The Sentence Is Death

13 Bury Street

Who was Mike Carlyle?

I spent an hour searching the internet but couldn’t find anything that related to the man who had come into the Station Inn in Ribblehead. He had been about the same age as Hawthorne – maybe a couple of years younger – and unless he had been on holiday, which seemed unlikely in late October, I guessed he must live in the Yorkshire Dales. What would that make him? A farmer? Something connected to tourism? Of course, it could have been Carlisle. I tried that spelling too. Michael Carlyle. Mike Carlisle. I was directed to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, to an office stationery supply company in Manchester and the Director of Missions at a Baptist church in Victoria, Australia. There were dozens of photographs to choose from but none resembled the man I had met.

I couldn’t get the encounter out of my head. It seemed to tie in with Hawthorne’s strange mood, his nervousness as we left London. Carlyle had been quite sure it was Hawthorne even if he had referred to him as ‘Billy’. He had known him from somewhere called Reeth – a village in nearby Swaledale and ‘a well-known centre for hand-knitting and the local lead industry’, as Wikipedia helpfully informed me. Hawthorne’s behaviour hadn’t just been defensive, it had been borderline rude. I couldn’t be certain but it seemed quite possible to me that ‘Billy’ had lied to ‘Mike’. They had known each other once.

I was thinking this over when the telephone rang. It was Hawthorne arranging to meet me at the Bury Street Gallery in Mayfair – which was where Stephen Spencer worked.

‘We can go on to Marylebone afterwards,’ he said.

‘What’s in Marylebone?’

‘Akira Anno is giving a talk in a bookshop.’ I heard the rustle of paper as he turned a page. ‘“Women of mass destruction: sexual objectification and gender coding in modern warfare”.’

‘That sounds fun,’ I said.

‘We can talk to her and if you’re lucky you can get her book of haikus signed.’

He rang off.

I spent the next couple of hours working. I went for a walk. I wrote a quick draft of the chapter Hawthorne wanted. I know it all sounds a bit dull laid out like that but I’m afraid I’m describing very much my life as a writer. I spend at least half the day on my own and in silence. I flit from one project to another, channelling thousands of words – first with a pen and then with a computer – onto the page. That’s why I enjoy writing Alex Rider. Even if I’m not having adventures, I can at least imagine them.

It was less satisfying writing about Hawthorne. I had become a prisoner of circumstance. For example, I would have loved to have opened a chapter with something surprising: Davina Richardson in bed with Adrian Lockwood, perhaps. Or Susan Taylor, dressed in black, being driven to her husband’s funeral in the Yorkshire Dales, the cortège slowly winding its way through those twisting country lanes. It would have been a real challenge to imagine myself inside Long Way Hole, describing the last moments of Charlie Richardson as he drowned, or I could have turned myself into a fly on the wall inside the room when Richard Pryce’s killer had struck. Sadly, none of these possibilities was available to me. I was stuck with the facts. My job was to follow Hawthorne’s investigation, setting down his questions and occasionally trying, without much success, to make sense of the answers. It was really quite frustrating. It wasn’t so much writing as recording.

I was still glad to get out of the house. I took the Tube over to Green Park and walked into Mayfair. This time Hawthorne had arrived ahead of me. He was waiting outside an art gallery contained in a small, elegant building, the sort of place that warned you to stay away unless you were well heeled. The name was spelled out in discreet lettering and there were just three works in the window, with no prices. I recognised a Wadsworth and a Paul Nash – a nice watercolour of a shingle beach. The glass door was locked but there was an assistant on the other side and he buzzed us in.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked. He was from the Middle East with very dark skin and a jet-black beard. He was in his late twenties, wearing an expensive, tailored suit that made Hawthorne’s look resolutely off the peg, but no tie. He had a gold chain around his neck and a gold band on the third finger of his left hand.

Needless to say, Hawthorne had taken an immediate dislike to him. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘I’m sorry?’ The assistant was quick to take offence.

‘I’d like to talk to Stephen Spencer.’

‘Mr Spencer’s busy.’

‘It’s all right, Faraz. I know these people.’

Spencer had appeared from a back office, making his way across the thick-pile carpet that swallowed up any sound. He was also in a suit and looked much recovered from when I had last seen him. His fair hair was carefully groomed and he had the pink, clean-shaven looks of someone who has just stepped out of the bath.

‘How can I help you?’ he asked. ‘I take it you’re not here to buy art.’ He was being starchy with us and I could understand why. The last time we had seen him, he had been at his most vulnerable, in tears, and Hawthorne hadn’t exactly been sympathetic. There was a simmering hostility between them even now. Hawthorne was homophobic. It was his least endearing trait. I’m sure Spencer had picked up on it.

‘I want to know where you were last weekend,’ Hawthorne said. His voice and manner were unsparing.

Spencer turned to his assistant. ‘Why don’t you go back into the office, Faraz?’

‘Stephen—’

‘It’s all right.’ Spencer waited until the other man had gone, then answered: ‘I already told you.’

‘You lied to us. I’ve spoken to your mother at the St Osyth Care Home in Frinton. She has no memory of you visiting her.’

Spencer bristled. ‘My mother is in the fairly advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. There are times when she doesn’t even remember who I am.’

‘And have all the nurses got Alzheimer’s too? None of them remember seeing you either.’

I thought Spencer would deny it but he was cleverer than that. He considered for a moment, then shrugged. ‘All right. I was lying.’

‘You were with your boyfriend, Faraz. Where is he from, by the way? Iran?’

‘Yes. He is. But what makes you think—’

‘Please don’t treat me like an idiot, Mr Spencer. This is a murder investigation and right now you could be done for obstructing a police officer.’

‘You’re not a police officer.’

‘You lied to DI Grunshaw and you certainly don’t want to get on the wrong side of her!’ That was true, as I knew only too well. ‘That’s a very distinctive aftershave your Iranian friend wears and your car stank of it.’ Hawthorne sniffed. ‘I can smell it on you now. You didn’t wait very long for your husband to pass on, did you? Has he moved into your place in Hampstead?’

‘No!’

‘But Richard Pryce had found out about the two of you, hadn’t he? The marriage, the civil contract, whatever you want to call it, was all over as far as he was concerned. He wanted you to move out.’

‘That’s not true! Who told you that?’ Spencer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Was it Oliver Masefield?’

‘As a matter of fact, it was.’ Hawthorne continued before Spencer could interrupt: ‘Your late husband’s law partner is also the executor of his will. He was actually very discreet but he did mention that the two of them had discussed the contents just a few weeks ago. Now there’s only one reason you talk about a will and that’s if you’re going to change it. And given the fact that you and Davina Richardson are the main beneficiaries and she hasn’t done anything to piss him off, while you’ve been gallivanting around at the weekends with Ali Baba out there’ – he jerked a thumb in the direction of the office and I closed my eyes, quietly adding casual racism to the charge sheet against Hawthorne – ‘it was a fair bet that he’d rumbled you and that he was about to do something about it.

‘The telephone call that you made to Richard at eight o’clock on Sunday evening originated in Chiswick, which is, by coincidence, where your mate Faraz Delijani lives. Cara Grunshaw already knows that and I’m surprised she hasn’t been round here already. So before that happens you might as well tell me what you were really up to – you can spare me the graphic details, if you don’t mind – and with a bit of luck it’ll persuade me that you didn’t creep home and commit murder.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ There was a bottle of mineral water on a shelf. Spencer went over and twisted it open. I heard the rush of escaping gas. He poured himself a glass. ‘Richard and I had been having difficulties. Yes. We’d talked about spending time apart. And yes – I spent the weekend with Faraz in his flat in Chiswick. Lots of people saw us. On Sunday night we had dinner at a place called L’Auberge on the Upper Richmond Road.’ He took out his wallet and produced a slip of paper that he offered to Hawthorne. ‘Here’s the receipt, but you can ask them if you like. We had a table in the window.’

‘I will ask them.’ Hawthorne took the receipt.

‘This may surprise you, Mr Hawthorne, but I loved Richard very much and I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt him.’

‘Except for sleeping around behind his back.’

‘We had an open marriage. We tolerated each other’s indiscretions. And if Richard was going to change his will, it could just as easily have been to do with Davina as me.’

‘Why would he have done that?’

‘Forget it.’ It was clear that Spencer had decided he’d said too much and was regretting it.

‘I think you’d better tell me, Mr Spencer.’

‘All right.’ He frowned. ‘If you really must know, she was wearing him out . . . all her demands. He set up her business. He put her son through private education. He was always round there, listening to her problems. But it was never enough. She was bleeding him dry to get more clients who wanted interior decorating and for what it’s worth, he didn’t even much like her taste. It was all reds and yellows and that horrible shade of green. “Gangreen”, he called it! He was desperate to get her out of his life but he couldn’t do it because of what had happened in Yorkshire. I never understood it, personally. It wasn’t as if it had been his fault. I told him to tell her to fuck off – and maybe he did. Maybe he finally got her out of his system.’

‘Do you think she killed him?’ Hawthorne asked, a little more gently.

Spencer shook his head. ‘No. I’ve already told you. It was Akira. I was there in the restaurant when she threatened him and I heard it with my own ears. And there was something else . . .’

He paused for effect and for the first time I glanced around the gallery, at the oil paintings and watercolours displayed on the walls, each one carefully isolated in its private pool of light. It would have made a perfect setting if anyone had chosen to film this.

‘Richard was on to her,’ Spencer continued. ‘He told me that he’d had her investigated. You need to talk to Graham Hain at Navigant business management. He’s a forensic accountant who worked with Richard and he’d discovered that Akira had a limited company and an income stream that she didn’t want anyone to know about. Richard thought she was doing something illegal.’

‘Like what?’ In fact we already knew this. Oliver Masefield had told us as much, although he had put it less baldly.

‘He didn’t say. But she’d done everything she could to keep it hidden and it might have had an impact on the divorce. Both sides have to say how much they’re worth and he knew she was lying.’

Hawthorne made a mental note of it. He never wrote down anything. He had a prodigious memory – and of course he had me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ he asked.

‘I was upset when you saw me in Hampstead and I wasn’t thinking straight. That’s also why I lied to you about Faraz. I didn’t want to drag him into this, but the truth is that I really don’t have anything to hide. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.’

Spencer padded off towards the office. Hawthorne didn’t try to stop him.

Back out in the street, I turned on him.

‘You can’t behave that way!’ I exclaimed. ‘What happened in there . . . that Ali Baba joke, your whole attitude. You can’t talk like that!’

‘I did what I had to.’ For once, I’d taken Hawthorne by surprise. ‘I had to get under his skin, Tony. Don’t you see it? He’s standing in his smart gallery, surrounded by a million quid’s worth of art. And he’s lying to us! He thinks he can get away with it. I had to break him down and that’s what I did.’

‘But I can’t put that sort of stuff in the book,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘People won’t like it.’ I paused. ‘They won’t like you.’

That jolted him. Just for a second I saw the vulnerability, the child he had once been, spark in his eyes and before he could stop himself he asked: ‘Do you like me?’

I wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ I stammered eventually.

He looked at me.

‘I don’t need you to fucking like me. I just need you to write the fucking book.’

We stood there, staring at each other. There was nothing more to say.