The Word Is Murder

Five The Lacerated Man

‘What did he mean … that crack about the stairs?’

‘Charlie Meadows is a pillock. He didn’t mean anything.’

‘Charlie? You called him Jack.’

‘Everyone does.’

We were sitting outside a café close to Fulham Broadway station – fortunately the sun was shining – so Hawthorne could smoke. He had gone through the documents that Meadows had given him, sharing them with me too. There were photographs of Diana Cowper before and after she had died and I was shocked by the difference. The corpse that Andrea Kluvánek had discovered bore almost no resemblance to the smart, active socialite who had invested in theatre and eaten lunch in expensive restaurants in Mayfair.

Andrea’s statement was attached, reproduced word for word in her broken English. There was a photograph of her: a slim, round-faced woman, quite boyish, with short, spiky hair, staring defensively at the camera. Hawthorne had told me she had a criminal record but I found it difficult to imagine her murdering Diana Cowper. She was too small.

There was plenty of other material too. In fact it occurred to me that it might be possible for Hawthorne to solve the murder right here at this table over his coffee and cigarette. I hoped not. If that happened, it would be a very short book. Perhaps it was with that thought in mind that I wanted to talk about other things first.

‘How do you know him?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘Meadows!’

‘We worked in the same sub-command in Putney. He had the office next to mine and although I always held my nose, there were a few times I had to walk down the dark side.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It’s when you have to ask another team for help. When we were doing house-to-house … that sort of thing.’ Hawthorne seemed anxious to move on. ‘Do you want to talk about Diana Cowper?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to talk about you.’

He gazed at the paperwork spread out on the table. He didn’t need to say anything. This was all that mattered to him. But for once, I was on my home ground and I was determined. ‘The only way this is going to work is if you allow me into your life,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to know about you.’

‘Nobody’s interested in me.’

‘If that were true, I wouldn’t be here. If it’s true, the book won’t sell.’ I watched as Hawthorne lit another cigarette. For the first time in thirty years, I was tempted to ask for one myself. ‘Listen to me,’ I went on, carefully. ‘They’re not called murder victim stories. They’re not called criminal stories. They’re called detective stories. There’s a reason for that. I’m taking a big risk here. If you solve this crime right now, I won’t have anything to write about. Worse than that, if you don’t solve it at all, it’ll be a complete waste of time. So getting to know you matters. If I know you, if I can find something that makes you more … human, at least that’s a start. So you can’t just brush aside every question I ask you. You can’t hide behind this wall.’

Hawthorne shrank away. It was funny how, with his pale skin and those troubled, almost childlike eyes, he could make himself seem vulnerable. ‘I don’t want to talk about Jack Meadows. He didn’t like me. And when the shit hit the fan, he was happy to see me go.’

‘What shit? What fan?’

‘When I left.’

That was all he was going to say, so I made a mental note to follow it up later. Obviously, now wasn’t the right time. I opened the notebook which I had brought with me and took out a pen. ‘All right. While we’re sitting here, I want to ask you a few questions about yourself. I don’t even know where you live.’

He hesitated. This really was going to be blood out of a stone. ‘I’ve got a place in Gants Hill,’ he said at length. I’d often driven through Gants Hill, a suburb in north-east London, on the way to Suffolk.

‘Are you married?’

‘Yes.’ I could see that there was more to come but it took a while to arrive. ‘We’re not together any more. Don’t ask me about that.’

‘Do you support a football team?’

‘Arsenal.’ He said it without much enthusiasm and I suspected that if he was a football fan, he was a fairly casual one.

‘Do you go to the cinema?’

‘Sometimes.’ He was getting impatient.

‘What about music?’

‘What about it?’

‘Classical? Jazz?’

‘I don’t listen to music much.’

I’d been thinking of Morse and his love of opera but that had just gone out of the window too. ‘Do you have children?’

He swiped the cigarette out of his lips, holding it like a poison dart, and I saw that I’d pushed too hard, too soon. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ he snapped and at that moment I could easily imagine him in a police station, in an interrogation room. He was looking at me with something close to contempt. ‘You can write what you like about me. You can make it all up if you want to. What difference does it make? But I’m not going to play fucking University Challenge with you now or at any time. I’ve got a dead woman and somebody strangled her in her own front room and that’s all that matters to me right at this moment.’ He snatched up one of the pages. ‘Do you want to look at this or not?’

I could have gone home right then. I could have forgotten the whole thing – and, given what happened later on, it might have been better if I had. But I had just left the murder scene. It was almost as if I knew Diana Cowper and for some reason – maybe it was the photographs I had seen, the violence of her death – I felt I owed her something.

I wanted to know more.

‘All right,’ I said. I put down my pen. ‘Show me.’

The page contained a screenshot of the text that Diana Cowper had sent to her son just before she died.

‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.

‘She was interrupted before she finished,’ I said. ‘There’s no full stop. She didn’t have time to say what she was afraid of.’

‘Or maybe she was just afraid. Maybe she was too afraid to worry about the full stop at the end of the sentence.’

‘Meadows was right. It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Then maybe this will help.’ Hawthorne pulled out three more pages, copies of newspaper articles written ten years before.

I looked at the dates above the three articles and made the connection. ‘This all happened exactly ten years ago,’ I exclaimed.

‘Nine years and eleven months,’ Hawthorne corrected me. ‘The accident was at the start of June.’

‘It’s still pretty much the anniversary.’ I handed back the third article. ‘And the boy who survived … he had brain lacerations.’ I picked up Diana Cowper’s text. ‘… the boy who was lacerated’.

‘You think there’s a connection?’

I assumed he was being sarcastic but I didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Do you know where she lives?’ I asked. ‘Judith Godwin?’

Hawthorne searched through the other pages. ‘There’s an address in Harrow-on-the-Hill.’

‘Not Kent?’

‘They might have been on holiday. The first week in June … that’s summer half-term.’

So perhaps Hawthorne had children after all. How else would he have known? But I didn’t dare raise that subject again. Instead, I asked: ‘Are we going to see her?’

‘No need to hurry. And we’ve got a meeting with Mr Cornwallis just down the road.’ My mind had gone blank for a moment. I had no idea who he was referring to. ‘The undertaker,’ he reminded me. He began to gather up the documents, drawing them towards him like a croupier with a pack of cards. It was interesting that as much as Detective Inspector Meadows had disliked him, someone higher up in the Met was taking him seriously. The crime scene had been left untouched for his examination. He was being kept fully in the loop.

Hawthorne stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Once again, I noticed, I’d paid for the coffees.

We took the number 14 back down the Fulham Road, the same bus used by Diana Cowper on the day she died. We exited, as Hawthorne would have put it, at twelve twenty-six and retraced our steps to the funeral parlour.

I hadn’t been to a funeral parlour since my father died – and that was a long time ago. I had been twenty-one years old. Although he had suffered a protracted illness, the end had come very suddenly and the whole family was poleaxed. For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, an uncle stepped in and took control of the burial arrangements … after years of agnosticism, my father had expressed a desire to have an orthodox funeral. I’m sure my uncle thought he was doing us a favour but unfortunately, he was a loud, opinionated man and I can’t say I’d ever been very fond of him. Even so, I found myself accompanying him to a funeral parlour in north London. In Jewish families, the burial happens very quickly and I hadn’t yet had time to accept what was happening; I was still in shock. I have vague memories of a large room that was more like a lost property office in a railway station than an undertaker’s. Everything was very dark, in different shades of brown. There was a short, bearded man standing behind a counter, wearing an ill-fitting suit and a yarmulke: the funeral director or perhaps one of his assistants. As if in a nightmare, I see a crowd of people surrounding me. Were they other customers or staff? I seem to remember that there was no privacy.

My uncle was negotiating the price of the funeral, which was to take place the following day. He didn’t ask me what I thought. He was discussing the various coffins and different options with the counter man and, as I stood there listening to them, their voices became more and more heated until I realised that the two of them were actually engaged in a full-blooded argument. My uncle accused the funeral director of cheating us and that was what finally did it. The other man exploded in rage. He had gone quite red in the face and now he was jabbing a finger at us, shouting, with saliva flecking at his lips.

‘You want mahogany, you pay for mahogany!’

I have no idea whether my father was buried in mahogany or plywood and frankly I don’t care. The fury of the undertaker and the words he spoke have echoed in my memory for almost forty years. They have made me determined that my own funeral will be short, cheap and non-denominational. And they were still with me as I followed Hawthorne into Cornwallis and Sons, closing the door (silently) behind me.

The funeral parlour was very much as I have described it, smaller and less threatening than the office I remembered from my past – but this time, of course, there was no personal connection for me. Hawthorne introduced himself to Irene Laws, who took us directly to Robert Cornwallis’s office at the end of the corridor, the same room where Diana Cowper had made the arrangements that she would now be requiring. This time, Irene stayed, planting herself firmly in a chair as if Diana Cowper’s untimely death had been her fault and she expected to be interrogated along with her cousin. Again, I found myself wondering what it must be like to work there, sitting in a room with those miniature urns, a constant reminder that everything you were and everything you’d achieved would one day fit inside. Hawthorne hadn’t introduced me, by the way. He never did. They must have assumed I was his assistant.

‘I have already spoken to the police,’ Cornwallis began.

‘Yes, sir.’ It was interesting that Hawthorne called him ‘sir’. I saw at once that he was quite different when he was dealing with witnesses or suspects or anyone who might help him with his investigation. He came across as ordinary, even obsequious. The more I got to know him, the more I saw that he did this quite deliberately. People lowered their guard when they were talking to him. They had no idea what sort of man he was, that he was only waiting for the right moment to dissect them. For him, politeness was a surgical mask, something he slipped on before he took out his scalpel. ‘Because of the unusual nature of the crime, I’ve been asked to provide independent support to the investigation. I’m very sorry to take up your time …’ He gave the funeral director a crocodile smile. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Well, actually …’

It was too late. The cigarette was already between his lips, the lighter sparking. Mrs Laws frowned and slid a pewter saucer onto the desk for him to use as an ashtray. I noticed an engraving around the side: Awarded to Robert Daniel Cornwallis, Undertaker of the Year 2008.

‘Would you mind going over your meeting with Mrs Cowper once again, starting from the beginning?’

Robert Cornwallis did exactly that, speaking in the same measured tone that he must have used many times in his years spent dealing with the bereaved. Hawthorne may have criticised some of the embellishments which I added in my first chapter but what he told us corresponded more or less exactly to what I had written. Mrs Cowper had been reasonable, business-like and precise. She had arrived without an appointment and she had left once everything had been agreed.

In retrospect, I may have been a little unfair to Robert Cornwallis. I described him as crumpled and mournful but it may be that I was confusing the man with his profession, and this time I was struck by how very ordinary he was. Take away the corpses, the embalming fluids, the interments and the tears and I’m sure he’d be perfectly pleasant, someone you’d be happy to chat to if you met him at a party. It would just be better not to ask him what he did.

‘How long was Mrs Cowper with you?’ Hawthorne asked.

It was as if Irene Laws had been waiting for the question. ‘She was here for just over fifty minutes,’ she replied with the clipped exactitude of a speaking clock.

‘I was going to say an hour,’ Cornwallis agreed. ‘We went over all the arrangements very carefully. And the prices.’

‘How much was she going to pay you?’

‘Irene can provide you with a complete breakdown. She already had a plot in Brompton Cemetery, which saved a considerable amount of money. The price of a resting place in London has increased greatly over the years, in the same way as property. The final figure, including the Church of England burial fee and the gravedigger, was three thousand pounds.’

‘Three thousand, one hundred and seventy,’ Miss Laws corrected him.

‘Did she pay with a credit card?’

‘Yes. She paid in full although I assured her that there was a ten-day cooling-off period should she have second thoughts. In that respect, we’re rather similar to double-glazing salesmen.’ This was his little joke. He smiled. Irene Laws frowned.

‘What do you do with that money?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if she hadn’t died …’

‘We would have placed it in escrow. We belong to a trust known as the Golden Charter which takes care of payments and also, of course, calculates for inflation.’ Somewhere in the back of my mind it had occurred to me that the funeral parlour might have welcomed Mrs Cowper’s death because they would be the first to profit from it, providing the funeral. But if she had already paid, the very reverse was true. I was glad I hadn’t mentioned it.

Even so, Hawthorne threw an angry glance at me, letting me know that my contribution had annoyed him. ‘What sort of mood would you say she was in?’ he asked, changing the subject completely.

‘The same mood as anyone who comes here,’ Cornwallis replied. ‘She was a little uncomfortable, at least to begin with. We have a great reticence, talking about death, in this country. I always say it’s a shame we don’t adopt the practice of the Swiss, who invented what they call the Café Mortel, an opportunity to discuss one’s mortality over tea and cake.’

‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea if you’ve got one,’ Hawthorne said.

Cornwallis glanced at Miss Laws, who got up and stomped out of the room.

‘You say she’d already worked out everything she wanted for the funeral.’

‘Yes. She’d written it down.’

‘Do you still have that document?’

‘No. She took it with her. I made a copy, which I included in the summary that I sent her.’

‘Would you say there was any urgency on her part? Did she tell you why she’d chosen that particular day to come in?’

‘She didn’t appear to consider herself to be in danger, if that’s what you mean.’ Cornwallis shook his head. ‘It’s not unusual for people to plan their funerals, Mr Hawthorne. She wasn’t ill. She wasn’t nervous or afraid. I already said this to the police. I also told them that both I and Miss Laws were shocked when we heard the news.’

‘Why did you telephone her?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I have her phone records. You telephoned her at five past two. She had just arrived for a board meeting at the Globe Theatre. You spoke to her for about a minute and a half.’

‘You’re quite right. I needed the plot number of her husband’s grave.’ Cornwallis smiled. ‘I had to contact the Royal Parks Chapel Office to register the interment. It was the one piece of information she hadn’t given me. There’s something I should perhaps mention. She was having some sort of argument when I spoke to her. I heard voices in the background. She said she’d call back but of course she never did.’

Irene Laws returned with Hawthorne’s tea. The cup rattled against the saucer as she set it down.

‘Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr Hawthorne?’ Cornwallis asked.

‘I’d be interested to know … did you both speak to her?’

‘Irene showed her into this office—’

‘I spoke to her briefly in the reception area but I didn’t stay for the meeting,’ Miss Laws interrupted, as she took her place.

‘Was she ever in here on her own?’

Cornwallis frowned. ‘What a very odd question. Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m just interested.’

‘No. I was with her the whole time.’

‘Just before she left, she used the cloakroom,’ Miss Laws said.

‘You mean the toilet.’

‘That’s what I said. That was the only time she was on her own. I took her to the room, which is just along the corridor, and then came back with her while she collected her things. I’d also like to say that she was in a perfectly pleasant state of mind when she left. If anything, she was relieved – but that’s often the way when people come here. In fact, it’s part of our service.’

Hawthorne downed his tea in three large gulps. We stood up to leave. Then one thought occurred to me. ‘She didn’t say anything about someone called Timothy Godwin, did she?’ I asked.

‘Timothy Godwin?’ Cornwallis shook his head. ‘Who is he?’

‘He was a boy she accidentally killed in a car accident,’ I said. ‘He had a brother, Jeremy Godwin …’

‘What a terrible thing to happen.’ Cornwallis turned to his cousin. ‘Did she mention either of those names to you, Irene?’

‘No.’

‘I doubt they’re relevant.’ Hawthorne had cut off the discussion before it could go any further. He stretched out a hand. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Cornwallis.’

Outside, in the street, he turned on me.

‘Do me a favour, mate. Never ask questions when you’re with me. Never ask anything. All right?’

‘You just expect me to sit there and say nothing?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m not stupid,’ I said. ‘I may be able to help.’

‘Well, you’re wrong on at least one of those counts. But the point is, you’re not here to help. You said this was a detective story. I’m the detective. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Then tell me what you’ve learned,’ I said. ‘You’ve been to the crime scene. You’ve seen the phone records. You’ve talked to the undertaker. Do you know anything yet?’

Hawthorne considered what I’d said. He had a blank look in his eyes and, for a moment, I thought he was going to dismiss me out of hand. Then he took pity on me.

‘Diana Cowper knew she was going to die,’ he said.

I waited for him to add something more but he simply turned and stormed off down the pavement. I considered my options, then followed, in every sense struggling to catch up.