Close to Death
(Hawthorne & Horowitz #5)
by Anthony Horowitz
Map
Dedication
In memory of Peter Wilson
12 January 1951 – 4 September 2023
The end is where we start from.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Map
Dedication
One: Riverview Close
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Two: The Fifth Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Three: Six Weeks Later
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Four: Fenchurch International
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Five: Another Death
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Six: A Locked-Room Mystery
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Seven: The Second Meeting
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Eight: The Solution
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Nine: Endgame
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Anthony Horowitz
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
Riverview Close
1
It was four o’clock in the morning, that strange interval between night and morning when both seem to be fighting each other for control of the day ahead. Riverview Close was perfectly silent, nothing moving, not a single light showing behind any of the windows – which was exactly how Adam Strauss liked it. He could imagine the entire world hanging in outer space, undecided, catching its breath while the mechanism of the universe ticked slowly round, preparing for the business of the next twenty-four hours, the start of another week. He alone was awake. Even the birds hadn’t begun their infernal dawn chorus and the road, invisible on the other side of the brick wall that enclosed his garden, was delightfully empty of traffic.
It had been two hours since he had climbed out of bed and dressed himself in the smoking jacket, crisp white shirt and bow tie that his wife had left out for him. In the world he inhabited, what he chose to wear was not just a choice, it was a strategy, and it made no difference if, as now, his audience was unable to see him. He could see himself and, more importantly, his self-image, carefully created over several decades. His one deviation was the velvet slippers he had put on at the last minute, leaving the freshly polished shoes by the door. Slippers would be more comfortable and they were quieter, ensuring that Teri wouldn’t be woken up as he made his way downstairs.
He was sitting, alone, in the long room that occupied almost the entire ground floor of The Stables, an open-plan kitchen at one end and a library/television area with its comfortable arrangement of sofas and chairs at the other. His seat was on castors, allowing him to slide up and down, alongside the eighteenth-century oak refectory table that had been rescued from a French monastery and which could easily have seated a dozen frères. The table drew a straight line from one end of the room to the other.
Six laptop computers had been placed side by side on the wooden surface and, apart from a single lamp in one corner, the only illumination in the room came from the glow of their screens. They sat in a sprawl of wires with an extension lead and plug connecting each one to the mains. The laptops could easily have operated on their own batteries for the required four hours, but Adam would have been aware of the power running down, of the battery symbols at the top of the screens diminishing, and even the faintest concern that one of them might blink out would have been enough to put him off his stride. He needed total focus. Everything had to be exactly right.
Adam Strauss, a grandmaster, had already played twenty-two games of simultaneous chess, connected over the internet to clubs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs. There were two sessions: he was well into the second, with twenty-four games, four to a screen, in front of him. The tournament had begun at six o’clock in the evening, Californian time – which was why he’d had to get up so early and continue through the night. In fact, it made little difference to him. Whether he was involved in a single game or a tournament, when he was playing chess he might as well have been on the moon. He wouldn’t even notice the lack of gravity – or air.
Adam had won all twenty-two games in the first round and so far had seen off seventeen of his opponents in the second, although he had been pleasantly surprised by the abilities of these American amateurs. One of them – a man called Frank (no surnames were being used) – had managed to shatter his kingside pawn structure and he had been lucky to engineer a passed pawn for the endgame. Moving now to the next screen, he saw that Frank had pulled back a bishop, only making his position worse. Surely he could see that there were five moves to mate against any defence? The other contests were also drawing to a close and, at the current rate of play, he calculated that in eighteen minutes it would all be over. Theoretically, it didn’t matter if he lost or drew; the fee he was being paid would stay the same. But Adam had decided that he wanted to make a clean sweep: forty-six games, forty-six wins. However well they had played, these people were amateurs. They should have expected nothing less.
He advanced a rook on one screen (leaving it en prise . . . would Dean be unwise enough to take the bait?), put Charmaine in check (mate in three) and was just focusing on the next game, about to make his move, when he heard the gate opening outside his house.
Riverview Close was set back from the main road, connected to it by a narrow drive that ran through an archway with an electronic gate controlling who came in and out. Adam Strauss’s house was right next to this entrance and although he couldn’t hear the gate from his bedroom, which was on the other side, he was quite close to it here. Even as the mechanism whirred into action, it was accompanied by a blast of pop music cutting through the air like a blade through grey silk. ‘So we danced all night to the best song ever . . .’ The lyrics were so loud they were echoing in the room and, for a brief moment, Strauss froze, his index finger hanging over the trackpad. He knew the car. He knew the driver. It was so typical. Only one man could be as gauche, as inconsiderate as this.
He looked up at the screen and even as he felt the cool touch of the plastic against his finger, he saw to his dismay that he had allowed his hand to fall. He had accidentally pressed the key and selected the wrong piece! The next move had been clear in his head: ♘xf2. It was so obvious, it could have been signposted in neon. But somehow he had managed to highlight the king standing next to the knight and the rules dictated that there could be no going back. He had to reposition the king on a legal square, although he saw at once that any move involving that piece would destroy his game. In that tiny second of non-concentration, he had ruined everything. It was over!