The Sentence Is Death

7 His Story

‘I should never have married her!’ Adrian Lockwood threw his head back and roared with laughter. ‘It was one of my biggest mistakes, and God knows, I’ve made plenty of those. Mind you, she was a very sexy little piece . . . bloody attractive and the toast of the town. Everyone was talking about her. It was only when we got back from the honeymoon that I discovered she was totally self-obsessed and boring! Actually, I think I may have spotted it on the plane out now I come to think of it. I was on my third G and T before we were at the end of the runway – and I needed it.

‘I really should have seen her for what she was from the start, but, you see, she was an intellectual. I never went to university myself and I’ve always had a respect for people who are good with words. But with her . . . well, there was no stopping her. It was all words, words, words, and I’m not just talking about her writing habits, although God knows she would lock herself away for hours at a time even when she was writing those bloody poems of hers. They only had three lines but I’d hear her pounding away at the computer from dawn to dusk.’

‘Did you take an interest in her work?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘I’m not sure “interest” is the word I’d use. I read one of her novels but I’m more of a John Grisham fan myself and I couldn’t really see the point of it. She gave me a copy of that haiku book of hers but by then things were already going off the rails. She signed it for me so maybe I can get a couple of quid for it on eBay. I’ve certainly got no other use for the bloody thing.’

Adrian Lockwood was the sort of man who was hard to dislike although he was doing everything he could to help us on our way. Lying back on the sofa with one denim-covered leg crossed over the other, a shining, black leather Chelsea boot dangling in front of us and his arms spread over the cushions, he looked every inch the shark he undoubtedly was. He had mean eyes that lurked behind sunglasses similar to those of his ex-wife, although in his case they were Porsche or Jaguar: racing-car chic. His black hair was tied back in a ponytail that didn’t suit him at all – he was well into his fifties – and he had a deep tan that must have come from his yacht in the Camargue. As well as designer jeans, he was wearing a dark blue velvet jacket that showed just a few flecks of dandruff on the shoulders, and a soft white shirt, open at the neck.

We had met him that same afternoon at his home in Edwardes Square, a twenty-minute walk from the police station through Holland Park. It was one of a terrace of houses that were not just similar but seemed to have been purposely designed to have no variations – the same proportions, the same arched doorways, the same black railings and, almost certainly, the same class of multimillionaire owners. We could tell which one was his from the car that was parked outside: a silver Lexus sedan with the registration number RJL 1.

Lockwood was on his own although the house showed signs of a cleaner and maybe even a housekeeper too, with expensive flower arrangements in vases, rigorously hoovered carpets and not a spot of dust to be seen. He had met us at the door, taking Hawthorne’s coat and hanging it on an art deco coat stand with a skull-handled umbrella – Alexander McQueen no less – poking out beneath. From there we had gone past an office and a home cinema and up to the first floor, which consisted of a single large space stretching the entire length of the building and offering views onto the square with its communal garden at the front and the smaller, very ornate, private garden behind.

This was the main living area, with an open-plan kitchen attached. A burst of October sunlight had flooded in, illuminating a thick, oyster-pink carpet, solid, quite traditional furniture, heavy, drooping curtains and a scattering of books on shelves. These included Two Hundred Haikus by Akira Anno, the book he had mentioned. A marble counter separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. The units could have come from one of those companies that manage to put three zeros on even a pedal bin and looked as if they had never been used.

‘This was your second marriage,’ Hawthorne said. He wasn’t impressed by the house or its owner. He was perched on the edge of the sofa, facing Lockwood, his hands clenched below his knees and his whole body tense, as if about to pounce.

‘That’s right.’ He was sober for a moment. ‘As I’m sure you know perfectly well, my first marriage came to a very unhappy end.’

Lockwood’s first wife had been Stephanie Brook, a Coronation Street actress who had reached the finals of Strictly Come Dancing. She had died of a drug overdose while she was on his yacht in Barbados and the tabloid press had been full of gossip about suicide – something he had always denied. I had looked at the stories on my phone before I had got here. Stephanie had been, according to one headline, ‘big, blonde and bubbly’. The opposite of Akira.

‘How did you meet your second wife?’ Hawthorne continued.

‘At Ronnie Scott’s. Someone introduced us.’

‘And you were married . . . ?’

‘On the eighteenth of February 2010, three days after my birthday, as it happened. That was the last happy birthday I was going to have for a while! Westminster registry office and then lunch at the Dorchester for two hundred people. It’s lucky I stipulated no presents or I’d have to send them all back!’ Again, he laughed at his own joke. ‘I have to tell you that when the police told me they were investigating a murder, for one brief, joyous moment I assumed someone must have done her in.’

‘Why is that?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Because she’s horrible, that’s why! She reminds me of a cat I used to have . . . a Siamese. It looked beautiful curled up in front of the fire and it would purr when you reached out to stroke it. But then a minute later, for no reason at all, it could twist round and sink its teeth into your hand. You never knew what was on its bloody mind.’

I remembered the way Akira had turned on me. ‘What happened to the cat?’ I asked.

‘Oh. I had it put down.’

‘So you must have been surprised when you were told that the victim was your solicitor, Richard Pryce,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I’ll say!’ He held up a finger, contradicting himself. ‘Well, he was a lawyer. And you know what they say about lawyers! What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?’

‘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.

Hawthorne 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 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.