The Twist of a Knife

He didn’t own the flat, by the way. He didn’t even rent it. He had told me that he was a caretaker, employed by a London estate agent who was ‘a sort of half-brother’. That was the thing about Hawthorne. He couldn’t have a relative who was something simple like a sister-in-law or a first cousin or whatever. He was separated from his wife, but he was still close to her. Everything about him was complicated and it didn’t matter what questions I asked because the answers led me exactly nowhere. It was all very frustrating.

The two of us were sitting in his kitchen, surrounded by gleaming chrome and pristine work surfaces. I had walked down from my own flat in Clerkenwell: we only lived about fifteen minutes apart, which made the emotional distance between us all the more striking. Hawthorne was wearing his usual combination of a suit with a white shirt, although, just for once, he had put on a grey round-neck jersey instead of a jacket. The casual look. He had offered me a cup of tea and he had been thoughtful enough to provide biscuits: four of them, to be precise; two-finger KitKats criss-crossing each other on a plate as if set up for a game of noughts and crosses. He was drinking black coffee with his ever-present packet of cigarettes close by.

He wanted me to write a fourth book. That was what the meeting was about, but I had already decided against it. Why? Well, first of all – and ignoring the visits I had made to the casualty wards of two London hospitals – Hawthorne had never been very kind to me. He had made it clear from the start that this was going to be a business relationship. He wanted someone to write about him because he needed the money and, to make matters worse, he had let me know that I wasn’t even his first choice. For my part, I’d made my decision before I’d come here. Enough was enough. I was fed up of being treated like an appendage. There were lots of stories I wanted to write where I would be in charge and this was something he would never understand. Authors don’t write their books for other people. We write for ourselves.

‘You can’t stop now,’ Hawthorne said. He thought for a moment. ‘The Word is Murder was really good.’

‘You read it?’ I asked.

‘Some of it. But the reviews were great! You should be pleased with yourself. The Daily Mail said it was splendidly entertaining.’

‘I don’t read reviews – and that was the Express.’

‘Your publishers want you to do more.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Hilda told me.’

‘Hilda?’ I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Hilda Starke was my literary agent – the same agent who had advised me against getting into all this in the first place. I could still remember her face when I’d told her I would be sharing the profits fifty-fifty with Hawthorne. She’d met him recently at Penguin Random House and I’d seen him charm her, but it was still a surprise that the two of them had been having conversations without me. ‘When did you talk to her?’ I asked.

‘Last week.’

‘What? You rang her?’

‘No. We had lunch.’

My head swam as I took this in. ‘You don’t even eat lunch!’ I exclaimed. ‘And anyway, what are you doing meeting Hilda? She’s my agent.’

‘She’s mine now too.’

‘You’re serious? You’re paying her fifteen per cent?’

‘Actually, I managed to knock her down a bit.’ He moved on hastily. ‘She reckons we could get another three-book deal. And a bigger advance!’

‘I don’t write for the money.’ I didn’t mean to sound so prim but it was true. Writing for me has always been a very personal process. It’s my life. It’s what makes me happy. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference,’ I went on. ‘I can’t write another book about you. You’re not working on any new cases.’

‘Not at the moment,’ he admitted. ‘But I could tell you about some of my past ones.’

‘When you were with the police?’

‘After I left. There was that business in Riverside Close in Richmond. A man hammered to death in a posh cul-de-sac. You’d like that, Tony! It was my first private investigation.’

I remembered him talking about it when we were both in Alderney. ‘It may be a great story,’ I said. ‘But I can’t write about it. I wasn’t there.’

‘I could tell you what happened.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not interested.’ I reached out for one of the biscuits, then changed my mind. They were somehow unappetising. A chocolate hashtag. ‘Anyway, it’s not just about the crimes, Hawthorne. How can I write about you when I know almost nothing about you?’

‘I’m a detective. What else do you need to know?’

‘We’ve already been into this. I know you’re a very private person. But you’ve got to see things from my point of view. You can’t have a main character who doesn’t give anything away, and frankly, being with you, I feel I’m up against a brick wall.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Are you being serious?’

‘Ask me!’

‘All right.’ About twenty questions arrived at the same moment, but I asked the first one that came into my head. ‘What happened at Reeth?’

‘I don’t even know where that is.’