Henrik has uncovered one lead though. It was another early payment, this time for a hundred thousand pounds.
Viktor and Elizabeth scan the file in front of them. Henrik has tracked the payment as far as the British Virgin Islands, where it was further broken down into four separate payments. One of the payments found its way to the Cayman Islands, but that path has gone cold. One headed to Panama, and one to Liechtenstein, and into the endless corridors of banking secrecy. But the fourth payment was the interesting one. To the International Bank of Dubai. It seems out of place.
‘Why pay money to Dubai?’ says Elizabeth. ‘Surely there are plenty of places much safer, much darker.’
‘Access perhaps?’ says Viktor. ‘Was this a little bit of spending money for someone?’
Elizabeth thinks she might take some time investigating the Dubai connection. She knows people there. Ten million pounds has gone missing somewhere, but sometimes a hundred thousand is all you need to catch someone. And Elizabeth would love to catch whoever killed Bethany Waites.
But perhaps she is a fool? Perhaps she is missing something obvious – it certainly feels that way. In her bones she knows it’s not quite right. Are her powers waning? She is getting old. She uses a foot spa these days. She’s even going to get Joyce one for Christmas. Is it time to quit all this nonsense? All this running around after shadows?
Viktor shivers in the cold. Elizabeth adjusts his blanket.
‘Thank you,’ says Viktor. ‘Your country is so cold.’
‘So is yours,’ says Elizabeth, and Viktor concedes the point.
Time to quit all this nonsense? Elizabeth laughs to herself. What is there in life other than nonsense?
‘Perhaps,’ says Elizabeth, ‘a little winter sunshine would do us some good?’
‘Perhaps,’ agrees Viktor. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘I hear Dubai is very temperate this time of year.’
‘I hear that too,’ says Viktor. ‘And they say the shopping is very good. There are even art galleries.’
‘Well, we could have a poke around the art galleries, couldn’t we?’
‘Spot of shopping,’ says Viktor. ‘Soak up the sun?’
‘Wouldn’t do any harm, would it?’ says Elizabeth. She may be old, but she knows she will find something there. The missing piece.
‘You know,’ says Viktor, ‘I remember being at the bottom of that hole, having all that earth shovelled over me. I remember looking up at everybody, and wondering if this might be the life for me. Coopers Chase. The tea, and the cake, and the birds and the dogs, and the friends. If it might be where I belong. You will understand that.’
‘Only too well,’ says Elizabeth.
‘I was lonely,’ says Viktor. ‘You fixed that for me. You and your friends. My friends. They are quite something, aren’t they?’
‘They are quite something,’ agrees Elizabeth.
‘Did I tell you I’m going to get a snooker table?’
‘Ron spoke of little else in the car up here,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I had to feign sleep.’
‘It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?’ says Viktor. ‘It’s always the people. You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.’
Elizabeth looks over to the swimming pool, suspended in the sky. There is Joyce swimming laps, her head above water so as not to get her hair wet. The boys, Ron and Ibrahim, are by the side of the pool, wearing overcoats on daybeds. Ibrahim is struggling to read the Financial Times in the wind. Ron is trying to work out how the lid goes back on his coffee cup.
It is far too cold to swim, but Joyce would not be dissuaded. Elizabeth had told her not to be so silly, and that the pool would still be here in the summer.
‘Ah, but we may not be,’ Joyce had replied, and she was right. It was best to grab everything while you could. Who knows when your final swim might come, your final walk, your final kiss? Elizabeth has an idea what secret Bogdan is keeping from her. So be it.
Joyce sees Elizabeth looking, and gives her a wave. Elizabeth waves back. You keep swimming, Joyce. You keep swimming, my beautiful friend. You keep your head above the water for as long as you can.
Acknowledgements
These acknowledgements are literally the last thing I have to write, and as soon as I finish I am allowed to go on holiday.
I could probably have gone on holiday at other points during the writing, but, honestly, publishers have a way of looking at you that says, ‘Do you really need to be going to CenterParcs this close to your deadline?’
I write this with, as so often, Liesl Von Cat stretched out on my desk. Her paw idly flicks out at me every now and again when my typing gets too loud for her delicate ears.
Whether Liesl is sleeping on my keyboard, blocking my screen or miaowing loudly for food, even though she has literally just been fed, I know that she is constantly trying to help.
Indeed, I am indebted to so many people who have helped, cajoled, supported or, in her case, miaowed at me during the process of writing The Bullet That Missed.
First of all, readers. Nothing happens in this business without readers, and that’s you. Unless you are just reading these acknowledgements in a shop while you’re waiting for someone to buy wrapping paper. In which case, maybe buy a book? It doesn’t have to be this one. Buy a Mark Billingham or a Shari Lapena.
But if you have read the book, then I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have had a blast spending more time with the gang, and I hope you have too. My only job is to try to entertain you, and I really, really want you to have a good time. Even if that ‘good time’ involves crying in public, or missing your stop on the bus.
Thank you also to all the incredible booksellers around the world. I think I have met almost all of you by now, and you are heroes. You are heroes for your love of books, for your skill at recommending the right books to the right people, and for your ability to say, ‘Do you need a bag?’ three hundred times a day while still smiling. I promise I’ll have another book for you to sell this time next year.
I am blessed with the most wonderful team of publishers too. Eternal thanks to my editor Harriet Bourton, at Viking, for her patience, wit and skill, and for being such an absolute pleasure to work with. The ‘sky pool’ mentioned in the book is not only real, but is actually right next to the PRH offices in Battersea.
There are guards at the door of the American Embassy up ahead, and there’s a group of young women going through the revolving doors of a publisher’s building on her left.
In my mind’s eye, that group is my wonderful Viking team of Harriet, Ella Horne, Olivia Mead, Ellie Hudson, Rosie Safaty and Lydia Fried, immortalized in print. Thank you for the incredible work you do: you’re the best team in the business. See how close you got to Joyce and Elizabeth without realizing!
Thank you to the amazing Sam Fanaken, sales guru, for knowing how much I love to see a graph. And thank you to her brilliant team, Rachel Myers, Kyla Dean, Alison Pearce, Eleanor Rhodes Davies, Linda Viberg, Madeleine Bennett and Meredith Benson, and also to Samantha Waide and Grace Dellar.
I am indebted once again to the copy-editing and production genius of Natalie Wall and Annie Underwood. Natalie is the first person ever to succinctly explain to me when I should be using ‘which’ and when I should be using ‘that’. It is a piece of knowledge that I will always remember.