I had received an answer to the question that Holmes had put to me. Now all I needed to know was why I had asked it.
I took the train to New York and it is hard to convey to you my first impressions as I left Grand Central Depot. I found myself in a city of extraordinary opulence and abject poverty, of astonishing elegance and extreme depravity, the two living so close by that I only had to turn my head to pass from one to the other.
Well, I’m investigating a murder and now a woman has gone missing, so I wasn’t exactly waiting for an invitation,’ Hawthorne replied.
You’ve been thrown out, like me, and now you’re on the sidelines, scrubbing around for whatever petty cash you can persuade the police to throw your way and employing a second-rate hack author to write about you because you need the money. That’s what you’ve come to and I’m not afraid of you. Hawthorne Investigates? You’re pathetic!
It’s one of the paradoxes of being a writer that, physically, there’s not a huge difference between the debut novelist and the international best-seller: they’re each stuck in a room with a laptop, too many Jaffa Cakes and nobody to talk to. I once worked.
He had an extraordinary presence that could be saturnine, threatening or magnetic, depending on his mood.
Why would I believe someone who spends his entire life making stuff up?
Well,’ I tried, ‘I suppose it’s the thought that counts.’ ‘Yes. He thought we wouldn’t notice he’s a complete cheapskate.
But in the space of one minute he had told Colin Matheson more than he had ever told me. I had never known his age, for example. And I had written that he had spent ten years as a detective, not eleven. Why was Hawthorne answering these questions so readily in front of an audience in an Alderney cinema when with me he’d always been so guarded about his private life?
Everything has a relevance,’ remarked Holmes.
Given that Alderney isn’t exactly a whirl of social activity, I’m assuming you weren’t invited.
He saved my life. In a way, I loved him. I love you too, Alex. You are so very much like him. I’m glad that you’re here with me now.
Do geese see God?
But at the same time I recalled something Holmes had said to me many times, namely that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
It’s funny but I never quite know what to say when people tell me that they like my books. I almost feel embarrassed. ‘That’s great,’ I muttered. ‘Thank you.
You know the trouble with this part of the world? It’s full of retired bankers and lawyers with too much time on their hands.
He had discovered the secret of war, the moment when soldiers cast aside their fear and become part of a machine that is so much bigger than themselves. For only then are they prepared to die.
In a way, I think I am writing this for Leo. I have decided to keep a record of my life because I suspect my life will be short. I do not particularly want to be remembered. After all, being unknown has been essential to my work. But I sometimes think of him and I would like him to understand what it was that made me what I am.
I warned you that danger can become a drug and it seems to me that in your case, it’s too late. You’re already hooked.
We used our imagination to create a world of wolves and vampires, ghosts and Cossack warriors – and we chased each other right through the middle of them.
When people keep secrets, those secrets have a nasty way of festering. They can turn into poison. They can kill.