She took off her pretend headphones, and I asked her how she was, and she said she was fine, thank you. And I asked her if she was still having trouble with the manager of Costa, and she said that, if anything, it was getting worse, and he had even offered her a lift home on his motorbike. I told her that, for what it was worth, my experience of men with motorbikes was really very poor, and we laughed like the women of the world neither of us really is. She asked if I needed something from my locker, and I told her I needed something from her, and that it was funny we were talking about motorcycles, and that got her attention.
You see, the thought I’d had, when I left Elizabeth last night, was that the girl at the Left Luggage desk took her job seriously, and did it properly. I thought there was no way she’d let someone walk into the locker area willy-nilly wearing a motorcycle helmet. And it turns out I was right.
She apologized that she didn’t remember the day in question – her job is quite boring, the way she was telling it – but confirmed that she would never let anyone into the lockers without seeing a key, and without seeing a face. So anyone wearing a helmet would have to take it off. I asked if there was CCTV in the desk area, and she said there was because her predecessor had been fired for watching pornography on his laptop while he was working. She said she didn’t blame him, as the days can start to drag.
I thanked her, and she asked what it was all about, and I said I couldn’t tell her, because it was government business. Well, the look on her face. Imagine me saying that if Elizabeth was there, though? I don’t think so. I should do more things by myself.
Then I made the same trip we did last time, through the streets to Fairhaven Police Station to tell Donna about the CCTV. Of course, I forget that Elizabeth always seems to know when Donna is on duty, and Donna wasn’t there. So perhaps I shouldn’t do more things by myself? It is a tightrope.
When I got home, I told Elizabeth what I had done, and she was delighted by my ingenuity, but also annoyed that she hadn’t thought of it. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Joyce?’ she said, and I said that I’d only thought of it on the minibus. Then she told me I was a terrible liar, which, of course, I am. I promised her I wouldn’t do things by myself in future, but she told me never to make a promise I couldn’t keep.
Elizabeth has sent Donna a message about the CCTV, so perhaps we shall soon find out who opened the locker. And, presumably, that might tell us who killed Douglas and Poppy?
55
Coopers Chase looks beautiful in the late-autumn sun. As Donna walks up towards the village a llama tilts a quizzical head towards her over a white fence. Donna nods a good morning to it. On the lake to her right, a goose misjudges a landing, inelegantly belly flopping into the water. She swears the goose looks round to make sure none of the other geese were watching.
Up ahead a woman with a cane sits on a bench, her face raised to the sun. Donna wonders if the woman might be lonely, until a man in a panama hat sits down next to her, with sandwiches and two newspapers. The Daily Mail for him, the Guardian for her. How had they made that work over the years, she wonders. The heart wants what it wants, of course.
She passes another couple, hand in hand, and they both smile and wish her a good morning. They are walking down the path to sit by the lake.
When will Donna get to walk down a path, hand in hand, and sit by a lake?
The path broadens out as it reaches the village, the first building being Willows, the nursing home. Last time she had visited had been when Elizabeth took her to meet Penny, former cop and Elizabeth’s best friend. No longer there, of course. Some other poor soul in her bed.
Would Elizabeth be in there one day? Would Joyce? Would Ron? Surely not Ibrahim? The thought of any of them so diminished upsets her, and Donna keeps walking past Willows with her head down.
Ibrahim’s block lies ahead to her left, through a pretty garden still bursting with colour. A lady using a walking frame moves to one side to let her through and says, ‘Cheer up, my darling, it might never happen.’ Donna gives her a small smile in return.
It might never happen. Well, yes, wasn’t that just the problem?
Walking up the stairs, Donna wonders again what she is doing here. Everybody goes through tough times, don’t they? Everyone feels low? They don’t go bleating all their troubles to a psychiatrist, do they? Not where she’s from. You don’t have psychiatrists in Streatham. You have mates with shoulders to cry on. To tell you to pull yourself together.
But Donna doesn’t have mates in Fairhaven, and so here she is.
Ibrahim’s door is open as Donna reaches the top of the stairs. The man himself moves gingerly, and is able to give her only the gentlest of hugs.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ says Donna.
Ibrahim braces himself against the arms of his chair and manoeuvres himself with awkward grace into it. Donna settles herself opposite him, in a beaten-up armchair beneath a painting of a boat. Just a regular police officer, paying a regular visit to a friend who just happens to be a psychiatrist. She won’t say anything though, it feels silly now she’s actually here. They can just look at the CCTV. She’s OK, just a bit down.
‘Nice to see you out of bed,’ says Donna. ‘How’s the pain?’
‘It’s getting better,’ says Ibrahim. ‘It only really hurts if I breathe.’
Donna smiles. ‘Shall we take a look at this CCTV? I thought you might enjoy it?’
Ibrahim nods. ‘In good time, in good time. But first, how is your pain, Donna?’
‘How’s my pain?’ asks Donna, with a laugh. Oh, OK, is this how it’s going to work? Is this how therapy starts?
‘Yes,’ says Ibrahim, tilting his head to one side, reminding Donna of the llama. ‘How is your pain?’
‘I hurt my wrist in the gym, but that’s the best I’ve got,’ says Donna. She shouldn’t be here, wasting Ibrahim’s time.
‘Is that so?’ asks Ibrahim. Well, it’s more of an observation than a question.
Donna sees that Ibrahim has a large writing pad on the table beside his chair. He reaches over for it and takes a pen from his shirt pocket. OK.
‘I have no interest in putting words in your mouth, Donna,’ says Ibrahim. ‘But you really could have just looked at this new CCTV by yourself. Or sent it to me. Or arranged to meet all of us. But you asked to see me alone?’
‘I wanted to see how you are,’ says Donna.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Which is not unexpected, because you are a very kind woman. As luck would have it, I wanted to see how you are, too. So how about we have a little chat, and we see how we both are?’
She can’t fool Ibrahim, so here we go. She is now Gwyneth Paltrow or something. Donna sits back in the beaten-up old armchair, nods, and closes her eyes. ‘OK.’ It’s not really therapy, is it? If you’re just talking to a friend?
Ibrahim looks down at his watch. ‘Where do you want to start? Leaving London? Your mum and Chris?’
Donna tips her head back and breathes in deeply through her nose.
‘Perhaps we should start with loneliness?’ suggests Ibrahim.
Through Donna’s closed eyes, tears begin to escape.
‘Does it hurt?’ asks Ibrahim.
‘Only when I breathe,’ says Donna.
She wonders how Chris is getting on this morning.
56
The three men sit around a concrete table outside Maidstone Crown Court. The building itself looks like a 1980s Travelodge at a motorway service station.
It is Chris Hudson’s duty to be here, but he would have come to watch Ryan Baird in court anyway for sheer pleasure.
Chris has seen quite enough of Maidstone Crown Court over the years. His very first case here had involved a local councillor who had exposed himself on a train, and blamed his hay-fever medication. That councillor was now their local MP. His most recent case was a Paralympian who had been caught stealing rare birds’ eggs. She wore her bronze medal in court but was convicted nonetheless.
> But he wouldn’t miss this for the world. Ryan Baird. The case was deeply unsafe, of course. The cocaine and the bank card found in the cistern of his toilet? The anonymous tip-off? But needs must, sometimes. Chris has never done anything like this before. The Thursday Murder Club leads him further astray almost daily.
Revenge for Ibrahim, that was the only goal. Last time Chris had seen Ibrahim, he had been battered and bruised, and the fact he was so stoic and uncomplaining had just made it worse. Ryan Baird behind bars would do no one any great harm.
So the trial will be a pleasure, but Chris has another, far less happy, reason for being here.
Connie Johnson. What was she capable of? Would she really harm Patrice? It was unthinkable.
What could he do to stop her? Who could help him?
He couldn’t call Elizabeth. Elizabeth would tell him to tell Patrice, and he wasn’t going to do that. Although it was almost certainly the right thing to do, the brave thing to do, he simply couldn’t. You didn’t get to be a fifty-one-year-old man by tackling things head-on.
And so he called Ron.
A pigeon is currently trying to steal Ron’s chips. He had insisted on a trip to McDonald’s on the way to court. Ron shoos the bird away, but it just stands its ground on the table, staring at him, then staring at his chips, waiting for him to drop his guard.
‘Don’t even think about it, mate,’ says Ron to the pigeon, then turns to Chris. ‘I reckon all pigeons are Tory.’
‘That’s a theory,’ says Chris.
‘She sounds like a nasty piece of work, then?’ says Ron. ‘This Connie Johnson?’
Bogdan, the third man around the table, nods.
‘Fit, though, I heard?’ asks Ron.
‘English fit, maybe,’ shrugs Bogdan. ‘Not Polish fit.’
Bogdan had been Chris’s next call. During their surveillance of Connie Johnson’s lock-up, they had seen Bogdan pay Connie a visit and leave with a package. Chris had decided he would need to confront Bogdan at some point, ask him a few questions. But after the package had been found in Ryan Baird’s cistern, all his questions had been answered. Bogdan clearly knew Connie Johnson, though, and that could be useful, so Chris had invited him along – ‘Meet me in Maidstone, bit of fun, don’t tell Elizabeth.’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ says Chris. ‘It’s just intimidation, don’t you think? She won’t do anything to Patrice?’
Bogdan grimaces. ‘I don’t know. She’s done worse things than that.’
‘Worse than killing the woman I love?’ says Chris.
‘She killed the Antonio brothers, you know that? Did it herself, too, sliced them in two in front of each …’
‘Jesus,’ says Chris. ‘By the way, if you have any evidence of that, you know what I do for a living.’
Bogdan laughs. ‘You must never talk to the police. It’s the law.’
‘That’s a vote of confidence,’ says Chris. ‘Thank you, Bogdan.’
‘We will fix it,’ says Bogdan. ‘Ron? We will fix it, yes?’
Ron nods.
‘It’s a diabolical liberty,’ says Ron. ‘I won’t have a diabolical liberty taken.’
‘Don’t do anything illegal, though,’ says Chris.
‘Well, define illegal,’ says Ron.
‘Against the law,’ says Chris. ‘It’s pretty simple.’
‘Chris, my old son,’ says Ron shaking his head. ‘You couldn’t be more wrong. Legal, illegal. It’s a fine line. It’s nineteen eighty-four, and we’re protesting outside Manton Colliery in Nottinghamshire. Fighting to protect the jobs of fifteen hundred men, fighting to save an industry.’
‘You had coal mines in England?’ says Bogdan.
‘The government, Thatcher, passes emergency legislation, saying you can’t picket outside someone else’s pit. But we do it anyway, we stand our ground. Matter of principle. The police come at us with batons and shields, but we don’t move. We don’t fight back, but we don’t move. Each and every one of us carted off to some nick or other, a good beating in the back of the van for our troubles. Next morning we’re in court, breach of the peace, two hundred quid. Criminal record and concussion for weeks. Now, forgive an old lefty, but I don’t think what I did was illegal, I think it was right.’
‘Well, different times, Ron,’ says Chris.
‘Now, a week later,’ continues Ron, ‘one of the boys goes to the library and finds the address of the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire. He was made Lord something or other shortly after this. Anyway, he gets the address, and the next day some brother-in-law of someone’s brother-in-law goes round with a bulldozer and drives it into his extension. Now that, I grant you, was illegal. So there’s your fine line.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And when Jason was on Celebrity Bargain Hunt,’ continues Ron, ‘he found out where the auction was going to be and got two of his mates to bid against each other for everything he bought. Gary Sansom, you won’t know him, he’s an armed robber, but from up north, he ends up paying a hundred and sixty quid for a silver cigarette lighter Jason bought for a tenner, and he won the whole show. Is that illegal? When all the money went to Multiple Sclerosis?’
‘Well …’ says Chris.
‘What we’re saying,’ says Bogdan, ‘is you’re in safe hands.’
Chris nods. ‘Look, just don’t kill anyone. But if you can find a way to stop her, you know, all help gratefully received.’
The men nod. Even the pigeon seems to nod, and Ron gives it a chip.
‘And not a word to Donna, and not a word to Elizabeth?’ says Chris.
‘Elizabeth will know already,’ says Bogdan. ‘There will be a bug under the table.’
‘I’m going to have to tell Joyce something though,’ says Ron.
‘Nothing to anyone, Ron,’ says Chris. ‘The conversation stays here.’
‘Sorry, old son,’ says Ron. ‘Joyce reckons you’re in love with Patrice, and I said, no, they’re just banging, and who wouldn’t, with respect, she’s a beautiful woman.’
‘Thank you, Ron,’ says Chris.
‘So I’m going to have to tell her.’
‘Tell her what?’ says Chris.
‘I’ll just say we were having a chat, something about the police, I don’t know, and Chris called Patrice “the woman I love”. She’ll be tickled pink.’
‘I don’t think I did say that, Ron,’ says Chris. Had he said that?
‘You did,’ says Ron.
‘Yeah, you did,’ says Bogdan. ‘Elizabeth will have it all on the tape.’
Well, thinks Chris. Sitting at a concrete table with two friends, a pigeon enjoying a McDonald’s, and being in love. That was something to protect, wasn’t it?
57
‘I just remember there used to be much more dancing,’ says Donna. ‘You know? Not so long ago. What happened to all that?’
‘I don’t dance,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I don’t have the fast-twitch muscle fibres for it.’
‘And the drugs, and the friends, and the laughs. I miss it all.’
‘They don’t let you take drugs in the police,’ says Ibrahim. ‘You are unlucky there.’
‘Spoilsports,’ says Donna. Her eyes are still closed, but Ibrahim makes her smile.
‘Frowned upon, I bet,’ says Ibrahim, and then looks at his pad. ‘Dancing, drugs, friends, laughs. Which one of those do you imagine I’m thinking is most important?’
‘I’m guessing not drugs,’ says Donna.
‘Friends, Donna, that’s where it all comes from. You dance with friends, you do drugs with friends, you laugh with friends. That is what’s gone. The friends. Where are they?’
Where have they gone? Where to begin? ‘London, America, having babies with men I don’t like, found religion, got proper jobs, one of them joined UKIP. No one’s got time, everyone’s busy. Except Shelley, and she’s in prison.’
‘So no one’s dancing any more?’
‘If they are, they’re not dancing with me,’ says Donna. ‘Who are my
closest friends? Chris, who’s sleeping with my mum. My mum, who’s sleeping with Chris. You lot, and, back me up here, my best friends shouldn’t be in their seventies.’
Ibrahim nods. ‘Agreed. Maybe one would be OK, but four of us seems a bit much.’
‘The only person my age I’ve met down here who I actually like is Connie Johnson, and she’s a drug dealer. I bet she dances though.’
‘And she certainly does drugs, I imagine,’ says Ibrahim.
Donna smiles again. Her eyes have remained shut. This is peaceful, this is helping. Just saying things out loud. Was this therapy? It didn’t feel like it. It just felt like finally telling somebody the truth.
‘Open your eyes now, Donna, I want to talk to you in a different way.’ Donna does as she is told and Ibrahim looks deeply into her eyes. ‘You know that time is not coming back, don’t you? The friends, the freedom, the possibilities?’
‘You’re supposed to be cheering me up,’ says Donna.
Ibrahim nods. ‘Let it go. Remember it as a happy time. You were at the top of the mountain, and now you’re in a valley. It will happen to you a number of times.’
‘So what do I do now?’
‘You climb the next mountain, of course.’
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ says Donna. Simple. ‘And what’s up the next mountain?’
‘Well, we don’t know, do we? It’s your mountain. No one’s ever climbed it before.’
‘And what if I don’t want to? What if I just want to go home and cry every night, and pretend to everyone that everything’s OK?’
‘Then do that. Keep being scared, keep being lonely. And spend the next twenty years coming to see me, and I will keep telling you the same thing. Put your boots on and climb the next mountain. See what’s up there. Friends, promotions, babies. It’s your mountain.’
‘Will there be other mountains after that one?’
‘There will.’
‘So I can leave babies until another mountain?’
The Man Who Died Twice (The Thursday Murder Club) Page 22