A Line to Kill

We followed our steps back into the hall. Hawthorne went straight over to the hexagonal table that stood in the centre. I saw now that there was a postcard propped up against the vase of flowers. It showed a view of Gannet Rock, the towering sea stacks and plunging cliffs on the far western side of the island that I had visited on my first day. Why should it mean anything to him? Then I remembered the other postcards and the rollerball pen I had seen on the desk.

Hawthorne turned the card over. There was a handwritten message on the other side.

I can’t go back to prison. I’m not doing that. I can’t.

He showed the card to Torode. ‘Do you know where this is?’ he asked.

‘Les Etacs. Yes. I know.’

‘I think we should go there.’

We went in Torode’s car with Whitlock behind the wheel, back across the island and up Tourgis Hill, passing close to the airport. A narrow lane, more like a track, led from the main road through swathes of the strange, pale grass that characterised so much of the island. We pulled up in front of yet another gun emplacement, or the remains of one, a heptagon of grey concrete lying on the ground like an oversized coin. There were two more of them further up the hill. Dozens of gannets, each one a ball of brilliant white feathers, were soaring high overhead, providing a commentary on the scene with their eerie, sawing cries.

Even before we got out of the car, we could tell something was wrong. A small crowd had gathered on the very edge of the grass, all of them looking out to sea, and there was something about their body language, the way they stood, that warned us that although they might be birdwatchers, they were not now watching birds. We went over and joined them.

I saw the two rock towers rising up out of a steel-blue sea, providing an astonishing breeding ground for twelve thousand gannets. To one side, the land sloped down and there were paths that you could follow all the way to the water’s edge, but in front of us the island simply stopped, like a map torn in half, with a sheer drop on the other side of the jagged line.

‘He’s down there,’ someone said, inviting me to join them in this spectacle of death. And sure enough, he was.

Derek Abbott was too far away to be recognisable, but who else could it have been, lying there on the shingle, his body disjointed, exactly like one of those chalk outlines in a bad police drama? The water was lapping at him, but he wasn’t moving. I wondered how anyone would reach him. They’d have to send a boat. There was no other way to bring him up to the top.

A man was standing next to me, dressed in an anorak with a heavy pair of binoculars on a cord around his neck. ‘Did you see what happened?’ I asked.

‘He jumped,’ the man told me.

I turned away. I’d seen more than enough death on Alderney. Hawthorne was standing right behind me, impassive. I looked him straight in the eye. ‘You did this,’ I said.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Hawthorne replied.

But I knew he was lying. Someone had told Abbott that the police were coming to arrest him and I had seen Hawthorne walking out of the hotel late at night.

Now I knew where he had gone.

23 Keep Reading

Two days after I got back to London, I went to see my agent, Hilda Starke. I walked over to Greek Street in Soho, where her office was located on the fourth floor of a narrow building hemmed in between an Italian restaurant and an off-licence. There was no lift and the stairs creaked menacingly under my weight, as if warning me that I was not really welcome here. I think it’s true to say that Hilda preferred books to authors. In the three years I had been with her, I’d only gone to her office half a dozen times.

I arrived at a dusty landing where a door opened into a tiny reception area, made tinier by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books. A single window allowed a little daylight to seep through, but it was a room that devoured daylight. I gave my name to the receptionist and told him I had an appointment with Hilda.

‘What’s this about?’ he asked vaguely.

‘I’m one of her clients.’

‘Oh.’

Ten minutes later, I had squeezed into Hilda’s office. There was so little space in the building, all the furniture seemed to be in the way. She was behind her desk, holding a Sharpie and covering a manuscript with black markings. I wondered if she did the same with my work when she received it.

‘Have you been offered coffee?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Your receptionist didn’t even know you represented me.’

She wasn’t troubled. ‘He hasn’t been here long.’

‘How are you?’ I asked.

She looked at me, puzzled. ‘I’m fine. Why do you ask?’

According to Hawthorne, she had been on her way to the doctor, worrying about tests, when I’d met her seven weeks before. Could he have been wrong? The trouble was, if I told her what I knew, it would look as if I’d been prying. ‘I just thought you seemed a bit down when we last met,’ I said, trying to sound casual.