Stephen puffs out his cheeks as his options dwindle. ‘You need to send me somewhere, Elizabeth. Somewhere they can care for me properly, twenty-four hours a day. I will look at my list of suggestions.’
‘I can care for you properly,’ says Elizabeth.
‘No,’ says Stephen. ‘I won’t have it.’
‘I hope I might have a say in the matter too.’
Stephen reaches across the desk and takes Elizabeth’s hand. ‘I need you to promise me you won’t destroy this letter.’
‘I won’t make a promise I can’t keep,’ says Elizabeth. My God, his hand, my hand, she thinks, the way they fit together, the two of them.
‘I need you to show me this letter every day,’ says Stephen. ‘Do you understand?’
Elizabeth looks at her husband. Then she looks at the letter that this clever man wrote to himself a year ago. What must he have been going through? One of those days of galumphing typing had been this letter. Probably came back into the living room with a big smile on his face. ‘Cup of tea, old girl?’
To show Stephen this letter every day would be to lose him. But to not show him would be to betray him. And that is no choice at all.
‘I promise,’ she says.
Now the tears come from Stephen. They stand and they embrace. Stephen is shaking and sobbing. He is saying ‘sorry’, she is saying ‘sorry’, but to whom, and for what, is lost on them both.
Elizabeth realizes what the smell was when she had walked into the flat, fifteen minutes earlier, a whole lifetime ago. She knew she had recognized it.
It was fear. Cold-blooded, sweat-soaked fear.
In theory Ron was all for keeping an eye on a major heroin importation hub, and trying to find a murderer.
However, thus far, in practice, it has largely involved sitting in the back of his Daihatsu, looking through some binoculars he bought from Lidl, at a hangar that no one had entered or exited for an hour, while listening to Ibrahim reading Joyce an article about Ecuador from the
‘Is being a spy always this boring?’ he asks Elizabeth. She has been unusually quiet today.
‘It’s 90 per cent this, 5 per cent paperwork and 5 per cent killing people,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Ibrahim, is this article going to take much longer?’
‘I’m enjoying it,’ says Joyce.
‘Joyce is enjoying it,’ says Ibrahim, and continues with a paragraph about the pressures felt by the tech sector in Quito.
A black Range Rover pulls up in front of them in the lay-by, blocking them in.
‘Aye, aye,’ says Ron, putting down his binoculars. Elizabeth’s hand moves instinctively to her bag. In front of them a man steps from the driver’s seat of the Range Rover and approaches the Daihatsu. He knocks on Ibrahim’s window. Ibrahim winds it down.
The man pokes his head across the threshold, and takes in the four figures, one by one.
‘Day out, is it?’ A Scouse accent.
‘Birdwatching,’ says Ron, holding up his binoculars.
‘That’s a lovely overcoat,’ says Joyce. ‘Would you like a Percy Pig?’
She holds out a bag of sweets to the man; he takes one, and talks as he chews.
‘You’ve been looking at my warehouse for an hour,’ he says. ‘Seen anything?’
‘Not a thing, Mr Holt,’ says Elizabeth.
Dominic Holt pauses for a moment at the sound of his name.
‘Call me Dom,’ says Dom.
‘Not a thing, Dom, not even a hint of heroin,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Commendable on your part. Though I suppose shipments are few and far between?’
‘Most days it’s just admin?’ asks Joyce.
‘I run a legitimate logistics company,’ says Dom.
‘And I’m a harmless pensioner,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Me too,’ says Joyce. ‘Another Percy Pig? I can never have just one.’
Dom Holt holds up his hand to decline. ‘May I ask how you know my name?’
‘One doesn’t have to scratch very far under the surface of the South Coast heroin trade before your name crops up,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Right,’ says Dom, contemplating. Ron has seen the effect that the Thursday Murder Club has on people before.
‘Don’t know what to make of us, do you, son?’ says Ron.
Dom gives them another look, and seems to make up his mind.
‘I’ll tell you what I make of you,’ says Dom. He points at Ron. ‘You’re Jason Ritchie’s old man. Roy?’
‘Ron,’ says Ron.
‘Seen you with him before. He’s a wrong ’un, so I’m guessing you are too.’ Dom points at Ibrahim. ‘I don’t know your name, but you’re the guy who goes to see Connie Johnson at Darwell Prison. Word is you’re a Moroccan cocaine importer. That true?’
‘No comment,’ says Ibrahim. Has Ron ever seen him look so proud?
‘You,’ says Dom, nodding his head towards Elizabeth. ‘No idea who you are, but you’ve got a gun in your bag. Badly hidden.’
‘I’m not hiding it,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Now do me,’ says Joyce.
Dom looks at Joyce. ‘You look like you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd.’
Joyce nods. Dom beckons to them all. ‘Come on, out. All of you.’
The gang exit the car. Ron thinks it’s nice to be able to stretch his legs. Dom appraises them as a group.
‘So I’ve got a dodgy cockney, a coke dealer, some old bird with a shooter, and …’ He looks at Joyce again.
‘Joyce,’ says Joyce.
