The corporate box is beginning to fill up for the Saturday lunchtime game. There’s a buffet and a bar in the warm, and, outside, currently behind sliding doors, twenty seats, all overlooking the halfway point of the pitch. The pitch looks gorgeous, like an emerald amphitheatre. Shame to spoil it with a game of football, but there we are.
Donna has never been undercover before. Not that she’s officially undercover now. Chris would kill her if he knew what she was doing. This is strictly off the books. Chris is currently in the garden centre with her mum, because she is worried that his flat lacks oxygen.
Donna had thought that she might stick out, but, so far, everyone who has walked into the box has struggled so endearingly with the dress code – ties, jackets, no jeans, no trainers – that they all look like undercover cops. Bogdan brings her an English sparkling wine. It’s from a local vineyard; they do tours. Bogdan is drinking still water because sparkling water is bad for your tooth enamel.
‘He is not here yet?’ Bogdan asks, looking around.
Donna shakes her head. The box belongs to Musgrave Car Dealership, which, as far as the Home Office computer can tell, is a genuine and legitimate business. Statistically there must still be a few legitimate businesses dotted around.
Donna helps herself to a vegan sausage roll. At every home game Dave Musgrave invites friends and clients to come and watch the match, have a few drinks, maybe do a bit of business. Goodness knows what this whole set-up costs him, but Donna guesses it must be worth it. You don’t have to sell many Range Rovers and Aston Martins to pay for a few sausage rolls.
Donna sees Dave Musgrave walking towards them.
‘Can you do banter?’ Donna quickly asks Bogdan.
‘Banter? Of course,’ says Bogdan.
‘Are you sure? I’ve never heard you do banter?’
‘Is easy,’ says Bogdan. ‘I’ve lived here a long time. You say something about golf.’
Dave Musgrave is upon them, and he holds out a hand to Bogdan. He doesn’t look at or acknowledge Donna. That’s fine. If given the choice between men who pay women no attention and men who pay them too much attention, Donna will always take the former. Besides, she is happy to stay as low-profile as possible. She keeps worrying that someone she’s arrested will walk through the door next and recognize her. After all, it is the football.
‘You’re Barry?’ Dave Musgrave asks Bogdan.
‘I am Barry,’ agrees Bogdan.
‘Nicko says you’re a bloody legend.’
‘Nicko’ is a friend of Bogdan. Nicholas Lethbridge-Constance. He invented a type of portable wind turbine and retired on the proceeds at fifty. Bogdan has done some work for him. Just building work, Donna hopes – she never likes to pry too closely. Nicko had been glad to make the introductions, not even blinking at the fake name Bogdan had asked him to use. Bogdan really is a very good builder.
‘Nicko said, “Dave is a good guy,”’ says Bogdan. ‘He says, good cars, good prices, but bad at golf.’
Dave lets out a roar and slaps Bogdan on the back.
‘Oh, you I like, Barry! You I like!’
‘You like me, I like beer!’ says Bogdan, slapping Dave’s back in return. Dave roars again.
‘Beer, he says! We’ve got a live one here.’
So Bogdan can do banter. Why had she ever doubted it? Donna browses the buffet table again and lets the boys talk. There is a plate of prawns, but Donna has never had the confidence to know which bits to eat and which bits to leave, so she has a chicken goujon instead.
‘What do you reckon to the score, Bazza?’ Dave asks Bogdan. Uh-oh. Bogdan is an expert in many things, but football is not one of them.
‘I think 3–1,’ says Bogdan. ‘This Everton defence too shaky, letting in too many goals, too many old legs now. Welbeck and Mitoma too much for them. And if Estupiñán starts, then game over.’
So that’s what he was doing on his phone last night while she was watching Die Hard.
‘Hope you’re right, Bazza,’ says Dave. ‘Would love to have one over on the Scousers. Ahh, talk of the devil.’
Dave Musgrave has turned to face the door. Donna follows his gaze. In walks Dom Holt, swishing expensively. Finally, someone who does not look like an undercover cop. Dave leaves Bogdan, to stalk this new, richer prey.
Will they discover anything they don’t already know? A fatal slip from a man enjoying the football, lips loosened with drink? A little nugget she can take back to Chris? Let’s hope so. One way or another Dom Holt is up to his cashmere-scarfed neck in the murder of Kuldesh Sharma. And if she has to sit through ninety minutes of football to prove it, it’ll be worth it. She has brought a book just in case, and wonders if she will be allowed to read it.
She thinks of Chris, her boss, pushing a trolley through the shrubs at the garden centre, his arm interlinked with her mum’s. Forgive me, Chris, someone has to be a maverick sometimes, and it’s never going to be you.
33
Chris downs his second English sparkling wine. Two glasses come free with the tour. After that you have to pay.
Strictly speaking Chris shouldn’t be here, but he’d love to get one over on SIO Regan. He really shouldn’t be so petty. Shouldn’t have risen to it, should have been strong, like Donna, but here he finds himself. Couple of glasses of bubbly, an afternoon with Patrice, and, at some point, a suitable lull, when he can make himself scarce and have a little nosy around the warehouse of Sussex Logistics just across the car park. Donna would kill him if she knew he was here; he’s supposed to be at the garden centre. Donna and Bogdan have gone to see an art exhibition in Hastings. You wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Although the woman at the Brighton café had identified Dom Holt – as had the Thursday Murder Club – believe it or not, her evidence would not hold up in court. There was no way they could get a warrant to search Sussex Logistics, not in a million years, so Chris thought perhaps he might take matters into his own hands.
Not like him, really, but he is beginning to tire of seeing Elizabeth and her merry band cutting corners that he is not allowed to cut. It isn’t fair. Chris is determined to solve this case before SIO Regan, and, if he is being entirely honest with himself, before the Thursday Murder Club too. He’d love to see the look on Elizabeth’s face if he finds the heroin, and finds Kuldesh’s killer. And, wherever the Thursday Murder Club are today, perhaps starting a gunfight in a hollowed-out volcano, he knows they won’t be breaking into Sussex Logistics.
Dom Holt also won’t be there today, Chris is fairly sure of that. Brighton are playing Everton just along the coast. A man like Dom Holt will be in a corporate box somewhere. Chris has always wanted to go into a corporate box at the football. He’s seen them sometimes, at Crystal Palace: booze and food, and comfy seats and warmth and men shaking hands with other men. Maybe one day. Policing must have been so much easier in the seventies, when you could just openly take bribes. He remembers an old DI of his from his early days on the force who’d got Wimbledon Royal Box seats just for losing a vital piece of evidence.
Perhaps no one at all will be at Sussex Logistics? Unmanned for the weekend? Chris has been hearing all about Dom Holt’s boss, Mitch Maxwell, who paid the Thursday Murder Club a visit the other day, but he lives up in Hertfordshire somewhere and is rarely at the sharp end of things.
Perhaps a window will be left open somewhere? A fire door ajar? There will be alarms for sure, but Chris has disabled enough of them in his time. And if the police are called out, Chris has brought his radio, so he can be first on the scene to investigate the break-in.