A Line to Kill

19 The Simple Answer

After Maïssa had gone, I called the waitress over and ordered a double gin and tonic. Hawthorne asked for a glass of water, which arrived with a slice of lemon. ‘Don’t you ever drink anything except water?’ I asked him.

He seemed surprised by the question. ‘Not really.’

‘Have you ever drunk alcohol?’

‘No.’

It was time for dinner and I wondered if we might eat together, not that I had much appetite after everything that had happened that day. The drinks came and we sipped them in a silence that might, I suppose, have been called companionable. The argument we’d had just before we’d visited Derek Abbott had been forgotten and it seemed to me as good a moment as any to press him for some of the information that always seemed to be just out of my grasp.

‘When we were doing our event together, you said that you didn’t have any brothers or sisters,’ I began. ‘But when we were in London, you mentioned that you had a half-brother who was an estate agent.’ I waited for him to comment. He said nothing. ‘Did one of your parents remarry?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Are they still alive?’

‘No.’ The monosyllables were in stark contrast to his performance in front of an audience. They also made no sense. How was it possible to have a half-brother if his parents had never remarried?

‘What did your father do?’ I tried again. ‘Was he a police officer?’

‘No.’ Hawthorne had lost patience. ‘I don’t really like talking about myself.’

‘You did well enough when you were on the stage.’

‘Well, that was different – and it’s not going to happen again.’ He paused. ‘You can do the next one on your own.’

‘I think people are more interested in you than they are in me.’

He looked at me in surprise. ‘That’s not true.’

‘It is. Even Colin Matheson got it right when he introduced you. He said you were the real thing. Why do you think there are so many detective stories? People are fascinated by detectives, by what you do. I am too. It’s one of the reasons why I agreed to follow you around.’ I picked up my drink. ‘I’m sorry I got angry with you when we went to visit Derek Abbott. We’ve just got to try to be more of a team.’

Hawthorne considered what I’d just said, but before he had time to reply, the door opened and Torode and Whitlock came in. They came straight over to us and sat down.

‘I was hoping to find you here,’ Torode said. He looked as if he was off duty, wearing a jersey that was one size too big for him. It hung off his chest in softly undulating folds. Whitlock was in uniform. Perhaps she had forgotten to pack anything else.

Torode eyed our drinks. ‘Who’s buying?’

‘You are,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Well, that’s not very friendly – but never mind.’ He called out to the bar. ‘A pint of best, please. And what will you have, Whitlock?’

‘A tomato juice, please, sir.’

The barman acknowledged him and Torode turned back to us. ‘I’ve got a few things to tell you, starting with Maïssa Lamar.’

‘We already know about OLAF,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Yes. That was a bit of a turn-up for the books, don’t you think? Or for the book!’ He smiled at me. ‘I had her boss on the phone just now and he didn’t give me any choice. I had to let her leave. Anyway, it’s one suspect less, so I suppose that’s something to be grateful for. And while we’re on the subject of suspects, Hawthorne … You’re not going to like this, but we’re going to have to let all the other writers go too.’

Hawthorne didn’t look particularly put out. ‘Is that a good idea?’ he asked. ‘One of them might have committed two murders – Helen le Mesurier just a few hours ago.’

‘That’s true. But we can’t keep them locked up on Alderney for ever and I can’t see any of them committing a double murder. Mr Pastry, perhaps, with his steak and kidney puddings? Or Mrs Fizzbang? Whitlock here can’t wait to get home.’

‘I wish I’d never come,’ Whitlock said, looking as miserable as ever.

‘I know! I know!’ Torode shook his head. ‘As for the others, I imagine you’ve had a chance to talk to the whole lot of them by now. Any thoughts?’ The barman brought over the drinks. ‘Put them on his room.’ Torode pointed at me and lifted his glass. ‘Cheers!’

Whitlock stared at her tomato juice but didn’t touch it.

‘I’ll make sure you’ve got all their addresses and contact numbers,’ Torode went on. ‘But if your reputation’s anything to go by, you’ve probably worked it out by now anyway. If not, this might help.’ He produced a second envelope, just like the one Whitlock had given us the evening before. ‘Mrs le Mesurier’s medical report. No surprises there. Blunt trauma. Three blows more or less caved in the skull, leading to massive haemorrhaging. There was enough blood swilling around in there to fill a coconut.’

Whitlock looked up from the tomato juice. Her face had gone pale. ‘Excuse me, sir …’ She hurried out of the room.

Torode watched her leave. ‘Sorry about that. She’s done nothing but complain since I brought her here. I won’t make that mistake again.’

‘What happens to the money?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘What money? Oh – you mean the will. That’s a good question, considering that Mrs le Mesurier just became a wealthy woman … not that she had any time to enjoy it. I’ve spoken to her solicitor. No children of her own, of course, but she has a brother and a sister and it’s their lucky day. They get everything. But there’s no chance that either of them had anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re thinking. One works for Goldman Sachs in London and the other’s a teacher in Wales. There was one little thing that surprised me. She left a hundred thousand to the school here in St Anne. Wouldn’t have thought she’d have cared.’

I knew better. Colin Matheson had told us that he had first got close to Helen when he was on an education committee. She invited me to The Lookout to talk about a possible bequest. I’d never heard of anyone being murdered to benefit a school library, but it still made me wonder who on the island might have known about the money.

‘What else?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Derek Abbott,’ Torode replied. He knew the effect the words would have. He let them hang in the air. ‘You went to see him,’ he added.

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘He didn’t fall down any stairs if that’s what you’re asking.’

Torode wasn’t amused by that. ‘Come off it, Hawthorne. You know what I mean.’ He waited. ‘Did he kill her? Did he kill both of them?’

Hawthorne blinked. ‘What makes you think that, Deputy Chief?’

‘I think you’re forgetting something.’ Everything about Torode was lazy: his smile, his dress sense, his work ethic. It was also true of the menace that he was now directing at Hawthorne. ‘The only reason you have any authority on this island is because of me. And I thought we had an agreement. I help you; you help me. What do you know?’

‘I know it’s a mistake letting everyone leave the island.’

‘About Derek Abbott!’ Hawthorne said nothing, so Torode went on, keeping his voice low. ‘All right. Let me tell you where I am with this, just so you don’t think I’ve been sitting on my arse all day while you’ve been gallivanting around. First of all, I know that Abbott was working for le Mesurier as some sort of business adviser, but the two of them had fallen out. Anne Cleary told me that, just like she told you. She also said that there was money involved, and maybe I can tell you something you don’t know.’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Take a look at this.’ Torode reached into the envelope and took out a sheet of paper. He slid it across the table. It was a photocopy of a cheque for £20,000, made out to Derek Abbott and signed by Charles le Mesurier.

‘Abbott personally presented this to the cash desk in Lloyds Bank in Victoria Street this morning. The date is the Saturday of the murder and the number of the cheque accords with the last one torn out of the chequebook we found in the Snuggery. I didn’t know people were still making payments this way – not that it made any difference. The bank can’t honour it, pending probate, but they were smart enough to take a copy, which they passed to me. Makes you think, doesn’t it.’

‘He told me that he was owed money,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I bet he didn’t mention he’d been paid – and I’ll tell you why not. It’s very simple, really. Sometime on the night of the party, the two of them have a falling-out over money that results in Abbott getting the chop. He’s not happy about it, so he follows le Mesurier into the Snuggery—’

‘Nobody saw them go in together.’

‘We’ll come to that. You know the weird thing about this whole business? It’s Charles le Mesurier tied to that chair but one hand left free.’ Torode pointed at the photocopy. ‘That’s the simple answer. At first, it was all friendly. Maybe they took a few lines of cocaine together. But then Abbott got the better of him. He could have used that walking stick of his to hit le Mesurier on the head. He tied him to the chair, but he left one hand free – his right hand – because he needed him to sign something. A cheque! He must have threatened him with something nasty to get him to cooperate, but when le Mesurier signed this piece of paper he wasn’t thinking straight. It was his death warrant. Of course Abbott couldn’t keep him alive, because if he did, the next day le Mesurier would simply ring the bank and cancel the cheque. So he killed him.’

‘For twenty thousand quid?’

‘And the Rolex watch. That doubles it.’

‘Have you spoken to Abbott yet?’

‘I’m speaking to you first.’ Torode was enjoying himself, knowing that he had Hawthorne at a disadvantage. ‘Now, let’s go back to what you said about nobody seeing the two of them go in together. That’s not true, of course.’

‘Helen le Mesurier …’

‘That’s right. Nice of you to show me those texts. Put them together and they make complete sense.’ He took out a notebook and read from it. ‘What happened last night? I saw you leave with Charles.’ He looked up triumphantly. ‘She was a witness. She saw someone cross the garden from her bedroom window.’

‘But we don’t know who.’

‘No. But we know it was someone who lived less than thirty minutes away from her home on foot. She left at two o’clock for a two-thirty meeting and I got Whitlock to time it for me. You can easily walk from The Lookout to Quesnard Cottage in half an hour – and her route would have taken her right next to the Mannez Quarry. Easy enough for Abbott to wait for her, talk her into going into that cave for a bit of privacy and then do her in with a rock.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have made that remark about the coconut. Whitlock’s very highly strung.’

‘She’s also a volunteer,’ I reminded him.

‘Was. She’s handed in her notice.’ He drank some of the beer. ‘Then there’s that other text to consider. Bit sneaky of you not to tell me that Colin was Colin Matheson, but I suppose you were trying to earn your fee. Anyway, it didn’t take me long to work it out for myself. There are thirty-eight Colins living on the island of Alderney, but only one of them was at the party that night so it wasn’t too hard.’

‘Great detective work,’ Hawthorne muttered.

‘Sarcasm won’t get you very far with me, Hawthorne. So what does the text tell us? Colin Matheson and Helen le Mesurier were having an affair and they both came to regret it. What had happened? I went round to Mr Matheson – and his wife – and we had a little chat. I can’t say Mrs Matheson was too pleased to hear what hubby had been getting up to, but that’s his problem. He told me he’d already spoken to you and that you know the rest of it – that Derek Abbott was blackmailing him about this stupid power line. Something to do with shares in a company called Electricity de Nord. So whatever happens, I think we can be confident that Mr Abbott is going right back where a pervert like him belongs.’

‘Blackmail?’ Hawthorne looked doubtful. ‘You’ll have to prove it and there’s no evidence. It’s Matheson’s word against his.’

Torode ignored this. ‘Blackmail’s only the start of it. It would only get Abbott five years in jail, if we were lucky. I’m not going to let him slip through our fingers a second time, the way you did. I want him put away for life.’

‘So why haven’t you arrested him?’

Torode drank half his beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He looked annoyed and it didn’t take me long to work out why. Despite everything, he still needed Hawthorne. ‘I haven’t arrested him because you’re right,’ he explained. ‘At the moment, most of the evidence is circumstantial. I haven’t found anyone yet who can put him in that cave with Mrs le Mesurier or, for that matter, in the Snuggery with her husband. I was rather hoping that you might have come up with something.’

‘You’re one step ahead of me, Deputy Chief.’

‘Well, I suppose I should take that as a compliment,’ Torode remarked, but I knew differently. He wasn’t one step ahead of anyone. There wasn’t a single thing he had said that Hawthorne hadn’t already worked out for himself long before. ‘Anyway, perhaps you’ll understand now why I’m letting the other writers go. No point hanging on to them when we’ve got our prime suspect sitting right here on the island.’

‘When are they leaving?’

‘There’s a flight at eleven tomorrow morning. I imagine you’ll be going with them.’

Hawthorne considered. ‘There doesn’t seem much more for me to do here.’

‘No. That’s right. Of course, I’m afraid that puts an end to that little agreement we talked about at the start of all this. It turns out that I’ve done all the work for you, so I don’t think I can justify any ex officio payments. You do understand?’

‘I’d say I’ve put in the hours.’

‘That may be true, but we only pay for results.’ He drained his beer and glanced at me. ‘Thanks for that, Andrew. Very nice.’ He stood up. ‘I suppose I’d better go and find Whitlock. She never even touched her tomato juice.’

He left.

Hawthorne picked up the piece of lemon and dropped it back into his glass. He had finished his water.

‘Are we really going to leave tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘You heard what he said. It looks like he’s got it all wrapped up.’

‘You think Derek Abbott committed the murders?’

‘What do you think, mate?’

I’m not sure Hawthorne had ever asked my opinion before.

‘I don’t know,’ I began. ‘Listening to what he said, it does all sound fairly straightforward. Abbott had a motive for both the murders. He was close to le Mesurier and he lives right next to the quarry. There’s that business with the cheque.’ I stopped. ‘Please tell me I’m wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if Derek Abbott turns out to be the killer, I’m not sure there’ll be a book in it.’ Quickly, I explained what I’d already been thinking when I was in my hotel room – my fear that if he turned out to be the killer, nobody would care. ‘Actually, it’s even worse than that,’ I concluded. ‘If I write about what’s happened here, I’m going to have to say that Torode solved it. He got there before you.’

‘Are you sure?’ Hawthorne looked genuinely puzzled. ‘You’re the author. You can say I worked it all out and he didn’t know anything. You don’t even have to mention he was here.’

‘I can’t do that!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s a complete fiction.’

‘I thought that’s what you wrote.’

‘Even when I’m writing fiction I try to write the truth.’ Suddenly, I was depressed. ‘Tell me you’re keeping something to yourself. Tell me he didn’t do it.’

‘I’m sorry, mate. I can’t help you.’ Hawthorne shook his head sorrowfully. ‘If Abbott didn’t do it, I’ve got no idea who did.’