The Twist of a Knife

12 Another Knife

‘Why do I have to talk to you? I’ve already spoken to the police. I haven’t got anything else to say.’

Sky Palmer sucked on her vaping device and for a brief moment the end glowed an angry red. She hadn’t been happy from the moment I’d introduced her to Hawthorne, as if a murder investigation was nothing more than an inconvenience added to her busy diary. She threw down the vape and picked up her hairbrush, scratching at hair, which had gone from pink to her natural colour … a very light blonde.

‘I’m going on stage any minute,’ she went on. ‘I’m still doing my make-up. And I don’t really like to talk to anyone before I start. It messes with my head. I have to think about my character.’

From the first time I’d met her, I’d found Sky difficult to pin down: that mixture of youth and self-assurance, shyness and arrogance. It was even harder now, seeing her sitting there dressed as Nurse Plimpton. Her costume had been designed to turn her into a caricature. It was deliberately tight-fitting around her breasts and hips, with a tear in her black tights … one of the critics had even mentioned it. Tucked under her blouse, there was a plastic bag of fake blood – Kensington Gore – which would burst when she was stabbed (with a scalpel) at the end of Act I. It was all very Rocky Horror Picture Show and she carried it off perfectly on the stage. In the dressing room, though, it was disconcerting. She was trapped between the two characters and I wasn’t sure which was which.

I had to remind myself that Sky was very young, no more than twenty-five. Strolling into rehearsals in her leggings and boas, knee-high boots, gloves with the fingers cut off and every day a different piece of antique jewellery that she might have inherited from a wealthy aunt, she seemed to be modelling herself on Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Maybe that was how she saw herself, skating along the surface of life, admired by all. Hawthorne was looking at her dubiously. He wasn’t impressed.

Her rose-gold telephone rang and without a glance in our direction, she picked it up and answered it.

‘Yeah … Yeah … No, I can’t talk to you right now. I’m about to go on and I’ve got someone with me. No …’

But although she didn’t talk, she listened, holding the phone with her little finger pointing in the air.

I took in the rest of the dressing room while I waited for her, wondering what Hawthorne would make of it all. Somehow, I didn’t think he would find it too difficult to work out Sky Palmer’s background, her family history and everything she’d done in the last ten years, given the multiple clues scattered around.

There was barely a surface that wasn’t crowded out. She had been sent so many flowers she could have opened a shop – or perhaps a funeral parlour – including a huge bunch of roses that had been shoved into a single vase and were struggling to survive. Most of her good luck cards were expensive: handmade rather than mass-market. I’d already noticed Sky’s Gucci umbrella and Cartier watch. The luxury brand names continued with crystal flasks of perfume, hand cream in porcelain tubs, Fortnum & Mason biscuits and loose-leaf tea in fancy tins, liqueur chocolates, soap and scent diffusers, those weird stick things that poke out of a jar of oil, dispensing, to my mind, no scent at all. Three bottles of champagne and a bottle of gin had been lined up on one shelf and there were a dozen glasses that didn’t appear to have been washed.

None of this connected with what I knew of her. She had spent three years appearing as a barmaid in EastEnders, and during rehearsals she’d always spoken with an Estuary English accent, although dismissing us just now, she had been much more Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I thought I’d had a good understanding of everyone I’d met so far – Tirian, Jordan, Arthur and Olivia Throsby. But Sky was something else. A mystery within a mystery.

‘This is a fifteen-minute call for members of the Mindgame company. You have fifteen minutes to curtain up. Thank you.’

It was a disembodied voice that I presumed belonged to Pranav, the stage manager. It came over the intercom system and for the first time I noticed the speaker set high up in a corner of the room. Sky heard it. ‘I’ve gotta go! Bye!’ She disconnected the telephone and set it down, then turned to us. ‘I’m really sorry. I have to get ready.’

‘Come on, darling. I’ve seen the play. You’re not on for the first fifteen pages.’ When Hawthorne was annoyed, he often slipped into language that I would not have used myself. Perhaps he did it deliberately, to show he didn’t care. ‘We need to ask you a few questions about Harriet Throsby,’ he added.

‘I told you. I’ve got nothing to say. I hardly knew her.’

‘Did you know where she lived?’

‘Why are you even asking me that? Are you accusing me of something? Yes, I knew where she lived. We all did.’ She looked directly at me. ‘You showed me that article in the magazine.’

‘What?’

Once again, I felt the ground opening up beneath my feet. How many more ways could I be found guilty of this crime?

‘House & Garden. You showed it to me during the first week of rehearsals. There was a picture of her house. The article said she lived next to the canal … near a tunnel.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’ I exclaimed. ‘I never saw the magazine. I didn’t know her address …’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

I turned to Hawthorne for help. He glanced at me and shook his head a little sadly – but his attention was still fixed on Sky. ‘No one’s calling you anything,’ he said. He waited until she had calmed down. ‘Tell me what happened in the green room, when you all got together after the first performance.’

‘You mean … the party?’

‘I’m talking about the review.’

That shook her. ‘Yes. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it now. But Tirian snatched my phone before I could stop him and he showed it to everyone. I had no idea it was going to be so cruel,’ she added, defensively.

‘It certainly put a crimp in the evening,’ Hawthorne agreed.

‘But it didn’t have anything to do with Harriet being killed!’ Sky stared at Hawthorne. ‘Do you seriously think she was murdered because she didn’t like the play? That’s ridiculous. And I’m not going to be held responsible. If there was someone in the room who was crazy enough to kill her, they’d have killed her at the weekend when what she’d written was published in the newspaper, so telling everyone what she’d written wouldn’t have made any difference.’

Hawthorne wasn’t giving up. ‘We can’t be sure of that, Sky. It had been a long day. A lot of alcohol. A late night. Maybe you inadvertently triggered something. You saw what happened for yourself.’

Her phone pinged. She glanced at the screen and I could see that she wanted to pick it up and respond. She turned it face down.

‘Are you talking about Jordan?’ she asked. ‘Maybe you should be talking to him, not me. He’s the one with the temper. Fighting with Tirian. Him and his wife … always shouting at her down the phone. And what he did to me during rehearsals! Have you heard about that? You should have seen the bruises.’ She rubbed her arm, realising that she’d said too much. ‘But that thing with the knife was just stupid,’ she went on. ‘He wouldn’t kill anyone. He doesn’t have it in him. I quite like him, really. When he isn’t going on about his boring stagecraft or boasting about his career – American House of Horror and all the rest of it – he can be all right. He bought me flowers. And he wasn’t the only one who was upset that night. Harriet slagged Ewan off too and he was just as angry.’

‘He didn’t seem that upset to me,’ I remarked. I was still reeling from what she had said about the magazine. I thought back to the rehearsals in Dalston and the tech run-through here at the Vaudeville. I had absolutely no memory of handing her anything. ‘He made a joke about it. He didn’t seem to care about the review at all.’

‘You don’t know him,’ Sky said. ‘He never likes people to know what he’s thinking, but it’s all happening inside his head. He’s the complete opposite of Jordan.’

‘How well do you know Ewan Lloyd?’ Hawthorne cut in.

‘This is the second time I’ve worked with him. He’s OK. I did Macbeth with him in Yorkshire.’

‘What did you play?’

‘There were only six of us in the cast. I played Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, Fleance, the Porter and all three witches.’

‘Was that a good experience?’

‘Not really. It never stopped raining and nobody came.’

‘This is your ten-minute call. Ten minutes to curtain up. Thank you.’

‘There’s one thing I don’t quite understand.’ Hawthorne spoke softly … always a dangerous sign. ‘Where exactly did you find the review?’

‘It was on my phone.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ He looked at her sadly. ‘I’ve searched the internet and it’s not there. It’s not anywhere. And when you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense, does it. Why would Harriet Throsby have posted her review on social media if she was being paid by the Sunday Times? They’ve got a paywall. They wouldn’t want it leaking out. The only way you could have read what she’d written was if you’d had access to her computer.’ He paused. ‘Or knew someone who did.’

There was a pause. For the first time, Sky looked vulnerable.

‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘There was a website …’

‘What website?’

‘I didn’t look.’

Another pause. Hawthorne waited. Sky said nothing.

‘I think you need to remember that this is a murder investigation,’ he reminded her. As always, he leaned heavily on the first part of the word ‘murder’, as if he was relishing it. ‘You can explain yourself to me or you can talk to the police. It’s your choice.’

‘I’m not talking to you.’

Hawthorne smiled. ‘Then we’ll do it the other way. I’ll put you in touch with Cara Grunshaw. It may not work out too well for you, though. Obstructing a murder investigation is never a good idea. I hope you’ve got an understudy ready to take over your part. You can go to prison for that.’

He got up, as if to leave.

‘Wait,’ Sky said. I could see her weighing up her options. It didn’t take her long to realise that she didn’t have any. ‘Olivia sent it to me,’ she said.

‘Harriet’s daughter!’ I muttered.

‘Yes.’

Hawthorne sat down again. ‘Why would she do that? Do the two of you know each other?’

Sky’s shoulders slumped. ‘We’ve met a couple of times.’

‘Where?’

‘The first time was at the Barbican Theatre. It was a production of The Crucible. As usual, Harriet barged her way into the first-night party. Why did she do that? She must have known that nobody wanted her there. Olivia was dragged along too. I could see she was embarrassed. We got talking and we sort of hit it off. We had a lot in common.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, a mother we couldn’t stand, for a start. A stepmother in my case. If you want to make friends with someone, that’s a good place to begin. We kept in touch on Facebook. We met up for a drink a couple of times. It was no big deal. I didn’t even ask her to send me that review. She just thought I’d like to see it.’

‘She hacked into her mum’s computer?’ Hawthorne sounded shocked, as if he had somehow forgotten that only that morning he’d raided the Police National Computer and shut down their forensic laboratory in Lambeth.

‘She didn’t hack into anything,’ Sky protested. ‘She knows the password. She just wanted to let me know that her mum hadn’t slagged me off. And she didn’t, incidentally. She was quite nice about me. The mistake I made was telling everyone that I had it. That was stupid of me. When the police told me what had happened, I couldn’t believe it at first … that Harriet was dead and that someone had killed her. But it never even occurred to me that it might be one of us, despite what Jordan had said. It just didn’t seem possible.’

Her phone pinged a second time – but whoever was trying to reach Sky was concealed from us.

‘The police came to your house?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Victoria Park.’

‘You were there all Wednesday morning? Around ten o’clock, for example?’

She looked down. ‘That’s when it happened,’ she said quietly. When she met Hawthorne’s eyes again, she was defiant. ‘I was at home all day. I was on my own. Why don’t you check the CCTV cameras? There are loads of them down my street, and all around the canal where Harriet lived, for that matter. I didn’t go anywhere.’

‘You live alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Renting?’

Sky hesitated. She was embarrassed, but there was no point lying. ‘It’s my own place,’ she admitted.

‘Acting doing well for you, then,’ Hawthorne remarked.

‘My dad helped me buy it.’

‘And who is your dad?’

She didn’t want to tell him but she had no choice. The police would have probably found out all about her. She was, after all, a suspect in a murder case … or had been until I’d been arrested. I wondered if Hawthorne already knew the answer to his question. It wouldn’t have surprised me.

Sky’s father was the lead singer of one of the UK’s biggest rock groups. Even I recognised the name when she told us. Immediately, everything about her made sense: all the luxury goods, owning a house in her twenties, her ambiguity about the play. She didn’t need to work. She had quite possibly drifted into acting because of her father’s connections in showbiz. It would have been that or some sort of PR or work in a posh Mayfair art gallery. I also remembered his divorce, which had been all over the papers. He had left his wife for a model not all that much older than his daughter.

‘He didn’t come to the first night,’ Hawthorne said. He knew that because it would have been obvious if he’d been at the theatre. Keith would have told us. There would have been paparazzi crowding around the entrance.

‘He didn’t even know it was happening. He’s on tour.’

She looked at us defiantly, but there were tears in her eyes. In a few words she had told us everything we needed to know about her relationship with her father.

‘This is your five-minute call, ladies and gentlemen. Five minutes to curtain.’

‘Can you go now? I really do need to get ready.’

There was nothing more to be said and we did as she asked. I felt a little sorry for Sky as we left the room. I’ve met a few young people with famous parents and it’s often the case that the problems outweigh the privileges.

We went out through the fire escape that led into Lumley Court. The door opened with a push-bar mechanism and didn’t set off any alarms. We hadn’t signed in when we arrived, so there was no need to go back past the stage-door manager’s office. As soon as we were outside, I turned on Hawthorne. ‘I’ve got to explain to you about that magazine—’ I began.

Hawthorne shook his head. ‘You should have told me earlier, Tony.’

‘I’d forgotten all about it. It must have happened during the rehearsals in Dalston. There were loads of things on my mind. Maybe someone passed me a magazine and I passed it to her, but I didn’t look inside. I didn’t even look at the cover.’ I realised I was burbling. ‘I had no idea where Harriet lived until Cara told me,’ I concluded, feebly.

‘I believe you, mate.’ Hawthorne considered. ‘It might not be so easy to persuade them in court, but maybe the jury will take pity on you. I mean, you’ve certainly stacked up the evidence against yourself.’

We walked on in silence, making our way back to the Strand. The front of the theatre was deserted now, but it was exactly seven thirty and the first act would have begun. I glanced inside and saw the box-office manager, sitting on his own. He didn’t look happy.

‘Hawthorne …’ I’d had a thought while I was in the dressing room and I expressed it now. ‘Sky Palmer was in Macbeth.’

‘I heard.’

‘But you must realise what it means! She must have been given one of the original daggers. Ahmet had a whole lot made for the cast in Edinburgh.’ I thought back to what she had said. ‘And Ewan Lloyd directed it. So he must have a second dagger too.’

‘I’d sort of figured that one out, Tony. The trouble is, it doesn’t really help us.’

‘Why not?’

‘Your producer could have had another dozen knives made. Friends, sponsors, costume designer, front-of-house manager and so on. But you’ve lost yours. And the one that killed Harriet Throsby had your fingerprints on it.’

I felt deflated. ‘That’s true.’

Hawthorne looked at his watch. ‘Ahmet’s waiting for us in his office. I said we’d call in tonight.’

‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ I was exhausted. I’d had no sleep the night before, I’d spent half the day in jail and we’d visited one suspect after another, including – in the past hour – the entire cast of Mindgame.

‘It’s up to you, mate. But the clock’s still ticking. The DNA results could come in any time. And if you want to head back to Tolpuddle Street …’

The custody centre. Cara Grunshaw. Suddenly I was awake again. ‘No. Let’s go.’

We continued past the front of the theatre. I could imagine Tirian Kirke onstage, describing Dr Farqhuar’s office. Would the line about the books have got a laugh? I noticed my name in lights. Another letter had fused. I’d been reduced to ANONY. One more short circuit and I’d be completely anon. Which, given the reviews, was probably what I deserved.

Hawthorne flagged down a taxi and once again we were on our way.