The Sentence Is Death

I spent another hour thinking it through. I saw Jill turn off the light and heard her go to bed. I made more notes. Then I rang Hawthorne. I didn’t care that it was late.

‘Tony?’ It was almost midnight but he didn’t sound upset to hear from me.

‘I know who did it,’ I said.

There was an empty silence at the other end of the telephone. Of course he didn’t believe me. ‘Tell me,’ he said, eventually.

So I did.

21 The Solution to the Crime

It was with a mixture of excitement and dread that I made my way back up the steps and into the police station at the corner of Ladbroke Grove where I had first attended the interview with Akira Anno. The memory of my conversation with Hawthorne was still buzzing in my head.

‘Tell me I’ve got it right.’

‘You’ve nailed it, mate. More or less . . .’

‘Hawthorne . . . !’

‘You’ve got it right.’

From the start I had known that it was possible to get there ahead of him, but I was disappointed that he was so grudging in his respect for what I’d done. Maybe he was a little peeved. To be fair to him, he had corrected me on a few points where I had got things confused. More importantly, he had agreed to the course of action I was taking now, although I wasn’t going to let Cara Grunshaw know that.

I had to share what I knew with her and her unpleasant sidekick, DC Mills. I didn’t want either of them to get the credit but I owed it to Jill and the series. I was still certain that Grunshaw was behind many of the problems that the production team was facing and it was the only way I could get her off our backs. It didn’t matter that much to Hawthorne. He was paid by the day; one of the reasons he was so painstaking in his enquiries. He didn’t seem to be particularly interested in taking the credit. Even so, he had chosen not to come with me. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Grunshaw myself.

She was waiting in the same dingy interrogation room where we had met before. She was wearing a bright orange jersey and a multi-coloured bead necklace, but they contrasted with the sourness of her expression, her refusal to smile or to look anything but threatening. Darren Mills was looking jaunty in a sports jacket and trousers with a very slight flare. Generally, I have quite a lot of admiration for the British police. They’re always extremely helpful to writers, giving us access to operations, control rooms and all the rest of it. They must get fed up always being depicted as aggressive or corrupt – but where these two are concerned, I have no regrets.

‘So what do you want?’ Grunshaw asked. She was sitting at the table with Mills leaning against the wall behind her. She hadn’t offered me a cup of coffee. She didn’t look at all pleased to see me.

‘You wanted information,’ I said. ‘We know who killed Richard Pryce.’

‘You mean, Hawthorne worked it out?’

‘We worked it out together.’ That wasn’t strictly true but I needed his authority.

‘Does he know you’re here?’

‘No. I didn’t tell him.’

I was worried for a moment but she didn’t see through the lie. ‘Well, go on then.’

‘Can I have a glass of water?’

‘No. You can’t have a fucking glass of water. And get on with it. We haven’t got all day.’

I was tempted to turn my back on her and walk out. But it was too late for that now. This was my moment. I plunged in.

‘This has been an investigation into not one death but two,’ I began. ‘There was the murder of Richard Pryce at his home in Fitzroy Park—’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Grunshaw interrupted. ‘We know where he lived.’

I held my ground. ‘Forgive me, Detective Inspector, but if I’m going to tell you this, I’m going to tell it my way.’

‘Whatever you say.’ She scowled. ‘But it had better be good.’

Behind her, Mills crossed his arms and his legs, using his shoulder blades to stay upright against the wall.

‘There was the killing of Richard Pryce and there was the death of Gregory Taylor just twenty-four hours before. What’s made this investigation difficult has been working out the connection between them – if there was one at all. Was Gregory’s death murder? Was it suicide? Was it an accident? Let’s take them one at a time.