The Sentence Is Death

They did manage to do a second take before time ran out and at the end of the day they had just about enough footage to cut a sequence together. If you ever watch the scene, you can see the telephone box, the horse and cart, the two policemen (in the far distance) and Sam walking away. Unfortunately, the camera missed most of the background artists, including the woman with the pram and the man with the bicycle. Sam is carrying a shopping bag, but you don’t see that either.

And in the end we ran out of money and when we got to post-production there was nothing we could do about that bloody bus.

2 A Murder in Hampstead

I left Hawthorne in my office – actually a Winnebago trailer parked halfway up a side street – while I went to get us both coffees from the catering truck. When I returned, he was sitting at the desk, leafing through the latest draft of ‘The Eternity Ring’, which rather annoyed me because I certainly hadn’t invited him to read my work. At least he wasn’t smoking. These days, I hardly know anyone who smokes but Hawthorne was still getting through about a packet a day, which was why we usually met outside coffee shops, sitting in the street.

‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ I said, as I climbed back inside.

‘You don’t seem too pleased.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I’m quite busy . . . although you probably didn’t notice that when you drove straight into the middle of the set.’

‘I wanted to see you.’ He waited until I had sat down opposite him. ‘How’s the book going?’

‘I’ve finished it.’

‘I still don’t like the title.’

‘I’m still not giving you any choice.’

‘All right! All right!’ He looked up at me as if I had somehow, and for no good reason, offended him. He had mud-brown eyes but it was remarkable how they still managed to appear so clear, so completely innocent. ‘I can see you’re in a bad mood today, but you know it’s not my fault you overslept.’

‘Who told you I’d overslept?’ I asked, falling into the obvious trap.

‘And you still haven’t found your phone.’

‘Hawthorne . . . !’

‘You didn’t lose it in the street,’ he went on. ‘I think you’ll find it’s somewhere in your flat. And I’ll give you a word of advice. If Michael Kitchen doesn’t like your script, maybe you should think about hiring another actor. Don’t take it out on me!’

I stared at him, playing back what he had just said and wondering what evidence he could possibly have for any of it. Michael Kitchen was the star of Foyle’s War and although it was true we’d had a lot of discussion about the new episode, I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone apart from Jill, who knew anyway. And I certainly hadn’t brought up my sleeping patterns or the fact that I had been unable to find my phone when I got up that morning.

‘What are you doing here, Hawthorne?’ I demanded. I had never once called him by his first name, not from the day I had met him. I’m not sure anybody did. ‘What do you want?’

‘There’s been another murder,’ he said. He stretched out the last word in that odd accent of his. Another murrrr-der. It was almost as if he was relishing it.

‘And?’

He blinked at me. Wasn’t it obvious? ‘I thought you’d want to write about it.’

If you’ve read The Word Is Murder, you’ll know that Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne was first introduced to me as a consultant on a television series I was writing: Injustice. He had once worked for Scotland Yard but that had come to an end following an incident in which a suspect, a man dealing in child pornography, had taken a tumble down a flight of concrete stairs. Hawthorne had been standing right behind him at the time. As a result, he had been fired and since then had been forced to earn a living on his own. He could have gone into security like many ex-detectives but instead he’d turned his talents to helping film and television companies producing dramas about crime and that was how we met. But, as I soon discovered, it turned out that the force hadn’t quite finished with him after all.

He was called in when the police got what they called a ‘sticker’ – that is, a case which presented obvious difficulties from the start. Most murderers are brutal and unthinking. A husband and wife have an argument. Perhaps they’ve been drinking too much. One of them picks up a hammer and – bang – that’s it. With fingerprints, blood splatter and all the other forensic evidence, the whole thing will be solved within twenty-four hours. And these days, with so much CCTV, it’s hard even to escape a crime scene without leaving a cheerful snapshot of yourself behind.