Ron has not seen Ibrahim blush before.
‘No one dies here today,’ continues Pauline. ‘Viktor has been very reasonable, so stop pretending to be a psychopath.’
‘I am a psychopath,’ protests Henrik.
‘Darling,’ says Pauline, letting go of Henrik’s face, ‘a psychopath would have shot Alan.’
Alan gives a happy woof. He likes hearing his name.
Henrik looks beaten. ‘I thought this would be easier.’
‘I’m going to get you a water,’ says Joyce. ‘It will be quite safe, I promise you.’
‘Thank you, Joyce,’ says Henrik. ‘I should have chosen the flower mug. Even as I chose the motorbike mug, I thought, “Oh, come on, that’s so clichéd.”’
‘We’re all programmed,’ says Joyce. ‘Joanna made me watch a YouTube video about it.’
‘I’m going to untie you now,’ says Viktor. ‘I can trust you, yes? Even if I can’t, I have a gun, and I’m assuming Elizabeth has a gun too. Perhaps even Pauline has one.’
Viktor loosens the baling wire around Henrik’s wrists, and he wriggles his hands free. Joyce comes back in with the water and Henrik takes it from her.
‘Thank you, Joyce,’ he says.
‘I can take a sip of it if you’d like?’ says Joyce.
The room falls into a momentary, contented silence. It is broken by Pauline again.
‘Can I make an observation?’
Ron looks at Pauline, who, once again, has the attention of the room. My God, he’s got a hell of a woman on his hands here.
‘I love an observation,’ says Ibrahim. ‘It is grist to my mill. Especially coming from a good friend such as you, Pauline.’
‘OK, here’s how I see things,’ says Pauline. ‘And I’ve only known you a short while. But this is just my take, and who am I to say? But each and every one of you in the room, each and every one of you, in your own different way, is absolutely barking mad.’
Joyce looks at Elizabeth. Elizabeth looks at Ibrahim. Ibrahim looks at Ron. Ron looks at Joyce. Viktor and Alan look at each other.
Stephen surveys the room. ‘She has a point.’
‘I’ve known you for just over two weeks, and I’ve already been in a grave with a KGB colonel, I’ve seen a tiny old woman drug a Viking, and I’ve shared a bed with the most handsome man in Kent. For three or four years in the eighties I did a lot of magic mushrooms. I once did LSD in Bratislava with Iron Maiden. But nothing – nothing I’ve ever done – compares to a couple of days in your company. What else have you got in store?’
‘Well,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Tomorrow we’re digging up a garden with the Chief Constable of Kent, looking for a body and a gun.’
‘Bethany’s body?’ says Pauline. She is suddenly serious.
‘Bethany’s body,’ confirms Elizabeth. ‘Now, Henrik, I wonder if you might stick around here for a day or so? There’s a spare room at Ibrahim’s, if Ibrahim wouldn’t mind?’
‘It would be my pleasure,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Henrik has had a long and traumatic day.’
‘I just want to go home,’ says Henrik.
‘All in good time, Henrik,’ says Elizabeth. ‘There’s a task I think you might be able to help us with first.’
61
Joyce
Inspector Gerry Meadowcroft lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. A cloud of smoke drifted across his fierce blue eyes. Eyes that had seen too much killing, too much blood, too many widows. He felt the weight of a gun in his pocket. Would he have to use it?
Gerry could kill. He had killed before, and he would kill again if he was called upon. But not through choice, never through choice. Each time he killed, Gerry Meadowcroft lost a piece of his soul. How many pieces did he have left? Gerry was in no mood to find out.
He thought back to his training at Ashford Police College. Not everyone trained at Hendon, that was a misconception.
What do you think? I’ve been inspired to give writing a go. There is a short-story competition in the Evening Argus, first prize a hundred pounds and a Zoom call with a literary agent. I don’t really want to do any more Zoom calls than I absolutely have to, but I could give the hundred pounds to Alan’s rescue centre, and it might be fun, mightn’t it?
My detective is named after Gerry, though my Gerry had brown eyes, because you have to change some things. Also, my Gerry had hayfever, and I’ve changed that too. I can’t just have my Gerry pottering about solving a murder. So this Gerry has blue eyes and a gun, while my Gerry had brown eyes and an organ-donor card. But my Gerry often said, ‘Well, then, Bob’s your uncle,’ and I’m going to make that the detective’s catchphrase too.
At the moment, the story is called ‘Cannibal Bloodbath’, but I might change that, because it gives away too much of the plot.
62
So they think they know where Bethany might be buried. Buried. That just makes no sense at all. Oh, Bethany, what on earth did you get involved in?
Mike Waghorn pours himself a glass of cider. He doesn’t really drink cider in public, it doesn’t look right. In public, he drinks champagne, good wine, the sort of stuff people would expect Mike Waghorn to drink. A beer if he’s fitting in with the lads at a corporate do.
But when Mike was a teenager, he would only drink cider, and as he gets older he finds himself returning to it. He has tried expensive cider, you can get that now. Waitrose does one, but, really, the cheaper the better with cider. The one he is currently drinking is from a two-litre plastic bottle. He has poured it into a heavy cut-glass decanter, just for appearances, but he might stop doing that soon as well. Who is he trying to fool? There is no one here, so he can only be fooling himself.
He washes down his arthritis pills, then his beta-blockers, and his gout medication. You’re not really supposed to drink alcohol with any of them, but no one is going to stop him.
He is watching Stop the Clock on a very big television. Fiona Clemence looks wonderful. He thought he should probably give it a go, after Joyce mentioned it. Admit some professional jealousy, swallow a bit of pride, he has plenty to spare, and watch it once. See if Fiona Clemence is any good. He hoped not.
Annoyingly, he watched an episode and is now hooked. Fiona is OK, friendly enough, good at reading out loud, but what a quiz. Mike imagines what he might have done with it. Every time a contestant says something, Mike thinks about how he would respond. Once or twice Fiona Clemence says the same thing as he would have done, and that irks him a little, but, overall, he thinks he’d be slightly better.
But isn’t that just the thing, Mike? You can think all you like, but you never did it. Never took the risks. He filmed a pilot once, the late eighties or so. It went well, everybody agreed, ITV loved it, commissioned a series, but wanted one little change. Could they get a different host? Someone younger, someone – and these words remained etched in his mind for a long time – ‘more authentic, more real’.
Mike never put his perfectly groomed head above the parapet again, never left the burrow, however much he could smell the air outside. ‘More authentic, more real’ – for years he had railed against this insult. Mike was real, Mike was authentic, and if some twenty-somethings from London with fashionable hair and trainers couldn’t see that, the problem was not with Mike, it was with them.
So there he sat, behind his desk, year in, year out, telling the people of Kent and Sussex about fires in care homes, building-society robberies in Faversham, or a Hastings man claiming to have the world’s largest bouncy castle. And he was real enough and authentic enough for the people of Kent and Sussex, thank you very much. Walk through the streets of Maidstone or East Grinstead and see who thinks Mike is real. Everyone.