The Man Who Died Twice (The Thursday Murder Club)

by Richard Osman

  ‘Of course I did, darling. They were just sitting there. Couldn’t resist.’

  Elizabeth nods.

  ‘And I need you to keep me safe long enough so I can pick them up, take them to Antwerp and cash them in. Thought I’d stumbled across the perfect crime, didn’t I? If I hadn’t taken that stupid mask off I’d be in Bermuda already, I assure you.’

  ‘I see,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And where are the diamonds now, Douglas?’

  ‘Keep me alive, my darling, and I’ll tell you,’ says Douglas. ‘Ah, here’s our friend Hermione Granger.’

  Poppy has reached the bench. She motions to her headphones, asking if it’s safe to take them off. Elizabeth gives her a nod.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed the walk, dear?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘Very much,’ says Poppy. ‘We used to do hiking at uni.’

  ‘What were you listening to? Grime music?’

  ‘A podcast about bees,’ says Poppy. ‘If they die, we’re doomed, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then I shall be more careful in future,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Now, Poppy, Douglas has persuaded me to accept the position you are offering. I imagine I can be helpful.’

  ‘Oh, terrific,’ says Poppy. ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘I have two caveats, however. Firstly, this task, keeping an eye out and so on, will be so much easier to perform with my three friends to help me.’

  ‘That’s impossible, I’m afraid,’ says Poppy.

  ‘Oh, my dear, as you get older you’ll realize very few things are impossible. Certainly not this.’

  ‘And the second thing?’ asks Douglas.

  ‘Well, the second thing is very important. More important than diamonds, and more important than Douglas. If I’m to accept this job, then I need a favour from MI5. A simple favour, but one that will mean a great deal to me.’

  ‘Go on?’ says Poppy.

  ‘I need all the information you have on a teenager from Fairhaven named Ryan Baird.’

  ‘Ryan Baird?’ says Douglas.

  ‘Oh, Douglas, stop repeating what I last said, it’s a terrible habit of yours. That and adultery.’

  Elizabeth stands and crooks an elbow so Poppy can take her arm.

  ‘Could you do that for me, dear?’

  ‘I mean I suppose I could,’ says Poppy. ‘Can I ask what it’s for?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, no,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Then can you promise me this Ryan Baird won’t come to any harm?’

  ‘Oh “promise” is such a big word, isn’t it? Let’s all have a nice walk home. I don’t want you to be late for your lunch shift.’

  10

  Joyce

  So I have joined Instagram, if you know it?

  Joanna persuaded me. She said you can see all sorts of photos from all sorts of people. Nigella, Fiona Bruce, everyone.

  I joined this morning. It asked me for a ‘username’ so I put in my name and it said ‘@JoyceMeadowcroft has already been taken’ and I thought ‘I should be so lucky’. Then I tried @JoyceMeadowcroft2, but that was gone as well.

  Then I thought about nicknames, but really most people just call me Joyce. Then I remembered a nickname from back in my nursing days. There was one consultant who would always call me ‘Great Joy’. Whenever our paths crossed, he would say, ‘Ah, here she is, Great Joy, her beautiful smile spreading happiness.’ Which was lovely, but not when you’re changing a catheter.

  Looking back, I realize he wanted to get into my apron, and I would have let him, had I caught on. The paths not taken.

  So I tried ‘@GreatJoy’, but nothing doing. I added my year of birth so I was ‘@GreatJoy44’ but still no luck. Then I added Joanna’s year of birth and, bingo! So I’m all set up and registered as ‘@GreatJoy69’, and am looking forward to having lots of fun. I’ve already followed the Hairy Bikers and the National Trust.

  It was a nice thing to do, to be honest, because today is Sunday, and I sometimes get blue on Sundays. Time seems to go a little slower. I think because lots of people are spending it with their families. The restaurant is always full of fidgeting nieces and disappointing sons-in-law. Also on Sunday the daytime TV is not as good, the Bargain Hunts are always repeats, there’s no Homes Under the Hammer, nothing. Joanna says I can watch something on catch-up, and I’m sure she’s right, but that feels even lonelier somehow. I’d honestly rather she just came down for lunch with her mum. She does come sometimes, to be fair. She was here an awful lot more during the murders, and who can blame her? Not me.

  In the absence of any more murders, though, I imagine a dog would be a draw. Though Joanna’s probably allergic. She never was as a child, but people seem to get allergic to all sorts as soon as they move to London.

  Today I am going to get a taxi down to Fairhaven with Ron and Elizabeth to visit Ibrahim, so that will cheer me up at least. I love hospitals, they’re like airports.

  I have bought Ibrahim a Sunday Times, because I once saw one at his place. Goodness me, it weighs a ton. To lighten the load I have taken out any sections I think won’t interest him, but that’s only fashion, and a special pull-out report about Estonia, so it has made very little difference. I have also bought him some flowers, a big Dairy Milk, and a can of Red Bull because of the adverts.

  I know the others were shaken to see him bruised and bandaged, but I was grateful to see it was only that. I was certainly relieved to hear him talking. Relieved, and then a bit bored, because you know Ibrahim, but the boredom was a lovely feeling.

  I have seen worse is all I’m saying. A great deal worse. I won’t go into details.

  On our way there on Friday I was reassuring Ron and Elizabeth, nothing to worry about, he’s in good hands, they found him so quickly. But I had feared the worst. There are some injuries you don’t recover from. Ron and Elizabeth are no fools, of course, so they will have known I was just being reassuring, but that doesn’t make it any less important. At any given time, somebody has to be calm, and it was my turn.

  When I got home I had a cry, and I’m sure they both did too. But when we were together, we were as good as gold.

  I know I’m only talking about the immediate injuries, by the way. I realize there is an awful road ahead for Ibrahim when what has happened sinks in. He is very wise, but he is also very vulnerable. Perhaps he is wise because he is vulnerable? Because he lets everything in? Now I’m the one who sounds like a psychiatrist! I think I would talk too much to be a psychiatrist. You wouldn’t get your hour’s worth.

  Is it psychiatrist or psychotherapist, by the way? I can’t remember which one Ibrahim calls himself. I’ll ask him today. I am looking forward to seeing him ever so much. One thing I know is that it will be important to have good friends around him when he gets home, and I can guarantee that.

  Another thing I can guarantee? The boy who decided to steal my friend’s phone, and aim a kick at my friend’s head, and race off leaving him for dead? He will wish he was never born.

  I don’t think psychiatrists really encourage revenge. I don’t know, but I imagine they might preach forgiveness, like Buddhists? There was a quote on Facebook about it. Either way, psychiatrists and I are going to have to disagree on this one.

  Perhaps Ryan Baird has had a difficult upbringing? Perhaps his dad left or his mum left, or they both left, or he’s hooked on drugs, or he was bullied, or he didn’t fit in. Perhaps all of these things are true, and perhaps there are places Ryan Baird might find a sympathetic hearing. But he won’t find one with me, he won’t find one with Ron and he won’t find one with Elizabeth. Ryan is out of whatever luck he may ever have had.

  I can’t tell you how tempted I am to have some of this Dairy Milk. I know Ibrahim will let me have some as soon as I hand it over, but you know what it’s like when it’s just staring you straight in the face? I should have bought him grapes, then I wouldn’t have been tempted.

  I will have a bit of the chocolate now. Don’t you think? I’ll just nip up to the shop and buy him a new one before the taxi
arrives. Then everyone’s happy, aren’t they?

  I see that @GreatJoy69 has already had a few private messages on Instagram. That was quick! I will take a look at them when I get back. How very exciting!

  11

  The woman from the Sunday Telegraph is very friendly, but Martin Lomax supposes that’s all part of her job. She is cooing over his Japanese anemones and stroking one of his ornamental box hedges as they wander.

  ‘I mean, I’ve seen some beautiful private gardens, Mr Lomax, but really this tops them all. It tops them all. Where has this been hiding?’

  Martin Lomax nods, and they keep walking. She seems quite happy talking. It is a beautiful garden, he knows that. It really should be for the money. But the best? The very best? Come now. But that’s her job, of course.

  ‘The use of symmetry is fascinating. It unfurls, doesn’t it? It reveals itself. Do you know the famous William Blake poem, Mr Lomax?’

  Martin Lomax shakes his head. He once killed a poet, but that’s as far as he and poetry go.

  ‘Tyger tyger in the night, burning very very bright. What immortal symmetry. Have thee.’

  Martin Lomax nods again and thinks he should probably say something like ‘beautiful’. In case she starts to think he might be a sociopath. He has read The Psychopath Test.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  He has wanted to be in the Sunday Telegraph’s ‘Britain’s Best Gardens’ supplement for a long time. In the distance he sees the photographer under a hedge, shooting upwards into the cloudless sky. That will be a beautiful photograph. There is a box containing half a million emergency dollars buried under that hedge, because you should never keep all your money in one place.

  ‘And you’re having your first ever Open Garden event this week?’ asks the journalist.

  Martin Lomax nods. He was looking forward to it. To showing off what he had created. He could watch from an upstairs window as people enjoyed themselves. If anyone decided to take a liberty, he would have them killed. But everybody else would be very welcome.

  ‘For the piece, we were going to describe you as a “businessman”. Does that suit? I read all about you – private insurance services, was that it? I wonder if that would just confuse people. “Businessman” usually does the trick, or if it’s a woman, “mum and entrepreneur”. Sometimes we’ll say “heir to the something fortune”. But you’re happy with “businessman”?’

  Martin Lomax nods. He had a Ukrainian coming to the house this afternoon. The Ukrainian has just agreed to buy some decommissioned Saudi anti-aircraft missiles for twelve million dollars and is planning to kidnap a racehorse as down payment.

  ‘The chrysanthemums are beautiful,’ says the woman. ‘Exquisite.’

  A kidnapped racehorse was not ideal, as far as Martin Lomax was concerned, but if both sides were happy with the arrangement he has ample stabling by the paddock. He has done business with the Ukrainians before and found them violent but trustworthy. Martin Lomax will get the local Scout troop to run a refreshment stall on one of the Open Garden days. Water and so on. People need water, he has noticed. They go crazy for the stuff.

  ‘Dawn,’ calls the journalist to the photographer. ‘Can you get some shots of this mulch? It’s imported from Crete.’

  No plastic water bottles, though; people would complain, and he wouldn’t want anything to spoil the experience. Thinking it through now, he realizes he will have to keep people away from the stables, just in case. And, of course, away from the house, that goes without saying. And away from the bodies in the cesspit, though who would go near that, anyway? And no digging. There are grenades somewhere. For the life of him he can’t remember where they are buried, but he knows they are in a safe location, and he has written it down somewhere. Under the Venetian gazebo? On reflection, he can’t even remember whose grenades they were, or why he had agreed to bury them, but that comes with age.

  ‘We don’t need any biographical detail, Mr Lomax, but people like it sometimes. Can I mention a wife? Children?’

  Martin Lomax shakes his head. ‘One-man band.’

  ‘That’s absolutely fine. It’s all about the gardens, really.’

  Martin Lomax nods. After the Ukrainian, he would have to deal with that other matter. The break-in. He had handled it very nicely so far. You shouldn’t really mess with MI5, he knows that, and he would far rather be friend than foe. But twenty million is twenty million when all’s said and done. He is certain that somebody will end up dead, and he just needs to make sure it’s not him.

  ‘Do you think, I wonder, that I might use your bathroom?’ asks the journalist. ‘Long trip here, long trip back.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Martin Lomax. ‘There’s one in the equipment shed. You see it? Behind the fountain? I don’t think there’s paper, so use whatever’s at hand.’

  ‘Oh, yes, certainly, certainly,’ says the journalist. ‘Don’t suppose I could be cheeky and go in the house?’

  Martin Lomax shakes his head again. ‘The equipment shed is nearer.’

  No one ever comes in the house unless it’s business. No one. First it’s toilets, and then you never know what. MI5 think they can just break in? We’ll see about that. Martin Lomax has many friends. Saudi princes, a one-eyed Kazakh with a one-eyed Rottweiler. Both the Kazakh and the Rottweiler would rip you apart without hesitation. No one comes into the house without his invitation.

  Martin Lomax looks around the gardens once more. How lucky he is to live among such beauty. It was a wonderful world when you thought about it. But enough reflection for the moment, he had anti-aircraft missiles to worry about. And maybe he should bake some biscuits for the Open Garden too? Perhaps some brownies?

  He hears an ancient toilet flush and, in the distance, the first vibrations of an approaching helicopter.

  White chocolate and raspberry? People would like them, he’s sure of it.

  12

  ‘And that’s it in a nutshell. No need for drama, and no need to look at me, jaws agape.’

  Elizabeth finishes her story and sits back in the low chair. For a moment the only sound is Ibrahim’s heart monitor.

  ‘But diamonds?’ says Ibrahim, pushing himself up in his hospital bed.

  ‘Yes,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Twenty million quid’s worth of diamonds?’ says Ron, who had stood still throughout the story, but is now pacing. Joyce had brought him fresh underwear from home, and he had dutifully changed in the disabled toilet, even though his present underwear easily had another day in it.

  ‘Yes,’ says Elizabeth, rolling her eyes. ‘Any more obvious questions?’

  Ibrahim, Joyce and Ron look at each other.

  ‘He’s your ex-husband?’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘He is, yes,’ says Elizabeth. ‘With respect to the three of you, this is tiresome. Any questions about anything I haven’t covered?’

  ‘And we’ll get to meet him?’ asks Ron. ‘In the flesh?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes,’ says Elizabeth.

  Ron and Ibrahim are shaking their heads in wonder. Elizabeth turns to Joyce.

  ‘Joyce, you’re very quiet. Nothing to ask about the diamonds or the ex-husband? Or the mafia? Or the Colombians?’

  Joyce shifts forward in her seat. ‘Well, I have plenty to say about it all, and I’m excited to meet Douglas. I bet he’s handsome. Is he handsome?’

  ‘A bit too obviously handsome,’ says Elizabeth. ‘If you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘Ooh, I do know that sort of thing,’ says Joyce. ‘You can’t be obvious enough for me.’

  ‘Not as handsome as Stephen, though,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Oh, no one’s as handsome as Stephen,’ says Joyce. ‘But, honestly, all I was really thinking, all the way through, was that it explains Poppy’s nails.’

  ‘Yes, I could see the penny drop,’ says Elizabeth.

  A nurse walks into the room to fill Ibrahim’s water jug and the friends fall silent and nod their thanks. She leaves.

  ‘I am conventional
ly handsome,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Not at the moment you’re not,’ says Ron.

  ‘So you need us to look out for him?’ asks Joyce. ‘Like bodyguards?’

  ‘Hardly bodyguards, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘We’re guarding his body,’ says Ron.

  ‘All right, bodyguards then, Ron, as you wish.’

  Ron nods. ‘Yep, I do wish.’

  ‘Well, the invitation is there,’ says Elizabeth. ‘If you’re too busy, then don’t.’

  ‘I can fit it in,’ says Ron. ‘We getting paid?’

  ‘After a fashion, yes,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Douglas and Poppy have agreed to give us information on Ryan Baird.’

  ‘Ryan Baird?’ asks Ron.

  ‘That’s the name of the boy who stole Ibrahim’s phone,’ says Joyce.

  ‘Oh,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Ryan Baird,’ says Ron. ‘Ryan Baird.’

  ‘I didn’t … I don’t think I like him having a surname,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I think it’s harder to pretend it never happened when he has a surname. I don’t … sorry, I’m not sure about this at all.’

  ‘I know,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I understand. We’re taking care of it.’

  ‘Revenge is what you need,’ says Ron. ‘Beaten up, locked up, whatever Elizabeth’s got in store.’

  ‘I don’t really believe in revenge,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘I knew it,’ says Joyce quietly.

  ‘Well, I do,’ says Ron.

  ‘As do I,’ says Elizabeth. ‘So the matter is decided, I’m afraid. Now, let’s agree to speak his name no more.’

  The room falls quiet. Ibrahim tilts his head back. He grimaces slightly.

  ‘What do you think Douglas has done with the diamonds?’ asks Ibrahim.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Elizabeth. ‘But it feels like it might be fun to find out.’

  ‘Let’s find them and sell ’em,’ says Ron.

  ‘Ooh yes!’ says Joyce. ‘Twenty million between the four of us!’

  ‘What do we know about Martin Lomax?’ asks Ibrahim.