‘Hello, Mr Hawthorne,’ he said. ‘I heard you arrive.’
‘No, you didn’t, Kevin. You’ve connected yourself to the video entry system and you watched us come in.’ Hawthorne was pleased to see him. ‘We were talking about you. Or I think we were about to.’
‘Kevin …’ I’d worked out exactly what had happened. ‘Have you hacked into the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Lambeth?’ I demanded. I could have been a parent telling off a naughty boy.
‘It’s nice to see you, Anthony.’ Kevin was ignoring my question. He pushed the lever on his wheelchair and rolled towards me. ‘Mr Hawthorne told me you’d been arrested. I must say, I was jolly surprised. I never thought you had it in you to kill anyone.’
‘He says he’s innocent,’ Hawthorne said.
‘I got the DNA results,’ Kevin went on. ‘It’s a definite match. It’s your fingerprints too. I’ve got a photograph of them.’ The thing about Kevin was that he had a boyish enthusiasm for what he was doing and seemingly no awareness that it was a criminal offence. This, combined with his Bollywood good looks and, I suppose, the wheelchair, made it easy to forget how dangerous he was.
‘How long have we got?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I took down their servers with a general denial-of-service attack,’ Kevin replied. ‘It means they’ve got the information, but they can’t access or share it—’
‘Wait a minute!’ I interrupted. ‘What exactly are you talking about?’ Then I remembered. ‘Cara said she had a computer problem. Was that you? What’s a denial-of-service attack?’
Kevin glanced at Hawthorne as if asking his permission to reply. Hawthorne nodded. ‘We had to buy you time,’ he explained. ‘So I hacked into the system and installed a bot. The bot made all the computers come together in a botnet, which then flooded the servers with, like, millions of connection requests: spam, porn, the complete works of Shakespeare … that sort of thing. It’s called a DDoS attack. It’s crude but effective.’
‘You brought down the police computer!’
‘They’ll get it sorted eventually. They’ve already called in a DDoS mitigation company and they’ll be scrubbing all the inbound traffic, sorting out the load balancers, firewalls and routers—’
‘How long?’ Hawthorne repeated.
‘Twenty-four hours, definitely. Probably forty-eight.’
‘Thank you, Kevin.’
‘A pleasure, Mr Hawthorne.’ Before Kevin left, he turned to me. ‘I really liked The Word is Murder,’ he said. ‘Am I going to be in the next one?’
‘Not unless you want to end up in jail,’ I replied.
‘Maybe best not, then.’ He pushed the electronic control and, with a gentle whirring sound, propelled himself out of the room.
‘I hope you realise he’s stuck his neck out for you,’ Hawthorne said, once he’d gone.
‘I’m very grateful,’ I replied. And I was.
‘So we’d better get moving then.’ Hawthorne was already on his feet, reaching for his cigarettes and front-door keys.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You heard what Kevin said. He’s bought you forty-eight hours maximum before Cara rearrests you. If you didn’t murder Harriet Throsby, that’s how long we’ve got to find out who did.’
8
Palgrove Gardens
Little Venice is one of the more secretive corners of London, tucked away between Paddington Station and Regent’s Park and unknown to almost everyone except the people who live there – and who wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The traffic roars past along the Marylebone Road, heading for Heathrow Airport and the west, unaware that there’s this quiet enclave of handsome, expensive houses, eclectic shops and attractive cafés, almost a village in its own right, lurking just out of sight. The Regent’s Canal skirts round Lord’s Cricket Ground and London Zoo, then continues through the middle of it before passing through the Maida Hill Tunnel. The closer you are to the water’s edge, the more you are likely to pay. Harriet Throsby had lived a few minutes away from the canal. If I had killed her, I could have followed the canal path virtually from my flat to hers. It wouldn’t have taken me much more than an hour.
And here I was, supposedly returning to the scene of the crime. For some reason, Hawthorne hadn’t given the driver the house number and we were cruising slowly along an elegant crescent, looking for the right address. The houses were very similar, Victorian, tall and narrow, with bay windows looking out over private parking bays, and expensive loft conversions above. Japanese cherry trees sprouted out of the pavement, one for every two or three houses, looking a little sad in the damp April weather.
‘Which house is number 27?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I don’t know …’ We continued on our way until, suddenly, it occurred to me. ‘You asked me that on purpose!’ I exclaimed.
He looked at me innocently.
‘Yes, you did. You wanted to know if I’d already been to her house. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to fall for that?’
‘Well …’
‘And you’re still ready to believe I could have killed her!’
‘I’m trying to keep an open mind.’
I pointed. ‘There it is, over there. I may be wrong, but I’d guess it’s the one with the policeman standing outside.’
The taxi drew in. We got out, I paid and then together we walked up to the front door. There were two bells. Hawthorne rang the lower one – marked Throsby. I thought the policeman might stop us from entering, but he had barely acknowledged us as we approached. Maybe Hawthorne had a certain authority about him. After all, he had visited enough crime scenes.
Arthur Throsby opened the door.
It had to be him. He had the blank, exhausted look of someone whose life has been turned upside down. We were two more strangers entering his house to ask yet more questions and he looked at us with sad resignation.
‘Yes?’ he asked, incuriously.
‘Mr Throsby?’
‘I’m Arthur Throsby, yes.’
‘My name is Daniel Hawthorne. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m helping the police with their inquiries. Can we come in?’
Hawthorne was lying. In fact, he had lied twice. He wasn’t officially helping anyone except me. And he wasn’t sorry at all.
Throsby looked puzzled. ‘I’ve already spoken to Detective Inspector Grunshaw,’ he said. ‘I’ve made a full statement.’
‘Yes. There were a couple of things she wanted to follow up on.’
‘I thought we’d covered everything. She didn’t say anyone else would be coming.’
‘Mr Throsby, we’re trying to find out who killed Harriet. You can phone DI Grunshaw if you like. But I think it’s fair to say that every minute we waste is a minute the trail gets cold. It’s up to you.’
He was bluffing, of course, but it worked.
‘No. It’s all right. I’m … well, I’m sure you understand.’ Throsby stepped back to allow us in. This was something I’d learned after three investigations with Hawthorne. When someone was murdered, people expected to be asked questions. It was as if they’d seen so many murder stories on television, they knew the part they had to play and didn’t ask too many questions themselves.
We stepped through the front door and found ourselves in a narrow communal area with two further doors facing each other at angles. Harriet Throsby had lived with her husband and daughter in the ground-floor and basement of the building, with access to the garden, while a second flat had been carved out above. The door on the right was open, showing a brightly lit, airy space with a wide corridor leading into an open-plan kitchen and living room with French windows at the end. The taste was simple, on the edge of chintzy: floral wallpaper, lots of brightly coloured vases and original theatre posters hanging in frames. The wooden floor, what I could see of it, was original, but we were standing in an area that had been covered by translucent plastic sheeting with numbered tags underneath.