Close to Death

The others were just as bad. The two old ladies had to be persuaded to let him into the house, preferring to address him from the other side of a half-open door. The barrister, Andrew Pennington, was so circumspect that he tied himself in knots, talking as much as he could without actually saying anything. By contrast, Adam Strauss, whom Khan remembered from a terrible quiz show his grandmother had liked to watch, was monosyllabic. Gemma Beresford, the doctor’s wife, was openly hostile.

Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan was something of a poster boy for the Metropolitan Police – and knew it. He was young, good-looking, Oxford-educated, a great communicator from a working-class background. His father had been employed as a hospital porter. With his prematurely silver hair, his slim physique, his Bollywood good looks and his easy manner, Khan was admired by everyone who knew him and was regularly put forward for press briefings and evening news slots. This was the first time he had ever felt out of his depth. He’d found himself in drug-ridden sink estates in the worst parts of south London that had been more open and accommodating than Riverview Close. So far, they hadn’t given him so much as a Mr Kipling cake.

Late in the afternoon, he stood in the sunlight, comparing notes with DC Ruth Goodwin, who had worked with him for the last five years. The two of them got on well even though they came from different worlds – in her case, Hampstead Garden Suburb and a well-to-do Jewish family who wouldn’t have objected if she’d married a police officer but were surprised when she announced she was going to become one. Short and dark, with a round face and close-cropped hair, she had recently given up smoking, much to Khan’s satisfaction. Unfortunately, she had replaced cigarettes with a series of brightly coloured vapes, each one with a more unlikely flavour. Today it was lemon and mint. Khan thought she looked ridiculous, like a child sucking a sweet.

‘What do you think’s going on here?’ he asked. They were both leaning against the car that had brought them here.

‘I don’t know, sir. They’re all hiding something. That much is obvious.’

‘Do you think one of them killed Giles Kenworthy?’

‘It seems unlikely. They’re all friends, living in each other’s back gardens. But this is murder and they don’t seem like the sort of people who would cover up anything as serious as that.’

‘Unless they were somehow involved.’

‘Well, they can’t all have done it.’

Khan nodded. ‘He’d have had nine crossbow bolts in him if they had.’ He watched as a cloud of steam from the vape formed in the air and then disappeared. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Ruth. If they’re covering for each other, it’s going to be hard to untangle.’

‘And they’ve all got the same motive. The neighbour from hell. That doesn’t make it any easier.’

There was a long silence. The police and forensic officers were moving around them like pieces on one of Adam Strauss’s chessboards.

‘I wonder if we could use some outside help?’ DC Goodwin suggested at length.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, don’t shout at me, but I was thinking. Maybe . . . Hawthorne?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘It can’t do any harm and this might be right up his street . . .’

Neither of them had met Hawthorne, but they both knew who he was: the detective inspector who had lost his job when a suspect he’d been interrogating had sustained life-changing injuries – although he’d had a reputation long before that. He was a hard-working, solitary, difficult man who somehow always managed to pull the guilty rabbit out of the blood-soaked hat. After he’d been thrown out, his reputation had grown. They had both heard DI Cara Grunshaw talking about him. She had come across him on two occasions and had a deep loathing for him, but even she admitted that he had helped her. He also had plenty of friends inside the force. DCI Ian Rutherford had been his superior officer and wouldn’t hear a word said against him.

‘We could bring him in as an outside consultant,’ DC Goodwin went on. ‘If you think this one is a special case.’

‘I don’t know.’ Khan shook his head doubtfully.

‘It’s a crossbow, sir. In a private close in Richmond. We’ve already got the local hacks outside. They’re going to lap it up.’

‘But how do we even reach him? And who authorises payment?’

‘I can ask DCI Rutherford.’ Goodwin inhaled on her bright yellow vape. The light at the end blinked on. A smell of something like candyfloss shimmered in the air between them. ‘From what I hear, Hawthorne never takes any of the credit.’

This mattered to Khan. He didn’t want anyone to think that he was already giving up on such a shocking crime.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we give him a call?’

2

Hawthorne arrived the following morning, a Wednesday.