Close to Death

‘I hope you’re not wasting my time,’ Khan said. There were no greetings, no handshakes.

‘If you thought I was wasting your time, you wouldn’t have come,’ Hawthorne said reasonably.

‘So what do you want to tell me?’

‘Well, the first thing to mention is that Dudley and I haven’t been paid, since you ask. And as we’ve done your job for you, it would be nice if you’d see your way to giving us the whole week plus bonus.’

‘It’s in the contract,’ Dudley said.

‘You tell us what you know and I’ll be the judge of that,’ Khan said. He looked around him. ‘It seems very quiet here.’

‘The killer’s in. Don’t worry. We wouldn’t drag you all the way over here without making sure of that.’

Khan looked for movement behind the windows. Woodlands was empty, obviously, but Gardener’s Cottage? The Stables? Well House? There was no sign of anyone.

‘I thought we might start out here,’ Hawthorne said. ‘It’s a nice day and we need to get back to the beginning.’

‘And when was that?’ Goodwin asked.

‘A long time ago, as a matter of fact. Much longer than any of us thought.’

Hawthorne took a few steps forward so that he was on the edge of the roundabout, surrounded by the six houses. Dudley stayed where he was. He had nothing more to do, but he was quietly pleased to be here. Khan and Goodwin stood, a little self-consciously, waiting for Hawthorne to begin.

‘Most murderers don’t really think about what they’re going to do,’ he said. ‘You get the fantasists, the husbands who hate their wives, the kids who hate their stepdads, and they may think about murder for years . . . but they’re never going to do it. Planning it is enough. You know as well as I do that most murders are acts of passion – spur-of-the-moment things. One drink too many. A fight that gets out of control. But then, just now and again, you get the genius, the killer who’s not going to get caught, who sits down and works it all out. These are what you call the stickers, the crimes that are like no others because there’s an intelligence behind them. That’s where I come in. That’s sort of my speciality.

‘You knew from the start that something was wrong, but what was it exactly that worried you about this one? Well, the crossbow and bolt screamed out that something weird was going on. It’s not a weapon of choice for your average killer. And then there was the setting: a smart close in Richmond. Do you know how many people get killed in a place like this? You could probably count them on the fingers of one posh lady’s hand. Finally, everyone had the same motive. That doesn’t even seem fair! How do you choose between the neighbour who’s pissed off about the smoke coming off the barbecue and the one who can’t park his car?

‘So you decided to get me involved. To be honest with you, the first day I came here, I thought you were wasting my time. It all seemed pretty straightforward to me. Nightmare neighbour. Crossbow in the garage. Who’s going to fire it? They draw straws and . . . bang!’

‘What are you talking about – drawing straws?’ Khan asked.

‘Oh yeah. You never found out about that.’ Quickly, Hawthorne described his meetings with Felicity Browne and then May Winslow and Phyllis Moore and where they had taken him.

‘So the piece of straw in the dead man’s pocket . . . ?’ Goodwin began.

‘Got it in one, Detective Constable. Roderick drew the short straw and took it with him to his death.’

Hawthorne paused.

‘Except it wasn’t like that. What I’ve realised, since I arrived at Riverview Close, is that nothing here is what it seems. Nothing! Every clue, every suspect, every question, every answer . . . it’s all been carefully worked out. Everyone who lives here has been manipulated. So have you. So have I. Something happens and you think that it somehow connects with the murder – but you’re wrong. It’s been designed to trick you. Smoke and bloody mirrors. I’ve never seen anything like it.

‘I mean . . . take all the coincidences. What is a coincidence? It’s the most random thing in the world. It’s like when you go to the supermarket and bump into your mum. And it never occurs to you that it might have been carefully arranged—’

‘Hawthorne, where is this taking us?’ Khan was losing his patience.

‘To the solution, Detective Superintendent. I’m just trying to explain what we’ve been up against.’

‘What coincidences?’ Goodwin asked.

‘Well, three attacks. One was an old lady living a couple of miles away in Hampton Wick. This happened the night before Giles Kenworthy was killed. Nothing to do with it, you’d think. Except the old lady, Marsha Clarke, was being looked after by Kylie Jane, who was the Beresfords’ nanny. And a couple of days before that, on Friday morning, someone pushed Adam Strauss down a flight of stairs.’

‘Well, you’d know about that,’ Goodwin muttered and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Hawthorne didn’t care. ‘We’ve checked out the CCTV,’ he said.

‘There’s definitely someone behind Mr Strauss,’ Dudley said. ‘Wearing a hoodie and filmed from behind. Looks like a kid. CCTV wasn’t a lot of help.’