The Word Is Murder Read online

  He pushed and prodded the pages as if trying to find a single sentence that he liked. ‘You’re being a bit selective with the information,’ he said, at length.

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, you say that Mrs Cowper only used public transport but you don’t explain why.’

  ‘I say she was eccentric!’

  ‘I think you’ll find there was rather more to it than that, mate. And then there’s the question of the funeral itself. You know exactly what she requested for her service but you haven’t written down what it was.’

  ‘A psalm! The Beatles!’

  ‘But which psalm? Which Beatles track? Don’t you think it might be important?’ He took out a notebook and opened it. ‘Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. The song was “Eleanor Rigby”. The poem was by someone called Sylvia Plath. Maybe you can help me with that one, Tony, because I read it and it didn’t make a word of bleeding sense. The classical music was the Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke. She wanted her son to give the main address … what do you call it?’

  ‘The eulogy.’

  ‘Whatever. And maybe you should have mentioned who she had lunch with at the Café Murano. His name is Raymond Clunes. He’s a theatrical producer.’

  ‘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 ne
ver 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.

  Mrs Cowper’s living room couldn’t have been more different. As I stepped onto the thick-pile carpet with its floral pattern etched out in pink and grey and took in the crystal chandelier, the comfortable, faux-antique furniture, the Country Life and Vanity Fair magazines spread out on the coffee table, the books (modern fiction, hardback, nothing by me) on the built-in shelves, I felt like an intruder. I was on my own, wandering through what might as well have been a museum exhibit as a place where someone had recently lived.

  The police investigators had left those yellow numbers on plastic tags that mark out crime scenes but there weren’t very many of them, suggesting that there hadn’t been much to find. A full glass of what looked like water (12) had been left on an antique sideboard and next to it I noticed a credit card (14) with Diana Cowper’s name. Were they clues? It was hard to say, just seeing them there. The room had three windows, each of them with a pair of velvet curtains hanging all the way to the floor. Five of the curtains were tied back with knotted red cords and tassels. The curtain nearest the door (6) was hanging loose and it reminded me that not so long ago, a middle-aged woman had been strangled right where I was standing. It was all too easy to see her in front of me, her eyes staring, her fists pummelling the air. I looked down and noticed a stain on the carpet, marked by two more police numbers. Her bowels had loosened just before she died, the sort of detail I would normally have spared an ITV audience.

  Hawthorne came into the room, dressed in the same suit as usual – and that’s one sentence I definitely don’t need to write again. He was eating a sandwich and it took me a moment to realise that he must have made it for himself, in Mrs Cowper’s kitchen, using her food. I stared at him.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, with his mouth full.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  He must have heard the tone in my voice. ‘Shame to waste it,’ he said. ‘And she don’t need it any more.’ He waved the sandwich around the room. ‘So what do you think?’

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. The room was very neat. Apart from the flat-screen television – on a stand rather than mounted on the wall – everything in the room belonged to a former age. Diana Cowper had lived an orderly life with the magazines placed just so and the ornaments – glass vases and china figurines – regularly dusted. She had even died tidily. There had been no last-minute struggle, no upturned furniture. The assailant had left just one mark: a muddy half-footprint on the carpet near the door. I could imagine her frowning if she had seen it. She had not been brutally beaten or raped. In many ways this murder had been sedate.

  ‘She knew the killer,’ Hawthorne said. ‘But he wasn’t a friend. He was a man, at least six feet tall, well built, with poor eyesight. He came here with the specific intention of killing her and he wasn’t here very long. She left him alone for a while and went into the kitchen. She hoped he was going to leave – but that was when he killed her. After he had finished, he searched the house and took a few things but that wasn’t the reason he was here. This was personal.’

  ‘How can you possibly know all that?’ Even as I spoke the words I was annoyed with myself. I knew it was exactly what he wanted me to ask. I had fallen right into the trap.

  ‘It was getting dark when he arrived,’ Hawthorne said. ‘There have been quite a few burglaries in the area. A middle-aged woman, living alone in an expensive part of town, wouldn’t open her door to a complete stranger. He was almost certainly a man. I’ve heard of women strangling women but – take it from me – it’s unusual. Diana Cowper was five foot three and it would have been helpful if he’d been taller than her. He fractured her hyoid bone when he killed her, which tells me he was strong, although I admit she was a bit of an old biddy so it might have snapped anyway.

  ‘How do I know he came here to kill her? Three reasons. He didn’t leave any fingerprints. It was a warm evening but he made sure he was wearing gloves. He didn’t stay here very long. He was only in this room and as you can see there are no coffee cups, no empty glasses of G and T. If he’d been a friend, six o’clock, they’d probably have had a drink together.’

  ‘He might have been in a hurry,’ I said.

  ‘Look at the cushions, Tony. He didn’t even sit down.’

  I went over to the glass I’d seen and resisted the temptation to pick it up. The police and forensics must have been here and I was more than a little surprised that they’d left it behind. Wouldn’t they have taken it away for immediate analysis? I said as much to Hawthorne.

  ‘They’ve brought it back,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For me.’ He smiled that bleak little smile of his, then finished the rest of the sandwich.

  ‘So someone did have a drink,’ I said.

  ‘It’s only water.’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘My guess is that he asked her for a glass of water before he left. That got her out of the room long enough for him to unhook the curtain and steal the tie. He couldn’t have done that with her watching.’

  ‘But he didn’t drink it.’

  ‘He didn’t want to leave his DNA.’

  ‘What about the credit card?’ I read the name, printed across it: MRS DIANA J. COWPER. It had been issued by Barclays bank. Its expiry date was November. Six months after hers.

  ‘That’s an interesting one. Why isn’t it in her purse with all the others? Did she take it out to pay for something and is that why she opened the door? There are no fingerprints on it except her own. So you’ve got a possible scenario. Someone asks her for payment. She takes out the credit card and while she’s fiddling around with it, he slips behind her and strangles her. But then, why isn’t it on the floor?’ He shook his head. ‘On the other hand, it may have nothing to do with what happened. We’ll see.’

  ‘You said the killer had poor eyesight,’ I said.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘That was because he missed the diamond ring on her finger.’ I’d cut in before Hawthorne could explain everything down to the last detail. ‘It must be worth a fortune.’

  ‘No, no, mate. You’ve got that all wrong. He obviously wasn’t interested in the ring. Whoever did this nicked a few pieces of jewellery and a laptop to make it look like a burglary but he either forgot the ring or he couldn’t get it off her finger and decided not to bother with a pair of secateurs. There was no way he could have missed it. He was right up close when he was strangling her.’

  ‘Then how do you know his eyesight was bad?’

  ‘Because he stepped in the puddle outside the door, which is how he left a mark on the carpet. It looks like a man’s shoe, by the way. In every other respect he was careful. That was the one thing he missed. Aren’t you going to write all this down?’

  ‘I can remember most of it.’ I took out my iPhone. ‘But I’ll take some pictures if that’s OK.’

  ‘You go ahead.’ He pointed at a black and white photograph of a man in his forties, also on the sideboard. ‘Make sure you get a shot of him.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Her husband, at a guess. L
awrence Cowper.’

  ‘Divorced?’

  He looked at me sadly. ‘If they were divorced, she wouldn’t keep his picture, would she! He died twelve years ago. Cancer.’

  I took the picture.

  After that, I followed Hawthorne around the house as he went from room to room, photographing everything that he pointed out to me. We started in the kitchen, which had the look of a showroom: expensively stocked but underused. Diana Cowper had enough equipment to cook a Michelin-starred meal for ten but probably went to bed with a boiled egg and two pieces of toast. The fridge was covered with magnets: classical art and famous Shakespearean quotes. A metal tin, merchandise from the Narnia film Prince Caspian, stood on the fridge. Using a cloth to keep his hands from coming into contact with the metal, Hawthorne opened it and looked inside. It was empty apart from a couple of coins.

  Everything was in exactly the right place. There were recipe books – Jamie Oliver and Ottolenghi – on the windowsill, notebooks and recent letters in a rack beside the toaster, a blackboard with notes for the week’s shopping. Hawthorne glanced through the letters then returned them. A wooden fish had been mounted on the wall above the counter with five hooks which Diana used to hang keys and he seemed particularly interested in these – there were four sets, each one of them labelled, and I duly took a picture, noting that according to the tags they opened the front door, the back door, the cellar and a second property called Stonor House.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘She used to live there before she moved to London. It’s in Walmer, Kent.’

  ‘A bit odd that she should keep the key …’

  We found a household drawer full of older letters and bills, which Hawthorne glanced through. There was also a brochure for a musical called Moroccan Nights. The front cover showed a picture of a Kalashnikov machine gun with its shoulder strap lying in the shape of a heart. One of the producers, listed on the first page, was Raymond Clunes.

  From the kitchen, we went upstairs to the bedroom, passing wallpaper with faint stripes and old theatre programmes in frames: Hamlet, The Tempest, Henry V, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Birthday Party. Damian Cowper had appeared in all of them. Hawthorne bulldozed ahead but I entered the bedroom with a sense of unease that surprised me. Once again I felt as if I was intruding. Only a week ago, a middle-aged woman would have undressed here, standing in front of the full-length mirror, sliding into the queen-sized bed with the copy of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire that was lying on the bedside table. Well, at least Mrs Cowper had been spared the slightly disappointing ending. There were two sets of pillows. I could see the indentation on one of them, made by her head. I could imagine her waking up, warm, perhaps smelling of lavender. Not any more. Death for me had always been little more than a necessity, something that moved the plot on. But standing in the bedroom of a woman who had so recently died, I could feel it right there beside me.