‘That’s cricket, is it?’
‘You know full well it is,’ says Stephen.
Bogdan drives the wrong way down a narrow, cobbled backstreet.
They arrive at 1.22.
29
Ibrahim is beginning to despair. They have driven into the very centre of Petworth, with no parking spaces yet evident. The town is very beautiful – cobbled streets, flowers in the windows, antiques shops every five yards – but he is unable to enjoy it. What if there is simply nowhere to park? What then? Park illegally? No thanks, a ticket on the windscreen or, worse, the car towed away. Then how would they get home? They would be stuck. In Petworth. Which, charming as the guide books have made it sound, is alien to Ibrahim. Wherever he is, and whatever he is doing, the primary thought in Ibrahim’s mind is always ‘How will I get home?’ With one’s car impounded? Impossible.
He tries to control his breathing. He is about to say, ‘Well, there are no parking spaces, Joyce, so let’s go home and come back another day,’ when a Volvo reverses out from a bay directly on their right. Jackpot.
‘It’s our lucky day,’ says Joyce. ‘We should buy a lottery ticket!’
Ibrahim sighs but is glad to have the opportunity to teach Joyce an important lesson. ‘Joyce, that is precisely the opposite of what we should do. There are no “lucky days”, just individual parcels of “luck”.’
‘Oh,’ says Joyce.
The space is wide and open and welcoming. Even the wing mirrors can relax.
‘We have just had a single piece of luck: the parking space opening up. Expecting an immediate, second piece of luck is folly. Small bits of good luck, such as this, are actually, in the scheme of things, bad luck.’
‘Shall we get out of the car?’ asks Joyce.
‘Now the reason they are bad luck,’ Ibrahim continues, ‘is that we might logically assume that we are all allocated the same number of moments of random luck in our lives. Forget for a moment the “luck” we bring upon ourselves through hard work; I am speaking merely of the luck that falls into our laps. Happenstance, as the poets might say.’
‘I think Alan might need the toilet,’ says Joyce, and Alan, roaming the back seat, barks in agreement.
‘And if we are allocated the same number of these random moments of luck,’ says Ibrahim, straightening the car for what he hopes will be the final time, ‘it is better not to waste them on small things. Perhaps you might catch the bus with a second to spare, or find the perfect parking space; but those two bits of luck may mean that you will have no moments of luck left for the big things, for example, winning the lottery or meeting the man of your dreams. You would do a great deal better to choose a day when we hadn’t found a parking space and then say, “We should buy a lottery ticket.” Do you see?’
‘Of course I do,’ says Joyce, undoing her seatbelt. ‘Thank you, as always.’
Ibrahim is not convinced that she does see. Joyce sometimes does this to humour him. Lots of people do. But he is right. Save your good luck for big things, and your bad luck for small things. Joyce is out of the car and putting Alan’s lead on. Ibrahim steps out and takes a look around him. Now he has parked, he is able to appreciate what a pretty place Petworth is. And, if he has memorized the map correctly, and he has, then Samantha Barnes’s antiques shop must be straight up the road ahead of them, second right and first left. And the café where Joyce wants to have lunch is back in the same direction, left, then first right. He downloaded the menu for her, but he has not printed it out, because you have to start somewhere. Ibrahim has stuck a Post-it note on both his printer and his laminator saying What would Greta Thunberg do?
Joyce leads the way, with a delighted Alan stopping to smell wondrous new things every few yards. He barks at a postal worker, a constant for Alan wherever he might find himself, and tries to drag Joyce across the road when he spots another dog. They take the second right, and then the first left, and find themselves in front of G&S ANTIQUES – FORMERLY S&W ANTIQUES.
The bell on the door gives a comforting small-town ‘jingle’ as they walk in. Samantha Barnes is waiting for them, prewarned by Elizabeth, with a pot of tea and a Battenberg on the shop counter. Elizabeth will want to know what Samantha Barnes looks like. Ibrahim is very bad at noticing that sort of thing, but he will try. She is wearing black and looks very elegant. Ibrahim feels unqualified to comment any further. Though, if he really concentrates, he can see that she has dark hair and red lipstick. Joyce will be able to fill in the details.
‘You must be Joyce and Ibrahim?’ says Samantha.
Joyce takes Samantha’s hand. ‘And Alan, yes. You are very kind to be meeting us like this; you must be very busy.’
Samantha gestures to the empty shop. ‘I’m intrigued to hear what you have to ask. There’s a bowl of water behind the counter if Alan gets thirsty.’
Ibrahim offers his hand now. ‘Ibrahim. You wouldn’t believe where we parked. You simply wouldn’t believe it.’
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ agrees Samantha, shaking Ibrahim’s hand. She bids them to sit and pours the tea. ‘What’s all this about heroin, I wonder? It doesn’t sound very Petworth.’
‘Heroin crops up everywhere,’ says Joyce. ‘Once you start noticing it. I’ll slice the Battenberg while you pour.’
‘And murder too?’
‘Alarmingly common,’ says Ibrahim. ‘We are told you have a very fine house, Mrs Barnes?’
‘Call me Samantha,’ says Samantha. ‘Who might have told you that?’
‘We pick things up,’ says Joyce. Ibrahim can see that, in Elizabeth’s absence, Joyce is channelling her, and enjoying it.
‘Well, the rule here is that if you pick things up, you pay for them,’ says Samantha. ‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Is it normal milk?’ Joyce asks.
‘Of course,’ says Samantha.
Joyce nods. ‘Just milk for both of us. You heard that our friend Kuldesh Sharma was murdered?’
‘I read all about it in the Evening Argus, yes,’ says Samantha. ‘And you think, what? That I killed him? That I know who killed him? That I might be the next victim? Thrilling whichever way, I would say.’
‘We were just hoping you might have some information,’ says Ibrahim. ‘We think somebody used Kuldesh’s shop to sell a consignment of heroin. Does that sound far-fetched to you?’
Samantha sips her tea. ‘Far-fetched? Not at all. I wouldn’t say it was an everyday occurrence in the antiques world, but one hears about such things.’
‘And has anyone ever asked you to do the same?’ Joyce asks.
‘They have not,’ says Samantha. ‘Nor would they dare.’
‘It then seems that Kuldesh decided to take matters into his own hands and sell the heroin himself,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Did they mention that in the Evening Argus?’
‘They did not,’ says Samantha. ‘Do you know who he sold it to?’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ says Joyce. ‘This Battenberg is terrific by the way, is it M & S?’
‘My husband, Garth, made it,’ says Samantha.
‘He’s a whizz,’ says Joyce. ‘We’re not here to pry into your business, or accuse you of this, that or the other. It just seems that you own a small antiques shop –’
‘And yet you make an awful lot of money,’ says Ibrahim.
‘And so it occurred to us,’ continues Joyce, ‘admittedly via Elizabeth, that you might be a good person to consult on the subject of where antiques and crime collide. Does that sound a reasonable assumption?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at,’ says Samantha. ‘But I could offer an amateur insight, if you think it might help?’