The Sentence Is Death

He looked at me carefully, puzzled as to why I should be so annoyed. Could he really have forgotten what I had been through at Daunt’s? ‘All right,’ he admitted, finally. ‘So you rubbed Cara up the wrong way.’

‘Nice of you to notice.’ I took the first sip of my drink, wishing he could have found it in himself to get me a glass of wine or a gin and tonic.

‘I assumed it was her who slipped that book into your bag. I somehow don’t see you enjoying the Doomworld series.’

‘What? And if it had been Charles Dickens or Sarah Waters, you think I might have been tempted to go on a shoplifting spree?’

‘No, mate. That’s not what I meant.’ His voice was apologetic now but it struck me that he still looked quite amused.

‘You don’t seem to understand. What happened at that bookshop was terrible! It could be the end of my career. If it gets into the papers, I’ll be destroyed.’ I was almost trembling with anger and indignation. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t her. It was her assistant. Mills.’

‘He’s a nasty piece of work too. They suit each other. So what have you done to piss them off?’

I had no choice. I had to explain what had happened, how DI Grunshaw had visited my home and assaulted me. ‘She wants to solve the case before you do,’ I said. ‘She wants me to contact her and tell her everything I know.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Hawthorne exclaimed. ‘You don’t know anything!’

‘Wait a minute . . . !’ I found my hand tightening around my glass. ‘I may not know who killed Richard Pryce – but for that matter, nor do you.’

‘I’ve narrowed it down to one of two suspects.’ Hawthorne blinked at me over his coffee.

‘Which two suspects?’

‘That’s my point. You don’t know. So you can’t say.’

‘As a matter of fact, I called her.’ Even in my anger, I felt guilty having to admit it. ‘I didn’t have any choice. She blocked the filming of Foyle’s War. At least, I think she did. I told her that we’d been to Yorkshire and that Gregory Taylor had been killed. I also told her about the break-in at Adrian Lockwood’s office.’ I waited for Hawthorne to respond and when he said nothing, I added: ‘I had to tell her something. And she said she knew all that anyway.’

‘She was lying.’ I had thought Hawthorne would be more annoyed with me, but he was unconcerned. ‘Cara Grunshaw and Darren Mills are both thick as shit. I’ve met police dogs with more intelligence than those two. You could tell them everything we’ve done, down to the last word, and they’d still end up running round in a circle, sniffing each other’s arses.’

‘Do you have to be quite so picturesque?’

‘You can call them every day if it’ll keep them off your back. You should have told me about this sooner. Honestly, mate. We’re streets ahead of them. You’ll have your book finished and in the Oxfam shops before they work out who did it. That’s why I was called in. The police know they’re going nowhere with this one. They need all the help they can get.’

There was a long pause. I drank some more. He had used real Coke and it was horribly sweet. Sugar with sugar.

‘Do you really know who killed Richard Pryce?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘One of two.’

‘Well, at least give me a little help! I’ve been everywhere you’ve been. I’ve seen everything you’ve seen. And yet I haven’t got the faintest idea who killed him. Just tell me one clue that I’ve missed – one clue that makes it all make sense.’

‘It’s not like that, Tony.’ I could tell that Hawthorne wanted a cigarette but he couldn’t smoke, not when he was surrounded by someone else’s fittings and furniture. ‘I’ve told you before. You’ve got to find the shape. That’s all.’

I frowned, not following him.

‘I’d have thought it’s the same when you write a book. Isn’t that how you start . . . looking for the shape?’

I was thrown by what Hawthorne had said because he was absolutely right. At the very start of the process, when I’m creating a story, I do think of it as having a particular, geometrical shape. For example, I was about to start work on Moriarty, my Sherlock Holmes sequel, and it had occurred to me that the twisting narrative, which would turn in on itself at the end, was rather like a Möbius strip. The House of Silk had the appearance of a letter Y. A novel is a container for 80,000 to 90,000 words and you might see it as a jelly mould. You pour them all in and hope they’ll set. But it had never occurred to me that a detective might see his world in the same way.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘So exactly what shape does the murder of Richard Pryce have?’

‘It wasn’t just Richard Pryce who died. You’ve got to remember Gregory Taylor went under that train and there are three explanations for that.’

‘It was an accident. It was suicide. Someone deliberately killed him.’

‘That’s right. And each one of those possibilities changes the shape of the whole thing.’

My head was spinning: Hawthorne wasn’t making a great deal of sense. Or perhaps it was the rum. ‘Did you always want to be a detective?’ I asked him.

The question took him by surprise. ‘Yes.’

‘Since you were a child?’