‘Is he a suspect?’
‘Well, she’d just lost fifty grand in a musical he’d produced. From my experience, money and murder have a way of going hand in hand.’
‘Did I miss anything else?’
‘You don’t think it’s significant that Mrs Cowper resigned from the board of the Globe Theatre that very same day? She’s been doing it for six years and the day she dies, she decides to give it all up. Then there’s Andrea Kluvánek – the cleaner. Where did you get that stuff about her tiptoeing out into the street and calling the emergency services?’
‘It came from her interview with the police.’
‘I read it too. But what makes you think she wasn’t lying?’
‘Why would she be?’
‘I don’t know, mate. But she’s got a criminal record so maybe she’s not all sweetness and light.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I checked. And finally, there’s Damian Cowper, the son. It might have been worth pointing out that he’s just inherited two and a half million quid from his old mum, which is going to come in handy as I’m told he has money problems out there in LA.’
I fell silent. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach. ‘What money problems?’ I asked.
‘From what I understand, most of them have gone up his nose. But there’s the house in Hollywood Hills, the pool, the Porsche 911. He’s got an English girlfriend who lives with him but she can’t be too fond of him either because there’s a load of other women knocking around … knocking being the operative word.’
‘Is there anything in the chapter that was any good?’ I asked.
Hawthorne thought for a moment. ‘I liked that gag about World’s End,’ he said.
I looked at the pages scattered in front of me. ‘Maybe this is a bad idea,’ I said.
Hawthorne smiled at me for the first time. When he smiled, that was when I saw the child he had once been. It was as if there was something inside him always struggling to be released but it had got trapped inside the suit, the tie, the pale features, the malevolent gaze. ‘Early days, mate. It’s only a first chapter. You can tear it up and start again. The thing is, we’ve got to find a way of working together, a …’ He searched for the right phrase.
‘A modus operandi,’ I suggested.
He pointed a finger. ‘You don’t want to use posh words like that. You’ll just get people’s backs up. No. You’ve just got to write what happens. We’ll talk to the suspects. I’ll make sure you have all the information. All you have to do is put it in the right order.’
‘And what happens if you don’t solve it?’ I said. ‘Maybe the police will find out who killed Diana Cowper before you do.’
He looked offended. ‘The Met are a load of tossers,’ he said. ‘If they had a clue, they wouldn’t have hired me. That’s what I explained to you. A lot of murders are solved in the first forty-eight hours. Why? Because most murderers don’t know what they’re doing. They get angry. They lash out. It’s spontaneous. And by the time they start thinking about blood splatter, car number plates, CCTV – it’s too late. Some of them will try to cover their tracks but with modern forensics they haven’t got a hope in hell.
‘But then there are the tiny amount of murders – maybe only two per cent – that are premeditated. They’re planned. They might be a contract killing. Or some nutter who’s doing it for fun. The police always know. They know when they’ve got a sticker … that’s what they call this type of murder. And that’s when they reach out to someone like me. They know they need help. So what I’m saying is, you have to trust me. If you want to add extra details, ask me first. Otherwise, just write down what you see. This isn’t Tintin. OK?’
‘Wait a minute!’ Once again, Hawthorne had managed to throw me off balance. ‘I never told you I was writing Tintin.’
‘You told me you were working for Spielberg. And that’s what he’s directing.’
‘He’s producing.’
‘Anyway, what was it that made you change your mind about writing this? Was it your wife? I bet she told you what was good for you.’
‘Stop right there,’ I said. ‘If we’re going to have rules, the main rule is that you never ask me about my private life: not my books, not my TV, not my family, not my friends.’
‘I’m interested you put them in that order …’
‘I’ll write about you. I’ll write about this case. And when you solve it – if you solve it – I’ll see if I can get my publisher interested. But I’m not going to be bullied by you. This is still my book and I’m going to be the one who decides what goes into it.’
His eyes widened. ‘Calm down, Tony. I’m just trying to help.’
This is the agreement that we made. I wouldn’t show Hawthorne any more of the book; certainly not while I was writing it and probably not even after it was finished. I would write what I wanted to write and if that meant criticising him or adding thoughts of my own I would simply go ahead. But when it came to the scene of the crime, the interrogations or whatever, I would stick to the facts. I wouldn’t imagine, extrapolate or embroider the text with potentially misleading descriptions.
As for Chapter One, forget the bell and the Mont Blanc pen. Diana Cowper had lunch with Raymond Clunes. And Andrea Kluvánek may not have been telling the truth. But be assured that the rest of it, including a clue which would indicate, quite clearly, the identity of the killer, is spot on.
Four
Scene of the Crime
There was a uniformed policeman standing outside Diana Cowper’s home on the Monday morning when I presented myself there. A strip of that blue and white plastic tape – POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS – hung across the front door but someone must have told him I was coming because he let me in without even asking me my name. It was five days after the murder. Hawthorne had sent across copies of the police files and early interviews, which I had read over the weekend. He had attached a brief note telling me to meet him here at nine. I stepped round a puddle in the short path that led to the front door and went in.
Normally, when I visit a crime scene, it’s one that I have myself manufactured. I don’t need to describe it: the director, the locations manager, the designer and the props department will have done most of the work for me, choosing everything from the furniture to the colour of the walls. I always look for the most important details – the cracked mirror, the bloody fingerprint on the windowsill, anything that’s important to the story – but they may not be there yet. It depends which way the camera is pointing. I often worry that the room will seem far too big for the victim who supposedly lived there – but then ten or twenty people have to be able to fit inside during filming and the viewers never notice. In fact, the room will be so jammed with actors, technicians, lights, cables, tracks, dollies and all the rest of it that it’s quite difficult to work out how it will look on the screen.
Being the writer on a set is a strange experience. It’s hard to describe the sense of excitement, walking into something that owes its existence entirely to what happened inside my head. It’s true that I’m completely useless and that no matter where I stand I’m almost certain to be in the way but the crew is unfailingly polite and pleasant to me even if the truth is that we have nothing to say. My work finished weeks ago; theirs is just beginning. So I’ll sit down in a folding chair which never has my name on the back. I’ll watch from the side. I’ll chat to the actors. Maybe a runner will bring me a cup of tea in a styrofoam cup. And as I sit there, I’ll take comfort in the knowledge that this is all mine. I am part of it and it is part of me.