Meanwhile, Davina was completely out of it. ‘We need to find Colin!’ Her words drifted across the kitchen.
‘Not now,’ Hawthorne said.
She stood up. ‘I’m going to find him.’
Hawthorne pointed a finger at her. He didn’t shout, but there was such controlled fury in his voice that there could be no argument. ‘You stay right there!’
She sat down again.
And then the door opened and a team of paramedics came bursting in and hurried over to examine me. I have a feeling they took the knife out there and then, but again, I can’t be sure. They injected me with something and a few minutes later I was lying on my back with an oxygen mask on my face, being loaded into the ambulance for the short journey to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
As it turned out, the wound was nowhere near as bad as it looked. It was on the other side of my chest, away from my heart and it had missed all my other vital organs too. In fact it was only two inches deep. By the time Jill came to visit me later that evening, I was already sitting up in bed with a couple of stitches and a thick wodge of bandages, watching the news on TV.
She wasn’t amused. ‘You can’t keep ending your books with somebody trying to kill you,’ she said.
‘It’s only the second time it’s happened and anyway, he wasn’t trying to kill me,’ I told her. ‘He was just a kid. He thought I was going to grab hold of him and he panicked.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know. I imagine the police will be looking for him.’
‘What about his mother?’
What about her? I supposed there was every chance she would be charged as an accessory to murder. I wouldn’t know until I’d spoken to Hawthorne. ‘She’s being questioned.’
Jill sat down on the end of the bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘When are they going to let you come home?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘Is there anything you need?’
‘No. I’m fine.’
She looked at me with a mixture of worry and exasperation. ‘If you want my advice, you’ll leave this out of the book. People aren’t going to believe it and you’re going to look ridiculous.’
‘I’m not even thinking about the book at the moment.’
‘I wish you’d never met Hawthorne.’
‘Me too.’
I said that. And I was beginning to think I meant it.
Sure enough, I was discharged from the hospital after breakfast and the first thing I did when I got home was to ring Hawthorne. He didn’t ask me how I was but I got the impression he had made enquiries at the hospital and already knew. We arranged to meet at a coffee shop midway between our two flats just this side of Blackfriars Bridge.
‘You’re sure you’re up to it?’ he asked.
‘I need to know what happened after I left in the ambulance.’
‘Bring an umbrella. It looks like rain.’
He was right. It was pouring down by the time I set out and the weight of the umbrella pulled at my chest, making the wound throb. Farringdon Road, never handsome at the best of times, was an oily black streak with the traffic sitting, ill-tempered, at the lights and cyclists wrapped in bright plastic weaving their way through. We arrived at the same time. Hawthorne picked out a table in the window and as I took my place the rain was hammering against the glass, then sliding down in a series of oscillations like the screen of an old black-and-white TV. It wasn’t winter yet. It had been warm outside and the coffee shop had a muggy feel, although we were almost alone.
Water dripped off Hawthorne’s raincoat as he hung it on a hook behind his chair. Underneath, his suit was dry. The journey had worn me out and for once he bought the drinks: a double espresso for him, hot chocolate for me. I needed the comfort. He brought them over to the table and sat down.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, at last.
‘Not great,’ I said. The stitches were hurting more than the original knife wound. I hadn’t slept well. ‘Have they found him yet?’ I asked.
‘Colin? Yes. He went round to a friend’s house and the police picked him up this morning.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘He’ll be charged with murder.’ Hawthorne shrugged. ‘But he’s under sixteen so they’ll probably go easy on him.’
I waited for him to go on. ‘Are you going to tell me the rest of it?’ I said. ‘It’s the only reason I’ve come here. I’d have much rather stayed in bed.’
‘What’s the matter with you, Tony, mate? You don’t need to sound so bloody miserable. We solved it!’
‘You solved the crime,’ I said. ‘I didn’t do anything. I just made a complete fool of myself.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Well what would you say?’
He considered. ‘You put Grunshaw in her place.’
It wasn’t enough. ‘Just tell me,’ I said. ‘Colin killed Richard Pryce. How did you work it out?’
He looked at me quizzically, as if he didn’t quite understand me. Then he told me what I wanted to hear.
‘I said to you that I’d narrowed it down to one of two people,’ he began. ‘I always had a feeling that it had to be Davina Richardson or her son – but at the end of the day, the murder of Richard Pryce had the kid’s fingerprints all over it. What I told Davina yesterday – the death of Charles Richardson, Gregory Taylor coming round to the house – that was all true. But she never went round to Heron’s Wake with a knife. She was only saying that to protect Colin. She’s a good mum. I’ll say that for her. She’s been protecting him all along.
‘You see, what happened was that Colin must have eavesdropped on the conversation between Gregory Taylor and his mother. Don’t you remember the first time we went round? She told him off for listening at the door. He did it again last night. I knew he was outside. It was a habit of his. Well, it was bad enough for Davina listening to what Gregory had to tell her about Long Way Hole. All those lies. The cowardice. But think of it from a fifteen-year-old’s point of view. Richard had become a second dad to him. Of course, he didn’t have any kids of his own. He put Colin through school. He bought him expensive presents – that telescope, for example. He was always there for him and when Colin finally heard the truth, what do you think he felt? It must have driven him mad.
‘And the next night, he did something about it. We know Colin wasn’t in the house—’
‘How do we know that?’ I interrupted.
‘Because Davina was in bed with Adrian Lockwood. She told us they could never get up to that sort of thing when Colin was around, so he must have said he was staying with a friend or something. In fact, he cycled over to Fitzroy Park, taking a short cut across the Heath.’
I had seen the bicycle in Davina’s hallway. I had walked straight past it three or four times.
‘The light that Henry Fairchild saw wasn’t a torch. There was no need for it with a full moon.’
‘It was a bicycle light.’
‘That’s right. There was a big puddle by the gate so Colin had to dismount and he was pushing the bike through. He continued down to Heron’s Wake and dumped the bike by the front door. My kid does that with his bike all the time. He’s too lazy to prop it up against the wall, especially when he’s in a hurry. He just lets it fall.’
‘The bike fell onto the bulrushes.’
‘That’s right. And it was the pedal that made that hole in the soil. Then Colin rang the door. Richard opened it and of course he was surprised to see him. “It’s a bit late.” Yes, it was. Eight o’clock at night in a quiet part of Hampstead. That is late for a kid to be out on his own.