The compère, a comedian Chris has seen on TV, Josh something, kicks things off with a monologue. He’s very funny, ripping into everyone, and dealing with the drunken heckles that come his way. Chris sees Donna making her way through the side door of the Grand Ballroom. She is alone. Uh oh. Both he and Patrice watch as she makes her way over, and sits, her face like a cliff in a dark storm. An empty chair beside her.
‘No Bogdan?’ asks Chris.
‘Elizabeth needed him,’ says Donna.
Well, quite a theme was developing.
Was something going on they didn’t know about?
Part Three. CATCH UP ON ALL THE NEWS
70: Joyce
I am in Staffordshire. We all are, pretty much. Everyone who needs to be, at least.
Elizabeth and Stephen are here: they are down the hallway, though they haven’t emerged yet this morning. Ron and Pauline are in the East Wing. This house has wings. Ibrahim drove them, and he is staying at the gatehouse at the end of the drive.
Henrik is here, naturally, it is his house. It’s like Downton Abbey, but with a pinball machine, and a hot tub.
Mike Waghorn is also here. I suggested he join us for a brandy in the library last night, but he wanted an early night as we have given him a job to do today. He is taking it seriously.
In the end it was just me and Ibrahim, sitting up, drinking and chatting. He is feeling very perky because he has cracked the identity of ‘Carron Whitehead’. He worked it out in the car on the way up here. When he told me, I double-checked and triple-checked, but he was quite right.
He really can be very clever. I’m still taking credit for ‘Michael Gullis’ though. That’s what really cracked the case.
I told Joanna I had worked it out and she said, ‘Well done’ and sounded like she meant it. There was even a thumbs-up emoji.
As for ‘Robert Brown Msc’, we are still none the wiser, but it doesn’t matter so much now. I’m sure we will work it out sooner or later.
Stephen had been given a guided tour of the library when he arrived. He looked like a boy, eyes wide, smile even wider. The years dropped away from him.
Viktor is having breakfast in his room, and making notes for later. Interesting to see how he plans these things out. Andrew Everton is on his way up too. It was the Kent Police Awards last night and he couldn’t miss it. They were giving Chris and Donna a commendation. I saw it on Donna’s Instagram. I think Bogdan should probably have been with her, but he had to drive Elizabeth and Stephen up here. I wonder if Donna minded? No one else seems to have spotted they are dating, but Pauline and I had a quiet gossip about it earlier. Donna certainly wasn’t smiling in the photographs.
One person who isn’t here is Fiona Clemence, but that’s not to say she isn’t involved.
Alan has stayed at home.
I make that sound as if it was his choice, as if he had a few things he wanted to catch up on. If we are all up here in Staffordshire, who is looking after him, you ask?
There is a new resident in the village. He is called Mervyn, and he is Welsh. I have always had a soft spot for the Welsh. He used to be the headmaster of a school. You can tell that too. Strict but fair. Grey hair, dark moustache, you know the look. Don’t mind if I do. I have shown him to Pauline at a distance and got a thumbs-up. I thought Pauline might have got a little upset about the way I questioned her at our afternoon tea, but not a bit of it. I suppose she just wanted the truth to come out as much as the rest of us.
Now, Mervyn has a Cairn Terrier called Rosie, and we bumped into each other a couple of days ago on a walk. Alan sniffed around Rosie and, I daresay if Alan were asked, he’d tell you I sniffed around Mervyn too. Long story short, we got chatting, and the same afternoon I dropped around a cherry Bakewell for him, just to say welcome to the village. Mervyn is going to feed and walk Alan while I’m gone. I told him I would be very grateful, and he gave me a little smile.
And, before you ask, yes, Mervyn is heterosexual. He’s had two wives and five kids, and there was a Top Gear DVD on one of his shelves.
We should only be here for twenty-four hours or so, unless something goes very wrong. Which reminds me, I must make sure that Ibrahim moves his car round to the back of the house. Bogdan didn’t need telling – his is hidden away.
We’re planning to kick off at about midday. I think everyone knows what they’re doing. I don’t really have a role as such, I just get to watch.
Which I think I’ve earned, given I worked out who murdered Bethany Waites.
Very soon the whole world will know.
I gave Mervyn my phone number, ‘You know, in case you want to send me a picture of Alan,’ but so far he hasn’t used it. I keep checking, but nothing.
71
It was an indignity to be dumped at the gates in a blindfold, but, if that’s the price of entry, so be it. Paranoia is to be expected.
The approach to the house is magnificent. Long, gravel driveway, topiary hedges, fountains, statues of lions. But today there are no staff tending to it. No gardeners or chauffeurs poking their noses in, able to tell what they’ve seen. It’s exactly as was promised. Looking up at windows ahead, no movement there either. You have to allow for the possibility that this is a trap, but, thus far, it doesn’t look like one.
The house itself is too big. Way too big if this man, the Viking, lives here alone. Given the secrecy involved in this whole operation, and given the monosyllabic nature of their email exchanges, that’s a fair bet. It will be just the two of them, and it will have to be played exactly right. Get what you’ve come for and go. Not easy, not easy at all, but the rewards will be worth it.
A push on the bell, and the sound of it reverberates deep inside this lonely house. How much would the Viking have paid for this place? Twenty million? At least.
Footsteps approach, and the huge oak front door opens. There he is, the man himself. What is he? Six six? Huge beard, Foo Fighters t-shirt clinging to a huge torso.
An offered hand, a shake.
‘You must be the Viking?’
‘And you,’ says the Viking, ‘must be Andrew Everton. Let me take you to my library.’
Andrew Everton follows the huge figure through a marble entrance hall, and into a carpeted corridor. Every wall is covered in art, most of it too modern for the Chief Constable’s tastes, but the odd sailing ship or Norman church here and there make up for it. The Viking leads him into a library, a cocoon of dark wood and red leather and soft lighting. Andrew Everton thinks about the sign on his office wall, CRIME DOESN’T PAY. We’ll see about that.
The Viking gestures to the walls, lined from floor to ceiling with books. ‘Are you a reader, Chief Constable?’
‘Love writing books more than reading them, if I’m honest,’ says Andrew Everton, and sits in an armchair indicated by his host. ‘We can probably skip all this chat if you’d rather? It’s a lovely house, it was a pleasant journey, I don’t need the loo, and I’m OK for water.’
The Viking nods. ‘OK.’ He sits on, and nearly fills, a two-seater leather sofa, and switches on a lamp beside him. ‘What do you need from me, Mr Andrew Everton?’
72: Joyce
The lamp is the key to the whole thing.
Once you switch it on, you switch on the cameras and microphones. We’re all in the staff kitchen at the back of the house, quiet as church mice, and now we can see the live images from inside the library. We can’t see Henrik, because he didn’t want to be on camera. Because of his criminal empire, not because he is shy. Although he is also quite shy, I think.