‘The bad stuff,’ says Pauline. ‘Anything I’ve missed while I’ve been staring into those beautiful eyes.’
‘Where to begin,’ says Joyce. ‘He can’t dress, he refuses to eat healthily, you can’t disagree with him, he’s too loud sometimes, especially in public, some of his attitudes are outdated, and he once gave me an hour-long lecture when I said I’d voted Lib Dem at the local elections.’
‘But is –’
‘Sometimes he teases me, although when he teases Elizabeth I like it, so perhaps that’s not a fault. He’s very slow at responding to messages, he gets grumpy easily, especially if he hasn’t eaten. He passes wind often. He once sulked for an entire day because we didn’t ask him to see the corpse of an assassin someone had shot at Coopers Chase. He has terrible taste in music and, if he ever comes round in the evening, he talks when the TV is on.’
‘There was an assassin at Coopers Chase?’
Joyce waves this away. ‘If you ever send him to the shop, he’ll get the wrong thing. And I don’t mean dark chocolate digestives instead of milk chocolate digestives. I mean you’ll ask for a four-pack of loo roll and you’ll get a pineapple.’
‘That’s fairly comprehensive,’ says Pauline. ‘Any good points?’
‘That’s a longer list,’ says Joyce. ‘So I’ll boil it down for you. He’s loyal, he’s kind, he’s funny, and I am very, very proud that, for whatever reason, he has chosen to be my friend. He is, and this is just an opinion, a prince. I sometimes daydream, and this will sound silly, but I sometimes daydream about Ron sitting there on my sofa, and Gerry is in his armchair, and the two of them just laughing and arguing until all hours. I can play the whole thing out in my head. Gerry would have loved him, and that’s the greatest compliment I have.’
There are tears in Joyce’s eyes, and Pauline takes her hand. ‘It sounds like you love him too, Joyce.’
‘Of course I do,’ says Joyce. ‘How could you not love Ron? I mean, he is not the man for me, Pauline, for the many reasons listed. But if you like pineapple, and you’ve already got enough loo roll, he’s the man for you.’
‘You know, you could just be right,’ says Pauline.
Joyce is smiling through her tears now. ‘How lovely, how lovely. I shall look for a wedding hat.’
‘Let’s not go that far,’ says Pauline, smiling. ‘Early days.’
Pauline lets Joyce’s hand go. But Joyce now places it over Pauline’s. She looks her directly in the eye.
‘You promise me you’re telling me everything, Pauline?’
‘It looks like you ladies might need another top-up,’ says the waiter.
‘Yes, please,’ say Joyce and Pauline.
31
‘You’ve put them through the old computer?’ Stephen asks. ‘Nothing doing?’
‘Nothing doing,’ says Elizabeth. A friend still in the Service had run the names for her. ‘Carron Whitehead’ throwing up no matches, ‘Robert Brown’ throwing up far too many. They have promised to look through them all, but there are only so many favours you can ask, and Elizabeth has asked rather a lot recently. Perhaps she should pay a visit to the Chief Constable, and see if he knew anything they didn’t? Could she get an appointment? There must be a way.
‘Your pal will crack it,’ says Stephen. ‘The one with the crosswords.’
Ibrahim. He and Stephen used to be good friends. Ibrahim still asks to come round, and Elizabeth still puts him off.
‘I’m trying to play chess here,’ says Bogdan. ‘There is a lot of talking.’
Bogdan has come down from the construction site at the top of the hill to keep Stephen company.
‘You still smell rather nice,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And the same smell as before. Almost as if you are seeing someone regularly?’ Elizabeth has room for more than one mystery at a time.
Bogdan makes a move and sits back. ‘What are you going to do about the guy you have to kill?’
‘I asked a question first, Bogdan,’ says Elizabeth.
She will get nothing from Bogdan. Perhaps she should start following him. Is that a bit much? She contemplates for a moment, and decides that, yes, that probably is a bit much. But, really, Elizabeth hates not knowing secrets. Spies are like dogs. They cannot stand a closed door.
‘Wonderful books the Viking chap had,’ says Stephen, pondering his move. ‘Really quite extraordinary.’
Stephen is her secret of course. Her closed door. For now.
‘You going to use the gun I gave you?’ Bogdan asks. ‘The woman I got it from said it had been buried for a while, so make sure it works.’
‘He’s giving me advice about guns now,’ says Elizabeth. She will actually have to check though. She’ll take it out into the woods this evening. Scare the owls and the foxes.
‘Bogdan, old chap,’ says Stephen, frowning at the chessboard. ‘Looks like you’ve got me again. Must be losing my marbles.’
‘Only thing you are losing is the game,’ says Bogdan.
Carron Whitehead and Robert Brown. The very first transactions with the stolen money. There must be a clue there, but Elizabeth feels like she’s hit a dead end.
Ironically she can think of one person who might be able to help.
Viktor Illyich. A whizz at this sort of thing. Delving into records, following money trails.
It’s time to put up or shut up though. Eliminate Viktor, and, thus, eliminate the risk from the Viking. Elizabeth will go into the woods tonight and test the gun. And then she will have to message Joyce, and tell her they are going to London tomorrow. Though she won’t tell her why.
It is time to kill Viktor Illyich. And Elizabeth will need Joyce there when she does it.
32
The morning rush-hour has passed, but the train is still busy. Elizabeth has just come clean about her kidnapping.
‘But why a bag over your head and a blindfold?’ asks Joyce, as the train races through the horizontal English rain. ‘That’s a bit much.’
‘Belt and braces,’ says Elizabeth.
Joyce nods. ‘I suppose I’ve packed a raincoat and an umbrella today, so I can hardly talk. How was Staffordshire?’
‘I didn’t see a great deal of it, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I was driven there at speed, then forced into a house with a gun at my head, and eventually dumped on a freezing roadside at two a.m.’
Elizabeth’s phone buzzes, a message from a withheld number.
I see you are on the train to London, Elizabeth. I have people everywhere. Please don’t let me down.
It is meant to sound threatening, but it is starting to come across as needy. Elizabeth takes a look along the carriage, though, judging every face in turn.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever been to Staffordshire,’ Joyce continues. ‘But I must have been through it at some point, mustn’t I?’
The ideal scenario would be to not have to murder Viktor Illych. But the Viking would kill Joyce in two weeks, unless given a good reason not to. The choice was Viktor or Joyce, and that was no choice at all.
So here they were, on the 09.44 from Polegate to London Victoria. She is still choosing not to tell Joyce about the threat against her. Was that right? Could Joyce handle a death threat? Elizabeth had yet to see Joyce’s limits, but surely she must have some?
‘You’ll have been through Staffordshire, Joyce, yes. It’s quite broad.’
Joyce has been telling Elizabeth her new theory. That Fiona Clemence had been involved in Bethany Waites’s murder and wouldn’t it, all things being considered, be worth talking to her? Nice to think about that for a while, rather than what she is about to do.
Elizabeth feels the weight of the gun in the handbag sitting on her lap. A gun, a pen, some lipstick and a crossword book. Just like the good old days.
‘Is there a trolley on this train?’ Joyce asks. ‘Or do we have to go to the buffet car?’
‘There’s a trolley,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Oh, good,’ says Joyce, and looks over her shoulder, to see if, perhaps, the trolley is on its way. ‘And is this trip to London connected to your adventure?’ Joyce continues. ‘Or are we shopping?’
‘It is connected. I will take you shopping another day to make up for it.’
Another message on Elizabeth’s phone.
Nice day for it, by the way!