The Sentence Is Death

He slid another photograph forward and I saw it for myself.

‘One eight two,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I don’t suppose you have any idea what that means?’ I asked.

‘It could mean lots of things. There’s a 182 bus that runs in north London, although I don’t suppose Mr Pryce was the sort who had much time for public transport. It’s the name of a restaurant in Wembley. It’s an abbreviation used in texting. It’s a type of four-seater aircraft—’

‘All right,’ I stopped him. ‘Are you sure it was left by the killer?’

‘Well, it might have been the decorators but I doubt it.’

‘What else?’

Hawthorne stopped with the cigarette halfway to his mouth. His dark eyes challenged me. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

That was true. I was already looking at the murder of Richard Pryce from a writer’s perspective and the awful truth was that, at this stage anyway, I wasn’t sure I cared who had killed him. Akira Anno was obviously the prime suspect – and that was interesting because although I hadn’t ever managed to read any of her books, I was aware of her name. What mattered more, though, was this. If I was going to write a second book about Hawthorne, it would need to run to at least eighty thousand words and I was already wondering if there would be enough material. Akira had threatened him with a bottle. He had been killed with a bottle. She did it. End of story.

It also troubled me that it was a divorce lawyer who had been killed. I’ve got nothing against lawyers but at the same time I’ve always done my best to avoid them. I don’t understand the law. I’ve never been able to work out how a simple matter – a trademark registration, for example – can end up eating months out of my life and thousands of pounds. Even making my will was a traumatic experience and there was considerably less to leave to my children once the lawyers had finished with me. I had enjoyed writing about Diana Cowper, the blameless mother of a famous actor, but what sort of inspiration would I get from Richard Pryce, a man who made his living out of other people’s misery?

‘There is one other thing,’ Hawthorne muttered. He had been watching me closely as if he could see into my thoughts – which, as he had already demonstrated, he actually could.

‘What’s that?’

‘The bottle of wine. It was a 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild, Pauillac.’ Hawthorne spoke the foreign words as if each one was an insult. ‘Do you know anything about wine?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither. But I’m told this one would have cost at least two thousand quid.’

‘So Richard Pryce had expensive tastes.’

Hawthorne shook his head. ‘No. He was a teetotaller. He never drank alcohol at all.’

I thought for a moment. A very public threat from a well-known feminist writer. A mysterious message in green paint. An incredibly expensive bottle of wine. I could just about see all that on the inside flap. And yet . . .

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I am quite busy at the moment.’

His face fell. ‘What’s the matter with you, mate? I thought you’d be jumping at this one.’

‘Can you give me time to think about it?’

‘I’m heading over there now.’

I let that hang in the air for a moment.

‘I was just wondering,’ I muttered, almost to myself. ‘All that stuff you just said. About Michael Kitchen – and my phone. How did you know?’

He saw which way I was going. ‘That was nothing.’

‘I’m just interested.’ I paused. ‘If there’s going to be another book . . .’

‘All right, mate. But it couldn’t be simpler.’ I wasn’t moving and he knew it. ‘You got dressed in a hurry. The second button of your shirt is tucked into the third buttonhole, which is sort of classic, really. When you shaved this morning, you left a bit of hair under your nose. I can see it right there, next to your nostril, and it doesn’t look very nice, to be honest with you. You’ve also got a smudge of toothpaste on your sleeve, meaning you got dressed before you went into the bathroom. So you woke up, jumped out of bed and got dressed straight away, which sounds to me like your alarm didn’t go off.’

‘I don’t have an alarm.’

‘But you’ve got an iPhone and you might have set it if you had an important meeting – like a set visit – but for some reason you didn’t use it.’

‘It doesn’t mean the phone is lost.’

‘Well, I rang you twice to tell you I was coming today but there was no answer. Also, if you had your phone, your driver would have been able to ring you to say he was on his way or he was waiting outside and you wouldn’t have been in such a panic. Nobody else answered it, by the way, although it didn’t go straight to voice message so that means it’s still turned on. The chances are it’s on silent and you’ll find it somewhere at home.’

Hawthorne hadn’t been on the set when I arrived. He couldn’t possibly have known how I’d got there. ‘What makes you think I had a driver?’ I demanded. ‘I could have just taken the Tube.’