The Sentence is Death Read online

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A good start!’

  He roared. Hawthorne was blank-faced. ‘So what you’re saying is that you would consider the murder of a lawyer to be justifiable.’

  ‘I’m not being serious!’ Lockwood stared at Hawthorne, carefully adjusting his features. ‘Look – you’re not really suggesting that I had anything to do with it, are you? Why would I have done something like that? Richard was a bit of a fusspot. He had to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and he could certainly be a bit long-winded, but then, of course, the more they talk, the more they get paid. But he did a terrific job. The divorce went exactly the way I wanted.’

  ‘You gave him a gift, is that right?’

  ‘A bottle of wine, yes.’ Lockwood seemed unaware that this had been the murder weapon. ‘It wasn’t very much,’ he went on. ‘But it was the least I could do. By persuading Akira not to go for a final hearing, he’d saved me thousands of pounds.’ Lockwood glanced briefly at his gold cufflink and adjusted it. ‘Actually, it was a waste of money giving it to him as I learned afterwards that he didn’t drink. But, as they say, it’s the thought that counts!’

  ‘I’d be interested to know the details of what you agreed … the settlement between you and your wife.’

  ‘I’m sure you would, Mr Hawthorne. But I wouldn’t say it was any of your business.’

  Hawthorne shrugged. ‘You know that Richard Pryce had hired a team of forensic accountants to investigate your wife.’

  ‘My ex-wife. Yes, of course I know. Navigant! Who do you think was paying the bills?’

  ‘What you may not know is that almost the last thing he did before he was killed was to ring his partner – Oliver Masefield – and tell him that he was concerned about something that related to the settlement. He was even thinking about referring the matter to the Law Society. It could well be that he was murdered to prevent this. So it is very much my business, Mr Lockwood. And the police’s business. You’d be doing yourself a favour if you got your version of events out there first.’

  Lockwood was flustered. Two red pinpricks had appeared in his cheeks, fighting against the suntan. ‘Well, I’ve got nothing to hide. Everything is on record and I’m sure you’ll get access to all the papers. It’s just that having put the whole thing behind me, I’m not keen on stirring it all up again.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Hawthorne was a little more emollient now. But then he knew he was going to get what he wanted.

  ‘It was actually very straightforward. Ms Anno, if I may call her that, thought she could get her hooks into half of everything I had but Richard very quickly put her right. Let’s start with the fact that she had brought absolutely nothing to the marriage. Quite the opposite. I had to prop her up with her therapies and her health club and her yoga sessions and all the rest of it. After the honeymoon, she hardly ever let me into her bed and even on the honeymoon I had to chase her round the bloody ecolodge that she’d chosen in the middle of Mexico.’

  There was a bowl of fruit – bilberries – on the table beside him. Lockwood reached in and scooped out a handful, which he ate, one after another, as he continued.

  ‘But it’s simpler than that. All we’re talking about, really, is money. It’s certainly what was on her mind! For someone who calls herself a poet, she certainly has an eye for the hard stuff! Well, Mr Hawthorne, here’s the truth. As you probably know, I’ve made my living out of property. I won’t say I’ve done badly. In fact I’ve had some pretty good years. But it’s an up-and-down business and sad though it is to say it, there have recently been more downs than ups. There was the credit crunch – and we still haven’t shaken off the after-effects. The slowdown in London. Banks not lending. I don’t need to go into the details. But it’s been pretty grisly, I can tell you, and dear old Akira joined the team at exactly the worst time.

  ‘In the three years I was married to her, I made nothing. Not a bean! Absolute zip. And that was the point. Akira was entitled to fifty per cent of nothing at all and I was more than happy to give it to her.’

  ‘Did she believe you?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘Of course she didn’t! Listen. I had my accountants work on the papers that we presented to her lawyers. I set out all my finances, down to the last euro, everything fair and square. I had to. That’s the law. But Akira wouldn’t accept it. She questioned every last bloody detail and she had her own forensic accountants looking into all my business dealings over God knows how many years. I have no idea what they hoped to find but they came up with nothing.’

  Lockwood was becoming more relaxed, warming to his subject. The smile was back on his face.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject, maybe we should be talking about her own income. She was always very cagey about how much money she was earning but I can tell you that she had plenty of spare cash stashed away under the mattress. You can’t be married to someone for three years and hide that sort of thing even if the marriage is as useless as ours. She was loaded but here’s the funny thing. Wherever the money was coming from, it wasn’t from her writing. I happened to catch sight of one of her royalty statements from Virago Books and I can tell you, it wouldn’t have paid for a wet weekend in Torquay! For all her airs and graces, it seems there isn’t much of an audience for clinically depressed call girls surviving Hiroshima or weird Japanese poems that don’t make any sense.’

  He plucked out another handful of the bilberries.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was the one who suggested to Richard that he should call in Navigant and it’s just as well I did because the moment she knew we were on to her, she caved in. Suddenly she was all for coming to an agreement and forget Justice Cocklecarrot and the rest of it. That was pretty much the end of it. We settled everything outside the court. She got the house in Holland Park and I let her keep the Jag. But the actual settlement was a tenth of what she’d hoped for, and frankly, if it had meant seeing the back of her, I’d have happily paid twice as much.’

  Another bark of laughter. Nobody enjoyed their own witticisms more than Adrian Lockwood.

  But Hawthorne still wasn’t smiling. ‘Why do you think Richard Pryce made that call on the day he died?’ he asked. ‘There was obviously something that was worrying him.’

  ‘Are you certain it related to my divorce?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I have no idea. Presumably he’d found out something about Akira, about her income – where it was coming from. If she was breaking the law, I’m sure he’d have wanted to take the matter further. But for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have cared if she was the top hitwoman for the Mafia. I would have told him to forget it. As far as I was concerned, she was over. We’d come to an agreement. I was a single man. I never wanted to hear her name again.’

  Lockwood sank back into the sofa, a smug look on his face.

  ‘Just out of interest, where were you when your lawyer was killed, Mr Lockwood?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘Why on earth do you want to know?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Hawthorne’s voice was bleak, on the edge of rude. ‘We need to know where everyone was on Sunday evening between eight and nine o’clock.’

  ‘So you can eliminate them from your enquiries? That’s how you put it in police speak, I believe.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, let me think. Sunday evening … I had a drink with a friend of mine over in Highgate – Davina Richardson. I got to her house around six and left about eight fifteen. After that, I drove home. I got in about nine o’clock and watched television.’

  ‘What did you watch?’

  ‘Downton Abbey. Does that answer your question, Mr Hawthorne?’

  I sat up when he mentioned the name Davina Richardson although it had taken me a moment to remember where I had heard it before. Of course. She was the woman who had been left £100,000 in Richard Pryce’s will. So she was part of the triangle that included Pryce and Lockwood! That had to mean something.

  Haw
thorne had certainly picked up on it. ‘Tell me about Mrs Richardson,’ he said, almost casually, as if he just needed the information to complete his notes.

  ‘There’s not much to tell. She’s an interior designer I happen to have met. Actually, it was Richard who introduced her to me. She worked on my place in Antibes. Did a bloody good job too.’

  ‘How did she first meet Richard Pryce?’

  ‘You should ask her.’

  ‘I will. But right now I’m asking you.’

  ‘Well, if you insist. I don’t particularly like talking about my friends behind their backs but if you really want to know, the two of them go back a long way. Richard was at university with her husband and he’s godfather to their child. He was also there when the accident happened.’

  ‘What accident?’

  ‘I would have thought you’d have known all about that before you came here, Mr Hawthorne.’ Lockwood was pleased with himself, seeing that he had taken the upper hand. ‘I’m talking about the caving accident that happened six or seven years ago now. Davina’s husband, Charles Richardson, and Richard Pryce were at university together and there was a third man too. I forget his name. Anyway, Charles got lost in the cave system – it was somewhere up in Yorkshire – and never made it out.’

  He waggled a finger. ‘Don’t think for a minute that it was Richard’s fault. There was a full inquiry and it turned out that nobody was to blame. From what Davina told me, he behaved magnificently when it was all over. He supported her and Colin – that’s her son – even paying all the fees to put him through private education. He had no children of his own, of course. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that! He helped her set up her business – interior design – and he always told her she’d be looked after in his will.’

  ‘Did she know that?’ I asked.

  Lockwood frowned. He seemed to notice me for the first time. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Who are you again?’

  ‘I’m helping him,’ I said. Better to be vague.

  ‘Well if you think that Davina killed Richard for his money, you’re barking up the wrong tree. She had his money anyway! Anything she wanted, he gave her. He did everything for her and he would probably have slept with her too except that he was gay.’

  ‘Do you think your ex-wife killed him?’ Hawthorne asked, abruptly.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘But you did know that she had threatened him?’

  ‘Yes. I heard about that business in the restaurant. That was typical Akira! She liked to grandstand. And I can absolutely see her beating someone to death because she was annoyed with them. Mind you, she’d probably torture them first by reading them one of her poems.’

  He stood up. He had decided it was time for us to leave.

  ‘If you really want to know who killed Richard Pryce, then maybe you should start with the man who broke into my office,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘Really?’ Hawthorne had also got to his feet.

  ‘I actually reported it to the police … not that they took a blind bit of notice.’ He paused as if he expected us to agree that, yes, the police were completely useless and should have spent more time and resources investigating his complaint. ‘It happened last Thursday. I have a small suite of offices in Mayfair which I use mainly for meetings. There’s not much there – just a girl on reception, a secretary, a young man who helps with accounts.

  ‘Anyway, Thursday lunchtime I was out with a client when this chap turns up. Tells the girl on reception that he’s from our IT company and he’s come to fix a glitch on my Apple Mac. She’s stupid enough to let him in – and the next half-hour he’s on his own in my office. She should have known that there was absolutely nothing wrong with my Mac and we don’t even have an IT company! Fortunately, I keep all my private documents in a safe and there’s nothing of particular interest on my hard drive, so whatever he was after, I doubt if he got it. Nothing seemed to be taken. I did call the police, but, as I say, they took no interest. You’d have thought they’d have changed their minds when, just three days later, Richard Pryce was killed. But nobody seems to think there’s any connection.’

  ‘Was your receptionist able to provide a description of the man?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘She said he was about forty, medium height, white.’

  ‘That’s not much of a description.’

  ‘He was wearing glasses. She remembered that. They were heavy, plastic things and they were blue. He may have had some kind of skin problem on the side of his face. Thinning hair. He was dressed in a suit and he had a briefcase. He showed her a business card but she didn’t even read the name of the so-called IT company he worked for. Stupid girl. I fired her, of course.’

  ‘It goes without saying,’ Hawthorne muttered. ‘There were no CCTV cameras in your office? It might help if we had an image of this man.’

  Lockwood shook his head. ‘There’s one on the main stairs but it’s not working. I’m glad you agree there’s something in it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I said that,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘But if he turns up again, let me know.’

  Adrian Lockwood showed us out of the house and as we went, I noticed a collection of pills and medicines on the kitchen counter. They seemed to be mainly homeopathic. Prominent among them was a large bottle of vitamin A. It was odd. Lockwood hadn’t struck me as the sort of person who would be into alternative medicine and I wondered what condition he might be suffering from.

  It was too late to ask him. He showed us down the stairs, handed Hawthorne back his coat and opened the front door. He said nothing to me. The door closed behind us and once again we were outside, back in the street.

  8

  Mother and Son

  I spent the afternoon at my flat in Farringdon.

  It was hard to believe that only the day before I’d been on the set of Foyle’s War and that the unit was still out there, shooting somewhere in London. All of that felt like a world away. I had to remind myself that I still had a lot of work to do, starting with the rewrite of the next episode, ‘Sunflower’. I’d had notes from ITV, notes from the director, notes from Michael Kitchen, notes from Jill. That’s the difference between writing books and writing television. When you write TV, everyone has an opinion.

  I couldn’t concentrate. My head was filled with the events of the past two days: the crime scene at Heron’s Wake, Hawthorne, the various witnesses and suspects I’d met. In the end, I slid the script to one side and plugged my iPhone into my computer. Stephen Spencer, the neighbour, Henry Fairchild, Oliver Masefield … I listened to their responses as they were interviewed by Hawthorne and Grunshaw, with my own voice making occasional contributions from the side. Next came Akira Anno and her ex-husband, Adrian Lockwood, each of them investigating the other, trying to find evidence of hidden wealth that might or might not exist.

  If you really want to know who killed Richard Pryce, then maybe you should start with the man who broke into my office …

  That had been Adrian Lockwood, talking about the man in blue spectacles. The Man in Blue Spectacles. That might make a good chapter heading – but was he really involved in all this? Did he even exist?

  Hawthorne seemed to think so. As we walked through Edwardes Square, he had muttered, almost as much to himself as me: ‘He knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Blue spectacles. You put something like that on your face, it’s the only thing anyone will notice. You can pull the same trick with an Elastoplast or a gold tooth. Give people something they’ll remember, they forget the rest.’

  The break-in had happened on a Thursday, three days before the murder. It had to be related. But how?

  It took me about two hours to type up my notes and at the end of it I found myself wondering, had I sat in a room with the killer? Had I already met the person who had murdered Richard Pryce? At the same time, another thought occurred to me. I might not be gifted with quite the same professional skills as Hawthorne – I had never,
after all, been trained as a detective – but I had written dozens of murder mysteries for TV. I knew how it worked. Surely I could work this out for myself.

  Akira Anno. I drew a circle around her name. She still seemed the most likely suspect, so far anyway. She’d even threatened to murder me!

  The telephone rang. It was Hawthorne.

  ‘Tony! Can you meet me at Highgate Tube station at six?’

  I looked at my watch. It was five twenty. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re seeing Davina Richardson.’ He rang off without waiting for an answer.

  It wouldn’t take me long to get up to Highgate. I went through my usual ritual, loading my glasses, keys, wallet and Oyster card into the black leather shoulder bag I always carry and was just on my way out when the doorbell rang. I went over to the intercom and pressed it. We have no video system but I recognised the voice that asked for me. It was Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. ‘I wonder if I could come in?’ she asked.

  ‘What – now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Actually, I’m just leaving.’

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  My heart sank. I couldn’t get rid of her. ‘All right. I’ll come down.’

  I could have buzzed the doors open for her but I didn’t want her inside the flat. She’d sounded friendly enough out on the doorstep but I wondered what she was doing here and I felt nervous seeing her on my own. I took the six flights of stairs down and opened the front door. She was standing on my doorstep with her leather-jacketed assistant, Darren, slouching behind her.

  ‘Detective Inspector …’ I began.

  ‘Can I have a word?’ She seemed completely pleasant, relaxed.

  ‘What is this about?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting …’

  ‘This will only take a moment.’

  She looked past me, inviting herself in, and I realised that I couldn’t really refuse. She was a police officer, after all, and we were involved in the same case. There might be some information she wanted to share. I moved aside and the two of them stepped past me into the hallway, a wide area with my sons’ bicycles on one side and an exposed brick wall on the other. I allowed the doors to swing shut. They fastened with magnetic locks.