The Man Who Died Twice (The Thursday Murder Club)

by Richard Osman

  ‘I’m watching mine now,’ says Kendrick. ‘What should we talk about?’

  Ibrahim is looking at the black-and-white feed on his screen. The camera shows the whole aisle of lockers. Even at 8x speed, not a soul has come or gone yet. ‘How is school?’

  ‘Ummm, it’s OK,’ says Kendrick. ‘Do you know Romans?’

  ‘I do,’ says Ibrahim. A backpacker has just stuffed her bag in a locker further down the aisle.

  ‘Who’s your best?’ asks Kendrick.

  ‘My best Roman?’

  ‘Mine is Brutus. There was just a cleaner, but she didn’t steal anything.’

  ‘I think I like Seneca the Younger,’ says Ibrahim. ‘He was the greatest of the Stoic philosophers. He was very good on the theory of the whole thing, but also always looked to give practical advice. He believed philosophy was not a sacred text, but a medicine.’

  ‘Oh, great, we haven’t done him,’ says Kendrick. ‘What’s the best dinosaur? Stegosaurus?’

  ‘Yes, we agree there, Kendrick,’ says Ibrahim, and takes a swig of brandy.

  ‘Does it hurt where they kicked you?’ asks Kendrick, his eyes still clearly glued to the CCTV.

  ‘I tell the others it doesn’t,’ says Ibrahim. ‘But it does, very much.’

  ‘They probably know,’ says Kendrick.

  ‘They probably do,’ says Ibrahim. ‘But you’re the only person I’m telling for sure.’

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Ibrahim,’ says Kendrick. ‘Someone just took a box out of one of the other lockers, but just boring. Did you feel it when they kicked you? Were you frightened?’

  ‘Those are very good questions,’ says Ibrahim, as a man in a suit puts his briefcase in a locker, then takes off his tie and puts that in too. Lost his job and hasn’t told his wife yet. ‘I remember being very scared, and I remember feeling like I was in a washing machine. That’s silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ says Kendrick. ‘If that’s what you felt.’

  ‘And I knew I might die, I remember that. And I thought about that, and I thought it was OK, but perhaps unfair that this was how it was going to happen. And I thought, I wish I’d known.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ says Kendrick.

  ‘And I thought about your grandad, and I thought about Joyce and Elizabeth too, and I knew I would miss them, and I knew they would miss me, and I thought, I hope I don’t die, I hope this ends up OK.’

  ‘I’m happy that you didn’t die, because then we wouldn’t be doing this.’

  Ibrahim lights his cigar.

  ‘If I was being killed I would think of Grandad too, and now I would think of you. And I would think about Cody at school, and Melissa and also Miss Warren. And I would think mainly about my mum. Wow, that’s a big cigarette! You shouldn’t smoke, did you know that?’

  Ibrahim takes a puff. ‘Mostly I do what I’m told, life is easier that way. But sometimes I don’t do what I’m told.’

  ‘Like me,’ says Kendrick. ‘Sometimes I stay awake, but Mum doesn’t know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think about your dad?’ asks Ibrahim. ‘If you were being killed?’

  Kendrick considers this for a moment. ‘I think maybe he’d be angry about it.’

  Ibrahim nods and tucks this away. ‘I didn’t think about my dad either.’

  ‘You don’t have a dad, Uncle Ibrahim. He would be a thousand.’

  The boys settle to their work for a while. Ibrahim sees seven or eight people walking up the aisle, always to other lockers, and Kendrick sees about the same. No one has yet touched locker 531. The occasional conversation is very easy, and Ibrahim discovers that Kendrick’s favourite number is thirteen, because he feels sorry for it, and Kendrick sets him a quiz about the planets. Biggest, Jupiter, best, Saturn. (‘Not Earth?’ ‘You can’t count Earth!’) The clock on the screen ticks on, eight times faster than the clock on his bedside table. Another cleaner comes in at the end of the day, and they are done.

  ‘That was so good,’ says Kendrick. ‘Can we do the other day together now?’

  Ibrahim agrees that they can. He receives a text from Elizabeth – Any news? – and he replies Yes. I am concerned about Kendrick’s relationship with his father. Elizabeth replies back with a rolling-eyes emoji. She has really taken to emojis.

  After a toilet break, considerably quicker for Kendrick than for Ibrahim, they settle down for the footage from the day Elizabeth and Joyce opened the locker, and so they will stop as soon as they see them.

  The fast-forwarded black-and-white images zoom by once again. Neither Ibrahim nor Kendrick tires, because who tires when they are having fun? Ibrahim asks if Kendrick likes books and Kendrick says he likes some of them but not others, and Kendrick asks if Ibrahim ever lived in another country, and Ibrahim replies Egypt, and Kendrick spells it for him.

  Ibrahim is looking at the video when, around lunchtime, he sees Elizabeth and Joyce, and slows the footage down to normal speed. He can’t hear what they are saying, but you can always pretty much guess with those two. He sees them having trouble opening the locker, sees Joyce go into her bag, then sees Elizabeth try again, and the locker door pops open. The picture quality is not great, but you can make most things out. Elizabeth takes out the crisp packet, the one she showed Ibrahim this morning, then Joyce puts it in her bag, and they leave.

  Kendrick wants to see the footage of Joyce and Elizabeth, and says, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s really them,’ when he does. But they find nothing else and admit defeat. So no one had visited the locker? No one had tried to open it until Elizabeth and Joyce arrived.

  ‘I wish we’d seen a baddie,’ says Kendrick.

  ‘Me too,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Elizabeth won’t be pleased.’

  ‘Let’s do the day before,’ says Kendrick. ‘Just for fun and in case?’

  Ibrahim agrees, because the moment this task is over Kendrick will be heading back to his grandfather’s.

  They watch the footage from the twenty-fifth, the day before Poppy and Douglas were murdered. Or just Poppy, if you believed Elizabeth. Had Douglas really faked his own death? Hmmm. They are a little quieter this time, both comfortable in the silence. Kendrick makes Ibrahim guess how fast a rocket is, but that’s about it.

  As they are watching together, they both see the figure at the same time. Walking down the aisle like the hundred or so others they must have seen before. But this figure is wearing motorcycle leathers and a closed helmet. And this figure stops dead in front of locker 531.

  ‘What have we here, Kendrick?’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Maybe a baddie?’ says Kendrick.

  ‘Maybe a baddie,’ agrees Ibrahim, and takes another puff on his cigar. Who needs the outside world?

  52

  Lance James settles into a huge white sofa next to Sue Reardon. The whole house smells of white fig and pomegranate. He knows that smell well. Or used to before Ruth moved out, taking her candles with her. He will sometimes light a match after he has been to the bathroom, but that’s as new-age as Lance gets.

  ‘Do you have a cleaner, Mr Lomax?’ Sue Reardon asks. ‘A white sofa is a very bold choice.’

  ‘A woman from the village has done it for years,’ says Martin Lomax. ‘Margery, or Maggie, something like that. Thank you so much for popping in, I don’t like to travel. I get car sick.’

  ‘It’s no problem at all, Lance was only at the bottom of your drive taking photos,’ says Sue. ‘And I’m not busy, just investigating the deaths of a couple of colleagues.’

  ‘Investigating?’ says Martin Lomax. ‘I assumed you killed them? Did you not?’

  ‘Believe it or not, no, we didn’t. We assumed that you killed them,’ says Lance.

  Martin Lomax juts out a lip and nods. ‘Well, we can’t both be right. They’re dead, though, that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Yes, that’s some common ground,’ agrees Sue. ‘How does it work with you having a cleaner? Aren’t you worried she’ll stumble across something?’

  ‘I always tidy up before she comes round
. Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tidy away some magazines and do the washing-up,’ says Sue.

  ‘I’m like that, too. Always hurrying around half an hour before she arrives, I’ve always left something out, a brick of cocaine or some such. I’ve got so lazy with tidying up my things over the years.’

  ‘Hence leaving the diamonds lying about, of course,’ chides Sue.

  ‘Well, quite,’ agrees Lomax. ‘Anyway, then I put Radio 4 on for her, and away she goes. How many people have you killed, do you think?’

  ‘Eight or nine,’ says Sue. ‘You?’

  ‘Same, pretty much,’ says Martin Lomax.

  Lance looks around. They are in a conservatory with beautiful views of the gardens. There is some stray bunting hanging from a eucalyptus tree. They must have had an event. Martin Lomax has yet to offer them a coffee, or even a glass of water. It doesn’t seem to be a power play, it just seems not to have occurred to him.

  ‘I know this is boring,’ says Lomax, ‘and I know I bang on about it, but I really do need to find those diamonds.’

  ‘Likewise,’ says Sue.

  ‘Well, you don’t really need to find them, do you?’

  ‘I’m afraid we do,’ says Lance.

  ‘Not really, though. Obviously, you’d look good if you found them. Obviously, people would be pleased with you. But they’re not your diamonds, Sue, are they?’

  ‘Well, they’re not yours either, are they?’ says Sue.

  ‘I read a book once where the mafia had somebody ripped apart by tigers,’ says Lomax. ‘At a private zoo. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid we don’t have the diamonds,’ says Sue. ‘And we have no idea where they are.’

  ‘Rats,’ says Martin Lomax. ‘In my head you killed them, some big cover-up. You hear about it with your gang, don’t you? Tortured the information out of them?’

  ‘We didn’t,’ says Lance.

  ‘Can you not just give Frank Andrade his twenty million pounds?’ says Sue. ‘Just give him cash and call it quits?’

  ‘My assets tend to be illiquid. And they also tend to belong to someone else. I could steal from the Mexicans to pay the mafia, then steal from the Serbians to pay the Mexicans. I’d be the old lady who swallowed the fly, and where would that leave me?’

  ‘Dead, of course,’ says Sue Reardon.

  53

  The gang are all crowded around Ibrahim’s bed. Elizabeth has brought a notebook, Joyce has brought chocolate fingers and Ron has brought a copy of Rocky III (‘the best Rocky’) for Ibrahim to watch with him later.

  But there is another film for them to watch first. Elizabeth is drumming her fingers and Ron is pacing as Ibrahim gets everything ready. He gets the footage up on his screen. Kendrick is on the balcony playing Pokémon.

  ‘So,’ says Ibrahim, ‘here is today’s question. Who is this?’

  Ibrahim presses play, and they all watch as the figure in the motorcycle helmet walks down the row of lockers and stops in front of 531. The figure inserts a key.

  ‘Looks like he’s having trouble with the lock too,’ says Joyce.

  ‘Or she,’ says Ron. Ibrahim notes that Ron is getting much sharper on his gender neutrality.

  The figure has trouble with the lock but eventually it pops open. The camera angle doesn’t show the inside of the locker, but they know precisely what the figure is seeing. They watch as the biker takes the crisp packet out of the locker, then tosses it back in. The biker stares at the empty locker for quite some time before locking it back up and leaving.

  Ibrahim stops the footage and it becomes a still image. ‘And there we have it,’ he says.

  ‘So this was the day before Poppy and Douglas were shot?’ says Joyce.

  ‘Yes, we weren’t even going to check the day before. Kendrick suggested it.’

  ‘Kendrick?’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Yes, Ron’s idea,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Thought he might enjoy it,’ says Ron.

  ‘If this was the day before, then how did somebody else know about locker 531?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘Douglas must have told somebody else,’ says Joyce.

  ‘Douglas probably told everyone,’ says Ron. ‘All his ex-wives. Stuck it on Facebook.’

  ‘Unless it is Douglas,’ says Joyce. ‘I mean, it could be, couldn’t it?’

  ‘It could be anyone, Joyce,’ says Ron. ‘It could be Elizabeth, for all we know.’

  ‘Douglas was in protective custody the whole time, it couldn’t possibly be him,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And, besides, he was the one person who knew the locker was empty.’

  ‘But who else would he have told?’ asks Joyce.

  They stare at the figure on the screen. Dark leathers, dark helmet, dark gloves.

  ‘What are we missing?’ asks Elizabeth. ‘Let’s watch again.’

  They sit through the footage again. And again. And again. But nothing. Elizabeth slumps back.

  ‘We can’t tell the gender, we can’t tell the age, we can’t even tell the height because of the angle of the camera.’

  Kendrick walks in from the balcony. ‘That was really good orange squash, Uncle Ibrahim. Did you all see the clue?’

  ‘The clue?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘Hello, Elizabeth,’ says Kendrick. ‘Yeah, did you see it? I bet you did.’

  ‘I mean, I read certain things into posture, and into stride patterns, if that’s –’

  ‘No, the clue. Did you see it, Joyce?’

  ‘I didn’t spot a thing,’ says Joyce.

  ‘We made cupcakes earlier, and I did the icing,’ says Kendrick. ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘No, you have mine,’ says Joyce.

  ‘OK,’ says Kendrick. ‘Grandad and Uncle Ibrahim, I bet you saw it?’

  ‘I saw it,’ says Ron. ‘But in case it’s not the same clue you saw, why don’t you say yours first?’

  Kendrick leans forward into the screen. ‘OK, watch the bit where he’s opening the locker.’

  Ibrahim speeds the footage through and pauses it. The four of them are all looking at each other. Ron shakes his head a little and shrugs.

  ‘You see when he reaches up to the lock?’ says Kendrick.

  They do see.

  ‘And you see a little gap between his jacket and his glove?’

  They lean forward. There is a gap as the jacket slides down towards the elbow.

  ‘And there’s the clue!’

  The short-sighted lean further forward, and the long-sighted lean further back.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘He’s wearing one of Joyce’s friendship bracelets.’

  Coiled around the wrist of the figure opening locker 531 are some inexpertly woven strands of wool, studded with sequins.

  Everyone in the room looks down at their wrists, and then at Joyce.

  Joyce looks down at her bracelet, then back up at her friends. ‘Well, that narrows things down nicely.’

  54

  Joyce

  You will never guess what?

  Kendrick had been looking at the security footage from the Left Luggage Office. This is Ron and Ibrahim’s idea of an appropriate project for an eight-year-old. Anyway, he spotted that the figure in the motorcycle helmet was wearing one of my friendship bracelets!

  You really could tell it was one of mine. I don’t think anybody else makes them quite like me.

  You can imagine the fun we had next.

  Who was our biker? Ibrahim made a list on his computer of all the people I had given friendship bracelets to. No one from the mafia, for starters, so that was Ron out of the water. He came up with an elaborate scenario in which I had been seduced by an elderly Italian-American on the minibus and we all had a good giggle. Chance would be a fine thing. You can see he’s disappointed though.

  The four of us were on the list, of course, and Kendrick. Imagine if it was Kendrick? In a book it would be. Wouldn’t it be fun to be in a book? I bet my hip wouldn’t hurt so much
in a book.

  Then a few more interesting names. Sue Reardon has a bracelet. Could it have been her? Might Douglas have told her where he had left the diamonds? Elizabeth says she would have taken the crisp packet though.

  Lance? Less likely that Douglas might have told him, but more likely he’d have missed the crisp packet.

  Siobhan, Poppy’s mum, has one. Had Douglas told Poppy, and Poppy told her mum? Siobhan seems very quiet and unassuming, but don’t we all?

  Martin Lomax? But I didn’t give him a bracelet until after the CCTV was taken. Also, I know I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, but I am fairly sure his went in the bin the moment we left. I did pay in his five-pound cheque to Living With Dementia by the way. Even the woman at the bank looked like she hadn’t seen a cheque for years.

  So, who else? A few people from around the village, Colin Clemence, Gordon Playfair, Jane from Larkin who is having an affair with Geoff Weekes, and don’t we all know it? In fact, she gave hers to Geoff Weekes, so I suppose we have to count him too.

  And then Bogdan, of course. I nearly forgot him.

  We talked for an hour or so. Who, why, when, what? Then Mark arrived in his taxi, time for Kendrick to go home. We had a big cuddle.

  Ibrahim fell asleep – he’s still not at his best – so Elizabeth and I left. Ron said he’d be back to watch his film once he’d dropped Kendrick off.

  Now, here’s the thing, just between you and me.

  The moment I said goodbye to Elizabeth, I had a thought. About how to identify the biker for certain. I was going to call after her, but I thought, no, Joyce, for once in your life why not fly solo? You don’t always need Elizabeth.

  And so this morning I took the minibus down to Fairhaven. I did the same walk, along the same streets, to Fairhaven station. A bit slower than last time, because Elizabeth is a strider. I know she doesn’t mean to be, but she is.

  I made straight for the Left-Luggage Office and, as I’d hoped, the nice girl with the hair and the headphones was on duty. She even recognized me, which made my day. No one ever recognizes me.