The Sentence Is Death

I couldn’t concentrate. My head was filled with the events of the past two days: the crime scene at Heron’s Wake, Hawthorne, the various witnesses and suspects I’d met. In the end, I slid the script to one side and plugged my iPhone into my computer. Stephen Spencer, the neighbour, Henry Fairchild, Oliver Masefield . . . I listened to their responses as they were interviewed by Hawthorne and Grunshaw, with my own voice making occasional contributions from the side. Next came Akira Anno and her ex-husband, Adrian Lockwood, each of them investigating the other, trying to find evidence of hidden wealth that might or might not exist.

If you really want to know who killed Richard Pryce, then maybe you should start with the man who broke into my office . . .

That had been Adrian Lockwood, talking about the man in blue spectacles. The Man in Blue Spectacles. That might make a good chapter heading – but was he really involved in all this? Did he even exist?

Hawthorne seemed to think so. As we walked through Edwardes Square, he had muttered, almost as much to himself as me: ‘He knew what he was doing.’

‘Who?’

‘Blue spectacles. You put something like that on your face, it’s the only thing anyone will notice. You can pull the same trick with an Elastoplast or a gold tooth. Give people something they’ll remember, they forget the rest.’

The break-in had happened on a Thursday, three days before the murder. It had to be related. But how?

It took me about two hours to type up my notes and at the end of it I found myself wondering, had I sat in a room with the killer? Had I already met the person who had murdered Richard Pryce? At the same time, another thought occurred to me. I might not be gifted with quite the same professional skills as Hawthorne – I had never, after all, been trained as a detective – but I had written dozens of murder mysteries for TV. I knew how it worked. Surely I could work this out for myself.

Akira Anno. I drew a circle around her name. She still seemed the most likely suspect, so far anyway. She’d even threatened to murder me!

The telephone rang. It was Hawthorne.

‘Tony! Can you meet me at Highgate Tube station at six?’

I looked at my watch. It was five twenty. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘We’re seeing Davina Richardson.’ He rang off without waiting for an answer.

It wouldn’t take me long to get up to Highgate. I went through my usual ritual, loading my glasses, keys, wallet and Oyster card into the black leather shoulder bag I always carry and was just on my way out when the doorbell rang. I went over to the intercom and pressed it. We have no video system but I recognised the voice that asked for me. It was Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. ‘I wonder if I could come in?’ she asked.

‘What – now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Actually, I’m just leaving.’

‘It won’t take a minute.’

My heart sank. I couldn’t get rid of her. ‘All right. I’ll come down.’

I could have buzzed the doors open for her but I didn’t want her inside the flat. She’d sounded friendly enough out on the doorstep but I wondered what she was doing here and I felt nervous seeing her on my own. I took the six flights of stairs down and opened the front door. She was standing on my doorstep with her leather-jacketed assistant, Darren, slouching behind her.

‘Detective Inspector . . .’ I began.

‘Can I have a word?’ She seemed completely pleasant, relaxed.

‘What is this about?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I’ve got a meeting . . .’

‘This will only take a moment.’

She looked past me, inviting herself in, and I realised that I couldn’t really refuse. She was a police officer, after all, and we were involved in the same case. There might be some information she wanted to share. I moved aside and the two of them stepped past me into the hallway, a wide area with my sons’ bicycles on one side and an exposed brick wall on the other. I allowed the doors to swing shut. They fastened with magnetic locks.

‘I hope you don’t mind—’ I was about to make some excuse as to why I wasn’t going to invite her upstairs when she suddenly grabbed hold of me by the lapels of my jacket and slammed me into the wall with such force that the breath was punched out of my lungs and my spine did the neural equivalent of a Mexican wave. Suddenly her face was close to mine; so close that I could smell the fried food she’d had for lunch. Her little eyes were flaring and her mouth was twisted in an ugly grimace.

‘Now you listen to me, you little fuck,’ Grunshaw said. Her voice was thick with contempt. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, some smarmy kids’ author, walking into my murder scene and thinking you can treat it like a chapter out of Alec Rider—’

‘Alex Rider,’ I managed to gurgle.