Mitch points his gun at Joyce now. ‘Give me the box. Now!’
Garth points his gun at Mitch. ‘No, Joyce, give me the box now.’
‘No one else needs to get hurt,’ says Mitch. ‘This is my box, fair’s fair. I’ll take it, I’ll give it back to Hanif, no more guns, and no more trouble.’
‘Dude, my wife died,’ says Garth, gun still trained. ‘I’m having the box.’
Mitch swings around to point his gun at Garth.
‘Perhaps there’s one more death to come?’
‘Perhaps there is,’ says Garth.
Mitch unlocks the safety on his gun. Garth unlocks the safety on his.
‘Boys,’ says Joyce. ‘I don’t mean to spoil your fun, but I don’t have the box any more.’
‘No, no,’ says Mitch. ‘Not when I’m this close.’
‘It was under my sink for a few days, but it started to smell quite musty. Alan didn’t like it one bit, so I put it out for the binmen yesterday,’ says Joyce. ‘It’ll be at the Tunbridge Wells tip by now.’
80: Joyce
What a day we’ve had of it. Alan and I are both pooped. He is face down on the rug with his tongue out, and I’m just going to get everything down on paper before bed. I’m going to do it as a list, in the order of everything that happened today, as I’m very sleepy.
They have had almond milk in the shop for some while now, but I had never paid it much attention until my row with Joanna. I was pretending to browse there earlier and I saw two people pick it up and put it back down again. You can just feel it’s going to catch on. I sent Joanna a photograph of me next to it with a thumbs-up, but no reply yet. I think she is in Denmark for work, so perhaps the message hasn’t got through.
Alan was chased by a squirrel. Honestly, I wish he would defend himself sometimes. He ended up hiding behind my legs as the squirrel stopped about five yards in front of me and stared.
There is a new afternoon quiz show on ITV called But What’s the Question? I didn’t understand it at all, but guess who the host is? Mike Waghorn! Hasn’t he done well for himself? A woman from Aberdeen won a barbecue set, and I will be watching again tomorrow.
The man calling himself Jeremmy came down from London to visit us, with a large holdall, hoping someone was going to give him five thousand pounds. As so often when people think they are going to be able to get things from us, he left disappointed. Tea, biscuits, a good gossip? Yes, we will provide you with those. Money, heroin, diamonds? No. Anyway, we used the heroin we dug up the other day, and, long story short, Mervyn has his money back and Jeremmy is going to prison.
There was something different about Ibrahim. Don’t ask me what, but I will find out when there aren’t quite so many distractions.
Mitch Maxwell and Garth (I’m sorry, I realize I don’t know his last name) came in with guns to get (so we thought) the heroin. We told them the police had it, and you could tell that Mitch was devastated (I’m not sure how much he enjoys his job) but Garth laughed, and we soon found out why.
The heroin wasn’t the issue at all. It was the box. It’s six thousand years old, and it protects you from evil or something along those lines. Though it is doing a fairly bad job of that, I would say. Elizabeth said she had already worked it out, but, honestly, I think she just worked it out in that second, because she had said nothing to us about it. But it was nice to see her on the front foot again, so I didn’t say any of that, I just said, ‘Well done.’
I told them I had put the box out for the binmen and Mitch Maxwell went as white as a ghost – you could see clean through him. He ran. For his life, I suppose. Garth took it in good part and said, ‘Them’s the breaks,’ which is a fun expression, and then we all had a cup of tea. He said how well he thought we had handled everything, and if we ever needed a job to come and talk to him. Then he and Elizabeth spoke for a while and I left them to it.
As Garth was leaving, he spotted the ‘Picasso’ I’d picked up from Kuldesh’s lock-up. As he was looking at it, I told him I knew it was a fake, but I liked it anyway, and he shook his head and told me it was real. Apparently his wife produced most of the fakes in the UK. ‘This is Picasso, not my wife,’ were his exact words. So I own a Picasso. I texted this to Joanna too, but, again, I think maybe the internet is slow in Denmark. They definitely have it there though, because I Googled it.
And one final thing, before I turn in. Elizabeth congratulated me afterwards for my quick thinking, which put a big smile on my face. I think that, since I’ve stepped up a bit after Stephen’s death, I’ve been surprised at what I’m able to do. Elizabeth rubs off on me in a very good way. I hope I rub off on her in a good way too. She was very impressed anyway. ‘A very calm reaction in a situation of great pressure, if you don’t mind my saying?’ I told her I didn’t mind her saying that one bit. Because when Garth had revealed to us the secret of the box – the fact that the box I’d been keeping under my sink was highly illegal and worth millions and millions of pounds – it’s true, I did make my mind up quickly. To tell them I had left it out for the binmen.
Because I hadn’t left it out for the binmen, you see. The box is still under my sink. Though I have taken the bottle of drain unblocker out of it.
Elizabeth says she now has a good idea who murdered Kuldesh, and the box will help to prove it. And she also has one other plan for it.
81
‘I was wondering if it might be Mesopotamian,’ says Elizabeth, as Jonjo examines the box on his desk.
Jonjo Mellor’s office is exactly what you might hope. Two walls lined floor to ceiling with books, a wall of mullioned windows overlooking the University of Kent campus, and every surface covered in vases, skulls, pipes and a ‘World’s Greatest Uncle’ mug.
To make room to inspect the box, he has cleared as much of his writing desk as he can. There are now piles of papers on the chairs and on the floor. His computer is on the windowsill, next to a bronze cow.
‘If that’s a guess, it’s a good one,’ says Jonjo. He is brushing specks of dirt from the box with a fine brush. ‘I’d say you’re spot on.’
‘Stephen spoke about a museum in Baghdad,’ says Elizabeth. ‘He rarely wasted words, even when they were easier to come by. He and Kuldesh must have identified it between them.’
‘It’s an extraordinary find; I will have to report it,’ says Jonjo. ‘But might we sit with it? Just for an hour or two? I have never seen a piece like it.’
‘Stephen talked about pieces on which you could see fingerprints and scuff marks,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Well, he was talking about this,’ says Jonjo. ‘All present and correct. And it was smuggled in by heroin dealers?’
‘Unwittingly, I think,’ says Elizabeth. ‘They thought they were just importing the heroin. So it will have come from Afghanistan.’
‘Makes sense,’ says Jonjo. ‘Wherever there is turmoil, people try to protect their assets. Or sell them.’
‘And it was religious?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘This long ago, everything was religious,’ says Jonjo. ‘All the gods and devils were loose. This, I would say, was a sin box. It would have been outside an important tomb, to ward off the spirits. It will have been looted many years ago. The Iraqis will know for sure.’
‘So what’s the next step?’ asks Elizabeth.
‘I inform the Foreign Office of what we have,’ says Jonjo. ‘They come and collect it, authenticate it, liaise with the Iraqis, and it’ll be in Baghdad within the year. We might ask them if we could display it for a while though.’