The Word Is Murder Read online

  Hawthorne rifled through the drawers, wardrobes and bedside cabinets. He glanced briefly at a framed photograph of Damian Cowper, propped up on her make-up table. I vaguely recognised him, although to be honest I’m not good with faces and most of these young, handsome, English actors blend into one another … particularly once they’ve made the move to Hollywood. He discovered a safe behind Mrs Cowper’s shoe rack, scowled when he found it was still locked but then forgot it. I was fascinated by the way he searched for clues. He didn’t speak to me. He barely noticed I was there. He reminded me a little of a sniffer dog at an airport. There is never any reason to suppose that there will be drugs or bombs in any of the suitcases but the dog will examine every one of them and will be sure to find anything that’s there. Hawthorne had the same vagueness, the same certainty.

  From the bedroom, he moved into the bathroom. There were about twenty little bottles gathered around the bath: she’d had the habit of taking the shampoo and bath gel from hotels. He opened a cabinet above the basin and took out three packets of temazepam – sleeping pills. He showed them to me.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. It was the first word he had spoken for a while.

  ‘She was worried about something,’ I said. ‘She couldn’t sleep.’

  I followed Hawthorne as he continued around the house. There were two guest rooms on the upper floor but they clearly hadn’t been used for a while. They were almost too clean with a chill in the air, the central heating turned down to save on bills. He took a brief look around, then went back out into the corridor.

  ‘What do you think happened to the cat?’ he muttered.

  ‘What cat?’ I asked.

  ‘The old lady’s cat. A Persian grey. One of those horrible bloody things that look like a medicine ball with fur.’

  ‘I didn’t see a photograph of a cat.’

  ‘Nor did I.’

  He didn’t add anything and I was suddenly irritated. ‘If I’m going to write about you, you’re going to have to tell me how you work. It’s all very well making these pronouncements but you can’t just leave them hanging in the air.’

  He frowned as if he was trying to make sense of what I had just said, then nodded. ‘It’s pretty bloody obvious, Tony. There was a feeding bowl down in the kitchen. And the pillow. Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘The indentation? I thought that was her head.’

  ‘I doubt it, mate. Not unless she had short, silky hair and smelled of fish. She slept on the left side of the bed. That was where the book was. The cat slept with her on the other side. It was obviously heavy, quite big. I’d guess a Persian grey. It’s just the sort of pet a woman like her would have – but it’s not here.’

  ‘Maybe the police took it.’

  ‘Maybe they did.’

  We went back downstairs and as we re-entered the living room, I saw that we were no longer alone. A man in a cheap suit was sitting on the sofa with his legs apart and a file spread out across his lap. His tie was crooked and two of the buttons on his shirt were undone. I had a feeling he was a smoker. Everything about him was unhealthy: the colour of his skin, his thinning hair, broken nose, stomach pressing against the waistband of his trousers. He was about the same age as Hawthorne but bigger, flabbier. He could have retired from the boxing ring but I guessed he must be a police officer. I had seen his sort often enough on television – not in dramas but on the news, standing outside courtrooms, awkwardly reading a prepared statement to the camera.

  ‘Hawthorne,’ he said, without any enthusiasm.

  ‘Detective Inspector Meadows!’ Hawthorne had used the formal title ironically, as if it somehow wasn’t deserved. ‘Hello, Jack,’ he added.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when they told me they’d brought you in on this one. It seems straightforward enough to me.’ He noticed me for the first time. ‘Who are you?’

  I wasn’t quite sure how to introduce myself.

  ‘He’s a writer,’ Hawthorne said, stepping in. ‘He’s with me.’

  ‘What? Writing about you?’

  ‘Writing about the case.’

  ‘I hope you’ve got that authorised.’ He paused. ‘I left everything for you, like I was told. Brought stuff back. Laid it all out just like we found it. Complete waste of time if you ask me.’

  ‘I don’t, Jack. No-one ever does.’

  He took that on the chin. ‘You had a chance to look round, then? Have you finished?’

  ‘I was just leaving.’ But Hawthorne stayed where he was. ‘You say it’s straightforward. So what are your thoughts?’

  ‘I’m not going to share my thoughts with you, if you don’t mind.’ He got lazily to his feet. He was a bigger man than I had thought. He towered over both of us. He had gathered up the pages and, almost as an afterthought, he handed them over. ‘They told me to give you these.’

  The file contained photographs, forensic reports, witness statements and records of all the telephone calls made to and from both the house and Diana Cowper’s mobile phone in the past two weeks. Hawthorne glanced at the top page. ‘She sent a text message at six thirty-one.’

  ‘That’s right. Just before she was strangled. My killer was Aaaaagh …’ He smiled at his own joke. ‘I’ve read the text. It doesn’t make a lot of sense so I’ll leave you to work it out.’ He went over to the glass of water that I had noticed on the sideboard, next to the credit card. ‘I’ll take this now, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  For the first time I noticed that Meadows was wearing gloves. He had some sort of plastic cap which he used to seal the glass, then lifted it to take it with him.

  ‘The only fingerprints on it are hers,’ Hawthorne said. ‘And there’s no DNA. Nobody drank out of it.’

  ‘You’ve seen the report?’ Meadows seemed puzzled.

  ‘No need to see anything, mate. It’s bloody obvious.’ He smiled. ‘You look at that tin in the kitchen? Prince Caspian?’

  ‘A few coins. No fingerprints. Nothing.’

  ‘No surprise there either.’ Hawthorne glanced at the sideboard. ‘How about the credit card?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘When was it last used?’

  ‘You’ll find all her financial details in there.’ Meadows nodded at the file. ‘Fifteen thousand quid in her private account. Another two hundred thou’ in savings. She was doing all right.’ He remembered what Hawthorne had asked. ‘The last time she used the card was a week ago. Harrods. That’s where she bought her groceries.’

  ‘Smoked salmon and cream cheese.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘It was in the kitchen. I had it for breakfast.’

  ‘That’s evidence!’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Meadows scowled. ‘Anything else you want to know?’

  ‘Yes. Did you find the cat?’

  ‘What cat?’

  ‘That answers the question.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave you to it.’ Meadows was holding the glass as if he were a magician about to make a goldfish appear. He nodded at me. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. ‘But I’d watch out for yourself when you’re around this one. Particularly if you go near any stairs.’

  He was pleased with that. He took one last look around the room and then, still holding the glass in front of him, he left.

  Five

  The Lacerated Man

  ‘What did he mean … that crack about the stairs?’

  ‘Charlie Meadows is a pillock. He didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Charlie? You called him Jack.’

  ‘Everyone does.’

  We were sitting outside a café close to Fulham Broadway station – fortunately the sun was shining – so Hawthorne could smoke. He had gone through the documents that Meadows had given him, sharing them with me too. There were photographs of Diana Cowper before and after she had died and I was shocked by the difference. The corpse that Andrea Kluvánek had discovered bore almost no resemblance to the smart, active socialite
who had invested in theatre and eaten lunch in expensive restaurants in Mayfair.

  I come in at eleven o’clock. Is the start of my work time. I see her and I know at once that something very bad has happen.

  Andrea’s statement was attached, reproduced word for word in her broken English. There was a photograph of her: a slim, round-faced woman, quite boyish, with short, spiky hair, staring defensively at the camera. Hawthorne had told me she had a criminal record but I found it difficult to imagine her murdering Diana Cowper. She was too small.

  There was plenty of other material too. In fact it occurred to me that it might be possible for Hawthorne to solve the murder right here at this table over his coffee and cigarette. I hoped not. If that happened, it would be a very short book. Perhaps it was with that thought in mind that I wanted to talk about other things first.

  ‘How do you know him?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Meadows!’

  ‘We worked in the same sub-command in Putney. He had the office next to mine and although I always held my nose, there were a few times I had to walk down the dark side.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘It’s when you have to ask another team for help. When we were doing house-to-house … that sort of thing.’ Hawthorne seemed anxious to move on. ‘Do you want to talk about Diana Cowper?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to talk about you.’

  He gazed at the paperwork spread out on the table. He didn’t need to say anything. This was all that mattered to him. But for once, I was on my home ground and I was determined. ‘The only way this is going to work is if you allow me into your life,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to know about you.’

  ‘Nobody’s interested in me.’

  ‘If that were true, I wouldn’t be here. If it’s true, the book won’t sell.’ I watched as Hawthorne lit another cigarette. For the first time in thirty years, I was tempted to ask for one myself. ‘Listen to me,’ I went on, carefully. ‘They’re not called murder victim stories. They’re not called criminal stories. They’re called detective stories. There’s a reason for that. I’m taking a big risk here. If you solve this crime right now, I won’t have anything to write about. Worse than that, if you don’t solve it at all, it’ll be a complete waste of time. So getting to know you matters. If I know you, if I can find something that makes you more … human, at least that’s a start. So you can’t just brush aside every question I ask you. You can’t hide behind this wall.’

  Hawthorne shrank away. It was funny how, with his pale skin and those troubled, almost childlike eyes, he could make himself seem vulnerable. ‘I don’t want to talk about Jack Meadows. He didn’t like me. And when the shit hit the fan, he was happy to see me go.’

  ‘What shit? What fan?’

  ‘When I left.’

  That was all he was going to say, so I made a mental note to follow it up later. Obviously, now wasn’t the right time. I opened the notebook which I had brought with me and took out a pen. ‘All right. While we’re sitting here, I want to ask you a few questions about yourself. I don’t even know where you live.’

  He hesitated. This really was going to be blood out of a stone. ‘I’ve got a place in Gants Hill,’ he said at length. I’d often driven through Gants Hill, a suburb in north-east London, on the way to Suffolk.

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Yes.’ I could see that there was more to come but it took a while to arrive. ‘We’re not together any more. Don’t ask me about that.’

  ‘Do you support a football team?’

  ‘Arsenal.’ He said it without much enthusiasm and I suspected that if he was a football fan, he was a fairly casual one.

  ‘Do you go to the cinema?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ He was getting impatient.

  ‘What about music?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Classical? Jazz?’

  ‘I don’t listen to music much.’

  I’d been thinking of Morse and his love of opera but that had just gone out of the window too. ‘Do you have children?’

  He swiped the cigarette out of his lips, holding it like a poison dart, and I saw that I’d pushed too hard, too soon. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ he snapped and at that moment I could easily imagine him in a police station, in an interrogation room. He was looking at me with something close to contempt. ‘You can write what you like about me. You can make it all up if you want to. What difference does it make? But I’m not going to play fucking University Challenge with you now or at any time. I’ve got a dead woman and somebody strangled her in her own front room and that’s all that matters to me right at this moment.’ He snatched up one of the pages. ‘Do you want to look at this or not?’

  I could have gone home right then. I could have forgotten the whole thing – and, given what happened later on, it might have been better if I had. But I had just left the murder scene. It was almost as if I knew Diana Cowper and for some reason – maybe it was the photographs I had seen, the violence of her death – I felt I owed her something.

  I wanted to know more.

  ‘All right,’ I said. I put down my pen. ‘Show me.’

  The page contained a screenshot of the text that Diana Cowper had sent to her son just before she died.

  I have seen the boy who

  was lacerated and I’m afraid

  ‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.

  ‘She was interrupted before she finished,’ I said. ‘There’s no full stop. She didn’t have time to say what she was afraid of.’

  ‘Or maybe she was just afraid. Maybe she was too afraid to worry about the full stop at the end of the sentence.’

  ‘Meadows was right. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Then maybe this will help.’ Hawthorne pulled out three more pages, copies of newspaper articles written ten years before.

  DAILY MAIL – FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 2001

  TWIN BOY KILLED IN HIT-AND-RUN HORROR

  His brother is in critical condition but doctors say he will recover.

  An eight-year-old boy was fighting for his life and his twin brother was killed by a short-sighted motorist who ploughed into both children before driving off.

  Jeremy Godwin was left with injuries which include a fractured skull and a severe laceration of the brain. His brother, Timothy, died instantly.

  The accident took place at half past four on Thursday afternoon on The Marine in the coastal resort of Deal, Kent.

  The two boys, who have been described as ‘inseparable’, were returning to their hotel with their nanny, 25-year-old Mary O’Brien. She told the police: ‘The car came round the corner. The driver didn’t even try to slow down. She hit the children and drove straight off. I’ve been with the family for three years and I’m devastated. I couldn’t believe she didn’t stop.’

  Police have arrested a 52-year-old woman.

  THE TELEGRAPH – SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 2001

  POLICE ARREST SHORT-SIGHTED DRIVER WHO KILLED TWIN

  The woman who killed eight-year-old twin, Timothy Godwin, and inflicted life-threatening injuries on his brother has been named as Diana Cowper. Mrs Cowper, 52, is a long-term resident of Walmer, Kent, and was returning from the Royal Cinq Ports Golf Club when the accident took place.

  Mrs Cowper, who had been drinking at the club-house with friends, was not over the limit and witnesses have confirmed that she was not speeding. However, she was driving without her spectacles and in a test conducted by the police she was unable to read a registration plate 25 feet away.

  Her lawyers have made the following statement. ‘Our client had spent the afternoon playing golf and was on her way home when the incident took place. She had unfortunately mislaid her glasses but thought she would be able to drive the relatively short distance without them. She admits that she panicked following the accident and drove straight home. However, she was fully aware of the seriousness of what she had done and contacted the police within two hours that same ev
ening.’

  Police have charged Mrs Cowper under Sections 1 and 170 (2) and (4) of the Road Traffic Act of 1988. She faces charges of causing death by dangerous driving and failing to stop at the scene of an accident.

  Mrs Cowper gave her address as Liverpool Road, Walmer. She had recently lost her husband after a long illness. Her 23-year-old son, Damian Cowper, is an actor who has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and who was last seen in The Birthday Party on the West End stage.

  THE TIMES – TUESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2001

  FAMILY CALLS FOR CHANGE IN LAW AS HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER WALKS FREE

  The mother of an eight-year-old boy killed as he was crossing the road in the seaside town of Deal, Kent, spoke out today as the driver walked free.

  Timothy Godwin died instantly and his twin brother, Jeremy, received severe lacerations to the brain after Diana Cowper, 52, failed to see them. It turned out that Mrs Cowper had left her spectacles at the golf club where she had been playing and was unable to see beyond twenty feet.

  Canterbury Crown Court had heard that she had not broken the law by not wearing her glasses. Judge Nigel Weston QC said: ‘It was not a wise idea to drive without your spectacles but they were not a legal requirement as the law stands and there can be no doubting your remorse. In the light of this, I have decided that a custodial sentence would not be appropriate.’