The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

  We were in a boardroom and the table was made out of the wing of an aeroplane. I knew not to make a thing of it in front of Joanna, but it was really something. I sat there as if I saw aeroplane tables every day of the week.

  Elizabeth had emailed all the files over and Joanna had given them all to Cornelius, who works for her. Cornelius is American, by the way, in case you were wondering about his name. He asked Elizabeth where she had got all the documents and she said ‘Companies House’, and he said these are not the sort of documents you can get at Companies House and she said that, well, she wouldn’t know about that sort of thing, she was just a seventy-six-year-old woman.

  I’ve gone on too long. The long and short was that Ventham’s companies were in very good shape. He knew what he was doing. Though Cornelius had found out two very interesting things, which we’ll be telling the police about when they come and visit. They’ve added it all to Elizabeth’s big blue file.

  Joanna was funny and bright and engaging and all the things I had worried that she’d lost. There they all were. Perhaps she had just lost them with me?

  I have talked to Elizabeth about Joanna before. How I feel we’re not as close as we should be, as other mothers and daughters seem to be. Elizabeth has a way of making you want to tell the truth. She knew I had been a bit sad. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I wonder if the whole trip hadn’t been for my benefit. Really, an awful lot of people could have told us what Cornelius told us. So, perhaps? I don’t know.

  As we left, Joanna said she would have to come down next weekend for a proper gossip. I told her I would like that very much and that we could do a trip into Fairhaven, which she said she would love. I asked if the new man might come down with her and she gave a little laugh and said no. That’s my girl.

  We could have got another black cab straight back to the station, but Elizabeth wanted to have a stroll and so we did. I don’t know if you know Mayfair – there are no shops you would actually buy anything in, but it was very pleasant. We stopped for coffee in a Costa. It was in a beautiful building, which Elizabeth said used to be a pub where she and a lot of her colleagues would drink. We stayed there for a while and talked about what we’d learned.

  If today was anything to go by, this whole murder investigation is going to be the most enormous fun. It has been a long day, and whether it has got us any closer to catching Tony Curran’s killer, I’ll let you decide.

  I think Joanna saw a different side to me today. Or maybe I saw a different side to myself through her eyes. Either way, it was very pleasant. Also, next time I’ll tell you about Cornelius, who we liked.

  The village is nearly dark now. In life you have to learn to count the good days. You have to tuck them in your pocket and carry them around with you. So I’m putting today in my pocket and I’m off to bed.

  I will just finish by saying that, back at Charing Cross, I nipped into Marks and bought a couple of gin and tonics in a can. Elizabeth and I drank them on the train home.

  24

  With the lights of the village turning out, Elizabeth opens up her appointments diary and attempts today’s question.

  ‘WHAT WAS THE REGISTRATION NUMBER OF GWEN TALBOT’S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW’S NEW CAR?’

  She approves of this question. Not the make of the car, that was too easy. Not the colour, that could be guessed, and guessing proved nothing, but the registration number. Something that required genuine recall.

  As she has done so often before, in a different life, usually in a different country and a different century, Elizabeth shuts her eyes and zooms in. She sees it immediately, or does she hear it? It is both, her brain is telling her what she sees.

  JL17 BCH

  She traces a finger down the page and reads the correct answer. She is spot on. Elizabeth shuts the diary. She’ll write the next question later, she already has a nice idea.

  For the record, the car was a blue Lexus, Gwen Talbot’s daughter-in-law having done well for herself in bespoke yacht insurance. As for the daughter-in-law’s name, well, that remained a mystery. Elizabeth had only been introduced to her once and had not quite caught it. She was confident that it was just a hearing issue and not a memory issue.

  Memory was the bogeyman that stalked Coopers Chase. Forgetfulness, absent-mindedness, muddling up names.

  What did I come in here for? The grandchildren would giggle at you. The sons and daughters would joke too, but keep a watchful eye. Every so often you would wake at night in cold dread. Of all the things to lose, to lose one’s mind? Let them take a leg or a lung, let them take anything before they take that. Before you became ‘Poor Rosemary’, or ‘Poor Frank’, catching the last glimpses of the sun and seeing them for what they were. Before there were no more trips, no more games, no more Murder Clubs. Before there was no more you.

  Almost certainly you mixed up your daughter’s and granddaughter’s names because you were thinking about the potatoes, but who knows? That was the tightrope.

  So every day Elizabeth opens her diary to a date two weeks ahead and writes herself a question. And every day she answers a question she set herself two weeks ago. This is her early warning system. This is her team of scientists poring over seismology graphs. If there is going to be an earthquake, Elizabeth will be the first to know about it.

  Elizabeth walks into the living room. A number plate, from a fortnight ago, is a real test and she is pleased with herself. Stephen is on the sofa, lost in concentration. This morning, before her trip to London with Joyce, they had been talking about Stephen’s daughter, Emily. Stephen is worried about her and thinks she is getting too thin. Elizabeth disagreed, but, all the same, Stephen wished Emily would visit more often, just so they could keep an eye on her. Elizabeth agreed that was reasonable and said she’d talk to Emily.

  However, Emily is not Stephen’s daughter. Stephen has no children. Emily was Stephen’s first wife and had died nearly twenty-five years ago.

  Stephen is an expert in Middle-Eastern Art. Perhaps the expert if you were talking about British academics. He had lived in Tehran and Beirut in the sixties and seventies and many years later would go back, to track down looted masterpieces for once-wealthy west-London exiles. Elizabeth had briefly been in Beirut in the early seventies, but their paths had not actually crossed until 2004, when Stephen had picked up a glove she had dropped outside a bookshop in Chipping Norton. Six months later they were married.

  Elizabeth knocks the kettle on. Stephen still writes every day, sometimes for hours. He has an academic agent in London, whom he says he must get up to see soon. Stephen keeps his work safely locked up, but, of course, nothing is safely locked up from Elizabeth and she reads it from time to time. Sometimes it is just a piece copied from his newspaper, repeated over and over, but most often it is stories about Emily, or for Emily. All in the most beautiful handwriting.

  There will be no more trains up to London for Stephen, to have lunch with his agent or to see exhibitions, or just look up a little something at the British Library. Stephen is on the brink. He is over the brink, if Elizabeth is honest with herself. She is choosing to manage the situation. She medicates him as best she can. Sedation, to be truthful. With her pills and his, Stephen never wakes in the night.

  The kettle now boiled, Elizabeth makes two cups of tea. PC De Freitas and her DCI are coming to see them soon. That had all worked out very nicely, but she still has some thinking to do. After today’s trip with Joyce, she now has some information to hand to the police and she would like their information in return. They are really going to have to do a number on Donna and her boss, though. She has a few thoughts.

  Stephen never cooks, so Elizabeth knows the place won’t burn down while she’s out. He never goes to the shop, or the restaurant, or the pool, so there won’t be an incident. Sometimes she will come home to evidence of a poorly concealed flood and sometimes there is emergency washing, but no matter.

  Elizabeth is keeping Stephen to herself for as long as she can. At some point h
e will have a fall, or cough up blood, and he will be exposed to a doctor who won’t be fooled, and that will be that, and off he will go.

  Elizabeth grinds the temazepam into Stephen’s tea. Then adds milk. Her mother would have had rules on the etiquette of that. Temazepam before milk, or milk before temazepam? She smiles, this is a joke Stephen would have enjoyed. Would Ibrahim like it? Joyce? She supposed no one would.

  Sometimes they still play chess. Elizabeth once spent a month in a safe house somewhere near the Polish–West German border, babysitting the Russian chess grandmaster and later defector, Yuri Tsetovich. She remembers him crying tears of joy when he saw how well she played. Elizabeth had lost none of her skill, but Stephen beats her every time, and with an elegance that makes her swoon. Though they are playing less and less now she realizes. Perhaps they have played their last game? Has Stephen captured his last king? Please, no.

  Elizabeth gives Stephen his tea and kisses him on the forehead. He thanks her.

  Elizabeth returns to her notebook and flicks forward two weeks to write today’s question, a fact she learned from Joanna and Cornelius today.

  HOW MUCH MONEY DID IAN VENTHAM MAKE FROM THE DEATH OF TONY CURRAN?

  She writes the answer further down the page, £12.25 MILLION, and closes her appointments diary for another day.

  25

  PC Donna De Freitas had got the news the previous morning. Report to CID. Elizabeth was a quick worker.

  She had been assigned to the Tony Curran case as Chris Hudson’s ‘shadow’. A new Kent Police initiative. Something to do with inclusivity, or mentoring, or diversity, or whatever the guy from HR in Maidstone had said when he rang her. Whatever it was, it meant she was sitting on a bench, overlooking the English Channel, while DCI Chris Hudson ate an ice cream.

  Chris had given her the Tony Curran file to get her up to speed. She couldn’t believe her luck. Donna had enjoyed the file a great deal at first. It felt like some proper police work. It brought back all the things she loved about south London. Murder, drugs, someone who carried off a ‘no comment’ with a bit of panache. As she read, she felt sure she would stumble across a tiny clue that would crack open some decades-old case. She had role-played it in her head. ‘Sir, I did some digging and it turns out that 29 May 1997 was a bank holiday, which rather blows Tony Curran’s alibi don’t you think?’ Chris Hudson would look dubious, no way has this rookie cracked the case and she would raise an eyebrow and say ‘I ran his handwriting through forensics, sir, and guess what?’ Chris would feign a lack of interest, but she would know she had him. ‘It turns out that Tony Curran was actually left-handed all along.’ Chris would blow out his cheeks. He would have to hand it to her.

  None of this happened. Donna simply read exactly what Chris had read, a potted history of a man getting away with murder and then being murdered in his turn. No smoking guns, no inconsistencies, nothing to peel back. But she had enjoyed it nonetheless.

  ‘That’s something you don’t get in south London, eh?’ says Chris, pointing to the sea with his ice cream cone.

  ‘The sea?’ asks Donna, making sure.

  ‘The sea,’ agrees Chris.

  ‘Well, you’re right there, sir. There’s Streatham ponds, but it’s not the same.’

  Chris Hudson is treating her with a kindness she senses is genuine and with a respect that could only come with being good at his job. If she was ever to work for Chris permanently, she would have to do something about the way he dressed, but that was a bridge that could be crossed in good time. He really took the expression ‘plain clothes’ seriously. Where does someone even buy shoes like that? Was there a catalogue?

  ‘Fancy a trip out to see Ian Ventham?’ says Chris now. ‘Have a little chat about his argument with Tony Curran?’

  Elizabeth had come good again. She had rung Donna and given a few more details about the row that Ron, Joyce and Jason had witnessed. They would still have to go and visit in person, but it was something to be going on with.

  ‘Yes please,’ says Donna. ‘Is it uncool to say “please” in CID?’

  Chris shrugs. ‘I’m not really the person to ask whether something is cool, PC De Freitas.’

  ‘Can we fast forward to the bit where you start calling me Donna,’ says Donna.

  Chris looks at her, then nods. ‘OK, I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘What are we looking for with Ventham?’ asks Donna. ‘Motive?’

  ‘Exactly. He won’t give it to us on a plate, but if we just watch and listen, we’ll pick a couple of things up. Let me ask the questions though.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Donna.

  Chris finishes off his cone. ‘Unless you really want to ask a question.’

  ‘OK,’ says Donna, nodding. ‘I probably will want to ask one. Just to warn you.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Chris nods, then stands. ‘Shall we?’

  26

  Joyce

  ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ That’s what they say isn’t it? That’s why I invited Bernard for lunch.

  I cooked lamb with rice. The lamb was Waitrose, but the rice was Lidl. That’s the way I do it, you honestly don’t notice the difference with the basics. You see more and more Lidl vans here these days as people catch on.

  Bernard’s not the sort to notice the difference anyway. I know he eats in the restaurant every day. What he has for breakfast I don’t know, but who really knows what anyone has for breakfast? I usually have tea and toast with the local radio. I know some people have fruit, don’t they? I don’t know when that came into being, but it’s not for me.

  It wasn’t a date with Bernard, don’t think that, but I asked Elizabeth not to tell Ron and Ibrahim anyway, because they would have a field day. If it had been a date, which it wasn’t, I will say this. This is a man who likes to talk about his late wife a lot. I don’t mind that, and I do understand it, but I’d gone to quite an effort. Anyway, not something I should complain about, I know.

  Perhaps I feel guilty because I don’t really talk about Gerry. I suppose it’s just not how I deal with things. I keep Gerry in a tight little ball just for me. I think if I let him loose here, it would overwhelm me, and I worry he might just blow away. I do know that’s silly. Gerry would have enjoyed Coopers Chase. All the committees. It feels unfair that he missed out.

  Anyway, this is exactly my point, I feel the tears prickling, and this isn’t the time or the place. I’m supposed to be writing.

  Bernard’s wife was Indian, which must have been very unusual back then, and they were married for forty-seven years. They moved in here together, but she had a stroke and was in Willows within six months. She died about eighteen months ago, before I’d arrived. From the sound of her, I do wish I’d met her.

  They have one daughter, called Sufi. Not Sophie. She lives in Vancouver with her partner and they come over a couple of times a year. I wonder what would happen if Joanna moved to Vancouver. I absolutely wouldn’t put it past her.

  We talked about other things too, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. We discussed poor Tony Curran. I told Bernard how excited I was that Tony Curran had been murdered. He looked at me askance, in a way that reminded me I can’t talk to everyone in the same way I talk to Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron. But, between you and me and the gatepost, Bernard looks rather handsome with an askance look on his face.

  He talked a little about his work, though I am still none the wiser, to be honest. If you know what a chemical engineer is, then you are a better woman than me. Don’t get me wrong, I know what an engineer is and I know what chemicals are, but I can’t join the dots. I talked a little bit about my work and told some funny stories about patients. He laughed and, when I told a story about a junior doctor who’d got his bits trapped in a hoover nozzle, I saw a little twinkle in his eye, which gave me cause for optimism. It was nice, I wouldn’t go further than that, but I sensed there was more to learn about Bernard, a gap that needs to be crossed. I know the difference bet
ween alone and lonely, and Bernard is lonely. There is a cure for that.

  I am drawn to strays. Gerry was a stray; I knew it from the moment I met him. Always joking, always clever, but always a stray, needing a home. Which is what I gave him and he gave me back so much more in return. Oh, Joyce, this place would have suited that lovely man down to the ground.

  I’m banging on like Bernard, aren’t I? Do shut up, Joyce. There are silly, proper tears now. I’ll let them fall. If you don’t cry sometimes, you’ll end up crying all the time.

  Elizabeth is inviting Donna and her DCI to come to see us later. She is planning to give them the information we found out from Joanna and Cornelius and to see what we might get in return.

  Because it isn’t Thursday, Elizabeth asked if we can use my front room to meet them. I told her it would be too small for all of us and she said that was perfect for her purposes. Make the DCI uncomfortable and maybe he’ll give something away. That’s her plan. She says it’s an old work trick of hers, though she no longer has access to all the equipment that she used to have. Her express instruction was: ‘No one leaves the room until we’ve made DCI Hudson tell us something we can use.’

  She has asked me to bake. I am doing a lemon drizzle, but also a coffee and walnut, because you never know. I have used almond flour because they are so good with it at Anything with a Pulse and I have been looking for an opportunity. I can tell that Ibrahim is tempted by the idea of being gluten-intolerant and this will head him off at the pass.

  I wonder if I should have a nap? It is 3.15 and my cut-off point for a nap is usually 3 p.m., otherwise I struggle to sleep later. But it has been a busy few days, so perhaps I have earned a bit of rule-breaking?

  Either way, I will just add that coffee and walnut is Bernard’s favourite, but you mustn’t read anything into that.