The Twist of a Knife

‘He didn’t take the train to Blackheath. At least, not then. He came back to the theatre in the middle of the night, by which time he assumed everyone had left – although he didn’t realise that Jordan was sound asleep in his dressing room. That didn’t matter. He snuck back in through the fire exit, chucked the crumpled packet into the bin and stole the first dagger he saw, which happened to be the wrong one. Incidentally, one person noticed that the fire exit was open when they left the green room. That was Ewan Lloyd. He told me that he had a chill at the back of his neck – he thought it was some sort of premonition. He didn’t realise … It was a cold night and all he’d felt was the draft from the slightly open door.

‘The next morning, Tirian went round to Harriet’s home. He’d got the address from an article in a magazine. She wasn’t surprised to see him. She’d been expecting him.’

‘How do you know?’ Arthur asked.

‘Because of the three books on her table. She was killed in the hall, so she must have taken them off the shelf before he arrived. They were her credentials, if you like. All three of them were a reminder of her days as a crime reporter, but the one that was actually relevant was Bad Boys. That was what she would have shown him if she’d lived a few minutes more.’

Hawthorne took a breath. Tirian was still crying. I had watched Hawthorne expose several killers in my time with him, but I had never witnessed such a complete collapse. Part of me felt sorry for him, but at the same time there was something quite horrible about it. Harriet Throsby had described him as childish in her review. She’d obviously seen something that I hadn’t.

‘So that was how it was done. But I’m sure all of you – especially Cara – want to know why.’

‘Don’t push your luck, Hawthorne,’ Cara growled.

‘To understand that, we have to go back to the party itself. Tony described it all very precisely for me. It was almost like I was there.

‘Harriet Throsby, of course, was there. She made a habit of crashing first-night parties because she liked screwing with people’s heads. I think we all know by now that she had a malicious streak as wide as the Gulf of Mexico. There are two more things we have to remember about her. Ewan has already explained how she used words like weapons. She expressed herself in a way that was deliberately hurtful. That thing about lighting her “fire”, for example. And there was something else. Tony told me that she was avoiding his eye when she was talking to him. She was “looking over my shoulder as if hoping someone more interesting had come into the room.” That’s what he said. And he was half-right.

‘She wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to Tirian. And once you understand that, everything falls into place.

‘What did she say? “I never forget a face.” She was pretending to be talking about an actor in some thriller she’d seen on the stage. But I bet you she was looking right into Tirian’s eyes then. And a moment later, Olivia mentioned Tony’s Alex Rider books, and how did she describe them? “They were stories about a young assassin.” That’s not quite true. They’re about a young spy. So why that description?’

‘She recognised me!’ Tirian sobbed out the words.

‘That’s right. And just to make sure you knew that she knew, she even had to rub it in when she wrote her review. Not once but three times. “Most disappointing for me is Tirian Kirke, whom I recognised from the first time I saw him … ” There you are. She’s telling him she knows who he is. “His performance is quite childish.” Odd choice of word, don’t you think? Childish. But then, she’d known him when he was a child. And that last line: “ … surprisingly, he is completely unconvincing when things turn violent.” Why surprisingly? Unless Harriet knew that he had committed an act of violence in which a man had died …’

‘So who is he?’ Derek Mills had also got to his feet and was leaning against the front of the stage.

‘Do you want me to tell them, Tirian?’ Hawthorne asked.

Tirian nodded, unable to speak.

‘His real name is Wayne Howard.’

Martin Longhurst stood up, his own seat falling backwards and crashing to the floor. ‘He and Stephen—’