‘Why do you think anyone would want to read about you?’ I asked.
‘I’m a detective. People like reading about detectives.’
‘But you’re not a proper detective. You got fired. Why did you get fired, by the way?’
‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘Well, if I was going to write about you, you’d have to tell me. I’d have to know where you live, whether you’re married or not, what you have for breakfast, what you do on your day off. That’s why people read murder stories.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Yes!’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t agree. The word is murder. That’s what matters.’
‘Look – I’m really sorry.’ I tried to break it gently. ‘It’s a good idea and I’m sure you’ve got a really interesting case but I’m afraid I’m far too busy. Anyway, it’s not what I do. I write about fictional detectives. I’ve just finished a story about Sherlock Holmes. I used to do Poirot and Midsomer Murders. I’m a fiction writer. You need someone who writes true crime.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘All the difference in the world. I’m in control of my stories. I like to know what I’m writing about. Creating the crimes and the clues and all the rest of it is half the fun. If I were to follow you around, just writing down what you saw and what you said, what would that make me? I’m sorry. I’m not interested.’
He glanced at me over the tip of his cigarette. He didn’t look surprised or offended, as if he’d known that was what I was going to say. ‘I reckon you could sell a ton of copies,’ he remarked. ‘And it would be easy for you. I’d tell you everything you need to know. Don’t you want to hear what I’m working on?’ I didn’t – but he went on before I could stop him. ‘A woman walks into a funeral parlour, just the other side of London, in South Kensington. She’s arranged her own funeral, right down to the last detail. And that same day, six hours later, someone murders her … goes into her house and strangles her. That’s a bit unusual, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Who was she?’ I asked.
‘Her name doesn’t matter just for now. But she was rich. She’s got a famous son. And here’s another thing. As far as we can see, she didn’t have an enemy in the world. Everybody liked her. That’s why I got called in. None of it makes any sense.’
For a brief moment, I was tempted.
The hardest part of writing murder stories is thinking up the plots and at that particular moment I didn’t have any more in my head. After all, there are only so many reasons why anyone wants to kill someone else. You do it because you want something from them: their money, their wife, their job. You do it because you’re afraid of them. They know something about you and perhaps they’re threatening you. You kill them out of revenge because of something they knowingly or unknowingly did to you. Or, I suppose, you kill them by accident. After twenty-two episodes of Foyle’s War, I’d pretty much covered every variation.
And then there was the question of research. If I decide that the killer is going to be, say, a hotel chef, then I have to create his world. I have to visit the hotel. I have to understand the catering business. Making him believable means a lot of hard work and he’s only the first of twenty or thirty characters I have to invent, all of them lurking somewhere inside my head. I have to understand police procedure: fingerprints, forensic science, DNA … all the rest of it. It can be months before I write the first word. I was tired. I wasn’t sure I had the stamina to begin another book so soon after finishing The House of Silk.
Effectively, Hawthorne was offering me a short cut. He was giving me the whole thing on a plate. And he was right. The case did sound interesting. A woman walks into a funeral parlour. It was actually quite a good opening. I could already see the first chapter. Spring sunshine. A smart area of town. A woman crosses the road …
It was still unthinkable.
‘How did you know?’ I asked suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Just now. You told me I’d been in the country and you said I’d got a puppy. Who told you that?’
‘Nobody told me.’
‘Then how did you know?’
He scowled – as if he didn’t want to tell me. But at the same time he was trying to get something out of me and so, briefly, I had the upper hand. ‘There’s sand stuck in the tread of your shoes,’ he said. ‘I saw it when you crossed your leg. So either you’ve walked across a building site or you’ve been on the coast. I heard you got a place in Orford, so I suppose you must have been there.’
‘And the puppy?’
‘There’s a paw-print on your jeans. Just below the knee.’
I examined the material. Sure enough, it was there, so faint that I wouldn’t have noticed it. But he had.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘How did you know it was a puppy? It could have been a breed of small dog. And for that matter, how do you know I didn’t just meet it in the street?’
He looked at me sadly. ‘Someone’s sat down and chewed your left shoelace,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose that was you.’
I didn’t look. I have to admit I was impressed. But at the same time I was annoyed that I hadn’t worked it out for myself. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s certainly an interesting case from the sound of what you say and I’m sure you could find a writer who would do it for you. But it’s like I said. You need to ask a journalist or someone like that. Even if I wanted to do it, I can’t. I’m working on other things.’
I wondered how he would respond. Again, he wrong-footed me. He just shrugged. ‘Yeah. All right. It was just a thought.’ He got to his feet, his hand reaching towards his trouser pocket. ‘Do you want me to get that?’
He meant the tea and cake. ‘No. It’s all right. I’ll pay,’ I said.
‘I had a coffee.’
‘I’ll get that too.’
‘Well, if you change your mind, you know where to reach me.’
‘Yes. Of course. I can talk to my literary agent, if you like. She might be able to recommend someone who can help.’
‘No. Don’t worry. I’ll find someone.’ He turned round and walked away.
I ate the cake. It was a shame to waste it. Then I went back home and spent the rest of the afternoon reading. I tried not to think about Hawthorne but I couldn’t get him out of my mind.
When you’re a full-time writer, one of the hardest things to do is to turn down work. You’re slamming a door which may not open again and there’s always the fear of what you may have missed on the other side. Years ago, a producer rang me to ask if I might be interested in working on a musical based on the songs of a Swedish pop group. I turned her down – which is why I’m not on the posters (and have enjoyed none of the royalties) of Mamma Mia! I don’t have any regrets, incidentally. There’s no saying the show would have been such a success if I had ended up writing it. But it just shows the level of insecurity that most writers live with day by day. A bizarre crime that happened to be true. A woman walks into a funeral parlour. Hawthorne, an odd, complicated but genuinely brilliant detective, gets called in as some sort of consultant. Had I made another mistake, refusing his offer? I picked up my book and went back to work.
Two days later, I was in Hay-on-Wye.
It’s funny how many literary festivals there are all over the world. There are some writers I know who never actually write any more; they simply spend their time travelling from one shindig to the next. I’ve often wondered how I would have managed if I’d been born with a stammer or chronic shyness. The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It’s almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes.
Whether it’s crime in Harrogate, children’s books in Bath, science fiction in Glasgow or poetry in Aldeburgh, it feels as if there’s a literary festival in every city in the UK, and yet Hay, which takes place in a disturbingly muddy field on the edge of a tiny market town, has bec
ome one of the most pre-eminent. People come from miles around and over the years speakers have included two US presidents, several Great Train Robbers and J. K. Rowling. I was excited to be there, talking to about five hundred children in a large tent. As usual, there was a scattering of adults too. People who know my television writing will often come to my events and will happily sit through forty minutes of Alex Rider in order to talk about Foyle’s War.
The session had gone well. The children had been lively and had asked some good questions. I’d managed to get in some stuff about Foyle. I was almost exactly sixty minutes in and had received a signal to close things down when something rather strange happened.
There was a woman, sitting in the front row. At first, I’d taken her for a teacher or perhaps a librarian. She was very ordinary-looking, about forty, round-faced with long, fair hair and glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. I’d noticed her because she seemed to be on her own and also because she didn’t seem particularly interested in anything I had to say. She hadn’t laughed at any of my jokes. I was afraid she might be a journalist. Newspapers often send reporters to author talks these days and any joke you make, any unguarded comment, may be quoted out of context and used against you. So I was on my guard when she put up her hand and one of the attendants handed her the roving mike.
‘I was wondering,’ she said. ‘Why is it that you always write fantasy? Why don’t you write anything real?’
Most of the questions that I’ve been asked at literary festivals, I’ve been asked many times before. Where do my ideas come from? Which are my favourite characters? How long does it take to write a book? Nobody had ever asked me this and I was a little put out. Her tone wasn’t offensive but there was still something in what she’d asked that rankled.
‘Foyle’s War is real,’ I replied. ‘Every episode is based on true stories.’
I was about to go on to explain how much research I did, that I had spent the whole of the last week reading about Alan Nunn May, who had shared atomic secrets with the Soviets and who might be the inspiration for my next episode if a new series of Foyle went ahead. But she interrupted me. ‘I’m sure you do use true stories, but what I’m trying to say is, the crimes aren’t real. And your other television shows – Poirot and Midsomer Murders – they’re all completely fantastical. You write stories about a fourteen-year-old spy and I know a lot of children enjoy them, but that’s the same. I don’t mean to be rude, but I wonder why you’re not more interested in the real world.’
‘What is the real world?’ I countered.
‘I just mean real people.’
Some of the children were getting restless. It was time to move on. ‘I like writing fiction,’ I said. ‘That’s what I do.’
‘Aren’t you worried that your books might be considered irrelevant?’
‘I don’t think they have to be real to be relevant.’
‘I’m sorry. I do like your work. But I disagree.’
It was an odd coincidence, given the proposal Hawthorne had put to me just a couple of days before. I looked for the woman again before I left but I didn’t see her and she didn’t come to get a book signed. On the train back to London, I couldn’t help thinking about what she had said. Was she right? Was my work too focused on fantasy? I was about to launch myself as an adult writer but my first outing, The House of Silk, was about as far from the modern world as it was possible to be. Some of my television work – Injustice, for example – was set in a recognisable, twenty-first-century London but perhaps it was true that I had spent too long living in my own imagination and that if I wasn’t careful, I would lose touch. Maybe I already had. Maybe a crash course in reality would do me good.
It’s a long, long way from Hay-on-Wye to Paddington station. By the time I got home, I had made up my mind. As soon as I got in, I picked up the phone.
‘Hawthorne?’
‘Tony!’
‘All right. Fifty-fifty. I’m in.’
Three
Chapter One
Hawthorne did not like my first chapter.
I’m jumping ahead here because I didn’t actually show it to him until a while later and even then it was only with reluctance. I remembered all too well what had happened with Injustice and would have preferred to keep it under wraps – but he insisted and since this was meant to be an equal partnership, how could I refuse? But I think it’s important to explain how the book was written; the rules of engagement, so to speak. These are my words but they were his actions and the truth is that, to begin with, the two didn’t quite fit.
The two of us were sitting in one of the many Starbucks that seemed to punctuate our investigation. I had emailed him the pages and I knew I was in trouble when he took them out of his case and I saw that he had printed them, covering them with red crosses and circles. I am very protective of my writing. It’s fair to say that I think about every single word I write. (Do I need ‘single’? Would ‘true’ be better than ‘fair’?) When I had agreed to work with Hawthorne, I had assumed that although he was in charge of the case, he would take a back seat when it came to the actual narrative. He quickly disabused me.
‘It’s all wrong, Tony,’ Hawthorne began. ‘You’re leading people up the garden path.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The very first sentence. It’s wrong.’
I read what I had written.
Just after eleven o’clock on a bright spring morning, the sort of day when the sunshine is almost white and promises a warmth that it doesn’t quite deliver, Diana Cowper crossed the Fulham Road and went into a funeral parlour.
‘I don’t see what’s wrong with that,’ I said. ‘It was about eleven o’clock. She went into a funeral parlour.’
‘But not the way you say.’
‘She took the bus!’
‘She caught it at the top of her street. We know that because we’ve got her on CCTV. The driver also remembered her and gave the police a statement. But here’s the problem, mate. Why do you say she crossed the road?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because she didn’t. We’re talking about the number 14 bus, which she picked up at Chelsea Village. That’s the stop marked “U” exactly opposite Britannia Road. It took her to Chelsea Football Club, Hortensia Road, Edith Grove, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Beaufort Street and finally Old Church Street, stop HJ, where she got off.’
‘You have a terrific knowledge of London bus routes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t quite get the point.’
‘She didn’t have to cross the road. When she left the bus, she was already on the right side.’
‘Does it really make any difference?’
‘Well, yes, it might. If you say she crossed the road, it means she must have gone somewhere else before she went into the undertaker’s – and that might be important. She could have gone to the bank and taken out a load of money. She could have had a row with someone that very morning and that could have been the reason she was killed. That same person could have followed her across the road and seen where she was going. She could have stopped in front of someone who was driving a car and that could have led to an altercation. Don’t look at me like that! Road rage murders are more common than you think. But the facts of the matter are that she got up in her house, alone. She had breakfast, then she got on a bus. It was the first thing she did.’
‘So what would you want me to write?’
He had already scribbled something on a sheet of paper. He handed it to me. I read:
At exactly seventeen minutes past eleven, Diana Jane Cowper exited from the number 14 bus at the Old Church Street (HJ) stop and retraced her steps twenty-five metres along the pavement. She then entered Cornwallis and Sons funeral parlour.
‘I’m not writing that,’ I said. ‘It reads like a police report.’
‘At least it’s accurate. And what’s the bell doing there?’
‘What bell?’
‘In the fourth paragraph. Right here. You say the
re’s a bell on a spring mechanism leading into the funeral parlour. Well, I didn’t notice any bell. And that’s because it’s not there.’
I tried to stay calm. That was something I would soon learn about Hawthorne. When he put his mind to it, he could annoy me more easily than anyone I’d ever met.
‘I put the bell in for atmosphere,’ I explained. ‘You’ve got to allow me some sort of dramatic licence. I wanted to show how traditional and old-fashioned the business was – Cornwallis and Sons – and that was a simple, effective way.’
‘Maybe. But it makes a big difference. Suppose someone followed her in there. Suppose someone overheard what she said.’
‘You’re talking about the man she had the altercation with?’ I asked, sarcastically. ‘Or maybe someone she met at the bank? Is that what you think?’
Hawthorne shrugged. ‘You’re the one saying that there was a link between Mrs Cowper arranging her funeral and her getting murdered the same day. At least, that’s what you’re suggesting to your readers.’ He lingered on the first syllable of ‘readers’, making it sound like a dirty word. ‘But you have to consider the alternatives. Maybe the timing of the funeral and the murder was just a coincidence – although I’ll be honest with you. I don’t like coincidences. I’ve been working in crime for twenty years and I’ve always found everything has its place. Or maybe Mrs Cowper knew she was going to die. She’d been threatened and she arranged the funeral because she knew there was no way out. That’s possible, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense because why didn’t she just go to the police? And a third possibility: somebody found out what she was doing. It could have been anyone. They could have followed her in off the street and listened to her making all the arrangements because there’s no sodding bell on the door. Anyone could come in or go out without being heard. But not in your version.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll take out the bell.’
‘And the Mont Blanc pen.’
‘Why?’ I stopped him before he could answer. ‘All right. It doesn’t matter. I’ll lose that too.’