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.
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.
The wine tasting has ended, and there is a suggestion that people might like to use the bathroom before the tour of the winery begins. Chris thought they were going to see a vineyard, but vineyards and wineries are different things. What a lot he is learning today.
He looks at Patrice and nods in the direction of the door. She nods back. She couldn’t have been more enthusiastic when he’d outlined his plan (‘I’m going to be an
‘Ready to break some laws, m’lady?’
‘For you, sir, always,’ says Patrice. ‘Donna would kill us, wouldn’t she?’
‘She’s at an art exhibition in Hastings,’ says Chris. ‘She’ll kill herself first.’
Bogdan has managed to sit in the seat next to Dom Holt. He’d had to very slightly nudge a child out of his way to do it, but he wasn’t about to let Donna down. He lowers his muscular frame into a seat barely adequate for the job. He and Dom Holt nod to each other, like strangers on a train. Bogdan takes an Everton scarf out of his jacket and drapes it over his enormous shoulders. This gets Dom’s attention.
‘You Everton?’ he asks.
‘Yes, Everton,’ says Bogdan. ‘I think I’m the only one.’
