The Sentence Is Death

I said as much to Hawthorne later that evening after Gallivan had left but, annoyingly, he didn’t seem quite so sure. ‘It doesn’t quite stack up, mate. If he made the call on the way to the station and someone overheard him, they’d have had to be with him, and according to his wife he was on his own.’

‘He could have met someone in London.’ I thought about the time frame. ‘It could have been Davina Richardson. We know he was near her home.’

‘What? And you think she followed him to King’s Cross station and pushed him under a train?’

‘Why not? If she blamed Richard Pryce and Gregory Taylor for the death of her husband, she could have killed both of them.’

‘But she didn’t blame them. She’d forgiven Pryce and she hadn’t seen Taylor for six years. We don’t even know if she saw him the day he died.’

‘Presumably you’re going to ask her.’

Hawthorne gave me his most reasonable smile. ‘Of course we’ll ask her. You liked her, didn’t you ?’

‘She seemed nice enough.’

‘And she had a son who read your books!’

‘Unlike your son. Yes!’

There was one other odd development that evening. We’d finished early as we had a seven o’clock start the next morning and we were about to go up to our rooms when a man came into the pub. I noticed him standing by the door, looking at us, puzzled. He was late thirties, fair-haired, short and quite slender, wearing a hoody and jeans. He hesitated, then came over to us and I assumed that he had recognised me and was going to say something about my books.

But actually it was Hawthorne he thought he knew. ‘Billy!’ The single word was somewhere between a statement and a question. Hawthorne looked up at him but showed no recognition at all and now the man doubted himself. ‘It’s Mike,’ he said. ‘Mike Carlyle.’

‘I’m sorry, mate.’ Hawthorne shook his head. ‘My name’s not Billy. And I don’t know any Mike Carlyle.’

The man was completely thrown. He had recognised the face and he thought he knew the voice too. ‘You weren’t in Reeth?’

‘No. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just up from London. I’ve never been to anywhere called Reeth.’

‘But . . .’ He wanted to continue but Hawthorne hadn’t just been definitive. He’d been almost hostile. ‘I’m sorry,’ the man stammered. He was still staring at Hawthorne. He couldn’t bring himself to leave.

Hawthorne picked up his glass of water. ‘No problem.’ I could hear the steel in his voice. It was also there in his eyes.

‘Sorry.’ The man got the message. He didn’t just back away. If he’d come here for a pint, he’d changed his mind. He left the way he had come.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Hawthorne said.

I wanted to ask him what had just happened. Had he once been known as William or Billy or had it simply been a case of mistaken identity? These things happen. But somehow I was sure there was more to it than that and that somehow Mike Carlyle was connected to the strange mood Hawthorne had been in all day.

Hawthorne left without saying another word and he didn’t mention it again when we met for breakfast the next morning, or on the train all the way back to London.

12 The Haiku

I could tell things were still going wrong as soon as I walked into the Foyle’s War production base later that same day. Jangling phones, printers churning out fresh paperwork, accountants staring desperately into computer screens, runners chasing around as if being chased themselves, a sense of tightly controlled panic . . . All that was normal. It was the silence that worried me, the way everyone avoided my eye as I made my way into Jill’s office.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

She was standing at her desk (she never sits), just ending a phone call, checking her emails and dictating a note to her assistant, all at the same time. As she has often told me, only women know how to multitask. ‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ she said.

‘No. Tell me!’

‘We’ve lost a location,’ she said.

‘Which one?’

‘The chase. All of it.’ It was a rare moment of action in the series, with Foyle and Sam being tracked through London streets by an armed Russian assassin. ‘The police have withdrawn permission,’ she went on. ‘They won’t even give us a sensible reason.’

‘What did they say?’ I asked. There was an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach.

‘I don’t know. It was something about a murder inquiry. It sounds completely unlikely. They say someone’s been killed and they’ve had to cordon off a whole load of streets. There’s nothing we can do. They won’t let us shoot there.’

Cara Grunshaw. It had to be. That mention of a murder inquiry was a direct shot across my bows. I didn’t dare say anything to Jill but crept back to my desk, which was tucked away in a corner. The business card that Cara had given me was still in my pocket. I took it out and stared at it for a long time, then picked up the phone and dialled. It rang twice before she answered. I had hoped it would go straight to voicemail.

‘Yes?’ Her voice was curt, almost brutal.

‘This is Anthony—’

‘I know who it is. What do you want?’