He must have sensed the hesitation at the other end of the line. ‘I need to set up a meeting,’ he explained. ‘I want it to be somewhere neutral.’
‘What’s wrong with your place?’
‘That wouldn’t be appropriate.’ He paused. ‘I’ve worked out what really happened in Deal,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll agree that it’s relevant to our investigation.’
‘Who are you meeting?’
‘You’ll know who they both are when they get here.’ He tried one last plea. ‘It’s important.’
As it happened, I was on my own that evening. And it occurred to me that if I allowed Hawthorne to see where I lived, perhaps I might be able to persuade him to do the same. I was still keen to find out how he could possibly afford a flat overlooking the river and although Meadows had said he didn’t own it I was curious to see inside.
‘What time?’ I asked.
‘Five o’clock.’
‘All right,’ I said, already regretting it. ‘You can come here for an hour – but that’s it.’
‘That’s great.’ He rang off.
I spent the rest of the morning typing up my notes from the investigation so far: Britannia Road, Cornwallis and Sons, the South Acton Estate. I had made several hours’ worth of recordings on my iPhone and I connected it to my computer, listening to Hawthorne’s flat, wheedling voice through a set of headphones. I’d also taken dozens of photographs and I flicked through them, reminding myself of what I’d seen. I already had far more material than I needed and I was sure that ninety per cent of it was irrelevant. For example, Andrea Kluvánek had talked at length about her childhood in the Banská Štiavnica district of Slovakia and how happy she had been until the death of her father in an agricultural accident. But even as she had gone on, I’d been doubtful that any of it would make the first draft.
I had never worked this way before. Normally, when I’m planning a novel or a TV script, I know exactly what I need and don’t waste time with extraneous details. But without knowing what was going on inside Hawthorne’s head, how could I tell what was relevant and what wasn’t? It was exactly what he had warned me about when he’d read my first chapter. A spring bell mechanism on a door or its absence could make all the difference to the conclusion and leaving something out could be just as damaging as making it up. As a result, I was having to write down everything I saw in every room I visited – whether it was the Stieg Larsson in Diana Cowper’s bedroom, the fish-shaped key hook in her kitchen or the Post-it notes in Judith Godwin’s kitchen – and the rapidly growing pile of information was driving me mad.
I was still convinced that Alan Godwin was the killer. If it wasn’t him, who else could it have been? That was the question I asked myself as I sat at my desk, surrounded by what felt like a devastation of white A4.
Well, there was Judith Godwin, for one. She had exactly the same motivation. I thought back to what Hawthorne had said about the killer when we were at the scene of the crime, then rifled through the pages until I found it. He was almost certainly a man. I’ve heard of women strangling women but – take it from me – it’s unusual. Those were his exact words, recorded and written down. As a result, I hadn’t considered any of the women I had met. But almost certainly was not one hundred per cent definite and unusual was not impossible. It could have been Judith. It could have been Mary O’Brien – so devoted to the family that she had stayed working with them for the whole ten years. And what about Jeremy Godwin? It was always possible that he wasn’t quite as helpless as everyone supposed.
And then there was Grace Lovell – the actress who had moved in with Damian Cowper. Although she hadn’t said so in as many words, there was clearly no love lost between her and Damian’s mother, whose interest had extended no further than her first grandchild, Ashleigh. The baby had been the end of Grace’s acting career and if the newspaper stories were true, Damian had proved to be a far from ideal partner. Drugs, parties, showgirls … it easily added up to a motive for murder. On the other hand, she had been in America when Diana was killed.
Or had she?
Once again, I scoured through my notes and found exactly what I was looking for, a line spoken by Damian Cowper that hadn’t registered at the time but which, I now saw, was hugely significant. Grace had complained that she didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles. She wanted to spend more time with her parents. And Damian had said to her: You’ve already had a week with them, babe. I felt a glow of satisfaction. I really had missed nothing! It might even be that I was ahead of Hawthorne on this one. A week might be an approximation. Grace could have arrived nine or ten days ahead of Damian. In which case she could easily have been in the country on the day that Diana was killed. That said, we had left her behind at the pub in the Fulham Road after the funeral and remembering how heavy the traffic was, I would have thought it impossible for her to have reached Brick Lane before us.
Who else was there? I had spent a lot of time with Robert Cornwallis – and, for that matter with his cousin, Irene Laws. Either of them could have slipped the music player into the coffin but why would they have? They only met Diana Cowper on the day she died. Neither of them had anything to gain from her death, or that of her son.
I spent the rest of the day working on my notes and hardly noticed the time when, at a quarter to five, the doorbell rang. I work on the fifth floor of the building, with an intercom that connects me to the street, although there are times when I don’t feel connected at all, stuck in my ivory tower. I buzzed the door open, then went downstairs to meet my guest.
‘Nice place,’ Hawthorne said as he walked in. ‘But I don’t think we’ll need the drinks.’
I’d laid out glasses with a choice of mineral water and orange juice as it seemed a polite thing to do. I noticed him examining the living room as I returned them to the fridge. The main floor of my flat is essentially one large space. It has bookshelves – I have about five hundred books in the house but I keep my favourite ones here – a kitchen area, a dining-room table and my mother’s old piano which I try to play every day. There’s a TV area and a couple of sofas around a coffee table. Hawthorne sat down here. He looked completely relaxed.
‘So you know what really happened in Deal,’ I said. ‘Am I about to find out who killed Diana Cowper?’
Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Not right now. But I think you’ll find it interesting. I’ve got some good news, by the way,’ he added.
‘What’s that?’
‘Mr Tibbs has turned up.’
‘Mr Tibbs?’ It took me a few seconds to remember who he was. ‘The cat?’
‘Diana Cowper’s Persian grey.’
‘Where was he?’
‘He’d got into the neighbour’s house – through a skylight. Then he couldn’t get out again. He was found by the owners when they got back from the South of France and they called me.’
‘I suppose that is good news,’ I said, wondering what Diana Cowper’s cat had to do with anything. Then another thought struck me. ‘Wait a minute. There was a lawyer living in the house next door.’
‘Mr Grossman.’
‘Why did he contact you? How did he even know who you were?’
‘I put a note through his door. Actually, I put a note in all the houses in Britannia Road. I wanted to know if the cat had made an appearance.’
‘Why?’
‘Mr Tibbs is the reason everything happened, Tony. If it hadn’t been for him, Mrs Cowper might never have been killed. And nor would her son.’