The Word Is Murder

Four Scene of the Crime

There was a uniformed policeman standing outside Diana Cowper’s home on the Monday morning when I presented myself there. A strip of that blue and white plastic tape – POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS – hung across the front door but someone must have told him I was coming because he let me in without even asking me my name. It was five days after the murder. Hawthorne had sent across copies of the police files and early interviews, which I had read over the weekend. He had attached a brief note telling me to meet him here at nine. I stepped round a puddle in the short path that led to the front door and went in.

Normally, when I visit a crime scene, it’s one that I have myself manufactured. I don’t need to describe it: the director, the locations manager, the designer and the props department will have done most of the work for me, choosing everything from the furniture to the colour of the walls. I always look for the most important details – the cracked mirror, the bloody fingerprint on the windowsill, anything that’s important to the story – but they may not be there yet. It depends which way the camera is pointing. I often worry that the room will seem far too big for the victim who supposedly lived there – but then ten or twenty people have to be able to fit inside during filming and the viewers never notice. In fact, the room will be so jammed with actors, technicians, lights, cables, tracks, dollies and all the rest of it that it’s quite difficult to work out how it will look on the screen.

Being the writer on a set is a strange experience. It’s hard to describe the sense of excitement, walking into something that owes its existence entirely to what happened inside my head. It’s true that I’m completely useless and that no matter where I stand I’m almost certain to be in the way but the crew is unfailingly polite and pleasant to me even if the truth is that we have nothing to say. My work finished weeks ago; theirs is just beginning. So I’ll sit down in a folding chair which never has my name on the back. I’ll watch from the side. I’ll chat to the actors. Maybe a runner will bring me a cup of tea in a styrofoam cup. And as I sit there, I’ll take comfort in the knowledge that this is all mine. I am part of it and it is part of me.

Mrs Cowper’s living room couldn’t have been more different. As I stepped onto the thick-pile carpet with its floral pattern etched out in pink and grey and took in the crystal chandelier, the comfortable, faux-antique furniture, the Country Life and Vanity Fair magazines spread out on the coffee table, the books (modern fiction, hardback, nothing by me) on the built-in shelves, I felt like an intruder. I was on my own, wandering through what might as well have been a museum exhibit as a place where someone had recently lived.

The police investigators had left those yellow numbers on plastic tags that mark out crime scenes but there weren’t very many of them, suggesting that there hadn’t been much to find. A full glass of what looked like water (12) had been left on an antique sideboard and next to it I noticed a credit card (14) with Diana Cowper’s name. Were they clues? It was hard to say, just seeing them there. The room had three windows, each of them with a pair of velvet curtains hanging all the way to the floor. Five of the curtains were tied back with knotted red cords and tassels. The curtain nearest the door (6) was hanging loose and it reminded me that not so long ago, a middle-aged woman had been strangled right where I was standing. It was all too easy to see her in front of me, her eyes staring, her fists pummelling the air. I looked down and noticed a stain on the carpet, marked by two more police numbers. Her bowels had loosened just before she died, the sort of detail I would normally have spared an ITV audience.

Hawthorne came into the room, dressed in the same suit as usual – and that’s one sentence I definitely don’t need to write again. He was eating a sandwich and it took me a moment to realise that he must have made it for himself, in Mrs Cowper’s kitchen, using her food. I stared at him.

‘What is it?’ he asked, with his mouth full.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Have you had breakfast?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

He must have heard the tone in my voice. ‘Shame to waste it,’ he said. ‘And she don’t need it any more.’ He waved the sandwich around the room. ‘So what do you think?’

I wasn’t sure how to respond. The room was very neat. Apart from the flat-screen television – on a stand rather than mounted on the wall – everything in the room belonged to a former age. Diana Cowper had lived an orderly life with the magazines placed just so and the ornaments – glass vases and china figurines – regularly dusted. She had even died tidily. There had been no last-minute struggle, no upturned furniture. The assailant had left just one mark: a muddy half-footprint on the carpet near the door. I could imagine her frowning if she had seen it. She had not been brutally beaten or raped. In many ways this murder had been sedate.

‘She knew the killer,’ Hawthorne said. ‘But he wasn’t a friend. He was a man, at least six feet tall, well built, with poor eyesight. He came here with the specific intention of killing her and he wasn’t here very long. She left him alone for a while and went into the kitchen. She hoped he was going to leave – but that was when he killed her. After he had finished, he searched the house and took a few things but that wasn’t the reason he was here. This was personal.’

‘How can you possibly know all that?’ Even as I spoke the words I was annoyed with myself. I knew it was exactly what he wanted me to ask. I had fallen right into the trap.

‘It was getting dark when he arrived,’ Hawthorne said. ‘There have been quite a few burglaries in the area. A middle-aged woman, living alone in an expensive part of town, wouldn’t open her door to a complete stranger. He was almost certainly a man. I’ve heard of women strangling women but – take it from me – it’s unusual. Diana Cowper was five foot three and it would have been helpful if he’d been taller than her. He fractured her hyoid bone when he killed her, which tells me he was strong, although I admit she was a bit of an old biddy so it might have snapped anyway.

‘How do I know he came here to kill her? Three reasons. He didn’t leave any fingerprints. It was a warm evening but he made sure he was wearing gloves. He didn’t stay here very long. He was only in this room and as you can see there are no coffee cups, no empty glasses of G and T. If he’d been a friend, six o’clock, they’d probably have had a drink together.’

‘He might have been in a hurry,’ I said.

‘Look at the cushions, Tony. He didn’t even sit down.’

I went over to the glass I’d seen and resisted the temptation to pick it up. The police and forensics must have been here and I was more than a little surprised that they’d left it behind. Wouldn’t they have taken it away for immediate analysis? I said as much to Hawthorne.

‘They’ve brought it back,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘For me.’ He smiled that bleak little smile of his, then finished the rest of the sandwich.

‘So someone did have a drink,’ I said.

‘It’s only water.’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘My guess is that he asked her for a glass of water before he left. That got her out of the room long enough for him to unhook the curtain and steal the tie. He couldn’t have done that with her watching.’

‘But he didn’t drink it.’

‘He didn’t want to leave his DNA.’

‘What about the credit card?’ I read the name, printed across it: MRS DIANA J. COWPER. It had been issued by Barclays bank. Its expiry date was November. Six months after hers.

‘That’s an interesting one. Why isn’t it in her purse with all the others? Did she take it out to pay for something and is that why she opened the door? There are no fingerprints on it except her own. So you’ve got a possible scenario. Someone asks her for payment. She takes out the credit card and while she’s fiddling around with it, he slips behind her and strangles her. But then, why isn’t it on the floor?’ He shook his head. ‘On the other hand, it may have nothing to do with what happened. We’ll see.’

‘You said the killer had poor eyesight,’ I said.

‘Yes—’

‘That was because he missed the diamond ring on her finger.’ I’d cut in before Hawthorne could explain everything down to the last detail. ‘It must be worth a fortune.’

‘No, no, mate. You’ve got that all wrong. He obviously wasn’t interested in the ring. Whoever did this nicked a few pieces of jewellery and a laptop to make it look like a burglary but he either forgot the ring or he couldn’t get it off her finger and decided not to bother with a pair of secateurs. There was no way he could have missed it. He was right up close when he was strangling her.’

‘Then how do you know his eyesight was bad?’

‘Because he stepped in the puddle outside the door, which is how he left a mark on the carpet. It looks like a man’s shoe, by the way. In every other respect he was careful. That was the one thing he missed. Aren’t you going to write all this down?’

‘I can remember most of it.’ I took out my iPhone. ‘But I’ll take some pictures if that’s OK.’

‘You go ahead.’ He pointed at a black and white photograph of a man in his forties, also on the sideboard. ‘Make sure you get a shot of him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Her husband, at a guess. Lawrence Cowper.’

‘Divorced?’

He looked at me sadly. ‘If they were divorced, she wouldn’t keep his picture, would she! He died twelve years ago. Cancer.’

I took the picture.

After that, I followed Hawthorne around the house as he went from room to room, photographing everything that he pointed out to me. We started in the kitchen, which had the look of a showroom: expensively stocked but underused. Diana Cowper had enough equipment to cook a Michelin-starred meal for ten but probably went to bed with a boiled egg and two pieces of toast. The fridge was covered with magnets: classical art and famous Shakespearean quotes. A metal tin, merchandise from the Narnia film Prince Caspian, stood on the fridge. Using a cloth to keep his hands from coming into contact with the metal, Hawthorne opened it and looked inside. It was empty apart from a couple of coins.

Everything was in exactly the right place. There were recipe books – Jamie Oliver and Ottolenghi – on the windowsill, notebooks and recent letters in a rack beside the toaster, a blackboard with notes for the week’s shopping. Hawthorne glanced through the letters then returned them. A wooden fish had been mounted on the wall above the counter with five hooks which Diana used to hang keys and he seemed particularly interested in these – there were four sets, each one of them labelled, and I duly took a picture, noting that according to the tags they opened the front door, the back door, the cellar and a second property called Stonor House.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘She used to live there before she moved to London. It’s in Walmer, Kent.’

‘A bit odd that she should keep the key …’

We found a household drawer full of older letters and bills, which Hawthorne glanced through. There was also a brochure for a musical called Moroccan Nights. The front cover showed a picture of a Kalashnikov machine gun with its shoulder strap lying in the shape of a heart. One of the producers, listed on the first page, was Raymond Clunes.

From the kitchen, we went upstairs to the bedroom, passing wallpaper with faint stripes and old theatre programmes in frames: Hamlet, The Tempest, Henry V, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Birthday Party. Damian Cowper had appeared in all of them. Hawthorne bulldozed ahead but I entered the bedroom with a sense of unease that surprised me. Once again I felt as if I was intruding. Only a week ago, a middle-aged woman would have undressed here, standing in front of the full-length mirror, sliding into the queen-sized bed with the copy of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire that was lying on the bedside table. Well, at least Mrs Cowper had been spared the slightly disappointing ending. There were two sets of pillows. I could see the indentation on one of them, made by her head. I could imagine her waking up, warm, perhaps smelling of lavender. Not any more. Death for me had always been little more than a necessity, something that moved the plot on. But standing in the bedroom of a woman who had so recently died, I could feel it right there beside me.

Hawthorne rifled through the drawers, wardrobes and bedside cabinets. He glanced briefly at a framed photograph of Damian Cowper, propped up on her make-up table. I vaguely recognised him, although to be honest I’m not good with faces and most of these young, handsome, English actors blend into one another … particularly once they’ve made the move to Hollywood. He discovered a safe behind Mrs Cowper’s shoe rack, scowled when he found it was still locked but then forgot it. I was fascinated by the way he searched for clues. He didn’t speak to me. He barely noticed I was there. He reminded me a little of a sniffer dog at an airport. There is never any reason to suppose that there will be drugs or bombs in any of the suitcases but the dog will examine every one of them and will be sure to find anything that’s there. Hawthorne had the same vagueness, the same certainty.

From the bedroom, he moved into the bathroom. There were about twenty little bottles gathered around the bath: she’d had the habit of taking the shampoo and bath gel from hotels. He opened a cabinet above the basin and took out three packets of temazepam – sleeping pills. He showed them to me.

‘Interesting,’ he said. It was the first word he had spoken for a while.

‘She was worried about something,’ I said. ‘She couldn’t sleep.’

I followed Hawthorne as he continued around the house. There were two guest rooms on the upper floor but they clearly hadn’t been used for a while. They were almost too clean with a chill in the air, the central heating turned down to save on bills. He took a brief look around, then went back out into the corridor.

‘What do you think happened to the cat?’ he muttered.

‘What cat?’ I asked.

‘The old lady’s cat. A Persian grey. One of those horrible bloody things that look like a medicine ball with fur.’

‘I didn’t see a photograph of a cat.’

‘Nor did I.’

He didn’t add anything and I was suddenly irritated. ‘If I’m going to write about you, you’re going to have to tell me how you work. It’s all very well making these pronouncements but you can’t just leave them hanging in the air.’

He frowned as if he was trying to make sense of what I had just said, then nodded. ‘It’s pretty bloody obvious, Tony. There was a feeding bowl down in the kitchen. And the pillow. Didn’t you notice?’

‘The indentation? I thought that was her head.’

‘I doubt it, mate. Not unless she had short, silky hair and smelled of fish. She slept on the left side of the bed. That was where the book was. The cat slept with her on the other side. It was obviously heavy, quite big. I’d guess a Persian grey. It’s just the sort of pet a woman like her would have – but it’s not here.’

‘Maybe the police took it.’

‘Maybe they did.’

We went back downstairs and as we re-entered the living room, I saw that we were no longer alone. A man in a cheap suit was sitting on the sofa with his legs apart and a file spread out across his lap. His tie was crooked and two of the buttons on his shirt were undone. I had a feeling he was a smoker. Everything about him was unhealthy: the colour of his skin, his thinning hair, broken nose, stomach pressing against the waistband of his trousers. He was about the same age as Hawthorne but bigger, flabbier. He could have retired from the boxing ring but I guessed he must be a police officer. I had seen his sort often enough on television – not in dramas but on the news, standing outside courtrooms, awkwardly reading a prepared statement to the camera.

‘Hawthorne,’ he said, without any enthusiasm.

‘Detective Inspector Meadows!’ Hawthorne had used the formal title ironically, as if it somehow wasn’t deserved. ‘Hello, Jack,’ he added.

‘I couldn’t believe it when they told me they’d brought you in on this one. It seems straightforward enough to me.’ He noticed me for the first time. ‘Who are you?’

I wasn’t quite sure how to introduce myself.

‘He’s a writer,’ Hawthorne said, stepping in. ‘He’s with me.’

‘What? Writing about you?’

‘Writing about the case.’

‘I hope you’ve got that authorised.’ He paused. ‘I left everything for you, like I was told. Brought stuff back. Laid it all out just like we found it. Complete waste of time if you ask me.’

‘I don’t, Jack. No-one ever does.’

He took that on the chin. ‘You had a chance to look round, then? Have you finished?’

‘I was just leaving.’ But Hawthorne stayed where he was. ‘You say it’s straightforward. So what are your thoughts?’

‘I’m not going to share my thoughts with you, if you don’t mind.’ He got lazily to his feet. He was a bigger man than I had thought. He towered over both of us. He had gathered up the pages and, almost as an afterthought, he handed them over. ‘They told me to give you these.’

The file contained photographs, forensic reports, witness statements and records of all the telephone calls made to and from both the house and Diana Cowper’s mobile phone in the past two weeks. Hawthorne glanced at the top page. ‘She sent a text message at six thirty-one.’

‘That’s right. Just before she was strangled. My killer was Aaaaagh …’ He smiled at his own joke. ‘I’ve read the text. It doesn’t make a lot of sense so I’ll leave you to work it out.’ He went over to the glass of water that I had noticed on the sideboard, next to the credit card. ‘I’ll take this now, if you don’t mind.’

‘Be my guest.’

For the first time I noticed that Meadows was wearing gloves. He had some sort of plastic cap which he used to seal the glass, then lifted it to take it with him.

‘The only fingerprints on it are hers,’ Hawthorne said. ‘And there’s no DNA. Nobody drank out of it.’

‘You’ve seen the report?’ Meadows seemed puzzled.

‘No need to see anything, mate. It’s bloody obvious.’ He smiled. ‘You look at that tin in the kitchen? Prince Caspian?’

‘A few coins. No fingerprints. Nothing.’

‘No surprise there either.’ Hawthorne glanced at the sideboard. ‘How about the credit card?’

‘What about it?’

‘When was it last used?’

‘You’ll find all her financial details in there.’ Meadows nodded at the file. ‘Fifteen thousand quid in her private account. Another two hundred thou’ in savings. She was doing all right.’ He remembered what Hawthorne had asked. ‘The last time she used the card was a week ago. Harrods. That’s where she bought her groceries.’

‘Smoked salmon and cream cheese.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘It was in the kitchen. I had it for breakfast.’

‘That’s evidence!’

‘Not any more.’

Meadows scowled. ‘Anything else you want to know?’

‘Yes. Did you find the cat?’

‘What cat?’

‘That answers the question.’

‘Then I’ll leave you to it.’ Meadows was holding the glass as if he were a magician about to make a goldfish appear. He nodded at me. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. ‘But I’d watch out for yourself when you’re around this one. Particularly if you go near any stairs.’

He was pleased with that. He took one last look around the room and then, still holding the glass in front of him, he left.