The Word Is Murder

Seven Harrow-on-the-Hill

That night, I went to the National Theatre with my wife. I’d managed to get tickets for Danny Boyle’s production of Frankenstein but I’m afraid I couldn’t enjoy it. I wondered what Hawthorne would make of the actor, Jonny Lee Miller, who spent the first twenty minutes running around the stage, completely naked. We got home at about eleven thirty and my wife went straight to bed but I sat up late into the night, worrying about the book. I hadn’t talked to her about it. I knew what she would say.

If I had sat down to write an original murder mystery story, I wouldn’t have chosen anyone like Hawthorne as its main protagonist. I think the world has had quite enough of white, middle-aged, grumpy detectives and I’d have tried to think up something more unusual. A blind detective, a drunk detective, an OCD detective, a psychic detective … they’d all been done but how about a detective who was all four of those things? Actually, I’d have preferred a female detective, someone like Sarah Lund in The Killing. I’d have been much happier with someone who was younger, feistier, more independent, with or without the chunky jerseys. I’d also have given her a sense of humour.

Hawthorne was undoubtedly clever. I’d been impressed by the way his mind worked when we were together at the house in Britannia Road, and he’d quickly been proved right about the cleaner and the stolen money. And, for that matter, the disappearing cat. Detective Inspector Meadows might not have been pleased to see him but I had got the sense that there was a grudging respect and someone high up in the Metropolitan Police clearly had a high opinion of him too. You got a new puppy! I remembered how quickly he had pinned me down – where I’d been, what I was doing. He was clever all right. He might even be brilliant.

The trouble was, I didn’t like him very much and that made the book almost impossible to write. The relationship between an author and his main protagonist is a very peculiar one. Take Alex Rider, for example. I’d been writing about him for over ten years and although I sometimes envied him (he never aged, everyone liked him, he had saved the world a dozen times) I was always fond of him and eager to get back to my desk to follow his adventures. Of course, he was my creation. I controlled him and made sure that I pressed all the right buttons for a young audience. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t swear. He didn’t have a gun. And he certainly wasn’t homophobic.

That was what was preying on my mind: Hawthorne’s reaction to Raymond Clunes. I really had been shocked by what he had said outside the house. I didn’t even understand why he’d opened up to me in that way when he was so secretive about everything else.

There are some people who argue that we are too sensitive these days, that because we’re so afraid of causing offence, we no longer engage in any serious sort of argument at all. But that’s how it is. It’s why political chat-shows on television have become so very boring. There are narrow lines between which all public conversations have to take place and even a single poorly chosen word can bring all sorts of trouble down on your head.

I remember once that I was asked about gay marriage on a radio programme. This was at a time when a Christian husband and wife with a hotel in Cornwall had refused to give a room to a gay couple. I was careful. To begin with, I made it clear that I was one hundred per cent in favour of gay marriage and that I didn’t agree with the hotel owners at all. However, having established that, I went on to say that we should try to understand their point of view, which was at least based on some sort of religious conviction (even if I didn’t share it), and that perhaps they didn’t deserve the hate mail and the death threats they had received. We need to tolerate intolerance. I thought that was a neat encapsulation of what I believed.

It didn’t prevent a torrent of abuse hitting my Twitter feed. A couple of teachers wrote to me to say that my books would never appear in their schools again. Someone else thought all my books should be burned. These days, the world sees things in black and white, so although it may be all right for a twenty-first-century novelist to create a character who is homophobic, it will be much more sensible if that character is palpably vile, the villain of the piece.

Sitting in my office, gazing out of the window at the red lights twinkling on the cranes that had sprung up all over Farringdon during the construction of Crossrail, I asked myself if I could continue working with Hawthorne. What had drawn me into this in the first place and what possible benefit could I get from pursuing it any further? It would be much better to drop him now, before I was fully committed, and get on with other things. It was past midnight now and I was getting tired. The Meaning of Treason by Rebecca West, the book I was supposed to be reading, lay face down next to my computer. I reached out and dragged it towards me. That was where I should be spending my time. The 1940s were so much safer.

And that was when my phone pinged. I looked down at the screen. It was a text from Hawthorne.

Harrow-on-the-Hill was where the Godwins lived. He was telling me that that was where he was going next.

I really wanted to know who had killed Diana Cowper. That was the truth of it. Like it or not, I was involved. I had stood in her living room and I had got a sense of how she had lived … and died. I had seen the stain on the carpet. I wanted to know who had sent her that letter and if it was the same person who had taken her cat. Hawthorne had told me that she knew she was going to die. How was that possible and if it was the case, why hadn’t she gone to the police? Most of all, I wanted to meet the Godwin family and Jeremy Godwin in particular – ‘the boy who was lacerated’. One day I might come upon the solution to the mystery in a newspaper article. Hawthorne might even get someone else to write the book for him. But that wasn’t good enough.

I wanted to be there myself.

It occurred to me that I could make up my own rules. Who had said that I had to write down everything exactly as it happened? There was absolutely no need to mention what Hawthorne had said about Raymond Clunes. For that matter, I could remove any reference to the black and white photograph and the other artwork that had sparked the whole thing off. In fact, I could describe him in any way I wanted. There was nothing to stop me making him younger, wittier, softer, more charming. It was my book! He wouldn’t read it until it was published and by then it would be too late. He wouldn’t care anyway, so long as it sold.

At the same time, I knew I couldn’t do it. Hawthorne had approached me and he was what he was. If I changed him, it would be the first ripple in the pond, the start of a process that would shift everything back into the world of fiction. I could see myself reinventing all the people he spoke to and all the different places he went. That bloody Robert Mapplethorpe would be the first to go. What, then, would be the point? I might just as well go back to what I always did and make up the whole thing.

9.30 a.m. Harrow-on-the-Hill.

I was still holding my phone and I realised that there was only one way forward – although it would mean fundamentally changing the way I approached the book and, for that matter, my role in it. I didn’t have to lie about Hawthorne. Nor did I need to protect him. He could look after himself. But I would challenge some of his attitudes … in fact it was my duty to do so. Otherwise, I’d be open to exactly the sort of criticism I feared.

I had just learned that he had a problem with gay men. Well, without in any way condoning it, I would explore why he felt that way and if as a result I came to understand him a little better, then surely nobody would complain. The book would be worthwhile.

It might be that he was gay himself. After all, when high-ranking politicians or clergymen have publicly spoken out against homosexuality, they’ve often turned out to be deep inside their own closets. I didn’t want to expose him. Despite everything, I had no desire at all to hurt him. But suddenly I saw that I might have a purpose after all.

I would investigate the investigator.

I picked up my telephone and thumbed in three words:

Then I went to bed.

The Unico café was just down the road from Harrow-on-the-Hill station, at the end of a dilapidated shopping parade, near the railway line. Hawthorne had already ordered breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast and tea. It struck me that this was the first time I’d ever seen him sitting down with a proper meal. He ate warily, as if he was suspicious of what was in front of him, cutting with a fast motion and then forking the food into his mouth as quickly as possible to get rid of it. He didn’t seem to take any pleasure in what he ate. I thought he might apologise for the way our last meeting had ended but he just smiled at me. He wasn’t at all surprised that I’d turned up. I don’t suppose it had occurred to him that I wouldn’t.

I slid behind the table opposite him and ordered a bacon sandwich.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m all right.’

If I sounded distant, he didn’t notice. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of work on the Godwin family,’ he said. He talked while he ate but somehow the food didn’t get in the way of the words. There was a notepad on the table next to him. ‘The father is Alan Godwin,’ he went on. ‘He’s got his own business. He’s an events organiser. His wife is Judith Godwin. Works part-time for a kids’ charity. They’ve only got the one son. Jeremy Godwin is eighteen now. Brain damage. According to the doctors, he needs full-time care – but that could mean anything.’

‘Can’t you even feel slightly sorry for them?’ I asked.

He looked up from his plate, puzzled. ‘What makes you think I don’t?’

‘Just the way you’re rattling off the facts. “They’ve only got the one son.” Of course they have! The other one was killed. And as for the one who’s still alive, you’re already suggesting that he might be faking it or something.’

‘I can see you got out of bed the wrong side.’ He drank some tea. ‘I don’t know anything about Jeremy Godwin apart from what I’ve been told. But unless Diana Cowper made a mistake, it seems he may well have got out of his bed or out of his wheelchair and hiked down to Britannia Road on the night she died. And let’s not forget that only yesterday, you were the one who was in a hurry to get up here. You’d got them all bang to rights: Alan Godwin, Judith Godwin and – if he was up to it – Jeremy Godwin. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

My bacon sandwich arrived. I didn’t really feel like eating it. ‘I’m just saying you could be a bit more sensitive about people.’

‘Is that why you’re here? Because you want to put your arms around the suspects and hold them close?’

‘No. But …’

‘You’re here for the same reason as me. You want to know who killed Diana Cowper. If it was one of them, they’ll be arrested. If it wasn’t, we’ll walk away and we’ll never see them again. Either way, what we think about them, what we feel about them, doesn’t make a sod of difference.’

He flicked over one of the pages. He had made the notes in handwriting that was very neat and precise, so small that I couldn’t read it without my glasses. ‘I’ve made a summary of the accident. If it won’t upset you too much … an eight-year-old kid getting killed!’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘It’s pretty much like Raymond Clunes told us. They were staying at the Royal Hotel in Deal … just the two brothers and a nanny, Mary O’Brien. They’d been on the beach all day and they were on their way back when the kids ran across the road to get ice-creams. The nanny got a bit of stick for that in court but she swore the road was clear. She was wrong. They were halfway across when a car came round the corner and slammed into them. It missed the nanny by inches, killed one kid, hurt the other, then drove off. There was quite a crowd, plenty of witnesses. If Diana Cowper hadn’t turned herself in a couple of hours later, she’d have been in serious shit.’

‘Do you think it was right she was acquitted?’

Hawthorne shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask a brief.’

‘She knew the judge.’

‘She knew someone who knew the judge. Not the same thing.’ He seemed to have forgotten that he had been suggesting a gay conspiracy only the day before. ‘Judges know lots of people,’ he added. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean there was something nasty going on.’

We finished the breakfast in a moody silence. The waitress brought the bill. Hawthorne didn’t look at it. He was expecting me to pay.

‘That’s another thing,’ I said. ‘So far, I notice that I’ve paid for every coffee and every taxi fare. If we’re in this fifty-fifty, maybe we should split the expenses the same way.’

‘All right!’ He sounded genuinely surprised.

I was already regretting what I’d said. It was more a reaction to what had happened the day before than a genuine desire to share costs. I watched as he took out his wallet and produced a ten-pound note so limp and crumpled that but for the colour I would have been unsure of its denomination. He laid it on the table like an autumn leaf that’s been fished out of the gutter. There were no other notes in his wallet and even if my point had been justified, all I’d managed to do was to make myself seem petty and mean. That was just about the last time Hawthorne ever paid for anything, by the way. I never complained again.

We walked together from the café. I actually know Harrow-on-the-Hill quite well. We filmed quite a few scenes of Foyle’s War there, with the old-fashioned high street doubling as Hastings’. It’s amazing what a few seagulls added to the soundtrack can achieve. My first boarding school was nearby and it struck me how little the area had changed in fifty years. It was still a slightly improbable enclave, very green and unworldly, rising above the other north London suburbs that sprawled around.

‘So what did you get up to last night?’ I asked Hawthorne, as we continued on our way.

‘What?’

‘I just wondered what you did. Did you go out for dinner? Did you work on the case?’ He didn’t answer, so I added, ‘It’s for the book.’

‘I had dinner. I made some notes. I went to bed.’

But what did he eat? Who did he go to bed with? Did he watch TV? Did he even own a TV?

He wasn’t going to tell me and there wasn’t time to ask.

We had arrived at a Victorian house on Roxborough Avenue, three storeys high, built out of those dark red bricks that always make me think of Charles Dickens. It was set back from the main road with a gravel path and a double garage and from the very first sight it struck me that I had never seen a building that exuded a greater sense of misery – from the scrawny, half-wild garden to the peeling paintwork, the window boxes with dead flowers, the blank, unlit windows.

This was the home of the Godwins … or, at least, the three members of the family who had survived.