The Twist of a Knife

7 The Custody Clock

‘So, how are you feeling?’ Cara Grunshaw asked, managing to load that normally innocent question with an extraordinary amount of malevolence.

Beside her, Derek Mills smiled unpleasantly.

It was the following day, and I was sitting in yet another horrible room, this one designed for interrogations. It was soundproofed, with a two-tone wall – brown on grey – the two dreary shades separated by a black panic strip. I was being video-recorded, sitting on one side of a metal table with the two of them opposite. All of this was predictable. But what had surprised me was how long my arresting officers had left me on my own before calling me in for this interview. The custody clock was ticking. Ninety-six hours! That was how long they could keep me, according to Hawthorne. He’d also told me they would have to get authorisation from a superintendent after twenty-four.

I looked at my watch. It was already eleven o’clock. I’d been twiddling my thumbs all morning, but finally I could see a way out of this nightmare. Unless the superintendent was as mad as they were, he or she would understand that I was completely blameless and that Cara Grunshaw was pursuing a personal vendetta. Apart from the murder weapon, there was no evidence whatsoever to implicate me. Ahmet had handed out at least five of those absurd, cheaply made daggers, and for all I knew, he could have a dozen more at home. And did she really think I would murder Harriet Throsby simply because she had given me a bad review? It’s critics who kill writers, never the other way round.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I said.

It might have given Cara some measure of satisfaction, leaving me here the whole morning. But I could put up with it because I was counting the hours before I walked out of here. I was sure of it. I would get a taxi home. I would have a bath and put all this behind me.

So why was Mills still smiling?

Cara Grunshaw produced a sealed bag. Inside it I saw one of the Macbeth knives, coated in blood that had turned brown and smeared itself across the plastic. Seeing it like this only reminded me what an absurd gift it had been in the first place. It wasn’t even as though it was simply an ornament. It was actually lethal!

‘This is the dagger that killed Harriet Throsby,’ Cara said. ‘It’s your dagger. We have examined all the others and this is the only one that has a faulty design. More to the point, your dagger is the only one that’s unaccounted for. How do you explain that?’

‘I left it in the green room,’ I said. ‘Anyone could have picked it up.’

‘You told us you took it home,’ Mills remarked, with evident satisfaction.

‘I thought I had. I must have made a mistake.’

‘You lied to us.’

‘No. It was a mistake.’

‘We found a set of fingerprints on this dagger,’ Cara told me. She was holding the bag in front of her as if she could actually see them. ‘They are your fingerprints, Anthony. They’re a perfect match.’

‘I held the dagger when I was at the Vaudeville. I’m not denying that.’

‘And you’re saying someone stole it. But there are no other fingerprints on the hilt, which means that they would have had to handle it very carefully. Do you think they were deliberately trying to incriminate you?’

‘I suppose that’s possible.’

‘Payback for writing such a crap play,’ Mills sneered.

‘Do you know where Harriet Throsby lived?’ Grunshaw asked.

I sighed. ‘Yes. Twenty-seven Palgrove Gardens, Little Venice.’

Her eyes widened at this admission. ‘How did you know that?’ she demanded.

‘You told me when you arrested me.’

Cara thought back. I saw the calculation in her eyes. ‘I didn’t mention Little Venice.’

‘You said W9. Anyway, I know where Palgrove Gardens is. I often walk my dog along the Regent’s Canal and it’s close to the tunnel.’

Was I deliberately digging my own grave? Mills leapt on me. ‘So you admit you know the vicinity.’

‘I didn’t know Harriet lived there,’ I replied. ‘Until you told me.’

‘But you could have known. There was a feature on her in House & Garden magazine in January – three months ago. “A Great Place to Live”. It didn’t give the address, but they mentioned the area where she lived and they were stupid enough to show the front of the house, along with the number. So it wouldn’t have taken you long to track it down.’

‘Except that I’ve never read House & Garden.’

‘Did you have any contact with Harriet Throsby when she came to the Vaudeville?’ Cara asked. I should have recognised her technique. She was deliberately and very quickly changing the subject, giving me no time to think.

‘No.’

‘You didn’t shake hands – or embrace?’

‘No!’

‘Forensics found a hair on her blouse … the blouse she was wearing when she was killed. We’ve sent it for tests, but on first examination, it’s the same colour and length as yours.’

‘It can’t be mine,’ I said. ‘I never went anywhere near her. And I was nowhere near her house.’

‘You can say that now,’ Cara said. ‘But once we have a DNA match, it’ll all be over. And there’s something else. Show him, Derek.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Mills presented his next magic trick. This time I found myself looking at a black-and-white photograph of a man walking along the towpath next to the canal. The picture was taken by a CCTV camera and from behind, but I saw at once that the man had a very similar height and build to me. He was also wearing a grey puffer jacket with the hood up. I had a piece of clothing just like that.

‘This was taken at half past nine yesterday morning, approximately thirty minutes before Harriet Throsby was stabbed to death. The camera was positioned round the corner from where Ms Throsby resided, close to the Maida Hill Tunnel. Do you recognise the man in the picture?’

‘No.’

‘It looks very much like you.’

‘It can’t be me. At half past nine yesterday morning, I was in bed.’

‘But you have no witnesses to that. We only have your word for it.’

I had a sense of the clouds closing in and suddenly that twenty-four hours was looking more like twenty-four years. The weapon was mine. It had my fingerprints on it. A man very similar to me had been photographed in the area at the time of the murder. My hair was on the body. I had a motive: the bad review.

‘It will make this a lot easier for you if you confess,’ Cara Grunshaw said.

‘And the judge will take it into account too,’ Mills added.

They both sounded so reasonable.

‘Go to hell,’ I said. There was no point antagonising them, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d had enough.

After that, I was taken back to the custody cell. I knew what was going to happen next. Cara was waiting until the DNA on the stray hair had been analysed by the laboratory and then, assuming there was a match with mine, she would charge me with murder. Was there any way one of my hairs could have ended up on the dead body of a theatre critic in Little Venice? It was impossible. I hadn’t come into contact with her at the theatre. And even if someone had set out to frame me, as Cara had suggested, there was surely no way they could have plucked it out of my head without my knowing.

The next few hours passed very slowly. The laughing man and the screaming woman had gone, but I had a new neighbour who made up for their absence by sobbing, chanting and slamming something – perhaps his head – against the wall. I’d had very little sleep the night before, but somehow I must have managed to nod off because the next thing I knew, the door had banged open and Cara Grunshaw and Derek Mills had marched in, the custody sergeant lingering behind. I knew at once that something had gone wrong … at least, as far as they were concerned. Cara was holding a pile of my own clothes.

‘We’re letting you go,’ she announced.

‘So you know I’m innocent,’ I said.

‘We know you did it. The motive, the murder weapon, the opportunity … they all point to you, and the DNA result will screw you once and for all. But it seems you’ve had a bit of luck. We’ve got a computer problem at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Lambeth. We’re not going to get your results until the end of play tomorrow and the superintendent has decided you’re not a flight risk, so we don’t need to hold you.’

‘You still have to surrender your passport,’ Mills added, nastily.

‘And there’s someone here to see you.’

They waited outside while I got changed. Already feeling more human, I followed them out of the cell, back down the corridor, then through the barred gate and, finally, the metal door into the room where I had first been processed.

Hawthorne was waiting for me.

I felt a sense of something close to affection. Right then, I almost wanted to throw my arms around his shoulders and hug him – something that would have been unthinkable in normal circumstances. I didn’t understand how he came to be there and at that moment it didn’t occur to me that he might have had anything to do with my release. All I could think was that I had called him and, eventually, he had come.

‘How are you doing, Tony, mate?’ he enquired, cheerfully.

‘I’ve been better,’ I growled.

‘I thought you might like a lift out of here.’

‘Have you got a car?’

‘I’ve got a cab.’

As usual, of course, I’d pay.

‘You two enjoy yourselves,’ Grunshaw muttered. ‘And just remember, “Tony”, we can rearrest you at any time.’

‘Come off it, Detective Inspector!’ Hawthorne looked amused. ‘You know as well as I do that Tony had nothing to do with the death of Harriet Throsby, whatever evidence you’ve managed to cobble together against him. First of all, he could never hurt anyone. Look at him! The only thing he’s ever hit in his life is a computer keyboard. He writes about murder but I’ve seen him get queasy at the sight of blood. And if he killed every critic who had something bad to say about his work, there’d be hundreds of corpses littered across the country.’

‘Why don’t you say something nice about me?’ I muttered.

‘Well, if he didn’t do it, who did?’ Cara asked.

‘I suppose that’s what I’m going to have to find out for you, like I did last time. And maybe you should think about that. Another false arrest coming so soon after the last one isn’t going to look too good on your CV, is it!’

‘There is no one else, Hawthorne,’ Cara sneered. ‘You can investigate if you want to, but you’d better make it quick because as soon as we have the DNA evidence, I’m going to fall on him like a ton of bricks.’

‘You’ve definitely got the physique for it, Cara.’

‘Get out of here. Both of you.’

There was a taxi waiting for us outside the custody centre. I expected we’d be going back to Farringdon, but to my surprise it took us past my flat and on to Hawthorne’s place at Riverside View. I used the journey to tell him what had happened in the last few days – at least, from my own perspective. What I described was pretty much everything I have written so far here. Hawthorne said little. He was looking away from me, gazing out of the window, and I wondered if he was even listening. But that was his way. When he interrogated people, he often seemed to be distracted, although there was never a single word, not even a nuance, that he missed.

We sat down in the kitchen where we had met a few days ago and he made me a cup of coffee. It felt very good to be sitting there, in spotless surroundings, in my own clothes, acting normally, with nobody screaming or praying next door. Better still, Hawthorne was on my side. At least, he seemed to be.

He brought the coffee over. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

‘I’m much better,’ I admitted. ‘Thanks for coming to Tolpuddle Street.’

‘I couldn’t leave you in there on your own. It’s not a nice place, is it!’

‘You can say that again. Have you got a biscuit?’

‘No.’

I’d barely eaten for a day and a half.

Hawthorne was sitting opposite me and I felt him examining me, his eyes boring into mine. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘There’s something I’ve got to know,’ he said. He grimaced. ‘Did you do it? Did you kill Harriet Throsby?’

‘What?’ I almost choked on my coffee.

‘I hate to ask you, mate. I mean, I don’t want to be nasty about this, but it’ll be a waste of both our time if it turns out you did actually stick in the knife.’

‘How can you possibly think that!’ I struggled to find the words. ‘After what you said to Grunshaw …’

‘I had to say that to get you out of there. I had to make it sound like I believed you. But the truth is, I wouldn’t blame you. Harriet was really nasty about your play.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe in future you should stick to books.’

‘I didn’t go near her.’

‘You may say that – but the trouble is, Grunshaw’s got enough evidence to hang you out to dry. And when the DNA results come in …’

‘It’s not my hair. It can’t be. I never went near her.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, mate. I’ve already seen the analysis. It’s a definite match – 99.999 per cent probability.’

‘That’s impossible! Wait a minute …’ There were so many different thoughts in my head that they could have been having a massive punch-up, trying to get my attention. I played back what he had said. ‘How do you know that?’ I asked. ‘Cara hadn’t even seen the lab report. Do you know someone who works there?’

‘Not exactly …’ Hawthorne was being coy. There was something he didn’t want to tell me.

The answer arrived a moment later.

I noticed a movement at the door and, unannounced, Kevin Chakraborty came in. He was the teenager who lived with his mother in a flat one floor below. He was steering himself in the motorised wheelchair he was forced to use: he had been born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which, inch by inch, was stealing away his muscles and his ability to move. But as helpless as he might look to some, he was actually a brilliant computer hacker – whether it was my phone, the Police National Computer or the five million CCTV cameras across the UK. It would have been quite wrong to think of Kevin as disabled. He was one of the most spectacularly enabled people I had ever met.

‘Hello, Mr Hawthorne,’ he said. ‘I heard you arrive.’

‘No, you didn’t, Kevin. You’ve connected yourself to the video entry system and you watched us come in.’ Hawthorne was pleased to see him. ‘We were talking about you. Or I think we were about to.’

‘Kevin …’ I’d worked out exactly what had happened. ‘Have you hacked into the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Lambeth?’ I demanded. I could have been a parent telling off a naughty boy.

‘It’s nice to see you, Anthony.’ Kevin was ignoring my question. He pushed the lever on his wheelchair and rolled towards me. ‘Mr Hawthorne told me you’d been arrested. I must say, I was jolly surprised. I never thought you had it in you to kill anyone.’

‘He says he’s innocent,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I got the DNA results,’ Kevin went on. ‘It’s a definite match. It’s your fingerprints too. I’ve got a photograph of them.’ The thing about Kevin was that he had a boyish enthusiasm for what he was doing and seemingly no awareness that it was a criminal offence. This, combined with his Bollywood good looks and, I suppose, the wheelchair, made it easy to forget how dangerous he was.

‘How long have we got?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘I took down their servers with a general denial-of-service attack,’ Kevin replied. ‘It means they’ve got the information, but they can’t access or share it—’

‘Wait a minute!’ I interrupted. ‘What exactly are you talking about?’ Then I remembered. ‘Cara said she had a computer problem. Was that you? What’s a denial-of-service attack?’

Kevin glanced at Hawthorne as if asking his permission to reply. Hawthorne nodded. ‘We had to buy you time,’ he explained. ‘So I hacked into the system and installed a bot. The bot made all the computers come together in a botnet, which then flooded the servers with, like, millions of connection requests: spam, porn, the complete works of Shakespeare … that sort of thing. It’s called a DDoS attack. It’s crude but effective.’

‘You brought down the police computer!’

‘They’ll get it sorted eventually. They’ve already called in a DDoS mitigation company and they’ll be scrubbing all the inbound traffic, sorting out the load balancers, firewalls and routers—’

‘How long?’ Hawthorne repeated.

‘Twenty-four hours, definitely. Probably forty-eight.’

‘Thank you, Kevin.’

‘A pleasure, Mr Hawthorne.’ Before Kevin left, he turned to me. ‘I really liked The Word is Murder,’ he said. ‘Am I going to be in the next one?’

‘Not unless you want to end up in jail,’ I replied.

‘Maybe best not, then.’ He pushed the electronic control and, with a gentle whirring sound, propelled himself out of the room.

‘I hope you realise he’s stuck his neck out for you,’ Hawthorne said, once he’d gone.

‘I’m very grateful,’ I replied. And I was.

‘So we’d better get moving then.’ Hawthorne was already on his feet, reaching for his cigarettes and front-door keys.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You heard what Kevin said. He’s bought you forty-eight hours maximum before Cara rearrests you. If you didn’t murder Harriet Throsby, that’s how long we’ve got to find out who did.’