The rest of the evening went by in a sort of daze. Someone brought up The House of Silk and although it turned out that only a couple of people – the identical twins – had actually read it, I was asked to talk about writing in the style of Conan Doyle. I managed to ramble on for a few minutes before Lisa Chakraborty cut me short.
‘Well, thank you so much for that, Anthony,’ she said. ‘That was a very interesting contribution and a lovely way to round off this evening’s discussion. And now all that’s left for me to do is to hand over to Christine, who has chosen our next book for the New Year. I’ll let her introduce it.’
Christine – spectacles, grey hair, loose-fitting cardigan – got to her feet. ‘I’ve chosen a modern work,’ she said. ‘And I believe something of a masterpiece. It’s A Multitude of Gods, the first published novel by Akira Anno.’
Well, it would be, wouldn’t it! I could actually feel the warmth and enthusiasm in the room.
‘Wonderful!’
‘She’s such a tremendously powerful writer.’
‘I read The Temizu Basin three times. It made me cry.’
‘What a lovely choice, Christine!’
There was a patter of applause.
I couldn’t wait to get out. Hawthorne came with me but I was just as keen to get away from him. We barely spoke as we walked back down the corridor and as I watched him disappear into the lift, I wondered if I should admire or despise him for using a seriously handicapped young man to help him break the law.
One thing was becoming clear. The more I learned about him, the less I actually knew.
17 The Chase
I slept badly that night. I had a bad dream that turned the book group into something out of Rosemary’s Baby – which actually wasn’t too much of a transformation. Hawthorne and Kevin were at the centre of it, crouched over a computer screen that was running a compilation of all the worst moments of my life. Even while I was asleep, I was surprised how many of them there were.
I was woken by the sound of my mobile phone ringing and was grateful to find myself in bed, in my own room. Jill had already gone. I reached out and answered it, thinking it would be Hawthorne, and I half groaned when I heard Cara Grunshaw’s voice at the other end.
‘Did I wake you up?’ she asked, with mock concern. It was a little after seven o’clock, the sun struggling to make itself known.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I thought you’d like to know. I’ve spoken to Daunt’s. They don’t want to press charges.’
‘That’s good news.’
‘I’m trying to persuade them otherwise.’ She paused. ‘Nothing personal. I just don’t think we should be encouraging petty crime.’
I closed my eyes, my head sinking back into the pillows. ‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘You know what I want.’
I took a breath. ‘Hawthorne is going back to see Adrian Lockwood today,’ I said. I knew that because he’d texted me before I got home. There had been a name, an address in Curzon Street and a time. Nothing more. No question that I wouldn’t be there. As much as I disliked sharing the information with Grunshaw, I couldn’t see any harm in it. After all, Hawthorne had given me permission.
‘We’ve already spoken to him twice,’ Grunshaw said. ‘He didn’t have any reason to kill his lawyer.’
‘Yes, he did, as a matter of fact.’
‘What?’
Maybe it was because I had just woken up or maybe it was just my deep fear of annoying Grunshaw, but suddenly the answer came to me. Was this the ‘shape’ that Hawthorne had been talking about? Even as I blurted out the words, I knew they made sense.
‘Richard Pryce was known as the Blunt Razor because he was completely honest,’ I began. ‘He was worried about Akira Anno because he thought she was concealing part of her income.’
‘I know that.’ Grunshaw sounded bored again.
‘Wait a minute. It’s possible that Pryce had got fresh information about Akira. He was going to ring the Law Society. According to Stephen Spencer, she might even have been involved in something illegal.’
‘So what?’
‘So if she was, Richard wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have upturned the entire judgement even though it would have harmed his own client. Adrian Lockwood wasn’t going to allow that to happen. He hated Akira and he didn’t want anything more to do with her. He may not have gone to the house meaning to kill Richard Pryce. The two of them could have had an argument. Akira told us he was violent. He could have picked up the bottle and—’
‘Wait a minute,’ Grunshaw cut in. ‘Lockwood had an alibi. He was with Davina Richardson in Highgate.’
‘He was only a few minutes away in a fast car.’
There was a brief silence at the end. Then: ‘Adrian Lockwood didn’t kill Richard Pryce,’ Cara said, flatly.
‘Do you know who did?’
‘I’m close. I could be making an arrest any time.’
Hawthorne had told me that he had narrowed the identity of the killer down to two possible suspects but I didn’t tell her that. Nor did I mention that I had myself narrowed it down to a possible five. DI Grunshaw had set this up as a race to the truth and she had decided to cheat every step of the way.
‘Keep in touch,’ she said and rang off.
I slunk out of bed and got into the shower. The conversation with Cara Grunshaw had unnerved me. As I stood there with the water hammering down, it all seemed so unfair. I had managed to spend fifty years without ever encountering people like her and now, suddenly, I was being threatened and roughed up in my own home. I was also seriously worried about Daunt’s. I had told Hawthorne that the story could destroy my career and it was true. For twenty years, the press had ignored me. Then, when Alex Rider began to sell in large numbers, and particularly after the film, they had been broadly supportive. But more recently it was as if someone had decided I had got too big for my boots and I had noticed my name turning up in diary pieces that were half true and resolutely hostile. A children’s author caught stealing from a much-loved bookshop would be more than a diary piece. This was 2013 and we were already moving towards the atmosphere of the bear pit where anyone who was even slightly in the public spotlight could find themselves torn down on the strength of a single accusation long before the allegations could actually be disproved.
Perhaps Grunshaw had been lying. It might be that the whole thing would go away, but in the end I decided I couldn’t take that chance. I got out of the shower, dried myself and got dressed. Then I went to see Hilda Starke.
Hilda had been my literary agent for about two years. It was she who had sold my novel The House of Silk to Orion Books as part of a three-book deal. A small, grey-haired woman with beady eyes and a fondness for quite masculine clothes, she ran her own agency with offices in Greek Street, Soho. I had only been there a couple of times – we usually met at restaurants or at my publishers – and I hadn’t been too impressed. Hilda occupied the third and fourth floors of a building above an Italian café, reached by a narrow and uneven flight of stairs. Today, there were no more than half a dozen people in the office, including two junior agents, a receptionist and a couple of assistants – but with small rooms and little light it still felt crowded.