The Bullet That Missed полностью

I remembered Bethany Waites, of course, and I had read a piece Mike Waghorn had written in the Kent Messenger about her murder, so I thought to myself, hello, Joyce, this looks suspicious, and you might get to meet Mike Waghorn.

Is that so wrong?

I have been watching Mike Waghorn on South East Tonight for as long as I can remember. If anyone gets murdered or opens a fête anywhere in the South East, Mike will be there, with that big smile on his face. Actually, he doesn’t smile for the murders. Then he does a serious face, which he is also very good at. I actually prefer his serious face, so if there has been a murder, at least that’s a silver lining. He looks a little bit like if Michael Bublé were more my age.

Mike has done South East Tonight for thirty-five years now, but every five years or so they get a new woman to host it with him. Which is where Bethany Waites came in.

Bethany Waites was blonde and Northern and she died in a car that drove over Shakespeare Cliff, near Dover. (It’s just off the A20, I looked it up, because I suspect we’ll be going there at some point.) This must have been almost ten years ago. You would have thought it was just a suicide, cliffs and cars and what have you, but there were all sorts of other things. Someone had been seen in the car with her just beforehand, there were ambiguous messages on her phone, the waters were muddied. So the police called it murder and, looking through their files, we were inclined to agree.

It was very big news around here at the time. Not an awful lot happens in Kent, so you can imagine. They had a special tribute show and I remember Mike crying, and Fiona Clemence having to put an arm around him on air. Fiona was the new co-host by then.

Fiona Clemence is so famous now, lots of people don’t realize she started on South East Tonight. I asked Mike if he watches her quiz Stop the Clock, but he said he doesn’t. Which must make him the only one in the country who doesn’t. Pauline – she’s the make-up artist, and we will get back to her – said he’s just jealous, but Mike said he doesn’t watch TV.

I will be honest with you. I’d hoped that this evening I would flirt with Mike, and he would tell me how much he liked my necklace, and I would blush and giggle, and Elizabeth would roll her eyes.

But nothing doing, I’m afraid.

‘All wag, no horn,’ was how Ron put it. Mike gave me a peck on the cheek, and at one point he brushed my hand and there was electricity, but I think that was the combination of the deep carpet outside the restaurant and my new cardigan.

He interviewed Ron this afternoon: they’re doing a piece about retirement living on South East Today. This was all Elizabeth’s suggestion; she made me email one of the producers. If you want to lure someone, go to Elizabeth.

I have to admit Ron was actually rather good. He knows when to turn it on. He talked about loneliness and friendship and security, and I was very proud of him for being so open. You can see that Ibrahim rubs off on him. At one point he got distracted and started talking about West Ham, but Mike steered him back on course.

What we really wanted out of this whole plan, though, was information about Bethany Waites, and Mike was certainly happy to chat. He was three sheets to the wind, and he told us a lot of things we already knew from the files, but he was fired up.

The basic facts are these. Bethany had been investigating a huge VAT fraud. To do with importing and exporting mobile phones. The scheme had made millions.

A woman named Heather Garbutt had been behind it. She worked for a man named Jack Mason, a local crook, and it was widely believed that she was managing the operation on his behalf. Heather later went to jail for the fraud, but Jack Mason did not. Lucky Jack Mason.

One March evening, Bethany had sent Mike a text message, and Mike had expected to see her bright and breezy the next morning. But the next morning was never to come for Bethany.

That night she had been seen leaving her apartment building – we used to call it a block of flats, didn’t we – at about ten p.m., and had then gone AWOL for several hours, no one knows where. She next reappeared on a CCTV camera near Shakespeare Cliff at nearly three a.m. She had an unidentified passenger in her car.

The next time the car is seen is at the bottom of Shakespeare Cliff, wrecked, and containing her blood and her clothes but not her body. Which makes me suspicious, but is apparently common, with the tides around there. A year later, without the faintest sign of her, and with her bank accounts having not been touched, a Presumption of Death certificate had been issued. Again, par for the course, but still you must ask yourself, where’s the body? I didn’t say that out loud to Mike, because you can tell Bethany Waites means a great deal to him.