The Sentence Is Death

‘There’s a clock in the kitchen.’

‘We weren’t in the kitchen. We were in her bedroom. I got dressed and I left. Maybe she mentioned the time. I honestly can’t remember.’

Hawthorne smiled. ‘Thank you.’

It was the gesture that gave him away. As Adrian Lockwood talked about his watch, he raised his hand to show off the heavy-duty Rolex that he had strapped on his wrist. And that was when I saw it. Not on the watch but on the sleeve of his shirt, very small, half concealed by the cufflink: a spot of green paint.

And I knew exactly what shade of green it was. I remembered the fancy name that Davina had chosen from Farrow & Ball.

Green Smoke.

It had to be.

I arrived home that evening at the same time as Jill, who came in weighed down by problems from the set. Another location had fallen through. We were now two full days behind schedule. Nothing seemed to be going right.

We had dinner together, not that you could actually call it that. Jill had a salad with a tin of tuna fish. I scouted around in the fridge but all I could find was a bottle of champagne that had been given to me by Orion when I got into the top ten, and two eggs. I scrambled the eggs and ate them with Ryvita as there wasn’t any bread.

‘So how was your day?’ Jill asked.

‘It was OK.’

‘Have you finished the rewrites?’

‘I’ll finish them tonight.’

It was quite normal for the two of us to start work again after dinner. We have a shared office and we’ll often find ourselves sitting side by side well on the way to midnight. Jill is the only person I know who works harder than me, running the company, overseeing the productions, organising our social life, managing the flat. We actually met working together in advertising. She was the account director. I was the copywriter. Two days after meeting me she asked – pleaded – to be moved to any other account in the building but somehow we began a relationship and twenty-five years later we are still together. I had written four shows for her: Foyle’s War, Injustice, Collision and Menace. She was the first person to read my books, even before Hilda Starke. It feels odd to be writing about her and the truth is she has made it clear that she’s uncomfortable being a character in my book. Unfortunately, truth is what it’s all about. She is the main character in my life.

‘You’re working with that detective again, aren’t you?’ she said as we sat there, eating.

‘Yes.’ I hadn’t wanted her to know but I never tell her lies. She can see right through me.

‘Is that a good idea?’

‘Not really. But I have a three-book deal and a case came up.’ I felt guilty. I knew she was waiting for my script. ‘I think it’s over anyway,’ I went on. ‘Hawthorne knows who did it.’

He hadn’t said as much but I could tell. There was something quite animalistic about Hawthorne. The closer he got to the truth, the more you could see it in his eyes, in the way he sat, in the very contours of his skin. He really was the dog with the bone. I’d hoped we might have a drink after our meeting with Adrian Lockwood but he couldn’t wait to get back home. I could imagine him sitting at his table, assembling his Westland Sea King with the same voracious attention to detail he brought to the solving of crime.

‘Do you know?’ she asked.

It was a depressing question. I felt sure that the solution must be obvious by now. All along, it had been my hope that I would actually work it out before Hawthorne. And yet, I was still nowhere near. It really wasn’t fair. How could I even call myself an author if I had no connection to the last chapter – the whole point of the book?

‘No,’ I admitted, then added, hopefully, ‘Not yet.’

After dinner, I went up to the office, which Jill had actually constructed for me on the roof of the flat. It’s about fifteen metres long and quite narrow with uninterrupted views towards the Old Bailey and St Paul’s. At the time, a new building was rising up, adding a streak of silver to the skyscape and completely changing my view. It would become known as the Shard. I sat at my desk, gazing out at the evening sky. Despite what I had said, I wasn’t in the mood for scriptwriting. Instead, I drew out a notepad and began to think about the case.

If Hawthorne could solve it, I could solve it. I was as clever as him. The answer was right in front of me. I went through it all one last time.

Adrian Lockwood.

He was the most obvious suspect. Despite what he’d said, it was possible that he knew Pryce was investigating his secret wine stash and might have overturned the divorce as a result.

According to Akira Anno, he had a temper. His first wife had died. And then there was the spot of green paint I had seen on his shirt. Was it the same green as the number on the wall at the scene of the crime? Of course it was, which meant that he had painted it, although I couldn’t quite see why.

The trouble was, he had a solid alibi for the time of the murder. He had been with . . .

Davina Richardson.