The Word Is Murder(9)



‘What is the real world?’ I countered.

‘I just mean real people.’

Some of the children were getting restless. It was time to move on. ‘I like writing fiction,’ I said. ‘That’s what I do.’

‘Aren’t you worried that your books might be considered irrelevant?’

‘I don’t think they have to be real to be relevant.’

‘I’m sorry. I do like your work. But I disagree.’

It was an odd coincidence, given the proposal Hawthorne had put to me just a couple of days before. I looked for the woman again before I left but I didn’t see her and she didn’t come to get a book signed. On the train back to London, I couldn’t help thinking about what she had said. Was she right? Was my work too focused on fantasy? I was about to launch myself as an adult writer but my first outing, The House of Silk, was about as far from the modern world as it was possible to be. Some of my television work – Injustice, for example – was set in a recognisable, twenty-first-century London but perhaps it was true that I had spent too long living in my own imagination and that if I wasn’t careful, I would lose touch. Maybe I already had. Maybe a crash course in reality would do me good.

It’s a long, long way from Hay-on-Wye to Paddington station. By the time I got home, I had made up my mind. As soon as I got in, I picked up the phone.

‘Hawthorne?’

‘Tony!’

‘All right. Fifty-fifty. I’m in.’





Three





Chapter One




Hawthorne did not like my first chapter.

I’m jumping ahead here because I didn’t actually show it to him until a while later and even then it was only with reluctance. I remembered all too well what had happened with Injustice and would have preferred to keep it under wraps – but he insisted and since this was meant to be an equal partnership, how could I refuse? But I think it’s important to explain how the book was written; the rules of engagement, so to speak. These are my words but they were his actions and the truth is that, to begin with, the two didn’t quite fit.

The two of us were sitting in one of the many Starbucks that seemed to punctuate our investigation. I had emailed him the pages and I knew I was in trouble when he took them out of his case and I saw that he had printed them, covering them with red crosses and circles. I am very protective of my writing. It’s fair to say that I think about every single word I write. (Do I need ‘single’? Would ‘true’ be better than ‘fair’?) When I had agreed to work with Hawthorne, I had assumed that although he was in charge of the case, he would take a back seat when it came to the actual narrative. He quickly disabused me.

‘It’s all wrong, Tony,’ Hawthorne began. ‘You’re leading people up the garden path.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The very first sentence. It’s wrong.’

I read what I had written.

Just after eleven o’clock on a bright spring morning, the sort of day when the sunshine is almost white and promises a warmth that it doesn’t quite deliver, Diana Cowper crossed the Fulham Road and went into a funeral parlour.



‘I don’t see what’s wrong with that,’ I said. ‘It was about eleven o’clock. She went into a funeral parlour.’

‘But not the way you say.’

‘She took the bus!’

‘She caught it at the top of her street. We know that because we’ve got her on CCTV. The driver also remembered her and gave the police a statement. But here’s the problem, mate. Why do you say she crossed the road?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because she didn’t. We’re talking about the number 14 bus, which she picked up at Chelsea Village. That’s the stop marked “U” exactly opposite Britannia Road. It took her to Chelsea Football Club, Hortensia Road, Edith Grove, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Beaufort Street and finally Old Church Street, stop HJ, where she got off.’

‘You have a terrific knowledge of London bus routes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t quite get the point.’

‘She didn’t have to cross the road. When she left the bus, she was already on the right side.’

‘Does it really make any difference?’

‘Well, yes, it might. If you say she crossed the road, it means she must have gone somewhere else before she went into the undertaker’s – and that might be important. She could have gone to the bank and taken out a load of money. She could have had a row with someone that very morning and that could have been the reason she was killed. That same person could have followed her across the road and seen where she was going. She could have stopped in front of someone who was driving a car and that could have led to an altercation. Don’t look at me like that! Road rage murders are more common than you think. But the facts of the matter are that she got up in her house, alone. She had breakfast, then she got on a bus. It was the first thing she did.’

‘So what would you want me to write?’

He had already scribbled something on a sheet of paper. He handed it to me. I read:

At exactly seventeen minutes past eleven, Diana Jane Cowper exited from the number 14 bus at the Old Church Street (HJ) stop and retraced her steps twenty-five metres along the pavement. She then entered Cornwallis and Sons funeral parlour.

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