The Sentence Is Death

‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’ She glanced at me and I couldn’t escape the glint in her eye which underlined what she had just said with a streak of malevolence.

‘You don’t mind if we join you, do you?’ Hawthorne asked, indifferently.

‘Not at all.’ Now she focused on Akira. ‘We need to have a few more words, Ms Anno. Do you mind?’

‘Does my opinion really matter?’

‘Not really. Is there somewhere we can go?’

One of the managers showed us downstairs. It wasn’t completely private but there was a wicker table and some chairs tucked away in an alcove and it was at least a little quieter. Grunshaw had come on her own, leaving Darren upstairs. Hawthorne took the chair next to her, facing Akira, who sat with her legs crossed, glowering behind her mauve spectacles. I stood leaning against West Africa with South Africa in front of me and Italy just across the corridor. There was little natural light down here. Glass tiles in the ceiling gave a blurry view of the area where Akira had just been speaking.

Once we were settled, Grunshaw weighed in with the obvious question that had brought her here. ‘So where were you on Sunday night, Miss Anno?’

‘I told you . . .’ Akira began.

‘We know that you weren’t at Glasshayes Cottage in Lyndhurst. Did you really think we wouldn’t check what you’d said?’

Akira shrugged as if to suggest that was exactly what she’d expected.

‘You realise that lying to a police officer involved in a murder investigation is a very serious offence?’

‘I didn’t lie to you, Detective Inspector. My life is a very busy one. I sometimes have difficulty remembering.’

It wasn’t true. She didn’t even try to make it sound so.

‘So where were you?’

She blinked a couple of times, then pointed at me. ‘I’m not talking in front of him. He is a commercial writer. He has no business here.’

I had never heard anyone make the word ‘commercial’ sound so dirty.

‘He’s staying,’ Hawthorne said. I was surprised he had taken my side, but then of course he would want me to write what happened.

‘Where were you?’ Grunshaw repeated the question. I was quite surprised she didn’t try to get rid of me.

Akira, too, had seen that she wasn’t going to get her way. She shrugged a second time. ‘With a friend. In London.’

‘And the name of your friend?’

Still Akira hesitated and I wondered what she was so desperate to hide. But she had no choice. ‘Dawn Adams.’

That was the publisher she had been having dinner with the night she threw a glass of wine over Richard Pryce.

‘You were with her for the whole weekend?’

‘No. On Sunday. She lives in Wimbledon.’

This last piece of information was offered grudgingly, as if it would get Grunshaw off her back. But the detective inspector had only just started. ‘What time did you arrive? What time did you leave?’

Akira sighed in an ill-natured way. She would rather have been answering questions about unvoiced phonemes. I wondered if she and Dawn Adams had been having an affair, although I’d have thought she would have volunteered such information willingly. Still, there was definitely something she didn’t want us to know. ‘I arrived maybe six o’clock. I left the next day.’

‘You stayed overnight?’

‘We talked. We had too much to drink. I didn’t want to drive. So she put me up.’

‘You do realise we’ll ask Ms Adams for a statement.’

‘I’m not lying to you!’ Akira scowled. ‘I don’t like telling you about my private life. Certainly not in front of him.’ Again the finger with its long, pointed nail jabbed in my direction. ‘She’s a friend of mine. That’s all. She got divorced last year and now she’s on her own.’

‘She went to court?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who represented her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who represented her ex-husband?’

There was a long pause. Akira really didn’t want to tell us. ‘It was Richard Pryce.’

I didn’t like to admit it, but DI Grunshaw had certainly hit the nail on the head. Two women, one a writer, the other a publisher, had both come up against the same lawyer. At least one of them had been trashed by him and had threatened to kill him. And now the other one was providing an alibi for her.

I managed to catch Hawthorne’s eye and silently urged him to ask the one thing I wanted to know. For once, he obliged. ‘I’ve been reading your poetry,’ he said brightly, addressing Akira.

Akira might have been flattered but she said nothing.

‘I was interested in one of your haikus . . .’

‘Are you taking the piss?’ Grunshaw demanded.

‘It was haiku number one eight two.’

That surprised her. She waited for Hawthorne to continue but in fact I was the one who recited it.

‘Your breath in my ear / Your every word a trial / The sentence is death.’

‘What does that mean?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘What do you think it means?’ Akira returned.

Hawthorne shrugged, unfazed. ‘It could mean all sorts of things. If it was about Richard Pryce, it could be that you didn’t like what he said about you. He was going to lie about you in court. That’s what you told us. So you decided to kill him.’