The Word Is Murder

Sixteen Detective Inspector Meadows

With the end of the book in sight, I realised I needed more background. It was time to get in touch with Detective Inspector Charles Meadows.

In fact that turned out to be quite easy. I called the Metropolitan Police, gave his name and was immediately patched through – to his mobile, I think. I could hear a pneumatic drill in the background as we talked. At first, when I told him who I was and why I wanted to see him, he was suspicious. He started making excuses and would have hung up if I hadn’t, frankly, bribed him. That is, I offered him £50 for an hour of his time and suggested we meet at a pub where I could buy him a drink. Warily, he agreed, although I had a feeling he didn’t need much persuading. He didn’t like Hawthorne and would surely take any opportunity to do him down.

We met that evening at the Groucho Club in Soho. He’d asked for a central London location and I thought he’d be impressed by a private club known for its celebrity clientele. I also knew we could get a seat. He arrived ten minutes late, by which time I’d bagged a quiet corner upstairs. He ordered a vodka martini, which surprised me. The triangular glass looked ridiculous in his oversized hands and he took just three gulps before he needed – and asked for – another.

I had a lot of questions for him but first he wanted to know about me. How had I come across Hawthorne? Why was I writing a book about him? How much had he paid me? I told him how we had met and why I had agreed to do the job (without being paid) and made it clear that I had misgivings about Hawthorne too, that he wasn’t my friend.

Meadows smiled at this. ‘A man like Hawthorne doesn’t have that many friends,’ he said. ‘I’ve nicked thieves and rapists who are more popular than him.’

So I told him about Injustice, how we had worked together and how he had approached me effectively to write about his most recent case. I didn’t mention the encounter at Hay-on-Wye that had changed my mind. ‘It just sounded interesting,’ I said. ‘I write a lot about murder but I’ve never met anyone quite like Hawthorne.’

He smiled a second time. ‘There aren’t many people like Hawthorne around, thank God.’

‘Why exactly do you dislike him?’

‘What makes you think I dislike him? I don’t give a toss about him, to be perfectly honest. I just don’t think it’s right to employ people like him to do police work when he’s not a policeman.’

‘I’d like to know what happened. Why was he fired?’

‘Did you tell him you were seeing me?’

‘No, but he knows I’m writing about him. It’s what he asked me to do. And I told him I’d find out everything I could about him.’

‘Bit of a detective yourself, then.’

‘That had occurred to me.’

I wondered what anyone would make of us if they glanced in our direction. Built like a rugby player, with his broken nose, lank hair and cheap suit, Meadows didn’t look anything like the usual sort of person who drank at the Groucho. Like Hawthorne, there was something indefinably threatening about him. The waiter brought over a bowl of Twiglets and he plunged his hand into it. When he pulled it out again, the bowl was half empty.

‘What did he tell you about the murder squad?’ Crunch, crunch, crunch. The rest of our interview would be punctuated by those damned snacks being mechanically ground between his teeth.

‘He didn’t tell me anything. I know almost nothing about him. I’m not even sure where he lives.’

‘River Court, Blackfriars.’ That was only a mile or so from my own flat in Clerkenwell. ‘It’s quite a fancy place. Views out onto the Thames. I don’t know what the arrangement is. He doesn’t own it.’

‘Do you know the number?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘He told me he had a place in Gants Hill.’

‘He lost that when he split up from his wife.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ I paused. ‘Did you ever meet her?’

‘Once. She came to the office. About five foot eleven. Caucasian.’ He was describing her as if she were a suspect in an investigation. ‘She was quite pretty, fair hair, a few years younger than him. A bit nervous. She asked to see him and I took her to his desk.’

‘What did they talk about?’

‘I haven’t got the faintest idea. No-one ever hung around with Hawthorne. I made myself scarce.’

‘So what was he like to work with?’

‘You couldn’t work with him. That was his problem.’ Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. He wasn’t enjoying the Twiglets. He was just eating them. ‘Can I have another of these?’

He raised his glass. I signalled at the waiter.

‘Hawthorne came to us in 2005,’ he said. ‘He’d been in other sub-commands – in Sutton and Hendon – and they weren’t having him and we soon found out why. They say there’s a lot of competition working in murder. It’s true that the teams can be at each other’s throats. But at the same time, we rub along. We’ll drink together after work. We try to help each other out.

‘But he wasn’t like that. He was a loner and if you want the truth, nobody likes a loner. I’m not saying people didn’t respect him. He was bloody good at the job and he got results. We have something called the murder manual. You ever heard of that?’

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘Well, there’s no secret about it. You can download the whole thing on the internet if you want to look at it. It came out about twenty years ago and it’s the definitive guide to homicide investigation. It says that on page one. Basically, it’s the manual to everything from first response to crime scene strategy to house-to-house and post-mortem procedure and there are some investigating officers who carry it around with them like born-again Christians with their Bible. That’s the thing about our job. Process is king. The trouble is, you can take it too far. There was one man I knew, he was investigating a skeleton that had been dug up in the crypt of a church, victim of a murder that had taken place back in the fifties. He was trying to work out a CCTV strategy because that’s what it tells you to do in the manual – even though it was twenty-five years before CCTV was invented.

‘Now the thing about Hawthorne was, he did things his own way. He’d just disappear without so much as a by-your-leave, because he had a hunch or maybe it was just a lucky guess or Christ knows really how he knew. But almost every single time he was right. That was what pissed people off. He had an arrest record that was second to none.’

‘So what didn’t they like?’

‘Everything. On a day-to-day basis he was a pain in the arse. He was rude to the boss. He never clicked with anyone. And he didn’t drink. I’m not holding that against him but it didn’t help. Seven o’clock in the evening, he’d disappear. Maybe he went home to his wife although I heard whispers he was playing the field. It’s no matter. If he’d made a few more friends, maybe there’d have been someone to stand by him when the shit hit the fan.’

‘You told me not to go near any stairs.’

‘I shouldn’t have said that really. I couldn’t resist having a dig at Hawthorne.’ The third vodka martini arrived. He threw it back. ‘There was a man called Derek Abbott, a 62-year-old retired teacher, living in Brentford, who’d been arrested as part of Operation Spade. It was an international operation involving fifty countries, looking into the trafficking of child pornography by mail and internet. It had started in Canada and eventually there’d be more than three hundred arrests. Abbott was suspected of being the main distributor in the UK and so he’d been brought in for questioning. I’m not even sure what he was doing in Putney, but there he was.

‘Anyway, he was in the custody office, which was on the second floor. He’d been booked in, pockets searched and all the rest of it and someone had to take him to the interview room, which was in the basement. Normally, that would have been a civilian but there was nobody around and to this day I don’t quite know what happened but Hawthorne volunteered. He took him down a corridor to the staircase – I forgot to mention he’d decided that Abbott needed to be handcuffed. There was no need for that. He was in his sixties. He had no history of violence. Well, you’ve probably guessed what happened next and a guess is all we have because the CCTV wasn’t working in that part of the building. Abbott swore that Hawthorne tripped him. Hawthorne denied it. All I can tell you is that Abbott went head first down fourteen steps and because his hands were cuffed behind his back, there was nothing to break his fall.’

‘How badly was he hurt?’

Meadows shrugged. ‘Did his neck in, broke a few bones. He could have been killed and if so, Hawthorne would probably be in jail. As it was, Abbott was in no position to make too much fuss and basically the whole thing was hushed up. That said, it couldn’t all be brushed under the carpet. Too many people knew and, like I say, too many people had it in for him. So Hawthorne got the boot.’

There was nothing particularly surprising about this story. I had always been aware of a sort of smouldering violence in Hawthorne’s make-up, a sense of outrage, even – ironically – injustice. If he was going to kick someone down a flight of stairs, of course it would be a paedophile. It reminded me of his behaviour when we had visited Raymond Clunes.

‘Was he homophobic?’ I asked.

‘How would I know?’

‘He must have said something. Even if he wasn’t very sociable, he must have expressed an opinion – maybe if he’d read something in the newspaper or seen something on TV?’

‘No.’ Meadows looked in the Twiglet bowl. It was empty. ‘People don’t express opinions in the police force any more. You start mouthing off about gay people or black people, you’re going to be out on your ear before you know it. We don’t even use words like “manpower” any more. You’ve got to be aware of gender equality. Ten years ago, if you said something out of order you might get a clip on the ear. Not any more. These days, PC means more than police constable and you’d better know it.’

‘What happened to Abbott?’

‘I’ve no idea. He went to hospital and we never saw him again.’

‘There’s a detective chief inspector who’s been helping Hawthorne.’

‘That’d be Rutherford. He always had a soft spot for Hawthorne and he came up with this idea. It’s almost like a parallel investigation. You were at the crime scene. You saw how we had to leave everything in place for Hawthorne to come along and make his deductions. He reports directly to Rutherford. By-passes the whole system …’ Meadows stopped himself. He had said more than he intended. ‘Rutherford won’t talk to you,’ he added, ‘so I wouldn’t waste your time.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘I don’t know. Is there anything else you can tell me?’

‘No. But maybe there’s something you can tell me. You’ve been following Hawthorne around. Has he spoken to a man called Alan Godwin?’

I felt a cold sinking in my stomach. I had never thought that Meadows might try to use me to help him get ahead of Hawthorne in his investigation. It only occurred to me now that this might have been the real reason why he had agreed to meet me. I knew at once that I couldn’t tell him anything. If Meadows suddenly announced the identity of the killer, it would be a complete disaster. There would be no book!

At the same time, I was aware of a sense of loyalty to Hawthorne that must have developed over the past few days, because I’d certainly never noticed it before. We were a team. We – not Meadows or anyone else – were going to solve the crime. ‘I haven’t been to all the interviews,’ I said, weakly.

‘I’m not sure I believe that.’

‘Look … I’m sorry. I really can’t talk to you about what Hawthorne is doing. We made an agreement. It’s confidential.’

Meadows looked at me the way he might look at someone who has beaten up an old-age pensioner or killed a child. I had met him on three separate occasions and had considered him slow, inferior, even oafish. I suppose, in my mind’s eye, I had been casting him as a Japp, a Lestrade, a Burden: the man who never solves the crime. Now I saw that I had underestimated him. He could be dangerous too.

‘You don’t seem to know a lot about anything, Anthony,’ he said. ‘But I take it you’ve heard of obstruction.’

‘Yes.’

‘Obstructing a police officer in the execution of their duty under the Police Act of 1991. You could be fined a thousand pounds or sent to jail.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. And it was. This wasn’t Scotland Yard – it was the Groucho Club. And I had invited him here!

‘I’m asking you a simple question.’

‘Ask him,’ I said, holding his gaze. I had no idea what he was going to do. But then, quite suddenly, he relaxed. The cloud had passed. It was as if that little bit of nastiness had never happened.

‘I forgot to mention,’ he said. ‘My son got very excited when he heard I was going to meet you.’

‘Did he?’ I’d been drinking gin and tonic. I took a sip.

‘Yes. He’s a big fan of Alex Rider.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it.’

‘As a matter of fact …’ Suddenly Meadows was sheepish. He’d been carrying a leather briefcase and he reached into it. I knew what was going to happen next. Over the years, I’ve come to know the body language so well. Meadows pulled out a copy of Skeleton Key, the third Alex Rider novel. It was brand new. He must have stopped at a bookshop on the way to the club. ‘Would you mind signing it?’ he asked.

‘It’s a pleasure.’ I took out a pen. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Brian.’

I opened the book and wrote on the first page: To Brian. I met your dad and he almost arrested me. All good wishes.

I signed it and handed it back. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘I think you said you were going to pay me for my time.’

‘Oh yes.’ I reached for my wallet. ‘Fifty pounds,’ I said.

He looked at his watch. ‘Actually, we’ve been here an hour and ten minutes.’

‘As long as that?’

‘And it took me thirty minutes to get here.’

He left with £100. I’d also paid for three cocktails and signed his book. And what had I got in return? I wasn’t sure it had been much of a deal.