The Thursday Murder Club

54: Joyce

I tripped over a loose paving slab in Fairhaven a few weeks ago. I didn’t mention it in my diary because of murders and trips to London and my pursuit of Bernard. But it was a nasty tumble and I dropped my bag and my things went everywhere. Keys, glasses case, pills, phone.

Now, here’s the thing. Every single person who saw me fall came over to help. Every single one of them. A cyclist helped me to my feet, a traffic warden picked up my things and dusted down my bag, a lady with a pushchair sat with me at a pavement table until I’d got my breath back. The woman who ran the café came out with a cup of tea and offered to drive me around to her GP.

Perhaps they only came to help because I look old. I look frail and helpless. But I don’t think so. I think I would have helped if I saw a fit youngster take the tumble I did. I think you would too. I think I would have sat with him, I think the traffic warden would have picked up his laptop and I think the woman in the café would still have offered to drive him to her GP.

That’s who we are as human beings. For the most part, we are kind.

However, I still remember a consultant I once worked with, at Brighton General, up on the hill. A very rude, very cruel, very unhappy man, and he made our lives a misery. He would shout and would blame us for mistakes he made.

Now, if that consultant had dropped dead in front of my eyes I would have danced a jig.

You mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but there are exceptions to every rule and Ian Ventham was of the same type as this consultant. Come to think of it, he was called Ian too, so that’s something to look out for.

You know those people. People who feel the world is theirs alone? They say you see it more and more these days, this selfishness, but some people were always awful. Not many, that’s what I’m saying, but always a few.

All of which is to say that, in one way, I’m sorry that Ian Ventham is dead, but there is another way to look at it.

On any given day lots of people die. I don’t know the statistics, but it must be thousands. So somebody was going to die yesterday and I’m just saying that I would rather it was Ian Ventham who died in front of me than, say, the cyclist or the traffic warden, or the mum with the pushchair, or the woman who ran the café.

I would rather it was Ian Ventham the paramedics failed to save, than that it was Joanna, or Elizabeth. Or Ron, or Ibrahim, or Bernard. Without wanting to sound selfish about it, I would rather it was Ian Ventham who was zipped into a bag and wheeled into a coroner’s van, than me.

For Ian Ventham, though, yesterday was the day. We will all have one and yesterday was his. Elizabeth says he was killed, and if Elizabeth says he was killed then I expect he was. I don’t suppose he expected that when he woke up yesterday morning.

I hope I don’t sound callous, it’s just that I have seen a lot of people die and I have shed so many tears. But I have shed none for Ian Ventham and I just wanted you to know why. It is sad that he is dead, but it hasn’t made me sad.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and help solve his murder.

55

‘Well, here’s the big headline.’ Chris Hudson is standing at the front of the briefing room, his team spread out in front of him. ‘Ian Ventham was murdered.’

Donna De Freitas looks around at the murder squad. There are a few new faces. She simply cannot believe her luck. Two murders and here she is, right in the middle of it all. She had to hand it to Elizabeth. She definitely owed her a drink, or whatever else Elizabeth might prefer. A scarf? Who knew what Elizabeth would like? A gun, probably.

Chris opens a folder. ‘Ian Ventham’s death was caused by fentanyl poisoning. A massive overdose, delivered into the muscle of his upper arm. Almost certainly in the moments leading up to his collapse. You’ll tell by the speed that this is not official; this is me calling in a favour, OK? And they see enough fentanyl overdoses at the path lab these days to know one when they see one. We’re the only people who have that piece of information at present, so let’s keep it that way as long as we can, please. No press, no friends and family.’

He gives Donna the briefest of looks.

56

‘So, we were all witnesses to a murder,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Which, needless to say, is wonderful.’

Fifteen winding miles away, the Thursday Murder Club is in extraordinary session. Elizabeth is laying out a series of full-colour photos of the corpse of Ian Ventham, alongside every conceivable angle of the scene. She had taken them on her phone while pretending she was calling for an ambulance. She then had them privately printed by a chemist in Robertsbridge who owed her a favour, due to her keeping quiet about a criminal conviction from the 1970s that she had managed to uncover.

‘Tragic too, in its way, if we wanted to be traditional about our emotions,’ adds Ibrahim.

‘Yes, if we wanted to be melodramatic, Ibrahim,’ says Elizabeth.

‘First question, then,’ says Ron. ‘How do you know it was a murder? Looked like a heart attack to me.’

‘And you’re a doctor, Ron?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘As much as you are, Liz,’ says Ron.

Elizabeth opens a folder and takes out a sheet of paper. ‘Well, Ron, I’ve already been over this with Ibrahim, because I had a job for him, but listen carefully. The cause of death was an overdose of fentanyl, administered very shortly before death. This information is straight from a man who has access to the email correspondence of the Kent Police Forensic Service, but it hasn’t yet been confirmed by Donna, even though I have texted her repeatedly. Happy, Ron?’

Ron nods. ‘Yeah, I’ll give you that. What’s fentanyl? That’s a new one on me.’

‘It’s an opioid, Ron, like heroin,’ says Joyce. ‘They use it in anaesthesia, pain relief, all sorts of things. Very effective, patients rave about it.’

‘Also you can mix it with cocaine,’ says Ibrahim. ‘If you were a drug addict, say.’

‘And the Russian security services use it for all sorts of things,’ says Elizabeth.

Ron nods, satisfied.

Ibrahim says, ‘And, as it must’ve been administered very shortly before his death, then we are all suspects in his murder.’

Joyce claps her hands. ‘Splendid. I’m not sure how any of us would have got hold of fentanyl, but splendid.’ She is arranging Viennese whirls on a plate commemorating Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s wedding, something Joanna had assumed she would like many years ago.

Ron is nodding, looking at the photos of the scene. Looking at the faces of the residents craning for a better view of Ian Ventham’s slumped body. ‘So, someone at Coopers Chase killed him? Someone in these pictures?’

‘And we are all in the pictures,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Except for Elizabeth, of course,’ says Joyce. ‘Because she was taking the photos. But she would still be a suspect for any half-decent investigation.’

‘I would hope so,’ agrees Elizabeth.

Ibrahim walks over to a flip chart. ‘Elizabeth asked me to make a few calculations.’

Elizabeth, Joyce and Ron settle into the Jigsaw Room chairs. Ron takes a Viennese whirl, to the relief of Joyce, who now feels able to do the same. They are own-brand, but there had been a Gregg Wallace programme which had said they were made in the same factory as the proper ones.

Ibrahim begins. ‘Somebody in that crowd administered an injection to Ian Ventham which killed him, almost certainly within a minute. There was a puncture wound found on his upper arm. I asked you all to compile a list of everybody you remembered seeing, which you kindly did, although not all of your lists were alphabetized in the way I had asked.’

Ibrahim looks at Ron. Ron shrugs. ‘Honestly, I get mixed up somewhere around F, H and G and then I give up.’

Ibrahim continues. ‘If we combine those lists – an easy job if you know your way around an Excel spreadsheet – then in total there were sixty-four residents at the scene, ourselves included. Then we add DCI Hudson and PC De Freitas, the builder Bogdan, who went missing …’

‘He was up on the hill,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Thank you, Elizabeth,’ says Ibrahim. ‘We add the driver of the low-loader whose name was Marie, another Pole if that is of interest. She also teaches yoga, but that’s by the by. Karen Playfair, the lady who lives at the top of the hill, was there, as she was supposed to teach us about computers yesterday. And then, of course, Father Matthew Mackie.’

‘That makes seventy, Ibrahim,’ says Ron, now onto his second biscuit, whatever diabetes might say.

‘And Ian Ventham makes seventy-one,’ explains Ibrahim.

‘So you think he might have driven up, started a ruck, then killed himself? All right, Poirot,’ says Ron.

‘This isn’t thinking, Ron,’ says Ibrahim. ‘This is just a list. So no impatience please.’

‘Impatience is all I got,’ says Ron. ‘It’s my superpower. You know Arthur Scargill once told me to be patient? Arthur Scargill!’

‘So one of these seventy people killed Ian Ventham. Now these are nicer odds than the Thursday Murder Club usually faces, but can we narrow down the field still further?’

‘It would have to be someone with access to needles and drugs,’ suggests Joyce.

‘That’s everyone here, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Quite so, Elizabeth,’ agrees Ibrahim. ‘If I might be permitted a visual image, that would be like looking for a needle in a haystack made entirely of needles.’

Ibrahim pauses, under the assumption there might be applause at this point. In its absence, he continues.

‘Now, the injection would be the work of a split second to anyone experienced in intramuscular injections, which, again, is all of us. But the drug would need to be administered at very close quarters. So, I have deleted the names of anyone we know, for a fact, was never in close proximity to Ian Ventham. That loses a lot of the supporting cast. The fact that many of the crowd suffer from severe mobility issues has played into our hands here, as we know they couldn’t have managed a quick dash when none of us were looking.’

‘No Zimmers,’ agrees Ron.

‘We lose eight names on Zimmer frames alone,’ agrees Ibrahim. ‘Mobility scooters are also our friends here, as are cataracts. There are also many people, such as Stephen, I hope you agree, Elizabeth, who never found themselves close to Ian Ventham on that morning. They are struck from the list. Also, three residents were padlocked to the gate until someone thought to call the fire brigade, sometime later in the day. And so here we find ourselves.’

Ibrahim turns over the top sheet of the flip chart to reveal a list of names.

‘Thirty names. Ourselves included. And one of them is the killer. I pause only to note that, alphabetically, by surname, I am first on the list.’

‘Well done, Ibrahim,’ says Joyce.

‘So that’s the list,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And I’m guessing it’s now time for the thinking?’

‘Yes, I think between us we can trim down the list a little further,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Who wanted him dead?’ says Ron. ‘Who gained? Did the same person kill Curran and Ventham?’

‘Funny to think, isn’t it?’ says Joyce, wiping crumbs from the front of her blouse. ‘That we know a murderer? I mean, we don’t know who it is, but we know we definitely know one.’

‘It’s brilliant,’ agrees Ron. He is considering biscuit three, but knows there’s no way he would get away with it.

‘Well, we had better get started,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Conversational French are due in at twelve.’

57

‘Which means,’ says Chris Hudson, ‘that the fentanyl must have been administered by someone who was there that morning. So, one way or another, we already know our killer. Today, we work on a full list of everyone who was there, which won’t be easy, but the sooner we have it, the sooner we’ll have the killer. And who knows, maybe Tony Curran’s killer too. Unless Ventham killed Curran and this was retaliation.’

Donna chances a quick peek out of the briefing-room window. Her uniformed colleague, Mark, is putting on a bicycle helmet, perfectly complementing his morose expression. Donna sips her tea – murder squad tea – and thinks about suspects. She thinks about Father Mackie. What do they really know about him? Then she thinks about the Thursday Murder Club. They were all there. All surrounding Ventham at one point or another. She could imagine them each, in their own particular way, being a murderer. Hypothetically, anyway. But actually? She couldn’t see it. They would certainly have a view, though. Donna should probably head over and see them.

‘In the meantime,’ continues Chris, opening another folder, ‘I have some other fun jobs for you. Ian Ventham was not a popular man. His business dealings were complicated and wide-reaching and his phone has revealed a list of affairs, which must have been pretty tiring for him. Tell your loved ones they won’t be seeing much of you for a while.’

Loved ones. Donna thinks about her ex, Carl, then realizes she hasn’t thought about Carl for a good forty-eight hours, which is a new record. Though she has thought about him now, which spoils it a little. She realizes, though, that soon she won’t think about him for ninety-six hours, and then a week, and before you know it Carl will just seem like a character from a book she once read. Really, why had she left London? What happens when these murders are solved and she’s back in uniform?

‘And the rest of you, no let-up on the Tony Curran case. The two could be connected, we can’t rule it out. We still need the speed-camera info. I particularly want to know if Ian Ventham’s car was on that road that afternoon. I need to know where Bobby Tanner is and I need to know who took that photograph. And I still need the information on the phone number that called Curran.’

Which reminds Donna of a little hunch she has been meaning to check.

58

Elizabeth is back in Willows, sitting in her low chair in Penny’s room. She is filling Penny in on the drama.

‘Simply everyone was there, Penny. You would have been in your element, swinging your truncheon and arresting everyone in sight, no doubt.’

Elizabeth looks over at John, in the chair where he spends most of his waking hours. ‘I’m guessing you filled Penny in on the details, John?’

John nods. ‘I may have overstated my own bravery a little, but other than that, it was chapter and verse.’

Elizabeth, satisfied, pulls a notepad and ballpoint from her handbag. She taps a page of the notepad with her pen, like a conductor giving notice to her orchestra, and begins.

‘So, where are we, Penny? Tony Curran is bludgeoned to death, by person, or persons, unknown. As a side note, I will never tire of saying “bludgeoned”. I bet you used to say that a lot in the police, you lucky thing. Now Ian Ventham, meanwhile, dies within seconds of being injected with a huge dose of fentanyl. You know fentanyl, John?’

‘Of course,’ says John. ‘Used it all the time. Anaesthetic, mainly.’

John the vet. Elizabeth remembers the fox that John nursed back to health with Ron. Once healthy, it had gone on to murder Elaine McCausland’s chickens. Not proven, but there were no other suspects. Ron had taken a lot of grief for it at the time, which had pleased him enormously.

‘How easy would it be to get hold of it?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘For someone here?’ John starts. ‘Well, not easy, but not impossible. Pharmacies would have it. You could break in here, I suppose, but you’d have to be very determined, or very lucky. And you can get it on the internet.’

‘Goodness,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Can you?’

‘The dark web. I read about it in The Lancet. You can get all sorts. A rocket launcher, if you really wanted one.’

Elizabeth nods. ‘And how would one go about getting on the dark web?’

John shrugs. ‘Well, I’m guessing, but if it were me, the first thing I would do would be to buy a computer. Perhaps go from there?’

‘Mmm,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Might be worth checking who has a computer.’

‘You never know,’ agrees John. ‘It would certainly narrow it down.’

Elizabeth turns back to Penny. How unfair to see her lying there. ‘One man bludgeoned, Penny, the other poisoned. But by whom? If Ventham was killed straight away, then somebody out there this morning killed him. Me or John. Or Ron or Ibrahim? Or … who knows? Ibrahim has a list of thirty names on a spreadsheet, to start us off.’

Elizabeth looks at her friend again. She wants to walk out of the door with her right now, arm in arm. Share a bottle of white, listen to her swear like a docker about some imagined slight and sway home happy and tipsy. But that will never happen again.

‘I always find it peculiar that Ibrahim doesn’t come and visit you, Penny.’

‘Oh, he does,’ says John.

‘Ibrahim visits?’ says Elizabeth. ‘He’s never said.’

‘Like clockwork, Elizabeth. Every day he brings a magazine and solves bridge puzzles with her. He talks them through. They solve a puzzle, he kisses her hand and off he pops half an hour later.’

‘And Ron?’ asks Elizabeth. ‘Does he visit?’

‘Never,’ says John. ‘I suppose it’s not for everyone, Elizabeth.’

Elizabeth nods. She supposes so too. Back to business. ‘So, Penny, who wants to kill Ian Ventham? And why at the very moment digging was about to start? I suspect your question might be, who loses what if the development goes ahead? Wouldn’t you think? I want to talk to you about Bernard Cottle at some point. Do you remember him? With the Daily Express and the nice wife? I feel like there is a motive there, waiting to be winkled out.’

Elizabeth stands, ready to leave.

‘Who loses what, Penny? That’s the question, isn’t it?’

59

Chris Hudson has his own office, a little bolthole where he can pretend to work. There is a space on his desk where a family photograph might ordinarily sit and he feels a prick of shame every time he notes its absence. Perhaps he should have a photo of his niece? How old was she now? Twelve? Or maybe fourteen? His brother would know.

So who killed Ventham? Chris was right there when it happened. One way or another, he actually watched him being killed. Who had he seen? The Thursday Murder Club, they were all there, the priest. The attractive woman in the jumper and trainers. Now who was she? Was she single? Now’s not the time, Chris. Concentrate.

Had the same person murdered Ventham and Tony Curran? It made sense. Solve one, solve the other?

Who were the three calls to Tony Curran’s phone from? Almost certainly someone trying to sell him life insurance, but you never knew. Chris is sure that Tony Curran’s phone could tell all sorts of tales. Human rights are all well and good, but Chris would love to tap the phone of every single person in Fairhaven who looked even a bit suspicious. Like they do in prison.

He remembers an armed robber called Bernie Scullion who ran out of money in Parkhurst, but wanted to buy himself a PlayStation, so phoned his uncle and told him where he’d buried half a million pounds. The police had the money and the uncle within the hour and Bernie never got his PlayStation.

There is a knock at the door and Chris has the brief, disturbing, realization that he hopes it’s Donna.

‘Come.’

The door opens. It’s DI Terry Hallet. Terrifyingly efficient, handsome in that Royal Marine way that everyone seemed to like, but also, annoyingly, a nice guy. Chris would never be able to wear a T-shirt that tight. One day Terry will have this office. Terry has four kids and a happy marriage. Imagine the photographs he will have on the desk. Chris wishes he was Terry, but who really knew what went on at home? Perhaps Terry had a hidden sadness, perhaps he cried himself to sleep? Chris doubts it, but at least it’s something to cling to.

‘I can come back?’ says Terry and Chris realizes he has been staring at him for a beat too long.

‘No, no, sorry, Terry, miles away.’

‘Thinking about Ian Ventham?’

‘Yep,’ lies Chris. ‘What have you got?’

‘Sorry to drag you back to Tony Curran, but I’ve got something I think you’re going to like,’ says Terry. ‘I’ve got a car that took twelve minutes to travel the half mile between the two speed cameras either side of Tony Curran’s house. Exactly the right time frame too.’

Chris looks at the details. ‘So it stopped somewhere between the two? Nice little ten-minute break for something or other?’

Terry Hallet nods.

‘Anything else around there except Tony Curran’s house? Somewhere you’d stop?’

‘There’s a lay-by. If you needed a slash. But …’

‘Long slash,’ agrees Chris. ‘We’ve all had them, but even so. And you’ve run the number plate?’

Terry nods again. Then smiles.

‘I like that smile, Terry. What have you got?’

‘You won’t believe the registered owner, Guv.’

Terry slides another piece of paper onto Chris’s desk. Chris takes it in.

‘Well, this is very good news. Are you sure about these timings?’

Terry Hallet nods and drums his fingers on Chris’s desk. ‘That’s our killer, surely?’

Chris has to agree. Time to go and have a chat.

60

Bogdan has seen where Marina lives, and now is as good a time as any. She will know what to do about the bones; he sensed that as soon as he met her. He has brought her flowers. Not from the shop but from the wood, tied the way his mother used to tie them.

Flat 8. He presses the buzzer and a man’s voice answers. This surprises Bogdan. He has kept a close eye on her for a while and not seen a man.

The external door to the flats swings open. ‘I am here for Marina? To see Marina?’ he says as he walks through. The first door off the carpeted hallway swings open and he sees an elderly man in pyjamas running a comb through his thick, grey hair. Maybe he has got this wrong? Either way, the man will know Marina and can point him in the right direction.

‘I come looking for Marina?’ says Bogdan. ‘I think maybe she live here, but maybe another flat?’

‘Marina? Of course, of course, come in, let’s get the kettle on shall we? Never too early, is it?’ says Stephen.

With an arm around his shoulder, the man ushers Bogdan in. Bogdan is relieved to see a picture of Marina, a younger Marina, on the hallway table. It’s the right flat.

‘I don’t know where she is, old chap, but she won’t be long,’ says Stephen. ‘Probably at the shops or round at her mother’s. Sit yourself down and let’s make the most of the peace and quiet, eh? You play chess at all?’

61

Chris Hudson is pulling his coat over his jacket as he leaves the station. He turns as a voice behind him calls out, ‘Sir?’

It is Donna De Freitas. She catches up with him.

‘Wherever you’re going, I think I’ve got a change of plan for you,’ says Donna.

‘I doubt it, PC De Freitas,’ says Chris. He still calls her PC De Freitas at work. ‘I’m off to have a little chat with someone.’

‘Only, I was looking through the call logs,’ says Donna. ‘And I recognized the number.’

‘The mobile that called Tony Curran?’

Donna nods, then takes out a scrap of paper for Chris to see. ‘Remember this? Jason Ritchie’s number. He’s the one who phoned Tony three times on the morning of the murder. Is this worth a change of plan?’

Chris holds up a finger to silence her and takes the piece of paper Terry Hallet had handed him from his jacket pocket. He passes it to Donna. ‘Vehicle records, from the day of the murder.’

Donna reads and then looks up at Chris.

‘Jason Ritchie’s car?’

Chris nods.

‘Jason rings Tony Curran that morning. Jason’s car is outside Tony’s house when he dies. So we’re going to see Jason?’

‘Maybe just me this time,’ says Chris.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Donna. ‘Firstly, I’m your shadow, which is a sacred bond of trust et cetera, et cetera. And secondly, I just solved the crime.’

She waves Jason’s phone number at him.

Chris waves the vehicle records at her. ‘I solved it first, Donna. So I’m just going to pay him a quick visit at home, alone, and see if he wouldn’t mind answering a couple of questions. Very low key.’

Donna nods. ‘Good idea. He’s not at home, though, I checked already.’

‘Then where is he?’

‘If you take me along, I’ll show you,’ says Donna.

‘And what if I ordered you to tell me where he was?’ asks Chris.

‘Well, you can try,’ says Donna. ‘See where it gets you?’

Chris shakes his head. ‘Come on, then, you can drive.’

62

Neither Chris nor Donna had known that Maidstone had an ice rink. Why on earth did Maidstone have an ice rink? That had been a large part of the conversation on the drive there. This was after Donna had asked Chris to turn off his compilation of early Oasis B-sides.

Bit by bit, Donna was intent on dragging Chris from his century into hers.

The mystery had not been solved when they pulled up outside Ice-Spectacular. How was anyone making money out of an ice rink, just off a ring road, sandwiched between a tile warehouse and a Carpetright?

Chris would often tell friends that if there was a business in their neighbourhood that didn’t make any sense, which had no customers, then it was a front for a drugs business. Always. No real customers needed, no real profit needed, just a way of washing money. Every town had one, tucked away somewhere on a little row of shops, or in the railway arches, or sat next to a Carpetright. Whether it was a waxing parlour, or a party lights hire shop or an ice rink with a neon sign that last lit up in 2011.

Always a front, always drugs, thought Chris as he closed the passenger door of his Focus. Which seemed apt, given who Chris and Donna were here to see.

They walk through the front doors, across the sticky, carpeted foyer and into the arena. At this time of day it is mostly empty, except for an elderly man hoovering up popcorn from rows of plastic seats and two figures out on the ice.

Anyone who had seen Jason Ritchie in his prime would tell you the same. He had a fluid strength, his feet simply gliding around the ring. Those powerful arms arcing through the air, or flicking forwards in rib-rattling jabs. His tiny feints and dips, eyes never leaving his opponent, his whole body ready to pounce and strike. He wasn’t a slugger, a big plank of wood, a zombie. He was an athlete, strong and brave, a magnificent, flowing machine, everything given, nothing wasted. With his grace and his poise and his movement, Jason Ritchie was beautiful to watch.

However, as Chris and Donna sip on coffees, watching, it becomes apparent that Jason Ritchie cannot ice dance.

The session seems to be over, as Jason is gingerly skating towards the side of the rink, his elbow being supported by a small woman in a purple leotard. Even so, about a metre from the sweet safety of the side, Jason’s left skate disappears from underneath him, slices into his right skate and his tumbling weight is too much for the lady in the leotard to save. The big man is down again. Chris and Donna have been watching for only a matter of minutes, but have already lost count of his falls.

Chris leans over the board and offers a hand. It is the first time Jason clocks the two officers. He has been preoccupied. He looks Chris in the eye as he takes the proffered hand and finally reaches dry land.

‘Have you got five minutes, Jason?’ asks Chris. ‘We’ve come ever such a long way.’

‘Are you OK, Jason?’ asks the lady in the leotard.

Jason nods and gestures for her to go on ahead. ‘Yeah, couple of mates. I’m going to stop for a chat.’

‘Well, look, I’m going to write this all up and send it to the producers,’ says the skater. ‘You’re not a lost cause, I promise!’

‘Darling, you’re a superstar, thanks for putting up with me and picking me up off my arse.’

‘Hopefully see you on the show!’ says the skater and waves as she disappears up the steep stairs on her narrow blades.

Jason collapses onto a moulded plastic chair, which bends a little under his weight. He starts to unlace his skates.

‘Thought I might see the two of you again. You got another photo for me?’

‘Well, shall we dive straight in?’ starts Chris. ‘What were you doing at Tony Curran’s house on the day he was murdered?’

‘None of your business,’ says Jason. He nearly has the first skate off, though it’s a struggle.

‘But you agree you were there?’ asks Donna.

‘Am I under arrest?’ asks Jason.

‘Not yet,’ says Donna.

‘Then it’s none of your business if I was or I wasn’t.’ The first skate is finally off. Jason puffs like he’s gone three rounds.

‘Just so you have the full picture,’ says Chris, pulling out his phone from his pocket and swiping it into life. ‘We’d been trying to find Ian Ventham’s car on the traffic cameras near Tony Curran’s house. A nice open-and-shut case. Ian Ventham didn’t visit Tony Curran that afternoon, but we found something even more interesting. The first traffic camera catches your car, Jason, about four hundred yards east of Tony’s house at three twenty-six and then the next camera, the other side of Tony’s house, catches you at three thirty-eight. So either you took twelve minutes to drive half a mile, or you stopped somewhere in between.’

Jason looks at Chris very calmly, then shrugs and starts on his right skate.

‘OK, I’ve got one too,’ says Donna. ‘The day that Tony Curran was murdered, did you ring him?’

‘Don’t remember, I’m afraid.’ Jason is picking at what seems to be an impossible knot in his laces.

‘You’d remember that though, Jason, wouldn’t you?’ asks Donna. ‘Ringing Tony Curran? One of the old gang, wasn’t he?’

‘Never been in a gang,’ says Jason, finally making a breakthrough with the knot.

Chris nods. ‘But here’s our issue, Jason. A mystery number phones Tony Curran three times on the morning of his death. A number we couldn’t trace, thanks to Vodafone and to data protection legislation. But a number that, thankfully, you had personally written down and handed to PC De Freitas. So your number, Jason.’

Jason finally has the second skate off. He nods. ‘That was silly of me.’

‘And then, that very afternoon, you are driving along the road outside Tony Curran’s house, at which point you stop to perform some sort of errand, which takes around ten minutes. At the exact time that Tony Curran was murdered.’ Chris looks at Jason for a response.

‘Yep. Sounds like you’ve got yourself a mystery there,’ says Jason. ‘Now I’ve got these skates off, I’m going to head back.’

Jason stands. Chris and Donna do too.

‘I wonder if you’d like to come in and give us some fingerprints and a bit of DNA?’ says Chris. ‘Just to eliminate you from our inquiries? We could eliminate you from two murders at once. That would be nice.’

‘You should probably ask yourself why you don’t have my prints and DNA already,’ says Jason. ‘Maybe because I’ve never been arrested for anything?’

‘Never been caught, Jason,’ says Chris. ‘That’s different.’

‘Be interesting to hear a motive too,’ says Jason.

‘Robbery?’ says Chris. ‘Man like that has a lot of money lying around. You got any money worries at the moment?’

‘I think time’s up here, don’t you?’ says Jason, starting to climb the stairs to the changing room. Chris and Donna don’t follow.

‘Or are you doing Celebrity Ice Dance for the prestige, Jason?’ asks Donna. To which Jason turns and gives a genuine smile. Then raises his middle finger, turns again and continues towards the dressing room.

Chris and Donna see him disappear, then sit back down on their plastic chairs and look out over the empty ice.

‘What do you make of that?’ asks Chris.

‘If he did it, why on earth would he leave a photo with him in it by the body?’ asks Donna.

Chris shakes his head. ‘Perhaps some people are just stupid?’

‘He doesn’t seem stupid,’ says Donna.

‘Agreed,’ agrees Chris.

63

From outside, Elizabeth can immediately see that something is wrong. The curtains in Stephen’s study are open. They are always closed. Stephen doesn’t like the glare of the morning sun when he writes.

Her brain makes all of the necessary calculations in a second. Has Stephen woken and broken his routine? Is he hurt? Lying on the floor? Alive? Dead?

Or has someone broken in? Someone from her past life? It does happen, even now. She has heard of it happening. Or perhaps someone from the messy present has paid her a visit?

Elizabeth circles to the fire door at the back of Larkin Court. It is impossible to open from the outside without a piece of kit available only to the Fire Service. Elizabeth opens it and slides inside.

Her feet make no sound on the carpeted hallway, but they would have made no sound on the concrete walkway of an East German detention centre. She takes out her keys and coats the Yale in lip balm. It makes no noise when she inserts it in the lock and Elizabeth opens the door as quietly as she can. Which is very quietly.

If there is someone in the flat Elizabeth knows her time may be up. Holding her key ring in the palm of her hand, she slides a different key through each of the gaps in her fist.

Stephen has not collapsed in the hallway, that is news at least. His study door is open, morning sun streaming in. She feels a momentary shame at the bright dust dancing in the doorway.

‘Checkmate,’ says a voice from the living room. An eastern European voice.

‘Well I’m damned,’ replies Stephen.

Elizabeth slips her keys back into her bag and opens the living-room door. Stephen and Bogdan sit across the chess board from each other. They both smile to see her.

‘Elizabeth, look who it is!’ says Stephen, gesturing to Bogdan.

Bogdan has a moment of confusion. ‘Elizabeth?’

‘He calls me that. He gets things wrong.’ To Stephen, ‘It’s Marina, dear, remember.’ This doesn’t feel wonderful, but needs must.

‘Like the man said,’ agrees Stephen.

Bogdan has risen from his chair and extends his hand towards Elizabeth. ‘I brought you flowers. Your husband has put them somewhere. I’m not sure where.’

Stephen is examining the end-game on the chess board. ‘The bugger got me, Elizabeth. Fair and square.’

Elizabeth looks at her husband, crouched over the board, backtracking moves, clearly delighted with the trap in which he has been caught. Life in the old dog yet, then, thinks Elizabeth, and falls in love again for the thousandth time. She repeats. ‘It’s Marina, darling.’

‘I call you Elizabeth. Is OK,’ says Bogdan.

‘He fixed the light in my study too, dear,’ says Stephen. ‘We have a marvel on our hands.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Bogdan. I’m sorry we’re not as clean as we might be. We don’t get guests, so sometimes …’

Bogdan places his hand on Elizabeth’s upper arm. ‘You have a beautiful home, Elizabeth, and a wonderful husband. I wonder if I can speak to you?’

‘Of course, Bogdan,’ says Elizabeth.

‘I can trust you?’ asks Bogdan, staring deep into Elizabeth’s eyes.

‘You can trust me,’ says Elizabeth, her eyes never leaving his.

Bogdan nods. He believes her.

‘Can we go for a walk? You and I? This evening?’

‘This evening?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘I have something to show you. Is best to wait till dark.’

Elizabeth studies Bogdan. ‘Something to show me? Any clues?’

‘Yes. It is something you will be interested to see,’ says Bogdan.

‘Well, I’ll be the judge of that,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And where will we be walking, Bogdan?’

‘To the cemetery,’ says Bogdan.

‘The cemetery?’ A slight shiver runs down Elizabeth’s spine. How wonderful the world can be at times!

‘I meet you here,’ says Bogdan. ‘And wear warm clothes, we be there for a while.’

‘I think you can count me in,’ says Elizabeth.

64: Joyce

Yes, I know Ian Ventham is dead, and we will get to that, I promise. But guess what else? Joanna is here!

We took ourselves down to Fairhaven in her new car (I will check the make in a moment). We stopped at Anything with a Pulse. I was very casual about it, but it was an unqualified success. Not a word of complaint, or, ‘No one’s a vegan any more, Mum,’ or, ‘They do better brownies in a Lebanese shop round the corner from mine, Mum.’ Green tea, flapjack, macaroon. And I didn’t think I’d be saying that.

She has a meeting down this way. Something to do with ‘optimization’. If I think back to that girl who would eat her fish fingers and potato waffles, but scream blue murder about eating her peas, I didn’t imagine she would ever be having meetings about ‘optimization’. Whatever it is.

The boyfriend is history, as we’d guessed. Did you know you can lock your mobile phones these days, so that no one can take a peek? And you can unlock them with your thumbprint? Anyway, he had fallen asleep on the sofa one evening and she had used his thumb to open his phone. One look through his messages and, by the time he woke up, his suitcases were packed and in the hall. That’s my girl.

No details of the messages were forthcoming, but Joanna strongly hinted that photographs were involved. I listen to enough Woman’s Hour to get the gist of that. Excuse my language, but the silly sod.

We had a giggle about it, so I don’t think her heart is broken.

I can hear Joanna getting up from a nap, so I’ll say bye for now. You wouldn’t know it, but I’ve been typing quietly.

My gorgeous baby, happy and sleeping in my bed, and two murders to solve. Who could ask for more?

Joanna brought a bottle of wine down with her. There is something special about it, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten what it is. One day she will realize that she is the something special. Anyway, I invited Elizabeth over to have a drink with us this evening, but she has ‘other plans’.

Your guess is as good as mine there. Something to do with the murder though, you can bet on that.

(ADDITIONAL NOTE ADDED LATER: IT IS AN AUDI A4)

65

The path up the hill towards the Garden of Eternal Rest is a pale ribbon in the dusk light. Bogdan offers his arm and Elizabeth takes it.

‘Stephen is not well?’ says Bogdan.

‘No, dear, he’s not well.’

‘You put something in his coffee I think? When we left?’

‘We’re all on pills for something, dear.’

Bogdan nods, he understands.

They walk past the bench where Bernard Cottle spends most of his days. Elizabeth has been thinking some more about Bernard, has had to in the circumstances. She always gets the sensation that he is keeping guard for the cemetery. That he’s somehow at sentry duty on his bench. He won’t go in, but he’s never far away. What does Bernard lose if the development goes ahead? She would have to speak to him at some point, or, perhaps better, ask Ron and Ibrahim to speak to him. Which might mean tiptoeing around Joyce.

‘He hasn’t played chess in a long time, Bogdan. That was nice to see.’

‘He is good. He was a tough player for me.’

They have reached the iron gates of the Garden of Eternal Rest. Bogdan pushes one of them open and guides Elizabeth through into the cemetery.

‘You must be quite the player yourself?’

‘Chess is easy,’ says Bogdan, continuing the walk between the lines of graves and now flicking on a torch. ‘Just always make the best move.’

‘Well, I suppose,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I’ve never quite thought about it like that. But what if you don’t know what the best move is?’

‘Then you lose.’ Bogdan leads her on for a few more paces before stopping by an old grave in the top corner.

‘You said I can trust you, OK?’ says Bogdan.

‘Implicitly,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Even though you are really called Elizabeth, because I see bills in the study?’

‘Sorry,’ says Elizabeth. ‘But, other than that, implicitly.’

‘Is OK, whatever you need to do. But if I show you something, you don’t tell the police, you don’t tell no one?’

‘You have my word.’

Bogdan nods. ‘You sit while I dig.’

It is a pleasant evening to sit on the steps of a statue of Jesus Christ, and Elizabeth watches very happily as Bogdan, over to her left, starts digging the grave in the faint torchlight. She wonders what he might have uncovered. What secret was he about to reveal? She goes through the possibilities in her head. The most obvious answer was money. There would be a suitcase, or a canvas sports bag, and Bogdan would heave it out and lay it at her feet. Banknotes, gold perhaps, a haul, buried by goodness knows who and goodness knows when. And a big haul too, or why has Bogdan dragged her up here in the middle of the night? Enough for someone to kill for? A couple of thousand and surely Bogdan would just have taken it? Finders keepers, no harm done. But, a suitcase full of fifties, well that would –

‘OK, you come see,’ says Bogdan, standing in the grave, spade now over his shoulder.

Elizabeth pushes herself up, walks over to the grave and sees what Bogdan saw the morning that Ian Ventham was murdered. She supposes that of all the things to find in a grave, a body should be the least surprising. But as Bogdan’s torch plays over the bones and the coffin lid on which they rest, she has to admit this wasn’t what she had been expecting.

‘You thought money, right?’ says Bogdan. ‘Maybe I found some money or something and didn’t know what to do?’

Elizabeth nods. Money or something. Bogdan is very good.

‘I know. Sorry, no money. Would have been good. Instead, bones. Bones inside the coffin. Other bones, different bones, outside the coffin.’

‘And you found these yesterday, Bogdan?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Just when Ian was killed, yes. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted a day to think. Maybe it’s nothing, do you think?’

‘I’m afraid it’s probably something, Bogdan,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Yes, maybe is something,’ agrees Bogdan glumly.

Elizabeth sits now and dangles her feet into the grave. She looks down on the lid of the coffin. ‘So you opened the coffin?’

‘I thought was best. To check.’

‘Quite right,’ agrees Elizabeth. ‘And you’re sure it’s a different body in there?’

Bogdan jumps into the grave and pulls away part of the coffin lid, exposing the bones inside. ‘Yes. Bones where bones should be. Much older.’

Elizabeth nods and thinks. ‘So, two bodies. One where it belongs and another, much newer, where it doesn’t belong?’

‘Yes. Maybe I should have told police, but I don’t know. You know how the police are.’

‘I do know, Bogdan. You did the right thing coming to me. At some point we might need to talk to the police, but not yet, I think.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Fill it back in, Bogdan, if you wouldn’t mind? Just for the time being. Give me some thinking time.’

‘I dig, I fill in, I dig, I fill in. Whatever you need, until the job is done, Elizabeth.’

‘We are birds of a feather, Bogdan,’ says Elizabeth, thinking she must call Austin. He’ll know what to do with all this.

She looks down towards the lights of the village. Mostly off now, but Ibrahim’s light is shining bright. He’ll be working away. Good man.

She looks back at Bogdan, shovelling earth into the grave, covered in dirt and sweat. Sliding a broken coffin lid back over one body while carefully avoiding disturbing another body. She thinks this is absolutely the sort of son she would like to have had.

66

‘They are bang at it all the time,’ says Ron. ‘Always have been. Whatever it is, the Catholic Church will have a piece of it.’

‘Even so,’ says Ibrahim.

Ibrahim and Ron are discussing who might have murdered Ian Ventham.

They are working their way through the list of thirty names, weighing up the possibilities. It is just the boys this evening: Joyce has Joanna staying and Elizabeth was nowhere to be found. Which, at this time of the evening, was suspicious, but they have chosen to carry on regardless.

Ron is insisting on marking everyone out of ten, and the more whisky he drinks, the higher his scores are climbing. Maureen from Larkin had just scored a seven, largely because she had once pushed in front of Ron at dinner, which ‘spoke a thousand words’.

‘Father Mackie’s our first ten, Ibbsy, write it down. Top of the list. He’ll have something buried up in one of the graves. Guaranteed, nailed on. Gold, or a body, or porn. All three, knowing that lot. He’s worried they’ll dig it up.’

‘Seems unlikely, Ron,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Well, you know what Sherlock Holmes said, old son. If you don’t know who did it, then … something or other.’

‘Indeed, wise words,’ says Ibrahim. ‘And Father Mackie wouldn’t just have dug it up himself, Ron? At some point? To save himself the worry?’

‘Lost his spade, I dunno. Mark my words though,’ says Ron, those very words beginning to slur gently and warmly. Late nights, whisky, something to solve, this was the life. ‘It’s a ten from me.’

‘This is not Strictly Come Poisoning, Ron.’ Ibrahim strongly disagrees with Ron’s marking system, but writes ‘10’ next to Father Mackie’s name. As it happens, Ibrahim also strongly disagrees with the Strictly Come Dancing scoring system, believing it gives too much weight to the public vote when compared to the judges’ scores. He once wrote a letter to this effect to the BBC and received a friendly, but non-committal, reply. He looks at the next name on the list.

‘Bernard Cottle, Ron. What do we think there?’

‘Another of the big guns for me.’ The ice in Ron’s whisky chimes as he gestures with his glass. ‘See how he was that morning?’

‘He has become increasingly agitated, I agree.’

‘And we know he sits up there a lot, on that bench, like he’s marking his territory,’ says Ron. ‘Used to sit there with his wife, didn’t he? So that’s where he gets his peace, innit? You can’t take that away from a man, especially our age. Too much change don’t sit right.’

Ibrahim nods, ‘Too much change, yes. There comes a time when progress is only for other people.’

For Ibrahim one of the beauties of Coopers Chase was that it was so alive. So full of ridiculous committees and ridiculous politics, so full of arguments, of fun and of gossip. All the new arrivals, each one subtly shifting the dynamic. All the farewells too, reminding you that this was a place that could never stay the same. It was a community and, in Ibrahim’s opinion, that was how human beings were designed to live. At Coopers Chase, any time you wanted to be alone, you would simply close your front door and any time you wanted to be with people, you would open it up again. If there was a better recipe for happiness than that, then Ibrahim was yet to hear it. But Bernard had lost his wife, and showed no signs of finding a way through his grief. And so he needed to sit on Fairhaven Pier, or on a bench on a hill, and nobody ever needed to ask why.

‘Where is your place, Ron?’ asks Ibrahim. ‘Where do you find your peace?’

Ron purses his lips and chuckles. ‘If you’d asked me a question like that a couple of years ago I’d have laughed and left, wouldn’t I?’

‘You would,’ agrees Ibrahim. ‘I have successfully changed you.’

‘I think,’ starts Ron, face alert, eyes alive, ‘I think …’ Ibrahim sees Ron’s face relax as he decides to just let the truth come out, rather than think. ‘Honestly? I’m flicking through it all in my head, all the things you’re supposed to say. But, listen. It might be here in this chair, with my mate, drinking his whisky, dark outside, with something to talk about.’

Ibrahim knots his hands together and lets Ron talk.

‘Just think of everyone who isn’t here, Ibbsy. Every bugger who didn’t make it? And here we are, a boy from Egypt and a boy from Kent, and we made it through it all, and then someone in Scotland made us this whisky. That’s something, isn’t it? This is the place, isn’t it, old son? This is the place.’

Ibrahim nods and agrees. His place of peace is actually the wall of files directly behind him, but he doesn’t want to spoil the moment. Ron has stopped speaking, and Ibrahim can see he has gone somewhere very deep inside himself. Lost to memories. Ibrahim knows to keep quiet, to let Ron go where he needs to go. To think what he needs to think. Something Ibrahim has seen so many times over the years, with people in that very armchair. It is his favourite thing about his job. Seeing someone go deep inside themselves to access things they never knew were there. Ron tilts his head up; he is ready to talk again. Ibrahim leans forward, just a touch. Where has Ron just been?

‘Do you think Bernard is banging Joyce, Ibbsy?’ says Ron.

Ibrahim leans back, just a touch. ‘I haven’t really thought about it, Ron.’

‘Course you have, I know you have. Psychiatrist. I bet he is, lucky sod. All that cake and what have you. Could you still, you know, if you had to?’ he asks.

‘No, not for a few years now.’

‘Same, same. A blessing in some ways. I was a slave to it. Anyway, I’d say he’s a nine, wouldn’t you? Old Bernard? He was there, you could see he doesn’t want the place bulldozed, and he worked in science or something didn’t he?’

‘Petrochemicals I think.’

‘There you are then, fentanyl. Nine.’

Ibrahim is inclined to agree. Bernard does not seem to be living entirely in grace. He writes a ‘9’ next to Bernard Cottle’s name.

‘Of course, if they are banging, Joyce won’t like that nine,’ says Ron.

‘Joyce has the same information that we have. She will already know he’s a nine.’

‘She’s no fool, that one,’ agrees Ron. ‘What about that girl from the top of the hill? The farmer’s girl with the computers?’

‘Karen Playfair,’ says Ibrahim.

‘She was there, eh?’ says Ron. ‘Bang in the middle of it. Probably knows a thing or two about drugs. Pretty, too, and that’s always trouble.’

‘Is it?’

‘Always,’ says Ron. ‘To me, anyway.’

‘Motive?’ asks Ibrahim.

Ron shrugs. ‘Affair? Forget graveyards, it’s usually an affair.’

‘A seven perhaps?’ says Ibrahim. ‘Or perhaps a seven with an asterisk and a footnote explaining that the asterisk means “in need of further investigation”?’

‘Asterisk seven,’ agrees Ron, though with a pronunciation of the word ‘asterisk’ very much his own. ‘And that just leaves the four of us, eh? The only ones left on the list?’

Ibrahim looks down at the list and nods.

‘Shall we?’ asks Ron.

‘You think there is a chance one of us did it?’

‘I didn’t do it, that’s for sure,’ says Ron. ‘They can redevelop what they like, more the merrier, far as I’m concerned.’

‘And yet you led the objections at the public meeting, you lobbied the council and you started the barricade. All designed to stop the redevelopment.’

‘Of course,’ says Ron, as if his friend has lost his mind. ‘No one takes liberties with me. And when else do you get the chance to cause a bit of trouble when you’re nearly eighty? But, mate, think of the service charge, the new facilities. Probably won’t happen now. No way I’d have killed him, that’d be cutting off my nose. Score me a four.’

Ibrahim shakes his head. ‘You get a seven. You are very combative, you are hot-headed, often irrational, you were there at the heart of the scuffle and you are insulin-dependent, so you know how to use a needle. That adds up.’

Ron nods, fair enough. ‘All right, let’s call me a six.’

Ibrahim taps his pen against his book seven times, before looking up. ‘And your son, I think, perhaps knew Tony Curran a little. Which adds up to seven.’

Ron is no longer in his place of peace and his ice cubes now dance a different jig. He remains quiet, if not calm. ‘Don’t bring Jason into this, Ibrahim. You know better than that.’

Interesting, thinks Ibrahim, but says nothing. ‘Are we scoring ourselves, Ron, or are we not scoring ourselves?’

Ron stares at his friend for a long while. ‘We are, we are, you’re right. Well if I’m a seven then you’re a seven too.’

‘That’s fine,’ says Ibrahim and writes it in his book. ‘Any reason?’

So many reasons, mate, Ron thinks. He is smiling now, the tension broken. ‘Too smart by half, there’s one. You might want to write these down. You’re a psychopath, or sociopath, whichever one the bad one is. Terrible handwriting, that’s a sure sign. You’re an immigrant, and we’ve all read about them. There’s some poor British psychiatrist, a white fella, sitting at home without a job because of you. Also, perhaps you’re furious that your hair is thinning, people have killed over less.’

‘My hair isn’t thinning,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Ask Anthony about my hair. He admires it.’

‘You were there, right in the thick of it, as usual. And you’re exactly the sort of person in a film who would commit the perfect murder just to see if he could get away with it.’

‘That is certainly true,’ agrees Ibrahim.

‘Played by Omar Sharif,’ adds Ron.

‘Ah, so we agree I have hair. OK I am a seven. Now, Joyce and Elizabeth.’

Ibrahim relishes the thought of talking late into the night. Once Ron goes, all there will be to do is read, to make more lists, then force himself to lie on his bed waiting for a sleep that always takes too long to come. Too many voices wanting his attention. Too many people still lost in the dark, asking for his help.

Ibrahim knows he is usually the last person awake in Coopers Chase, and tonight he is glad to have the excuse of company. Two old men, fighting against the night.

Ibrahim opens his pad again and looks out of his window towards Joyce’s flat. Darkness everywhere. The village is asleep.

Of course, Elizabeth is too much of a professional to let her torch beam show on her walk back down the hill.

67

Jason Ritchie sits at a corner table, finishing his lunch. Monkfish and pancetta, both locally sourced.

He doesn’t know quite what to do.

Jason is surprised by the changes in the Black Bridge. It is now a gastropub called Le Pont Noir, with its name written, black against grey, in minimalist lower-case font. Some of the rough edges have been really been knocked off Fairhaven over the years, some of the darker corners have gone.

You and me both, Jason thinks, as he sips his sparkling water.

Jason is thinking about the photograph. He would feel a lot safer with a gun, and twenty years ago that would have been easy. He would have walked into the Black Bridge, talked to Mickey Landsdowne, who would have rung Geoff Goff and, before he’d finished his pint, a kid on a BMX would have delivered a brown parcel to the saloon bar and been given a packet of crisps and twenty B&H for his troubles.

Simpler times.

Now Mickey Landsdowne was in Wandsworth for arson, and for selling fake Viagra at car-boot fairs.

Geoff Goff had tried to buy Fairhaven Town FC, lost his money in a property crash, made another fortune selling stolen copper and had eventually been shot dead on a jet ski.

And did kids even ride BMXs any more?

The photograph lies in front of Jason on the table. Taken in the Black Bridge long ago. In the days before pancetta and sourdough bread.

The gang, just like it was yesterday. Laughing away like trouble wasn’t round the next corner.

Ever since he sat down, Jason has been trying to work out exactly where in the pub Tony Curran had shot that drug dealer down from London, trying his luck in sleepy Fairhaven. In about 2000, was it? It was hard because they had moved a wall, but he thinks perhaps it was by the reclaimed fireplace, with the locally sourced logs.

‘Coffee, sir?’ The waitress. Jason orders a flat white.

Jason remembers that the bullet had gone through the guy’s stomach, straight through the paper-thin wall and out into the car park, where it went through the front wing of Turkish Gianni’s Cosworth RS500. Gianni was gutted, you could see it, but it was Tony, so what could he do?

Turkish Gianni. Jason has been thinking about him a lot. He is sure Gianni had taken the photograph which had been left by the body. Always had that camera with him. Did the police know? Had Gianni come back to town? Had Bobby Tanner come back? Was Jason next on their list?

The boy Tony shot had died in the end. They had often come down from London in those days. Sometimes south London, sometimes north; gangs looking to expand, to find soft new markets.

The waitress brings his flat white. With an almond biscotto.

Jason still remembers the boy Tony had shot. He was only a kid. He’d offered a wrap of coke to Steve Georgiou, in the Oak on the seafront. Steve Georgiou was a Cypriot lad, used to hang around on the fringes of the gang, never liked to get involved, but was loyal. Owned a gym now. Steve Georgiou had set him up, told the young drug dealer to try his luck at the Black Bridge. Which the boy had done, before quickly realizing his luck was out.

He was bleeding a lot, Jason remembers that, and it wasn’t fun, he remembers that too. Thinking back, the kid must have been about seventeen, which seems young now, but didn’t at the time. Someone put him in Bobby Tanner’s old British Telecom van, and a cabbie Tony liked to use in this sort of situation drove him out to the ‘Welcome to Fairhaven’ sign on the A2102 and dumped him there. That’s where they found him the next morning. Too late for the boy, he was long dead, but he’d known the risks. The cabbie got shot too, because Tony thought you could never be too careful.

That had been the end of things for Jason. The end of it for all of them, really. It was no longer young men making money, friends having fun, pretending to be Robin Hood, or whatever he had thought it was at the time. It was bullets and dead bodies and police and grieving parents. He’d been an idiot. He’d spotted it all too late.

Bobby Tanner left soon after. His younger brother, Troy, had died on a boat in the Channel. Bringing drugs in? Jason never found out. Gianni did a runner too, straight after the cabbie was shot. And that was that. Just like that, with one bullet, those days were gone. And good riddance to them.

They say two brothers from St Leonards now run things in Fairhaven. Good luck to them, thinks Jason. Still keeping it locally sourced.

He walks over to the fireplace, then crouches. Yep, this was the place all right. He runs his finger across the reproduction antique tiles. Take them off, keep scraping and you’d find a little hole Mickey Landsdowne had filled in and painted over, twenty-odd years ago. The one bullet that changed everything.

There was nothing left here now, in the Black Bridge, with its memories and with its green tea with ginseng. All the gang gone. Tony Curran, Mickey Landsdowne, Geoff Goff. Where’s that Cosworth with a hole, now? Rusting somewhere in a field? And where was Bobby Tanner? Where was Gianni? How could he find them before they found him?

Jason sits back down and sips his flat white. Well, he supposes, he probably knows the answer to that. Has known it all along.

Jason sighs, dips his biscotto into his flat white and calls his dad.

68

‘I got the photo on the Tuesday morning,’ says Jason Ritchie. ‘Hand-delivered, through the letter box.’

Father and son are drinking from bottles of beer on Ron’s balcony.

‘And you recognized it?’ asks Ron.

‘Well, not the photo, I’d never seen the photo before. But I recognized what it was, where it was, all that,’ says Jason.

‘And what was it? And where was it? And all that,’ asks his dad.

Jason takes out the photograph and shows it to Ron.

‘Here you are. It’s Tony Curran, Bobby Tanner and me. The three of us around the table in the Black Bridge, that’s where we used to drink. Remember, I took you there once, when you came down?’

Ron nods and looks at the photo. In front of the little gang, the table is covered in cash. Thousands, twenty-five grand maybe, all in notes, just scattered about. And the boys all looking pleased about it.

‘And where was the money from?’ asks Ron.

‘That time? No idea, it was one evening out of many.’

‘But drugs?’ asks his dad.

‘Drugs. Always, in those days,’ confirms Jason. ‘That’s where I put my money. To keep it safe.’

Ron nods and Jason holds out his palms, no defence.

‘And the police have got the photo?’ asks Ron.

‘Yep, they’ve got plenty more on me too.’

‘You know I’ve got to ask, Jason? Did you kill Tony Curran?’

Jason shakes his head. ‘I didn’t, Dad, and I’d tell you if I did, because you know there’d have been a good reason if I had.’

Ron nods. ‘Can you prove you didn’t do it?’

‘If I can find Bobby Tanner or Gianni, then I reckon. It’s one of them. I can understand someone else leaving the photo by the body, you know, red herring for the cops to find. But why send it to me too? Unless Bobby or Gianni want me to know they did it?’

‘And you’re not talking to the police?’

‘You know me. I thought I’d find them myself.’

‘And how’s that going?’

Well, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it, Dad?’

Ron nods. ‘I’ll call Elizabeth.’

69

Donna and Chris are in Fairhaven Police Station. Interview Suite B.

Not so long ago Donna had been sitting in this interview room talking to someone pretending to be a nun. She now sat in front of a man pretending to be a priest. The parallel was not lost on her.

Donna herself had made the breakthrough. Just a few background checks on Father Matthew Mackie. Run him through the computer, see what popped up.

The background checks had taken a couple of days, because nothing at all had popped up. Which had made no sense at all. So Donna had spent a bit of time piecing it together, working out what was what, before taking the information to Chris. And now here they all were.

‘At every step of the process, Mr Mackie,’ Chris continues. ‘At every step, you referred to yourself as “Father”? You introduced yourself as “Father”?’

‘Yes,’ agrees Matthew Mackie.

‘Even now, you’re wearing a dog collar, are we agreed?’

‘I am, yes.’ Mackie fingers the dog collar in confirmation.

‘And the rest. The full kit, if you like?’

‘The vestments, yes.’

‘And yet, when we start looking into you, what do we find, do you think?’

Donna watches and learns. Chris is being gentle with the old man. She wonders if he will turn, given what they know.

‘I think … well, I think perhaps, possibly, there may have been a misapprehension.’ Chris sits back and lets Matthew Mackie talk. Which he does in fits and starts. ‘For which I accept my share of the blame, and if you feel I have … fallen short, I suppose, in some way, my intentions were not to mislead, but I see that that’s how it might look, without all the, uh, facts.’

‘The facts, Mr Mackie?’ says Chris. ‘Excellent! Let’s get on to the facts. You are not Father Matthew Mackie, that’s a fact. You do not work for the Catholic Church, or any church. That’s another one. You are, and this has taken a full fifteen minutes of research with the local NHS Trust, Doctor Michael Matthew Noel Mackie? Can we have that one as a fact too?’

‘Yes,’ admits Matthew Mackie.

‘You retired from private practice as a GP fifteen years ago. You live in a bungalow in Bexhill and, asking around there, you don’t even attend Mass.’

Matthew Mackie looks to the floor.

‘All facts?’

Mackie nods without looking up. ‘All facts.’

‘I wonder if you could remove the dog collar for me, Mr Mackie?’

Mackie looks up, and directly at Chris. ‘No, I’ll keep it on if you don’t mind. Unless I’m under arrest, which you haven’t mentioned.’

Now Chris nods. He looks over at Donna, then turns back and drums his fingers on the table. Here we go, thinks Donna. It takes a lot to get Chris to drum his fingers on a table.

‘A man has just died, Mr Mackie,’ says Chris. ‘And you and I watched it happen, didn’t we? And do you know what I thought I saw? I thought I saw a man pushing a Catholic priest. A Catholic priest protecting a Catholic graveyard. And, as a police officer, that painted things in a certain light for me. You understand?’

Mackie nods. Donna is staying quiet. There is nothing she can think to add. She wonders if Chris would ever drum his fingers on a table at her. She hopes not.

‘But what did I actually see? I actually saw a man pushing someone impersonating a priest, for reasons still known only to himself. Pushing a conman, which is what you are. A conman protecting a graveyard?’

‘I’m not a conman,’ says Matthew Mackie.

Chris holds up a hand to stop him. ‘Moments after scuffling with this conman, the first man drops down dead from a lethal injection. Which puts a different complexion on things, especially when we discover the conman is a doctor. But perhaps I’ve missed something?’

Mackie remains silent.

‘I’m just going to ask you again, sir. I wonder if you could remove the dog collar for me?’

‘I am not presently a father, I grant you that,’ says Mackie with a long sigh. ‘But I was, and for many years. And that confers privileges and this collar is one. If I choose to wear it, and if I still choose to call myself Father Mackie, then that is my business.’

‘Doctor Mackie,’ says Chris, ‘this is a murder case. I need you to stop lying to me. PC De Freitas here has been through every record. The Church has been very helpful. Whatever you’ve said to us, whatever you said to the council, to Ian Ventham, to the ladies who protected the gate, you are not a priest and you never were a priest. There is no record anywhere, no dusty ledger, no old photo. I have no idea why you are lying to us, but we have ourselves a dead body and we’re looking for a murderer, so it’s probably best that we find out quickly. If I’m missing something important, I need you to tell me.’

Mackie looks at Chris for a moment, thinking. Then shakes his head.

‘Only if you arrest me,’ replies Mackie. ‘Otherwise, I’d like to go home now. And no hard feelings, I know you are doing your job.’

Matthew Mackie crosses himself and stands. Chris stands too.

‘I would stay, Doctor Mackie, if I were you.’

‘The moment you charge me, I promise I will,’ says Mackie. ‘But, in the meantime …’

Donna stands and opens the interview room door for him and Matthew Mackie takes his leave.

70

It can be very hard to smoke in a sauna, but Jason Ritchie is giving it his best shot.

‘Are you sure you’re OK with this, Dad?’ he asks, sweat dripping from his brow.

‘Just tell them everything,’ replies Ron. ‘They’ll know what to do.’

‘And you reckon they’ll find them?’ asks Jason.

‘I should have thought so,’ says Ibrahim, stretched out on a lower bench.

The sauna door opens and Elizabeth and Joyce enter, with towels wrapped around swimsuits. Jason puts out his cigarette in a pile of hot ash.

‘Well, this is nice,’ says Joyce. ‘Eucalyptus.’

‘Nice to see you, Jason,’ says Elizabeth, taking a seat opposite the half-naked boxer. ‘I believe you think that we might be of use to you. I must say, I agree.’

That’s it for pleasantries. Elizabeth fixes her eyes on Jason.

‘So?’

Jason tells Elizabeth and Joyce the same story he told his dad. A copy of the photo is passed around the sauna. Ibrahim has had it laminated.

‘I get the photo,’ confirms Jason, ‘and I’m, like, what’s this about? Where’s this from? Is this the papers? Is this the front page of the Sun tomorrow? That’s what I was thinking. But there’s no message, nothing. There’s no journalist on the phone, and they’ve got a number for me, so what’s up?’

‘And what was up?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Well, I’m thinking, do I ring my PR? Maybe they’ve spoken to her. I was in shock, to be fair, this is twenty-odd years ago, this photo, and a world I’d left behind. So I’m ready to deny whatever, or come up with something, stag-do, fancy dress, anything to explain it away.’

‘Ooh, that’s good,’ says Joyce.

‘So there I am, still looking at his picture, and something clicks. I think, well maybe this is the game. Maybe Tony’s got hold of this photo, famous boxer, surrounded by cash, jailbirds everywhere. He sends me a copy, looking for a bit of money. Give me twenty K, whatever, and I don’t go to the papers. Fair enough, really, so I think, yeah, I should just ring him, have a little chat. See if we can work something out.’

‘Was Tony Curran the sort of man who might blackmail you?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Tony’s the sort of man who might do anything, yeah. So, first things first, I get hold of a new phone, cheap one, in town.’

‘Afterwards, will you tell me where, because I’m looking for one at the moment,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Of course, Mr Arif,’ says Jason. ‘So, I ring him once, and no answer. I ring him again – same; leave it twenty minutes and try again. He’s still not picking up.’

‘I never pick up if it’s a number I don’t recognize,’ says Joyce. ‘I saw that on Rogue Traders.’

‘Very wise, Joyce,’ continues Jason. ‘Then I came here for a quick drink with Pops and I saw the man himself, Curran, arguing with Ventham.’

‘Keeping all this quiet from me,’ says Ron, and Jason raises his hand to acknowledge it.

‘So after me and Dad had a couple of beers …’

‘And me,’ says Joyce.

‘And Joyce,’ agrees Jason. ‘After that, I went for a little drive, just to do a bit of thinking. Then I headed down there, Tony’s house, lovely place. Now, we’re always cautious around each other, me and Tony, too many secrets, but I wouldn’t be at his front door without a reason. His car’s on the drive, so when there’s no answer, I think he’s seen me on his security and doesn’t fancy a chat. And I didn’t blame him, so I rang the bell a few more times and then I left.’

‘And this is the day he died?’ asks Joyce.

‘The day he died. I couldn’t hear anything from inside, so I don’t know if that was before or after or whatever. Anyway, home I go and a couple of hours later I’m on this WhatsApp group …’

‘A WhatsApp group?’ asks Elizabeth, but Joyce waves her away and Jason continues.

‘A few of the old faces, and someone says Tony’s been found dead at home. I go cold, you know? I get sent the photo that morning and Tony dies that afternoon. Which leaves me worried. I mean, I can look after myself, but Tony could look after himself too, and see where that got him? So I’m nervous, that’s natural, and then the police get wind that I’ve been to Tony’s and they get records saying I’d rung Tony’s phone that day too. And they’ve got a photo of me that was left by the body. You can’t blame them, they think that stinks and so would I.’

‘But you didn’t kill Tony Curran?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘No, not me,’ says Jason. ‘But you can see why the police think I did.’

‘Their case is compelling,’ agrees Ibrahim.

‘And you’re here to see if we can find your old friend for you?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Well,’ says Jason, ‘the way my dad tells it, however good the police are, you lot are better.’

There are quiet nods all round.

‘And it’s old friends,’ says Jason. ‘There’s the lad who took the photo too.’

‘And who was that?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Turkish Gianni, the fourth member of our little gang.’

‘And he’s Turkish?’ asks Joyce.

‘No,’ says Jason.

Ibrahim notes this down.

‘He’s Turkish Cypriot and scarpered back there years ago.’

‘I know some good operatives in Cyprus,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Look,’ says Jason. ‘You owe me nothing. Less than that. I’ve done nothing good here and Tony never did. But if Bobby or Gianni killed Tony, then they’re still out there, and if they’re still out there, then why not me next? Again, not your business, I know, but Dad thought it might be up your street, and I’m not going to turn down the help.’

‘So … what do you reckon?’ Ron asks.

‘Well,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Here’s my take. The others might disagree, though I suspect they won’t. This is a mess of your own making. And a mess that came from greed and from drugs. And those are downsides for me. But there is an upside too. And that is that you are Ron’s son. And I believe you are probably right, I believe we can find Bobby Tanner and Turkish Gianni for you. Probably quickly. And whatever you’ve done, and whatever we might think of that, I would like to catch a murderer. Before that murderer catches you.’

‘Agreed,’ says Joyce.

‘Agreed,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Thank you,’ says Jason.

‘Thank you,’ adds Ron.

‘Not at all,’ says Elizabeth, standing. ‘Now, I will leave you to your sauna. I have to make a few calls. Ron, I need to see you at the graveyard at ten this evening, if you’re free: Joyce and Ibrahim, I’ll need you there too.’

‘Sounds lovely. Wouldn’t miss it,’ says Ron. His son gives him a questioning look.

‘And Jason?’ says Elizabeth.

‘Yes?’ says Jason.

‘If this is a bluff, it’s a high-risk one. Because we will catch this murderer. Even if it’s you.’

71

‘Do you need a hand to get down into the grave?’ asks Ibrahim.

‘Yes, please,’ says Austin, ‘that would be terribly kind of you.’

Bogdan has borrowed an arc light and it is trained on the grave he had opened on the morning that Ian Ventham was murdered. The grave that had revealed an extra occupant on top of the coffin. A skeleton, buried where it had no right to be buried.

Austin holds on to Ibrahim’s arm and takes a step down into the grave. He is careful not to step on the bones scattered on the lip of the coffin. He looks up at Elizabeth and chuckles. ‘This takes me back, Lizzie. Remember Leipzig?’

Elizabeth smiles, she certainly does remember: Joyce also smiles, because she has never heard Elizabeth called Lizzie before. She wonders if the others caught it.

‘Whaddaya think, Prof?’ asks Ron, sitting happily at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, and drinking from a can of Stella.

‘Well, I wouldn’t ordinarily like to say,’ replies Austin, raising his glasses to get a closer look at the femur he is now holding, ‘but if I were a gossip, among friends, of course, I would say these have been down here some while.’

‘Some while, Austin?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘I would say so,’ considers Austin. ‘Just by the colouration.’

‘And if you were being more specific?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Well, goodness!’ says Austin. ‘If you want me to be specific, I would say …’ He takes a moment to calibrate his thoughts. ‘I would say really quite some while indeed.’

‘So they could have been buried at the same time as Sister Margaret?’ asks Joyce.

‘What’s the date on the headstone?’ asks Austin.

‘Eighteen seventy-four,’ reads Joyce.

‘Not a chance. Thirty, forty, fifty years perhaps, depending on the soil, but not a hundred and fifty.’

‘So at some point,’ says Ibrahim, ‘somebody has dug up this grave, buried another body in it and then filled it in again?’

‘Certainly,’ agrees Austin. ‘You have yourselves a mystery.’

‘Another nun, perhaps, Austin?’ asks Elizabeth. ‘Any jewellery down there? Any fragments of clothing?’

‘Not a thing on this one,’ says Austin. ‘Stripped bare. If it was murder, then someone knew what they were doing. I’m going to take a few bones with me, if you don’t mind?’ I’ll have a little look at them in the morning, just to give you a clearer picture.’

‘Absolutely, Austin, take your pick,’ says Elizabeth.

Bogdan blows out his cheeks. ‘So we got to tell police now?’

‘Oh, I think we can probably keep this to ourselves until Austin gets back to us,’ replies Elizabeth. ‘If everyone agrees?’

Everyone agrees.

‘Someone give me a hand out of the grave,’ says Austin. ‘Bogdan, old chap?’

Bogdan nods, but seems to want to get something clear first. ‘Listen, I just need to say one thing. Is OK? In case maybe I go mad. This is not normal? Right? An old man in a grave looking at bones. Someone is murdered maybe, but no one tells the police?’

‘Bogdan, you didn’t tell the police when you first dug up the bones,’ says Joyce.

‘Yes, but I am me,’ says Bogdan. ‘I’m not normal.’

‘Well, we’re us,’ says Joyce, ‘and we’re not normal either. Although I did use to be.’

‘Normal is an illusory concept, Bogdan,’ adds Ibrahim.

‘Bogdan, trust us,’ says Elizabeth. ‘We just want to find out whose these remains might be and who buried them, and that will be a lot easier without the police poking their noses in until absolutely necessary. If the police have the bones first, you can bet that will be the last we hear about them. And that seems unfair, after all our hard work.’

‘I trust you,’ says Bogdan, then screws up his face as a thought occurs. ‘Though if it goes wrong I bet it’s me sent to prison.’

‘I won’t let that happen; you’re too useful,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Now, please help Austin out of the grave and grab those bones for me. I suggest we all go back to Joyce’s for a nice cup of tea.’

‘Splendid!’ says Austin, placing his selection of bones on the lip of the grave before reaching out for Bogdan’s arms.

‘You lead the way, Lizzie,’ says Ron and finishes off his can of Stella.

72: Joyce

There was a jolly atmosphere, and I can understand the reasons why. We each of us understand we’re in a gang and we understand we are in the middle of something unusual. We understand also, I think, that we are doing something illegal, but we are past the age of caring. Perhaps we are raging against the dying of the light, but that is poetry, not life. There will be other reasons I have missed out, but I know on the walk back down the hill we felt giddy. Like teenagers out too late.

But when Austin laid the pile of bones on my dining table, while we still knew it was an adventure, I think they began to have a sobering effect on all of us. Even Ron.

It is all very well, the Thursday Murder Club and all our derring-do, and the freedom of age and whatever we like to tell ourselves. But someone had died, however long ago it might have happened, so it was right to pause for reflection.

There was no way around it, we couldn’t conjure a single good reason why the extra body was there. On closer inspection, fuelled by orange drizzle cake (Nigella), Austin was fairly sure that the body was a man, so it wasn’t a nun.

But who was he? And who had killed him? The first step to finding out the answers would be to discover when he had been killed. Thirty years ago? Fifty years ago? There was a big difference.

Austin explained he would take the bones away and do further tests. After everybody had left, I googled him and it turns out he is a Sir. I can’t say I was surprised, he really did know a great deal about bones. Quite what he made of standing in a grave, at ten at night, in his eighties, is his business, but I suppose any friend of Elizabeth is probably used to these things. Three sugars in his tea too, though you wouldn’t know by looking at him.

And then the biggest question of all, of course. You’ll be ahead of me here. Had the motive been found for one much more recent murder? Did someone else know the bones were hidden there? Was Ian Ventham killed to protect the Garden of Eternal Rest and the secret of those bones?

We talked for around an hour, I suppose. Were we right not to involve the police? We will have to tell them eventually, but the feeling was that this is our story, our graveyard, our home and, just for the time being, we wanted to keep it for ourselves. As soon as we get the results from Austin we will have to tell all, of course.

So we are trying to solve two murders, and possibly three, if the skeleton was murdered. Or, I should say, if the skeleton is of someone who was murdered. Is a skeleton a person? That’s a question for greater minds than mine.

I know Elizabeth is keen to track down Bobby and Gianni, but we all agreed the bones have to take precedence for now.

I wonder if Chris and Donna are making any progress? We certainly haven’t heard if they are. I do hope they’re not keeping anything from us.

73

Chris and Donna are walking the three flights of stairs up to Chris’s office. Donna has pretended to be frightened of lifts, to force Chris to walk.

‘So, Jason Ritchie for the Tony Curran murder,’ says Chris. ‘And Matthew Mackie for Ian Ventham?’

‘Unless we’re missing something,’ says Donna.

‘I wouldn’t put that past us,’ says Chris. ‘So, let’s work it through. We know Matthew Mackie was there and we know he’s a liar. He’s a doctor, not a priest.’

‘So we know he could get hold of fentanyl and he’d know how to use it,’ says Donna.

‘Agreed,’ says Chris. ‘I think we’ve got everything except a motive.’

‘Well, he doesn’t want the graveyard moved,’ says Donna. ‘Is that enough?’

‘Not enough to arrest him. Unless we find out why he doesn’t want it moved.’

‘Is impersonating a priest a crime?’ asks Donna. ‘Someone I met on Tinder once pretended he was a pilot and tried to grope me outside an All Bar One.’

‘I bet he regretted that.’

‘I punched him in the balls, then called in his reg number and got him breathalysed on the way home.’

They both smile. But the smiles are fleeting. Both know they are in danger of letting Matthew Mackie slip between their fingers. No evidence whatsoever.

‘Have you heard anything from your pals in the Thursday Murder Club?’ asks Chris.

‘Not a peep,’ says Donna. ‘Which makes me nervous.’

‘Me too,’ says Chris. ‘And I really don’t want to be the one to tell them about Jason Ritchie.’

Chris pauses for a moment on the landing. Pretending to think, but really just to catch his breath.

‘Perhaps Mackie’s got something buried in the graveyard?’ says Chris. ‘Doesn’t want it dug up?’

‘Good place to bury something,’ agrees Donna.

74: Joyce

Have you ever used Skype?

I hadn’t until this morning, and now I have. Ibrahim set it up, and so we had gone round to his. He keeps his flat so clean, and I don’t think he has anyone in to do it.

There are files everywhere, but all locked away, so you can see them but not read them. Imagine the stories you must hear if you’re a therapist. Who did what to who? Or is it, whom did what to who? Either way, I bet he’s heard all sorts.

Austin rang at ten on the dot, as you would expect from a Sir, and told us what he knew. We could see him on screen, and we took it in turns to go in the little box in the corner. It was hard, because the box is very small, but I expect you get used to it if you do it a few times.

The body was a man, which he’d already told us. He had a gunshot wound to the femur. Austin held it up to show us. We all tried to get in the box for that bit. Had that been the wound that killed him? Austin wouldn’t like to say for certain, but probably not. A pre-existing injury.

At one point his wife walked past in the background. What must she think? Her husband holding up bones to a computer screen? Perhaps she is used to it.

Now, how much do you know about how to tell how old bones are? I knew nothing, and Austin went through the whole thing in detail. It was fascinating. There was a machine, and there was a special dye, and something to do with carbon. I tried to remember this all the way home so I could write it down, but I’m afraid it’s gone. But it was very interesting. He would be very good on The One Show if they ever needed it.

He’d taken some soil with him too, and done tests on that, but the soil stuff was less interesting. Back to the bones, please, I had been thinking.

The long and short of it, though, is that Austin had done some maths, and you can’t be certain, and there were variables, and no one has all the answers, and all he could really do was make his best guess. At this point Elizabeth told him to stop prattling on and get to it. Elizabeth can get away with that sort of thing, even to a Sir.

So he came out with it. The body was buried sometime in the 1970s, probably earlier rather than later. So fifty-odd years ago, give or take.

We thanked Austin, but then no one knew how to hang up. Ibrahim tried for a while and you could see he was losing face. In the end Austin’s wife came to the rescue his end. She seems lovely.

So there we had it. Two potential murders fifty years apart. Plenty to chew on for everyone there. And probably time to tell Chris and Donna what we have done. I hope they don’t take it too personally.

Elizabeth then asked if I would like to go to a crematorium in Brighton with her today, on a hunch, but I had already said that I would cook lunch for Bernard, so nothing doing.

I know you can’t smell it, but I’m making him steak and kidney. He is getting thin, so I’m just seeing what I can do.

75

Donna and Chris are waiting for their free coffee at the Wild Bean Café inside the BP garage on the A21. Anything to get out of the station for half an hour. To stop looking at the endless files from the Irish passport office. Chris picks up a chocolate bar.

‘Chris, you don’t need that,’ says Donna.

Chris gives her a look.

‘Please,’ says Donna. ‘Let me help, I know it’s hard.’

Chris nods and puts the chocolate bar back.

‘So, what’s in it for Mackie?’ asks Donna. ‘What’s the connection with the graveyard? Why protect it if he’s not a priest?’

Chris shrugs. ‘Perhaps it’s just a way of getting to Ventham? Perhaps there’s another connection between them. Have we looked at Doctor Mackie’s patient lists? You never know.’

Chris then picks up a cereal bar.

‘That’s even worse than a chocolate bar,’ says Donna. ‘Even more sugar.’

Chris puts it back down. He’s going to be forced to eat a piece of fruit at this rate.

‘He’s dodgy as hell,’ says Chris. ‘All we’re missing is his motive.’

Donna’s phone buzzes and she reads a message. She purses her lips and looks up at Chris.

‘It’s Elizabeth. She wonders if we might like to pop over this evening.’

‘I think that might have to wait,’ says Chris. ‘Tell her we’re busy solving two murders.’

Donna continues to scroll through the message. ‘She says she has something for us. I quote “Please do not read another file until you have seen what we have found. Also there will be sherry. See you at eight.”’ Donna puts her phone in her pocket and looks at her boss.

‘Well?’ she asks.

Well? Chris slowly strokes his stubble and considers the Thursday Murder Club. He has to face it, he likes them. He’s happy drinking their tea, eating their cake and chatting off the record. He likes their rolling hills and their big sky. Was he being taken advantage of? Well, almost certainly, but, for now, he was getting plenty in return. Would this all look very bad if it came out? Yes, but it won’t. And, if it did, why not just take Elizabeth into his disciplinary hearing and let her work her magic?

Eventually he looks up at Donna, who has her eyebrows raised waiting for an answer.

‘I’m a reluctant yes.’

76

‘Now we can do this one of two ways,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You can kick up a fuss and curse us to the heavens and we can all waste a lot of time. Or you can just accept what has happened and we can enjoy our sherry and get on with this. Your choice.’

Chris cannot speak for a moment. He looks at the four of them. Then to the air, then to the floor. Looking for words that don’t want to come. He holds the flat of a palm in the air in front of him, in an effort to pause reality for the briefest of moments. But no luck.

‘You …,’ he begins, slowly, ‘you … dug up a body?’

‘Well, technically we didn’t dig it up,’ says Ibrahim.

‘But a body was dug up, yes?’ says Chris.

Elizabeth and Joyce nod. Elizabeth takes a sip of her sherry.

‘That’s the long and short of it,’ confirms Joyce.

‘And you then performed a forensic analysis on the bones?’

‘Well, again, not us personally. And only on some of them,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Oh, that’s fine then. Just a few?’ Chris’s voice is raised, and Donna realizes it’s the first time she’s experienced this. ‘Then I wish you all a good evening. Nothing to see here.’

‘I knew you’d get melodramatic,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Can we just get this over with and move on to business?’

Donna steps in.

‘Melodramatic?’ she addresses Elizabeth directly. ‘Elizabeth, you just dug up a human body and failed to report it to the police. This isn’t pretending to be a nun who’s had her bag stolen.’

‘What nun?’ asks Chris.

‘Nothing,’ says Donna quickly. ‘This is a serious crime. Elizabeth, you could all go to jail for this.’

‘Nonsense,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Far from nonsense,’ says Chris. ‘What on earth are you doing? I need you to think very carefully about what you say next. Why did you dig up a body? Let’s take this step by step.’

‘Well, as I stated previously, we didn’t dig up the body. But our attention was drawn to the fact that a body had been dug up,’ says Ibrahim.

‘And we were curious, naturally,’ says Ron.

‘Our attention was grabbed,’ agrees Ibrahim.

‘What with the murder of Ian Ventham,’ adds Joyce, ‘it seemed it might be important.’

‘You didn’t think Donna and me might have been interested at this point?’ asks Chris.

‘Firstly, Chris, it’s “Donna and I”,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And secondly, who knew what the bones were? We didn’t want to waste your time until we knew for sure what we were dealing with. What if we’d called you out and they were nothing but cow bones? Wouldn’t we have looked silly old fools then?’

‘We wouldn’t have wanted to waste your time,’ agrees Ibrahim. ‘We know you are busy with two murders already.’

‘But off they went for analysis,’ continues Elizabeth. ‘And back it comes, human bones, good to have it confirmed, no cost to the taxpayer. Male, died sometime in the 1970s, a gunshot wound to the leg, but no way of telling if that’s what killed him. Now to invite Chris and Donna to take a look, and to lead things from here. Get the professionals in. It really feels like you might be thanking us.’

Chris is trying to compose a response. Donna decides that this one might be her responsibility.

‘Christ, Elizabeth, just give it a rest for one second. You can drop the act with us. The second you dug up that body you knew they were human bones, because I think you can tell the difference: Joyce, you were a nurse for forty years, do you know the difference between human bones and cow bones?’

‘Well, yes,’ admits Joyce.

‘The second you did that, Elizabeth, you and your whole gang …’

‘We are not Elizabeth’s gang,’ interrupts Ibrahim.

Donna raises her eyebrows at Ibrahim, who holds up a hand in concession. She continues. ‘The lot of you, from that moment, were in deep, deep trouble. This is not a neat little trick. You might fool the rest of the world, but you don’t fool me. You’re not plucky underdogs, or helpful amateurs. This is a serious crime. This is bigger than a serious crime. And this doesn’t end with us all giggling over a glass of sherry. It ends in a courtroom. How could you be so stupid? The four of you? We’re friends, and you treat me like this.’

Elizabeth sighs. ‘Well this is exactly what I meant, Donna. I knew you’d both make a fuss.’

‘A fuss!’ says Donna incredulously.

‘Yes, a fuss,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And I do understand, in the circumstances.’

‘Just doing your job,’ agrees Ron.

‘Admirable, if you want my opinion,’ adds Ibrahim.

‘But the fuss ends here,’ says Elizabeth. ‘If you’re going to arrest us, arrest us. Take the four of us to the station, question us all night. Get the same answer all night.’

‘No comment,’ says Ron.

‘No comment,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Like on 24 Hours in Police Custody,’ says Joyce.

‘You don’t know who dug the body up and you won’t hear the answer from any of us,’ continues Elizabeth. ‘You don’t know who took the bones away for analysis and you won’t hear that from us either. At the end of the evening you might try and explain to the CPS that four people in their seventies and eighties have failed to report digging up a body. For what reason? With what evidence, other than the inadmissible confession you’ve taken from us this evening? And with four suspects, all of whom are quite happy to go to court, smile happily and pretend to mistake the judge for their granddaughter and ask why she doesn’t visit often enough. The whole process is difficult, costly and time-consuming, and achieves nothing. No one is going to prison, no one is getting a fine, no one’s even going to be picking litter by the roadside.’

‘Not with my back,’ says Ron.

‘Or,’ continues Elizabeth, ‘you can forgive us, and believe us when we say we were trying to help. You can let us apologize for our overenthusiasm, because we did know what we were doing was wrong, but we did it anyway. We know you’ve spent the last twenty-four hours in the dark and we know we are in your debt. And if you forgive us, then tomorrow morning, on a wild hunch, you can order a search of the Garden of Eternal Rest. You can dig up the body, you can send it to your own forensics team, who will tell you it’s a male who was almost certainly buried in the early 1970s, and then we’ll all happily be on the same page.’

There is a moment’s silence.

‘So,’ asks Chris, very slowly, ‘you’ve reburied the bones?’

‘We thought it was best,’ says Joyce. ‘To give you the glory.’

‘I’d leave the grave in the top right-hand corner till about fourth or fifth, if I were you,’ says Ron. ‘Don’t want to make it too obvious.’

‘And in the meantime,’ continues Elizabeth, ‘we can all have a nice evening and no more shouting. We can tell you everything we know. So you can really hit the ground running in the morning.’

‘You could even share a bit of information with us if you thought that was appropriate,’ adds Ibrahim.

‘How about some information about the custodial sentences you can get for perverting the course of justice? Or disturbing a grave?’ says Chris. ‘Up to ten years, if you’re interested.’

‘Oh, we just went through all this, Chris,’ sighs Elizabeth. ‘Stop grandstanding and swallow your pride. And besides, we’re not hampering, we’re helping.’

‘I didn’t notice either of you digging up a body,’ adds Ron, to Chris and Donna.

‘We have certainly done an awful lot of the work so far,’ says Ibrahim.

‘So this is how I see it,’ confirms Elizabeth. ‘Either you arrest us, which we would all understand, and Joyce, in fact, I think would actually enjoy.’

‘No comment,’ says Joyce, nodding happily.

‘Or you don’t arrest us and we can spend the rest of the evening talking about exactly why someone buried a body, on this hillside, sometime in the 1970s.’

Chris looks at Donna.

‘And we can also discuss whether that same person has just murdered Ian Ventham to keep it secret,’ says Elizabeth.

Donna looks at Chris. Chris has a question.

‘So you think the same person might have committed two murders? But nearly fifty years apart?’

‘It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘It’s an interesting question we could have been asking last night,’ says Chris.

‘It might have been useful to know we could be looking out for someone who was right here in the 1970s and is still right here now,’ adds Donna.

‘We really are sorry,’ says Joyce. ‘But Elizabeth was adamant, and you know Elizabeth.’

‘Let’s move on,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Put this behind us.’

‘Do we have a choice, Elizabeth?’ asks Chris.

‘Choice is overrated; you’ll learn that as the years fly by,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Now, to business. What do you make of the priest, I wonder? Father Mackie? Might he have been around when this place was a convent?’

‘I take it from that question that you haven’t been able to find out anything about Father Mackie?’ says Chris. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve found a chink in your armour.’

‘My inquiries are ongoing,’ says Elizabeth.

‘No need, Elizabeth, we’ve cracked that one for you,’ says Donna. ‘It’s Doctor Mackie. Not a priest, never has been, never will be. A doctor in Ireland, moved over here in the nineties.’

‘That’s very curious,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Why pretend to be a priest?’

‘Told you he was a wrong ’un,’ says Ron to Ibrahim.

‘So, he might have killed Ian Ventham,’ says Donna. ‘And he’s certainly up to something. But I doubt it’s because of your bones.’

‘Is it worth my pointing out any more that this is all confidential?’ says Chris.

‘You are quite safe with us. You know that, don’t you? Nothing ever leaves this room,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Shall we just forget this ever happened, the business with the bones and what have you, and pool our knowledge?’

‘I think we’ve pooled quite enough for one day, Elizabeth,’ says Donna.

‘Oh really?’ says Elizabeth. ‘And yet, you haven’t even told us about the Tony Curran photograph yet. We had to find that out for ourselves.’

Donna and Chris both look at Elizabeth. Chris lets out a theatrical sigh.

‘By way of a peace offering,’ says Ibrahim, ‘perhaps you would like to know who took the photograph?’

Chris looks up to the heavens. Or Joyce’s Artex ceiling. ‘I would actually like to know that, yes.’

‘Lad named Turkish Gianni,’ says Ron.

‘Although he’s not Turkish,’ adds Joyce.

‘You’ve seen the photo, Ron?’ asks Donna.

Ron nods.

‘Nice one of Jason, eh?’

‘You want my view, for what it’s worth?’ says Ron. ‘You find Turkish Gianni or Bobby Tanner, you find Tony Curran’s killer.’

‘Well then, if we’re laying all our cards on the table,’ says Chris, ‘has Jason explained away his phone calls to Tony Curran on the morning of the murder? And has he explained away the presence of his car in the area at the exact moment that Tony Curran was murdered?’

‘Yes,’ says Elizabeth. ‘To our satisfaction.’

‘Anything you’d like to share?’ asks Donna.

‘Listen, I’ll get him to give you a bell and explain, don’t worry,’ says Ron. ‘But shall we get on and find this Gianni fella and Bobby Tanner?’

‘Just leave that with us, please,’ says Chris.

‘I think we’re unlikely to just leave that with you, Chris,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I’m ever so sorry.’

‘Would you like some sherry?’ asks Joyce. ‘It’s only Sainsbury’s, but it’s Taste the Difference.’

Chris sinks back into his chair and submits.

‘If any of this ever gets back to my superintendent, I will personally arrest you and march you into court myself. I swear, on my life.’

‘Chris, no one will ever find out,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You know how I used to make my living?’

‘Well, not really, if I’m honest.’

‘Exactly.’

As a complicit silence falls over the room, it seems the evening’s drinking can now begin in earnest.

‘I am very proud of how we all work together as a team,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Cheers.’

77: Joyce

I’m glad we told Chris and Donna about the bones. It seems right. Now everyone can keep an eye out. Who was here in the 1970s and is still here today? That should keep them all occupied for a bit.

Everyone knows everything now and that seems fair.

So where are Gianni and Bobby? Now we’ve dealt with the bones, I know Elizabeth will be thinking about how we track them down. That’s right up her street, isn’t it? I will get a call in the morning and it will be, ‘Joyce, we’re going to Reading,’ or, ‘Joyce, we’re going to Inverness, or Timbuktu,’ and bit by bit she’ll tell me why and before you know it we’ll be having a cup of tea with Bobby Tanner, or a café au lait with Turkish Gianni. You wait and see. Tomorrow morning, before 10 a.m. Guaranteed.

The only time I ever use my passport is when I need to pick up a parcel, but I’ve just checked and it has three years left. I remember when I first got it, wondering if it would be my last ever. The odds on it being renewed are with me now I think. Anyway, that’s just to say that if Gianni or Bobby Tanner are abroad somewhere, then I wouldn’t put it past Elizabeth to hop on a plane. We’re only a drive from Gatwick here.

I could send Joanna a postcard. ‘Who, me? Oh, I’m in Cyprus for a couple of days. Tracking down a fugitive. Possibly armed, but you mustn’t worry.’ Though no one sends postcards any more, do they? Joanna has shown me how to send photos on my phone, but I’m beggared if it’s ever worked when I tried. I just get that spinning circle.

Perhaps I could ask Bernard to come along with me. ‘A couple of days in the sun? Last-minute thing. We just fancied it.’ I think it might frighten the poor man to death.

I don’t like to give up on a chase, but Bernard seems to be drifting further and further away from me. He was not a bundle of fun at lunch and there was plenty of steak and kidney left over.

And don’t think I don’t know what the others think. What they suspect. They’ll be checking whether Bernard was here fifty years ago. They haven’t spoken to me about it, but you mark my words. Check away, don’t mind me.

Timbuktu is a real place by the way. Did you know that? It came up in a quiz once. Ibrahim will remember where it is, but I did think that was interesting.

78

Chris Hudson is cradling a whisky. He likes a real log fire and they have a nice one in Le Pont Noir. He’s never eaten here, because who would he eat with, but he likes the bar. The fire has a vintage tile surround, very tasteful. If you’d asked him twenty years ago, he would have imagined this was the sort of place he might live. Leather armchair, whisky on the go, wife reading some sort of book opposite him. Something prize-winning and beyond him, but she’d be turning the pages, smiling wryly. A love story set against the backdrop of the Raj. He could be looking at murder case notes. Slowly solving something.

He is still sure that Mackie is guilty as hell. It added up. But these bones? Did they change things? Had there been two murders, fifty-odd years apart, one to protect the other? If so, then Mackie wasn’t their man, they’ve been through the records, he hadn’t left Ireland until the nineties.

His mind drifts back to his dream life. Were there kids sleeping upstairs? In new pyjamas. A boy and a girl, two years apart. Good sleepers. But no, none of that, just a fireplace in a bar that wasn’t doing enough business, in a restaurant that he had no one to take to. Then a walk home, stop at the all-night shop for a Dairy Milk. A proper big one. Then the key fob, the apartment block, the three flights up, the flat that the cleaner kept clean, that no one ever cooked in, the spare room that was never used. If he opened his window he could hear the sea, but couldn’t see it. Didn’t that just sum it up?

There was a life that Chris hadn’t been able to take in his grasp. Families, driveways, trampolines, friends round for dinner, all the stuff you’d see on adverts. Was this for ever now? The lonely flat with the neutral walls and the Sky Sports? Maybe there was a way out, but Chris couldn’t immediately spot it. Treading water, getting fatter, laughing less. Chris was out of rocket fuel. It was lucky that Chris loved his job. Was good at his job. Chris always found it easy to get up in the morning. He just found it hard to go to sleep at night.

Leave Mackie be for a minute and focus on Tony Curran’s murder. Jason Ritchie had rung him earlier. Told his tale. Explained away the calls and the car. If he was lying, then he’d done a good job of it. But then he would, wouldn’t he?

Bobby Tanner was still proving elusive. After Amsterdam, there was no more Bobby Tanner on any official record. But he’d be somewhere. Maybe Brussels, living under some name or other, plenty of gangs could use him out there. He’d be doing what he’d always done. Smuggling, fighting, making himself useful. Not a big enough fish for anyone to worry about. Burned often enough to be careful. They’d catch him coming out of some expat gym one day, put their hand on his shoulder and fly him back for a few questions.

Though, of course, there was a good chance that Bobby Tanner was dead too. Steroids, pub fight, fell off a ferry, so many ways to go and the only way to identify him a false passport. But Chris thinks Bobby is still out there somewhere, and if he’s still out there somewhere, then who’s to say he hadn’t just paid a visit to Tony Curran for some long-forgotten reason? Something to do with his brother drowning with that boat full of drugs? Who knew?

And then the new name, Turkish Gianni. Chris had found plenty on record for him. Gianni Gunduz was his real name. Fled the country in the early 2000s after a tip-off he’d murdered the cabbie in the Black Bridge shooting. Everything kept coming back to that one night. In this very bar.

Had Gianni come back to town?

Chris finishes his whisky and looks at the tiles once again. Beautiful really.

He should probably go home.

79: Joyce

Just two quick things this morning, as I find myself in a hurry.

Firstly, Timbuktu is in Mali. I bumped into Ibrahim on my way back from the post box and I asked him. I also saw Bernard walking, slowly, up the hill. It’s every day now, but never mind.

And, as I say, Mali. So now you know.

Secondly, Elizabeth rang at 9.17 and we’re off to Folkestone. From the looks of it it’s two changes, one at St Leonards and one at Ashford International, so we’re setting off nice and early. I haven’t been to Ashford International, but I doubt a station would have ‘International’ in its name and not have an M&S. Maybe even an Oliver Bonas. Fingers crossed.

I promise I will report back later.

80

In many ways, his neighbours owed Peter Ward a debt of thanks and, to be fair, most of them knew it.

Pearson Street had always been a little down at heel. A newsagent with no papers, a mini-mart, with a mountain of cheap alcohol behind the counter, a travel agent with fading posters of the sun, two bookies, a pub on its last legs, a party accessories shop, a nail bar and a boarded-up café.

And then The Flower Mill had moved in. Peter Ward’s shop, bursting with colour, a little rainbow explosion on this grey street.

And what flowers! Peter Ward knew his stuff and when you know your stuff in a small town, word soon gets around. People would start making detours from the town centre. And they would tell their friends, who would tell their friends and, before you know it, someone down from London has spotted the boarded-up café and bought the lease and now there were two reasons to visit Pearson Street. Then a bride ordering flowers from Peter and enjoying a latte in the café, sees this little street is on the up and wonders if it might be the place to open a small hardware store? So now The Tool Chest sits next to The Flower Mill, opposite Casa Café. The travel agent suddenly has people walking past, feels the need to change those posters and those people start walking in. Under-thirties mainly, who have no idea what a travel agent might be. The Londoner with the café buys the pub and starts doing food. Terry at the newsagent starts ordering in more papers, more milk, more everything. The nail bar paints more nails, the party shop sells more balloons, the mini-mart starts stocking gin alongside the vodka. John from the butcher’s counter at Asda takes the leap and opens a store of his own, taking his customers with him. A local art group hires out a vacant storefront and takes it in turns to buy pieces of each other’s art.

All thanks to Peter Ward’s orchids and sweet peas and Transvaal daisies.

Pearson Street is just what you want a shopping street to be. Busy, friendly, local and happy: Joyce thinks it’s so perfect, that it’s surely only six months away from having a Costa and losing what it now has. Which would be sad, but Joyce has to admit that she likes a Costa, so must shoulder some of the blame.

Joyce and Elizabeth are sitting in Casa Café. Peter Ward has just bought them both a cappuccino. Becky from The Tool Chest will keep an eye out for customers while he takes half an hour off. It’s that sort of street.

Peter Ward is greying and smiling and has the easy air of a man who has made a series of good decisions in life. A Folkestone florist, whom karma has rewarded for a lifetime of kindness and calmness, a man whose good deeds have delivered him the prize of happiness.

This impression is misleading. As the scar under his right eye and the bulge of the biceps will tell you, Peter Ward is Bobby Tanner. Or perhaps Peter Ward has left Bobby Tanner behind? That is what they have come to find out. Is the fighter still there? The killer perhaps? Has he recently made the short trip along the coast to Fairhaven and bludgeoned to death his former boss? Elizabeth lays the photograph on the table between them and Peter Ward picks it up, smiling.

‘The Black Bridge,’ says Peter. ‘We had a few nights in there. Where’d you get this from?’

‘A number of places,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Well, two places, in fact. One was sent to Jason Ritchie and one was found by the corpse of Tony Curran.’

‘I read about Tony,’ nods Peter Ward. ‘That was about time.’

‘You’ve never seen this photograph before?’ asks Elizabeth.

Peter looks again, then says, ‘Never have.’

‘You weren’t sent one?’ asks Joyce, and sips her cappuccino.

Peter shakes his head.

‘Well, that’s either good news for you, or it’s good news for us,’ says Elizabeth.

Peter Ward raises an inquiring eyebrow.

‘Well, it’s either good news for you, in that Tony Curran’s killer has no idea where you are. Or it’s good news for us, in that you killed Tony Curran yourself and we haven’t wasted a trip to Folkestone.’

Peter Ward gives a half smile and looks at the photo again.

‘Not that the trip would really be wasted,’ says Joyce. ‘We’re having a very nice day.’

‘The police have the idea that Jason killed Tony Curran,’ starts Elizabeth. ‘And perhaps he did. But, for reasons of our own, we would prefer that he didn’t. Would you have a view on that, Bobby?’

Peter Ward holds up a hand.

‘Peter around here, please.’

‘Would you have a view on that, Peter?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘I don’t see it,’ says Peter Ward. ‘Jason went nowhere near that side of things. He looks mean, but he’s a teddy bear.’

Joyce looks up from her notes for a moment. ‘A teddy bear who funded a major drugs ring.’

Peter acknowledges this with a nod.

Elizabeth puts the photo back down on the table. ‘So, if not Jason, then perhaps you? Or perhaps Turkish Gianni?’

‘Turkish Gianni?’ says Peter.

‘He took the photo.’

Peter Ward thinks for a while. ‘Did he now? I don’t remember, but that would make sense. I’m guessing you know the story? The boy Tony shot in the Black Bridge? Gianni shooting the taxi driver who got rid of the body?’

‘We know that story, yes,’ confirms Elizabeth. ‘Then Gianni disappears back to Cyprus.’

‘Well, it wasn’t quite that simple,’ says Peter Ward.

‘I’m all ears,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Someone grassed Gianni up to the cops. They raided his flat, but he’d gone already.’

‘And who grassed him up?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Who knows? Not me.’

‘No one likes a grass,’ says Joyce.

‘It doesn’t matter who,’ says Peter Ward. ‘What matters is that when Gianni legged it, he took a hundred grand of Tony’s cash with him.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Money he had lying around his flat. Tony’s money. All disappeared. Tony went mental. A hundred grand was a lot of money to Tony in those days.’

‘Did he try and find Gianni?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘You bet. Went off to Cyprus a couple of times. Didn’t find a thing.’

‘Not easy when it’s not your natural territory,’ says Elizabeth.

‘So I’m guessing you haven’t found Gianni either?’ asks Peter Ward.

Elizabeth shakes her head.

‘How did you find me, by the way?’ he goes on. ‘If you don’t mind me asking? I don’t really want to be found by anyone if Gianni’s back in town, leaving photos of me next to bodies.’

Elizabeth takes a sip of her coffee. ‘Woodvale Cemetery, where they buried your brother Troy?’

Peter Ward nods.

‘I got access to the CCTV, thanks to a mortician whose uncle I once saved on a train,’ says Elizabeth. ‘That’s where I found you.’

Peter Ward looks at Elizabeth.

‘Elizabeth, I’ve been there twice in a year. There’s no way you found me from the CCTV. That’d be a needle in a haystack.’

‘You went there twice, yes,’ agrees Elizabeth. ‘But on what days?’

Peter Ward sits back, folds his arms, then nods and smiles. He sees it now.

‘Twelfth of March and seventeenth of September,’ continues Elizabeth. ‘Troy’s birthday and the anniversary of his death. I was hoping to see the same car both times, jot down a number plate, get the friend of a friend to run it through a computer somewhere. But on March the twelfth I saw a white van from a Folkestone flower shop, which I thought unusual at a cemetery in Brighton. Not impossible, but noteworthy. And I thought it very, very unusual to see the same van on September the seventeenth. I found that very noteworthy indeed. You see?’

‘I do see,’ nods Peter Ward. ‘And no need for a number plate.’

‘Because you had your name, your address and your telephone number signwritten on the side,’ says Elizabeth.

Peter can’t help but give Elizabeth a quiet round of applause and she responds with a slight bow.

‘That’s very good, Elizabeth,’ says Joyce. ‘She’s very good, Peter.’

‘I see that,’ says Peter. ‘So no one else knows where I am? No one else can find me?’

‘Not unless I tell them where you are,’ says Elizabeth.

Peter Ward leans forward. ‘And is that something you’d be likely to do?’

Elizabeth leans forward too. ‘Not if you come and see us tomorrow, sit down with Jason and the police and tell them what you just told us.’

81

‘Would you like a walnut?’ asks Ibrahim.

Bernard Cottle looks at him and then down at the open bag of walnuts he is being offered.

‘No thank you.’

Ibrahim withdraws the bag. ‘Very low carb, walnuts. In moderation, nuts are very healthy. But not cashews, cashews are an exception. Am I disturbing you, Bernard?’

‘No, no,’ says Bernard.

‘Just enjoying the view?’ asks Ibrahim. He can sense that Bernard feels uncomfortable sharing his bench.

‘Just taking the weight off,’ says Bernard.

‘What a place to be buried,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Wouldn’t you think?’

‘If one has to be buried,’ says Bernard.

‘Sadly, it comes to the best of us, doesn’t it? However many walnuts we might eat.’

‘I mean no offence by this, but I’m very happy to sit in silence,’ says Bernard.

‘That’s not unreasonable,’ says Ibrahim, nodding. He eats a piece of walnut.

The two men sit, taking in the view. Ibrahim turns, and sees Ron walking up the path, trying to hide his limp. He has a stick, but he won’t use it.

‘Well, this is nice,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Here comes Ron.’

Bernard looks, there is the slightest pursing of the lips.

Ron reaches the bench. He sits the other side of Bernard.

‘Afternoon, gents,’ says Ron.

‘Good afternoon, Ron,’ says Ibrahim.

‘So, Bernard, old son,’ says Ron. ‘You keeping guard?’

Bernard looks at Ron. ‘Keeping guard?’

‘Of the graveyard. Sitting here like a gnome, “none shall pass”, all that. What’s up?’

‘Bernard wants to be left in silence, Ron,’ says Ibrahim. ‘That’s what he tells me.’

‘Fat chance of that with me around,’ says Ron. ‘So come on, mate. What are you hiding up here?’

‘Hiding?’ asks Bernard.

‘I don’t buy all this grief stuff, son. We all miss our wives, with the greatest respect. Something else is going on here.’

‘I think grief affects people in different ways, Ron,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Bernard’s behaviour is not unusual.’

‘I don’t know, Ib,’ says Ron, shaking his head and looking out over the hills. ‘Geezer gets killed the other day, when all he wanted to do was dig up the graveyard. Bernard sits here by that same graveyard all day, every day. That changes things for me.’

‘Is that what’s happening here?’ asks Bernard, voice calm and level, refusing to look at Ron. ‘You’re talking to me about the murder?’

‘That’s what’s happening, Bernard, yeah,’ says Ron. ‘Someone down there injected the guy and killed him. We all had our hands on him, remember? Any one of us could have done it.’

‘We simply need to eliminate some people from our inquiries,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Maybe you had a good reason?’ says Ron.

‘Is there ever a good reason to murder someone, Ron?’ asks Bernard.

Ron shrugs. ‘Maybe you’ve got something hidden up there in the graveyard. You a diabetic? Good with a needle?’

‘We all are, Ron,’ says Bernard.

‘Where were you in the seventies, mate? Were you local?’

‘That’s a peculiar question, Ron,’ says Bernard. ‘If you don’t mind me saying.’

‘All the same, were you?’ says Ron.

‘We’re just exploring avenues,’ says Ibrahim. ‘We’re asking everyone.’

Bernard turns to Ibrahim. ‘Is this the game? Good cop, nasty cop?’

Ibrahim considers this. ‘Well, yes, that is the idea. Psychologically, it is often very effective. I have a book you could read if you are interested?’

Bernard lets out a long breath and turns to Ron. ‘Ron, you met my wife. You met Asima.’

Ron nods.

‘And you were nothing but kind to her. She liked you.’

‘Well, I liked her, Bernard. You had a good one there.’

‘Everyone liked her, Ron,’ says Bernard. ‘And yet you still ask me why I sit here? It’s nothing to do with the graveyard and it’s nothing to do with needles. Or where I lived fifty years ago. I’m just an old man who misses his wife. So spare me.’

Bernard stands.

‘Gentlemen, you have spoiled my morning. Shame on you both.’

Ibrahim looks up at Bernard. ‘Bernard, I don’t believe you, I’m afraid. I want to, but I don’t. You have a story you are desperate to tell. So, any time you want to talk, you know where to find me.’

Bernard smiles and shakes his head. ‘Talk? To you?’

Ibrahim nods. ‘Yes, talk to me, Bernard. Or to Ron. Whatever has happened, the worst thing you could do is to stay silent.’

Bernard tucks his paper under his arm. ‘With respect, Ibrahim, Ron, you have no idea what the worst thing I could do is.’

And with that, Bernard starts a slow walk down the hill.

82: Joyce

Well, that was jolly good fun. For starters, I had never been to Folkestone.

Peter Ward is Bobby Tanner’s name now, but we are sworn to secrecy. He owns a florist.

I suppose I have two things to write about then. Why was Peter Ward a florist? And, florist or not, who did he think killed Tony Curran?

I might write about Bernard too, but I will leave that to the end, because I want to think about it while I write the rest.

Peter Ward – I will call him Peter – left Fairhaven shortly after his brother died, for reasons you can imagine. He got himself a new passport. It’s easily done if you listen to Elizabeth and Peter, but I wouldn’t know how to go about it, would you? He ended up in Amsterdam, doing odd jobs. Not odd jobs as we would think about them, like clearing your gutters or painting a fence, but taking cocaine across the Channel on ferries. Or, I suppose, threatening people. You could see that in him, underneath everything.

He fell in with a gang from Liverpool. He wouldn’t tell us the name, as if I would have any sway if he had. Their ruse was to smuggle drugs in the backs of those big flower lorries you see coming over from Holland and Belgium. That was their ‘angle’.

At first, Peter would do the loading. A driver would be paid such and such to stop his lorry in a lay-by in Belgium, and Peter and a few cronies would hop in the back and stash what they could, where they could. Over the lorry would go, another stop in Kent and Bob’s your uncle. These lorries were back and forth all the time. It’s a daily schedule, isn’t it? Has to be, because of fresh flowers. So it was perfect.

They just had the odd driver here and there and that’s how it worked at first. Until the penny dropped and they bought one of the nurseries. The business ran as usual, but Peter was on hand to ‘inspect’ every shipment as it went out, and to add that little special something to each one. So now they had three lorries a day travelling through Zeebrugge and they could do what they liked with them. Clever, really.

Peter would spend all his time at the nursery, and the young lad who ran it was paid to turn a blind eye. They’d play cards and chat and whatever else you do all day in Belgium.

(Off-subject for a minute, but there was a notice pinned up the other day about a trip to Bruges and I thought of signing up. Joanna went a few years ago and her verdict was, ‘It’s too twee, Mum, but you would love it,’ so I might take the plunge. Would Elizabeth like it?)

That’s by the by, because here’s what happened next. There was an error, no one knows how or why, or at least Peter doesn’t, but the upshot was that a small florist’s shop in Gillingham accidentally took delivery of two kilograms of cocaine alongside their begonias and promptly reported it to the police.

The police, who are no fools at times, didn’t rush straight in and arrest the driver, they followed him instead and saw where he headed and what was what. There was a whole team on it eventually, and one by one they worked out who was doing what and arrested everyone they could.

The way Peter told it, he and the young lad running the nursery had seen the police coming a mile off (Belgium is as flat as Holland, says Peter) and they hid in a field of sunflowers for six hours as the police stripped the place bare. In Amsterdam, one of the Liverpudlians was killed by a Serbian shortly afterwards and that was that.

You can see where it’s going, I’m sure. Peter had never really risen through the ranks, he wasn’t really the type, but he’d made a bit of money and he had learned an awful lot about flowers. And he saw them at their most beautiful, of course. He described the colours and so on and got quite lyrical. Elizabeth had to hurry him along eventually.

So, now, every day, one of those big lorries pulls up in Pearson Street and Peter gets in the back, like he always used to, but this time he just unloads his flowers and carries them into his shop. And the lorry continues on its rounds and heads back to Belgium, to the nursery run by the young lad he’d played cards with and hidden in a sunflower field with.

So that’s a nice story. I bet the Liverpudlians and the Serbians are still shooting each other left, right and centre in Amsterdam, but Peter has his beautiful shop, in that lovely street, where everybody knows his name. Or doesn’t know his name, but you take my point. And the benefit of going straight was that no one has ever come looking for him, no one has ever arrested him and taken a closer look at that passport, so Peter Ward had left his past behind and found some peace, which is not easy to do.

Just to satisfy Elizabeth’s curiosity, Peter took her to The Flower Mill and showed her the CCTV from the day Tony Curran was murdered. There he was, Peter, I mean, plain to see, behind the till. Which I think rules him out. He is sure that Turkish Gianni is our man. Tony had betrayed him to the police and Gianni had stolen from Tony in turn. That would do it, I suppose.

Elizabeth and I talked about it on the train. And we had half an hour at Ashford International, where, believe it or not, there are no shops. Perhaps there are shops beyond passport control? There must be, surely?

So that’s Bobby Tanner. Time for bed, Joyce. I wonder what Ron and Ibrahim were up to today?

I know I was going to say something about Bernard, but it hasn’t really formulated, so I won’t.

I bought Bernard some freesias from Peter Ward’s shop. I wanted to buy something but I couldn’t think who to buy them for and I thought perhaps Bernard would like them. Do women give men flowers? Not where I’m from, but perhaps that’s not where I am any more. So they’re in the sink, and I will take them over tomorrow morning.

Bernard would like Bruges. Don’t you think?

83

The path is uneven, but by shining a torch at the ground he is able to make his way up to the allotments without drawing attention to himself. It is late, and everyone will be asleep, but why take a risk? He reaches the shed. There is a padlock, but it’s a cheap one and his wife’s hatpin soon springs it open.

The shed is shared by all the residents who have an allotment at Coopers Chase. A select band. There are a couple of folding chairs for nice weather and there’s a kettle for colder weather. There are bags of fertilizer and mulch along one wall. These are bought from the kitty and Carlito carries them in whenever the minibus comes back from the Garden Centre. Pinned above the fertilizer are the rules of the Coopers Chase Allotment Users Association. They are lengthy and they are enforced with vigour. It is cold, even on a summer’s night. The torch continues its circuit. There are no windows, which makes it easier.

The spade rests against the back wall inside the shed.

One look tells him all he needs to know. All he already knew, if he was honest, as he walked up the path. But what to do? You have to try.

He lifts it by the handle, but is quickly beaten by its weight. When did he get so weak? What happened to his body? It was never much to write home about, but to think he could now barely lift a spade? Digging was out of the question.

So what now? Who could help? Who would understand? It was hopeless.

Bernard Cottle sits in a folding chair and weeps for what he has done.

84

Chris and Donna are sitting in the Jigsaw Room, with mugs of tea. Opposite them are Jason Ritchie and Bobby Tanner. Bobby Tanner, whom detectives across eight forces had failed to locate. Elizabeth has repeatedly refused to say where or how she found him.

Elizabeth and Joyce have both seen evidence that Bobby was busy elsewhere when Tony Curran was murdered. Chris had wondered if he might see that evidence and Elizabeth had told him he certainly could, the moment he produced a warrant. Bobby’s deal was that he would tell them everything he knew and then slip back into the crowd, never to be seen again.

‘A hundred grand, bit more than that,’ says Bobby Tanner. ‘Gianni had it at his flat, used to keep it safe for Tony.’

‘Did he have a nice flat?’ asks Joyce.

‘Uhh, one of the big ones on the front?’ says Bobby.

‘Oh yes, with the picture windows,’ says Joyce. ‘Lovely.’

‘And Tony went out to Cyprus looking for him?’ asks Chris.

‘A couple of times, yeah. Never found a thing. Nothing was the same after that. Jason, you drifted off, didn’t you? Started doing telly and all that.’

Jason nods. ‘It wasn’t for me any more, Bobby.’

Bobby nods. ‘I left town a couple of months after, when my brother died. Nothing left for me here then.’

‘But someone would have seen Gianni, surely?’ asks Donna. ‘If he’d come back to town recently? Someone would have seen him, someone would be talking?’

Bobby thinks about this. ‘Not too many faces left from those days.’

‘Hard to know who Gianni would turn to if he needed a place to stay,’ says Jason.

Bobby looks at Jason. ‘Unless, Jase …?’

Jason looks back at Bobby, thinks for a moment, then nods. ‘Of course, of course. Unless …’

Jason starts composing a text.

‘Are you going to share this with the group?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Just someone me and Bobby need to talk to,’ says Jason. ‘Someone who’d know for sure. Leave it with us. It’s not fair if you get to solve everything, Elizabeth.’

‘Perhaps you could share it with the police?’ suggests Donna.

‘Oh come on,’ says Bobby, laughing.

‘Worth a try,’ says Donna.

Jason’s phone pings. He looks down, then turns to Bobby.

‘He can meet us at two. That OK for you?’

Bobby nods and Jason starts another message.

‘Only one place for it, eh?’

85

Lunch at Le Pont Noir. Just like old times and yet, of course, not like them at all.

‘Astronaut?’ guesses Jason Ritchie.

Bobby Tanner smiles, and shakes his head.

‘Jockey?’ guesses Jason.

Bobby Tanner shakes his head again. ‘I ain’t gonna tell you, even if you guess.’

Fair enough, fair enough.

‘You happy though, Bobby?’ asks Jason.

Bobby nods his head.

‘Good lad,’ says Jason. ‘You deserve it.’

‘We both do,’ agrees Bobby Tanner. ‘One way or another.’

‘Well, we do and we don’t,’ says Jason.

Bobby Tanner nods. Maybe so.

They are on desserts, still waiting for their guest, and a bottle of Le Pont Noir’s finest Malbec has been dispatched.

‘I mean, it must have been Gianni, right?’ asks Bobby. ‘I’ve always thought he was dead somewhere.’

‘I’ve always thought that you were dead somewhere,’ says Jason. ‘I’m glad you’re not though.’

‘Thanks, Jase,’ says Bobby.

Jason looks at his watch. ‘We’ll know for sure soon enough.’

‘You reckon he’ll know?’ asks Bobby.

‘If Gianni’s been over, then he’ll know. That’s where he’d have stayed.’

‘I can’t do lunchtime drinking any more, can you?’ asks Bobby.

‘We’re old men now, Bob,’ agrees Jason. ‘Time for another bottle though?’

They agree that they do have time for another bottle. And then in walks Steve Georgiou.

86

Donna has spent the evening looking through aeroplane passenger lists to and from Cyprus for the last two weeks. As if Gianni Gunduz would be using his own name these days. But you never knew.

Fun though the passenger lists had been, however, Donna is now back on Instagram.

Toyota was history already, but Carl wouldn’t wait around. Who was he seeing now? Donna was nothing if not a natural detective. Was he seeing that woman from his work, Poppy? Poppy, whose photo he’d liked on Facebook? Not just liked, but replied to with a wink emoji? Poppy, who seemed incapable of having her photo taken without being shot from the left and pouting? Yes, she was obvious enough for Carl. Donna had run her name through the Home Office computer on the off-chance, but nothing.

Donna knows it is time for bed, but she is still thinking about Penny Gray.

After the Thursday Murder Club meeting, Elizabeth had told her she wanted her to meet someone and had led her into Willows, the nursing home attached to Coopers Chase.

They had walked down quiet beige corridors, with dim strip lighting and seaside watercolours lining the walls. It all carried an appalling weight, and the hopeful sprigs of flowers on cheap MDF side tables were powerless against it. Who brought the flowers in every day? That was a losing battle, but what was the alternative? Donna had gulped for air at one point. Willows was a prison from which no escape was possible. Where release could mean only one thing.

They had walked into the room and Elizabeth had said, ‘Constable De Freitas, I’d like you to meet Detective Inspector Penny Gray.’

Penny had been lying in bed, a light sheet covering her to the neck, a blanket further down, folded back. Tubes running from her nose and from her wrists. Donna had once been on a school trip to the Lloyd’s Building, where everything that should be on the inside was on the outside. She preferred everything tidied away.

Donna saluted. ‘Ma’am.’

‘Take a seat, Donna, I thought it would be nice for the two of you to get to know each other. I do think you’ll get along.’

Elizabeth had taken Donna through Penny’s career. Smart, resilient, opinionated, thwarted at every turn, by her gender and by her temperament. Or rather by the unacceptable combination of them both.

‘She’s a wrecking ball,’ Elizabeth had said. ‘I’m a thin blade, you understand. Penny is all brute force. I don’t know if you could tell that now.’

Donna looked at Penny and fancied that she could.

‘It was fashionable in the police back then,’ Elizabeth had gone on. ‘A bit of blunt force. Fashionable if you were a man at least, it never helped Penny, she never made it higher than Detective Inspector. Absurd if you knew her. I’m right, John, absurd, wasn’t it?’

John had looked up and nodded. ‘A waste.’

‘She was trouble, Donna,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And I can think of no finer compliment. That’s why Penny enjoyed looking over the old cases. She could finally be in charge. Could finally be the bull in a china shop. She didn’t have to be polite and laugh at the jokes and make the tea.’

Donna saw Elizabeth’s hand close around Penny’s.

Elizabeth looked at her and nodded. ‘We fight on though, do we not? Penny took it all, sucked it up, as they say, day after day, without complaint.’

‘She complained a lot.’ This was John. ‘With respect, Elizabeth.’

‘Well, yes, she had an impressive temper on her when she wanted to.’

‘Very focused,’ John had agreed.

As they had left, generations apart, but shoulder to shoulder and in perfect step, Elizabeth had turned to Donna and said, ‘You will know better than me, Donna, but I think perhaps not all the battles have been won?’

‘I think perhaps too,’ Donna had agreed. They had continued, in companionable silence, out through the front doors of Willows, grateful to be breathing the air of the outside world.

Back at home – was this really home now? – Donna is not fully concentrating on Instagram any more. The visit to Penny has made her proud and sad. She would love to have met her. Really met her. There are many reasons why Donna would like to be the one to crack these murders, and she adds making Detective Inspector Penny Gray proud to her list.

Gianni for the Tony Curran murder? Matthew Mackie for Ventham? Elizabeth had told her to look into another of the residents. A Bernard Cottle. She had written the name down.

And the bones? Are they important?

What do you say, Penny Gray?

It would be nice to wrap it all up. A nice tribute to someone who has gone before. She should get back to those passenger lists.

Donna scrolls through some final pictures. Poppy has just been bungee-jumping for Cancer Research. Well of course she has; that was so Poppy.

87: Joyce

I don’t often write in the morning, I know. But today I am. I just felt I should. So here I am.

Yesterday was all very interesting, wasn’t it? Those boys and all the murders and the drugs and what have you. I bet they had a lot to talk about when they headed off afterwards. I wonder who they were meeting?

Really, it was very interesting to someone like me. Very interesting. Gianni certainly sounds a likely culprit, doesn’t he?

I wonder if … Oh stop it, Joyce, just stop it. You’re putting it off. You don’t want to write it.

All right then. So I have had some sad news, and the sad news is this.

I made my ‘All’s Well’ call to Bernard this morning.

Lots of people have an ‘All’s Well’ arrangement. You buddy up with a pal, ring them at 8 a.m., let it ring twice and put the phone down. Then they do the same back. So you each know the other is OK without it costing you a penny. And, of course, you don’t have to have a conversation.

So I rang Bernard this morning. Two rings, letting him know I was safe and sound, hadn’t had a fall or what have you. But nothing back. I never worry too much, sometimes he forgets and I wander round and ring his buzzer and he shuffles to the window in his dressing gown and gives me a guilty thumbs-up. I always think, ‘Oh let me in, you silly old man, let’s have some breakfast, I don’t mind the dressing gown,’ but that’s not Bernard.

So over I trotted. Did I know? I suppose I did, but I also didn’t, because it’s too big a thing to know. But I suppose I did know, because Marjorie Walters saw me on my way over, and said she’d waved but I hadn’t seen, just lost in a world of my own, which isn’t like me. So, yes, I suppose I knew.

I buzzed and looked up at the window. The curtains were drawn. Perhaps he was asleep? Had a touch of flu and stayed in bed. ‘Man flu’, someone had said on This Morning the other day. It had tickled me and I’d told Joanna, but she said the expression had been around for years and had I really never heard it? Which put me in my place.

I’m stalling, I know. Let’s get on to it.

I let myself into the block with the spare key fob, I walked up the flight of stairs and saw an envelope Sellotaped to Bernard’s door. On the front of it he had written ‘Joyce’.

Sorry, I have to finish there.

There was even a smiley face in the ‘O’. You really never knew with Bernard.

88

Joyce opens up the envelope and slips out a handwritten letter. Maybe three or four pages. She is grateful that her friends have come to her flat. She didn’t want to go out there again today.

‘So, I’ll just read it. Not all of it, but the bits of interest. It answers a few questions we had. I know what some of you had been thinking about him. Maybe thought he’d, you know … Ian Ventham. Anyway.’

‘You take your time,’ says Ron, and places his hand on Joyce’s for a moment.

Joyce begins to read, with an unfamiliar waver.

‘“Dear Joyce, I am sorry for the nuisance. Don’t try to come in, I have bolted the door. First time I have used that bolt since I moved here. You will know what I have done, and I suppose it’s nothing you haven’t seen before a thousand times. I will be lying on the bed, all things being well, and perhaps I will look peaceful, but perhaps I won’t. I would rather not take that chance, so I’ll leave it to the ambulance men to decide if I look in a fit state for you to say goodbye. That is if you wish to say goodbye.”’

Joyce stops reading for a moment. Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim are completely silent. She looks up at them. ‘They didn’t let me see him in the end. I’m sure that’s policy, when you’re not family. So he got that bit wrong, didn’t he? And they were both ambulance women.’

Joyce gives a weak smile and her three friends mirror it. She continues reading.

‘“I have the pills by my side and I have a Laphroaig I had been saving for a rainy day. I see the lights turning off around me and it will be my turn next. Next to the bed are the beautiful flowers you bought me. They are in a milk bottle, because you know me and vases. But before I go, I suppose I should tell you the whole thing.”’

‘The whole thing?’ says Elizabeth.

Joyce puts a finger to her lips. Elizabeth does as she is told and Joyce continues reading Bernard’s final letter.

‘“As you know, Asima” – that’s his wife – “died shortly after we moved to Coopers Chase, which was a spanner in the works. I know you don’t talk about Gerry very much, Joyce, but I know you understand. Like someone reached in and took out my heart and my lungs and told me to keep living. Keep waking up, keep eating, keep putting one foot in front of the other. For what? I don’t think I ever really found an answer to that. You know I would often walk up the hill and sit on the bench Asima and I used to sit on when we first moved here, and you know I felt close to her there. But I had another reason for climbing that hill, a reason for which I feel profound shame. A shame that has become too much for me to bear.”’

Joyce pauses for a moment. ‘I wonder if I might have some water?’

Ron pours her a glass and hands it to her: Joyce drinks, then returns to the letter.

‘“You will know that many Hindus have their ashes scattered on the Ganges. These days, other rivers will do, but for a certain generation it’s still the Ganges, if you have the wherewithal. This was Asima’s wish many, many years ago, certainly a wish that our daughter Sufi had grown up hearing about. Asima’s funeral is not something I wish to think about or write about, but two days afterwards Sufi and Majid – that’s the daughter and son-in-law – flew to Varanasi in India and scattered Asima’s ashes on the Ganges. But Joyce – and here’s where the pills and the whisky come in, I’m afraid – they weren’t her ashes.”’

She pauses and looks up.

‘Well. Goodness!’ says Ibrahim, and sits forward as Joyce reads on.

‘“I am not a religious man, Joyce, as you are aware. But in her later years, Asima was not a religious woman either. She shook off her faith slowly, like the leaves from a tree, until nothing remained. I loved that woman with everything I possess and she loved me. The thought of her leaving, being placed in hand luggage, Joyce, and then floating away from me. Well, that wasn’t something I was able to comprehend two days after saying goodbye. None of this excuses my actions, but I hope it might explain them. I had the ashes at home, for the first night. Sufi and Majid weren’t in my spare room, they had preferred to stay in a hotel, despite it all.

‘“Many years ago Asima and I had been browsing at an old antique shop and she had picked up a tea caddy in the shape of a tiger. ‘Well, that’s you,’ I said, and we both laughed. I called her Little Tiger and she called me Big Tiger, you know the drill. I went back a week later to buy it for her, as a surprise Christmas present, but it had already been sold. Anyway, that Christmas, I opened my present from her, and there it was. She had obviously gone straight back and bought it for me. I have kept it ever since. So, I took the urn and poured the ashes from the urn into the tiger tea caddy, then placed the caddy back in the cupboard. I filled the urn with a mixture of sawdust and bonemeal, it’s surprisingly convincing, then sealed it shut again. And that’s what Sufi took to Varanasi and that’s what she scattered on the Ganges. Bear in mind I wasn’t thinking straight, Joyce, I was paralysed with grief. I would have done anything to stop my Asima floating away. I had forgotten, of course, that she was Sufi’s Asima too. The next day, as soon after dark as I dared, I took a spade from the allotment shed and walked up the hill. I cut the turf from underneath the bench, I dug a hole and I buried the tin. Even then I knew it could only be temporary, but I wasn’t ready to let her go. The turf settled back in, nobody ever noticed a thing – why would they? – and every day I would go and sit on the bench, say hello when people walked by and talk to Asima when they didn’t. I knew then that it was wrong, I knew that I had betrayed my daughter and that I could never make amends. But the pain was so very great.”’

‘Some people love their children more than they love their partner,’ says Ibrahim, ‘and some people love their partner more than their children. And no one can ever admit to either thing.’

Joyce nods, absent-mindedly and begins a new page.

‘“The immediate pain goes, however much you might want it to stay, and I soon came to understand the enormity of what I had done. The awful selfishness, the entitlement. I started to think of plans and plots, something to put it right. Maybe I would dig the tea caddy up, I would take it on the bus down to Fairhaven, let some of her go and keep some of her with me. I could never tell Sufi what I had done, but at least her mother would be in the waves, returning to wherever Sufi imagines we return to. I knew it wasn’t enough, but it was the best I could do. Until one morning I climbed the hill to find workmen laying a concrete foundation for the bench. They had dug down, not far enough to find the tin, and filled the hole with cement. They had the job done in half an hour. And that was that, I suppose, so silly when you look at it, but I had no easy way of digging the tea caddy back up. So I would continue to walk up the hill and continue to talk to Asima when no one was listening, telling her my news, telling her how much I loved her and telling her I was sorry. And honestly, Joyce, for your eyes only, I realize that I have run out of whatever it is that we need to carry on. So that’s me, I’m afraid.”’

Joyce, finishes, stares down at the letter for another moment, running a finger across the ink. She looks up at her friends and attempts a smile, which turns, in an instant, to tears. The tears turn to shaking sobs and Ron leaves his chair, kneels in front her and takes her in his arms. The thing Ron is so good at: Joyce buries her head in Ron’s shoulder and flings her arms around him, weeping for Gerry and for Bernard and for Asima and for the ladies who went to Jersey Boys and drank G&Ts out of cans all the way home.

89

It is too late to be in Fairhaven Police Station, but Donna and Chris have nowhere else to be.

Chris kneels and unblocks the paper jam in the photocopier. Chris finds it hard to kneel without cramping up these days. He isn’t sure what that is. Too much salt, or not enough salt? It’s one or the other.

‘Fixed it,’ he tells Donna.

Donna presses ‘Print’ and makes a series of copies of the reports she’s been sent by the Cypriot Police Service.

‘I’ll bind them all together for you,’ says Donna. ‘It’ll take a while, but it’ll be easier for you.’

‘Very kind, Donna,’ says Chris. ‘But you’re still not coming to Cyprus with me.’

Donna sticks out her tongue.

Chris has a very interesting interview lined up. One that should tell them once and for all where Gianni Gunduz is.

Gianni’s name has not appeared on any of the passenger lists that Donna had waded through. No flight, no boat, no train, either into or out of the UK. But Chris supposes that Gianni is unlikely to still be using his old name. Not when the police had been hunting him down for the murder of the young cabbie and Tony Curran had been hunting him down for the £100,000 he had stolen.

But no one could simply disappear. There would be a trace somewhere.

Chris shuts down his computer. He feels sure that Turkish Gianni is their man, he’s been around long enough to sense when something fits perfectly. Evidence was another thing, but hopefully the trip to Nicosia will help him out there.

‘Shall we call it a night?’

‘Quick drink?’ says Donna. ‘Pont Noir?’

‘Six-fifty flight in the morning,’ says Chris.

‘Don’t rub it in,’ says Donna.

Chris stands and pulls down his office blinds. Gianni was one thing, but Ian Ventham? That was harder. Was it really connected to a murder from fifty years ago? Surely not? How many people could there be? Chris even had two DIs tracking down nuns in case they could remember anything. Surely some of them had left at some point? Lost their calling and gone out into the real world? What would they be now? Eighty-odd? Records were sketchy though, and he held out little hope. Or were they all missing something simpler?

‘Don’t crack the case while I’m gone please.’

‘I can’t promise anything,’ says Donna.

Chris picks up his briefcase. Time to go home. Always the worst time. Chris’s dream life remains just one stone away. But in his briefcase there is a packet of Salt & Vinegar McCoys, a Wispa and a Diet Coke. Diet Coke? Who did Chris think he was kidding?

Sometimes Chris thinks he should join a dating website. In his mind his perfect date would be a divorced teacher who had a small dog and sang in a choir. But he’d be happy to be proved wrong. Just someone kind and funny really.

Chris holds the door open for Donna, then follows her out.

What kind of woman would want Chris? Did women really mind a bit of extra timber these days? Well, yes, he was sure they did, but even so? He was just about to solve a murder, and surely, somewhere in the whole of Kent, there was someone who might find that attractive?

90: Joyce

Oh, I can’t sleep. It’s Bernard, Bernard, Bernard, of course. I’m already wondering about the funeral. Will it be here? I do hope so. I know I hadn’t known him long, but I’d hate to think of him in Vancouver.

So I’m back here at two in the morning, to give you some news. Don’t worry, no one has died this time.

After Ian we had all been wondering what’s to become of us here at Coopers Chase. Who was going to take it over? I don’t think anyone was too concerned; it seems to be profitable enough, so we knew there would be takers. But who?

You can probably guess who found out.

Elizabeth ‘accidentally’ bumped into Gemma Ventham, Ian Ventham’s unfortunate widow yesterday, at the new deli they’ve opened in Robertsbridge. It used to be Claire’s Hairdressers, until Claire was struck off. Is ‘struck off’ the correct expression for hairdressers? Either way, the local GP’s wife lost the top of an ear and that was that. They say Claire’s in Brighton now, and that’s probably for the best.

Gemma was with a man, who Elizabeth described as ‘a tennis-coach type’, though conceded that these days he might have been ‘a Pilates-instructor type’. Certainly not a grieving widow, and I think we all agreed that she’d earned a bit of happiness, so good for her.

She has also, it seems, earned an awful lot of money. This is what Elizabeth got out of her. I don’t know exactly how, but I do know that at one point she had pretended to faint, because she had actually grazed her elbow in the effort. She always finds a way, that one.

Anyway, Gemma Ventham has sold Coopers Chase Holdings to a company called Bramley Holdings. Of course, we’ve tried to find out as much as we can about Bramley Holdings, but thus far, no luck. We even called in Joanna and Cornelius, but they’ve turned up a blank. They promised they would keep looking, although you can hear that Cornelius’s patience is beginning to wear a bit thin.

But here’s something else keeping me awake. That name.

Bramley Holdings? It is ringing a bell and I can’t work out why. Elizabeth says they take names off the shelf, and perhaps she is right, but an alarm is ringing in my brain and I can’t switch it off.

Bramley? Where have I heard that before? And I know I’m an old woman, but don’t say apples. Something else. Something important.

Anne, who edits Cut to the Chase, came to see me today. People will always come and see you when you lose a friend. By now we’ve all worked out the right things to say. We’ve said them often enough.

I don’t think she is doing it just to be nice, but Anne has asked if I will write a column in Cut to the Chase. She knows I like to write and she knows I have my nose in everything, so would I write something about the comings and goings at Coopers Chase? I said yes, of course, and we are going to call it ‘Joyce’s Choices’, which I like. I had suggested ‘Joyce’s Voices’, but Anne had thought that might sound a bit mental health. She wants a picture of me, so I will go through a few tomorrow and pick out a nice one.

We are off to see Gordon Playfair tomorrow as well. The farmer at the top of the hill? He’s the only person any of us can think of who was here in the early 1970s and is still here today. He was nowhere near Ventham when he was murdered, so I don’t think we can count him as a suspect, but we’re hoping he might remember something useful from all those years ago.

I must try and sleep again.

91

‘Quaint?’ repeats Gordon Playfair, laughing. ‘This place? You and I know it’s an old house, falling apart, for an old man falling apart.’

‘We’re all falling apart, Gordon,’ says Elizabeth.

The walk to the Playfair farm had taken longer than expected, because a police cordon has been placed around the Garden of Eternal Rest. By all accounts, two police cars and a white van, popularly believed to be a forensics unit, had carefully parked at around 10 a.m. and a number of officers in white body suits had walked up the hill with spades. Martin Sedge has a top-floor flat in Larkin and is training binoculars on the site, but no news yet. ‘Just some digging,’ was his most recent report.

‘This house and me have grown old together. Roof coming off,’ says Gordon, and rubs the few strands of hair left on his head. ‘Things creak that didn’t use to creak. Dodgy plumbing. We’re two of a kind.’

‘We don’t disturb you too much? The village?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Never hear a peep,’ says Gordon. ‘Might as well still be the nuns down there.’

‘You should come and visit us sometime,’ says Joyce. ‘There’s a restaurant, there’s a pool. There’s Zumba.’

‘I used to go down a lot in the old days. Just for bits and bobs, have a chat. They were a lively bunch when they weren’t praying. Also, if you ever put a nail through your thumb or your ankle down a rabbit hole, they’d fix you up,’ says Gordon.

Elizabeth nods, fair enough. ‘You met Ian Ventham on the morning he was murdered?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. Not my choice.’

‘Whose choice?’

‘Karen, my youngest. She just wanted me to hear him out. She wants me to sell. Why wouldn’t she?’

‘And what was discussed?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Same old nonsense. Same offer, same manners. I’ll put it politely by saying I never took to Ian Ventham. I can be less polite if you’d like?’

‘You weren’t for turning?’

‘They both tried to talk me round. Karen could see it wasn’t washing, but Ventham kept on for a bit longer. Trying to make me feel guilty about the kids.’

‘But you didn’t budge?’

‘I rarely do.’

‘I’m much the same,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And how did you leave it?’

‘He told me he was going to get my land, one way or another.’

‘And what did you say to that?’ asks Joyce.

‘I said, “Over my dead body,”’ says Gordon Playfair.

‘Well, quite,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Anyway,’ says Gordon Playfair, ‘I’ve been made another offer. And I’m taking it, now Ventham’s out of the picture.’

‘Good for you,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Now, might I ask, is this just a social call?’ says Gordon Playfair. ‘Or is there something I can help you with?’

‘Funny you should ask,’ Elizabeth says, nodding. ‘We were wondering if you had any memories of this place? From the seventies, say?’

‘I certainly have plenty of memories,’ says Gordon Playfair. ‘Might even have a few photo albums if they’d help?’

‘It wouldn’t do any harm to take a look,’ says Elizabeth.

‘I should warn you now, my photos are mainly of sheep. What is it you’re looking for?’

92: Joyce

So we told Gordon Playfair about the body. And we all had a good old chat about who might have buried it there all those years ago. All those years ago, when Coopers Chase was a convent and a young Gordon Playfair sat in the very same house, with his young family, on this very hill.

The offer for his land, by the way? It was from our mysterious friends at Bramley Holdings. That name is still driving me crazy. But it’ll come. He was just cutting off his nose to spite his face with Ventham, refusing to sell simply because he couldn’t stand him. The moment Ventham was out of the picture, the sale was on.

I asked Gordon what he might do with the money, and it won’t surprise you to know that most of it will go to the kids. There’s three. We know one of them, of course: Karen, who lives in the small cottage in the next field over and was supposed to be teaching us about computers, until we were so unexpectedly interrupted.

Unmarried, but then so is Joanna. So am I, come to think of it.

So, lucky kids, but Gordon says he has enough left over to buy himself a little somewhere nice and, you will see where this is going, we’re going to give him a guided tour of Coopers Chase in a few days and see if anything takes his fancy. Wouldn’t that be fun? Gordon is craggy, rather than conventionally handsome, but has broad, farmer’s shoulders.

Anyway, back to the bones. Gordon understood now why we wanted to hear his memories of the 1970s. And why we were studying his photo albums so intently. Just to take a look at any shots he’d taken on those trips down the hill all those years ago. See if anyone rang a bell.

In the end, it was in the second album we looked through. It started with wedding photos, Gordon and Sandra (or Susan, I had glazed over I’m afraid, you know other people’s wedding photos), then pictures of a baby, suspiciously shortly afterwards. That will be their eldest. Then, and I’m not making this up, page after page of pictures of sheep and, the way Gordon was telling it, all different. And then, just as the wine and the fire and the sheep were making us drowsy, we reached the final photos in the album. Six in all, black and white. All six photos taken at a Christmas party at the convent. Probably not a party as such, but certainly Christmas.

It was in the fifth photo, a group shot. At first you couldn’t really see it. We’ve all changed a lot over fifty years, I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize Elizabeth, or she me. But we all looked and we all looked again. And we all agreed.

And so we have our evidence, and we have a plan. Well, Elizabeth has a plan.

And, speaking of photos, I found a nice one for my column in Cut to the Chase. It’s an old photo, which I know is vain, but you’d still know it’s me. Gerry is also in it, but Anne tells me she can crop him out on the computer. Sorry, love.

93

There is still a confessional stall in the chapel at the heart of Coopers Chase. It is used as storage for the cleaners now: Joyce had helped Elizabeth clear it out, stacking up the boxes of floor polish on the altar, neatly tucked behind Jesus. Elizabeth had given the whole place a spruce up, even polishing the grille. As a final touch, she puts a pair of Orla Kiely cushions on the hard wooden seats.

Elizabeth had conducted many interviews in her time, and brought many people to some kind of justice. If tapes existed of any of these interviews, they had long since been buried, erased or burned. That was Elizabeth’s fervent hope at least.

Lawyers? No. Procedure? Certainly not. Just whatever worked quickest.

Nothing physical ever, that wasn’t Elizabeth’s style. She knew it happened from time to time, but it was never effective. Psychology was key. Always try the unexpected, always approach from an angle, always lean back in your chair, with all the time in the world, and wait for them to tell all. Like the whole process was their idea in the first place. And for that you always needed an angle, something unexpected. Something bespoke.

Like inviting a priest to a confession.

Elizabeth realized she was very fond of Donna and Chris. The Thursday Murder Club had got lucky with those two. Imagine the bores they might have been saddled with. She knew that even Donna and Chris would have limits, though, and that this was way beyond those limits. But if she could work her magic with Matthew Mackie, she knew they would forgive her.

And if she couldn’t work her magic? If her magic was just a memory? She had been wrong about Ian Ventham murdering Tony Curran, hadn’t she?

But Matthew Mackie was different. Here was a man who had scuffled with Ventham. A man who didn’t seem to exist, yet had been in a photo taken in this very chapel. A man who both was a priest and wasn’t a priest. A man who had brushed over his footsteps.

Until someone had decided to dig up a graveyard. His graveyard?

And a man who was on his way this very moment. When it would have been easier for him to stay at home. Was he coming to confess? Was he coming to find out what she knew? Or was he coming with a syringe full of fentanyl?

Elizabeth has never been afraid of death, but, all the same, in this moment, she thinks of Stephen.

It is cold in the ageless dark of the chapel and Elizabeth shivers. She buttons her cardigan, then looks at her watch. She would soon find out, one way or another.

94

Chris Hudson is in a small cell, opposite a large man. The small cell is an interview room in the Central Prison of Nicosia and the large man is Costas Gunduz. The father of Gianni Gunduz.

Chris is in a concrete seat, bolted to the floor. The back is ramrod straight. It would be the most uncomfortable chair that Chris had ever sat in, had he not just made the flight to Cyprus on Ryanair.

Chris’s trips abroad for work have been few and far between. Many years ago, he had gone to Spain to escort home Billy Gill, a seventy-year-old antiques dealer from Hove who had run a counterfeit pound-coin operation from a garage close to the seafront. It was a lovely little business, running pretty much undetectably for many years, until, with the advent of the two-pound coin, Billy had got greedy. His coins had looked terrific, but the middles kept falling out, and after a lengthy stakeout of a Portslade launderette, Billy’s mint was tracked down and Billy had fled for the sun, pockets jangling as he went.

Chris’s memory of that trip was a cramped charter flight from Shoreham airport, landing somewhere in Spain beginning with A, being driven for forty-five minutes in searing heat, the van stopping and a handcuffed Billy Gill being shoved alongside him, and waiting seven hours for a flight home, all the while listening to Billy Gill telling him you couldn’t get Marmite in Spain.

Then a few years later there had been a compulsory IT course on the Isle of Wight. And, so far, that had been that for globetrotting.

But Cyprus was a bit more like it. Too hot, obviously, but more like it. He’d been met at Larnaca airport and driven to the capital by Joe Kyprianou, the Cypriot detective who now sat next to him. The prison was nice and cool and, Chris discovered, it’s impossible to sweat when sitting on a concrete chair. From the moment the cell doors closed, he had been happy.

Costas Gunduz was, Chris guessed, somewhere in his seventies, but was a lot less chatty than Billy Gill.

‘When was the last time you saw Gianni?’ asks Chris.

Costas looks straight at him and shrugs.

‘Last week? Last year? Does he visit? Come on, Costas.’

Costas looks at his nails. Which, Chris notes, are immaculate for a man in prison.

‘Here’s the thing, Mr Gunduz. We have records showing that your son arrived back in Cyprus, on 17 May 2000. Landing at Larnaca airport at around two p.m. And from that moment to this, nothing. Not a trace. Why might that be, do you think?’

Costas thinks for a moment. ‘Why do you want Gianni? After this time?’

‘I would like to speak to him about an offence in the UK. To rule him out.’

‘Pretty big offence if you fly here? No?’

‘A pretty big offence, Mr Gunduz, yes.’

Costas Gunduz nods slowly. ‘And you can’t find Gianni?’

‘I know where he was at two p.m. on 17 May 2000, and I’m hazy after that,’ says Chris. ‘Where would he have gone? Who would he have seen?’

‘Well,’ says Costas, sitting up tall in his chair, ‘he would have come to see me.’

‘And did he?’

Costas leans forward a little and gives Chris a smile. Then shrugs once again. ‘Time up, I think. Good luck to you. Enjoy Cyprus.’

Joe Kyprianou leans forward now, and regards Costas Gunduz.

‘Costas and his brother Andreas, they used to steal motorcycles, Chris, here in Nicosia, and ship them off to Turkey. Pretty easy, if you have a guy in each port. They had a little workshop, file off the serial number, change the registration, that’s right, Costas, isn’t it?’

‘A long time ago,’ says Costas.

‘Then it was cars every now and again. But they could go on the same boats, with the same men turning the same blind eye, so everything is OK for Costas and Andreas. The years roll by, bikes and cars, cars and bikes. And the cars mean a bigger workshop, and a bigger lorry, and bigger crates.’

‘And bigger money for Costas?’ asks Chris, looking at Costas.

‘Bigger money, for sure. So all is calm and everyone is happy, and Costas and Andreas do very nicely, thank you so much. And then 1974 and Turkey invade. You know the story?’

‘Yes,’ says Chris. He doesn’t, but he really wants a meal before his flight and he can bet the story is a long one. He will look it up on Wikipedia if it becomes important.

‘So the Turkish invade, they take over Northern Cyprus. Pretty much. The Greek Cypriots in the north come down south, the Turkish Cypriots in the south go up north. And that’s Costas and Andreas.’

‘So Costas moved north?’

Joe Kyprianou laughs. ‘You moved north, eh Costas? Like three streets north. Nicosia was cut in two, Turkish in the north of the city, Greek in the south. So they just moved north of the Green Line and found themselves in a whole new world.’

Google ‘Green Line’, thinks Chris.

‘And Costas, you sensed opportunity in this new world, eh? Started a new business.’

‘Drugs?’ asks Chris. ‘Naughty Costas.’

Costas shrugs.

‘Drugs,’ confirms Joe Kyprianou. ‘They paid the right people. Drugs from Turkey come into Northern Cyprus. Then from Northern Cyprus on to wherever, whoever. Huge business very, very quickly, and all protected. Frontier country, you know? Ten years on, the brothers run everything, they’re Kings of the North. Untouchable, Chris, the whole family. They pay charities, open schools, the whole match. Gunduz. You just say the name in Northern Cyprus and see what you see.’

Chris nods, he gets it. ‘When Gianni landed back here in 2000, he disappeared, never to be seen again. There was a warrant, we had officers fly over, the Cypriot police searched, but found nothing.’

Joe nods. ‘It’s simple, Chris, really. If Gianni has to get out of England quick, he just calls his dad. He lands at the airport, Costas sends people to pick him up, burn the passport, new one straight away. New guy, new name, back up to Northern Cyprus, back to business. Next day, back to business, I guarantee. Is that what happened, Costas?’

‘Nothing happened,’ says Costas.

‘And the search?’ asks Chris. ‘Our guys? Your guys?’

‘No chance. No chance at all,’ says Joe. ‘I won’t say bad things, Chris, because you know how it is. But no way they even looked. Not in the right places. See if your boys wrote it up. They won’t have set foot in Northern Cyprus. In 2000, you can’t believe the power Costas had. You owned everything and everyone, eh, brother?’

Joe looks at Costas. Costas nods.

‘Still does, even from prison. So, however good a cop you are, why even try? Gianni could be here, could be Turkey, could be US or back in the UK. You can see Costas knows where he is, but he’s never going to help you.’

Costas holds out his hands.

‘He could have flown into the UK?’ says Chris. ‘Under any name, killed Tony Curran and flown back out, and we’d be none the wiser?’

Joe nods. ‘Definitely. Though if he flew to the UK he’d have had help when he got there. Any Cypriots there who could help him? Put him up? Anyone who might be scared of Costas here, and what he can still do?’

Chris shrugs, but tucks this away.

Costas has had enough, and stands. ‘Are we done, gentlemen?’

Chris nods, he is out of ammunition. He knows a pro when he interviews one. Chris takes out his card and puts it on the table in front of Costas.

‘My card, if anything comes back to you.’

Costas looks at the card, then at Chris, then back at the card and lets out a belly laugh. He looks over at Joe Kyprianou and says something Chris can’t catch. Joe Kyprianou laughs too. Costas looks back at Chris for a final time and shakes his head, firmly, but not unkindly.

Chris gives Costas a shrug of his own. He is a pro too.

Chris had googled it earlier and there is a Starbucks and a Burger King at Larnaca airport. You saw fewer and fewer Burger Kings these days. Time to make tracks. He stands.

‘What did they get you for, Costas?’ asks Chris. ‘In the end?’

Costas gives a small smile. ‘I bought a Harley-Davidson, from the US, had it shipped over. Forgot to pay the duty.’

‘You’re kidding? And they gave you life?’

Costas Gunduz shakes his head. ‘Sentenced to two weeks and then I killed a prison guard.’

Chris nods. ‘Quite a family.’

95

Matthew Mackie had been surprised to get the call from Elizabeth. Asking if he was available for a confession. He had been gardening and thinking. The police interview had upset him, thrown him off balance. Life had been so simple a few months ago. His life wasn’t happy, exactly, he hadn’t been happy for many years, but was he at peace perhaps? Had he found some contentment? As much as he was ever going to, he supposed.

He had his house, his garden, his pension. He had nice neighbours who would look in on him. A young family had recently moved in opposite, and the kids would play on their bikes on the pavement. He could hear bells and laughter if he kept the windows open. He could walk down to the sea in five minutes. He could sit and watch the gulls and read the paper, when it wasn’t too windy. People knew him, and would smile and ask how he was keeping and, if he wasn’t too busy, could they tell him about their nose bleeds, or their hip, or their sleepless nights? It was a life, it had a rhythm and a routine and it kept the ghosts at bay. What more could you ask, really?

But now? Brawls, police interviews, non-stop worry. Would he ever get his peace back? Would this blow over? He knew it wouldn’t. Whatever they say about time healing, some things in life just break and can never be fixed. For now, Matthew Mackie was keeping his windows shut. There were no bells and there was no laughter, and he was old enough to know there might never be again.

It seemed that every bit of news he had received in the last month had been bad. So what to make of the phone call? What was this to be?

Did he know the confessional stall at St Michael’s Chapel, she had asked. Did he know it? He would still dream of it now, the darkness, the dull echo, the walls closing in on him. The place where his life broke in two, never to be fixed.

Should he go back there? It wasn’t a fair question. He had never left. He had known his life would lead him back there one day. God’s sense of humour. You had to hand it to him.

He had seen Elizabeth, he was sure. At the consultation meeting and again on the awful day of the murder. She stood out. So what was on Elizabeth’s mind? What sin could she no longer hide? And why ask for him? And why there? She must have seen him on the day of the murder, he supposed. Must have seen the dog collar, that usually stuck in people’s minds. It often made people want to tell their secrets, to spill all. What had he unlocked in her that made her pick up the phone? And, for that matter, how had she got his number? He wasn’t listed. Perhaps it was on the internet? She must have got it somewhere.

And so that was that. Back to St Michael’s. Into the confessional, with Elizabeth. Back to where it all began and where it all ended. A macabre coincidence. If only she knew.

Matthew Mackie was already on the platform at Bexhill station when he realized Elizabeth hadn’t actually mentioned which of them would be doing the confessing.

He thought about turning straight round. But, by that point, he had already bought a ticket.

She couldn’t possibly know? Could she?

96

So that, supposed Chris, was that. Gianni Gunduz had managed to disappear, the prodigal son returned, protected by his powerful family. Now to find out if Gianni had recently taken a flight back to England. A little trip down memory lane. But under what name? And with what face? Gianni could come and go as he pleased.

Chris had got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and was enjoying a triple chocolate muffin from Starbucks. He shouldn’t, of course, just empty calories, but he could think about that when he’d finished the muffin. He hears an English voice.

‘This seat taken?’

Chris motions that the seat is free, without looking up. Until his brain registers that the voice is familiar to him. But of course. Of course. Chris looks up, and nods.

‘Good afternoon, Ron.’

‘Afternoon, Chris,’ says Ron, sitting down. ‘Four hundred and fifty calories in one muffin, you know.’

‘Are you following me, Ron?’ asks Chris. ‘Seeing what there is to see?’

‘No, we got here yesterday, old son,’ says Ron.

‘We?’ says Chris.

Ibrahim arrives with a tray. He nods at Chris. ‘How lovely to bump into you, Detective Chief Inspector! We heard you were here. Ron, I didn’t really know how to ask for just an instant coffee, so I got us Caramel Frappuccinos.’

‘Thanks Ib,’ says Ron, and takes his drink.

‘I wonder if it’s worth my while asking what you two are doing here,’ asks Chris. ‘Assuming it is just the two of you? Perhaps Joyce is stocking up in Duty Free?’

‘Just us boys,’ says Ron. ‘Little jolly to Cyprus.’

‘Quite bonding, in fact,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I have never had many close male friends. Or close female friends. Or been to Cyprus.’

‘Elizabeth sent us over with instructions,’ says Ron. ‘She knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, so here we are. Probably finding out the same as you.’

‘A very powerful family,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Very easy for Gianni to go missing. To change his identity. No trace of him anywhere.’

‘A ghost,’ says Ron.

‘A ghost with a grudge,’ agrees Chris. He has given up on the muffin. He has already eaten half, so what was that? Two hundred and twenty calories? If the gate was a good walk from Starbucks, he would work some of that off. Then nothing on the plane.

‘We heard you’ve been to see Gianni’s dad,’ says Ron. ‘You get anything?’

‘Who did you hear that from?’ asks Chris.

‘Does it matter?’ asks Ron.

Chris supposes it doesn’t. ‘He knows where Gianni is. But even Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to get it out of him.’

The men nod.

‘Joyce, maybe,’ adds Chris, and they all nod again, smiling this time.

‘You don’t smile very often, Detective Chief Inspector,’ says Ibrahim. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so? That’s just an observation.’

‘If I can make an observation of my own?’ says Chris, realizing that Ibrahim is right and not wanting to think about it right here, right now. ‘If Elizabeth knows someone who knows someone who knows someone, then why isn’t she here? Why send Starsky and Hutch when Cagney and Lacey could have come and done the job?’

‘Starsky and Hutch, very good,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I would be Hutch, more methodical.’

There is a boarding announcement, and the three men gather their belongings. Chris sees that Ron has a walking stick with him.

‘First time I’ve seen you using a stick, Ron.’

Ron shrugs. ‘If you’ve got a stick they let you on the plane first.’

‘So where are Elizabeth and Joyce?’ asks Chris. ‘Or don’t I want to know?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Oh great!’ says Chris.

97

Candlelight is flickering in the chapel. Elizabeth and Matthew Mackie are inches apart, in the confessional.

‘I see no point in dressing it up. And I don’t want forgiveness, yours or the Lord’s. I just want it on record, I want someone to bear witness, before I die and it’s all dust. I know there are rules, even in the confessional, so you must do whatever you need to do with this information. I killed a man. This was a lifetime ago, and for what it’s worth, he attacked me and I defended myself. But I killed him.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was living in digs in Fairhaven. I don’t know if you’re the type to judge me, but I had invited him home. Stupid, perhaps, but you were probably stupid back then too. That’s where he attacked me. The details are grisly, but that’s not an excuse. I fought back and I killed him. I was so frightened, I knew exactly how it looked. No one had seen what happened, so who would believe me? They were different times, you know that, you remember that?’

‘I remember.’

‘I wrapped the body in a curtain. I dragged it to my car. And that’s where I left it while I thought what to do. This had all happened very quickly, that’s what you have to understand. That morning I had woken like everybody else and now here I was. It seemed so absurd.’

‘How did you kill him? Can I ask?’

‘I shot him. In the leg. I hadn’t thought he would die, but he bled and he bled and he bled. So much blood, so quickly. Perhaps if he’d made a noise it would have been different. But he just whimpered. In shock, I suppose. And I watched him die, as close as I am to you now.’

Silence in the confessional. Silence in the chapel. Elizabeth has locked and bolted the door. No one is going to come in. And, of course, no one is going to get out. If that was the way this was going to end.

‘Then … well, then I sat and I wept, because what else was there to do? I waited for the hand on my shoulder, for someone to take me away. It was so monstrous. But as I sat there and I sat there and I sat there, nothing much happened. No one knocked, no one screamed. There was no lightning. So I made myself a cup of tea. And the kettle still boiled and the steam rose, and I still had a body, wrapped in a curtain, in the boot of my car. It was a summer evening, so I turned on the wireless and I waited until dark. And then I drove here.’

‘Here?’

‘St Michael’s, yes. I worked here for a time. I don’t know if you knew that?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘So I drove through the gates, and I switched off my lights as I drove up the hill. The Sisters would always sleep early. I kept driving, past St Michael’s, past the hospital and up the lane to the Garden of Eternal Rest. You know it?’

‘I know it.’

‘Of course. And I took my spade, and I don’t want these walls to crumble around us, but I chose a grave, of one of the Sisters. It was right at the top, where the earth was soft, and I dug. I dug until I hit the wood of a coffin. Then I walked back to my car. I tipped the body out of the boot and out of the curtain. I hadn’t had to remove any clothes, because he was naked when he attacked me, you understand. And so I dragged the body up the path, through the headstones. It was hard going, I remember that. At one point I cursed, and then I apologized for cursing. I got the body up to the hole and tipped it into the grave. On top of the coffin. Then I took my spade again, I filled in the grave and I said a prayer. Then I walked back to my car, I put the spade in the boot and I drove home. That’s as plain as I can tell it.’

‘I understand.’

‘And the knock at the door never came. Which, I suppose, is why I’m telling you all this now. Because no one knocked at my door and surely someone should have? In my dreams they knock every night. There have to be consequences. So, what do you think? Please, just be honest with me.’

‘Be honest with you?’ Matthew Mackie lets out a long, slow, sigh. ‘I’ll be honest. I don’t believe a word of it, Elizabeth.’

‘Not a word?’ queries Elizabeth. ‘There was a lot of detail, Father Mackie. The date, the gunshot to the leg, that very particular grave. What a peculiar thing for me to make up.’

‘Elizabeth, you didn’t work here in 1970.’

‘Mmm. You did, though. I’ve seen the pictures.’

‘I did, yes. I’ve sat here before. And I’ve sat where you are too.’

Elizabeth decides to start turning the screw.

‘You sound like a man who wants to talk? Anything I’ve said triggered any memories? Convinced you I might just know something?’

Matthew Mackie gives a sad laugh. Elizabeth keeps at him.

‘If you don’t mind me saying, Father Mackie, you gave quite the little jump when I mentioned the Garden of Eternal Rest?’

‘I do mind you saying that, Elizabeth, but I suppose I would like to talk. I’ve always wanted to. And since we’re both here, why don’t you play your real cards and see where that gets you?’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m at home here, Elizabeth. In God’s house. Let’s talk awhile, shall we? Two old fools? You just start somewhere and I’ll join in where I can.’

‘Shall we start with Ian Ventham? Shall we talk awhile about him?’

‘Ian Ventham?’

‘Well, let’s start there at least. We can always work backwards. I might start with a question, Father Mackie, if you don’t mind?’

‘Ask away. And call me Matthew, please.’

‘Thank you, I will. So, first things first, Matthew. Why did you kill Ian Ventham?’

98: Joyce

I have been given express instructions, and Elizabeth has been gone too long. I wish Ron and Ibrahim were with me. I’m writing this down while I wait for Donna to arrive, which I hope will be very soon.

It’s beginning to feel like this isn’t all some jolly lark. An adventure where everything resolves itself and we all come back for more of the same next week. Elizabeth said two hours and she has now been gone two hours. A bit more than two hours. What had I been thinking when I agreed to this in the first place? There have been lots of things we had kept from Chris and Donna, but this is by far the most dangerous. I am not one of nature’s liars. I can keep my secrets to myself, right up until the time someone asks me about them.

So I made the call to Donna and I told her where Elizabeth had gone and I told her she hadn’t returned.

Donna was very angry, and I understand that. I told her I was sorry for lying and she said that Elizabeth had been the liar, I had simply been a coward. She then called me something which I wouldn’t want to repeat, but which, I have to admit, was fair comment.

I am so keen for people to like me that I chose that moment to say how much I had always liked her eye shadow and to ask her where it was from. But she had already put the phone down.

Donna is on her way. I know she is very worried and so am I. I have always thought Elizabeth was indestructible. I hope I’m not wrong.

99

Elizabeth has made this walk many times before, along the curving path, through the avenue of trees and up to the Garden of Eternal Rest. She can feel Matthew Mackie’s hand in the small of her back, guiding her forward.

It is always quiet, but she can never remember it being this quiet. Even the birds are silent. What do they know? It looks like rain. The sun is doing what it can to pierce the cloud cover, but she still shivers. There had been police crime tape here until a matter of days ago. A fragment has been left tied to a sapling and flaps its blue and white tail in the wind.

They pass Bernard’s bench. It looks absurdly empty.

Bernard would have wanted to know what the two of them were doing, Elizabeth and the priest, walking slowly up the hill, faces set in stone. Bernard would have looked up from his newspaper, wished them a good day and kept them in sight for the rest of the walk. But Bernard has gone. Like so many before him. Time’s up, that’s it. No return. An empty bench on a silent hill.

They reach the gates and Matthew Mackie pushes them open. He ushers Elizabeth inside, hand still at her back, and she hears the hinges squeal shut behind them.

Matthew Mackie does not walk her all the way to the top right-hand corner of the Garden of Eternal Rest, to where the older graves hold their secrets. Instead, he takes his hand from her back, steps off the path and walks between two rows of newer headstones, cleaner and whiter. The route he always takes. Elizabeth follows him this time and they stop in front of a headstone. Elizabeth looks at the inscription.

Sister Margaret Anne

Margaret Farrell, 1948–1971

Elizabeth takes Matthew Mackie’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his.

‘It’s a beautiful place, Elizabeth,’ he says.

Elizabeth looks out, beyond the wall, to the rolling fields, the hills, the trees, the birds. It really is a beautiful place. The peace is broken by a commotion further down the hill, the sound of footsteps running. Elizabeth looks at her watch.

‘That’ll be my rescue party,’ she says. ‘I told them if I wasn’t out in two hours, they were to break down the door. Come in shooting.’

‘Two hours?’ asks Mackie. ‘Were we really two hours?’

Elizabeth nods. ‘There was a great deal to say, Matthew.’

He nods too.

‘You’ll probably have to go through it again when this lot finally get up the hill.’

Elizabeth can see Chris Hudson now, fresh off the plane she guessed, running as best he can. She gives him a friendly wave and sees the relief on his face. Both that she is still alive and that he can now stop running.

100

There had been a schism in the Cryptic Crossword Club. Colin Clemence’s weekly solving challenge had been won by Irene Dougherty for the third week running. Frank Carpenter had made an accusation of impropriety and the accusation had gained some momentum. The following day a profane crossword clue had been pinned to Colin Clemence’s door, and, the moment he had solved it, all hell had broken loose.

The upshot of all this was that Cryptic Crossword Club had been postponed this week, to let all parties cool down, and so the Jigsaw Room was unexpectedly free. The Thursday Murder Club are in their regular seats and Chris and Donna have brought through a couple of stacking chairs from the lounge. Matthew Mackie sits in an armchair in the corner. The focus of attention.

‘I was not long over from Ireland. I’d only left for adventure, really. In those days they could send you all sorts of places, Africa or Peru, but that’s not for me, converting and what have you. So this place came up and I sailed over in 1967, sight unseen. It was what you see now, really. Very beautiful, very quiet, a hundred Sisters, but quiet enough you wouldn’t know it. They’d pad about. There was peace, here, in the convent, but it was also a place of work, and the hospital was always busy. So I’d stroll about the place. I’d give sermons and take confessions. I’d smile when people were happy and I’d cry with them when they were sad, and that was my job. Twenty-five years old, without a thought in my head and without a bone of wisdom in my body. But I was a man, and that seemed to be the only thing that counted.’

‘And you lived here?’ Chris asks the question. Elizabeth had suggested that Chris and Donna take charge of any questioning, as she was aware she would probably need a few Brownie points by the time today was done.

‘There was a gatehouse back then and I had rooms there. Nice enough, certainly nicer than the Sisters’ rooms. No visitors, of course. That was the rule, at least.’

‘A rule you followed?’ asks Donna.

‘At first, of course. I was eager to do well, eager to please, didn’t want to be sent home. All of that.’

‘But … things change?’ asks Chris.

‘Things change, yes. Things do change. I’d met Maggie very early on. She would clean the chapel. There were four of them cleaning.’

‘But only one Maggie?’ says Donna.

‘Only one Maggie,’ smiles Matthew Mackie. ‘You know when you look into someone’s eyes for the first time and the whole world breaks apart? And you just think, “Of course, of course, this is what I’ve been waiting for all this time”?’ That was Maggie, all right. And at first it would be, “Good morning, Sister Margaret,” and, “Good morning, Father,” and so on, and she’d get on with her work and I’d get on with mine. Such as it was. But I would smile, and she would smile, and sooner or later it would be, “A fine morning, Sister Margaret, we’re blessed with this sunshine,” and “You’re right, Father, how blessed we are.” And then it would be, “What’s that you’re using on the floor, Sister Margaret?” and, “It’s floor polish, Father.” This wasn’t immediate; this would be a few weeks in.’

Ron leans forward to say something, but Elizabeth shoots him a look and he doesn’t.

‘Anyway, let’s say I had been there a month or so, when Maggie came in for confession. There we both were. And neither of us said so much as a word. We sat there and we sat there, our bodies inches apart, just the wood between them. I can hear her breathing and I can hear my heart thumping. It’s trying to jump clean out of my chest. Don’t ask me how long it was, I wouldn’t have the first clue, but eventually I say, “You’ve probably work to be getting on with, Sister Margaret,” and she says, “Thank you, Father,” and that was that. That was the whole thing clinched and we both knew it. We both knew the confession was the sin and it wouldn’t be the last.’

‘Would you like a top-up?’ asks Joyce, tipping her flask of tea. Mackie lifts his fingers to say no thank you.

‘We would meet in private, which goes without saying, I know. I would see her every morning, but obviously we couldn’t speak with others around. So I would take her confession and we would talk. And on those two wooden seats we fell in love. Maggie and Matthew. Matthew and Maggie. Speaking through a grille. Can you imagine a love so doomed?’

‘And, forgive me, but just for the record, Maggie is Sister Margaret Anne?’ asks Chris.

‘She is.’

‘Nineteen forty-eight to nineteen seventy-one?’

Matthew Mackie nods. ‘I knew we had to get out. It would be easy enough. I’d find a job, I had all my exams, Maggie would nurse, we’d buy a place on the coast. We both grew up by the sea.’

‘You were going to quit the priesthood?’

‘Of course. Let me ask you. Why did you join the police, DCI Hudson?’

Chris thinks for a moment. ‘Honestly? I’d finished my A levels, my mum told me I had to get a job, and that night we were watching Juliet Bravo.’

‘Well, isn’t that just it?’ says Matthew Mackie. ‘In a different town, in a different country, I’d have been a pilot or a greengrocer, but for no good reason other than circumstance, I was a priest. In truth, I’m not a great believer and never have been. It was a job, and a roof, and a passage away from home.’

‘And Maggie?’ asks Donna. ‘She was going to quit too?’

‘It was harder for Maggie. She had the religion, it was still in her. But she would have. I think she would, one day. I think she’d be in Bexhill with me now, green eyes blazing. But it was hard for her. Mine was the risk of a young man and hers was the risk of a young woman, and that was a greater risk in those days, wasn’t it?’

Joyce reaches over and takes his hand. ‘What happened to your Maggie, Matthew?’

‘She would visit me. At night, if you get the picture. In the gatehouse. It was easy enough to slip away after lights out. Maggie was no fool, she would have fitted in with you lot, no problem. Tuesdays and Fridays she could see me, those were the safest. I would light a candle for her, in an upstairs room. If there was no candle, it meant I’d been called away, or had guests, and she knew not to come. But if I lit the candle, she would always come. Sometimes straight away and sometimes I’d be waiting and pacing, but she would always come.’

Mackie clears his throat and furrows his brow: Joyce squeezes his hand.

‘I haven’t told this story in fifty years, and now twice in a day.’ He gives a weak smile, then presses on. ‘It was a Wednesday, the seventeenth of March, and I had lit the candle and I was waiting and pacing. There was one floorboard in the sitting room that, when you trod on it, would give three little squeaks. And I was back and forth and back and forth and it was “squeak, squeak, squeak”, “squeak, squeak, squeak”. And I would hear little sounds outside and think, “It’s her,” and stop and listen some more, but each time, just silence. The wait went on too long and I got worried. Had she been caught sneaking out? Sister Mary was fierce. I knew everything would be fine really, because at that age, everything always was. So I went upstairs, blew out the candle, came down, laced up my boots and headed up to the convent. To see what I could see.’

Matthew Mackie looks to the floor. An old man telling the story of a young man. Elizabeth catches Ron’s eye and taps her breast pocket. Ron nods, then reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a small hip flask.

‘I’m just going to have a little nip of whisky. I hope you’ll keep me company, Matthew?’

Without waiting for an answer, Ron pours whisky into Matthew Mackie’s mug. Mackie nods his thanks, eyes still to the floor.

‘And what did you see, Father Mackie?’ asks Donna.

‘Well, the convent was dark, which was good. If she’d been caught sneaking out there’d be a light somewhere. Sister Mary’s office, maybe. Or some midnight scrubbing in the chapel. But the only lights were in the infirmary. I just wanted to do a little tour, make sure Maggie was safe and sound. I could think of a hundred good reasons she hadn’t come to me that night, but I wanted to ease my mind. I thought I would pick up some papers from the little office I had, off the back of the chapel. You know, if anyone saw me, I was just catching up on some work. I couldn’t sleep. Maybe have a wander around. If I could have, I would have had a peek into the dorms, just to see her lying there.’

‘This room we’re in,’ says Joyce, ‘this was one of the dorms.’

Matthew Mackie looks around, nodding. His left hand gently pats the arm of his chair and he continues.

‘I had the chapel key. You know that door, it’s so heavy and the lock was so noisy, but I opened up as quietly as I could, then shut it behind me. The place was pitch black, but I knew my way around, of course. Near the altar I bumped into an old wooden chair that shouldn’t have been there, and that clattered across the floor making a terrible racket. I thought I should light one of the lamps, by the altar, just to make me feel a little calmer, a little less like a thief. I lit the lamp and it was a very dim light, you wouldn’t have seen it from outside, I don’t think, not a bright light at all. Just a dim glow, really. And that’s what I would say about the lamp.’

Matthew Mackie picks up his mug and takes a sip. He places the mug back down.

‘So, that was the light, the one that I lit. And really all you could see was the altar, just shadows, but enough to see. Enough to see.’

Matthew Mackie rubs his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘And there was Maggie. There’s a beam above the altar. At least there was. You could hang incense or blessings. It was structural, I think, the beam, but we used it. Anyway, Maggie had looped a length of rope around the beam and hung herself. And not long before I’d got there. Perhaps she did it when I was tying my laces. Or perhaps it was when I blew out the candle? But she was dead, I could see that clearly. That’s why she hadn’t come.’

There is quiet in the Jigsaw Room. Matthew Mackie takes another sip from his mug.

‘Thank you, Ron, for this.’

Ron makes a ‘don’t mention it’ gesture with his hands.

‘Was there a note, Father Mackie?’ asks Chris.

‘No note. I raised the alarm – quietly, of course; this wasn’t a scene for all to see. I woke Sister Mary and she told me the story, really.’

‘The story?’ asks Donna.

Matthew Mackie nods to himself and Elizabeth takes the reins for a moment.

‘Maggie was pregnant.’

‘Bugger me!’ says Ron. Matthew looks up, and continues his tale.

‘She’d confided in someone, another of the young nuns. I never found out who. Maggie must have trusted her, whoever she was, but that was a mistake. The nun told Sister Mary and then, about six, after prayers, Sister Mary called Maggie to her room. Sister Mary didn’t tell me what was said, but I can guess, and that was Maggie packed and on her way. She was to stay one last night and be collected in the morning, straight back to Ireland. I’d have lit my candle around seven, I suppose. Maggie went back to the dorms, maybe right here where we’re sitting. She knew how to slip out, of course, so she slipped out. But that night she didn’t come to me. She came to the chapel and she slipped a noose around her neck. And she took her life and the life of our child.’

Matthew Mackie looks up at the six other people in the room.

‘And that’s my story. So, you see, it wasn’t fine, was it now? And nothing was ever fine again.’

‘So how is she buried up on the hill?’ asks Ron.

‘That was the deal I made,’ says Mackie. ‘I was to leave, which I did, not a word to a soul. Back to Ireland. They found me a job in Kildare, at a teaching hospital. All records destroyed, new records made, the Church could do what it wanted back then. They wanted me out of the way, no trouble, no scandal. Not a soul but me and Sister Mary saw the body hanging. Whatever story they told in the end, I’ve no idea, but it wasn’t the story of a priest and a baby and a suicide. And in return I asked that they allowed her to be buried in the Garden of Eternal Rest. She wouldn’t have wanted to go home and St Michael’s was the only other place Maggie knew.’

‘And Sister Mary agreed?’ asks Donna.

‘It looked better for her too. There would have been questions otherwise. Me leaving suddenly, Maggie sent away for burial, people would have strung two and two together. So we made the deal, and the next morning the car that was coming to pick up Maggie, picked me up instead. We drove through the day to Holyhead. I went back home, and that’s where I stayed until I heard that Sister Mary had died. She’s up there in the graveyard too, you’ll see the cherubs on her headstone. The day I heard the news I walked out of my job, I packed a case and I came back to stay. As near as I could to Maggie.’

‘And that’s why you did everything you could to stop the bodies being moved?’

‘It was the only thing I could do for her. To find her some final peace. You’ve all been up there; you all understand. It was all I had, to say sorry and to say, “I still love you.” Somewhere so beautiful, for the only love I ever knew, and for our baby boy. Or baby girl, but it’s a boy I’ve always carried in my heart. I called him Patrick, which is silly, I know.’

‘Without being indelicate, Father,’ says Chris. ‘I would say that gives you an extraordinary motive for killing Ian Ventham.’

‘It’s not a day for being delicate. But I didn’t do it. Can you imagine Maggie ever forgiving me if I’d killed Mr Ventham? You didn’t know her, but she’d a temper on her when she wanted. Every step, I did what Maggie would have wanted, and what would have made Patrick proud. I fought in all the ways I knew how, but one day I’ll see Maggie again, and I’ll meet my little boy, and I intend to do that with a pure heart.’

101

‘Do you like Pilates?’ asks Ibrahim.

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ says Gordon Playfair. ‘What is it?’

His tour of Coopers Chase finished, Gordon Playfair is sitting with Ibrahim, Elizabeth and Joyce, on Ibrahim’s balcony. Ibrahim has a brandy, Elizabeth has a G&T and Gordon has a beer. Ibrahim has them in the fridge for Ron, although Ron seems to be drinking wine these days.

Chris and Donna have returned to Fairhaven. Before they left, Chris had told them a little about Cyprus and about Gianni’s connections. He was pretty sure they have identified their man.

Donna was clearly still angry at them, but she would get over it. The sun is setting and the day is winding down.

Matthew Mackie has gone home to Bexhill, and to the two candles he keeps lit at all times: Joyce has promised to come down and visit him. She loves Bexhill.

‘It is the art of controlled movement,’ says Ibrahim.

‘Hmmm,’ says Gordon Playfair, considering this. ‘Is there darts?’

‘There is snooker,’ says Ibrahim.

Gordon nods. ‘That’s near enough.’

They look out over Coopers Chase. In the foreground is Larkin Court, curtained windows in Elizabeth’s flat. Beyond that is Ruskin Court, Willows and the convent. Then those beautiful hills, rolling to the horizon.

‘I could get used to this,’ says Gordon. ‘There seems to be a lot of drinking involved.’

‘Always,’ agrees Ibrahim.

The phone rings and Ibrahim gets up to answer it. He talks to Gordon Playfair over his shoulder as he goes.

‘I think I’ve made Pilates sound too boring. It is very good for the core muscles and for flexibility. At any rate, it is every Tuesday.’

Gordon watches some of the residents pass by below and sips his beer. ‘You know, I’m not kidding, but I wouldn’t know if any of these women had been here back then. Who’s to say? All those nuns. I wouldn’t know, you know. You could have been one of the nuns, Joyce.’

Joyce laughs. ‘It feels like I have been for the last couple of years. Not for the want of trying.’

Elizabeth has been thinking the same as Gordon Playfair. The nuns. Perhaps that was the route they would have to go down next? It was Thursday Murder Club tomorrow. Maybe that’s where they should start. She feels the gin beginning to work its magic. Ibrahim returns from his call.

‘That was Ron. He would like us to join him for a drink. It seems Jason has gifts for us all.’

102

‘Me and Bobby had a little reunion drink in the Black Bridge, after we all left here. In Le Pont Noir, anyway.’

Jason Ritchie takes a swig from his bottle of beer. Ron has a beer too, as he always does if Jason is around. It is important to be a role model.

‘You could tell we sort of trusted each other, you know? It felt like we’d both changed for the better over the years. Bobby wouldn’t let on what he’s up to these days, but he seemed happy, so fair play. I don’t suppose anyone wants to tell me what he does now?’

Jason looks expectantly at Elizabeth and Joyce and they both shake their heads.

‘Good,’ says Jason. ‘No one likes a grass. But we still couldn’t be sure, you know? Couldn’t be certain one of us hadn’t done it. Couldn’t be sure that it was Gianni, alive and kicking and back for revenge. So I made a call.’

‘Ooh, who to?’ asks Joyce.

Jason smiles. ‘What does no one like, Joyce?’

Joyce nods her defeat. ‘A grass, Jason.’

‘Let’s say I called a friend, someone we all trusted, but someone who Gianni would have trusted too, for different reasons. And he came down – no choice, really, if it’s the two of us ringing – and we asked him straight out. Has Gianni been over? You seen him? Just between us and it never goes further?’

‘And had he?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘He had,’ says Jason. ‘Gianni came over three days before Tony was murdered and left the day he died. He blamed Tony for grassing him up all those years ago, so he said. Who knows with Gianni?’

Joyce nods sagely and Jason continues.

‘Maybe he just felt the time was right. Put the record straight. Some people have long memories.’

‘And you trust this source? And Peter trusts him?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Peter?’ asks Jason.

‘Sorry, Bobby,’ says Elizabeth. ‘That’s my age showing. You and Bobby both trust him?’

‘With our lives,’ Jason says. ‘He’s the straightest shooter you’ll find. And he had his reasons to help Gianni. If your friends in the police don’t work out who the guy is, then I promise I’ll tell them. But I reckon they’re bright enough to work it out.’

‘Why did Gianni send you the photograph, Jason?’ asks Ibrahim.

Jason shrugs. ‘I think he just wanted us to know it was him. Showing off. Gianni was always like that. He could find my address pretty easy too, everyone knows me round here. Whatever Gianni did, he always had to tell you.’

‘And did Gianni look the same? What was his new name?’ asks Elizabeth.

Jason shakes his head. ‘None of our business. We just asked what we asked. We just wanted to know for sure. That was enough.’

‘Shame,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Well, if the police don’t track him down, I’m sure you four will,’ says Jason. ‘And listen, me and Bobby, we just wanted to say thank you. For bringing us together and for helping us get to the truth. None of this would have happened without you. Let’s be honest, without you I’d probably be banged up for this. So I got you all a little something, if that’s OK?’

That’s definitely OK. Jason unzips a sports bag at his feet and pulls out his gifts. He hands a wooden box to Ibrahim.

‘Ibrahim, cigars; Cuban, of course.’

‘That is the height of urbanity, Jason, thank you,’ says Ibrahim.

The next gift goes to Ron.

‘Dad, a bottle of wine, and a nice one too. You can stop pretending you still prefer beer in front of me.’

Ron takes his gift. ‘Ooh, a drop of white. Thanks, Jase.’

Jason hands Joyce an envelope. ‘Joyce, two tickets to come up and see Celebrity Ice Dance being filmed next month.’

Joyce beams.

‘VIP, all that. I thought you could bring Joanna.’

‘Not Joanna,’ says Joyce. ‘It’s ITV, and she won’t have that on.’

‘And Elizabeth,’ says Jason, with nothing in his hand but his phone. ‘My gift to you is this.’

Jason holds up his phone and, very deliberately, swipes his finger across the screen and then puts it back in his pocket. He looks to Elizabeth, who isn’t sure how to react.

‘Well, thank you, Jason, although I was rather hoping for some Coco by Chanel,’ says Elizabeth.

‘I think I know what you’d like more than that though,’ says Jason. ‘To catch whoever killed Ian Ventham?’

‘Is that in your gift, Jason?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘I reckon it is. Dad and I worked it out. Didn’t we, Dad?’

Ron nods. ‘We did, Son.’

‘And, without wanting to sound cocky,’ says Jason, ‘I reckon that one little swipe will confirm it.’

103: Joyce

I wonder if you know about Tinder?

I had heard about it on the radio, heard jokes about it, but I had never seen it before Jason showed me.

If you know what it is then you can skip through this bit.

So Tinder is for dating. You post pictures of yourself on an app. An app is like the internet, but only on your phone. Jason showed me some of the pictures. The pictures of the men are usually on a mountain, or chopping down a tree. Sometimes the pictures have been cropped down the middle to cut out a former partner. Thanks to my picture in Cut to the Chase I know how they do that now.

The pictures of the women are often on boats, or with groups of other women, and you’re not sure which one you’re supposed to be looking at, so I suppose you take pot luck.

I asked him if people use it for ‘one-night stands’ and he says that, by and large, people use it for little else. Well, that’s a bit of fun, you could say, but the whole thing felt unhappy to me. And the more smiles I saw, the unhappier I felt.

Perhaps that’s just me. I met Gerry at a dance I had decided to go to at the last minute to spite my mother. If I hadn’t gone then we never would have met. So I know that’s an inefficient way of finding true love, but it worked for us. From the moment I laid my eyes on him, he didn’t stand a chance. The lucky thing.

So, on Tinder you scroll through photographs of single people who live nearby. Or sometimes married people who live nearby. There is a picture of Ian Ventham on Tinder, in a karate suit, even though he’s dead.

Every time you like the look of someone you swipe their picture to the right (or to the left, I can’t remember). Meanwhile, somewhere nearby they are scrolling through pictures too and if they like the look of you they also swipe to the right (or left) and the two of you are a match.

Honestly, it breaks your heart to scroll through. It’s reminded me of those photos of lost cats you see on lamp posts. It’s all that hope, I think.

Anyway, when Jason swiped left or right he was confident of a match. And he was confident that match would be the killer. I trust his confidence on the first matter, I am more dubious about the second.

There is another dating app for gay men called Grindr. Perhaps it’s for gay women too? I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Would they use the same one? That would be nice I think.

So Jason imagines he has solved the case. And perhaps he has, though I doubt it very much. He says it’s obvious, but often, in these matters, the answer isn’t obvious at all.

At least I have discovered that online dating is not for me. You can have too much choice in this world. And when everyone has too much choice, it is also much harder to get chosen. And we all want to be chosen.

Goodnight all. Goodnight Bernard. And goodnight Gerry, my love.

104

Having spent a very happy morning preparing, changing outfits and texting friends, Karen Playfair is now alone for a moment, sitting in an unfamiliar armchair. She is shaking her head, thinking about the optimism of this morning and then the reality of the lunch she’s just had.

Karen has had some bad dates on Tinder. But this was the first time that someone had accused her of murder.

The match had pinged onto her phone yesterday evening. Jason Ritchie. Well, I don’t mind if I do, she had thought. This is a cut above your average. He’d messaged, she’d messaged, and before you knew it, there they were in Le Pont Noir, ordering a crayfish salad with radicchio. A whirlwind romance in the offing.

Karen shifts in her armchair and idly picks up a magazine from a pile on the coffee table. It’s more of a newsletter really. Cut to the Chase.

Back to the date. There had been some small talk, not too much, Karen knew very little about boxing and Jason knew very little about IT. Lightly sparkling water arrived, and that’s when Jason mentioned Ian Ventham. Karen immediately realized that this wasn’t a date, and felt foolish. But worse was to come.

She can hear Ron Ritchie in his kitchen now, he’s opening a bottle of wine. Jason’s nipped to the loo. She starts flicking through Cut to the Chase, but her mind keeps going back to Le Pont Noir.

All those questions Jason had fired at her. Hadn’t she been there the morning Ian Ventham was killed? Yes she had. Wasn’t her dad refusing to sell his land to Ian Ventham? Well, yes he was, but, look, here comes our crayfish. Didn’t she want her dad to sell the land, to take the money? That was her advice, yes, but it was her dad’s business. Surely if he sold, then some of that money would be coming to her? Well, you could certainly assume that, Jason, but why not just come out with it and say what you want to say?

And so he did. It was almost funny, thinks Karen, reliving it. She hears the loo flush. What was it he had said?

Jason had leaned forward, very sure – certain, in fact. You see, the police had been looking for someone who was there in the 1970s and was still there now, and they had been right in a way. They’d found bones and maybe someone had been murdered, all those years ago. But forget the bones, they were missing the simplest trick in the book: greed. Ventham was in the way of Karen making her millions. Her dad wasn’t budging, and so Ventham had to go. Jason mentioned some drugs you could only get on the dark web and didn’t Karen work in IT? Wasn’t that convenient? Jason had solved the case and felt sure he was about to get a confession. Honestly, some men!

He hadn’t expected Karen to laugh in his face and explain that she was a database administrator for a secondary school, who could no more access the dark web than fly to the moon. That she had misheard Jason’s mention of fentanyl as Ventolin and had wondered what he was on about. That she lived in one of the most beautiful places in England, and while she would certainly swap that for a million pounds, she would rather be there with her dad happy, than in some executive new-build in Hove, with her dad miserable. Jason looked like he was going to come back with a clever response but, when he tried, none came.

Jason walks back into the room and Karen remembers how crestfallen he had looked. He knew she was telling him the truth. That his little theory was wrong. He had apologized and offered to leave, but Karen had wondered if they shouldn’t make the best out of a bad deal and enjoy the rest of their lunch. What if they ended up together? Wouldn’t this be the greatest ‘and how did you two meet’ story of all time? Which set them both laughing and set them both talking and turned the whole thing into a lovely, long, boozy lunch.

Which is why Jason had asked her back here for another drink and to do a bit of explaining to his dad.

Right on cue, Ron Ritchie walks in with a nice bottle of white and three glasses.

Jason sits down next to her and takes the glasses from his dad. He really has been charm itself since he accused her of murder.

Karen Playfair puts her copy of Cut to the Chase back down on the pile. And as she does, she sees the photograph. Halfway down the page. She picks the newsletter up again and stares closely. Just to make sure.

‘You all right, Karen?’ asks Jason, as Ron pours the wine.

‘The police wanted someone who was here in the seventies, who’s still here now?’ asks Karen, slowly and carefully.

‘That’s what they reckon,’ says Jason. ‘Obviously, I thought they were wrong, but we saw how that played out.’

Jason laughs, but Karen does not. She looks at Ron and points to the face in the photograph. ‘Someone who was here in the seventies and is still here now.’

Ron looks, but his brain won’t take it in.

‘You’re sure?’ he manages to ask.

‘It was a long time ago, but I’m sure.’

Ron’s mind is travelling at speed. This can’t be. He’s searching for reasons why this must be wrong, but can find none. He puts the wine down on the coffee table and picks up Cut to the Chase.

‘I need to go and talk to Elizabeth.’

105

Steve’s Gym looks a lot like its owner. A squat, brick building, intimidating at first sight, but with the door always open and everyone always welcome.

Chris and Donna step over the threshold.

After the excitement in the graveyard yesterday, Chris and Donna had gone back to Fairhaven and checked on Joe Kyprianou’s hunch about the original investigation. No one from Kent Police had ventured into Northern Cyprus. There was no mention of Gianni’s family connections. There had been no meaningful investigation at all. Chris had seen the names of the two officers who had been sent to Nicosia. No surprises. They’d have come back with tans and hangovers and nothing else.

He and Donna had then been having another look at all those passenger lists, coming in from Larnaca to Heathrow and Gatwick in the week before the murder. Nearly three thousand names, mainly men and mainly Cypriots.

Looking through list after list of names, Chris remembered something else that Joe Kyprianou had said. If Gianni had come to the UK, he would have needed help. A fellow Cypriot would be the obvious choice. Did Chris know any?

As the names flashed before his eyes, he realized that he did.

They had then gone back to the original Tony Curran file. There was no doubt that, in the early days, Steve Georgiou had been in and around the Tony Curran crew. Mentioned in dispatches, but never anything to bring him in for. And whatever he had been doing for Tony hadn’t lasted long. He’d opened Steve’s Gym ages ago and it had gone from strength to strength, as it were. Chris and Donna both knew officers who trained there. Decent officers too, not fools. The place had a good reputation, and that wasn’t the case with all gyms.

Even today the gym was packed. A Wednesday afternoon, an atmosphere of quiet hard work, no preening and posturing. Chris has been meaning to join a gym, but at the moment he was waiting for his knee to stop hurting. No point aggravating it. As soon as it has settled down, he’ll join. Take the bull by the horns. He had felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his arm after the run up the hill to the graveyard to save Elizabeth. Almost certainly nothing, but even so.

Steve had been expecting them and met them by the door with a crushing handshake and a huge smile. They are now in his office. Steve is sitting on a yoga ball and chatting happily.

‘Listen, you know as well as anyone, we don’t have trouble here, and we don’t cause trouble here,’ says Steve Georgiou.

‘I do know that,’ agrees Chris.

‘The opposite, innit? You know that. We take people in, we turn them around. No secrets, you just ask whatever, yeah?’

‘I was in Cyprus recently, Steve.’

Steve stops smiling and bounces a little. ‘OK …’

‘I didn’t really know much about it before I went, I just thought holidays, you know.’

‘It’s very beautiful,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘Are we just gossiping or what?’

‘What are you, Steve? Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot?’ asks Donna.

There’s a beat, very short, but very telling to a good copper. Steve shakes his head. ‘I don’t get involved in all that, not for me. People are people.’

‘We’re agreed on that, Steve,’ says Chris. ‘But even so. What side of the line were you? We can probably find out another way, but since we’re here …’

‘Turkish,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘Turkish Cypriot.’ He shrugs; it’s of no concern.

Chris nods his head and and writes something down, just keeping Steve waiting for a moment. ‘Like Gianni Gunduz?’

Steve Georgiou tilts his head to the side and looks at Chris anew. ‘That’s a name from a long time ago.’

‘Isn’t it, though?’ says Chris. ‘Anyway, that’s why I was in Cyprus. Trying to track him down.’

Steve Georgiou smiles. ‘He’s long gone. Gianni was crazy. Good luck to the guy, but someone would have killed him by now. Guaranteed.’

‘Well, that would explain why we can’t find him. But, you know, Steve, I’m a police officer, and sometimes something doesn’t seem right.’

‘That’s the job, innit?’ says Steve Georgiou.

‘I want to suggest a story,’ says Chris. ‘Just something we’ve been thinking about. And you don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to react, just listen. Can you do that?’

‘I’ve got to be honest with you, I’ve got a gym to run and I still don’t know what you’re doing here.’

Donna holds up a hand and concedes the point. ‘You’re right. But just hear us out. Two minutes and you’ll be back out there.’

‘Two minutes,’ accepts Steve.

‘You’re one of the good guys, Steve,’ says Chris. ‘I know that, I don’t hear a bad word about you.’

‘I appreciate that, thank you,’ says Steve.

‘But here’s what I worry has happened,’ continues Chris. ‘I think a few weeks ago you get a message, or maybe it’s just a knock at the door, I don’t know. Either way, it’s Gianni Gunduz.’

‘Nope,’ says Steve Georgiou, shaking his head.

‘And Gianni needs help. He’s back in town for something. Maybe he doesn’t say what, maybe he does. And he turns to you, a little favour, for old times’ sake. Somewhere to stay? Maybe just that. He doesn’t want a record of whatever his new name is anywhere in town. And no one’s to know?’

‘I haven’t seen Gianni Gunduz in twenty years. He’s dead, or he’s in prison, or he’s in Turkey,’ says Steve Georgiou.

‘Maybe,’ says Chris. ‘But Gianni could be trouble if he doesn’t get what he wants. He could burn this place down pretty easily, I’d have thought. He’s the type to do it too, so maybe you had no choice? And it’s only a couple of days. He’s just got to deliver a couple of things, then tie up a loose end. Then he’d be gone. How does that sound to you, Steve?’

Steve Georgiou shrugs. ‘Like a pretty dangerous story.’

‘You’ve got a flat above the gym?’ asks Donna.

Steve nods.

‘Who stays there?’

‘Anyone who needs to. Not everyone who comes in here is from a stable background. A kid tells me he can’t go home, I don’t ask the reason, I just hand him the keys. It’s a safe place.’

‘Who was staying in the flat on June the seventeenth?’ asks Chris.

‘No idea, I’m not the Hilton. Maybe some kid, maybe me.’

‘Maybe no one?’ asks Donna.

Steve Georgiou shrugs.

‘But you think maybe someone?’ says Chris.

‘Maybe.’

‘Gianni is very well connected, Steve. In Cyprus?’ says Chris.

‘Not my world.’

‘You’ve still got family over there?’ asks Donna.

‘Yes,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘Lot of family.’

‘Steve, if Gianni Gunduz had come here and asked if he could stay,’ begins Chris. ‘If he put pressure on you of any kind. Or maybe he paid you? If you agreed. If he slept upstairs on June seventeenth. There’s no way you would tell me?’

‘No.’

‘Consequences too great? Consequences for family in Cyprus?’

‘I think that’s been two minutes, if we’re honest.’

‘Agreed,’ says Chris. ‘Thank you, Steve.’

‘Any time. You’re always welcome here. I mean that. We could sort that gut out in a heartbeat.’

Chris smiles. ‘It had crossed my mind, Steve. I don’t suppose there’s any way I could take a look upstairs before I go? Just see if Gianni left anything?’

Steve Georgiou shakes his head. ‘You could do me a favour though.’

‘Go on,’ says Chris.

‘Could you stick this in Lost Property? Someone dropped it a couple of weeks ago and I’ve asked and asked, but I don’t know who it belongs to.’ Steve reaches into a drawer and pulls out a clear plastic wallet, filled with cash, and hands it to Chris. ‘Five thousand euros. Some tourist must be kicking themselves.’

Chris looks at the cash, looks at Donna, then back at Steve. Would this have prints on it? Doubtful, but at least Steve is letting him know he’s right. ‘You don’t want to keep it?’

Steve Georgiou shakes his head. ‘Nope, I know where it’s been.’

Chris hands the envelope to Donna and she puts it in an evidence bag. They both know that Steve Georgiou has just been very brave. Chris stands and shakes him by the hand.

‘I know Tony Curran was a bastard,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘But he didn’t deserve that.’

‘Agreed,’ says Chris. ‘Up to a point. Anyway. Me and my gut will be back here soon.’

‘Good lad.’

106

Elizabeth leaves Stephen sleeping. Bogdan will be around after work for a game of chess. She hopes they will both be there when she gets back. She’ll need the company.

The knob has come off the bedroom wardrobe door and Elizabeth casually leaves it on the kitchen table. She bets that Bogdan won’t be able to resist fixing it.

Ron had come to her with the photograph that Karen Playfair had seen. Karen would have been young at the time, but she was sure. Elizabeth had tried to piece it all together in her head. It seemed impossible at first. But the more she thought about it, it began to seem horribly true. She worked out the steps, one by one. Ibrahim had come back an hour ago, with the final piece of the jigsaw, so now is the time. The case is solved and only justice remains.

Elizabeth walks out into the cold evening air, not turning back now. The skies are getting darker earlier and the scarves are coming out of the wardrobes. Summer is still keeping a lid on autumn, but it won’t be long. How many more autumns for Elizabeth? How many more years of slipping on a pair of comfortable boots and walking through the leaves? One day, spring will come without her. The daffodils will always come up by the lake, but you won’t always be there to see them. So it goes; enjoy them while you can.

But right now, with the job at hand, Elizabeth feels an affinity with the late summer. The leaves clinging gamely on, the last hurrah of the heat, the odd trick still up its sleeve.

She sees Ron making his way over, grim-faced, but ready. Hiding his limp, keeping his pain to himself. What a fine friend Ron is, she thinks. What a heart he has. Long may it go on beating.

As she turns the corner she sees Ibrahim waiting by the door, folder in hand. The last piece of the jigsaw. How handsome he looks, dressed for the occasion, ready to do whatever’s necessary. That Ibrahim might ever die seems absurd to Elizabeth. He will certainly be the last of them. The last oak in the forest, standing still and true, as the aeroplanes whizz overhead.

How to begin? thinks Elizabeth. How to even begin?

107

Chris gets the nod. An international warrant has been issued for the arrest of Gianni Gunduz for questioning over the murder of Tony Curran. A good end to the day. The euros Steve Georgiou gave them had no prints, but had been taken out at a bureau de change in Northern Cyprus three days before Tony Curran’s murder. He’d given Joe Kyprianou the address of the bureau, in case of CCTV, but Joe had taken one look at the address and laughed. No chance.

Would the Cypriot authorities ever find him? Who knew? You’d think so, but after the initial rush, how hard is anyone really going to look? Maybe Chris will even get another trip over to Cyprus. That would be nice. Either way, he’s done all he can and it’s up to the Cypriots now, if they fancy their chances. Whatever happens, Chris will look good.

It is a cause for celebration, but Chris has had too many nights in the pub with too many coppers over the years. What he’d really wanted was a curry at home, get Donna round, watch something on TV, bottle of wine and send her home at ten. Maybe talk a bit about Ventham. What have they missed?

Chris had a worrying thought earlier. A stupid one, really. Only, hadn’t the convent had a hospital, all those years ago? Wasn’t Joyce an ex-nurse? Run the name Joyce Meadowcroft through the computer? Could he talk to Donna about it?

But Donna had a mystery date tonight. Casually dropped it into the conversation on the way back from Steve’s Gym. So, he would go home and have a night in by himself, with a curry. Chris knew that was where this was heading. The darts was on Sky.

Chris wondered whether this was a tragic plan, or simply the sort of plan that people would think was tragic. Was he a content man, doing the things he liked alone? Or was he a lonely man, making the best out of what he had? Alone, or lonely? This question cropped up so often these days, Chris could no longer be confident of his answer. Though if he were a betting man, his money would be on lonely.

Where was his date?

If he leaves right now, it will be rush hour. So Chris closes the Tony Curran file and opens up the Ventham file. If he can solve one murder, he can surely solve two more? What has he missed? Who has he missed?

108

They make their way along the corridor, Elizabeth and Ibrahim, with Ron carrying a couple of extra chairs. A job to do.

Behind them, double doors swing open and Joyce hurries after her friends.

‘Sorry I’m late. The beeper was going off on my oven and I couldn’t work out why.’

‘Sometimes it can be a very brief power outage. Then the clock tries to reset itself,’ says Ibrahim.

Joyce nods. Without thinking, she takes Ibrahim’s hand. Ahead of them Elizabeth has taken Ron’s hand too and they walk in silence until they reach the door.

Despite the circumstances, Elizabeth knocks. As she always does.

She opens the door and there he is. The man Karen Playfair had recognized after all those years. His picture next to Ron, holding the fox that he had saved.

The same old book is open at the same old page. He looks up and seems unsurprised to see the four of them.

‘Ah, the gang’s all here.’

‘The gang’s all here, John,’ confirms Elizabeth. ‘Do you mind if we sit?’

John gestures for them to do exactly that. He puts down his book and pinches the bridge of his nose. Ron looks over at Penny, comatose on the bed. Nothing left of her, really, he thinks. Gone. Why hasn’t he been to see her? Why had it taken this?

‘How shall we do this, John?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Up to you, Elizabeth,’ replies John. ‘I’ve been waiting for that knock since the moment I did it. Just took each day as a bonus. I do wish you’d taken a bit longer, though. What was it, in the end?’

‘Karen Playfair recognized you,’ said Ibrahim.

John nods and smiles to himself. ‘Did she? Little Karen. Goodness!’

‘You put her dog to sleep when she was six, John,’ says Joyce. ‘She says she would never forget your kind eyes.’

Elizabeth is in her customary seat at the foot of Penny’s bed. ‘Do you want to start, John? Or shall we?’

‘Shall I?’ says John, and shuts his eyes. ‘I’ve been over it so many times in my head.’

‘Who is in the grave, John? Whose bones are they?’

Eyes still shut, John looks up to the heavens, lets out a sigh from the ages and begins.

‘It would have been the early seventies, maybe ten miles from here. Greyscott, one of the sheep farms. There used to be any number around here, you know? Long time ago now. I think I’d started in 1967, Penny would remember for sure, but around then anyway. The farmer was an old boy called Matheson and I knew him well enough by that point. I’d go out there every now and again. You know, something would happen. This time around, he’d had a mare just given birth. The foal had died and the mare was in distress. She was in such pain, screaming, and he hadn’t wanted to shoot her, which I understood, so I gave her an injection and that was that. Done it many times, before and since. Some farmers will just shoot them, some vets will too, but not Matheson and not me. Anyway, he made me a cup of tea and we got chatting. I was always in a hurry, but I think he was a very lonely man. There was no family, no one to help him on the farm, money running out, so I think he welcomed the company. It was very bleak up there, that’s how it seemed to me that day. I had to be on my way, but he didn’t want me to leave. You will judge me, I know, or perhaps you won’t, but suddenly something seemed clear as day to me. He was in distress, great distress. If Matheson had been an animal he would have been screaming. You have to believe that. And so I reached into my bag and I offered him a flu shot, you know, see him through the winter and all that. He was glad of the offer. He rolled up his sleeve and I gave him his shot. The same shot I’d just given the mare. And that was the end of the screaming and the end of the pain.’

‘You put him out of his misery, John?’ asks Joyce.

‘That’s how I saw it. Then and now. If I’d had my wits about me I would have conjured up some clever little concoction, something that wouldn’t show up in a post-mortem, and left him there to be found by the postman, or the milk van, or whoever knocked there next. But it was spur of the moment, so there he was, pumped full of pentobarbital and I couldn’t take the risk that someone might look into it.’

‘So you had to bury him? This Matheson?’ asks Elizabeth.

‘Quite so. I would have buried him there and then, but you’ll remember they were buying up farmland left, right and centre those days, building houses everywhere, and I thought it’d be just my luck to bury him, then have him dug up by builders a month later. And that’s when I remembered.’

‘The graveyard,’ says Ron.

‘It was perfect. I knew it from visiting Gordon Playfair. It wasn’t on farmland, and no one was going to be buying a convent, for heaven’s sake. I knew how quiet it was, I knew no one visited. So I drove up one night, a couple of days later, lights off. Picked up my spade and did the deed. And that was that, until one day, forty years later, I saw an advert for this place.’

‘And here we all are,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And here we all are. I persuaded Penny it would be a lovely place to retire to, and I wasn’t wrong there. I just wanted to keep an eye on things. You think they won’t dig up a graveyard, but you never know these days, and I wanted to be close by in case the worst happened.’

‘Which it did, John,’ says Joyce.

‘I couldn’t dig the body back up; too old, too feeble. And I couldn’t risk the grave being dug up and the body being found. So in the panic of that morning, in all the chaos while we were holding him back, I slid a syringe into Ventham’s arm and seconds later he was dead. Which is unforgivable in every way. Unforgivable. And from that moment I’ve been waiting for you to come, and I’ve been waiting to face the consequences of what I’ve done.’

‘How did you magically have a syringe filled with fentanyl, John?’ asks Elizabeth.

John smiles. ‘I’ve had it for a long time. In case I ever needed it here. If they ever wanted to move Penny.’

John looks at Elizabeth, through clear eyes.

‘I’m glad it was you at least, Elizabeth and not the police. I’m glad you solved it. I knew you would.’

‘I’m glad too, John,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And thank you for telling your story. You know we will have to tell the police?’

‘I know.’

‘We don’t need to do it this very second though. While it’s just us, can I clarify two little things?’

‘Of course. It was a long time ago, but I’ll help if I can.’

‘I think you and I agree, John, that Penny probably doesn’t hear what goes on in this room? Whatever silly nonsense we say to her? That we’re kidding ourselves, really?’

John nods.

‘But I think we’re also agreed that maybe she can? Just maybe? Maybe she hears it all?’

‘Maybe,’ agrees John.

‘In which case, John, perhaps she can hear us now?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Even if there’s the slightest chance, John. The slightest chance that Penny heard what you just said. Why would you do that to her? Why put her through that?’

‘Well, I …’

‘You wouldn’t, John, that’s the truth. That would have been torture,’ says Elizabeth.

Ibrahim sits forward. ‘John, you said that killing Ian Ventham was unforgivable. And I believe, truly, that you mean that. It was an act beyond your imagining. And yet you ask us to believe that you committed that act simply to save your own skin? That doesn’t ring true, I’m afraid. You committed an act you knew to be unforgivable. And I’m afraid we see only one reason for that.’

‘Love, John,’ says Joyce. ‘Always love.’

John looks at the four of them. Each implacable.

‘I sent Ibrahim to have a look at one of Penny’s files this morning,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Ibrahim?’

Ibrahim takes a small manila file from his shopping bag and hands it to Elizabeth. She opens the file on her lap.

‘Shall we get to the truth?’

109

Chris is alone. The remains of a takeaway curry are in front of him. Michael van Gerwen dispatched Peter Wright by six sets to love, finishing the darts early. So now there is nothing on TV and no one to watch it with. He is wondering whether he should go to the twenty-four-hour garage for some crisps. Just to take the edge off.

His phone buzzes. That’s something, at least. It’s Donna.

Might watch Jason Ritchie’s Famous Family Trees on catch-up. You fancy?

Chris looks at his watch, it’s nearly ten. Why not? Another buzz.

And wear your dark blue shirt, please. The one with the buttons.

Chris is used to Donna by now, so does as he is told. As always, he gets changed without looking in a mirror, because who wants to see that? He texts back.

Yes ma’am, anything for a bit of Jason Ritchie. On my way.

Donna’s date had clearly not been a roaring success.

110

‘She keeps them in storage, John,’ says Elizabeth, holding the manila file. ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever been? It’s files of all her old cases. You’re not supposed to keep them, but you know Penny. She made copies of everything, just in case.’

‘In case they might help catch a killer many years later,’ says Joyce.

‘Anyway, John, after Karen Playfair recognized you, it got me thinking, and I just needed one final thing checking in one of the files.’

‘Would you like some water, John?’ asks Joyce.

John shakes his head. His eyes are on Elizabeth as she begins to read from the file.

‘There was a case in Rye, in 1973. Penny must have been very junior. I can’t imagine Penny ever having been junior, but you must remember it very clearly. Probably seems like yesterday. The case concerned a girl named Annie Madeley. You remember Annie Madeley, Penny?’

Elizabeth looks over to where her friend is lying. Listening? Not listening?

‘Stabbed during a burglary and bled to death in the arms of her boyfriend. Around came the police, including Penny, that’s in the file. Found broken glass on the floor, where our burglar had got in, but nothing stolen. The burglar had been surprised by Annie Madeley, panicked, picked up a kitchen knife, stabbed her and fled. That’s the official account if you want to read it. Case closed. But Ron was the first to sniff it out; he didn’t like it one bit.’

‘It stunk, Johnny,’ says Ron. ‘A burglar in the middle of the day, on a busy estate? With people at home? You might burgle on a Sunday morning, while everyone is at church, but not Sunday afternoon, not the done thing.’

Elizabeth looks over to her friend. ‘You must have thought that too, Penny? You must have known the boyfriend had stabbed her, waited for her to die, then called the police.’

She dabs Penny’s dry lips.

‘We started looking into it months ago, John. The Thursday Murder Club. No Penny, but we carried on. I was surprised we’d never looked at the case before, surprised Penny had never brought it in. We started looking at it, John, seeing if the police had got it wrong all those years ago. I read the report on the knife wound and it didn’t seem right to me, so I asked Joyce about it. In fact, it might have been the first thing I ever asked you, Joyce?’

‘It was,’ remembers Joyce.

‘I described the wound and asked her how long it would take to die, and she said around forty-five minutes or so, which didn’t fit the boyfriend’s account at all. He had chased the burglar – no one saw this, John – rushed back to the kitchen, held Annie Madeley in his arms and rang the police immediately. I then asked Joyce if someone with any medical training could have saved her and what did you say, Joyce?’

‘I was certain, it would have been easy. You’ll know that too, John, with your training.’

‘Now the boyfriend had been a soldier, John, invalided out a few years before. So he could have saved her, no question. But that’s not the way the investigation went. I’d like to say that things were different in these cases back then, but no doubt he’d get away with it today too. They searched for the burglar, but with no luck. Poor Annie Madeley was buried and the world kept turning. The boyfriend disappeared shortly afterwards, in the middle of the night, with rent owing and we come to the end of the file.’

‘So we were looking into all of this, but then events took over, of course,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Mr Curran, Mr Ventham, the body in the graveyard. We put the case to one side while we had a real murder right in front of us.’

‘But we all know we don’t come to the end of the story, don’t we, John?’ says Ron.

Elizabeth taps the manila file.

‘And so I sent Ibrahim off to look at the file, with one question. Can you guess what it was, John?’

John stares at her. Elizabeth looks at Penny.

‘Penny, if you can hear, I bet you know the question. Peter Mercer, that was the name of the boyfriend, Peter Mercer. I asked Ibrahim to find out why Peter Mercer had been invalided from the army. And if you hadn’t guessed the question, I bet you can guess the answer, John. Have a go, it’s all too late anyway.’

John buries his head in his hands, drags them down his face and looks up. ‘I assume, Elizabeth, it was a gunshot wound to the lower leg?’

‘It was just that, John.’

Elizabeth pulls her chair nearer to Penny, takes her hand and speaks to her quietly and directly. ‘Nearly fifty years ago Peter Mercer murdered his girlfriend, then vanished into thin air. And everyone thought he’d got away with it. But it’s really not all that easy to get away with murder, is it, Penny? Sometimes justice is waiting just around the corner, as it was for Peter Mercer one dark night when you paid him a visit. And sometimes justice waits fifty years and sits beside a hospital bed holding the hand of a friend. Had you just seen one too many of these cases, Penny? Tired of it? And tired of no one listening?’

‘When did she tell you, John?’ asks Joyce.

John starts to cry.

‘When she was first ill?’

John nods slowly. ‘She didn’t mean to tell me. You remember how she was, Elizabeth? The mini-strokes?’

‘Yes,’ remembers Elizabeth. They were very gentle at first. Nothing too alarming, unless you knew what they were. But poor John had known exactly what they were.

‘She would say all sorts of things. See all sorts of things. Plenty of make-believe, and then the present sort of disappeared and her mind would go further and further back. Kept spooling back until it found something familiar I suppose. Just looking for something that made sense, because the world around her had stopped making sense. So she’d tell me stories, sometimes from her childhood, sometimes from when we first met.’

‘And sometimes from her early days in the police?’ prompts Elizabeth.

‘All things I’d heard before at first. Things I remember from the time, old bosses, little scams they’d pull, fiddling expenses, pub instead of court, the sorts of things we’d always laughed about. I knew she was adrift and I wanted to hold on to her as long as I could. Do you understand?’

‘We all do, John,’ says Ron. And they do.

‘So I would keep her talking. The same stories over and over again sometimes. One reminding her of another, reminding her of another, reminding her of the first one again, and round we’d go. But then …’

John pauses and looks at his wife.

‘You say you don’t really think Penny can hear you, John?’ says Elizabeth.

John shakes his head, slowly. ‘No.’

‘And yet every day, you come here. You sit with her. You talk to her.’

‘What else is there for me to do, Elizabeth?’

Elizabeth understands. ‘So, she was telling you stories. Stories you knew. And then one day …?’

‘Yes, and then one day it was stories I didn’t know.’

‘Secrets,’ says Ron.

‘Secrets. Nothing awful, only little things. She’d taken money once. A bribe. Everyone else had taken it and she felt she’d had to. She told me that as if she had told me many times before, but she hadn’t. We all have secrets, don’t we?’

‘We do, John,’ agrees Elizabeth.

‘She’d forgotten what was a funny story and what was a secret. But there must have been something still working, a final lock on a final gate. The last thing to give.’

‘The worst secret of all?’

John nods. ‘By God she held on to it. She was already in here. You remember when they moved her in?’

Elizabeth remembers. Penny had gone by this time. Conversations were snippets, incoherent, sometimes angry. When would Stephen come in here? She needed to get back to him. Just get this done and go home and kiss her beautiful husband.

‘She didn’t even recognize me by then. Well, she recognized me, but she couldn’t place me. I came in one morning. About two months ago, you know, and she was sitting up. It was the last time I remember her sitting up. And she saw me, and she knew me. She asked me what we were going to do and I didn’t understand the question, so I asked her, “Do about what?”’

Elizabeth nods.

‘And she started to tell me, and she was very matter of fact. As if there was something in the loft and she needed me to get it down. Nothing more than that. Nothing more than that. You know I couldn’t let people find out what she’d done, Elizabeth? You know that? I had to try something.’

Elizabeth nods.

‘We’d picnicked up on the hill a few times,’ John continues. ‘It really was very beautiful. I’d always wondered why we stopped.’

They sit in silence. Broken only by the quiet electronic beeps by Penny’s bedside. All that remained of her, like a lighthouse blinking far out to sea.

Elizabeth gently breaks the silence. ‘Here’s what I think we should do, John. I’m going to get the others to take you home. It’s late, have a sleep in your own bed. If you have letters to write, then write them. I’ll come with the police in the morning. I know you’ll be there. We’ll step outside for a moment so you can say goodbye to Penny.’

The four friends step outside and Elizabeth watches through the clear border of the frosted window in Penny’s door as John holds his wife in his arms. She looks away.

‘You’ll see John back safely, won’t you? If I stay with Penny for a moment?’ she asks the others, and gets nods in return. She opens the door again. John is putting on his coat.

‘Time to go, John.’

111

The lights in Donna’s flat are low and Stevie Wonder is working his magic from the speakers. Chris is happy and relaxed, shoes off, feet up. Donna pours him a glass of wine.

‘Thanks, Donna.’

‘Pleasure. Nice shirt by the way.’

‘Why thank you. It’s just something I threw on.’

Chris smiles at Donna and Donna smiles back. Donna can sense what is about to happen and it makes her very happy.

‘Mum?’ inquires Donna, holding the bottle towards her mother.

‘Thank you, darling, I will.’

Donna then pours a glass of wine for her mother, currently sitting beside Chris on the sofa.

‘Honestly, you could be her sister, Patrice,’ says Chris. ‘And I’m not just saying that because Donna is ageing so badly.’

Donna mimes throwing up while Patrice laughs.

‘Madonna told me you were charming.’

Chris puts down his wine, a look of delight creeping onto his face. ‘Sorry? Who told you I was charming?’

‘Madonna,’ she tilts her head towards her daughter.

Chris looks at Donna. ‘Your full name is Madonna?’

‘If you ever call me that I will taser you,’ says Donna.

‘It would be worth it,’ says Chris. ‘Patrice, I think I love you.’

Donna rolls her eyes and picks up the remote. ‘Shall we watch Jason Ritchie?’

‘Sure, sure,’ says Chris, distracted. ‘So what do you do for a living, Patrice?’

‘I teach. Primary,’ says Patrice.

‘Do you?’ says Chris. Teacher, sings in a choir, loves dogs, that’s his fantasy checklist.

Donna looks Chris straight in the eye. ‘And she sings in the choir on a Sunday.’

Chris refuses to hold Donna’s gaze and turns back to Patrice.

‘This is going to sound like a ridiculous question, Patrice, but do you like dogs?’

Patrice takes a sip of her wine. ‘Allergic, I’m afraid.’

Chris nods, and sips, then gives his glass an almost imperceptible raise towards Donna. Two out of three ain’t bad. He is glad he is wearing his blue shirt with the buttons.

‘What happened to your date?’ Chris asks Donna.

‘I just said I had a date. I didn’t say it was my date,’ replies Donna.

Donna’s phone buzzes. She looks at the screen.

‘It’s Elizabeth. She wonders if we’re free tomorrow morning? Nothing urgent.’

‘Solved the case no doubt.’

Donna laughs. She hopes everything is OK with her friend.

112

Penny’s bedside lamp is turned as low as it can go, just enough light for two old friends with familiar faces. Elizabeth has Penny’s hand in hers.

‘So, did anyone get away with anything, darling? Tony Curran didn’t, did he? Someone did for him. Gianni, so everyone seems to think, though I have a theory about that I must discuss with Joyce. No loss there, anyway. And Ventham? Well, you know John has to pay for that. I’ll take the police there in the morning and they’ll find his body, we both know that. The moment he’s home, a little nightcap and that’s that. He knows enough to make it peaceful at least, doesn’t he?’

Elizabeth strokes Penny’s hair.

‘And what about you, darling? You clever girl. Did you get away with it? I know why you did what you did, Penny; I see the choice you made, to deliver your own justice. I don’t agree with it, but I see it. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t facing what you were facing. But did you get away with it?’

Elizabeth places Penny’s hand back on the bed and stands.

‘It all rather depends, doesn’t it? On whether you can hear me or not? If you can hear, Penny, you’ll know that the man you love has just walked off into the night to die. All because he wanted to protect you. And that all comes down to the choice you made all those years ago. And I think that’s punishment enough, Penny.’

Elizabeth starts to put on her coat.

‘And if you can’t hear me, then you got away with it, dear. Bravo!’

Elizabeth’s coat is now on and she places a hand on her friend’s cheek.

‘I know what John did while he was holding you, Penny, I saw the syringe. So I know you’re off too, and that this is goodbye. Darling, I haven’t really spoken about Stephen recently. He’s not at all well and I’m trying my best, but I’m losing him bit by bit. So I have my secrets too.’

She kisses Penny’s cheek.

‘Dear God I will miss you, you fool. Sweet dreams, darling. What a chase!’

Elizabeth leaves Willows and walks out into the darkness. A quiet, cloudless night. A night so dark you think you might never see morning again.

113

Chris takes a taxi home and walks the long walk up to his flat. Is it the booze, or is he a little lighter on his feet?

He opens his front door and surveys the scene. A few things would need to be tidied away for sure, take the recycling out, maybe buy some cushions and a candle? The bathroom door still stuck whenever it was opened, but nothing that a bit of sandpaper and hard work wouldn’t fix. Go to Tesco’s, buy some fruit, put it in a bowl on the dining table. Of course, also buy a fruit bowl. Clean the bedding. Replace toothbrush. Buy towels?

That should do it. Just enough to convince Patrice that he was a regular human being and not a man who had given up on life. It didn’t take much. Then he could send her a text, invite her round for dinner while she was in Fairhaven.

Flowers? Why not? Go crazy.

Chris switches on his computer and waits for his emails to load. A bad habit, checking in before bedtime. Delaying bedtime, usually. Three new emails, nothing that looked like it would detain him. One of his sergeants was doing a triathlon, a cry for help, for which he expected to be sponsored. An invitation to the Kent Police Community Awards night, bring a guest. Would that count as a date? Probably not; he would check with Donna. Then an email from an account Chris didn’t recognize. Didn’t happen often; Chris kept his personal account as private as one could these days. From ‘KypriosLegal’, subject, ‘Strictly Private and Confidential’.

From Cyprus? Had they found Gianni? Were solicitors warning the police off? But why would it come to his personal account? No one in Cyprus had this email address.

Chris clicks on the email.

Dear Sir,

Our client, Mr Costas Gunduz, has asked us to forward this correspondence to you. Please be advised that all and any information included in this correspondence is to be treated as confidential. Please direct any reply to our offices.

Your faithful servant,

Gregory Ioannidis

Kyprios Associates

Costas Gunduz? Costas who had laughed when Chris had handed him his card? Well, wasn’t this turning into quite the evening? Chris clicks on the attachment.

Mr Hudson,

You say my son came back to Cyprus in 2000. You have proof of this. I need to tell you that I did not see him then and have not seen him since. Not once. I have not seen my son, I have had no letter or no call from my son.

Mr Hudson, I am old, you have seen this with your own eyes. As you look for Gianni, you must know that I too look for him.

I will never speak to a police officer, you understand, but I ask for help today. If you can find Gianni, if you have information of any type, there is great, great reward for you. I fear Gianni is dead.

He is my son and I want to see him before I die, or to know this is impossible and be allowed to grieve. I hope you accept this with compassion. I am asking you please.

Greetings,

Costas Gunduz

Chris reads it through a couple more times. Nice try, Costas. Is he expecting Chris to share this with the Cypriot police? With Joe Kyprianou? Surely he is. Does this mean the Cypriot police are getting close to Gianni? One last effort to throw them off the scent?

Or is it what it says it is? A plea from an old man to find his missing son. In his younger days, Chris might have believed this. But he’s seen too much, heard too much from people saving their own skins. Any story. And he knows where Gianni Gunduz was on 17 June.

Gianni is not dead. Gianni went home, with Tony Curran’s money. He changed his name, got a nose job and whatever else his dad’s money would pay for and has been living it up ever since. Gianni is sunning himself somewhere in Cyprus, happy with his lot. Without an enemy in the world, now that Tony Curran has been dealt with.

Costas Gunduz will not be getting a reply.

Chris shuts down his computer. He really wishes people would stop doing triathlons.

114

Elizabeth is out late, but Bogdan and Stephen have not noticed.

Bogdan has his lower lip jutting out to one side as he thinks. He taps on the table, thinking about the right move. He stares across at Stephen, then back down at the board. How does this man play like this? If Bogdan isn’t very, very careful he is going to lose. And Bogdan doesn’t remember the last time he lost.

‘Bogdan, can I ask you a question?’ says Stephen.

‘Always,’ says Bogdan. ‘We are friends.’

‘It won’t put you off? I have you in a bind here. I wonder if you need to concentrate?’

‘Stephen, we play, we talk. They are both special to me.’ Bogdan moves his bishop. He looks up at Stephen, who is surprised at the move, but not yet concerned.

‘Thank you, Bogdan, they are both special to me too.’

‘So, ask me a good question.’

‘It’s only this. Well, firstly, what was the name of the chap?’ Stephen attacks Bogdan’s bishop, but senses he is being lured into something.

‘Which chap, Stephen?’ asks Bogdan, looking down at the board, grateful for the chink of light which has just appeared.

‘The first one who was killed? The builder?’

‘Tony,’ says Bogdan. ‘Tony Curran.’

‘That’s the one,’ says Stephen. He rubs his chin as Bogdan protects his bishop and opens the board at the same time.

‘What’s the question?’ asks Bogdan.

‘Well, it’s just this, and forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but from everything I hear about it, I think you killed him. Elizabeth talks to me, you know.’ Stephen moves a pawn, but can see there’s nothing much doing.

Bogdan looks around the room for a moment, then back at Stephen.

‘Sure, I killed him. It’s a secret though, only one other person knows.’

‘Oh mum’s the word, old boy, no one will hear it from me. But I don’t really understand why. Not money, surely, that doesn’t seem your style at all?’

‘No, not money. You got to be careful with money. Don’t let it be in charge.’ Bogdan advances a knight and Stephen sees what he’s up to at last. Delightful, really.

‘What was it then?’

‘It was simple, honestly. I had a friend, my best friend when I arrived in England and he drove a taxi. One day he saw Tony do something he shouldn’t.’

‘What did he see?’ Stephen surprises Bogdan by moving his rook. Bogdan smiles a little. He loves this crafty old man.

‘He saw Tony shoot a boy, a young boy from London. About something, I don’t know, I never found out. A drug thing.’

‘So Tony killed your friend?’

‘Well, the taxi company is run by a man named Gianni. They called him Turkish Gianni, but he was Cypriot. Gianni and Tony were in business, but Tony was the boss.’ Bogdan stares down at the board, taking his time.

‘So Gianni killed your friend?’

‘Gianni killed my friend, but Tony told him to. I don’t care, is same thing.’

‘It is. We’re agreed there. And whatever happened to Gianni?’

Bogdan feels the need to withdraw his knight. A waste of a move, but never mind, these things happen.

‘I kill him too. Straight away, pretty much.’

Stephen nods. He stares at the board in silence for a while. Bogdan thinks he may have lost him, but he has learned you have to be patient with Stephen sometimes. And sure enough.

‘What was your friend’s name?’ Stephen keeps looking at the board, trying to conjure something from nothing.

‘Kaz. Kazimir,’ says Bogdan. ‘Gianni, he ask Kaz to drive him to the woods, he has to bury something and he needs help. They walk into the woods, they dig and dig, for whatever Gianni needs to bury. He was a hard worker, Kaz, and nice, you would like him very much. So then Gianni shoot Kaz, pop, one shot and buries him in the hole.’

Stephen further advances his pawn. Bogdan glances up at him and gives him a little nod and a smile. He scrunches his nose for a moment as he looks back at the board.

‘I thought Kaz had run away, maybe home, keep his head down, OK? But Gianni is stupid, not like Tony, and he speaks with his friends and says he shot this guy in the woods and the guy did all the digging, and isn’t this funny? And I hear about this.’

‘So you go into action?’ asks Stephen.

Bogdan nods, and wonders about his bishop and whether Stephen might just have something up his sleeve. ‘I tell Gianni I need to speak to him. Don’t tell Tony, don’t tell the others. I say a friend works in Newhaven, at the port, and there might be some money for him, and is he interested? And he’s interested, so we meet at the port, about two a.m.’

‘And there’s no security?’

‘There’s security, but the security man is a cousin of my friend, Steve Georgiou. A good guy. He really does work at the port. Is easier to lie with the truth. So Steve comes along too. Steve knew Kaz. Steve liked Kaz like I did. So we walk across to harbour steps and get in a little boat and Gianni, he is stupid, he just think about money, and we chug, chug, chug, and it’s choppy and I’m telling him the plan and we use this boat to smuggle people and Steve’s cousin will turn a blind eye and think of all the money. Then I take out a gun and I tell him kneel down, which Gianni thinks is a joke, and I say you killed Kazimir, just so he knows why he’s there, so suddenly he thinks it’s not joke, and I shoot him.’

Bogdan finally moves his bishop and it is Stephen’s turn to scrunch his nose.

‘I take his keys and his cards. We weigh him down with bricks and throw him over, never to be seen. Back we go to Newhaven, we say thank you to Steve’s cousin, let’s not speak of this. Then me and Steve, we drive to Gianni’s house, we let ourselves in, we take his passport, we pack suitcase full of clothes, there is piles of money, you know, drugs money, and we take this too, and anything valuable we find. Some of the money is Tony’s, like a lot, so I was glad to take it.’

‘How much money?’ asks Stephen.

‘It was like hundred grand. I send fifty grand to Kazimir’s family.’

‘Good lad.’

‘The rest I give to Steve. He wanted to open a gym and I thought was good investment. He’s a good guy, no nonsense with him. Then I drive Steve to Gatwick, he take flight to Cyprus on Gianni’s passport, no one looks. Easy. Then Steve fly straight back to England on his own passport. I call the police, anonymous, but I know enough that they take me serious. I tell them Gianni killed Kaz, and they raid his house.’

‘And they find his passport gone and his clothes gone?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So they check the ports and airports and find he’s scarpered off to Cyprus?’ Stephen attacks Bogdan’s bishop with a pawn. Just as Bogdan had hoped.

‘And so they check and check for Gianni for a bit in Cyprus, but he’s disappeared, and they just leave to Cypriot police in the end. No evidence that Gianni killed anyone, no drug money in his house, so everyone just forget in the end. Just move on.’

‘Took your time with Curran though, eh?’

‘Always just waiting for the best time. Just planning. I didn’t want to get caught, you know?’

‘I should think that would be the last thing you’d want, yes,’ says Stephen.

‘Anyway, couple of months ago I installed his surveillance system, the cameras, the alarm system, all of this. And I fitted the whole thing wrong pretty much. Nothing recording.’

‘I see.’

‘And I thought, so, now is the time. I can get in house, I got keys made, no one can see me.’ Bogdan attacks Stephen’s pawn, opening up a front that Stephen does not want opened up.

Stephen nods. ‘Clever.’

‘Just after I did it there’s a ring, ring, ring at the door, but I stayed pretty calm, no worry.’

Stephen nods again and moves a pawn in quiet desperation. ‘Good for you. What if they catch you?’

Bogdan shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think they will.’

‘Elizabeth will work it out, old boy. If she hasn’t already.’

‘I know, but I think she will understand.’

‘I do too,’ agrees Stephen. ‘But the police would be a different matter. They are less easy to charm than Elizabeth.’

Bogdan nods. ‘If they catch me, they catch me. But I laid a pretty good false trail, I think.’

‘A false trail? And how did you do that?’

‘Well, when we went to Gianni’s house on that night, one of the things we took was a camera, so –’

Bogdan breaks off as they hear a key turn in the door. Elizabeth back late from something or other. Bogdan puts a finger to his lips and Stephen does the same in response. She walks in.

‘Hello, boys.’ She kisses Bogdan on the cheek and then holds Stephen in a tight embrace. As she does, Bogdan moves his queen and closes his trap.

‘Checkmate.’

Elizabeth lets Stephen go and he smiles at the board and at Bogdan. He reaches out and shakes his hand.

‘He’s a crafty bugger, this one, Elizabeth. A grade-A crafty bugger.’

Elizabeth looks down at the board. ‘Well played, Bogdan.’

‘Thank you,’ says Bogdan, and starts to set the pieces back up again.

‘Well, I have quite a story for you both,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea, Bogdan?’

‘Yes please,’ says Bogdan. ‘Milk, six sugars.’

‘A coffee for me, love,’ says Stephen. ‘If it’s not too much trouble?’

Elizabeth walks into the kitchen. She thinks about Penny, surely dead by now? That was how it ended, in an act of love. Then she thinks about John, settling down to a final sleep. He had taken care of Penny, but at what cost? Is he at peace? Is he out of his misery? She thinks of Annie Madeley and everything she has missed. Everyone has to leave the game. Once you’re in, there is no other door but the exit. She reaches for Stephen’s temazepam, then pauses and puts them back in the cupboard.

Elizabeth walks back to her husband. She takes his hand in hers and kisses him on the lips. ‘I think it might be time to cut down on the coffee, Stephen. All that caffeine. It can’t be good for you.’

‘Quite so,’ says Stephen. ‘Whatever you think is for the best.’

Stephen and Bogdan begin another game. Elizabeth turns back to the kitchen and neither man sees her tears.

115: Joyce

Sorry I haven’t written for a while, it’s been very busy around here. But I have a gooseberry crumble on the go and I thought there might be a few things you’d want to know.

They buried Penny and John the Tuesday before last. It was quite a quiet one, and it rained, which seemed about right. There were a few old colleagues of Penny’s there. In fact, more than you would think, considering. It had been in the papers, Penny and John. They hadn’t got the whole story straight, but they were near enough. The news had got wind that Penny was a friend of Ron, too. He was interviewed on Kent Today and they even showed it on the normal news later. Someone came down from the Sun to talk to him, but Ron was having none of that. He told them to park outside Larkin Court and then had them clamped.

Elizabeth wasn’t at the funeral. We haven’t discussed it, so that’s that, I’m afraid. I wonder if she had already said her goodbyes? She must have, mustn’t she?

I don’t even know if Elizabeth has forgiven Penny. I’m afraid I take the Old Testament view that what Penny did was right. That’s just me, and it’s not something I would say out loud, but I’m glad she did what she did. I hope Peter Mercer was alive long enough to know what was happening to him.

Elizabeth is a good deal cleverer than me, and will have thought about it more, but I can’t see that she could really blame Penny for what she did. Would Elizabeth have done the same? I think so. I think Elizabeth would have got away with it though.

But I do think Elizabeth must be sad at the secret. There were the two girls, Elizabeth and Penny, and their mysteries, and all the while Penny was the biggest mystery of all. That must hurt Elizabeth. Perhaps one day we’ll talk about it.

Penny killed Peter Mercer and she kept it from John all her life. Until dementia broke her. And once John knew, he had to protect her. That’s love, isn’t it? That’s what Gerry would have done for me. Because Peter Mercer murdered Annie Madeley, Penny murdered Peter Mercer. Because Penny murdered Peter Mercer, John murdered Ian Ventham. So it goes, I suppose. And at least now it’s done. I wish peace on Penny and John, and I wish peace on poor Annie Madeley. For Peter Mercer, and for everything he caused, I wish nothing but torment.

The police have yet to find Turkish Gianni by the way, but they’re looking. Chris and Donna have popped over here a couple of times. Chris has a new lady friend, but is being coy about it for now, and we can’t get Donna to talk. Chris says they’ll catch up with Gianni eventually, but Bogdan was round to fix my power shower the other day and he says Gianni is too smart for that.

If you really want my view, Gianni is far too convenient. Gianni came over and killed Tony for informing on him all those years ago? Why would Tony have informed on him? For his part in clearing up a murder that Tony committed? That makes no sense to me.

No, the only person too smart to be caught around here is Bogdan.

Don’t you think he killed Tony Curran? I do. I’m sure he had a good reason, and I look forward to asking him. But not until he’s fitted my new replacement window, because what if he takes offence? I wonder if Elizabeth suspects him too? She certainly hasn’t mentioned chasing down Gianni recently, so perhaps she does.

I will have to check the crumble in a bit. Shall we get on to more pleasant tidings?

Hillcrest is already up and running, there are cranes and diggers up on the hill. They say Gordon Playfair got £4.2m for his land, and by ‘they’ I mean Elizabeth, so you can take it as gospel. He said goodbye to the house he’d lived in for seventy years and packed his belongings into a Land Rover and trailer. Then he drove the 400-odd yards down the hill and unpacked it all at a nice two-bed in Larkin Court.

Bramley Holdings gave him the flat as part of the deal. Which brings us on to another bit of news.

‘Bramley Holdings’? It wasn’t about apples, after all. I told you, though, that the name had rung a bell? Well, here’s why.

When she was very small, Joanna had a little toy elephant, pink with white ears, and she would never let me wash it. I can’t imagine the germs it carried, but I think that’s not necessarily a bad thing with children. And the name of that elephant? Bramley. I had quite forgotten. She had so many toys and I’m a terrible mother.

Perhaps you see where this is going, though?

You remember we had taken Ventham’s accounts to Joanna, of course, back when Elizabeth wondered if Ian Ventham had murdered Tony Curran?

Anyway, Joanna and Cornelius had looked through the accounts for us and they’d reported back, and that was the end of the matter.

But for Joanna it hadn’t been the end of the matter at all. Not a bit of it.

Joanna and Cornelius had liked what they saw in the accounts. And they had liked what they read about Hillcrest. So Joanna had made a presentation to the other board members – this scene, in my head, is around the aeroplane-wing table – and then they bought the company. She was planning to buy it from Ian Ventham, but, of course, ended up buying it from Gemma Ventham. So isn’t that a turn-up?

Joanna owns the whole place. Or Joanna’s company, but that’s the same thing, isn’t it?

Now, this leads me on to Bernard, and you’ll see why.

Joanna and I had never talked about Bernard, but she came down to be with me at the funeral, so had Elizabeth told her perhaps? Or did she just know? I think she just knew. So she came down and she held my hand, and in a weaker moment I put my head on her shoulder and that was nice. After the funeral she told me about Bramley Holdings. I pretended I had known all along, because I felt guilty about forgetting the elephant, but Joanna sees straight through me.

But we talked, and I told her I didn’t think this was the sort of business they bought, and she agreed, but said it was ‘a sector we have been keen to get into’, but I see straight through her too and she admitted that was a lie. She did say there was plenty of money to be made, but she told me she had another reason too. Which I’ll tell you now.

She sat on the lounger that she bought me, that would have been a tenth the price in IKEA, right beside the laptop she bought me that will never be carried anywhere, and here is what she said.

‘Remember when you moved in here, and I told you it was a mistake? I told you it would be the end of you? Sitting in your chair, surrounded by other people just waiting out their days? I was wrong. It was the beginning of you, Mum. I thought I would never see you happy again after Dad died.’

(We had never talked about this. Both our faults.)

‘Your eyes are alive, your laugh is back and it’s thanks to Coopers Chase and to Elizabeth and to Ron and Ibrahim and to Bernard, God rest his soul. And so I bought it, the company, the land, the whole development. And I bought it to say thank you, Mum. Though I know what you’re going to say next, and I promise I will also make millions out of it, so don’t panic.’

Well, I wasn’t panicking, but that was what I was going to say next.

And so a couple of things you will want to know. The Garden of Eternal Rest is staying exactly where it is. Joanna says they’ll make quite enough money out of Hillcrest, so The Woodlands has been quietly shelved. The graveyard is now protected, even if Coopers Chase is sold again (Joanna says they will sell it again one day, that’s their job). But just you try and buy it, you’ll see there are all sorts of covenants in place. It’s going nowhere.

By the way. Just now, when I said it was both our faults that we hadn’t talked about Gerry? Of course it wasn’t both our faults. It was my fault. Sorry, Joanna.

We had a ceremony the other day. Elizabeth invited Matthew Mackie for lunch and along he came, no dog collar this time. We broke the news to him that Maggie was safe and I thought he would cry, but he didn’t, he just asked to visit the grave. We walked up the hill with him, then we sat on Bernard and Asima’s bench while he pushed open the iron gates and knelt beside the grave. This is when the tears came, as we knew they would when he saw the headstone.

I had watched a couple of days ago as Bogdan had spent the best part of the morning gently cleaning up the inscription ‘Margaret Farrell, 1948–1971’, before carving underneath, ‘Patrick, 1971’. There really is nothing Bogdan can’t do.

When Father Mackie broke down at this, we sent Ron to hold him and the two of them stayed there quite some while. Elizabeth, Ibrahim and I stayed on the bench and took in the view. I like it when men cry. Not too much, but this was just right.

There are always plenty of flowers on Maggie’s grave now. I have added some of my own, and I’m sure you can guess where I got them from.

You’ll want to know about the bench, too. Well, busy Bogdan took to the concrete with a pneumatic drill, then dug down until he found the tiger tea caddy, which he gave to me.

In Bernard’s final letter there was rather a moving postscript, in which he had asked that his ashes be scattered off the pier in Fairhaven. I have it here.

‘Part of me and part of Asima will always be together, right here. But she is floating free in holy waters, so let me drift on the tide until one day I find her again,’ he had said. Very poetic Bernard, I’m sure.

Too poetic.

You and I know Bernard well enough to know that this was sentimental bunk. It was a message to me and it wasn’t exactly the Enigma code. I wonder if Bernard might have thought I was a little thick, but I suppose he wanted it spelled out, just in case. Anyway, I knew Bernard had given me my instructions.

Sufi and Majid had stayed at an airport hotel after the funeral, because that’s their way, and I had offered to keep Bernard’s ashes safe until they headed down to Fairhaven. When will these two learn?

I had Asima’s ashes in the tea caddy and I had Bernard’s ashes in a simple wooden urn. I took out my scales. Proper ones, because I don’t trust the electronic ones.

I was very careful tipping out the ashes, because, much as I liked Bernard, I didn’t want him all over my worktop. Within minutes, and with the help of a couple of intermediary bits of Tupperware (I felt a bit guilty about that) the deed was done.

In the tiger tea caddy that they had both wanted to buy the other for Christmas was half Bernard and half Asima. The next day we buried the tea caddy back under the bench where it belonged. We asked Matthew Mackie to bless the site and I think he was touched to be asked and did a lovely job.

And in the urn, half Asima and half Bernard. And, unbeknownst to them, that’s what Sufi and Majid took to Fairhaven the following day, so Asima could finally float free, but still in the embrace of the man she loved. We didn’t join them, as we didn’t really want to interfere.

I honestly don’t know what to do with the Tupperware I used. If you’ve used two Tupperware containers to help mix the ashes of a dear friend and a woman he loved, without letting their children know, is it more disrespectful to keep them, or to throw them away? This is honestly not the sort of thing I had to worry about before I moved to Coopers Chase. Elizabeth will know what to do.

Talking of Elizabeth, she rang me earlier to tell me that someone had slid a very interesting note under her door. She wouldn’t say what it was, but she said she’d have to pay someone a little visit and then she could tell me. What a tease!

Well, it is Thursday, so I must be on my way. I worried that, after Penny, we might stop meeting, or perhaps it would feel different. But that’s not really how things work around here. Life goes on, until it doesn’t. The Thursday Murder Club goes on meeting, mysterious notes are pushed under doors and murderers fit replacement windows. Long may it continue.

After the meeting I will pop over and see how Gordon Playfair is settling in. Just being a good neighbour, before you ask.

And, right on time, there’s my crumble. I will let you know how everything goes.