Close to Death

My agent, Hilda Starke, knew nothing of this. I hadn’t sent her the novel yet and she’d only seen a brief synopsis of Murder at the Vaudeville Theatre, which was my working title. She would certainly be delighted that I had cleared my name, if only because it wouldn’t have been easy to get books out of me if I’d been banged up in Wormwood Scrubs. I’ve never been quite sure if literary agents work for their writers or the other way round. Hilda had already twisted my arm into signing a four-book deal with Penguin Random House, arranging delivery dates that even an AI-powered neural network machine would have had difficulty meeting. Either I’m too weak or I like writing too much, but I always seem to be locked in a room with a ream of A4 while other writers are out and about having a good time.

There had, however, been a development that even Hilda could not have foreseen.

I couldn’t write another murder story for the simple reason that nobody had been murdered. I hadn’t heard from Hawthorne for months.

That’s the trouble with writing what I suppose I must call true crime. When I was working on the television programme Midsomer Murders, nobody so much as blinked if there were four or five homicides in a single episode. Hercule Poirot investigated no fewer than eighty-five mysterious deaths (starting with the one at Styles) during his career. Real life is not like that. There are seven or eight hundred murders a year in the United Kingdom, but most of them aren’t mysteries at all. A fight in a pub. A domestic argument that turns violent. Knife crime. These are all horrible, but nobody wants to read about them. Even journalists find them pedestrian. The police don’t need to call Hawthorne when the killer is sitting in the kitchen with a meat tenderiser in one hand, a bottle of whisky in the other and blood all over the walls.

None of this had occurred to Hilda when she called me unexpectedly, around noon. I was, as usual, in my office in Clerkenwell, listening to the thud of jackhammers and the endless whine of huge industrial drills as the new Crossrail underground was constructed just across the road. Everywhere I looked, there were cranes circling one another like prehistoric beasts deep in conversation. All the activity, the sense of London reinventing itself, only made me feel more isolated, which was one of the reasons I never failed to answer my phone.

‘How are you getting on with the next book?’ the familiar voice barked into my ear.

‘Hello, Hilda,’ I said. ‘Which book are you talking about?’

‘The new Hawthorne. We need the fifth in the series.’

She always called them the Hawthorne books. Everyone did. It was strange the way I did all the work but never got a mention.

‘Why are you asking? We’ve got plenty of time. And I still haven’t finished Murder at the Vaudeville Theatre.’

‘I really don’t like that title. It’s too old-fashioned. Hawthorne has a much better one . . .’

‘When did you see him?’ I had that strange sense of unreality that seemed to have taken over my life from the day I’d met Hawthorne.

‘He called in last week. They want him to appear on the Today programme.’

‘Talking about what, exactly?’

‘Working with you, I suppose.’

Shouldn’t it have been the other way round? I decided not to go there. ‘Why are you asking me about a book I haven’t even started writing?’ I demanded.

‘Because you’ve got to deliver it by Christmas.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Didn’t you read your contract?’

‘I never read my contracts. That’s your job.’

‘Well, I agreed to a December delivery. It’s ahead of the game, but it shows how much confidence they have in you. They want to publish in time for spring.’ I heard a bump and a rustling sound at Hilda’s end, and her voice became distant as she lowered her mobile into her lap. ‘I’ll have a tuna fish baguette, a flat white and a peppermint Aero.’

‘Hilda? Are you ordering lunch?’

She either didn’t hear what I said or ignored it. ‘So when are you going to get started?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen Hawthorne in months. And unless he told you something different, he hasn’t investigated any new cases.’

There was a pause as she digested this.

‘Well, you’ll have to write about an old one,’ she said. ‘Talk to Hawthorne. He must have solved half a dozen murders before he met you. Give it a think, Tony, and get back to me.’

Tony! Was she really calling me that too? I opened my mouth to protest, but she had already hung up.

Several thoughts went through my head.