The Sentence Is Death

We followed her back through the kaleidoscopic interior and into the kitchen where we had first sat together. She was already hitting the wine. There was a bottle of rosé and a glass out on the table and next to it a packet of cigarettes. She had also been munching her way through a tube of Pringles. She looked even more of a mess than she had on the last two occasions. It had been a while since her husband had died, but this had been followed by the loss of her closest friend and now her lover was in jail. She was surrounding herself with anything she could use to prop herself up.

‘Is Colin in the house?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Yes. He’s upstairs. Don’t worry – he won’t disturb us. He’s plugged into his computer.’

We arranged ourselves around the table. Davina took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you,’ she said. ‘I know it’s a mistake about Adrian. I’ve told everyone. He was here that evening with me.’

‘Are you quite sure about that, Mrs Richardson?’ Hawthorne locked into her in the way he did so well, leaving her no room for manoeuvre. ‘We’re talking about the evening of Sunday the twenty-seventh of October. That was the day after the clocks had gone back to winter time.’ He glanced at the grandmother clock beside the door. ‘Are you sure you remembered to change them on Saturday night?’

‘Of course I did!’ She stared at the clock, then brought her cigarette up to her mouth, unable to disguise the shake in her hand. ‘I’m sure I did!’

‘But you did mention to my friend here that you might have forgotten.’ My friend. Hawthorne meant me.

‘Did I say that?’ Everything about Davina – her long chestnut hair, her scarf, her sparkly jersey, her entire frame – seemed to be collapsing in on itself.

‘That’s what I thought you said.’

‘Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I left them until Monday. I really don’t remember.’

I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. I thought Hawthorne had dismissed out of hand everything I had told Cara Grunshaw. That included the breakdown of Lockwood’s alibi. But now it seemed that he was agreeing with at least that part of what I’d said, getting Davina to admit what I had already worked out for myself, meaning that Lockwood could have committed the crime after all.

‘I can’t help you,’ Davina wailed. She looked exhausted, close to tears. ‘Yes. I did forget the clocks. I always forget them and Colin shouts at me when he’s late for school. But what difference does it make? Adrian went straight home. He called me later.’

‘When was that?’

‘About an hour after he’d gone.’

‘On your mobile or on your landline?’ Hawthorne was still at his most aggressive. ‘You know that we’ll check?’

‘Maybe he called me the next day. I can’t tell you. I don’t know anything any more.’ She poured herself some more wine and took a large swig.

Hawthorne allowed a brief pause. When he continued, he was a little gentler. ‘The reason we’re here, Mrs Richardson, is to help Mr Lockwood. He’s been arrested by DI Grunshaw but I don’t think he did it.’

‘You don’t?’ Something between hope and fear stirred in her eyes.

‘Would you like me to explain to you what I think happened . . . the way I see it? Then there’ll be a few questions and I can leave you alone.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Right.’

He glanced at me, then began.

‘I don’t want to upset you any more than you’ve been upset already, Mrs Richardson, but this all starts with your husband’s death at Long Way Hole all those years ago. You’ve got to admit, it’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Gregory Taylor travels two hundred miles from Ribblehead in Yorkshire. He hasn’t been to London for years. He meets up with his old mate, Richard. And little more than twenty-four hours later, they’re both dead in mysterious circumstances. Now, you’re not going to tell me there’s no connection, are you? I mean, what would be the odds of that happening?’

‘I read about Gregory in the newspapers,’ Davina said. ‘It was an accident.’

‘I don’t think it was an accident,’ Hawthorne said.

‘You mean . . . he was murdered?’ I said. Again, I was confused. I was sure we had both dismissed the idea.

‘No, Tony. He didn’t fall. He wasn’t pushed. He killed himself. I would have thought that had been obvious all along.’

‘But . . . why?’

‘I’ll have a cigarette, if you don’t mind,’ Hawthorne said, helping himself to one of Davina’s. He went through the ritual: taking one out, rolling it through his fingers, lighting it. The air was full of smoke. ‘I’ve kept saying to you, you’ve got to find the pattern that works,’ he said, addressing me. ‘It doesn’t work if he was murdered. It doesn’t work if he tripped up and lopped his own head off. But if you start with suicide, everything falls neatly into place.’

‘He had no reason to commit suicide!’

‘If you believe what he told his wife, that’s true. But let’s start with the idea that he might have been lying.’

Hawthorne blew out smoke and watched it disperse in the air in front of him.