A Line to Kill

‘So what time do you want me to pick you up?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mind waiting for you outside if you’re going to have a spot of lunch.’

‘No thanks, mate,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I think we’re done for today.’

‘Tomorrow then?’ Terry was like a dog, panting at the leash. ‘Best business I’ve had all year,’ he went on. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, driving a taxi in a small place like this. It’ll all be mine when Dad retires, but … I don’t know! It’s like selling meat to vegetarians. Nobody’s got anywhere to go.’

Hawthorne and I had agreed to meet after lunch, but as we walked to the front door we ran into Maïssa Lamar on her way out, in a hurry. The timing couldn’t have been worse as far as she was concerned. She would have preferred to leave without being seen, but she was already face to face with Hawthorne and he wasn’t stepping out of the way. ‘I was hoping to speak to you,’ he said.

She looked at him blankly. She hadn’t understood what he had said. ‘I’m sorry?’ She managed to make the two words sound remarkably aggressive.

‘I have questions for you.’

‘Why?’

‘You haven’t noticed what’s been going on around here?’

‘I mean … why do I speak to you? Who are you? You are not police. You are only invited … same as me.’

‘I’m now working with the police. They’ve asked me to help them.’

‘I speak already with the police. I tell them all I know. I know nothing. Now, please. I am in hurry …’ She pushed past him and continued on her way.

It was the first time I had ever seen anyone refuse to cooperate with Hawthorne. When you think about it, it’s something that very rarely happens … at least, in fiction. When the detective asks questions, the suspects invariably answer them. Nobody ever told Morse or Rebus to mind their own business. It’s some sort of peculiar convention that even if the culprits are nervous that they’ll slip up and say something that gives them away, they will never hold back.

I thought Hawthorne would be angry that he had just been snubbed by a French performance poet dressed in torn clothes, cheap jewellery and a punk haircut, but he seemed unperturbed. ‘Where do you go in a hurry when there’s nowhere to actually go?’ That was his only remark as we continued into the hotel.

We were about to go up to our separate rooms but as we arrived at the reception desk to pick up our keys, we found Special Constable Jane Whitlock waiting for us. She was sitting in a chair with her hat perched on her knees and looked no happier than she had that morning.

‘Deputy Chief Torode asked me to see you,’ she said. She produced a thick padded envelope. ‘I have some information for you.’

‘Let’s go in the dining room,’ Hawthorne suggested.

The tables had been made up but we were alone in the room, which was long and bright with an archway leading into the bar. Whitlock looked around her. ‘This is a nice hotel,’ she said.

‘It’s a shame you couldn’t get in,’ I said.

‘That’s what they said. But they were probably thinking about the budget. They’ve put us up at a place in St Anne.’ Wherever she was staying, she clearly didn’t like it.

‘Have you been to Alderney before?’ I asked.

‘No.’

She wasn’t a great conversationalist, but I persevered. ‘What does it mean, exactly? Special constable?’

‘I’m not a full-time police officer. I’m a volunteer.’

‘So what do you do when you’re not with the police?’

‘Social work. I’m a community psychiatric nurse.’

‘Do you enjoy that?’

She shook her head. ‘Not really.’

Meanwhile, Hawthorne had opened the envelope and was removing a handful of photographs taken at the crime scene – the usual black and white horrors. There were also twenty or thirty pages of text and assorted diagrams. He picked up one of them and read it. ‘You have the time of death at around ten past ten,’ he said.

‘That’s right. We got witness statements.’

Hawthorne turned the page. ‘Two of the guests heard le Mesurier cry out, but neither of them knew what it was at the time,’ he told me. ‘The jazz band was playing and they couldn’t hear above the noise of the music. One of them thought it was a screech owl.’ He looked up at Whitlock. ‘Are there screech owls in Alderney?’

She shrugged.

‘The other one thought it was someone in the garden and went out to see but there was nobody there.’ He turned another page. ‘The footprint in the Snuggery. Size five shoes.’

‘If you say so.’

‘That’s what it says here. That must be a woman.’

‘Could be a child.’ Was Whitlock being deliberately difficult? I wondered.

‘Is that what Torode thinks?’

‘He hasn’t told me what he thinks.’

Hawthorne continued browsing until he came to the medical report. ‘Death caused by a penetrating stab wound to the neck which severed the common carotid artery, the left internal jugular and both jugular veins. No surprises there. He bled to death.’

‘Can I go?’ Whitlock asked.

Hawthorne glanced at her, surprised. ‘Aren’t you interested in this?’