The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

  Austin explained he would take the bones away and do further tests. After everybody had left, I googled him and it turns out he is a Sir. I can’t say I was surprised, he really did know a great deal about bones. Quite what he made of standing in a grave, at ten at night, in his eighties, is his business, but I suppose any friend of Elizabeth is probably used to these things. Three sugars in his tea too, though you wouldn’t know by looking at him.

  And then the biggest question of all, of course. You’ll be ahead of me here. Had the motive been found for one much more recent murder? Did someone else know the bones were hidden there? Was Ian Ventham killed to protect the Garden of Eternal Rest and the secret of those bones?

  We talked for around an hour, I suppose. Were we right not to involve the police? We will have to tell them eventually, but the feeling was that this is our story, our graveyard, our home and, just for the time being, we wanted to keep it for ourselves. As soon as we get the results from Austin we will have to tell all, of course.

  So we are trying to solve two murders, and possibly three, if the skeleton was murdered. Or, I should say, if the skeleton is of someone who was murdered. Is a skeleton a person? That’s a question for greater minds than mine.

  I know Elizabeth is keen to track down Bobby and Gianni, but we all agreed the bones have to take precedence for now.

  I wonder if Chris and Donna are making any progress? We certainly haven’t heard if they are. I do hope they’re not keeping anything from us.

  73

  Chris and Donna are walking the three flights of stairs up to Chris’s office. Donna has pretended to be frightened of lifts, to force Chris to walk.

  ‘So, Jason Ritchie for the Tony Curran murder,’ says Chris. ‘And Matthew Mackie for Ian Ventham?’

  ‘Unless we’re missing something,’ says Donna.

  ‘I wouldn’t put that past us,’ says Chris. ‘So, let’s work it through. We know Matthew Mackie was there and we know he’s a liar. He’s a doctor, not a priest.’

  ‘So we know he could get hold of fentanyl and he’d know how to use it,’ says Donna.

  ‘Agreed,’ says Chris. ‘I think we’ve got everything except a motive.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t want the graveyard moved,’ says Donna. ‘Is that enough?’

  ‘Not enough to arrest him. Unless we find out why he doesn’t want it moved.’

  ‘Is impersonating a priest a crime?’ asks Donna. ‘Someone I met on Tinder once pretended he was a pilot and tried to grope me outside an All Bar One.’

  ‘I bet he regretted that.’

  ‘I punched him in the balls, then called in his reg number and got him breathalysed on the way home.’

  They both smile. But the smiles are fleeting. Both know they are in danger of letting Matthew Mackie slip between their fingers. No evidence whatsoever.

  ‘Have you heard anything from your pals in the Thursday Murder Club?’ asks Chris.

  ‘Not a peep,’ says Donna. ‘Which makes me nervous.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Chris. ‘And I really don’t want to be the one to tell them about Jason Ritchie.’

  Chris pauses for a moment on the landing. Pretending to think, but really just to catch his breath.

  ‘Perhaps Mackie’s got something buried in the graveyard?’ says Chris. ‘Doesn’t want it dug up?’

  ‘Good place to bury something,’ agrees Donna.

  74

  Joyce

  Have you ever used Skype?

  I hadn’t until this morning, and now I have. Ibrahim set it up, and so we had gone round to his. He keeps his flat so clean, and I don’t think he has anyone in to do it.

  There are files everywhere, but all locked away, so you can see them but not read them. Imagine the stories you must hear if you’re a therapist. Who did what to who? Or is it, whom did what to who? Either way, I bet he’s heard all sorts.

  Austin rang at ten on the dot, as you would expect from a Sir, and told us what he knew. We could see him on screen, and we took it in turns to go in the little box in the corner. It was hard, because the box is very small, but I expect you get used to it if you do it a few times.

  The body was a man, which he’d already told us. He had a gunshot wound to the femur. Austin held it up to show us. We all tried to get in the box for that bit. Had that been the wound that killed him? Austin wouldn’t like to say for certain, but probably not. A pre-existing injury.

  At one point his wife walked past in the background. What must she think? Her husband holding up bones to a computer screen? Perhaps she is used to it.

  Now, how much do you know about how to tell how old bones are? I knew nothing, and Austin went through the whole thing in detail. It was fascinating. There was a machine, and there was a special dye, and something to do with carbon. I tried to remember this all the way home so I could write it down, but I’m afraid it’s gone. But it was very interesting. He would be very good on The One Show if they ever needed it.

  He’d taken some soil with him too, and done tests on that, but the soil stuff was less interesting. Back to the bones, please, I had been thinking.

  The long and short of it, though, is that Austin had done some maths, and you can’t be certain, and there were variables, and no one has all the answers, and all he could really do was make his best guess. At this point Elizabeth told him to stop prattling on and get to it. Elizabeth can get away with that sort of thing, even to a Sir.

  So he came out with it. The body was buried sometime in the 1970s, probably earlier rather than later. So fifty-odd years ago, give or take.

  We thanked Austin, but then no one knew how to hang up. Ibrahim tried for a while and you could see he was losing face. In the end Austin’s wife came to the rescue his end. She seems lovely.

  So there we had it. Two potential murders fifty years apart. Plenty to chew on for everyone there. And probably time to tell Chris and Donna what we have done. I hope they don’t take it too personally.

  Elizabeth then asked if I would like to go to a crematorium in Brighton with her today, on a hunch, but I had already said that I would cook lunch for Bernard, so nothing doing.

  I know you can’t smell it, but I’m making him steak and kidney. He is getting thin, so I’m just seeing what I can do.

  75

  Donna and Chris are waiting for their free coffee at the Wild Bean Café inside the BP garage on the A21. Anything to get out of the station for half an hour. To stop looking at the endless files from the Irish passport office. Chris picks up a chocolate bar.

  ‘Chris, you don’t need that,’ says Donna.

  Chris gives her a look.

  ‘Please,’ says Donna. ‘Let me help, I know it’s hard.’

  Chris nods and puts the chocolate bar back.

  ‘So, what’s in it for Mackie?’ asks Donna. ‘What’s the connection with the graveyard? Why protect it if he’s not a priest?’

  Chris shrugs. ‘Perhaps it’s just a way of getting to Ventham? Perhaps there’s another connection between them. Have we looked at Doctor Mackie’s patient lists? You never know.’

  Chris then picks up a cereal bar.

  ‘That’s even worse than a chocolate bar,’ says Donna. ‘Even more sugar.’

  Chris puts it back down. He’s going to be forced to eat a piece of fruit at this rate.

  ‘He’s dodgy as hell,’ says Chris. ‘All we’re missing is his motive.’

  Donna’s phone buzzes and she reads a message. She purses her lips and looks up at Chris.

  ‘It’s Elizabeth. She wonders if we might like to pop over this evening.’

  ‘I think that might have to wait,’ says Chris. ‘Tell her we’re busy solving two murders.’

  Donna continues to scroll through the message. ‘She says she has something for us. I quote “Please do not read another file until you have seen what we have found. Also there will be sherry. See you at eight.”’ Donna puts her phone in her pocket and looks at her boss.

  ‘Well?’ she asks.
>
  Well? Chris slowly strokes his stubble and considers the Thursday Murder Club. He has to face it, he likes them. He’s happy drinking their tea, eating their cake and chatting off the record. He likes their rolling hills and their big sky. Was he being taken advantage of? Well, almost certainly, but, for now, he was getting plenty in return. Would this all look very bad if it came out? Yes, but it won’t. And, if it did, why not just take Elizabeth into his disciplinary hearing and let her work her magic?

  Eventually he looks up at Donna, who has her eyebrows raised waiting for an answer.

  ‘I’m a reluctant yes.’

  76

  ‘Now we can do this one of two ways,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You can kick up a fuss and curse us to the heavens and we can all waste a lot of time. Or you can just accept what has happened and we can enjoy our sherry and get on with this. Your choice.’

  Chris cannot speak for a moment. He looks at the four of them. Then to the air, then to the floor. Looking for words that don’t want to come. He holds the flat of a palm in the air in front of him, in an effort to pause reality for the briefest of moments. But no luck.

  ‘You …,’ he begins, slowly, ‘you … dug up a body?’

  ‘Well, technically we didn’t dig it up,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘But a body was dug up, yes?’ says Chris.

  Elizabeth and Joyce nod. Elizabeth takes a sip of her sherry.

  ‘That’s the long and short of it,’ confirms Joyce.

  ‘And you then performed a forensic analysis on the bones?’

  ‘Well, again, not us personally. And only on some of them,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Oh, that’s fine then. Just a few?’ Chris’s voice is raised, and Donna realizes it’s the first time she’s experienced this. ‘Then I wish you all a good evening. Nothing to see here.’

  ‘I knew you’d get melodramatic,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Can we just get this over with and move on to business?’

  Donna steps in.

  ‘Melodramatic?’ she addresses Elizabeth directly. ‘Elizabeth, you just dug up a human body and failed to report it to the police. This isn’t pretending to be a nun who’s had her bag stolen.’

  ‘What nun?’ asks Chris.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Donna quickly. ‘This is a serious crime. Elizabeth, you could all go to jail for this.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Far from nonsense,’ says Chris. ‘What on earth are you doing? I need you to think very carefully about what you say next. Why did you dig up a body? Let’s take this step by step.’

  ‘Well, as I stated previously, we didn’t dig up the body. But our attention was drawn to the fact that a body had been dug up,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘And we were curious, naturally,’ says Ron.

  ‘Our attention was grabbed,’ agrees Ibrahim.

  ‘What with the murder of Ian Ventham,’ adds Joyce, ‘it seemed it might be important.’

  ‘You didn’t think Donna and me might have been interested at this point?’ asks Chris.

  ‘Firstly, Chris, it’s “Donna and I”,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And secondly, who knew what the bones were? We didn’t want to waste your time until we knew for sure what we were dealing with. What if we’d called you out and they were nothing but cow bones? Wouldn’t we have looked silly old fools then?’

  ‘We wouldn’t have wanted to waste your time,’ agrees Ibrahim. ‘We know you are busy with two murders already.’

  ‘But off they went for analysis,’ continues Elizabeth. ‘And back it comes, human bones, good to have it confirmed, no cost to the taxpayer. Male, died sometime in the 1970s, a gunshot wound to the leg, but no way of telling if that’s what killed him. Now to invite Chris and Donna to take a look, and to lead things from here. Get the professionals in. It really feels like you might be thanking us.’

  Chris is trying to compose a response. Donna decides that this one might be her responsibility.

  ‘Christ, Elizabeth, just give it a rest for one second. You can drop the act with us. The second you dug up that body you knew they were human bones, because I think you can tell the difference. Joyce, you were a nurse for forty years, do you know the difference between human bones and cow bones?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ admits Joyce.

  ‘The second you did that, Elizabeth, you and your whole gang …’

  ‘We are not Elizabeth’s gang,’ interrupts Ibrahim.

  Donna raises her eyebrows at Ibrahim, who holds up a hand in concession. She continues. ‘The lot of you, from that moment, were in deep, deep trouble. This is not a neat little trick. You might fool the rest of the world, but you don’t fool me. You’re not plucky underdogs, or helpful amateurs. This is a serious crime. This is bigger than a serious crime. And this doesn’t end with us all giggling over a glass of sherry. It ends in a courtroom. How could you be so stupid? The four of you? We’re friends, and you treat me like this.’

  Elizabeth sighs. ‘Well this is exactly what I meant, Donna. I knew you’d both make a fuss.’

  ‘A fuss!’ says Donna incredulously.

  ‘Yes, a fuss,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And I do understand, in the circumstances.’

  ‘Just doing your job,’ agrees Ron.

  ‘Admirable, if you want my opinion,’ adds Ibrahim.

  ‘But the fuss ends here,’ says Elizabeth. ‘If you’re going to arrest us, arrest us. Take the four of us to the station, question us all night. Get the same answer all night.’

  ‘No comment,’ says Ron.

  ‘No comment,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Like on 24 Hours in Police Custody,’ says Joyce.

  ‘You don’t know who dug the body up and you won’t hear the answer from any of us,’ continues Elizabeth. ‘You don’t know who took the bones away for analysis and you won’t hear that from us either. At the end of the evening you might try and explain to the CPS that four people in their seventies and eighties have failed to report digging up a body. For what reason? With what evidence, other than the inadmissible confession you’ve taken from us this evening? And with four suspects, all of whom are quite happy to go to court, smile happily and pretend to mistake the judge for their granddaughter and ask why she doesn’t visit often enough. The whole process is difficult, costly and time-consuming, and achieves nothing. No one is going to prison, no one is getting a fine, no one’s even going to be picking litter by the roadside.’

  ‘Not with my back,’ says Ron.

  ‘Or,’ continues Elizabeth, ‘you can forgive us, and believe us when we say we were trying to help. You can let us apologize for our overenthusiasm, because we did know what we were doing was wrong, but we did it anyway. We know you’ve spent the last twenty-four hours in the dark and we know we are in your debt. And if you forgive us, then tomorrow morning, on a wild hunch, you can order a search of the Garden of Eternal Rest. You can dig up the body, you can send it to your own forensics team, who will tell you it’s a male who was almost certainly buried in the early 1970s, and then we’ll all happily be on the same page.’

  There is a moment’s silence.

  ‘So,’ asks Chris, very slowly, ‘you’ve reburied the bones?’

  ‘We thought it was best,’ says Joyce. ‘To give you the glory.’

  ‘I’d leave the grave in the top right-hand corner till about fourth or fifth, if I were you,’ says Ron. ‘Don’t want to make it too obvious.’

  ‘And in the meantime,’ continues Elizabeth, ‘we can all have a nice evening and no more shouting. We can tell you everything we know. So you can really hit the ground running in the morning.’

  ‘You could even share a bit of information with us if you thought that was appropriate,’ adds Ibrahim.

  ‘How about some information about the custodial sentences you can get for perverting the course of justice? Or disturbing a grave?’ says Chris. ‘Up to ten years, if you’re interested.’

  ‘Oh, we just went through all this, Chris,’ sighs Elizabeth. ‘Stop grandstanding and swallow your pride. An
d besides, we’re not hampering, we’re helping.’

  ‘I didn’t notice either of you digging up a body,’ adds Ron, to Chris and Donna.

  ‘We have certainly done an awful lot of the work so far,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘So this is how I see it,’ confirms Elizabeth. ‘Either you arrest us, which we would all understand, and Joyce, in fact, I think would actually enjoy.’

  ‘No comment,’ says Joyce, nodding happily.

  ‘Or you don’t arrest us and we can spend the rest of the evening talking about exactly why someone buried a body, on this hillside, sometime in the 1970s.’

  Chris looks at Donna.

  ‘And we can also discuss whether that same person has just murdered Ian Ventham to keep it secret,’ says Elizabeth.

  Donna looks at Chris. Chris has a question.

  ‘So you think the same person might have committed two murders? But nearly fifty years apart?’

  ‘It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘It’s an interesting question we could have been asking last night,’ says Chris.

  ‘It might have been useful to know we could be looking out for someone who was right here in the 1970s and is still right here now,’ adds Donna.

  ‘We really are sorry,’ says Joyce. ‘But Elizabeth was adamant, and you know Elizabeth.’

  ‘Let’s move on,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Put this behind us.’

  ‘Do we have a choice, Elizabeth?’ asks Chris.

  ‘Choice is overrated; you’ll learn that as the years fly by,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Now, to business. What do you make of the priest, I wonder? Father Mackie? Might he have been around when this place was a convent?’

  ‘I take it from that question that you haven’t been able to find out anything about Father Mackie?’ says Chris. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve found a chink in your armour.’