Enjoy this excerpt from CLOSE TO DEATH by Anthony Horowitz! We guarantee that after reading this, you’ll want to read the whole book.
CHAPTER 3
Despite its name, Riverview Close had no view of the River Thames.
It stood in the grounds of a former royal residence, Rievaulx Hall, built in 1758 for Jane Rievaulx, a less well- known mistress of King George II. According to contemporary reports, the original house was something of a rarity: a Palladian villa that managed to be asymmetrical and ugly. It was perhaps no surprise that its architect, William de Quincey, eventually died in a prison that, by coincidence, he had also designed. Nothing remained of the old house. It had been damaged by fire in the early nineteenth century, left abandoned for almost a hundred and fifty years and finally bombed in 1941 by the Luftwaffe, who had done the entire neighbourhood a favour by getting rid of what had become a well-known eyesore. At some time during all this, Rievaulx had been distorted into Riverview, either because the locals had no time for fancy French names or simply because they were unable to spell it properly.
What had been left of the estate was an irregular patch of land just off the Petersham Road, separated from the River Thames by a thick ribbon of woodland, with the towpath on the other side and no glimpse of the water, not even in winter when the branches were bare. Even so, the misnomer had stuck and when the area was finally developed with six new houses, the largest of them standing in the footprint of the original villa and two others built where the gardener’s cot- tage and the stables had been, Riverview Close was what it was called.
The architects had decided on a deliberately picturesque design using traditional stock brick that might have charac- terised an English village, along with Dutch gables, sash windows and plenty of flowers and shrubbery to help the new owners forget that they were on the edge of a major city and, indeed, in the modern world. Once the gate swung shut, the close lived up to its name in every respect. It was a tightly knit community. In fact, it was almost hermetically sealed. Yes, you could still hear the traffic crawling up and down Richmond Hill – particularly in the morning and evening rush hours. But the sound was counterbalanced by birdsong, the whirr of weekend lawnmowers, the occasional snatch of Bach or Sidney Bechet through an open window. Everyone knew each other. Everyone got on.
At least, they had until the Kenworthys arrived.
Andrew Pennington had been at home that day and had watched the removal men drive in, the pantechnicons only just scraping under the archway directly outside his house. He wasn’t sure what the procession resembled more: a royal pageant or a funeral. One after another they had pulled up outside Riverview Lodge, a dozen young men bursting out and then scurrying around with boxes, crates and different pieces of furniture shrouded in what must have been a mile of bubble wrap. Andrew had already spoken to Adam Strauss, who had sold the property and then moved into The Stables, on the other side of the entranceway from him. He had learned that Giles Kenworthy was some sort of hedge fund manager, with offices in Liverpool Street. His wife, Lynda, was a retired flight attendant. They had two children – Hugo, twelve, and Tristram, nine – both of them at a local prep school, on their way to Eton. They had a ski chalet in Les Trois Vallées. They had been living in Guildford but wanted to be closer to London.
The family had arrived a few days after their furnishings. Andrew knew the moment they were there. They had announced their presence with pop music pounding out from somewhere upstairs, followed shortly by the snarl of buzz saws as two English yews that had been planted a few years back were chopped down to make way for a patio extension. A day later, he had spotted two boys chasing each other round the close on skateboards, armed with plastic Star Wars light- sabres. Two cars had already driven (the wrong way) round the roundabout and taken a tight right turn into the garage. A third, a Mercedes-Benz M-Class, took its place on the drive. All of this might have set him against his new neighbours, but Andrew preferred to give them the benefit of the doubt. It was perhaps a paradox that forty years as a criminal barrister had persuaded him to see the best in the worst of people, but then again he had always worked in defence and had learned that although everyone had the capacity to commit murder, even the most cold-blooded killers had a grain of goodness buried somewhere inside them, if you just looked hard enough. Fear, guilt, remorse . . . It took many forms, but he had never met anyone with no humanity at all.
His career was behind him now. He had retired at about the same time his wife had been diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually take her from him. With the encourage- ment of his neighbours, he had planted the flowers in the courtyard roundabout, each one of them a small celebration of her life. There were white peonies, which she had carried in her wedding bouquet, and lavender, a perfume she had often worn. Argyranthemum ‘Jamaica Primrose’, because that was where she had been born and where the two of them had met. And sweet iris, which recalled her name. Riverview Close employed a full-time gardener and handyman – in fact a woman – but she never touched the flower display. Andrew insisted on doing all the work himself.
His first meeting with Giles Kenworthy had been nothing short of a disaster.
On the first Sunday afternoon following their arrival, Andrew had walked round with a ginger cake he had baked that morning and which he thought might be a nice way to intro- duce himself. It was the last week in November and surprisingly warm, one of those days that the British weather occasionally throws out to take everyone by surprise. He had nearly always done the cooking when Iris was alive and his ginger cake with cinnamon and black treacle had been one of her favourites.
Carrying the cake in a plastic box, Andrew had crossed the close and rung the doorbell of Riverview Lodge. He had often been in the house when Adam Strauss had lived there – there had been regular suppers and drinks parties in each other’s homes – and he resisted the temptation to peer into the windows on either side to see what changes had been made. After a long wait, just when he was tempted to ring a second time, the door suddenly jerked open and Andrew was given his first close-up view of his new neighbour.
Giles Kenworthy did not look very friendly, as if he had been disturbed in the middle of something important. He was a short man with very dark, beady eyes and neatly combed hair that was so jet black it might have been dyed. His cheeks were round and well polished, and this, along with his upturned nose and the white cricket jersey he was wearing, suggested something of the schoolboy about him, although he must have been in his forties. He was smiling but in an unpleasant way. It was the way a child might smile whilst pulling the legs of a spider.
‘Yes?’ he said. He had a high-pitched voice. A single word was enough to reveal his public-school background. Andrew hesitated, and in that moment, Kenworthy took control of the situation. ‘It’s going round the back,’ he said. ‘You can use the garden gate.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re delivering the barbecue?’ It was as much a state- ment as a question. Kenworthy looked past him. ‘Where’s your van?’
‘No. I’m your neighbour. I just wanted to welcome you to the close.’ Andrew lifted the Tupperware box. ‘I made this for you.’
Kenworthy’s face fell. ‘God! What a stupid bloody mis- take. I’m terribly sorry. We ’ve bought a new gas barbecue and it’s meant to be delivered around now.’ He reached out and took the box. ‘That’s very kind of you . . . but you’re going to have to forgive me. I can’t invite you in right now. We ’re both at sixes and sevens and one of the boys seems to have got whooping cough. Will you think me very rude if I take a rain check?’
‘No. I’m sorry if I’ve called at a bad time.’
‘Not at all. It’s a very kind thought. You didn’t tell me your name.’
‘Andrew Pennington.’
‘Well, Andy, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure we ’ll be having a housewarming party in due course and that’ll give us a chance to get to know each other better. Which is your place?’
‘I’m over by the entrance.’ Andrew pointed. ‘Well House. You may have noticed the old well next to the archway. They say it dates back to the fifteenth century.’ He wasn’t quite sure why he had volunteered this information. ‘You should keep your boys away from it,’ he added. ‘You wouldn’t want one of them to fall in.’
‘I’m sure they’re more sensible than that, but I’ll have a word. And if you see the chaps with the barbecue, maybe you can point them in the right direction.’
‘I’ll do that.’ ‘Thank you.’
The door closed. Andrew was almost surprised to find that the cake was no longer in his hand. He turned round and walked home.
It was only later that the doubts came clouding in.
It was true that he hadn’t looked his best. He had spent the morning doing odd jobs and he was still wearing his old corduroy trousers and a loose-fitting shirt. He should have taken a shower first and changed into something a little smarter. But could Kenworthy have possibly mistaken him for a delivery man when there was no van in sight – and didn’t most delivery people wear uniforms? And there had definitely been something a little fake, a little knowing about that opening statement. ‘It’s going round the back. You can use the garden gate.’ Giles Kenworthy had delivered it with a curl of the lip that had been dismissive in every sense, as if he were deliberately making a point.
Casual racism had been a part of Andrew Pennington’s life for as long as he could remember. He knew that he had been fortunate. His father had made a great deal of money in tele- communications, which had unlocked a private education and, when he announced that he wanted a career in law, entry into a big-name chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. Not for him the so-called ‘black ghetto chambers’ that would have seen him working with local solicitors on pedestrian cases funded by legal aid. First as a pupil and then as a tenant, he had worked tirelessly. He had never allowed himself a margin of error. There could be no mistakes. Twice as hard to get half as far – that was the old adage.
Nobody ever said anything. Nobody was offensive. But he could feel it the moment he walked into a room, the sense that he was different, because of his colour. And there was that strange lack of progress. He got on well with the clerks, but his name was never put forward for the more high-profile cases. He was still trawling through stacks of documents late into the night when he should have been, at the very least, a junior junior.
Even in the latter part of his career, when he had become a QC, it had continued. How many times had he been stopped on his way into court, mistaken for a clerk, for a journalist or – worse still – for a defendant? ‘Excuse me, sir. Can I have your name so I can mark you as here for your case?’ The security guards were always polite and apologetic, but he sometimes felt that they were all part of the same conspiracy against him. And then there were the judges who patronised him or dis- missed him – at least, until he began his cross-examination.
He had never complained. Iris had always insisted that if he was going to advance in a world where black barristers made up only one per cent of the workforce, he should play the game, keep his head down.
‘But what about those who follow?’ he had asked her. ‘Don’t I owe it to them to speak out, to make a noise? I spend my entire life talking about justice – but how can I do that when there’s no justice for me?’
‘You are a successful man, Andrew,’ she had replied. ‘I’m proud of you. And you being so successful . . . that will lead the way for others.’
Lying alone in the bed that they had shared for thirty-five years, Andrew remembered her voice. It was half past five in the morning and already light. He had been woken up by the Porsche, just like Adam Strauss and Tom Beresford. Where had Giles Kenworthy been, out all night until four in the morning? Didn’t he ever sleep?
Was Giles a racist?
There was something else Andrew had noticed while standing there with the cake. A flyer had been placed in one of the windows – quite unnecessarily, as the only people who could see it lived in the close. It was a bright red square with the words BELIEVE IN BRITAIN printed in white. He had recognised the slogan of the UK Independence Party, none of whose members were racist, of course, but whose candidates had so far managed to offend just about every ethnic group in the country, including his own. Every time he walked home, Andrew saw the poster and couldn’t escape the feeling that it was aimed, directly, at him.
And although there had been half a dozen parties at Riverview Lodge, including a New Year’s Eve special that had managed to extend itself until midnight on 1 January, Andrew’s invitation had somehow never materialised. Seven months later, he had never been inside the house.
He got out of bed and went downstairs to make himself some tea. There were photographs of Iris all around him and he wondered what she would say. Would she have come with him to the meeting that was being held that evening, a chance for everyone to air their grievances, or would she have warned him not to go? He opened the fridge and sniffed the milk, and at the same time he heard her voice.
‘No good will come of it, Andrew. You know that. How many times have you seen it? Little grudges that get out of control and turn into fights, and fights that somehow become violent and end up with you standing there in court? You stay away!’
He closed the fridge door. He knew what she would have said, but this time he wasn’t going to listen to her. It was only much later that he would wish he had.
ANTHONY HOROWITZ is the author of the US bestselling Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder, and one of the most prolific and successful writers in the English language; he may have committed more (fictional) murders than any other living author. His novel Trigger Mortis features original material from Ian Fleming. His most recent Sherlock Holmes novel, Moriarty, is a reader favorite; and his bestselling Alex Rider series for young adults has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. As a TV screenwriter, he created both Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle’s War on PBS. Horowitz regularly contributes to a wide variety of national newspapers and magazines, and in January 2014 was awarded an OBE.
