Close to Death

1

Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan wasn’t happy to find himself driving back to Richmond.

For a start, the traffic was terrible on Kew Bridge, which had been built in 1903 when horse-drawn omnibuses and hansom cabs would have been carrying pleasure-seekers to Kew Gardens and Richmond Green, but was now, over a hundred years later, completely unfit for purpose. More to the point, though, he had finished with the business at Riverview Close. He had briefed the press. He had, once again, been on TV and his wife and parents-in-law had all said how handsome he looked. Going back could be seen as an acceptance of defeat, or at least an acknowledgement that it was just possible there was something he had missed. The worst of it was, he couldn’t resist it. He had to know.

DC Goodwin was behind the wheel. Khan liked to check the messages and social media on his phone (he had set up a Google Alert for his name), to scroll through the news and generally keep his mind off the road. This was the start of another week, but neither of them had discussed what they had done over the weekend. They had a good relationship at work but none at all out of it.

Half an hour later, they had reached the centre of Richmond and the annoying one-way system that would take them literally round the houses before allowing them to strike out for Petersham. Ruth Goodwin spoke for almost the first time.

‘Why are we doing this, sir?’ she asked.

‘Good question.’ Khan tapped a few last words into his iPhone and put it away.

‘You know Hawthorne is dangerous,’ Goodwin continued. ‘He committed a violent assault on a suspect . . .’

‘As I recall, you were the one who suggested using him in the first place.’

‘I thought he might be useful to us. But the whole thing turned out to be a whole lot easier than we first thought. You did a very good job, sir.’

Khan sniffed but made no answer to that.

‘It’s just that it might be trouble bringing him back.’

‘He says he has new information.’

‘And if everything changes, what are we going to tell the Daily Mail?’

The back seat of the car was covered with old newspaper and magazine articles relating to the case and the Daily Mail had indeed made it to the top, open at a double-page spread with the headline: CELEBRITY DENTIST FOUND DEAD. There was a photograph of Roderick Browne, another of the actor Ewan McGregor and – above a caption reading ‘THE CASE IS CLOSED’ SAYS POLICE HOTSHOT DS TARIQ KHAN – a picture of the detective superintendent too.

‘If he really does know something, it’s better that he talks to us than to the press,’ he said now.

‘And if he says we’ve got it all wrong?’

‘We’ve got nothing wrong, Ruth. Nothing at all.’

They drove down Richmond Hill and into Riverview Close. Hawthorne and Dudley were already there, waiting for them on the other side of the archway and the gate. Khan noticed that Hawthorne was dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the last two times they had met. Goodwin parked outside Woodlands and they both got out.

‘I hope you’re not wasting my time,’ Khan said. There were no greetings, no handshakes.

‘If you thought I was wasting your time, you wouldn’t have come,’ Hawthorne said reasonably.

‘So what do you want to tell me?’

‘Well, the first thing to mention is that Dudley and I haven’t been paid, since you ask. And as we’ve done your job for you, it would be nice if you’d see your way to giving us the whole week plus bonus.’

‘It’s in the contract,’ Dudley said.

‘You tell us what you know and I’ll be the judge of that,’ Khan said. He looked around him. ‘It seems very quiet here.’

‘The killer’s in. Don’t worry. We wouldn’t drag you all the way over here without making sure of that.’

Khan looked for movement behind the windows. Woodlands was empty, obviously, but Gardener’s Cottage? The Stables? Well House? There was no sign of anyone.

‘I thought we might start out here,’ Hawthorne said. ‘It’s a nice day and we need to get back to the beginning.’

‘And when was that?’ Goodwin asked.

‘A long time ago, as a matter of fact. Much longer than any of us thought.’

Hawthorne took a few steps forward so that he was on the edge of the roundabout, surrounded by the six houses. Dudley stayed where he was. He had nothing more to do, but he was quietly pleased to be here. Khan and Goodwin stood, a little self-consciously, waiting for Hawthorne to begin.

‘Most murderers don’t really think about what they’re going to do,’ he said. ‘You get the fantasists, the husbands who hate their wives, the kids who hate their stepdads, and they may think about murder for years . . . but they’re never going to do it. Planning it is enough. You know as well as I do that most murders are acts of passion – spur-of-the-moment things. One drink too many. A fight that gets out of control. But then, just now and again, you get the genius, the killer who’s not going to get caught, who sits down and works it all out. These are what you call the stickers, the crimes that are like no others because there’s an intelligence behind them. That’s where I come in. That’s sort of my speciality.

‘You knew from the start that something was wrong, but what was it exactly that worried you about this one? Well, the crossbow and bolt screamed out that something weird was going on. It’s not a weapon of choice for your average killer. And then there was the setting: a smart close in Richmond. Do you know how many people get killed in a place like this? You could probably count them on the fingers of one posh lady’s hand. Finally, everyone had the same motive. That doesn’t even seem fair! How do you choose between the neighbour who’s pissed off about the smoke coming off the barbecue and the one who can’t park his car?

‘So you decided to get me involved. To be honest with you, the first day I came here, I thought you were wasting my time. It all seemed pretty straightforward to me. Nightmare neighbour. Crossbow in the garage. Who’s going to fire it? They draw straws and . . . bang!’

‘What are you talking about – drawing straws?’ Khan asked.

‘Oh yeah. You never found out about that.’ Quickly, Hawthorne described his meetings with Felicity Browne and then May Winslow and Phyllis Moore and where they had taken him.

‘So the piece of straw in the dead man’s pocket . . . ?’ Goodwin began.

‘Got it in one, Detective Constable. Roderick drew the short straw and took it with him to his death.’

Hawthorne paused.

‘Except it wasn’t like that. What I’ve realised, since I arrived at Riverview Close, is that nothing here is what it seems. Nothing! Every clue, every suspect, every question, every answer . . . it’s all been carefully worked out. Everyone who lives here has been manipulated. So have you. So have I. Something happens and you think that it somehow connects with the murder – but you’re wrong. It’s been designed to trick you. Smoke and bloody mirrors. I’ve never seen anything like it.

‘I mean . . . take all the coincidences. What is a coincidence? It’s the most random thing in the world. It’s like when you go to the supermarket and bump into your mum. And it never occurs to you that it might have been carefully arranged—’

‘Hawthorne, where is this taking us?’ Khan was losing his patience.

‘To the solution, Detective Superintendent. I’m just trying to explain what we’ve been up against.’

‘What coincidences?’ Goodwin asked.

‘Well, three attacks. One was an old lady living a couple of miles away in Hampton Wick. This happened the night before Giles Kenworthy was killed. Nothing to do with it, you’d think. Except the old lady, Marsha Clarke, was being looked after by Kylie Jane, who was the Beresfords’ nanny. And a couple of days before that, on Friday morning, someone pushed Adam Strauss down a flight of stairs.’

‘Well, you’d know about that,’ Goodwin muttered and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Hawthorne didn’t care. ‘We’ve checked out the CCTV,’ he said.

‘There’s definitely someone behind Mr Strauss,’ Dudley said. ‘Wearing a hoodie and filmed from behind. Looks like a kid. CCTV wasn’t a lot of help.’

‘Again, these things happen. You’d think it had nothing to do with a murder that was being planned in Riverview Close. But you’d be wrong. It was all part of the same thing.’

‘What was the third attack?’ Ruth Goodwin asked.

‘That happened six weeks earlier. Someone hacked into Giles Kenworthy’s computer system. It was the reason he couldn’t come to The Stables the first time he was invited. Again, it hardly seems likely that it was part of the plot, but I’ve got every reason to think it was.’

‘Why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell us who did it?’ Khan asked. He didn’t like the feeling of being strung along.

‘There are more coincidences,’ Hawthorne said. ‘We now know there were two meetings where the neighbours tried to work out what to do about Giles Kenworthy. I think it’s fair to say that the first time they met, they were divided fifty-fifty. Roderick and Felicity Browne would do anything to get rid of Giles Kenworthy. They hated him and they were desperate not to lose their view. The same goes for Tom and Gemma Beresford. Mrs Beresford in particular was worried sick about her husband and the stress he was feeling from this parking thing. But, on the other side of the coin, Andrew Pennington wasn’t going to step out of line. His solution to the whole situation was to write letters, to stop things escalating – exactly what you’d expect from a criminal barrister. May Winslow and Phyllis Moore agreed. They had their own reasons for avoiding anything that might look like criminal activity. And Adam Strauss and his wife were neutral, happy to see how things developed.

‘What happened in the next six weeks? Everyone who didn’t already hate Giles Kenworthy was given a good reason to. May Winslow and Phyllis Moore lost their pet dog in a particularly cruel way, and they were led to believe that this was down to Kenworthy. Adam Strauss had his most expensive and precious chessboard smashed by a cricket ball. As it happens, cricket had been mentioned at the meeting – along with skateboards. And guess what! Andrew Pennington’s flower arrangement, a tribute to his dead wife which he’d spent years looking after, was crushed by a skateboard. And not just that. It happened on the fifth anniversary of her death. That’s terrible luck.

‘But was it luck? Or was everyone being tricked into thinking things they didn’t actually think?

‘Let’s take the whole premise of what was going on in Riverview Close. The “Nightmare Neighbours” scenario. I agree that Giles Kenworthy doesn’t sound like the nicest of guys, but was he really such a monster? You know the most sensible thing anyone said when I was asking questions? It was Lynda Kenworthy – “There’s nothing special about Riverview Close . . . There isn’t a street in England where the neighbours don’t have disputes. I was brought up in Frinton and it was just the same.” Everyone argues with their neighbours. They’ve been doing it since the Middle Ages, and maybe there have been odd instances where it’s led to murder. But hen’s teeth, I’d say. Even in tower blocks and housing associations, where a thoughtless neighbour can make life a complete misery, people somehow manage to put up with it. Are we really going to believe that selfish parking could be a motive for murder? Or kids on skateboards? Or flying a Union Jack in a back garden? It’s ridiculous!’

‘What about the swimming pool?’ Khan asked.

‘Oh, yes. That was the one big thing that happened between the first meeting and the second meeting. The Kenworthys got permission to build their pool. And we’ve heard lots of things about that, haven’t we. The loss of Felicity Browne’s view was the big one. It’s strange how nobody has considered that Felicity could have crawled out of bed and shot Giles Kenworthy with her husband’s crossbow or that Roderick might have killed himself to protect her, taking the blame. I wondered about that for a while. There were plenty of other reasons to stop the swimming pool being built: the noise, the chlorine, the disruption, the extra traffic. But do any of those sound like a motive for murder, or was there something else that no one had mentioned that might have had more serious consequences?’

‘You’ve been talking for a long time, Hawthorne,’ Khan interrupted. ‘And you haven’t said anything yet that’s made me think it was worth coming here.’

‘Then maybe you haven’t been listening, Detective Superintendent. But everything will make sense soon. We just need to talk a little bit about the so-called suicide of Roderick Browne.’

‘There was nothing so-called about it,’ Ruth Goodwin cut in. ‘This second meeting you just told us about. It proves we were right. Roderick Browne drew the short straw. He killed Giles Kenworthy and then he was worried sick he was going to be found out, so he did himself in.’

‘Oh, come on, love. Why don’t you go back and read that letter of his? There isn’t a single word that admits to his having killed anyone! “I did something very stupid”. You really think he would use the word stupid to describe murdering his neighbour? “I cannot bear you to see the consequences.” Is that him killing himself? “I do not want you to see this”. That must be his body in the garage?’

‘Exactly,’ Goodwin said.

‘Rubbish. What he did that was stupid was to announce, in front of everyone, that he was going to murder Kenworthy. The consequences were that everyone would assume he had done it and he would be arrested. And that was what he didn’t want her to see – him being led away in handcuffs.’

‘A bit convenient that he should have framed it that way,’ Khan muttered.

‘Not convenient. All part of the plan!’

Hawthorne slowed down. He was trying to make it as simple as he could.

‘Let’s look at yet another coincidence. The whole idea of killing Giles Kenworthy starts with Phyllis Moore because – guess what – two people have gone into her bookshop and bought the same Agatha Christie novel just days apart and that novel has a plot in which all the suspects have joined together to kill a man they hate! What do you reckon the chances of that happening are?’

‘People like Agatha Christie.’

‘Yes. But once again, you don’t seem to appreciate what was going on here, how every detail was being thought out in advance.

‘If you believe for a single minute that Roderick Browne killed himself because of what happened at that second meeting, ask yourself this. First, why was the suicide so bloody complicated? A locked car in a locked garage. The only keys inside the one pocket you don’t normally use to store them. You try getting them in when you’re sitting down! Stainless-steel screws which don’t rust have somehow gone rusty, making it impossible to open the skylight. And here are two more questions. Why is there a puddle on the floor when it hasn’t rained for weeks, and what is a piece of drinking straw doing in his top pocket?’

‘You’ve already told us where the straw came from,’ Goodwin said.

‘So when Roderick Browne killed himself, he made sure that it was somewhere we’d find it because he wanted us to know what had happened? You really think he even kept the straw, took it with him from The Stables? That clue was more planted than any of the flowers in Andrew Pennington’s roundabout. The aim was to manipulate us, to steer us to the second meeting, which would shine a light on the suicide-that-had-to-be-suicide and couldn’t possibly be murder!’

Hawthorne had said enough. He came to a halt, turning his soft brown eyes on the two police officers, daring them to challenge him.

There was a long silence.

‘What you’re saying,’ Khan began at last, ‘is that someone else killed Giles Kenworthy. They set up Roderick Browne and then killed him too, making it look like suicide. And that from start to finish, they’ve been dangling everyone on a string – a series of strings – and have been in complete control?’

‘You’ve finally got there, Detective Superintendent. Even now they’re laughing at us. They think it’s all gone their way.’

‘So who are you talking about?’ Khan looked around him, at the six houses that made up the close: Riverview Lodge, Woodlands, The Gables, Well House, The Stables, Gardener’s Cottage. Hawthorne had said that the killer was at home. ‘Which door do we knock on?’

Hawthorne smiled. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

2

The six of them were sitting quite formally in the living room, facing each other on two sofas and two chairs. Hawthorne and Dudley had taken the chairs.

‘What sort of person would always be ten moves ahead?’ Hawthorne was saying. ‘That was the question I asked myself. Who might see the whole world as a game where you could manoeuvre people left and right, this way and that, making them do almost anything you wanted? Who would remember every last detail about everyone around them so that they could use it to their own advantage? Who could plan against any eventuality so that no matter what happened, they’d be able to come back with the right response?’

‘A chess player,’ Adam Strauss said. ‘I have to admit, it’s an interesting idea, Mr Hawthorne.’

‘Why are you here?’ Teri demanded. ‘Are you accusing my husband of murdering Giles Kenworthy?’

‘And Roderick Browne,’ Hawthorne remarked amicably.

‘It’s lies! You are telling lies! You should get out of my house.’

Adam smiled and laid a hand on his wife’s thigh. ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to be afraid of and I’d be quite interested to hear what Mr Hawthorne has got to say.’

‘You’re denying it?’ Detective Superintendent Khan asked.

‘I’m not quite sure yet what it is I’m being asked to deny. Murder, obviously. But how, why and when? I’ve never been a great shot with a bow and arrow and right now –’ he lifted the walking stick – ‘I’m in no fit state to have broken into Roderick’s house and killed him. In fact, I was the last person to see him alive. Alive being the operative word. We were also good friends, although I don’t suppose that counts for anything in Mr Hawthorne’s mind. Do go ahead, Mr Hawthorne. So far, you’ve made complete sense, even if you’re barking up entirely the wrong tree.’

‘Unlike Mrs Winslow’s dog,’ Dudley said. ‘He had a thing about that magnolia in the Kenworthys’ garden.’

‘We’ll come to that in a minute,’ Hawthorne said. He hadn’t been put off by Strauss’s denials. He was quite relaxed.

‘We already know everything about the first meeting,’ he continued. ‘All the neighbours get together to air their complaints and at the last moment Giles Kenworthy pulls out – because someone’s tried to hack into his computer system. I’d guess you had a hand in that, Mr Strauss. It’s a smart move. It makes him look bad, worse than he is. It helps turn him into the target that he’ll eventually become. And that’s just the start of it. In the weeks that follow, the weaker chess pieces – May Winslow and Andrew Pennington – will be advanced across the board. Horrible things will happen to them to bring them onside. May’s pet dog will be killed. Andrew’s flower display will be spoiled – and in both cases the Kenworthys will get the blame.’

‘My chess set was also smashed,’ Adam reminded him.

‘Yeah . . . you and your precious chess set, Mr Strauss! You had to be one of the team. You had to suffer too. That’s part of the reason everyone trusted you. They thought you were with them. But it wasn’t a cricket ball that came through your window. You did it – just like you cold-bloodedly crept out and killed that poor bloody dog, and cut down the flowers on the anniversary of Andrew Pennington’s wife’s death. Only, here’s the funny thing, you were too vain to destroy anything that was truly valuable. So you chose a piece of posh merchandise made under licence from a film that came out thirteen years ago. You may have tried to big it up, but even when it was in a hundred pieces rather than thirty-two, I could tell it wasn’t up to much, and my friend Dudley thought it was rubbish too. A king that looks like Ian McKellen? A knight based on Orlando Bloom? The whole idea of hobbits against orcs? Fifty quid on eBay even if it was given to you by some major sheikh, which, incidentally, I doubt. Pull the other one!

‘The first meeting assembled the pieces that really mattered – your neighbours. The second moved them into position. By the way, Andrew Pennington thought it might have been his idea for all of you to get together again, but he also mentioned that it came out of a conversation with you two lovebirds. So you probably found a way to suggest it to him, the same way you hired two people to buy the same book at The Tea Cosy so that Phyllis or May would bring up the idea about everyone committing the same murder. The way you see the world, everyone’s a pawn.

‘So now they’re all pissed off with the Kenworthys and this time you make sure there’s lots of alcohol but no food so that things get a bit out of hand and there will be no inhibitions. When someone brings up the idea of murder, it’s all a bit of a laugh. To start with, you’re all going to do it – just like in the book. But then you remember that you’ve got a packet of drinking straws in the kitchen. You know, the very first time I heard that, it struck me as weird. You don’t have kids but you’ve got drinking straws left over from some party? It’s rubbish, of course. You’d bought them specially for that night. More manipulation.

‘And there was something else about the drawing of the straws that didn’t add up. Phyllis Moore told me that you were the one who held them – no surprises there – but she added that they were behind your back “so there could be no cheating”. But that makes no sense at all. It’s exactly the reason why you hold them in front of you, so everyone can see. If they’re behind your back, it’s easy to conceal the shortest straw in the waistband of your trousers or somewhere and force it on the person you’ve chosen by leaving them until last. That person was Roderick Browne. All along, you’d decided that he was going to be your patsy. But then, like every opponent you’ve ever come across, you had him psychologically pinned down like a butterfly. He was perfect for what you wanted.

‘He and his wife, Felicity, had been the most vocal opponents of Giles Kenworthy – along with Dr Beresford, of course. The death of his patient, Raymond Shaw, was a bonus . . . I doubt even a chess grandmaster could arrange a heart attack, so we’ll put that one down to real coincidence. Tom Beresford was onside anyway. Roderick Browne was the actual target. He and Felicity were hopping mad about the pool. For them it was almost a matter of life and death. And they had the murder weapon, right where they needed it. Everything was set up.

‘My guess is that you’d taken the crossbow before the trick with the drinking straws. That was always your method. Ten moves ahead. You knew that the Kenworthy kids would be boarding. You probably even knew about Lynda Kenworthy and her French teacher. You slipped round to the house when Giles Kenworthy was on his own, shot him and generously left the crossbow complete with Roderick Browne’s fingerprints, even making sure it was pointing at the right house for the police to find. As for that chess game you told us about, the one you were playing online with your Polish friend and which provided your alibi – my guess is that you were doing it on your phone at the same time. Talk about multitasking!

‘What’s the end result of all this? You’ve created the perfect conspiracy. What was a joke, a drunken game of “let’s pretend”, has suddenly become a reality. Roderick Browne has told everyone he’s going to kill Giles Kenworthy and he’s even been generous enough to name the murder weapon. How you must have laughed! Because the following morning, Kenworthy is found with a bolt in his throat and of course everybody assumes that Roderick went through with it, that it must have been him.

‘At the same time, they’re terrified. Like it or not, they were all part of it. Andrew Pennington is quick to warn them. It’s a classic “conspiracy to commit murder” and Roderick won’t be the only one to go down. They all will! Nice, respectable people: a doctor, his posh jewellery-designer wife, a retired barrister, two old ladies . . . they were all there. Before the police even arrive, they’ve all taken a vow of omertà. Nobody can say anything that might incriminate them. Don’t mention the second meeting! Everyone has to lie. What was the first thing Roderick said to me when I met him? “Has anyone said anything?” He was terrified that one of his neighbours would land him in it.

‘And things only got worse for Roderick. You talked to him once on Tuesday, Detective Superintendent, and then on Wednesday, after he’d taken his wife to Woking, you pulled him into Shepherd’s Bush. By the end of a heavy session, he was convinced he was going to be arrested and charged – and that was why he ended up writing that letter. Read it again! It’s not a confession! All he meant was the public humiliation of being taken away in handcuffs. “We will see each other again on the other side.” Did you think he was talking about the Pearly Gates? He meant the other side of the arrest, the trial, or even the prison sentence. But once the letter was sitting on his lap and he had a bag over his head and a tank of nitrous oxide, it wasn’t surprising that you should think otherwise.’

‘So he killed himself because he was afraid of going to jail,’ Goodwin said.

‘You haven’t been listening, love. Adam Strauss killed Roderick Browne just like he’d always planned.’

‘This is all lies,’ Teri hissed.

Adam Strauss squeezed her hand. ‘We’ll have our chance to respond,’ he said, speaking quietly.

‘I examined that garage,’ Khan said. ‘It was impossible to get in or out. Are you going to explain that?’

‘Of course. But let’s start with the set-up. Strauss deliberately made it look like suicide. In fact, it screamed suicide. You’re right! Two locked doors. A skylight securely fastened. The only set of car keys in his trouser pocket. Suicide note in his lap. Nobody in their right mind goes to so much trouble unless they really, really want you to accept the obvious. And surely by now you understand that, all along, Strauss was playing with your mind. He even left the supposed reason for the suicide sitting there for you to find. There’s no reason on earth why Roderick Browne would have slipped the cut-off piece of drinking straw in his top pocket. He didn’t mention it in his letter. Right to the end, he was protecting his neighbours. No. Strauss put a new straw in there. And if Detective Superintendent Khan had stuck with the idea that Roderick was taking cocaine – as he suggested – I’m sure Strauss would have found a way to drop another clue to lead us all back to the second meeting, which was what he wanted all along.

‘We know that Strauss was the last person to see Roderick Browne alive and that Browne invited him over. Strauss knew that Andrew Pennington played bridge every Wednesday evening, so it’s easy enough to time everything for the exact moment Pennington gets home. And what does Pennington see? Strauss says goodbye to Browne, who replies, “You’ve been very kind . . .” Words to that effect. The door closes and the light goes off. The time of death is two hours away. So, at this moment, Browne is very much alive.

‘That’s what we’re meant to think. But Strauss has been with Browne, by his own admission, for at least an hour and a half. What really happened was that he slipped a whole lot of sleeping pills into Browne’s whisky. One little mistake there. He couldn’t get hold of Felicity’s temazepam, so he used pills he must have stolen from Dr Beresford . . . which were the next best thing. Always good to point suspicion in the wrong direction. When he leaves at ten o’clock, Browne is already unconscious. How to fake the conversation on the doorstep? Easy with an iPhone and a portable speaker. Dudley here has been recording every conversation I’ve had, including this one! That’s what Pennington hears.

‘As for the lights, he said something very interesting to me. “The front door closed, the light went out and Adam walked away.” But that’s strange for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, Roderick clearly wasn’t going to bed. More to the point, think about what he said. A single light going off. The light switch by the door turns off the lights in the hallway, the stairs and the first landing. If Roderick had flicked the switch by the door, that’s what Pennington would have seen. But if it was a single light, Roderick would have had to close the door and then cross the hallway to turn off the antique lamp on the chest of drawers.’

‘So are you saying that it was Strauss who turned it off?’ Goodwin asked. She was finally entertaining the possibility that some sort of trick had been involved.

‘Exactly.’

‘How?’ Khan demanded.

‘Easy. He could have used a piece of string and pulled the plug out of the wall. But there were all sorts of electrical bits and pieces that suddenly turned up inside the garage and I think what he used was a cheap remote control he’d brought with him. In reality, Roderick Browne is sound asleep in the kitchen because of the zolpidem. Strauss plays the recording. He closes the door. He turns off the lights with the remote control, which he dumps in the garage later. No point risking the police finding it in his home. Anyway, that’s the illusion. Roderick Browne is alive and all is well. Except it isn’t.

‘Adam Strauss returns to the house. He’s left the garage open so he can get in without any trouble. First, though, he uses the ladder to climb onto the roof and remove the screws that hold down the skylight. And that, incidentally, is where Marsha Clarke enters the equation. The dear old lady in Hampton Wick! When Dudley and I stood on the garage roof, we could see just one window in the close: the room belonging to Kylie Jane, the Beresfords’ nanny. But that meant if she’d been there, she would have had a view of the garage and there was always a chance that she would look out and see what was happening. So she had to go. It was Strauss who attacked Marsha Clarke. He must have seen Kylie leaving the close with her breadcrumbs for the birds . . . he knew what was going on. He bashed the old lady, knowing Kylie would stay there and look after the cats. As for the political leaflet, that was more misdirection. It was another lie.

‘Anyway, as I was just saying, Strauss goes back into the house. My guess is that he’s already helped his old friend write the letter to his wife, maybe suggesting a phrase or two. He’s got to be sure it’ll work for him. Now he drags the unconscious man into the garage. Puts a bag over his head – making another small mistake. Roderick doesn’t shop at Tesco’s. But it’s a suicide. Who’s going to notice? He turns on the gas. And now comes the clever part. How is he going to leave Roderick in the car, with the only key fob in his pocket and with all the windows and doors locked from inside?

‘In fact, it couldn’t be easier. When I visited the garage, I had to step over a pool of water on the concrete floor and I did wonder what it was doing there. After all, it hasn’t rained for weeks – you can tell that from the state of the gardens. The answer’s built into the car that Roderick Browne drove, the Skoda Octavia. It comes with a range of accessories, but one of them is a rain sensor, located in front of the windscreen. If you’re driving and it rains, the wipers come on automatically. And if you’ve left the car parked, the windows close themselves.

‘There was a tap and a bucket in the garage. All Strauss had to do was pour a certain amount of water in the right place to complete the illusion that Browne had locked himself in. Most of the water drained away, but unfortunately for him a little puddle was left and I noticed it the moment I went in.

‘So. Back to the night of the crime.

‘The up-and-over garage door is locked. The door into the house likewise. Now Strauss climbs onto the Skoda and exits through the skylight. Of course, it would have been hard work doing that with a badly sprained ankle, but he’d faked that ahead of the game too, pretending to fall down the stairs at Richmond station. He pulls himself onto the roof, with no Kylie Jane to spot him, and fastens the screws using glue, which he’s brought with him. It was never rust. Stainless steel doesn’t rust. Then he climbs down the ladder and goes home to bed.

‘That’s pretty much it. The one question you might like to ask, Detective Superintendent, is how much Teri Strauss knew about all this. I’m surprised she wasn’t woken up when her husband tiptoed in sometime around midnight – and there was definitely someone behind him at Richmond station wearing a hoodie when he was “pushed” down those stairs. She seems quite a feisty little number. Maybe her oriental brain even came up with some of the plot.’

‘You are a racist!’ Teri snapped.

‘Better a racist than a murderer,’ Hawthorne retorted.

‘Wait a minute!’ Khan cut in. ‘You’ve said all this and I suppose it makes some sort of sense, even if it’s hardly very likely. But there’s one thing you haven’t explained. Why would Mr Strauss have wanted to kill Giles Kenworthy in the first place? If it wasn’t his chess set and it wasn’t any of the other complaints, why go to all this trouble?’

‘That’s the biggest misdirection of them all,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘The whole “Nightmare Neighbour” thing – it had nothing to do with it. You’ve got to ask, what was the one big change that happened at the time of the first meeting?’

‘The swimming pool,’ Dudley said.

‘Exactly. Kenworthy was going to dig up the garden to build a pool. Now, the evidence is a bit circumstantial, but let’s put it all together. First, there’s the magnolia tree with its amazing blossoms. Even Lynda Kenworthy was impressed by that. And Mrs Winslow’s dog was always sniffing around it . . . so it must have been attracted by something. Then we come to Wendy Strauss, Adam’s first wife, who divorced him and disappeared from the scene. What do we know about her? Only that she didn’t like chess. She wasn’t happy in the close. And she and Adam didn’t get on. We also know that Adam was having financial difficulties, so it probably wouldn’t have helped him to lose half his savings in a divorce.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Strauss asked. He seemed completely relaxed, half smiling.

‘That she’s under the magnolia tree,’ Hawthorne said. ‘If Kenworthy had gone ahead and built his pool, her skeleton would have been the first thing they discovered. The moment he got planning permission, that was when he had to die.’

There was a lengthy silence in the room. It was broken, at last, by Detective Superintendent Khan.

‘So, Mr Strauss,’ he said. ‘What have you got to say?’

3

‘I don’t even know where to begin,’ Adam Strauss said. ‘It’s one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever heard. It’s quite brilliant in its own way – and I ought to congratulate you, Mr Hawthorne – but it’s also fantastical, conjectural and full of holes. It wishes on me almost supernatural powers and it would be wonderful if I possessed them, but, unfortunately, I do not.’

He turned his attention to Detective Superintendent Khan.

‘I have to say, I’m a little surprised that the police have taken to hiring . . . what? Private detectives? I even wonder if it’s legal.’

‘We haven’t hired anyone,’ Khan said. ‘Right now, Mr Hawthorne is working under his own aegis, but we have a responsibility to respond to information provided by any member of the public.’

It was half a lie, wrapped in police officialese to make it more palatable.

‘What part of it did he get wrong?’ Ruth Goodwin asked. This drew an ugly glance from Khan.

By way of an answer, Strauss turned to his wife. ‘Can you get the postcards?’ he said. ‘One of them came in April or May. The other’s more recent.’

Teri rose out of the sofa, transported by rage. ‘Everything he says is a lie,’ she insisted. ‘Why do you let him come here to tell these lies?’

She went into the kitchen.

‘And the Chinese New Year card,’ he called after her.

‘We don’t have it.’

‘Yes, we do. It’s in the letters drawer.’

While she was looking, he turned back to Hawthorne, examining him with something close to sadness.

‘My first wife is not dead,’ he said. ‘She left England five years ago, on October the seventeenth, 2009. I remember the date because it’s the day after my birthday. She didn’t go straight to Hong Kong. She took a flight from Heathrow to New York because she had friends there she wanted to see. I’m sure the records are still available. You only need to check them out. I drove her to the airport. Our marriage wasn’t a great success, but that was largely my fault. Chess has been my life. At least you correctly described that part of my character. It’s my obsession. Wendy had no interest in it whatsoever and I should have known that this would be a recipe for disaster. It seems that I don’t quite have the foresight you ascribe to me. She felt left out and that led to our separation.

‘But you’re wrong to suggest that it was acrimonious. Wendy and Teri are cousins. They speak regularly. She and I have stayed in touch too. We’re more friendly now that we’re apart.’

‘I have them!’ Teri called out from the kitchen.

She came back to the sofa, carrying three pieces of mail, which she handed to Khan. The first was a postcard from Macau showing an extraordinary skyscraper shaped like a flower with the words GRAND LISBOA shining out at the top. Each floor was swathed in different-coloured neon lights. Khan turned it over and saw a message, written in blue ink.

This place is crazy. I’m scared I’m going to lose all my money so I haven’t even put a ten-avo coin in a slot machine. Liu says hello. Will call when I’m home.

Wendy x

‘Who is Liu?’ Khan asked.

‘It’s Wendy’s friend,’ Teri replied. ‘He works in Macau. She often goes to see him.’

‘Why has she written this in English?’

‘If you look, Detective Superintendent, you will see it’s addressed to both of us. Adam can’t read traditional Chinese.’

‘You may be able to see the postmark,’ Strauss added. ‘It was sent four months ago, I think. Not from beyond the grave. The second one was just for Teri, so it’s in Chinese.’

The second card showed Hong Kong harbour. Because of the Chinese characters, it was difficult to see if it had been written by the same hand, but it was certainly the same colour ink.

‘There’s a PS,’ Teri said. ‘It’s in English.’

Tell Roderick I said hello. Will write again soon. W.

‘Roderick was her dentist,’ Teri explained. ‘They were friends when she was here.’

Meanwhile, Adam had taken out his iPhone and was scrolling through it as he talked. ‘The other card came in February . . .’

Khan was already examining it. There was a picture of a jade horse on the front. The message inside, written in the same hand, was short:

Be happy. Love, Wendy

‘She always sent us a card at Chinese New Year,’ Strauss explained. ‘This is the Year of the Horse.’ He found what he was looking for on his phone and handed it over to Goodwin, who was seated nearest to him. ‘Here’s a photograph she sent at the same time . . .’

There was a photograph of a smiling young woman – Hong Kong Chinese – holding up a hand and waving.

‘You can see the date it was taken,’ Strauss continued. ‘I’m not quite sure where it is, but I think it’s Hong Kong.’

Goodwin turned the phone towards Teri. Hawthorne and Dudley both saw the image too.

‘Is this your cousin?’ she asked.

‘Yes. It’s my cousin!’ Teri agreed.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Strauss exclaimed. He snatched the phone, scrolled through it a second time and touched the screen. ‘It’s early evening in Hong Kong,’ he explained. ‘Wendy works at the Maritime Museum, next to the Star Ferry. You can check that out too if you want.’

‘What are you doing?’ Khan asked.

‘I’m FaceTiming her.’ Adam passed his phone across. ‘She should have got home by now. I won’t say anything. You speak to her.’

The phone was making the warbling sound of a FaceTime call. It rang for about ten seconds before a woman appeared in her own little box, which then expanded to cover the entire screen. It was the same woman Strauss had just shown them in the photograph. She was in a kitchen with a window behind her.

She said something in Chinese.

‘Excuse me,’ Khan interrupted her. ‘My name is Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan. I’m calling you from Richmond in England.’

The woman looked concerned. ‘Has something happened to Adam?’ she asked, speaking now in English.

‘No. Mr and Mrs Strauss are fine. May I ask who I’m speaking to?’

‘I’m Wendy Yeung.’

Khan frowned. ‘I’m not speaking to Wendy Strauss?’

‘Yes! Yes! I am Wendy Strauss, but that is not the name I use any more. My husband and I divorce.’ Her English was excellent but not perfect. ‘Why are you calling?’

‘Ms Yeung, can you confirm that you left the UK about five years ago?’

‘Yes. I went back to Hong Kong.’

‘Did you go straight to Hong Kong?’

‘I’m sorry?’

Khan repeated the question.

‘No. I went first to America. I stayed with friends.’

‘And where are you now?’

She seemed puzzled by the question. ‘I will show you!’ There was a blur as she moved across the kitchen and turned the camera round to show a street that was distinctly Asian. Khan could see trams, crowds of people passing in front of shops, banners with Chinese characters. ‘This is Hong Kong!’ She turned the phone round again. ‘Why are you asking? Why do you want to know?’

‘We were just checking something, Ms Yeung. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

Khan handed the phone back to Strauss, who spoke briefly. ‘I’ll explain later, Wendy. It’s nothing to worry about.’ He clicked it off, then looked at Khan defiantly. ‘There is one other thing I would like to mention as I found it personally offensive,’ he said. ‘Mr Hawthorne suggested that I killed Wendy because I didn’t want to pay her alimony. It’s true that I’ve had financial difficulties. It’s the reason I downsized. But if you like, I can arrange for my bank manager to send you details of a standing order that I’ve been paying every month for several years now. It’s one thousand pounds, paid directly to an account in Hong Kong. You may not think twelve thousand pounds a year is overgenerous, but it’s all I can afford and it’s all Wendy needs. She gets plenty of support from the family, and since Teri is part of that same family, it’s an arrangement that suits everyone. Is there anything more you want to know?’

There was a long silence. Khan turned to Hawthorne with a look of utter contempt.

‘Detective Superintendent . . .’ Hawthorne began.

Khan held up a hand for silence.

‘I think we’ve heard enough, thank you, Hawthorne.’ He stood up. ‘I owe you an apology, Mr Strauss.’

‘You don’t need to apologise, Detective Superintendent. You weren’t the one making the accusations. And if there’s any further information you require – bank details, whatever – please let me know.’

‘Ten moves ahead . . .’ Hawthorne muttered.

‘We’ll show ourselves out,’ Khan said.