The Word Is Murder Read online

  A huddle of twenty-somethings in hoodies and sweatshirts were sitting in the shadows, watching us with sullen, suspicious eyes. Fortunately, Hawthorne seemed to know where he was going and I stayed close to him, thinking back to what the woman at Hay-on-Wye had said to me. Perhaps this was the dose of reality she had prescribed.

  Andrea Kluvánek lived on the second floor of one of the towers. Hawthorne had telephoned ahead and she was expecting us. I knew from the police files that she had two children, but it was one thirty in the afternoon and I guessed they were both at school. Her flat was clean but it was very small, with no more furniture than was needed: three chairs at the kitchen table, a single sofa in front of the TV. Even the most optimistic estate agent wouldn’t have called the living room open-plan. The kitchen simply blended into it with no way of saying where one ended and the other began. This was a one-bedroom flat and I have no idea how they managed at night. Maybe the children had the bedroom and she slept on the sofa.

  We sat down, facing her across the table. There were pots and pans hanging on hooks, inches behind our heads. Andrea did not offer us tea or coffee. She gazed at us suspiciously across the Formica surface of her kitchen table, a small, dark woman who looked even tougher in real life than she had in the photograph I had seen. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans that had been torn in a way that wasn’t a fashion statement. Hawthorne had lit a cigarette and she had taken one off him too, so I was sitting there surrounded by smoke, wondering if I would actually manage to finish the book before I died of some secondary-smoking-related disease.

  To begin with, Hawthorne was quite pleasant with her. His tone was conversational as he took her through the statement she had given to the police and which I have already described. She had come into the house, seen the dead woman, gone straight outside and called the police. She had waited until they arrived.

  ‘You must have got very wet,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘What?’ She looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘It was raining that morning, when you discovered the body. If I’d been you, I’d have waited in the kitchen. Nice and warm and there’s a phone in there too. No need to use your mobile.’

  ‘I go outside. I already say all this. The police ask me what happen and I tell them.’ Her English wasn’t very good and it got worse, the angrier she became.

  ‘I know, Andrea,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I read what you told the police. But I’ve come all the way across London to talk to you face-to-face because I want you to tell me the truth.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I speak the truth.’ She didn’t sound convincing.

  ‘No, you don’t.’ Hawthorne sighed gently, as if this wasn’t something he really wanted to do. ‘How long have you been in this country?’ he asked.

  At once she was defensive. ‘Five year.’

  ‘Two years with Diana Cowper.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many days a week did you work for her?’

  ‘Two days. Wednesday and Friday.’

  ‘Did you ever tell her about that little trouble you had?’

  ‘I have no trouble.’

  Hawthorne shook his head sadly. ‘You have a lot of trouble. In Huddersfield – that’s where you were living. Shoplifting. A hundred-and-fifty-quid fine plus costs.’

  ‘You no understand!’ Andrea glowered at him. I was wishing the room was bigger. I felt out of place and uncomfortable being so close to her. ‘I have nothing to eat. No husband. My children, four-year-old and six-year-old, have nothing to eat.’

  ‘So you nicked stuff from a charity shop. Well, it was Save the Children. I suppose you were taking it literally.’

  ‘Is not …’

  ‘And it was a second offence,’ Hawthorne went on before she could deny it. ‘You were already on a conditional discharge. I’d say you were lucky the judge was in a good mood.’

  Andrea was still defiant. ‘I work for Mrs Cowper for two year. She look after me so I no need to steal nothing. I am honest person. I look after my family.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be able to look after your family when you’re in jail.’ Hawthorne allowed this to sink in. ‘You lie to me and that’s where you’ll end up. Your children will be in care – or maybe they’ll be sent back to Slovakia. I want to know how much money you took.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘The housekeeping money that your employer kept in a Prince Caspian tin. You know who Prince Caspian is? He’s a character in Narnia. Her son, Damian Cowper, was in the film. She kept the tin in the kitchen. I looked in it and I found a couple of coins.’

  ‘That’s where she keep money, yes. But I don’t take it. The thief take it.’

  ‘No.’ Hawthorne was angry. His eyes had darkened and the hand holding his cigarette had curled into a fist. ‘A thief went through the house, it’s true. He poked around a bit here and there. It was like he wanted us to know where he’d been. But this was different. The tin was put back in its right place. The lid was screwed back on. It was wiped clean of fingerprints by someone who’d been watching too many crime shows on TV. I don’t think you get it. There had to be some fingerprints on the surface. Yours. Your boss’s. My guess is you pulled out a wodge of notes and didn’t notice the coins. How much was there?’

  Andrea stared at him sullenly. I wondered how much she had understood. ‘I take money,’ she said, at last.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifty pound.’

  Hawthorne looked pained. ‘How much?’

  ‘One hundred and sixty.’

  He nodded. ‘That’s better. And you didn’t wait outside either. Why would you when it was pissing down? What I want to know is, what else did you do? What else did you take?’

  I saw Andrea struggling with the decision that she had to make. Did she admit to further wrongdoing and possibly get herself into more trouble? Or did she try to deceive Hawthorne and risk angering him again? In the end, she bowed to her better sense. She got up and took a folded piece of paper out of a kitchen drawer. She handed it to him. He unfolded it and read:

  Mrs Cowper,

  You think you can just get rid of me but I will not leave you alone. What I said is just the beginning, I promise you. I have been watching you and I know the things that are dear to you. You are going to pay. Believe me.

  It was a handwritten letter, unsigned, with no date or address. Hawthorne looked from it to Andrea, enquiry in his eyes.

  ‘A man come to the house,’ she explained. ‘Three week ago. He go with Mrs Cowper in the living room. I was upstair in the bedroom but I hear them talking. He was very angry … shouting at her.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘It was Wednesday. About one o’clock.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘I look out of the window when he leave. But it was raining and he have umbrella. I see nothing.’

  ‘You’re sure it was a man?’

  Andrea considered. ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘And what about this?’ Hawthorne held up the sheet of paper.

  ‘Is in her bedroom table.’ Andrea actually managed to look ashamed although I think she was just afraid of what Hawthorne might do to her. ‘I take a look in the house after she die and I find it.’ She paused. ‘I think this man kill Mr Tibbs.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Tibbs?’

  ‘Mrs Cowper have a cat. Is a big grey cat.’ She held out her hands, showing us its size. ‘She call me on Thursday. She tell me not to come in. She very upset and she say that Mr Tibbs has gone.’

  ‘Why did you take the letter?’ I asked.

  Andrea looked at Hawthorne as if asking his permission to ignore me.

  Hawthorne nodded. He folded the letter back up and slipped it into his pocket. The two of us left.

  ‘She took the letter because she thought she could make money out of it,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Maybe she knows the man who visited Diana Cowper, the man with the umbrella. Or maybe she thought she could find him. But she’s an opportun
ist. She knew there was going to be a murder investigation and this was something she thought she could use.’

  We were sitting together in another taxi, on our way back into town. We had one meeting left – with Raymond Clunes, the theatre producer who’d had lunch with Diana Cowper on the day she’d died. I was even more convinced now that this was a waste of time. Surely Hawthorne had the identity of the killer in his pocket. You are going to pay. What could have been clearer than that? But he said nothing more about the interview with Andrea Kluvánek. He was deep in thought. In fact it was more than that. He was totally absorbed. This was something I would learn about Hawthorne. He was someone who was only fully alive when he was working on a case. He needed there to have been a murder or some other violent crime. It was his entire raison d’être – another posh phrase which I am sure he would have hated.

  Clunes lived in rather different circumstances to Andrea Kluvánek. His home was behind Marble Arch, close to Connaught Square, and I wasn’t at all surprised that this was the home of a theatre producer. The building itself was like a stage set, made of red brick and almost improbably two-dimensional with an imposing front door and brightly painted windows set in perfect symmetry. Everything was pristine, even the dustbins standing in a neat line on the other side of the metal railings. A flight of steps led down to a basement with its own separate entrance. There were four more floors rising above. I guessed I was looking at around five bedrooms and at least thirty million pounds’ worth of central London property.

  Hawthorne wasn’t impressed. He jabbed at the doorbell as if he had some personal animosity against it. There was nobody else in the street and I got the feeling that most of the houses here would be empty, owned by foreign businessmen. Didn’t Tony Blair live somewhere close by? As central as it was, I’d never actually been to this particular area. It didn’t feel like London at all.

  The door was opened by that standby of every whodunnit; something I had never expected to encounter in the twenty-first century. Clunes had a butler, the real thing, in pinstriped suit, waistcoat and gloves. He was a man of about my age with swept-back dark hair and a look of dignity that he must have nailed into place each day.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir. Please come in.’ He didn’t need to ask our names. We were expected.

  We went into a large hallway between two reception rooms, the floors fabulously carpeted, the ceilings triple height. It didn’t look at all like someone’s home. It was more like a hotel, though one without paying guests. As we climbed the stairs, I noticed a Hockney pool painting with a boy just disappearing beneath the surface, followed by a Francis Bacon triptych. We reached a landing with a huge Robert Mapplethorpe nude although it showed only a part of the subject’s anatomy. It was a black and white photograph: the background white, the buttocks and erect penis black. Just to one side stood a classical sculpture of a naked shepherd boy. Hawthorne looked uncomfortable as we walked past this blatant homoerotic art. Not just his lips but his entire body curled in distaste.

  A cavernous archway led into the upper living room, which ran the full length of the house, with furniture, lamps, mirrors and further artwork dotted around as far as the eye could see. Everything was expensive but I was more struck by how impersonal it was. It was all brand new, in perfect taste. I looked in vain for a discarded newspaper or a pair of muddy shoes that might suggest somebody actually lived there. It was somehow too silent for the centre of London. The whole place reminded me of a sarcophagus, as if the owner had deliberately filled it with the riches of a life he had left behind.

  And yet, when Raymond Clunes finally appeared, he was surprisingly ordinary. He was about fifty years old, dressed in a blue velvet jacket with a roll-neck jersey, poised with his legs crossed, so exactly in the centre of an oversized sofa that I wondered if the butler had taken out a tape measure before we arrived and marked out where he should sit. He was well built, with a shock of silver hair and humorous, pale blue eyes. He seemed pleased to see us.

  ‘Do sit down.’ He made a theatrical gesture, directing us to the seat opposite. ‘Will you have some coffee?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Bruce, let’s have some coffee for our guests. And bring up those truffles.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The butler backed away.

  We sat down.

  ‘You’re here about poor Diana.’ He hadn’t waited for Hawthorne to ask a question. ‘I can’t tell you how shocked I am by what’s happened. I knew her through the Globe. That was where we first met. And of course I’ve worked with her son, Damian, a very, very talented young boy. He was in my production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Haymarket. It was a huge success. I always knew he’d go far. When the police told me what had happened, I couldn’t believe it. Nobody in the world would have wanted to hurt Diana. She was one of those people who only brought goodness and kindness to everyone she met.’

  ‘You had lunch with her the day she died,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘At the Café Murano. Yes. I saw her as she came out of the station. She waved to me across the road and I thought it was all going to be fine – but once we sat down, I could tell at once that she wasn’t herself, poor thing. She was worried about her pussy cat, Mr Tibbs. Isn’t that a hilarious name for a cat? He’d gone missing. I said to her not to worry. He’s probably gone off chasing mice or whatever it is cats do. But I could see there was a lot on her mind. She couldn’t stay long. She had a board meeting that afternoon.’

  ‘You say you were old friends but, as I understand it, you’d fallen out.’

  ‘Fallen out?’ Clunes sounded surprised.

  ‘She lost money in a show of yours.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Clunes dismissed the accusation with a flick of his fingers. ‘You’re talking about Moroccan Nights. We didn’t fall out. She was disappointed. Of course she was disappointed. We both were! I lost a great deal more money in that show than she did, I can assure you. But that’s the business. I mean, right now I’ve got money in Spider Man, which is a complete, total disaster between you and me, but at the same time I turned down The Book of Mormon. Sometimes, you just get it wrong. She knew that.’

  ‘What was Moroccan Nights?’ I asked.

  ‘A love story. Set in the Kasbah. Two boys: a soldier and a terrorist. It had a wonderful score and it was based on a very successful novel – but the audiences just didn’t take to it. Maybe it was too violent. I don’t know. Did you see it?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘That’s the trouble. Nor did anyone else.’

  Bruce came back carrying a tray with three tiny cups of coffee and a plate with four white chocolate truffles arranged in a pyramid.

  ‘Has anything you’ve ever done been successful?’ Hawthorne asked.

  Clunes was offended. ‘Look around you, Detective Inspector. Do you think I’d have a house like this if I hadn’t backed a few winners in my time? I was one of the first investors in Cats, if you really want to know, and I’ve invested in every one of Andrew’s musicals since then. Billy Elliot, Shrek, Daniel Radcliffe in Equus … I think I can say I’ve had more than my fair share of success. Moroccan Nights should have worked but you can never tell. That’s what being in musical theatre is all about. I can assure you of one thing, though, and that is – Diana Cowper had no bad feelings towards me when we had to put up the notices. She knew what she was getting into and at the end of the day the money she invested was hardly substantial.’

  ‘Fifty grand?’

  ‘That may be a great deal to you, Mr Hawthorne. It would be to a lot of people. But Diana could afford it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone ahead.’

  There was a brief silence and I saw Hawthorne examining the other man with those bright, unforgiving eyes. I was expecting him to say something offensive but in fact his voice was measured as he asked: ‘Did she tell you where she’d been that morning?’

  ‘Before lunch?’ Clunes blinked. ‘No.’

  ‘She went to an undertaker’s in South Kensington.
She arranged her own funeral.’

  Clunes had picked up one of the coffee cups and was holding it delicately in front of his face. He set it back down again. ‘Really? You do surprise me.’

  ‘She didn’t mention it at the Café Murano?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘Of course she didn’t mention it. If she’d mentioned it, I would have told you straight away. It’s not something you’d forget, something like that.’

  ‘You say she had a lot on her mind. Did she talk to you about anything that was worrying her?’

  ‘Well, yes. There was one thing she mentioned.’ Clunes thought back for a moment. ‘We were talking about money and she mentioned that there was someone pestering her. It was all to do with that accident she had when she was living in Kent. That was just after we met.’

  ‘She ran over two children,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right.’ Clunes nodded at me. He picked up the coffee cup again and took a single sip, emptying it. ‘It was ten years ago. She was living on her own after she had lost her husband to cancer … terribly sad. He was a dentist. He had a great many celebrity clients and they had a lovely house, right on the sea. She was living down there and as it happened Damian was with her when the accident took place. As I recall, he was between tours or maybe he was doing that thing for the BBC. I really can’t remember.

  ‘Anyway, it absolutely wasn’t her fault. There were two children. They were with their nanny but they ran across the road to get an ice-cream just as she was coming round the corner. She couldn’t stop in time – but that didn’t stop the family blaming her. I actually had a long chat with the judge and he was quite clear that Diana wasn’t in any way responsible. Of course she was terribly upset by the whole thing. She moved back to London shortly after that – and as far as I know she never got behind the wheel of a car again. Well, you can’t blame her, can you? The whole thing was a horrible experience.’