‘Not now,’ says Ron. ‘One day though. God knows how long we’ve got left, Ib, the four of us. Might as well let people know how we feel.’
Ibrahim nods. ‘What you did was very dangerous, Ron. Very foolhardy. But I think you had no choice. You had to protect your family.’
‘Had to show I still could,’ says Ron.
‘Had to show you still could,’ says Ibrahim. ‘And a few years ago I wouldn’t have understood. Not particularly. But if anyone were ever to threaten Joyce, or Elizabeth, or … you, I would move heaven and earth to protect you. I want you to know that.’
‘Sounds like you love us,’ says Ron.
‘I care about what happens to you,’ says Ibrahim.
‘Sounds like you care a lot,’ says Ron.
‘I care a great deal,’ says Ibrahim. ‘But I choose not to put a label on it.’
‘Has Tia left?’ asks Ron. ‘I thought the police were still looking for her?’
‘Elizabeth took her out for lunch,’ says Ibrahim.
‘Poor Tia,’ says Ron. ‘From Connie’s clutches to Elizabeth’s.’
Ibrahim looks down. ‘Okay, Ron, there’s something I’d like to say.’
Ron sits forward.
Ibrahim takes a deep breath, looks at the ceiling and then looks at Ron.
‘The reason that Timothy Dalton is the best James Bond is his mixture of elegance and his training in the Shakespearean tradition.’
Ron throws a cushion at his best friend.
73
‘When you say prison?’ the man asks.
‘Just regular prison,’ says Tia. ‘Metal toilets, punishment beatings, art classes.’
‘Sounds like my school,’ says the man. ‘Except we didn’t have art classes. And have you kept out of trouble since you left prison?’
‘Yes,’ says Tia.
‘She robbed a warehouse at gunpoint,’ says Elizabeth.
The man nods. ‘But other than that?’
Tia looks at Elizabeth.
‘Other than that,’ says Elizabeth, ‘she has been a model citizen.’
‘And how did she come to your attention?’ the man asks.
‘She solved something,’ says Elizabeth, ‘which I had missed.’
‘Goodness,’ says the man.
‘More to the point,’ says Elizabeth, ‘if Tia had gone to school where you went to school, I suspect she would have had a very different start in life. So why don’t we give her that start now?’
‘Eighteen is a bit young,’ says the man.
‘Not too young for a little training though,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Send her off somewhere, give her a gun?’
‘I could bring my own?’ suggests Tia.
The man is thinking. ‘It would have to be off the books. The prison sentence rules out anything official.’
‘I think that would be altogether more fun,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Can I ask a question?’ says Tia.
The man indicates that indeed she may.
‘What actually is the job?’
‘A question I still ask myself,’ says the man. ‘After forty years in it.’
‘But is it legal?’ Tia asks.
‘A lot of the time, yes,’ says the man. ‘A good eighty per cent or so.’
‘What do you say?’ Elizabeth asks the man.
‘It’s irregular,’ says the man.
‘Just like us,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And that’s why you’re at the very top.’
‘The top of what?’ Tia asks.
‘Oh, the whole shooting match,’ says the man. ‘The whole thing. Tia, if I were to send you to Belize for three months, what would you say?’
‘I’d say, where’s Belize? And when do you want me to go?’ Tia replies.
74
Joyce
The photos from the wedding have just arrived. At first they were just on a memory stick for a computer and I told Joanna that I had no idea what use that was, and when would the actual photos I could hold in my hand arrive?
She said I could take the memory stick into Snappy Snaps and they would print them for me, but I doubted that very much. So Joanna said she would get them printed out for me, and that’s what’s arrived.
She told me to choose my favourites, and I said I wanted all of them, and she said, Mum, there’s over a thousand and some of them are practically identical, and I said I didn’t care and I wanted all of them. Seeing them now, in a big stack, I realize she was quite right. I was flicking through earlier, and there were ten photos of one of Paul’s aunties raising a drink to the camera. While I liked this particular auntie, I’m afraid those went straight in the bin. Please don’t tell Paul.
There was also another guest, an older colleague of Paul’s from the university, and she was wearing the same hat as me. I’m afraid those went in the bin too. It was bad enough she was waltzing around in it all day, I don’t need a permanent reminder.
Joanna looks so beautiful, and so happy. Which are often the same thing, aren’t they? I look very old in them, I can see that, but I look happy too. And if you can be that happy when you get to my age, you must have done something right.
There are lots of shots of Nick Silver pre-vomiting, fewer afterwards. They still haven’t found him. Davey Noakes has a plan to find him that involves drones, and Elizabeth has a plan that involves a new machine to do with DNA that she’s not allowed to tell me about but did.
Paul and Joanna came round for a cup of tea yesterday. I keep getting in trouble with Joanna for saying ‘Paul and Joanna’. She says I should say ‘Joanna and Paul’ once in a while, but I told her it didn’t sound right, something was wrong with it, and she said, yes, you’re the something that’s wrong with it, and so I will try to remember every now and again, if only for a quiet life.
Paul also has a plan to find Nick, but Davey and Elizabeth seem to have more resources.
If they do find Nick, he’s in for a shock, isn’t he? Holly dead, the money worthless. I’m very glad Holly wasn’t at the wedding. There would be so many more photos to throw away.
The police seem to have their own theory about Holly’s murder. DCI Varma came round the other day with a few further questions. She agreed, after quite a lot of badgering, to join us for a cup of tea, and told us that a man named Lord Robert Townes had been boasting to some of his London friends about coming into some Bitcoin money, and she had wanted to question him. A few days afterwards he took a boat from the harbour in Newhaven and hasn’t been seen since. So, in the absence of any firmer leads, she’s leaning towards him as a suspect. We ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the appropriate moments. She asked if we recognized him at all, and I said he did look familiar, and she asked if perhaps he might have been at Coopers Chase on the night of Holly’s murder, and I said I couldn’t rule it out, which seemed to make her happy.
It makes you wonder where he has gone though? My worry, having met him, is that he might have done himself in. Apparently they haven’t found the boat though, so who knows?
But the last few weeks haven’t really been about the murder of Holly Lewis, have they? I thought they were, of course: her car blew up in the overspill visitors’ car park, and that was bound to catch our attention. By the way, despite the appalling mess and the police investigation, the overspill parking area was back up and running the following afternoon. The Coopers Chase Parking Committee do not take weeks to fix things. They remind me a lot of China in that regard.
When a bomb goes off in life, it tends to grab your attention, doesn’t it? But when I think back to that evening now, all I remember is Kendrick, in his pyjamas, holding Ron’s hand. That was where the story was all along, wasn’t it? A frightened young boy, his frightened mum trying to protect him, and his grandad trying to protect them both.