The Sentence Is Death Horowitz Mystery #2 by Anthony Horowitz

Author:Anthony Horowitz
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

13

Bury Street

Who was Mike Carlyle?

I spent an hour searching the internet but couldn’t find anything that related to the man who had come into the Station Inn in Ribblehead. He had been about the same age as Hawthorne – maybe a couple of years younger – and unless he had been on holiday, which seemed unlikely in late October, I guessed he must live in the Yorkshire Dales. What would that make him? A farmer? Something connected to tourism? Of course, it could have been Carlisle. I tried that spelling too. Michael Carlyle. Mike Carlisle. I was directed to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, to an office stationery supply company in Manchester and the Director of Missions at a Baptist church in Victoria, Australia. There were dozens of photographs to choose from but none resembled the man I had met.

I couldn’t get the encounter out of my head. It seemed to tie in with Hawthorne’s strange mood, his nervousness as we left London. Carlyle had been quite sure it was Hawthorne even if he had referred to him as ‘Billy’. He had known him from somewhere called Reeth – a village in nearby Swaledale and ‘a well-known centre for hand-knitting and the local lead industry’, as Wikipedia helpfully informed me. Hawthorne’s behaviour hadn’t just been defensive, it had been borderline rude. I couldn’t be certain but it seemed quite possible to me that ‘Billy’ had lied to ‘Mike’. They had known each other once.

I was thinking this over when the telephone rang. It was Hawthorne arranging to meet me at the Bury Street Gallery in Mayfair – which was where Stephen Spencer worked.

‘We can go on to Marylebone afterwards,’ he said.

‘What’s in Marylebone?’

‘Akira Anno is giving a talk in a bookshop.’ I heard the rustle of paper as he turned a page. ‘“Women of mass-destruction: sexual objectification and gender coding in modern warfare”.’

‘That sounds fun,’ I said.

‘We can talk to her and if you’re lucky you can get her book of haikus signed.’

He rang off.

I spent the next couple of hours working. I went for a walk. I wrote a quick draft of the chapter Hawthorne wanted. I know it all sounds a bit dull laid out like that but I’m afraid I’m describing very much my life as a writer. I spend at least half the day on my own and in silence. I flit from one project to another, channelling thousands of words – first with a pen and then with a computer – onto the page. That’s why I enjoy writing Alex Rider. Even if I’m not having adventures, I can at least imagine them.

It was less satisfying writing about Hawthorne. I had become a prisoner of circumstance. For example, I would have loved to have opened a chapter with something surprising: Davina Richardson in bed with Adrian Lockwood, perhaps. Or Susan Taylor, dressed in black, being driven to her husband’s funeral in the Yorkshire Dales, the cortège slowly winding its way through those twisting country lanes. It

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