‘But he wasn’t like that. He was a loner and if you want the truth, nobody likes a loner. I’m not saying people didn’t respect him. He was bloody good at the job and he got results. We have something called the murder manual. You ever heard of that?’
‘I can’t say I have.’
‘Well, there’s no secret about it. You can download the whole thing on the internet if you want to look at it. It came out about twenty years ago and it’s the definitive guide to homicide investigation. It says that on page one. Basically, it’s the manual to everything from first response to crime scene strategy to house-to-house and post-mortem procedure and there are some investigating officers who carry it around with them like born-again Christians with their Bible. That’s the thing about our job. Process is king. The trouble is, you can take it too far. There was one man I knew, he was investigating a skeleton that had been dug up in the crypt of a church, victim of a murder that had taken place back in the fifties. He was trying to work out a CCTV strategy because that’s what it tells you to do in the manual – even though it was twenty-five years before CCTV was invented.
‘Now the thing about Hawthorne was, he did things his own way. He’d just disappear without so much as a by-your-leave, because he had a hunch or maybe it was just a lucky guess or Christ knows really how he knew. But almost every single time he was right. That was what pissed people off. He had an arrest record that was second to none.’
‘So what didn’t they like?’
‘Everything. On a day-to-day basis he was a pain in the arse. He was rude to the boss. He never clicked with anyone. And he didn’t drink. I’m not holding that against him but it didn’t help. Seven o’clock in the evening, he’d disappear. Maybe he went home to his wife although I heard whispers he was playing the field. It’s no matter. If he’d made a few more friends, maybe there’d have been someone to stand by him when the shit hit the fan.’
‘You told me not to go near any stairs.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that really. I couldn’t resist having a dig at Hawthorne.’ The third vodka martini arrived. He threw it back. ‘There was a man called Derek Abbott, a 62-year-old retired teacher, living in Brentford, who’d been arrested as part of Operation Spade. It was an international operation involving fifty countries, looking into the trafficking of child pornography by mail and internet. It had started in Canada and eventually there’d be more than three hundred arrests. Abbott was suspected of being the main distributor in the UK and so he’d been brought in for questioning. I’m not even sure what he was doing in Putney, but there he was.
‘Anyway, he was in the custody office, which was on the second floor. He’d been booked in, pockets searched and all the rest of it and someone had to take him to the interview room, which was in the basement. Normally, that would have been a civilian but there was nobody around and to this day I don’t quite know what happened but Hawthorne volunteered. He took him down a corridor to the staircase – I forgot to mention he’d decided that Abbott needed to be handcuffed. There was no need for that. He was in his sixties. He had no history of violence. Well, you’ve probably guessed what happened next and a guess is all we have because the CCTV wasn’t working in that part of the building. Abbott swore that Hawthorne tripped him. Hawthorne denied it. All I can tell you is that Abbott went head first down fourteen steps and because his hands were cuffed behind his back, there was nothing to break his fall.’
‘How badly was he hurt?’
Meadows shrugged. ‘Did his neck in, broke a few bones. He could have been killed and if so, Hawthorne would probably be in jail. As it was, Abbott was in no position to make too much fuss and basically the whole thing was hushed up. That said, it couldn’t all be brushed under the carpet. Too many people knew and, like I say, too many people had it in for him. So Hawthorne got the boot.’
There was nothing particularly surprising about this story. I had always been aware of a sort of smouldering violence in Hawthorne’s make-up, a sense of outrage, even – ironically – injustice. If he was going to kick someone down a flight of stairs, of course it would be a paedophile. It reminded me of his behaviour when we had visited Raymond Clunes.
‘Was he homophobic?’ I asked.
‘How would I know?’
‘He must have said something. Even if he wasn’t very sociable, he must have expressed an opinion – maybe if he’d read something in the newspaper or seen something on TV?’
‘No.’ Meadows looked in the Twiglet bowl. It was empty. ‘People don’t express opinions in the police force any more. You start mouthing off about gay people or black people, you’re going to be out on your ear before you know it. We don’t even use words like “manpower” any more. You’ve got to be aware of gender equality. Ten years ago, if you said something out of order you might get a clip on the ear. Not any more. These days, PC means more than police constable and you’d better know it.’
‘What happened to Abbott?’
‘I’ve no idea. He went to hospital and we never saw him again.’
‘There’s a detective chief inspector who’s been helping Hawthorne.’
‘That’d be Rutherford. He always had a soft spot for Hawthorne and he came up with this idea. It’s almost like a parallel investigation. You were at the crime scene. You saw how we had to leave everything in place for Hawthorne to come along and make his deductions. He reports directly to Rutherford. By-passes the whole system …’ Meadows stopped himself. He had said more than he intended. ‘Rutherford won’t talk to you,’ he added, ‘so I wouldn’t waste your time.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘I don’t know. Is there anything else you can tell me?’
‘No. But maybe there’s something you can tell me. You’ve been following Hawthorne around. Has he spoken to a man called Alan Godwin?’
I felt a cold sinking in my stomach. I had never thought that Meadows might try to use me to help him get ahead of Hawthorne in his investigation. It only occurred to me now that this might have been the real reason why he had agreed to meet me. I knew at once that I couldn’t tell him anything. If Meadows suddenly announced the identity of the killer, it would be a complete disaster. There would be no book!
At the same time, I was aware of a sense of loyalty to Hawthorne that must have developed over the past few days, because I’d certainly never noticed it before. We were a team. We – not Meadows or anyone else – were going to solve the crime. ‘I haven’t been to all the interviews,’ I said, weakly.
‘I’m not sure I believe that.’
‘Look … I’m sorry. I really can’t talk to you about what Hawthorne is doing. We made an agreement. It’s confidential.’
Meadows looked at me the way he might look at someone who has beaten up an old-age pensioner or killed a child. I had met him on three separate occasions and had considered him slow, inferior, even oafish. I suppose, in my mind’s eye, I had been casting him as a Japp, a Lestrade, a Burden: the man who never solves the crime. Now I saw that I had underestimated him. He could be dangerous too.
‘You don’t seem to know a lot about anything, Anthony,’ he said. ‘But I take it you’ve heard of obstruction.’
‘Yes.’
‘Obstructing a police officer in the execution of their duty under the Police Act of 1991. You could be fined a thousand pounds or sent to jail.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. And it was. This wasn’t Scotland Yard – it was the Groucho Club. And I had invited him here!