The Sentence Is Death

18 The Dustbin Diver

Hawthorne didn’t seem to have moved. He was still standing there, waiting for me outside Leconfield House when I finally arrived back in the taxi, which had charged me £10 for a circular journey that had got me precisely nowhere. He watched me as I got out and crossed over to him.

‘You didn’t catch him then,’ he observed.

‘No. He got away.’ I was in a bad mood. The rain had stopped but I was damp all over. ‘You weren’t much help,’ I muttered. ‘You could have at least tried to catch him.’

‘There was no need to.’

‘Why not?’

‘I know who he is.’

I stared at him. ‘Then why didn’t you stop me?’

‘I shouted out to you but you didn’t hear me. You went off like a bloody stampeding bull and you didn’t give me a chance.’

‘So who was he?’

Hawthorne took pity on me. ‘You can’t go into Lockwood looking like that,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you a cup of coffee.’

We walked down to a Costa at the bottom end of Curzon Street and I went into the toilet while Hawthorne ordered the cappuccinos. Looking into the mirror, I saw that he was right. The short burst of activity had left me flushed, my hair bedraggled and damp from the rain and the exertion. I made myself as presentable as I could and by the time I came out Hawthorne had chosen a table with, I noticed, three chairs.

‘Are we waiting for someone?’ I asked.

‘We might be.’

‘Who?’

‘You’ll see.’

Something had amused him and it was all the more hilarious because he wasn’t going to share it with me. I understood why a few minutes later when the door opened and someone walked in. He cast around nervously, then saw us and came over. I scowled. It was the man in blue spectacles whom I’d last seen fleeing down St James’s Street in a cab.

‘Hawthorne—’ I began.

But Hawthorne was looking past me. ‘Hello, Lofty,’ he said.

‘Hello, Hawthorne.’

‘You want a coffee?’

‘Not really.’

‘Get yourself one anyway and bring it over.’

Lofty wasn’t his real name, of course, and – equally obviously – it was the last word I would have used to describe the small, lightweight man who had appeared. He couldn’t have been more than five foot three or four, with sandy-coloured hair hanging limply down to his collar, an upturned nose and the pallid skin of someone who didn’t get out often or who ate unhealthily or perhaps both. As he had come towards us, he had taken off the spectacles to reveal frightened eyes that twitched and flickered around him constantly. The skin condition which both Adrian Lockwood’s receptionist and Colin Richardson had mentioned – I was assuming this was the same man – was actually nothing more than a bit of scarring from acne he must have had as a teenager.

‘Lofty?’ I asked as he ordered himself a drink.

‘Lenny Pinkerman. That’s his real name. But we always called him Lofty.’

‘I get that. Is he a policeman?’

‘He used to be.’

‘So what’s he doing here?’ I stopped, remembering my last sighting of Hawthorne as I set off on the chase. He’d been on his mobile. ‘You called him!’

‘That’s right. I’ve got his mobile number. I asked him to join us.’

‘So who is he? What’s he got to do with all this?’

‘He’ll tell you . . .’

Lofty had ordered tea. He sat down at the table and tore open four sachets of sugar which he added to the cup. He stirred it with a plastic spoon. All this happened in a silence that was finally broken by Hawthorne.

‘Nice to see you, Lofty.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s not nice to see you at all, Hawthorne.’ Lofty had a whiney voice and crooked teeth. I think he wanted to sound angry but the best he could manage was petulant. He put the glasses down on the table and looking at them closely, I saw that they were clearly fake with no magnification. He had also taken off the raincoat. He was wearing shapeless corduroy trousers and a paisley shirt, buttoned up to the neck. If he sat on a pavement, people would have been quick to give him their spare change.

‘It’s been a while.’

‘Not bloody long enough, mate.’ He looked balefully across the table, clearly afraid of Hawthorne and disliking him in equal measure.

‘Are you going to tell me what you were doing outside Leconfield House?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘None of your business.’

‘Lofty . . . !’

‘Why should I tell you anything?’

‘Old times’ sake?’

‘Sod that!’ He considered. ‘Fifty quid. I’ll talk to you for fifty quid. Fifty-three quid. You can pay for the tea as well.’ He looked with disgust at the murky brown liquid in front of him. ‘How can they charge three quid for a cup of tea? That’s a bloody liberty.’

‘You really that hard up?’

‘I’m not hard up. I’m doing fine for myself if you really want to know. I’m doing brilliantly. But if you think I’m going to spend one minute with you without being paid for it, you can go take a flying jump. You’re a miserable bastard, Hawthorne. You always were and you still are. That business with Abbott. I shouldn’t have had to take the rap for that. You screwed me over and I’m only doing this fucking job now because of you.’

Do all policemen swear? Hawthorne, Grunshaw and now Lofty all had an issue with the English language that bordered on Tourette’s. My ears had pricked up, however. Derek Abbott was the suspected child pornographer that Hawthorne had pushed down a flight of stairs.

‘It was an accident.’ Hawthorne spread his hands and gave him a beatific smile. ‘These things happen.’

‘You were the one who told me to nip out for a cigarette. I thought you were being friendly but you knew what you were doing all along. One fucking smoke and it cost me my job, my pension, my marriage, my whole fucking life.’

‘Marge not with you, then?’

‘Marge dumped me. She went off with a fireman.’

Hawthorne had taken Derek Abbott down to the interview room because he had been in the custody office at the time and there was no one else around. That was when the accident had happened. Abbott had fallen down fourteen concrete steps with his hands cuffed behind him – a flying jump indeed – and as a result Hawthorne had been thrown out of the police force. Lofty was the one who should have escorted Abbott to the interview room. And he had lost his job too.

‘So are you going to tell me about Adrian Lockwood?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Fifty quid! And if you don’t get a move on, I might change my mind and make it a ton.’

Hawthorne glanced at me. ‘All right. Pay him.’

‘Me?’ But I had no choice in the matter. I took out my wallet. Fortunately, I had just enough cash. I set five £10 notes down on the table and added some change. Lofty swept it all towards him and folded it away.

‘I’m guessing you work for Graham Hain,’ Hawthorne went on.

‘You know him?’

‘We haven’t met – but I know who he is.’

Graham Hain was the forensic accountant who had been hired by Richard Pryce. Stephen Spencer had mentioned him to us. But there was something I didn’t understand. According to Spencer, Hain had been investigating Akira Anno, trying to find the secret income stream that she had refused to declare. In other words, in the Lockwood/Anno divorce, he had been very much on the Lockwood side of the proceedings. So what was Lofty doing, breaking into Lockwood’s office and now lurking outside Leconfield House? Why was he spying on his own client?

‘Lofty is a dustbin diver,’ Hawthorne explained. He glanced across the table. ‘Tell him what that means.’

Lofty was offended. ‘That’s not a term I use,’ he muttered, indignantly. ‘It says “asset trader” on my business card.’

‘You’ve got a business card? You’re definitely going up in the world.’

‘Faster than you, mate.’

‘What’s an asset trader?’ I asked. I was getting a little tired of all this banter.

Lofty took another sip of tea. When he spoke again, he was more authoritative. He might be a wreck of a human being, and I wouldn’t have wanted to enquire into his private life with or without Marge, but he knew what he was talking about. ‘These big divorces, rich bastards, you’ve got no idea! They put their money away all over the place. Jersey and the British Virgin Islands. They’ve got trusts and shell companies and offshore companies full of shadow directors and it’s impossible to work out who owns what. People like me – asset traders, which is what we’re called – help to sort it all out. We find out what’s what.’

‘Ex-cops,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Ex-journalists. Ex-security service. Funny how it always starts with an ex.’

‘I do all right,’ Lofty snapped. ‘I earn a ton more than when I was with your lot.’

‘So tell us about Adrian Lockwood.’

Lofty hesitated, already wishing he’d asked for more money. I could see it in his eyes.

‘You really make me sick, do you know that?’ he said to Hawthorne. Having got that out of his system, he continued more pleasantly: ‘I did some work on the Lockwood divorce. That wife of his, Akira Anno . . . she knew we were on to her. The moment we started sniffing round her finances she got nervous and’ – he flicked his fingers – ‘just like that she rolled over and gave Mr Lockwood everything he wanted. She was terrified we were going to find out just how much money she had in the bank . . . and that bank was probably in Panama or Liechtenstein or somewhere. So it all went hunky-dory. Mr Lockwood was happy. The courts were happy. Job done.

‘Only then something happened. All along, Mr Pryce had been having doubts about his client . . . like he wasn’t being straight with him. And he wasn’t happy about that. Not at all.’

‘You’re talking about Adrian Lockwood,’ I said.

‘That’s right. Mr Pryce knew straight off Mr Lockwood was a villain. I bet half his clients were as crooked as the A157.’

‘The A157? What are you talking about, Lofty?’ Hawthorne said.

‘It’s the road from Louth to Mablethorpe. It’s got a lot of bends.’

I wanted to laugh but Hawthorne just sighed. ‘Get on with it.’

‘The thing about Mr Pryce was that he always was a bit prissy, coming over all vicar’s daughter at the best of times. Anyway, the case is finished. Akira has pissed off and everyone’s smiling, but suddenly he’s talking to the people I work for, Navigant, and he’s asking them, very discreetly, to take a quick look at Lockwood’s assets.’ He paused, rolling his eyes. ‘He was very specific. He wanted to know about expensive wine.’

‘Wine.’ Hawthorne repeated the word.

‘That’s right. He wanted to know if Lockwood liked the stuff . . . I mean, really liked it. How much of it he drank. What vintages. All that sort of thing. How many bottles he had stashed away. That made it a lot easier for me, narrowing the field. And it didn’t take me very long to find what he wanted.

‘To say that Adrian Lockwood is into wine is putting it mildly. He’s a bleeding fanatic. I’ve seen his credit card slips from the Ritz and from Annabel’s. An Échezeaux Grand Cru at £3,250. A Bollinger Vielles Vignes at £2,000 . . .’ Lofty mangled the French but not the prices. ‘And that was just the start of it. I took a look in the basement of his home in Antibes . . .’

‘How did you get in there, Lofty?’

‘That’s my business, Hawthorne. It’s what I do. And the amount of booze I found underneath all that dust? You wouldn’t believe it! I had to look some of the names up. I’d never heard of them. And the prices! They were fucking incredible. I mean, you’re only talking about a mashed-up grape!

‘So one thing led to another and I found my way to Octavian. You ever heard of it?’

I shook my head. Hawthorne said nothing.

‘Octavian wine cellarage in Corsham. They’re a company. They store wine for hedge-fund managers and people like that. It’s a funny thing. Even people who live nearby don’t know much about it but you go in there, you’ll find some of the best wines in the world – millions of quids’ worth – tucked away in the darkness, a hundred feet under the Wiltshire hills. And of course there are all sorts of tax advantages. It’s a bonded warehouse. No VAT. And no capital gains tax either because you’re talking about a wasting chattel.’

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant but I didn’t interrupt. Lofty was in full flow.

‘It was easy enough to find out that Mr Lockwood was one of their clients,’ he went on. ‘But finding out what he had there was the devil’s own business. They’re not stupid and they’ve got a lot of security. I went down to Corsham and had a sniff around but that wasn’t going to work . . .’

‘So you broke into his office,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I didn’t break in.’ Lenny was offended again. ‘I just waited until Mr Lockwood went for lunch and walked in off the street. Easiest thing in the world. Told them I was from the IT company. The receptionist showed me into Lockwood’s office and even gave me the password for his computer, silly bitch. That way I was able to access his account at Octavian and find out how much capital he had invested.’

‘And how much was that?’

‘Just shy of three million quid, all paid for by one of his companies working out of BVI. Of course, Mr Pryce hit the bloody roof when he heard that. I don’t suppose any of it had ever shown up on his Form E.’

All along we had assumed that Richard Pryce had been investigating Akira Anno and that when he had rung up his partner, Oliver Masefield, on the day of his death, muttering about the Law Society, he had been thinking of her. But that wasn’t the case. It was his own client, Adrian Lockwood, who had rung the alarm bells. Lockwood was the one who had concealed his wealth, lying to his solicitor – not a great idea when the solicitor was known as the Blunt Razor.

Why wasn’t Hawthorne more excited? As far as I could see, this blew the entire case to smithereens. But he had just finished his coffee and had taken out a cigarette, which he was rolling back and forth along the table. ‘Two more questions, Lofty,’ he said. ‘What were you doing at Leconfield House just now? And why did you run off like that?’

‘What do you think?’ Lofty sneered. ‘Mr Pryce was my client. I liked him and I feel responsible for him. I’m quite interested to know who killed him and I’m wondering if Lockwood was responsible.’

‘That’s not possible,’ I said. ‘He was with someone on the Sunday evening at exactly the time Pryce was killed.’

‘Who says they didn’t both do it? Anyway, I’ve been keeping an eye on him just in case he meets someone or does something that blows the lid off what actually happened.’

‘And you ran . . . ?’

‘Because there’s been a murder and funnily enough I worry about my health. It’s often necessary in my line of work. When I see someone I’ve never met before running towards me, I generally turn and run the other way. Of course, as soon as I got your call, I realised there was no need for it. Not that I ever wanted to see you again, Hawthorne, just so you know.’

Hawthorne considered. ‘So you’ve been watching him,’ he said. ‘Found anything yet?’

Lofty slid his chair back and stood up. He had left half the tea. ‘If I had, I wouldn’t tell you,’ he said.

‘You’re still upset!’

‘Yes. I am still upset. Bloody upset. That’s the truth of it. You screwed up my life and I don’t know why I’ve told you as much as I have. Anyway, that’s it. You’ve had all you’re getting for fifty quid. Fuck off and leave me alone.’

He hurried out of the coffee bar.

‘Who was Abbott?’ I asked. I was thinking about the child pornographer Hawthorne had pushed down the stairs, but I knew nothing about what had happened.

‘Just someone I met at work. There was a health and safety issue. Lofty was a staff officer and he got the rap. I don’t know why he blamed me.’

Hawthorne looked at me with eyes that could not have been more perfectly innocent but I knew he was lying to me. Just like he always did.