‘You said you had a picture.’
‘Yes. You’re lucky because there are far fewer photographs from that time. These days, of course, everyone has phones. But we kept this because of the Hamlet.’ She had brought a large canvas bag with her and lifted it onto the table. ‘I found it in the office.’
She took out a framed black and white photograph which she laid between the coffee cups and I found myself looking through a window into 1999. There were five young actors, posing with almost exaggerated seriousness for the camera on a bare stage. I recognised Damian Cowper immediately. He hadn’t changed very much in twelve years. Back then he had been slimmer and prettier … cocky was exactly the word that sprang to mind. He was looking straight into the lens, his eyes challenging you to ignore him. He was dressed in black jeans and a black open-necked shirt, holding a white Japanese mask. Grace Lovell, who had played Ophelia, and the boy who had played Laertes were standing on either side of them. They both had fans, spread out over their heads.
‘That’s Amanda.’ Penny pointed to a girl with long hair, tied back, standing just behind them. She was playing a male part and was wearing the same clothes as Damian. I have to say that her photograph disappointed me. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting but she looked quite ordinary … pretty, freckled, hair tied back in a ponytail. She was standing on the very edge of the group, her head turned towards a man who was approaching from the side.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
The man had barely entered the frame and I couldn’t make out his face. He was black, wearing glasses, holding a bunch of flowers, noticeably older than the others.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Liz said. ‘He’s probably one of the parents. The photograph was taken after the first performance and the GBS was packed.’
‘Did you ever …?’
I was about to ask her something about Amanda’s relationship with Damian but it was just then that I saw something and stopped, mid-sentence. I was looking at one of the people in the photograph and quite suddenly I knew who it was. There could be no doubt of it and with a rush of excitement I realised that I had discovered something that might be important and that, just for once, I was one step ahead of Hawthorne. I knew something he didn’t! He had deliberately taunted me when we left Grace Lovell’s home and all along he had treated me with an indifference that sometimes edged close to contempt. Well, how amusing it would be if I was able to tell him what he’d missed when he got back from Canterbury. I couldn’t help smiling. It would be a delicious payback for all those hours following him around London, watching silently from the sidelines.
‘Liz, you’ve been brilliant,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose I can borrow this?’ I was referring to the photograph.
‘I’m sorry. It can’t leave the building. But you can take a picture of it if you like.’
‘That’s great.’ My iPhone had been on the table, recording our conversation. I picked it up and took a shot of the image. I stood up. ‘Thanks a lot.’
Outside RADA, I made three telephone calls. First, I arranged a meeting. Then I called my assistant, who was waiting for me at my office. I told her I wouldn’t be coming back this afternoon. Finally, I left a message for my wife, saying I might be a bit late for dinner.
In fact, I wouldn’t have dinner at all.
Twenty-two
Behind the Mask
From Gower Street, I took the tube back out to west London and walked down to a square, red-brick building on the Fulham Palace Road just five minutes from Hammersmith roundabout. It’s no longer there, by the way. It was knocked down when they constructed a brand-new office block – Elsinore House. By a weird coincidence, HarperCollins are based there. They publish the American editions of my books.
The building that I visited that day was deliberately discreet, with frosted-glass windows and no signage at all. When I rang the front doorbell, I was greeted by an angry buzz and a click as the lock was electronically released from somewhere inside. A CCTV camera watched as I entered an empty reception area with bare walls and a tiled floor. It reminded me of a clinic or some obscure department of a hospital, though perhaps one that had recently closed down. At first I thought I was alone but then a voice called out to me and I went into an office just round the corner where the funeral director, Robert Cornwallis, was making two cups of coffee. The office was as unremarkable as the rest of the building, with a desk and a collection of very utilitarian chairs – padded without being remotely comfortable. A coffee machine stood on a trestle table to one side. There was a calendar on the wall.
This was the facility that Cornwallis had mentioned when we first met. His clients came to South Kensington for consultations but the actual bodies were brought here. Somewhere close by there was a chapel, ‘a place of bereavement’ Irene Laws had called it. Certainly, this wasn’t it – for the room I had entered offered no solace at all. I listened out for other people. It had never occurred to me that we might be alone but it was late afternoon by now and perhaps everyone had gone home. I had actually telephoned Cornwallis in his office but he had insisted on meeting me here.
He greeted me by name and as I came in and sat down he seemed warmer and more relaxed than the last two occasions I had seen him. He was wearing a suit but had taken off the tie and undone the top two buttons of his shirt.
‘I had no idea who you were,’ he said, passing me one of the cups of coffee. I’d given him my name over the phone. ‘You’re a writer! I have to say, I’m quite surprised. When you came to my office – and my house – I had assumed you were working with the police.’
‘I am, in a way,’ I replied.
‘No. I mean, I thought you were a detective. Where is Mr Hawthorne?’
I drank some of the coffee. He had added sugar without asking me. ‘He’s out of London at the moment.’
‘And he sent you?’
‘No. To be honest, he doesn’t know I’m seeing you.’
Cornwallis considered this. He looked puzzled. ‘On the telephone, you said you were working on a book.’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t that a little unorthodox? I thought a police inquiry, a murder inquiry, would be conducted in private. Will I be appearing in this book of yours?’
‘I think you might,’ I said.
‘I’m not sure that I want to. This whole business with Diana Cowper and her son has been extremely upsetting and I really don’t want the company dragged into it. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you’ll find quite a few of the parties involved may have objections.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to get their permission. And if anyone really does object, I can always change their name.’ I might have added that there was nothing to stop me writing about real people if they were in the public domain, but I didn’t want to antagonise him. ‘Would you prefer it if I changed yours?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid I’d insist on it.’
‘I could call you Dan Roberts.’
He looked at me curiously. A smile spread across his face. ‘That’s a name I haven’t used for years.’
‘I know.’
He took out a packet of cigarettes. I didn’t know that he smoked although now I thought about it there had been an ashtray of some sort in his office. He lit a cigarette and shook out the match with an angry wave of the hand. ‘You mentioned on the telephone that you were calling from RADA.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I was there this afternoon. I was seeing …’ I told him the name of the associate director. He didn’t seem to recognise it. ‘You never told me that you went to RADA,’ I added. I’d drunk half of the coffee. I set the mug down.
‘I’m sure I did.’
‘No. I was there on both occasions when Hawthorne spoke to you. Not only were you at RADA but you were there at the same time as Damian Cowper. You acted with him.’
I was sure he would deny it but he didn’t blink. ‘I never talk about RADA any more. It’s not a part of my life that I remember with any great fondness and
from what you yourself told me, I didn’t think it was relevant. When you came to see me in my South Kensington office you made it quite clear that your investigation – or, I should say, Mr Hawthorne’s investigation – was directed towards the car accident that had taken place in Deal.’
‘There may still be a connection,’ I said. ‘Were you there when Damian talked about it? Apparently he used it as the basis of one of his acting classes.’
‘As a matter of fact, I was. It was a long time ago, of course, and I’d forgotten all about it until you brought it up.’ He came round the side of the desk and perched on the edge, hovering over me. There was a harsh neon light in the room and it reflected in his glasses. ‘He brought in a little red bus and he played the music. He talked about what had happened and the impression it had made on him.’ Robert Cornwallis reflected for a moment. ‘Do you know, he was actually quite proud of the fact that immediately after she had run over two children, killing one of them as it turned out, his mother’s thoughts were entirely focused on him and his career. The two of them were really quite remarkable, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘You acted with him,’ I said. ‘You were in Hamlet.’
‘The Noh production. Based on Japanese classical theatre. All masks and fans and shared experience. Ridiculous, really. We were just children with big ideas about ourselves but at the time it mattered more than you can possibly imagine.’
‘Everyone says you were brilliant,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘There was a time when I wanted to be an actor.’
‘But you became an undertaker.’
‘We discussed this when you were at my house. It was the family business. My father, my grandfather … remember?’ He seemed to have an idea. ‘There’s something I’d like to show you. You may find it interesting.’
‘What is it?’
‘Not here. Next door …’
He stood up, expecting me to follow. And that was what I meant to do. But when I tried to get to my feet, I discovered that I couldn’t.
Actually that’s not even the half of it. What I’m describing was without question the single most terrifying moment of my life. I couldn’t move. My brain was sending a signal to my legs – ‘get up’ – but my legs weren’t listening. My arms had become foreign objects, attached to me but not connected. I was aware of my head, perched like a football, on a body that had turned into a useless pile of muscle and bone and somewhere inside my heart was hammering away in panic as if it could somehow break free. I will never fully be able to describe the bowel-emptying fear I felt at that moment. I knew that I had been drugged and that I was in terrible danger.
‘Are you all right?’ Cornwallis asked, his face full of concern.
‘What have you done?’ Even my voice didn’t sound like me. My mouth was having to work twice as hard to form the words.
‘Stand up …’
‘I can’t!’
And then he smiled. It was a horrible smile.
Moving very slowly, he came over to me. I flinched as he took out a handkerchief and forced it into my mouth, effectively gagging me. It hadn’t even occurred to me until then that I really ought to have screamed, not that it would have made any difference. I knew now that he had made sure we were on our own.
‘I’m just going to get something. I won’t be a minute,’ he said.
He walked out of the room, leaving the door open. I sat there, exploring my new sensations – or rather, my lack of them. I couldn’t feel anything – except fear. I tried to slow my breathing. My heart was still pounding. The handkerchief was pressing against the back of my throat, half suffocating me. I was actually too terrified to work out what should have been obvious to me: that I had blithely walked into a place of death – and that my own death was almost certain to be the result.
Cornwallis came back pushing a wheelchair. Perhaps he used it for corpses although it was more likely that he kept it for the elderly relatives who came to pay their last respects to the departed. He was whistling quietly to himself and there was a curious, empty quality to his face. He was no longer wearing his tinted glasses and I looked at his twinkling eyes, his neat little beard, his thinning hair, with the knowledge that they were nothing more than a mask and that they had concealed something quite monstrous which was now showing through. He knew I couldn’t move. He must have put something in my coffee and I, fool that I was, had drunk it. Already I was screaming at myself. This was the man who had strangled Diana Cowper and had sliced up her son. But why? And why hadn’t I worked it out – hadn’t it been obvious? – before I came here?
He leaned down and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. I recoiled in disgust but he simply picked me up and dumped me in the wheelchair. I weigh about eighty-five kilograms and the effort made him pause for breath. Then he brushed himself off, straightened my legs and, still whistling, wheeled me out of the office.
We went past an open door with a chapel on the other side. I glimpsed candles, wood panels, an altar that might be equipped with a cross, a menorah or whatever religious icon was appropriate. At the end of the corridor there was an industrial lift, large enough to hold a coffin. He pushed me in and stabbed at a button. As the doors closed, I felt my entire life being shut off behind me. There was a jolt and we began our descent.
The lift opened directly into a large, low-ceilinged workroom with more neon lights, evenly spaced. Everything I saw filled me with fresh horror, intensified by the fact that I was completely helpless. At the far end there were six silver cabinets, refrigerated compartments arranged in two sets of three, each one large enough to hold a human body. A whole side of the room was given over to what looked like a basic surgery with a metal gurney, shelves containing darkly coloured bottles and vials, a table with an array of scalpels, needles and knives. He parked me so that I was facing them, with my back to the lift. The walls were whitewashed brick. The floor was covered in grey sheet vinyl. There was a bucket in one corner, and a mop.
‘I really wish you hadn’t come here,’ Cornwallis said. He still had that very reasonable, mannered way of speaking which he had cultivated over the years and which suited the role he had taken. Because I knew now that it was just a role. With every second that passed, the real Robert Cornwallis was revealing himself to me.
‘I’ve got nothing against you and I don’t want to hurt you but you made the decision to come here and poke your nose into my fucking business.’ His voice had risen as he completed the sentence so that by the time he reached the swear-word it was a high-pitched scream. He recovered himself a little. ‘Why did you have to ask about RADA?’ he went on. ‘Why did you have to go digging around in the past? You come here asking me these stupid questions and I have to tell you and then I have to deal with you – which I really don’t want to do.’
I tried to speak but the handkerchief prevented me. He pulled it out of my mouth. As soon as it came free, I found my voice. ‘I told my wife I was coming here,’ I said. ‘And my assistant. If you do anything to me, they’ll know.’
‘If they ever find you,’ Cornwallis replied. His voice was matter-of-fact. I was about to speak again but he held up a hand. ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to hear anything more from you. It doesn’t really make any difference to me any more. But I do just want to explain.’
He touched his fingertips to the side of his head, staring into the mid-distance as he gathered his thoughts. And I just sat there, silently screaming. I am a writer. This can’t happen to me. I didn’t ask for any of it.
‘Do you have any idea what my life has been like?’ Cornwallis said at last. ‘Do you think I enjoy my job? What do you think it’s like, sitting day after day after day listening to miserable people going on about their miserable dead mothers and fathers and grannies and grandpas, arranging funerals and cremations and coffins and headstones while the sun is shining and everyone else is getting on with their lives? People look at me and they see this boring man in a suit who never smiles and who says all the right
things – ‘my condolences, oh I’m so sorry, please let me offer you a tissue’ – when inside I actually want to punch them in the face because that’s not me and it’s not who I ever wanted to be.
‘Cornwallis and Sons. That’s what I was born into. My father was an undertaker. My grandfather was an undertaker. His father was an undertaker. My uncles and aunts were undertakers. When I was a boy, everybody I knew was dressed in black. I was taken out to see the horses pulling the hearse along the street. That was a treat for me. I’d watch my father eating his dinner and I’d think to myself that he’d spent the whole day with dead people and that those hands of his, the same hands that had embraced me, had touched dead flesh. Death had followed him into the room. The whole family was infected by it. Death was our life! And the worst of it was that one day I would be exactly the same because that was what they had planned for me. There was never any question about it. Because we were Cornwallis and Sons – and I was the son.
‘They used to tease me about it at school. Everyone knew the name, Cornwallis. They’d pass the shop on the way to get the bus and it wasn’t as if it was Jones or Smith or something forgettable. They called me “funeral boy” … “dead boy”. They asked me if my dad got off on corpses … if I did. They wanted to know what dead people looked like with no clothes on. Did they get hard-ons? Did their nails still grow? Half the teachers thought I was creepy – not because of who I was but because of what my family did. Other kids talked about university, about careers. They had dreams. They had a future. Not me. My future was, quite literally, dead.
‘Except – and this is the funny thing – I did have a dream. It’s strange how things happen, isn’t it? One year, they gave me a part in the school play. It wasn’t a big part. I was Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew. But the thing is, I loved it. I loved Shakespeare. The richness of the language, the way he created a whole world. I felt so excited standing there in costume, with the lights on me. Maybe it was just that I had discovered the joy of being someone else. I was fifteen years old when I realised that I wanted to be an actor and from that moment the thought consumed me. I wouldn’t just be an actor. I would be a famous actor. I wouldn’t be Robert Cornwallis. I’d be someone else. It was what I had been born for.