‘I suppose so. But he didn’t contact me. If you want the truth, we were only talking through solicitors. And I wouldn’t like you to think that his dealings with me were in any way connected with what happened – his death, I mean. Sure, he lost some money. We all did. But it wasn’t anything he couldn’t afford. He wasn’t going to have to sell up or anything like that. If he couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t have let him in.’
I left soon after that. I noticed that Elizabeth, the housekeeper hadn’t offered me a second cup of coffee. They waited on the doorstep as I climbed into my MBG and they were still standing there together, watching, as I drove back down the drive.
Starbucks, Ipswich
There’s a well-marked one-way system that takes you round the edge of Ipswich, which suits me because it’s one city I’ve never much enjoyed entering. There are too many shops and too little else. People who live there probably like it but I have bad memories. I used to take Jack and Daisy, my nephew and niece, to the Crown Pools and I swear to God I can still smell the chlorine. I could never find a space in the bloody car parks. I’d have to queue up for ages just to get in and out. More recently, they’d opened one of those American-style complexes just opposite the station, with about a dozen fast-food restaurants and a multiplex cinema. It seems to me that it kills the city, separating the entertainment like that – but it was here that I met Richard Locke for the fifteen minutes he’d been kind enough to give me.
I arrived first. At twenty past eleven, I had more or less decided that he wasn’t going to come but then the door opened and he strode in, looking pissed off. I raised a hand, recognising him at once. He was indeed the man I’d seen with Claire at the funeral but he had no reason to know me. He was wearing a suit but without a tie. This was his day off. He came over and sat down heavily, all that well-toned flesh and muscle hammering into the plastic chair, and my first thought was this wasn’t someone I’d want to arrest me. I felt uncomfortable even offering him a coffee. He asked for tea and I went over and got it for him. I bought him a flapjack too.
‘I understand you’re interested in Alan Conway,’ he said.
‘I was his editor.’
‘And Claire Jenkins was his sister.’ He paused. ‘She has this idea that he was killed. Is that what you think?’
There was grim, no-nonsense tone to his voice that was actually on the edge of anger. It was in his eyes, too. They were fixed on me as if he was the one who had ordered this interrogation. I wasn’t quite sure how to reply. I wasn’t even sure what to call him. Richard was probably too informal. Mr Locke was wrong. Detective Superintendent felt too TV but that was the one I plumped for. ‘Did you see the body?’ I asked.
‘No. I saw the report.’ Almost grudgingly, he broke off a piece of his flapjack but he didn’t eat it. ‘Two officers from Leiston were called to the scene. I only got involved because I happened to know Mr Conway. Also, he was famous and there was obviously going to be interest from the press.’
‘Claire had introduced you to him?’
‘I think it was the other way round, actually, Ms Ryeland. He needed help with his books and so she introduced him to me. But you didn’t answer my question. Do you think he was murdered?’
‘I think it’s possible. Yes.’ He was going to interrupt me so I went on quickly. I told him about the missing chapter which had first brought me to Suffolk. I mentioned Alan’s diary, the number of appointments he had made for the week after he died. I didn’t talk about the people I’d spoken to – it didn’t seem fair to drag them in. But for the first time I explained my feeling about the suicide letter, how it didn’t quite add up. ‘It’s only on page three that he talks about dying,’ I explained. ‘But he was dying anyway. He had cancer. The letter doesn’t actually say anywhere that he’s about to kill himself.’
‘You don’t think it’s a bit odd then that he sent it to his publisher one day before he threw himself off that tower?’
‘Perhaps he wasn’t the one who sent it. Perhaps someone read the letter and realised that it could be misinterpreted. They pushed Alan off the tower and then sent the letter themselves. They knew we’d leap to the wrong conclusion precisely because of the timing.’
‘I don’t think I’ve leapt to any wrong conclusions, Ms Ryeland.’
He was not looking at me sympathetically and although I was a little annoyed, the strange thing is that, right then, he was not wrong to doubt me. There was something about the letter which I, of all people, should have noticed but which I hadn’t. I called myself an editor but I was blind to the truth even when it was right there in front of my eyes.
‘There were a lot of people who didn’t like Alan—’ I began.
‘There are a lot of people who don’t like a lot of people but they don’t go around the place murdering them.’ He had come here with the intention of telling me this and now that he had started, he wasn’t going to stop. ‘What people like you don’t seem to understand is that you’ve got more chance of winning the lottery than you have of being murdered. Do you know what the murder rate was last year? Five hundred and ninety-eight people – that’s out of a population of around sixty million! In fact, I’ll tell you something that may amuse you. There are some parts of the country where the police actually solve more crimes than are committed. You know why that is? The murder rate’s falling so fast, they’ve got time to look into the cold cases that were committed years ago.
‘I don’t understand it. All these murders on TV – you’d think people would have better things to do with their time. Every night. Every bloody channel. People have some sort of fixation. And what really annoys me is that it’s nothing like the truth. I’ve seen murder victims. I’ve investigated murder. I was here when Steve Wright was killing prostitutes. The Ipswich Ripper – that’s what they called him. People don’t plan these things. They don’t sneak into their victims’ houses and throw them off the roof and then send out letters hoping they’re going to be misinterpreted, as you put it. They don’t put on wigs and dress up like they do in Agatha Christie. All the murders I’ve ever been involved in have happened because the perpetrators were mad or angry or drunk. Sometime all three. And they’re horrible. Disgusting. It’s not like some actor lying on his back with a little red paint on his throat. When you see someone who’s had a knife in them, it makes you sick. Literally sick.