darren Mills had done this when he bumped into me at the top of the stairs. He had slipped a book into my case to embarrass me, to punish me, perhaps even to have me arrested, and if I had been sensible I would have left it there and simply walked out or at least tried to explain. Instead I opened the case and took out a thick paperback, a book called Excalibur Rising, the second volume in the Doomworld series by Mark Belladonna. This was the same series that Gregory Taylor had bought on the day he died. The book had actually been on display on a table at the front of the shop and there it was, resting in my hand.
Akira Anno was staring at the book with a look of queasy horror on her face. It took her a moment to find the words. ‘He’s a thief!’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m not a thief …’ I began. ‘This is a set-up!’ I pointed at Mills. ‘He put it in my case. He barged into me when I came upstairs.’
Mills raised his hands in a show of surrender. ‘Why would I do a thing like that?’ he demanded.
Grunshaw looked at me thunderously. ‘Are you accusing a police officer of planting evidence?’
‘Yes! I am!’
‘You realise I could arrest you?’ She turned to LeFevre. ‘Do you want me to arrest him?’
‘Wait a minute.’ LeFevre was looking at me in dismay. If she had reminded me of a teacher before, she was now more like a headmistress with a child who had once been her favourite. ‘You’ve let the bookshop down. You’ve let your readers down. You’ve let yourself down.’ I could almost hear her saying it. ‘Could I have it back?’ That was what she actually said.
I handed the book to her. I could feel my cheeks burning.
‘The policy at Daunt’s is to refer all shoplifters to the police,’ she went on. ‘I have to say, I’m surprised and very disappointed, but it’s up to the police to decide if they want to take any further action.’
‘I didn’t do it!’ I knew I sounded pathetic. I couldn’t help myself.
‘I will say, though, that you’re not welcome back in this shop, Anthony. I’m very sorry. And I don’t think we’ll be stocking you after this.’
I’d had enough. I really couldn’t take any more. I pushed past Hawthorne and Akira and, with their eyes burning into me, hurried out into the rain.
15
Rum and Coke
I didn’t see Hawthorne again until Monday evening, when, instead of going to see Ghosts at the Almeida, I rang the doorbell at River Court to join him at his book club. At least this time I was expected. Normally, which is to say on the last two occasions, I had to resort to subterfuge to get anywhere near the flat where he lived. We’d arranged to meet at seven o’clock and the idea was that we would go together to wherever the group met.
He was standing in the corridor when the lift doors opened and I was afraid he was going to step in and take me straight back down. But his own front door was open and he seemed quite genial as he led me back towards the flat.
‘How are you, Tony?’
‘I’m all right.’ But I wasn’t, not after what had happened at Daunt’s and I wanted him to know it.
‘You sound like you got out of bed the wrong side. Come in and have a rum and Coke. That’ll cheer you up.’
I hardly ever drink Coca-Cola and I don’t much like rum, but the invitation intrigued me on all sorts of levels. I followed him in.
Hawthorne’s flat would have told me more about him if it had actually belonged to him but it was exactly as I remembered from the one time I’d been there, bare to the point of depressing with windows that were too narrow for the wonderful view they could have provided: the River Thames flowing darkly through the evening gloom. There were still no pictures, no flowers, no clutter … nothing that would suggest he did anything but sleep here.
Except, of course, for the models. I had discovered Hawthorne’s liking for Airfix kits on my first visit and although he had been sheepish at first, he had allowed his enthusiasm to take over and this had led to one of our very few conversations that wasn’t about crime. The surfaces were crowded with tanks, jeeps, ambulances, anti-aircraft guns, battleships, aircraft carriers and so on, while dozens of different aircraft dangled from the ceiling on wires. I noticed the Chieftain Mark 10 that he had been working on the last time I came. It had been perfectly assembled, with not a smear of glue nor a paint stroke out of place. The collection must have taken up thousands of hours of his time. I could imagine Hawthorne, hunched over the table, working into the night. They would also be hours when he could completely cut himself off from the world outside.
I had asked him when he had started model-making. It was a hobby when I was a kid. The more time I spent with Hawthorne, the more I suspected that something traumatic must have happened to him when he was young and it had created the adult he had become. I don’t just mean the casual homophobia, the moodiness, his attitude to me. Becoming a detective, marrying, separating, living alone in an empty flat, making models … all of it seemed to be driven by the same catastrophe, which might have happened in Yorkshire and which might have led him to change his name.
‘You’ve started a new model,’ I said.
It was spread out on the table, a helicopter with RAF RESCUE printed on the side.
‘Westland Sea King,’ he said. ‘WS-61. Used in the Falklands, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan … Search and Rescue. You want that drink?’
‘Do you have any wine?’
‘No. I’ve got some rum.’
‘That’s fine.’
Hawthorne didn’t drink. He had never told me that but nor had I ever seen him with anything alcoholic. Even at the Station Inn in Ribblehead, he’d stuck to water. I followed him into the kitchen, which connected to the living area through a wide doorway. You can learn a lot about someone from their kitchen – but this one was useless. Everything was high-end, brand new and looked as clean as the day it had been fitted. It doesn’t matter how many times I clean my own flat, I’m always embarrassed by the oven, which greets visitors with the carbonised memories of a hundred meals. Hawthorne’s oven had pristine glass doors and silver gas rings that I doubted had ever been switched on.
And there, standing on a marble counter, was the bottle of rum he had offered me. Had he gone out and bought it? I thought it was more likely that he had been given it by someone as a gift, like Richard Pryce and his £2,000 bottle of wine. Either way, the plastic around the cap was unbroken. Along with the single glass that had been placed next to it, it was somehow totemic. I knew at once that this was the only alcohol in the house and that it had been placed there deliberately for me.
Hawthorne went to the fridge and opened the door. Casually, trying not to look too nosy, I turned my head to examine the contents. I wasn’t surprised to see that the interior was as clinical as the rest of the kitchen. In my house, we either have too much food or none at all and there are times when I find myself furiously ransacking the fridge to find the single ingredient I need. Hawthorne’s fridge was monastic by comparison. He mainly seemed to eat ready meals. There were about half a dozen of them in plastic trays, stacked so neatly and with so much space around them that they had become quite unappetising, like an artwork by Damien Hirst. The vegetable trays were half empty, although I could see what looked like a bunch of carrots through the frosted plastic. It was the fridge of a man who had no particular interest in food. He would take out a packet and microwave it and he might not even examine the lid to see what he was going to eat. Now, he plucked a can of Coke out of the door, took some ice from the freezer and brought them over to the table.
‘You’re not going to join me,’ I said.
‘I’ve got some coffee.’ There was a single white mug beside the sink. I hadn’t noticed it before.
Two lumps of ice, about an inch of rum, half the can, a slice of lemon that he produced from somewhere … he made the drink mechanically, but slid it towards me with a certain pride. Again, as so often with Hawthorne, I got a sense of a child playing at being an adult.
He took his coffee, then sat down at the table. I produced four folded sheets of paper out of my pocket and slid them across. ‘These are the pages you wanted,’ I said, still keeping my distance.
‘What pages?’
‘From the book. When I met Davina Richardson without you. You said you wanted to see them.’
‘Oh. Right.’ He placed them to one side. He didn’t even open them.
‘You could at least say thank you.’
He looked at me carefully, puzzled as to why I should be so annoyed. Could he really have forgotten what I had been through at Daunt’s? ‘All right,’ he admitted, finally. ‘So you rubbed Cara up the wrong way.’
‘Nice of you to notice.’ I took the first sip of my drink, wishing he could have found it in himself to get me a glass of wine or a gin and tonic.
‘I assumed it was her who slipped that book into your bag. I somehow don’t see you enjoying the Doomworld series.’
‘What? And if it had been Charles Dickens or Sarah Waters, you think I might have been tempted to go on a shoplifting spree?’
‘No, mate. That’s not what I meant.’ His voice was apologetic now but it struck me that he still looked quite amused.
‘You don’t seem to understand. What happened at that bookshop was terrible! It could be the end of my career. If it gets into the papers, I’ll be destroyed.’ I was almost trembling with anger and indignation. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t her. It was her assistant. Mills.’
‘He’s a nasty piece of work too. They suit each other. So what have you done to piss them off?’
I had
no choice. I had to explain what had happened, how DI Grunshaw had visited my home and assaulted me. ‘She wants to solve the case before you do,’ I said. ‘She wants me to contact her and tell her everything I know.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’ Hawthorne exclaimed. ‘You don’t know anything!’
‘Wait a minute … !’ I found my hand tightening around my glass. ‘I may not know who killed Richard Pryce – but for that matter, nor do you.’
‘I’ve narrowed it down to one of two suspects.’ Hawthorne blinked at me over his coffee.
‘Which two suspects?’
‘That’s my point. You don’t know. So you can’t say.’
‘As a matter of fact, I called her.’ Even in my anger, I felt guilty having to admit it. ‘I didn’t have any choice. She blocked the filming of Foyle’s War. At least, I think she did. I told her that we’d been to Yorkshire and that Gregory Taylor had been killed. I also told her about the break-in at Adrian Lockwood’s office.’ I waited for Hawthorne to respond and when he said nothing, I added: ‘I had to tell her something. And she said she knew all that anyway.’
‘She was lying.’ I had thought Hawthorne would be more annoyed with me, but he was unconcerned. ‘Cara Grunshaw and Darren Mills are both thick as shit. I’ve met police dogs with more intelligence than those two. You could tell them everything we’ve done, down to the last word, and they’d still end up running round in a circle, sniffing each other’s arses.’
‘Do you have to be quite so picturesque?’
‘You can call them every day if it’ll keep them off your back. You should have told me about this sooner. Honestly, mate. We’re streets ahead of them. You’ll have your book finished and in the Oxfam shops before they work out who did it. That’s why I was called in. The police know they’re going nowhere with this one. They need all the help they can get.’
There was a long pause. I drank some more. He had used real Coke and it was horribly sweet. Sugar with sugar.
‘Do you really know who killed Richard Pryce?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘One of two.’
The Sentence is Death Page 17