The Sentence Is Death

I wanted to know more about Hawthorne. I wanted to know why he had destroyed his career by pushing a paedophile down a flight of stairs and how he had come to be living on his own in an empty flat, caretaking for the owners who were in Singapore. He had told me that he had a half-brother who was an estate agent but it still seemed an unusual arrangement. I also knew that he was separated from his wife and that she lived in Gants Hill with an eleven-year-old son who didn’t read my books. Apparently, the two of them were still seeing each other from time to time. Hawthorne had two hobbies. He liked constructing Airfix models, mainly from the Second World War. If this wasn’t unlikely enough, he was also a member of a book group.

And yet all this felt like window dressing . . . the outer costume rather than the man himself. If I was going to write three books about him (and possibly more if he came to me with further investigations), I needed to know more. I was already quite sure that something must have happened to him, that he was in some way damaged, and I wanted to discover what it was if only to justify some of the extremes of his behaviour. You cannot have a central character who is simply, by his very nature, unpleasant, and although I wouldn’t have used that word to describe Hawthorne there were moments – that ‘limp-wristed’ remark, for example – when he came close. In a way, I was trying to help him. He had chosen me as his biographer and I saw it as my job to picture him in the most sympathetic light. The trouble was, he was almost fanatical about keeping any personal or private details away from me. By inveigling myself into his flat for a second time, I hoped I might stumble on some clue that would explain what had turned him into the man he was and why, despite everything and against my better instincts, I was beginning to like him.

River Court is a low-rise block built in the seventies, a symphony of not terribly attractive beige-coloured balconies and rectangular windows that has somehow managed to find itself in the most wonderful position, right on the edge of the Thames. I’d walked past it dozens of times on the way to the National Theatre and the South Bank without even noticing it was there. That’s one of the pleasures of living in London. It’s so huge, so jammed with interesting buildings, that it’s always taking you by surprise. Even now I can stroll down an alleyway and realise I’m seeing it for the first time even though it’s only a few minutes from where I live.

I had turned up twenty minutes early. I knew that if I rang the bell, Hawthorne wouldn’t let me in; he would call down on the intercom system and keep me waiting in the street. But I was smarter than that. I waited until another resident emerged. At that moment, I reached out with a set of keys that wouldn’t actually have fitted the lock and, with a smile, stopped the door from fully closing and went in.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself as I took the lift up to the twelfth floor but it was only as I stood there, on my own, that I began to feel uneasy. Hawthorne would know perfectly well what I was up to and although he had often been sarcastic or irritable, I had never yet been a target of his anger. That might be about to change. Well, it was too bad. I just had to remember that he needed me. Despite his occasional threats, I didn’t think he would find it easy to get anyone else to write about him.

The lift door opened and at once I heard voices, one of which was Hawthorne’s. He was saying goodbye to someone who had visited him in his flat, even though it was still early – nine forty-five in the morning. I peeked round the corner, doing my best to stay out of sight, and saw a young man, about eighteen or nineteen years old. It was hard to be sure of his age, partly because he was some distance away but also because he was in a motorised wheelchair. If that in itself wasn’t surprising enough, he was also of Indian, perhaps Bengali, descent and, I could tell at a glance, he had some form of muscular dystrophy. One of his hands was holding an electric control, the other was resting on his lap. He was not on a ventilator but there was a plastic bottle attached to his chest with a drinking pipe reaching up to his lips. He had dark hair cut short and a wispy beard and moustache that spoiled what might otherwise have been film-star good looks: chiselled cheekbones, intense eyes, Valentino lips.

‘All right then, I’ll see you.’ That was Hawthorne speaking.

‘Thank you, Mr Hawthorne.’

‘Thank you, Kevin, mate. I couldn’t do it without you.’

Couldn’t do what? Was this something to do with model-making? No. That was impossible. But what could Hawthorne possibly need a young man in a wheelchair to help him with? I’d come for clues but all I’d got for my pains was another mystery.

‘I’ll see you, then.’

‘Yeah. Give my best to your mum.’

Hawthorne didn’t go back into the flat. He stood there, watching Kevin as he made his way towards the lift.