‘Thank you.’
‘Well, who’s going to write the book if it isn’t you?’ He suddenly looked sheepish. It was something I’d not seen before and it gave me a glimpse of the child he had been, the one that was still lurking inside the man he had become. ‘Look, mate, I’ve been meaning to say … I lied to you.’
‘When?’
‘In Canterbury. You were having a go at me and I was pissed off with you – but I didn’t speak to any other writers about this book. You were the only one I approached.’
There was a long silence. I didn’t know what to say.
‘Thank you,’ I muttered, in the end.
He stood up. ‘I heard from that agent of yours,’ he continued, briskly. ‘I liked her. It looks like we’re going to have to wait a bit to get published but she says she can get us a good advance.’ He smiled. ‘At least, the way it worked out, you’ve got something to write about. I think it’s going to be good.’
He left and I lay there thinking about what he had just said. ‘It’s going to be good.’ He was right. For perhaps the very first time, there was a chance it might be.
Twenty-four
River Court
I went back home. I started work.
I could see that my working method was going to be very different from what I was used to. Normally, when I have an idea for a book, it will sit in my head for at least a year before I start writing. If it’s a murder mystery, the starting point will be the murder itself. Someone kills somebody else for a reason. That’s the core of the matter. I will create those characters and then gradually build the world around them, drawing links between the various suspects, giving them a history, working out their relationships. I’ll think about them when I’m out walking, lying in bed, sitting in the bath – and I won’t begin writing until the story has a recognisable shape. I’m often asked if I start writing a book without knowing the end. For me, it would be like building a bridge without knowing what it’s got to reach.
This time everything had been given to me and it was more a question of configuration than actual creation and I wasn’t entirely happy with some of the material. In all honesty, I wouldn’t have chosen to write about a spoiled Hollywood actor because I’ve known too many of them and occasionally I’ve even worked with them. But unfortunately it was Damian Cowper who had been killed and I was stuck with him, along with his mother, his partner and the various associates who had turned up at the funeral. It was also worrying that I’d met them all so briefly. Raymond Clunes, Bruno Wang, Dr Buttimore and the others had played only a very peripheral part in the story and since Hawthorne had done all the talking I’d been unable to find out very much about them. Should I add more characters of my own? As things had turned out, everything that had happened in Deal had been, at least to an extent, irrelevant. I wondered if it was fair to leave it in.
The question I had to ask myself was – how closely should I stick to the facts? I knew I was going to have to change some names so why couldn’t I do the same with events? Although I hate using card systems, I scribbled down a heading for every interview and every incident and laid them out on my desk, starting with Diana Cowper’s arrival at the funeral parlour and continuing with my involvement, my visit to her house and so on. I had more than enough for ninety thousand words. In fact, there were scenes – hours of my life – that I could drop altogether. Andrea Kluvánek droning on about her childhood and a particularly dull afternoon spent with Raymond Clunes’s accountant were two examples.
Looking through my notes and iPhone recordings, I was relieved to see that I hadn’t been completely obtuse. When I first met Robert Cornwallis I had jotted down that ‘he could have been playing a part’ – which was exactly what he had been doing. I had also questioned whether he enjoyed being an undertaker, which turned out to be the heart of the whole matter. All in all, I hadn’t done too badly. I’d noticed the motorbike parked outside his house, the motorbike helmet in the hall, the fridge magnets, the glass of water, the key holder … in fact, I would have said that at least seventy-five per cent of the most important clues were written down in my notebook. It was just that I hadn’t quite realised their significance.
Over the next couple of days, I wrote the first two chapters. I was trying to find the ‘voice’ of the book. If I was really going to appear in it, I had to be sure that I wasn’t too obtrusive, that I didn’t get in the way. But even in that very tentative first draft (and there would eventually be five more) I saw that I had a much bigger problem. It was Hawthorne. It wasn’t too difficult to capture the way he looked and spoke. My feelings towards him were also fairly straightforward. The trouble was, how much did I know about him?
He was separated from his wife – who lived in Gants Hill.
He had an eleven-year-old son.
He was a brilliant, instinctive detective but he was unpopular.
He didn’t drink.
He had been fired from the murder squad for pushing a known paedophile down a flight of stairs.
He was homophobic. (I’m not, incidentally, making any connection between homosexuality and paedophilia, but both these points seemed noteworthy.)
He was a member of a reading group.
He had a good knowledge of WW2 fighter planes.
He lived in an expensive block of flats on the River Thames.
It wasn’t enough. Whenever we had been together, we had barely talked about anything except the business at hand. We had never had a drink together. We hadn’t so much as shared a proper meal – breakfast in a Harrow-on-the-Hill café didn’t count. The only time he had ever shown me any kindness was when he’d visited me in hospital. Without knowing where – and how – he lived, how could I write about him? A home is the first and most obvious reflection of our personality but he still hadn’t invited me in.
I thought of telephoning Hawthorne but then I had a better idea. Meadows had given me his address, River Court, on the south side of the river and one afternoon – about a week after I came out of hospital – I abandoned the scattered index cards, the crumpled balls of paper and the Post-it notes on my desk and set off down there. It was a pleasant day and although the stitches were pulling underneath my shirt, I enjoyed walking in the warm spring air. I followed the Farringdon Road all the way down to Blackfriars Bridge and saw the block of flats on the other side of the river in front of me … as I had seen it a hundred times on my way to the National Theatre or the Old Vic. It was extraordinary to think that Hawthorne lived here. My first thought was exactly the same one I’d had when Meadows first told me. How could he possibly afford it?
Despite its amazing position – nestling close to the bridge opposite Unilever House and St Paul’s – River Court is far from being a beautiful development. It was built in the 1970s, I would say by a group of colour-blind architects who drew their inspiration from the simplest mathematical forms, quite possibly matchboxes. It’s twelve floors high with narrow windows and a collection of balconies that feels haphazard. Some flats have them, some don’t: it’s just a matter of luck. In a city where spectacular glass towers are shooting up almost daily, it feels painfully old-fashioned. And yet perhaps because it’s so ludicrous, because it sits there so doggedly determined to sit out the twenty-first century (the pub next door is actually called Doggett’s), there is something attractive about it. And it has wonderful views.
The entrance was around the back, on the road leading down to the Oxo Tower and the National Theatre. Meadows had given me the name of the building but not the number of the flat. I saw a porter standing beside an open door and walked up to him. I’d had the presence of mind to bring an envelope with me and took it out of my pocket.