Was this the ending that Hawthorne had warned me against?
Hawthorne hadn’t wanted me to write the book. He’d said he wasn’t happy about the way it had turned out – both the case and his relationship with John Dudley. Dudley was part of the fallout. I already knew that because, of course, I’d taken his place. Roland Hawthorne had also tried to get me to stop. And when I was at Fenchurch International, Morton had described the whole exercise as a mistake I would come to regret. He must have known that Hawthorne’s conclusions would be thrown out by the police and that Adam Strauss would never be arrested or brought to trial. In which case, all the work I’d done so far had been a complete waste of time. It was the one thing I’d always feared. That I’d get to the end of the book and realise that I didn’t have one.
I called Hawthorne three times once I’d listened to Dudley’s recording, but got no reply, not even a voice message. He must have deactivated his phone because he knew how I’d feel and didn’t want to talk to me. I sat at my desk, unable to concentrate on Riverview Close, James Bond or anything else. All I could think about was how much time I’d wasted on a book that was never going to be published. It was incredible to think that when I’d set out, I’d thought it was going to be easy!
Was it possible that I’d missed something, that there was some clue I’d overlooked? I went through everything I’d been given and everything I’d written so far. In particular, I examined what Hawthorne had said in front of Detective Superintendent Khan at The Stables. It had all sounded so credible – until the letters and New Year’s card had been produced. And then that FaceTime call! Could it be that Adam Strauss had committed the two murders, but for a different reason, that if Wendy Strauss wasn’t buried under the magnolia tree, something else was concealed there?
But then I had to remind myself that Strauss had never been brought to trial. He was a chess grandmaster and a television celebrity of sorts: it would have been a huge story if he had been. Instead, he had died in an accident, falling off a hotel balcony. I shuddered. Giles Kenworthy, Roderick Browne, Raymond Shaw, Ellery the dog, and then Adam Strauss . . . How could a quiet residential close in a nice part of London have been responsible for so much death?
Had it been an accident?
Adam Strauss, accused of murder, somehow plunging to his death. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but I knew it was too much of a coincidence. He had been murdered. There was no escaping it. And that led me to an inescapable thought.
I’ve often mentioned Derek Abbott, the suspect manhandled and badly injured by Hawthorne. I’m not sure if it was a criminal offence, but there could be no doubt that he had eventually talked Abbott into killing himself. Could he have gone one step further with Adam Strauss? I remembered something that Morton had said to me and searched through my own manuscript to find it. Yes. There it was: ‘You may discover things about Hawthorne that you wish you hadn’t known and once you uncover them, there’ll be no going back. It may end your friendship with him.’
No. Hawthorne was many things. He could be cruel. Many of his attitudes were seriously questionable. He was damaged. But he was basically decent.
He was not a killer. I refused to believe it.
And then my telephone rang.
I snatched it up without even looking at the caller ID. I was certain it would be Hawthorne. But when I put the phone to my ear, there was a voice I didn’t recognise.
‘Is that Anthony?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is Detective Superintendent Khan.’ He was the last person I had expected to call. ‘I’m in London . . . at New Scotland Yard. I can give you ten minutes if you come over now.’
‘I’m on my way.’
‘There’s a pub round the corner. The Red Lion in Parliament Street. I’ll be there at twelve.’
I looked at my watch. That gave me half an hour to get across town.
‘I’ll see you there,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
But he had cut me off before I’d reached those last two words.