‘Yes, please,’ say Joyce and Pauline.
‘You’ve put them through the old computer?’ Stephen asks. ‘Nothing doing?’
‘Nothing doing,’ says Elizabeth. A friend still in the Service had run the names for her. ‘Carron Whitehead’ throwing up no matches, ‘Robert Brown’ throwing up far too many. They have promised to look through them all, but there are only so many favours you can ask, and Elizabeth has asked rather a lot recently. Perhaps she should pay a visit to the Chief Constable, and see if he knew anything they didn’t? Could she get an appointment? There must be a way.
‘Your pal will crack it,’ says Stephen. ‘The one with the crosswords.’
Ibrahim. He and Stephen used to be good friends. Ibrahim still asks to come round, and Elizabeth still puts him off.
‘I’m trying to play chess here,’ says Bogdan. ‘There is a lot of talking.’
Bogdan has come down from the construction site at the top of the hill to keep Stephen company.
‘You still smell rather nice,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And the same smell as before. Almost as if you are seeing someone regularly?’ Elizabeth has room for more than one mystery at a time.
Bogdan makes a move and sits back. ‘What are you going to do about the guy you have to kill?’
‘I asked a question first, Bogdan,’ says Elizabeth.
She will get nothing from Bogdan. Perhaps she should start following him. Is that a bit much? She contemplates for a moment, and decides that, yes, that probably is a bit much. But, really, Elizabeth hates not knowing secrets. Spies are like dogs. They cannot stand a closed door.
‘Wonderful books the Viking chap had,’ says Stephen, pondering his move. ‘Really quite extraordinary.’
Stephen is her secret of course. Her closed door. For now.
‘You going to use the gun I gave you?’ Bogdan asks. ‘The woman I got it from said it had been buried for a while, so make sure it works.’
‘He’s giving me advice about guns now,’ says Elizabeth. She will actually have to check though. She’ll take it out into the woods this evening. Scare the owls and the foxes.
‘Bogdan, old chap,’ says Stephen, frowning at the chessboard. ‘Looks like you’ve got me again. Must be losing my marbles.’
‘Only thing you are losing is the game,’ says Bogdan.
Carron Whitehead and Robert Brown. The very first transactions with the stolen money. There must be a clue there, but Elizabeth feels like she’s hit a dead end.
Ironically she can think of one person who might be able to help.
Viktor Illyich. A whizz at this sort of thing. Delving into records, following money trails.
It’s time to put up or shut up though. Eliminate Viktor, and, thus, eliminate the risk from the Viking. Elizabeth will go into the woods tonight and test the gun. And then she will have to message Joyce, and tell her they are going to London tomorrow. Though she won’t tell her why.
It is time to kill Viktor Illyich. And Elizabeth will need Joyce there when she does it.
The morning rush-hour has passed, but the train is still busy. Elizabeth has just come clean about her kidnapping.
‘But why a bag over your head
‘Belt and braces,’ says Elizabeth.
Joyce nods. ‘I suppose I’ve packed a raincoat
‘I didn’t see a great deal of it, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I was driven there at speed, then forced into a house with a gun at my head, and eventually dumped on a freezing roadside at two a.m.’
Elizabeth’s phone buzzes, a message from a withheld number.
I see you are on the train to London, Elizabeth. I have people everywhere. Please don’t let me down.
It is meant to sound threatening, but it is starting to come across as needy. Elizabeth takes a look along the carriage, though, judging every face in turn.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever been to Staffordshire,’ Joyce continues. ‘But I must have been through it at some point, mustn’t I?’
The ideal scenario would be to not have to murder Viktor Illych. But the Viking would kill Joyce in two weeks, unless given a good reason not to. The choice was Viktor or Joyce, and that was no choice at all.
So here they were, on the 09.44 from Polegate to London Victoria. She is still choosing not to tell Joyce about the threat against her. Was that right? Could Joyce handle a death threat? Elizabeth had yet to see Joyce’s limits, but surely she must have some?
‘You’ll have been through Staffordshire, Joyce, yes. It’s quite broad.’
Joyce has been telling Elizabeth her new theory. That Fiona Clemence had been involved in Bethany Waites’s murder and wouldn’t it, all things being considered, be worth talking to her? Nice to think about that for a while, rather than what she is about to do.
Elizabeth feels the weight of the gun in the handbag sitting on her lap. A gun, a pen, some lipstick and a crossword book. Just like the good old days.
‘Is there a trolley on this train?’ Joyce asks. ‘Or do we have to go to the buffet car?’
‘There’s a trolley,’ says Elizabeth.
