The Sentence Is Death

‘You’re a big-shot writer on Foyle’s War. Of course they’d send someone. Anyway, it was pissing down this morning until just an hour ago, but you’re bone dry. Look at your shoes! You haven’t walked anywhere today.’

‘And what about Michael Kitchen? Have you been talking to him?’

‘I didn’t need to.’ He tapped his fingers on the script, which he had closed when I came in. ‘The pink pages are the latest revisions, aren’t they? I just had a quick glance through and every single one of them relates to scenes that he happens to appear in. It looks like he’s the only one who’s not happy with your work.’

‘He’s perfectly happy,’ I growled. ‘I’m just fine-tuning.’

Hawthorne glanced in the direction of my waste-paper basket, which was piled high with balls of crumpled paper. ‘That’s quite a bit of fine-tuning,’ he remarked.

There was no reason to hang around the set. And after what had happened, I didn’t want anyone seeing Hawthorne and me together.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

3 Heron’s Wake

Richard Pryce’s home was in Fitzroy Park, one of the most exclusive streets in the whole of London, nestling on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Actually, it hardly looks like a street at all. When you enter it from the Heath, particularly during the summer months, you pass through an old-fashioned gate that could have come straight out of Arthur Rackham, with so much vegetation on all sides that it’s hard to believe you’re anywhere near the city. Trees, bushes, roses, clematis, wisteria, honeysuckle and every other climbing plant fight for space in the north London equivalent of Never Land, and the very light is tinted green. The houses are all detached and make a point of bearing no resemblance to each other at all. They range in style from mock Elizabethan to art deco to pure Cluedo – all chimneys and sloping eaves and gables – with Colonel Mustard mowing the lawn and Mrs Peacock taking tea with Reverend Green.

As if to contradict all this, Pryce’s house was aggressively modern, designed perhaps by someone who had spent too much time at the National Theatre. It had the same brutalist architecture, with stretches of prefabricated concrete and triple-height windows more suited to an institution than to somebody’s home. Even the Japanese-style bulrushes in the front garden had been planted at exact intervals and grown to the same height. There was a wood-fronted balcony on the first floor but the wood was Scandinavian pine or birch, unrelated to any tree growing in the immediate area.

The house wasn’t huge – I guessed it would have three or four bedrooms – but the way it was constructed, all cubes, rectangles and cantilevered roofs, made it seem bigger than it was. I wouldn’t have wanted to live there. I’ve got nothing against modern architecture in places like Los Angeles or Miami but in a London suburb, next to a bowling club? I felt it was trying too hard.

Hawthorne and I had taken a taxi from Bermondsey, climbing up Hampstead Lane towards Highgate before suddenly turning off and heading steeply down and away from reality into this fantastical rus in urbe. The hill brought us to a crossroads with a sign pointing to the North London Bowling Club straight ahead. We turned right. Pryce’s house was called Heron’s Wake and it was easy enough to spot. It was the one with the police cars in front of it, the plastic tape across the front door, the forensic officers dressed in white moving in what looked like slow motion around the garden, the uniformed policemen and the gaggle of journalists. Fitzroy Park had no pavements and no street lights. Several of the houses had burglar alarms but there were surprisingly few CCTV cameras. All in all, you could hardly have chosen a better location to commit murder.

We got out and Hawthorne instructed the driver to wait for us. We must have made an odd couple. He was looking smart and professional in his suit and tie while it was only now that I realised I had come straight from the set and that I was wearing jeans and a padded jacket with FOYLE’S WAR embroidered on the back. A couple of the journalists glanced my way and I was afraid I would end up on the front page of the local newspaper so I went in sideways, keeping the back of my jacket away from them, wishing I’d had time to change.

Meanwhile, Hawthorne had forgotten me, marching up the driveway as if he were a long-lost son returning to the family home. Murder always had this effect on him, drawing him in to the exclusion of everything else. I don’t think I’d ever met anyone quite so focused. He stopped briefly to examine two cars, parked side by side. One was a black S-class Mercedes coupé; a solid, executive car. The other, sitting there like a younger, snappier brother, was a classic MG Roadster, dating back to the seventies. It was a collector’s car: pillar-box red with a black hood and gleaming wire wheels. I saw him place a hand on the bonnet and hurried over to join him.

‘It hasn’t been here long,’ he said.