The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

Author:Anthony Horowitz [Horowitz, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

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Premonitions

Ewan Lloyd’s home was a mews house in every respect but one. It wasn’t actually in a mews. It was compact and elegant, painted pale blue, with a flat roof and a front room that had been converted from a garage. It was wedged in between two very similar houses in a cobbled street with old-fashioned street lamps. But the street itself led somewhere. I could imagine it being used as a rat run by north London mothers taking their children to school. Finsbury Park tube station, one of the most depressing stations on the London Underground system, was just round the corner. It had been my nearest station when I was living in Crouch End and I might have rubbed shoulders with Ewan any number of times. It’s amazing, really, the invisible process that can turn complete strangers into friends.

As Hawthorne rang the front bell, yellow light spilling out of the front windows and the sound of a Chopin nocturne being played on a speaker system, it struck me that this was exactly the sort of home I would have expected Ewan to live in. It reflected his single-mindedness, the way he presented himself, as if the light and the music had been arranged specially for our arrival. It was also the house of a divorced man. Ahmet had told me that he’d been married with four children and it was impossible to imagine them all living here. I wondered if he was still on his own.

The nocturne stopped mid-trill and a few moments later, Ewan opened the door and stood there, blinking through his round-framed spectacles. Hawthorne had told him we were on our way and he had dressed for the occasion in a velvet jacket with another long scarf dangling from his shoulders. At the same time, he wasn’t happy to see us. He filled the entire door frame … but then again, it was a small door.

‘Mr Hawthorne?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid I can only give you a few minutes. My wife will be home soon and I’m just cooking dinner.’

Well, that answered the question I’d just been asking myself.

‘A few minutes is all I need.’ Hawthorne replied. Of course, he would say that. Once he was inside, he would stay as long as he wanted.

The front door opened directly into the main living area, effectively a single space with an open-plan kitchen, modern furniture, a spiral staircase leading up to the next floor, and more than a thousand books. Like Harriet’s office, these focused almost entirely on the theatre. I ran my eye across biographies of Trevor Nunn, Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Harold Pinter – and was surprised to see that he arranged his shelves alphabetically. There were framed posters from landmark productions that he might have seen when he was much younger: Look Back in Anger, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. No musicals or comedies. The awards he had won peeked out of various corners, but none of them were recognisable in the way of a Tony or a BAFTA.

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