So Holly couldn’t come to the wedding because she had to work. The previous week she and Nick Silver had spoken, together, to a man named Davey Noakes. But on this day, 24 July, when she knew that Nick was out of circulation, Holly Lewis had met Davey Noakes alone, at The Compound.
Joanna can see from the CCTV that the two figures are talking. But what are they talking about?
Joanna decides she has to call Elizabeth. She takes a large piece of black card that she bought especially for Zoom calls and lowers it inch by inch over her screen to make it look like the Zoom has malfunctioned, then switches off the computer and reaches for her phone.
Elizabeth will want to know exactly why Holly Lewis and Davey Noakes were having a private meeting.
But, as she’s about to call, Joanna changes her mind.
And she calls her mum instead.
It rings the customary seven or eight times. Joanna knows that her mum likes to make herself look presentable before she answers the phone.
‘Hello, Joyce Meadowcroft here, whom is calling, please?’ Her mum also has a phone voice.
‘It’s me, Mum,’ says Joyce.
‘Ooh,’ says Joyce. She always sounds so excited when Joanna rings that it breaks her heart for all the times she hasn’t rung over the years. ‘I’ll just turn the volume down on Flog It!’
‘You can pause it, Mum,’ says Joanna.
‘My television doesn’t have pause,’ says Joyce.
‘It does, Mum,’ says Joanna. ‘I showed you last time we were down.’
‘Yes,’ says Joyce. ‘But the button you pressed doesn’t pause any more.’
‘It does, Mum,’ says Joanna. ‘You must be pressing the wrong button.’
‘I’m not pressing the wrong button,’ says Joyce. ‘I’m pressing the one you showed me.’
‘Mum, you are not pressing the one I showed you. If you were pressing the one I showed you …’ Unconditional love, Joanna, unconditional love. ‘Perhaps, perhaps it has stopped working. I’ll get Paul to take a look when I see you next.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ says Joyce. ‘He’s very good at that sort of thing. Your dad was too.’
‘I’m also pretty good at …’ Let it go, Joanna, let it go. ‘How much do you know about Davey Noakes?’
‘Not a great deal,’ says Joyce. ‘I know we ruled him out of Holly’s murder, because he’s always known about the money.’
‘Did he tell you that he and Holly had their own private meeting on the day of our wedding?’
‘No,’ says Joyce. ‘He did not.’
Joanna has also got Paul’s attention, and he puts down his essays and comes to look at the screen. Joanna puts her mum on speaker.
‘I was scrolling through the CCTV and saw them together,’ says Joanna. ‘That has to make him a suspect, surely?’
‘I’d say so,’ says Joyce. ‘Have you told Elizabeth?’
‘Why would I tell Elizabeth?’ Joanna asks. ‘You’re the brains of the operation.’
‘Me?’ laughs Joyce. ‘You might as well have called Alan. He’s cowering in the bedroom, by the way, because he got frightened by a banana skin.’
‘I’m like that with mushrooms,’ says Paul.
‘Hello, Paul!’ says Joyce.
‘Hello, Mum-in-law,’ says Paul, and Joanna can hear Joyce suppress a squeal.
‘I bet Alan can work the remote control though,’ says Joanna, because politeness is all well and good, but you can’t completely give up the fight.
‘Do you have the CCTV from today?’ Joyce asks.
‘Today? Sure,’ says Joanna. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘The strangest thing,’ says Joyce. ‘Ron went to open the safe today with Connie Johnson …’
‘Connie Johnson?’ Joanna raises an eyebrow to Paul, and he raises both of his at her.
‘Long story,’ says Joyce. ‘He insisted. But they’ve both gone missing. I don’t suppose the cameras caught them leaving? We’re worried about Ron.’
Joanna types in today’s date. ‘What sort of time?’
‘They went in at two-ish,’ says Joyce. ‘So any time after half two.’
Paul starts scrolling through, and Joanna senses an opportunity. ‘While we’re doing this, Mum, could you do me a favour? See the button on your big remote control, not the small remote control, the big one? Find the button with two parallel lines on it, and press it for me?’
‘Oh, that’s worked,’ says Joyce. ‘It wasn’t working earlier.’
‘That was the button you were pressing?’
‘I could swear,’ says Joyce.
‘Glad we could fix it without a big, strong man having to step in,’ says Joanna.
And, as she does so, she sees Ron and Connie Johnson walk out of the lodge. They disappear around the side of the building, and Paul switches cameras. They embrace – Ron Ritchie and Connie Johnson of all people – and then the two of them set off in different directions.
‘They left at three, Mum, I’ve just seen them,’ says Joanna.
‘Then where on earth is Ron?’ says Joyce. ‘Did it look like he was being kidnapped?’
‘It did not,’ says Paul. ‘It looked like they were in cahoots.’
‘Oh, that’s a lovely word,’ says Joyce. ‘That’s a very Paul word. Where were they both off to?’
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ says Joanna. ‘We’re coming down to see you.’
‘Oh, goodie,’ says Joyce. ‘I’ve got shopping tomorrow morning, but I’ll be around from lunchtime.’
‘We’re coming down now, Mum,’ says Joanna.
‘But I go to bed at nine thirty,’ says Joyce.
‘Not tonight you don’t,’ says Joanna. ‘We’ll see you in an hour.’
‘Goodness,’ says Joyce. This was worth missing the price of Victorian pornography. ‘What should I tell Elizabeth?’
‘Tell her that Joyce and Joanna Meadowcroft are in town,’ says Joanna.
‘Ooh,’ says Joyce.
‘And Paul,’ says Paul.
‘And Paul,’ agrees Joanna. ‘And tell her we’re all going to see Davey Noakes.’
65
Has she been at her absolute best? She worked out the Jamie Usher angle eventually, but other than that? No, Elizabeth has to concede that she has not.
Is that understandable? Yes. She is old, she is rusty, she is grief-stricken.
Does that make her useless? No.
Nick Silver reached out to her in the first place because of who she was. What she had done. And she may never be that woman again – the mind a razor, the body a spring, the soul a granite cliff face – but she doesn’t need to be.
Because she is now part of a team. An odd team, she accepts that, as she sits on Davey Noakes’s sofa between Joyce and Paul, with Ibrahim perching on a footstool because it helps with his posture. But a team nonetheless.
Elizabeth’s grand plan had not gone as hoped. Find the key, then sit and wait. Because they had found the key, but it had immediately gone missing, straight into the hands of either Ron or Connie Johnson. She could understand Connie’s angle for taking the key, but that razor-mind of hers could still not fathom Ron’s angle.
Where were they both? Elizabeth is delighted that she saw them part company on the CCTV. That Connie hadn’t immediately killed him. Which is not to say she didn’t follow him and kill him later.
Joanna has the armchair, the alpha seat, which, historically, would be Elizabeth’s. But she’s earned it. She had found the footage of Holly and Davey, meeting at a time neither had mentioned. That has to be significant.
If Elizabeth does not have the key, Joanna’s discovery is the next best thing. Davey Noakes knows something he isn’t telling. Whether that makes him Holly’s killer or not has yet to be established, but it is certainly why they are all here at close to midnight.
There are so many questions still unanswered: who killed Holly, where is Nick Silver, why did Davey Noakes and Lord Townes both pay visits to The Compound the previous week? Perhaps it is time that she stepped up and answered a few.