Close to Death

Close to Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz #5) by Anthony Horowitz

Map

Dedication

In memory of Peter Wilson

12 January 1951 – 4 September 2023

The end is where we start from.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Map

Dedication

One: Riverview Close

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Two: The Fifth Book

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Three: Six Weeks Later

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Four: Fenchurch International

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Five: Another Death

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Six: A Locked-Room Mystery

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Seven: The Second Meeting

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Eight: The Solution

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Nine: Endgame

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Anthony Horowitz

Copyright

About the Publisher

One Riverview Close

1

It was four o’clock in the morning, that strange interval between night and morning when both seem to be fighting each other for control of the day ahead. Riverview Close was perfectly silent, nothing moving, not a single light showing behind any of the windows – which was exactly how Adam Strauss liked it. He could imagine the entire world hanging in outer space, undecided, catching its breath while the mechanism of the universe ticked slowly round, preparing for the business of the next twenty-four hours, the start of another week. He alone was awake. Even the birds hadn’t begun their infernal dawn chorus and the road, invisible on the other side of the brick wall that enclosed his garden, was delightfully empty of traffic.

It had been two hours since he had climbed out of bed and dressed himself in the smoking jacket, crisp white shirt and bow tie that his wife had left out for him. In the world he inhabited, what he chose to wear was not just a choice, it was a strategy, and it made no difference if, as now, his audience was unable to see him. He could see himself and, more importantly, his self-image, carefully created over several decades. His one deviation was the velvet slippers he had put on at the last minute, leaving the freshly polished shoes by the door. Slippers would be more comfortable and they were quieter, ensuring that Teri wouldn’t be woken up as he made his way downstairs.

He was sitting, alone, in the long room that occupied almost the entire ground floor of The Stables, an open-plan kitchen at one end and a library/television area with its comfortable arrangement of sofas and chairs at the other. His seat was on castors, allowing him to slide up and down, alongside the eighteenth-century oak refectory table that had been rescued from a French monastery and which could easily have seated a dozen frères. The table drew a straight line from one end of the room to the other.

Six laptop computers had been placed side by side on the wooden surface and, apart from a single lamp in one corner, the only illumination in the room came from the glow of their screens. They sat in a sprawl of wires with an extension lead and plug connecting each one to the mains. The laptops could easily have operated on their own batteries for the required four hours, but Adam would have been aware of the power running down, of the battery symbols at the top of the screens diminishing, and even the faintest concern that one of them might blink out would have been enough to put him off his stride. He needed total focus. Everything had to be exactly right.

Adam Strauss, a grandmaster, had already played twenty-two games of simultaneous chess, connected over the internet to clubs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs. There were two sessions: he was well into the second, with twenty-four games, four to a screen, in front of him. The tournament had begun at six o’clock in the evening, Californian time – which was why he’d had to get up so early and continue through the night. In fact, it made little difference to him. Whether he was involved in a single game or a tournament, when he was playing chess he might as well have been on the moon. He wouldn’t even notice the lack of gravity – or air.