‘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.’
‘When we were in that pub in Yorkshire, a man called Mike Carlyle said that he knew you from Reeth, although he called you Billy.’
‘He’d got the wrong person. That wasn’t me.’
‘And there’s something I didn’t tell you.’ I paused. ‘When I got back from Alderney, a postcard came. It was from Derek Abbott.’
Abbott was the convicted child pornographer we’d met in Alderney. He was the man who’d supposedly fallen down the stairs while he was in police custody.
‘He wrote to you from hell?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘He wrote to me before he died. He told me to ask you about Reeth.’
‘I don’t know anything about Reeth. It’s a place. I haven’t been there.’
I knew he was lying, but there was no point in challenging him. ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘Tell me about your wife. Your son. What about your brother, the estate agent? How old are you really? You said you were thirty-nine in Alderney, but I think you’re older.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
I ignored him. ‘Why do you make all these models? What’s that all about? Why don’t you ever eat?’