Stephen is at his very best when Bogdan comes around to play chess, so Elizabeth has invited Bogdan over, and taken the risk with Joyce. Perhaps he will be on fine form. And perhaps that will be enough to keep the charade going for another few weeks. She has given Stephen a shave and washed his hair. He no longer finds this unusual. Elizabeth looks over to the chessboard.
Bogdan has his chin in his hands, contemplating his next move. There is something different about him.
‘Are you using a different shower gel, Bogdan?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘Don’t put the boy off,’ says Stephen. ‘I have him in a funk here.’
‘I used an unperfumed body scrub,’ says Bogdan. ‘Is new.’
‘Hmm,’ says Elizabeth. ‘That’s not it.’
‘It’s very feminine,’ says Joyce. ‘It’s not unperfumed.’
‘I play chess,’ says Bogdan. ‘No distractions please.’
‘I feel like you’re keeping a secret,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Stephen, is Bogdan keeping a secret?’
‘Lips are sealed,’ says Stephen.
Elizabeth returns to the documents. Something here got Bethany Waites killed. By Heather Garbutt? Elizabeth doubts it very much. Heather Garbutt’s boss, Jack Mason, is ostensibly a scrap-metal dealer, but in reality is one of the most well-connected criminals on the South Coast. Heather Garbutt seems like a soldier, not a general. So was Jack Mason the General? Is his name somewhere in these papers? Time for her plan B.
‘How’s Joanna, Joyce?’ Elizabeth asks. Joanna is Joyce’s daughter.
‘She’s doing a Skydive for Cancer,’ says Joyce.
‘Be lovely to catch up with her,’ says Elizabeth.
Joyce sees straight through this. ‘Do you mean, it would be lovely for her to take a look through those documents, because you don’t understand them?’
‘Wouldn’t do any harm, would it?’ Joanna, and her colleagues, will get through this stuff in no time, Elizabeth is sure. Maybe turn up a name or two.
‘I’ll ask her,’ says Joyce. ‘I’m in her bad books because I said I didn’t see the point of sushi. Why do you keep looking at your phone, by the way?’
‘Don’t be tiresome, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You’re not Miss Marple.’
On cue, Elizabeth’s phone buzzes. She doesn’t look. Joyce nails her with the minutest raise of an eyebrow, then turns to Stephen, with a much gentler look.
‘It’s very nice to see you, Stephen,’ says Joyce.
‘Always nice to meet one of Elizabeth’s friends,’ says Stephen, looking up. ‘You pop round any time. New faces always welcome.’
Joyce doesn’t react, but Elizabeth knows what she has heard.
Bogdan makes a move, and Stephen gives a gentle round of applause.
‘He might smell different,’ says Stephen. ‘But he doesn’t play different.’
‘I don’t smell different,’ says Bogdan.
‘You do,’ says Joyce.
Elizabeth takes the opportunity to sneak a look at her phone.
I have a job for you
Elizabeth feels the blood pumping. Things have been too quiet recently. A retired optometrist crashed his moped into a tree, and there has been a row about milk bottles, but that was about it for excitement. The simple life is all well and good, but, in this moment, with a murder to investigate, and threatening texts arriving daily, Elizabeth realizes that she has missed trouble.
7
DCI Chris Hudson is walking along a freezing cold beach, in a howling gale. He is nursing a lukewarm cup of something approximating tea. He has just bought it from a seafront café that refused to give him change, or let him use the staff toilet.
But nothing can ruin his mood. For once, things are going very well for Chris.
The Scenes of Crime Officer pokes her head out from inside the burned-out minibus currently squatting among the seaweed and the pebbles like a dreadful crab.
‘Won’t be a moment.’
Chris gives a ‘no bother’ wave, and means it.
Why is Chris so happy? The answer is simple, but also complicated.
Chris is in love with someone, and that same someone is in love with him.
No doubt it will all implode at some point, but it hasn’t imploded yet. A crisp packet, performing acrobatics in the air, blows into his face. Love, you just can’t beat it.
Perhaps it won’t implode at all? Is that possible? Perhaps this is it now? Chris and Patrice. Patrice and Chris. Chris narrowly avoids stepping on one of the many needles strewn alongside the minibus. Heroin addicts love the beach. Perhaps he will grow old with Patrice? Watching box sets and going to farmers’ markets? One hand, one heart. She has just made him watch West Side Story, and it actually wasn’t bad once you got past the singing and dancing. Wouldn’t that be a thing?
He looks over at PC Donna De Freitas, almost doubled up against the wind, face barely visible through the hood of her waterproof coat. She is his partner – officially still his ‘shadow’, but that doesn’t seem to be how their relationship works – and she is Patrice’s daughter. What a lot he owes her already.
Donna also seems quite happy despite the weather. She turns her back to the wind and, pulling off a glove with her teeth, starts to reply to a message she has just been sent. Donna had a date last night and is being very coy about the whole thing. Chris is not certain it went well, but he caught her humming ‘A Whole New World’ in the car over here, so he has his suspicions. Perhaps Patrice will be able to find out who the mystery man is.
The minibus, now just a twisted, melted frame, coal-black against the grey of the sea and sky, had belonged to a children’s home. The corpse in the driver’s seat is, as yet, unidentified. Chris has never really thought about how beautiful the sea is before. His foot crunches the broken neck of a beer bottle. The wind picks up still further, blowing icy needles into Chris’s face. Glorious, when you stop to look at it. When you drink it all in.
Chris has also lost a stone and a half in weight. He recently bought himself a t-shirt in size L, instead of his usual XL, or occasional, shameful XXL. He eats salmon and broccoli now. He eats so much broccoli he can spell it without looking it up. When was the last time he had a Toblerone? He can’t even remember.
Chris’s phone buzzes. Donna is not the only one who can be sent mystery messages. Checking the name, he sees it is from Ibrahim. If Elizabeth messages, you know you should worry. When it’s Ibrahim, it’s fifty-fifty. He reads:
Good afternoon, Chris, it is Ibrahim here. I hope I haven’t messaged you at an inconvenient time? One never knows the schedules of others, let alone those working in law enforcement, where hours are irregular at best.
There are dots, indicating Ibrahim is working his way through a second message. Chris can wait. Six months ago none of this was his. There was no Patrice, there was no Donna, there was no Thursday Murder Club. In fact, he realizes, it all started with them. They carried a kind of magic, the four of them. Sure, they recently condemned two men to their death on Fairhaven Pier, and stole an unimaginable amount of money, but they carried a kind of magic all the same.
‘Who are you texting?’ he calls to Donna, over the sound of the wind. Might as well give it a go.
‘Beyoncé,’ shouts Donna, and keeps typing.
Chris’s phone buzzes. Ibrahim again.
I was wondering, and forgive me if this is outside the ambit of our friendship, if you might be able to look into two old cases for me? I believe you might also find them interesting, and I hope you understand that I wouldn’t ask, were it not that the situation in which we find ourselves requires it.
Dots indicate there is a part three.