A Line to Kill

‘What are you talking about? You were the one who found the text that Helen le Mesurier sent Colin Matheson. OMG, Colin … What has he got? And Matheson told us—’

‘Matheson was wrong too.’

‘Well, if he wasn’t blackmailing them, what do you think he was doing? Revenge porn? Putting this out on the internet just to annoy them?’

‘It wasn’t Abbott,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Then how did this camera end up in his desk?’

Hawthorne put the camera back where he had found it. Slowly, he explained. ‘Helen le Mesurier wasn’t being blackmailed. She was part of it. And Derek Abbott wasn’t the blackmailer.’

‘Then who was?’

‘Charles le Mesurier.’

I ran that through my head. ‘Hawthorne, are you saying—’

‘The whole thing was a set-up.’ Hawthorne took out a cigarette and lit it. With Abbott absent and quite possibly on the run, there was no need to ask for permission.

‘I’ll have one of those, if you don’t mind,’ Torode said.

‘Sorry, mate. Last one.’ Hawthorne slid the pack back into his pocket.

‘What do you mean, it was a set-up?’ I asked.

‘When we talked to Derek Abbott in the kitchen, he was shit-scared half the time. Of course he denied everything. That’s what he’s done all his life. But he was also on the defensive. He insisted he hadn’t been fired. He didn’t want us to know how much money he’d been paid. He said it was peanuts when actually it was twenty thousand quid. He also lied about texting Helen le Mesurier. Of course it was him. She was five minutes from his house when she was killed.

‘The only time he relaxed was when I accused him of having shares in Électricité du Nord. That was when he got cocky. He told me to check out the list of shareholders and then he threw me out of the house. Well, I checked the shareholders and he was actually telling the truth. He’s got nothing.

‘That part of the story was wrong – but where had it come from? It was what Abbott had told Colin Matheson and what Matheson had then told us. So why did he lie? Don’t forget, he never took any money from Matheson. All he wanted was for him to influence his stupid committee and get the power line up and running. And who actually had the most to gain from that?’

‘Charles le Mesurier.’ Suddenly, it was crystal clear.

‘That’s right. Charles was getting cash payments as an adviser, but we also know that he’d sold a piece of land to the company for five times its true value. That was what was at stake. If he was going to hit pay dirt, le Mesurier needed someone inside the States to get the electricity line off the ground and so he used his own wife as bait. She seduced Colin in front of the camera. And his dirty little friend, Derek Abbott, was the one who put the squeeze on him.’

‘And that was why he was paid £20,000!’ I exclaimed.

‘Exactly. Le Mesurier earned millions, but Abbott got a commission.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Torode cut in. He pointed at the camera in disgust. ‘Are you saying she knew she was being filmed?’

‘She was only doing it for the camera,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Didn’t you see it for yourself? Helen le Mesurier was carrying the champagne, but the glasses were already laid out on the table. There was nothing spontaneous about what happened in the Snuggery, no moment of madness. She’d planned it all. And when they came in, Colin turned left, but she turned right. Why? Because she knew she had to be in the shot!’

‘But that’s disgusting,’ Torode said. ‘Le Mesurier used his own wife …’

‘They had an open marriage. Sex was no big deal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Charles didn’t get off watching this. The two of them were as bad as each other.’

The three of us stood facing each other in the empty room.

‘So where is Abbott now?’ Torode asked.

‘That’s the question,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Let’s take a look around.’

We went back into the hall and then upstairs. The house had three bedrooms. Two of them hadn’t been used for a long time. They weren’t just unoccupied, they felt musty and redundant, permanently empty. The master bedroom was cosier, with a king-sized bed and half a dozen pillows that must have mocked Derek Abbott every time he went up there, alone. A bathroom led off it. He had a lot of expensive toiletries.

There was no sign of the man himself and although I noticed a hatch leading up to the attic, Hawthorne wasn’t inclined to search there. I supposed it was unlikely that Abbott was intending to hide away in the house until this was all over. I wondered if he had actually gone on the run. Was it possible that he was simply shopping in St Anne?

Hawthorne stopped. Something had occurred to him. ‘Downstairs,’ he said.