‘My parents were very ordinary people. My father was a doctor. My mother worked in the same surgery – she was the receptionist. I was an only child and they weren’t sure what to do with me after the accident. I’d probably have ended up in an orphanage or something except that my dad had an aunt, my great-aunt May, and she stepped in and said I could live with her. She was on her own and she was quite well off. She was everything to me growing up. She’s still close to me now.’
He reached out and picked up one of the three cards he had been sent. It showed a cartoon of a man reaching down to pick up a four-leaf clover … just missing an old-fashioned safe that was plummeting down from a building behind him. The words GOOD LUCK were printed in silver foil. Hawthorne opened it and we read the message, written in a cramped, almost childish hand. Hope the first night goes well. All my love. AM.
‘Nice of her to remember,’ I said.
‘She’s got dementia,’ Tirian replied. ‘She’s in a care home now and the nurses will have helped her with the card because she doesn’t remember anything very much.’ For a moment he was sad, but then he smiled. ‘I had a wonderful time living with her. She had a beautiful house, a two-up-two-down on Otley Road … just opposite the tennis club. I used to go there all the time. I wasn’t crazy about the sport, but mixed doubles was definitely my thing. That’s where I had my first kiss. And my first cigarette.’
‘Did you go to school in Harrogate?’
‘Yeah. I got into Harrogate Grammar School. It was only five minutes away from where I lived. I was there until I was sixteen. Funnily enough, there was a teacher there – Miss Havergill – who was always trying to get me interested in drama. She put me in The Pied Piper, playing the king of the rats. I enjoyed that. Maybe it should have told me something, but I was a lazy little sod. I didn’t do A levels. I couldn’t wait to start work.’
‘What did you want to do?’
‘I didn’t really care. I just wanted to have enough money to have my own place, a fast car, travel … that sort of thing. Aunt May managed to get me a job with the National Trust in York. I started as a programmes manager in the event-management department. Twelve thousand pounds a year – that was my first salary. It was pretty boring, to be honest with you, and I wouldn’t have stuck it very long, but then one of those weird coincidences happened and it sort of changed my life.’
He was talking faster now, aware of time ticking away.
‘They were shooting a TV series called Heartbeat in one of our properties near Leeds. You must remember it. It was a cop show set in the sixties. I was sent down there to act as a liaison officer – to make sure that everything went all right – and they asked me if I’d like to be an extra, just for a lark. I ended up playing a stable boy. The episode was about a farmer who shoots someone’s dog or something. Anyway, I was up to my knees in mud, hanging on to a horse, which terrified me because I’d never been near one before, and I loved every minute of it.
‘I can’t explain it to you, really. The moment I went on the set I felt I’d sort of arrived. I’d never realised that so much work and so many people went into the making of an hour’s TV. I was amazed by all the equipment – the cameras and the dollies, the catering trucks, the lights. It was massive. And then there were the stars. There was no “them and us”。 They were really nice. I watched them doing their stuff, not once but lots of times, doing the same scene from lots of different angles, and I thought – I can do that! Maybe I remembered doing that play with Miss Havergill. I wanted to do it. She’d been right. I had it inside me. I was an actor!
‘And what happened that first day was really amazing. As it happened, the casting director happened to be on set. He was a guy called Malcolm Drury and after we finished filming, I went over and asked him if he could help me … you know, get into the business. I was actually quite nervous, but he couldn’t have been nicer.’
The strange thing was, I’d met Malcolm Drury myself. He’d worked on a TV play for children that I’d written at the end of the eighties. I’d liked him too.
‘We had a long chat. I was freezing cold and stinking of horses, but he took a liking to me and said he’d let me know if anything came up – and he was as good as his word. I got a few lines in Spooks and Little Dorrit – more horses – and after that I packed in the National Trust and got an agent and it all took off. There are lots of people who are a bit snooty, like Jordan, because I never went to drama school or anything like that, but I love what I’m doing and it seems I got lucky.’ He stopped. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t helped you very much, have I – and now I’ve got to get ready. I didn’t kill Harriet Throsby and I hope you find out who did. Let me know! But if you don’t mind …’