He left the room, disappearing up the spiral staircase. I sat in the armchair trying to ignore the body, trying not even to think of the dreadful injuries. It wasn’t easy. If I closed my eyes, I became more aware of the smell. If I opened them, I found myself glimpsing the blood, the sprawled-out limbs. I had to turn my head away to keep Damian Cowper out of my line of vision.
And then he groaned.
I twisted round, thinking I’d imagined it. But there it was again, a quite gruesome, rattling sound. Damian’s head was facing away from me but I was quite certain it was coming from him.
‘Hawthorne!’ I shouted. At the same time, I felt the bile rising in my throat. ‘Hawthorne!’
He came hurrying back down the stairs. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s Damian. He’s alive.’
He looked at me doubtfully, then went over to the body. ‘No, he isn’t,’ he said, tersely.
‘I just heard him.’
Damian moaned again, louder this time. I hadn’t imagined it. He was trying to speak.
But Hawthorne just sniffed. ‘Stay where you are, Tony, and forget about it, all right? His muscles are stiffening and that includes the muscles around his vocal cords. And there are gases in his stomach which are trying to escape. That’s all you’re hearing. It happens all the time.’
‘Oh.’ I profoundly wished that I wasn’t here. Not for the first time, I wished that I’d never agreed to write this bloody book.
Hawthorne lit a cigarette.
‘Did you find anything upstairs?’ I asked.
‘There’s no-one else here,’ he said.
‘You knew he was going to be killed.’
‘I knew it was a possibility.’
‘How?’
He cupped his hand and tapped ash into his palm. I could see that he was reluctant to tell me. ‘I was stupid,’ he said, at last. ‘But when the two of us were here the first time, you distracted me.’
‘So it was my fault?’
‘I told you, when I’m talking to someone, I need to focus and when you interrupt, it sort of breaks what I’m thinking, my train of thought.’ He softened. ‘It was my fault. I’ll hold my hands up. I was the one who missed it.’
‘Missed what?’
‘Damian said that his mum came in and watered the plants on the terrace. He said she forwarded his mail. I should have remembered. When we were at Diana Cowper’s place, there were five hooks in the kitchen. Do you remember?’
‘They were on a wooden fish.’
‘That’s right. And there were four sets of keys. If Diana Cowper was coming in here while he was in LA, it followed that she had his keys but I didn’t see one with that label.’
‘There was an empty hook.’
‘That’s right. Someone kills her. They search the place. They notice the keys. And they take the opportunity to snatch them.’ He stopped and I saw him playing back what he had just said. ‘That’s one possibility anyway.’
I heard the stamp of feet on the stairs leading up to the front door and a moment later, two uniformed police constables arrived. They looked from the body to the two of us, trying to work out what was going on.
‘Stay right where you are,’ the first one said. ‘Who made the call?’
‘I did,’ Hawthorne said. ‘And you took your time getting here.’
‘Who are you, sir?’
‘Ex-Detective Inspector Hawthorne, formerly with MIT. I’ve already contacted DI Meadows. I’ve reason to believe that this murder may be connected to a current investigation. You’d better get in the local DI and the murder squad.’
The British police have a particular way of addressing each other, a formal and slightly tortuous turn-of-phrase, as in ‘I have reason to believe’ and ‘contacted’ instead of ‘called’. It’s one reason why I’ve always found them so difficult to dramatise on television. It’s hard to care about a character who talks in clichés. They also look so much less interesting than their American counterparts, with their white shirts, stab vests and those hopeless blue helmets. No guns. No sunglasses. These two policemen were young and earnest. One was Asian, the other white. They hardly spoke to us again.
One of them took out his radio and called in the situation while Hawthorne set about examining the room for himself. I watched him as he went over to the door that led out to the terrace. He was careful not to touch the handle, using a handkerchief which he pulled out of his pocket. The door was unlocked. He disappeared outside and although I was still feeling dreadful, I hauled myself out of the chair and followed. The policemen had made their calls. They didn’t seem to have anything else to do. They glanced uncertainly in my direction as I left. They hadn’t even asked who I was.
I felt better immediately, being out in the afternoon air. Like the interior of the flat, the terrace – with its deckchairs, potted plants and gas barbecue – reminded me of a studio set. It resembled the balcony where Joey and Chandler and the rest of them used to hang out in Friends, looking out towards the back of the building with a metal fire escape leading to an alleyway. Hawthorne was standing at the edge, gazing down. I noticed he had taken off his shoes, presumably to avoid leaving footprints. He was smoking again. He consumed a suicidal number of cigarettes a day; at least twenty, maybe more. He turned round as I approached.
‘He was waiting out here,’ he said. ‘By the time Damian Cowper got back from the funeral, he’d already let himself into the flat, using the keys he’d taken from Britannia Road. Then he came out here and he waited. He also left this way when it was over.’
‘Wait a minute. How do you know all that? How do you even know it was a he?’
‘Diana Cowper was strangled with a curtain cord. Her son was chopped to pieces. The killer was either a man or a really, really angry woman.’
‘What about the rest of it? How can you be sure that’s how the murder happened?’
Hawthorne just shrugged.
‘If you want me to write about it, you’re going to have to tell me. Otherwise, I’ll have to make it up.’ It was a threat I’d made before.
‘All right.’ He flicked the cigarette over the side of the building. I watched it spin in the air before it disappeared. ‘Start by putting yourself in the killer’s place. Think about what’s going on in his mind.
‘You know Damian’s going to be coming back here from the funeral. That crap with the MP3 player and “The wheels on the bus” was done deliberately to drive him here. Or it could be that you were in the cemetery – in the crowd or hiding behind one of the gravestones. You heard him tell his girlfriend: I’m going home. That’s when you made your plan.
‘The only trouble is, you can’t be certain he’s going to be alone. Maybe Grace will come along after all. Maybe he’ll bring the vicar. So you have to wait somewhere you can see him and if the opportunity doesn’t present itself, you can piss off again.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘There’s a staircase down to ground level.’
‘Perhaps he came up that way?’
‘He can’t have. The door into the living room is locked and bolted on the inside.’ Hawthorne shook his head. ‘He had the key. He let himself in the front door. He looked for somewhere to hide and came out here. It was perfect. He could look in through the window and see if Damian had someone with him. But as things turned out, Damian was alone, which was what he wanted. The killer went back into the living room and …’ He left the rest of the sentence hanging.
‘You said he left this way too,’ I reminded him.
‘There’s a footprint.’ Hawthorne pointed and I saw a red quarter moon next to the fire escape, made by the sole of someone’s shoe after they’d stepped in Damian’s blood. It reminded me of the footprint we’d found at Diana Cowper’s house, presumably left behind by the same foot.
‘Anyway, he couldn’t use the front door,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘You’ve seen the stab wounds. There’d have been a lot of blood. He’d have been covered in it. You think he could stroll down Brick Lane without being noticed? My guess
is he put on a coat or something, climbed down here and disappeared down the alleyway.’
‘Do you know how the alarm clock got into the coffin?’
‘Not yet. We’re going to have to talk to Cornwallis.’ He rolled the cigarette between his fingers. ‘But we’re not going to be able to leave here for a while. You may have to give a statement to Meadows when he finally turns up. Don’t say too much. Just play dumb.’ He glanced at me. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult.’
Over the next couple of hours, Damian Cowper’s flat became more and more crowded while the two of us sat there with nothing to do. The police constables who had first arrived on the scene had summoned their detective inspector, who had in turn called in the Murder Investigation Team. There were about half a dozen of them, wearing those plasticised paper suits with hoods, masks and gloves that made them almost indistinguishable from each other. Every few seconds, the room seemed to freeze as a police photographer captured some section of it with a dazzling flash. A man and a woman, both part of the forensic team, were crouching over Damian’s body, delicately swabbing his hands and neck with cotton buds. I knew what they were looking for. If there had been any bodily contact between Damian and his attacker during the knife attack, they might be able to pick up DNA. Both of his hands had been bagged, the opaque plastic securely taped. It was extraordinary how quickly he had been dehumanised – and worse was to come. When they were finally ready to remove him, two men knelt down and wrapped him in polythene which they sealed with gaffer tape. The process turned him into something that reminded me of both ancient Egypt and Federal Express.
They’d used blue and white tape to create a cordon which began at the front door and blocked off the stairs. I wasn’t sure how they would deal with the neighbours on the upper and lower floors. As for me, although I hadn’t been questioned, a woman in a plastic suit had asked me to remove my shoes and taken them away. That puzzled me. ‘What do they need them for?’ I asked Hawthorne.
‘Latent footprints,’ he replied. ‘They need to eliminate you from the enquiry.’
‘I know. But they haven’t taken yours.’
‘I’ve been more careful, mate.’
He glanced at his feet. He was still in his socks. He must have slipped his shoes off the moment he saw Damian’s body.
‘When will I get them back?’ I asked.
Hawthorne shrugged.
‘How long are we going to be here for?’
Again, he didn’t answer. He wanted another cigarette but he wasn’t allowed to smoke inside and it was making him irritable.
After a while, Meadows arrived, signing himself in with the log officer at the door. He had taken charge – the murder of Damian Cowper was being folded into his current investigation – and this time I saw a different side of him. He was cool and authoritative, checking with the crime scene manager, talking to the forensic team, taking notes. When he finally came over to us, he got straight to the point.
‘What were you doing here?’
‘We came over to offer our condolences.’
‘Piss off, Hawthorne. This is serious. Did he call you? Did you know he might be in danger?’
Meadows wasn’t as stupid as Hawthorne had suggested. He was right. Hawthorne had known. But would he admit it?
‘No,’ he said. ‘He didn’t call me.’
‘So why did you come here?’
‘Why do you think? That business at the funeral – there’s obviously something sick going on and if you hadn’t been so busy chasing your non-existent burglar, you’d have seen it too. I wanted to ask him about what had happened. I just got here too late.’
No mention of the keys. Hawthorne would never admit he’d made a mistake. He’d forgotten that one day Meadows would read it in my book.
‘He was already dead when you got here.’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t see anyone leaving?’
‘There’s a bloody footprint out on the terrace, if you care to take a look. It might give you a shoe size. I’d say the killer left down the fire escape into the alley, so perhaps you’ll catch him on CCTV. But we didn’t see anything. We got here too late.’
‘All right, then. You can get lost. And take Agatha Christie here with you.’
He meant me. Agatha Christie is something of a hero of mine but I was still offended.
Hawthorne got up and I followed him to the front door, both of us padding across the wooden floor in our socks. I was about to point this out when he swept a pair of black leather shoes off the art deco sideboard and handed them to me. I hadn’t noticed when he’d put them there. ‘These are for you,’ he said.
‘Where did you get them?’
‘I nicked them out of the cupboard when I went upstairs. They belonged to him.’ He nodded in the direction of Damian Cowper. ‘They should be about your size.’
I looked uncertain, so he added: ‘He won’t be needing them.’
I slipped them on. They were Italian, expensive. They fitted perfectly.
He put on his own shoes and we walked out, past more uniformed policemen and down into Brick Lane. There were three police cars parked outside and, next to them, a vehicle with the words ‘Private Ambulance’ printed on the side. It wasn’t anything of the sort. It was just a black van brought here to transport Damian Cowper to the mortuary. More policemen were at work, erecting a screen from the front of the house to the edge of the pavement so that nobody would see the body when it was carried out. A large crowd was being held back on the other side of the road. The traffic had been blocked. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking of all the television programmes I’d been involved with. We’d never have been able to afford so many extras and all these vehicles, let alone the central London location.
A taxi had pulled in just ahead of us and I nudged Hawthorne as Grace Lovell got out. She was dressed in the same clothes that she had worn to the funeral, with her handbag over her arm – but now she had Ashleigh with her, wearing a pink dress and clutching her hand. Grace stopped and looked around, shocked by all the activity. Then she saw us and hurried over.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Why are the police here?
‘I’m afraid you can’t go in there,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I’ve got some bad news.’
‘Damian …?’
‘He’s been killed.’
I thought he could have put it more gently. There was a three-year-old girl standing in front of him. What if she had heard and understood? Grace had had the same thought. She drew her daughter closer towards her, a protective arm around her shoulders. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.
‘Someone attacked him after the funeral.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘No. That’s not possible. He was upset. He said he was going home. It was that horrible joke.’ She looked from Hawthorne to the door, then back again. She realised that the two of us had been on our way out. ‘Where are you going?’
‘There’s a DI in the flat called Meadows. He’s in charge of the investigation and he’ll want to talk to you. But if you’ll take my advice, you won’t go inside. It’s not very pleasant. Have you been with your parents?’
‘Yes. I went to pick up Ashleigh.’
‘Then get back in the taxi and go back to them. Meadows will find you soon enough.’
‘Can I do that? They won’t think …?’
‘They won’t think you had anything to do with it. You were at the pub with us.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ She made up her mind, then nodded. ‘You’re right. I can’t go inside. Not with Ashleigh.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’ Ashleigh spoke for the first time. She seemed confused and scared by the police and all the activity around her.
‘Daddy’s not here,’ Grace said. ‘We’re going back to Granny and Grandpa.’
‘Do you want someone to travel with you?’ I asked. ‘I don’t mind coming with you, if you like.’
; ‘No. I don’t need anyone.’
I didn’t know what to make of Grace Lovell. I’ve never been very comfortable with actors, because I can never tell if they’re being sincere or if they’re simply … well, acting. This was how it was now. Grace looked upset. There were tears in her eyes. She could have been in shock. And yet there was a part of me that said it was all just a performance, that she had been rehearsing her lines from the moment the taxi drew in.
We watched as she got back into the car and closed the door. She leaned forward and gave instructions to the driver. A moment later, it pulled away.
‘The grieving widow,’ Hawthorne muttered.
‘Do you think so?’
‘No, Tony. I’ve seen more grief at a Turkish wedding. If you ask me, I’d say there’s a lot of things she’s not telling us.’ The taxi passed through the traffic lights at the top of Brick Lane and disappeared. Hawthorne smiled. ‘She didn’t even ask how he died.’
Fourteen
Willesden Green
It was a 1950s semi-detached house, red brick on the first floor, then off-white stucco topped with a gabled roof. It was as if three architects had worked on it at the same time without ever being introduced to one another but they must have been pleased with their work because they’d replicated it on the house next door, which was an exact mirror of its neighbour, with a wooden fence dividing the drives and a single chimney shared between the two properties. Each one of them had a bay window which looked out over an area of crazy-paving running down to a low wall, with the street, Sneyd Road, on the other side. I guessed it had about four bedrooms. A poster in the front window advertised a fun run for the North London Hospice. A garage stood open to one side, with a bright green Vauxhall Astra, a tricycle and a motorbike fighting for space.
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