The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

Anyway, Gemma Ventham has sold Coopers Chase Holdings to a company called Bramley Holdings. Of course, we’ve tried to find out as much as we can about Bramley Holdings, but thus far, no luck. We even called in Joanna and Cornelius, but they’ve turned up a blank. They promised they would keep looking, although you can hear that Cornelius’s patience is beginning to wear a bit thin.

  But here’s something else keeping me awake. That name.

  Bramley Holdings? It is ringing a bell and I can’t work out why. Elizabeth says they take names off the shelf, and perhaps she is right, but an alarm is ringing in my brain and I can’t switch it off.

  Bramley? Where have I heard that before? And I know I’m an old woman, but don’t say apples. Something else. Something important.

  Anne, who edits Cut to the Chase, came to see me today. People will always come and see you when you lose a friend. By now we’ve all worked out the right things to say. We’ve said them often enough.

  I don’t think she is doing it just to be nice, but Anne has asked if I will write a column in Cut to the Chase. She knows I like to write and she knows I have my nose in everything, so would I write something about the comings and goings at Coopers Chase? I said yes, of course, and we are going to call it ‘Joyce’s Choices’, which I like. I had suggested ‘Joyce’s Voices’, but Anne had thought that might sound a bit mental health. She wants a picture of me, so I will go through a few tomorrow and pick out a nice one.

  We are off to see Gordon Playfair tomorrow as well. The farmer at the top of the hill? He’s the only person any of us can think of who was here in the early 1970s and is still here today. He was nowhere near Ventham when he was murdered, so I don’t think we can count him as a suspect, but we’re hoping he might remember something useful from all those years ago.

  I must try and sleep again.

  91

  ‘Quaint?’ repeats Gordon Playfair, laughing. ‘This place? You and I know it’s an old house, falling apart, for an old man falling apart.’

  ‘We’re all falling apart, Gordon,’ says Elizabeth.

  The walk to the Playfair farm had taken longer than expected, because a police cordon has been placed around the Garden of Eternal Rest. By all accounts, two police cars and a white van, popularly believed to be a forensics unit, had carefully parked at around 10 a.m. and a number of officers in white body suits had walked up the hill with spades. Martin Sedge has a top-floor flat in Larkin and is training binoculars on the site, but no news yet. ‘Just some digging,’ was his most recent report.

  ‘This house and me have grown old together. Roof coming off,’ says Gordon, and rubs the few strands of hair left on his head. ‘Things creak that didn’t use to creak. Dodgy plumbing. We’re two of a kind.’

  ‘We don’t disturb you too much? The village?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘Never hear a peep,’ says Gordon. ‘Might as well still be the nuns down there.’

  ‘You should come and visit us sometime,’ says Joyce. ‘There’s a restaurant, there’s a pool. There’s Zumba.’

  ‘I used to go down a lot in the old days. Just for bits and bobs, have a chat. They were a lively bunch when they weren’t praying. Also, if you ever put a nail through your thumb or your ankle down a rabbit hole, they’d fix you up,’ says Gordon.

  Elizabeth nods, fair enough. ‘You met Ian Ventham on the morning he was murdered?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. Not my choice.’

  ‘Whose choice?’

  ‘Karen, my youngest. She just wanted me to hear him out. She wants me to sell. Why wouldn’t she?’

  ‘And what was discussed?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘Same old nonsense. Same offer, same manners. I’ll put it politely by saying I never took to Ian Ventham. I can be less polite if you’d like?’

  ‘You weren’t for turning?’

  ‘They both tried to talk me round. Karen could see it wasn’t washing, but Ventham kept on for a bit longer. Trying to make me feel guilty about the kids.’

  ‘But you didn’t budge?’

  ‘I rarely do.’

  ‘I’m much the same,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And how did you leave it?’

  ‘He told me he was going to get my land, one way or another.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’ asks Joyce.

  ‘I said, “Over my dead body,”’ says Gordon Playfair.

  ‘Well, quite,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Gordon Playfair, ‘I’ve been made another offer. And I’m taking it, now Ventham’s out of the picture.’

  ‘Good for you,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Now, might I ask, is this just a social call?’ says Gordon Playfair. ‘Or is there something I can help you with?’

  ‘Funny you should ask,’ Elizabeth says, nodding. ‘We were wondering if you had any memories of this place? From the seventies, say?’

  ‘I certainly have plenty of memories,’ says Gordon Playfair. ‘Might even have a few photo albums if they’d help?’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to take a look,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘I should warn you now, my photos are mainly of sheep. What is it you’re looking for?’

  92

  Joyce

  So we told Gordon Playfair about the body. And we all had a good old chat about who might have buried it there all those years ago. All those years ago, when Coopers Chase was a convent and a young Gordon Playfair sat in the very same house, with his young family, on this very hill.

  The offer for his land, by the way? It was from our mysterious friends at Bramley Holdings. That name is still driving me crazy. But it’ll come. He was just cutting off his nose to spite his face with Ventham, refusing to sell simply because he couldn’t stand him. The moment Ventham was out of the picture, the sale was on.

  I asked Gordon what he might do with the money, and it won’t surprise you to know that most of it will go to the kids. There’s three. We know one of them, of course: Karen, who lives in the small cottage in the next field over and was supposed to be teaching us about computers, until we were so unexpectedly interrupted.

  Unmarried, but then so is Joanna. So am I, come to think of it.

  So, lucky kids, but Gordon says he has enough left over to buy himself a little somewhere nice and, you will see where this is going, we’re going to give him a guided tour of Coopers Chase in a few days and see if anything takes his fancy. Wouldn’t that be fun? Gordon is craggy, rather than conventionally handsome, but has broad, farmer’s shoulders.

  Anyway, back to the bones. Gordon understood now why we wanted to hear his memories of the 1970s. And why we were studying his photo albums so intently. Just to take a look at any shots he’d taken on those trips down the hill all those years ago. See if anyone rang a bell.

  In the end, it was in the second album we looked through. It started with wedding photos, Gordon and Sandra (or Susan, I had glazed over I’m afraid, you know other people’s wedding photos), then pictures of a baby, suspiciously shortly afterwards. That will be their eldest. Then, and I’m not making this up, page after page of pictures of sheep and, the way Gordon was telling it, all different. And then, just as the wine and the fire and the sheep were making us drowsy, we reached the final photos in the album. Six in all, black and white. All six photos taken at a Christmas party at the convent. Probably not a party as such, but certainly Christmas.

  It was in the fifth photo, a group shot. At first you couldn’t really see it. We’ve all changed a lot over fifty years, I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize Elizabeth, or she me. But we all looked and we all looked again. And we all agreed.

  And so we have our evidence, and we have a plan. Well, Elizabeth has a plan.

  And, speaking of photos, I found a nice one for my column in Cut to the Chase. It’s an old photo, which I know is vain, but you’d still know it’s me. Gerry is also in it, but Anne tells me she can crop him out on the computer. Sorry, love.

  93

  There is still a confessional stall in the chapel at the heart of
Coopers Chase. It is used as storage for the cleaners now. Joyce had helped Elizabeth clear it out, stacking up the boxes of floor polish on the altar, neatly tucked behind Jesus. Elizabeth had given the whole place a spruce up, even polishing the grille. As a final touch, she puts a pair of Orla Kiely cushions on the hard wooden seats.

  Elizabeth had conducted many interviews in her time, and brought many people to some kind of justice. If tapes existed of any of these interviews, they had long since been buried, erased or burned. That was Elizabeth’s fervent hope at least.

  Lawyers? No. Procedure? Certainly not. Just whatever worked quickest.

  Nothing physical ever, that wasn’t Elizabeth’s style. She knew it happened from time to time, but it was never effective. Psychology was key. Always try the unexpected, always approach from an angle, always lean back in your chair, with all the time in the world, and wait for them to tell all. Like the whole process was their idea in the first place. And for that you always needed an angle, something unexpected. Something bespoke.

  Like inviting a priest to a confession.

  Elizabeth realized she was very fond of Donna and Chris. The Thursday Murder Club had got lucky with those two. Imagine the bores they might have been saddled with. She knew that even Donna and Chris would have limits, though, and that this was way beyond those limits. But if she could work her magic with Matthew Mackie, she knew they would forgive her.

  And if she couldn’t work her magic? If her magic was just a memory? She had been wrong about Ian Ventham murdering Tony Curran, hadn’t she?

  But Matthew Mackie was different. Here was a man who had scuffled with Ventham. A man who didn’t seem to exist, yet had been in a photo taken in this very chapel. A man who both was a priest and wasn’t a priest. A man who had brushed over his footsteps.

  Until someone had decided to dig up a graveyard. His graveyard?

  And a man who was on his way this very moment. When it would have been easier for him to stay at home. Was he coming to confess? Was he coming to find out what she knew? Or was he coming with a syringe full of fentanyl?

  Elizabeth has never been afraid of death, but, all the same, in this moment, she thinks of Stephen.

  It is cold in the ageless dark of the chapel and Elizabeth shivers. She buttons her cardigan, then looks at her watch. She would soon find out, one way or another.

  94

  Chris Hudson is in a small cell, opposite a large man. The small cell is an interview room in the Central Prison of Nicosia and the large man is Costas Gunduz. The father of Gianni Gunduz.

  Chris is in a concrete seat, bolted to the floor. The back is ramrod straight. It would be the most uncomfortable chair that Chris had ever sat in, had he not just made the flight to Cyprus on Ryanair.

  Chris’s trips abroad for work have been few and far between. Many years ago, he had gone to Spain to escort home Billy Gill, a seventy-year-old antiques dealer from Hove who had run a counterfeit pound-coin operation from a garage close to the seafront. It was a lovely little business, running pretty much undetectably for many years, until, with the advent of the two-pound coin, Billy had got greedy. His coins had looked terrific, but the middles kept falling out, and after a lengthy stakeout of a Portslade launderette, Billy’s mint was tracked down and Billy had fled for the sun, pockets jangling as he went.

  Chris’s memory of that trip was a cramped charter flight from Shoreham airport, landing somewhere in Spain beginning with A, being driven for forty-five minutes in searing heat, the van stopping and a handcuffed Billy Gill being shoved alongside him, and waiting seven hours for a flight home, all the while listening to Billy Gill telling him you couldn’t get Marmite in Spain.

  Then a few years later there had been a compulsory IT course on the Isle of Wight. And, so far, that had been that for globetrotting.

  But Cyprus was a bit more like it. Too hot, obviously, but more like it. He’d been met at Larnaca airport and driven to the capital by Joe Kyprianou, the Cypriot detective who now sat next to him. The prison was nice and cool and, Chris discovered, it’s impossible to sweat when sitting on a concrete chair. From the moment the cell doors closed, he had been happy.

  Costas Gunduz was, Chris guessed, somewhere in his seventies, but was a lot less chatty than Billy Gill.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Gianni?’ asks Chris.

  Costas looks straight at him and shrugs.

  ‘Last week? Last year? Does he visit? Come on, Costas.’

  Costas looks at his nails. Which, Chris notes, are immaculate for a man in prison.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Mr Gunduz. We have records showing that your son arrived back in Cyprus, on 17 May 2000. Landing at Larnaca airport at around two p.m. And from that moment to this, nothing. Not a trace. Why might that be, do you think?’

  Costas thinks for a moment. ‘Why do you want Gianni? After this time?’

  ‘I would like to speak to him about an offence in the UK. To rule him out.’

  ‘Pretty big offence if you fly here? No?’

  ‘A pretty big offence, Mr Gunduz, yes.’

  Costas Gunduz nods slowly. ‘And you can’t find Gianni?’

  ‘I know where he was at two p.m. on 17 May 2000, and I’m hazy after that,’ says Chris. ‘Where would he have gone? Who would he have seen?’

  ‘Well,’ says Costas, sitting up tall in his chair, ‘he would have come to see me.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Costas leans forward a little and gives Chris a smile. Then shrugs once again. ‘Time up, I think. Good luck to you. Enjoy Cyprus.’

  Joe Kyprianou leans forward now, and regards Costas Gunduz.

  ‘Costas and his brother Andreas, they used to steal motorcycles, Chris, here in Nicosia, and ship them off to Turkey. Pretty easy, if you have a guy in each port. They had a little workshop, file off the serial number, change the registration, that’s right, Costas, isn’t it?’

  ‘A long time ago,’ says Costas.

  ‘Then it was cars every now and again. But they could go on the same boats, with the same men turning the same blind eye, so everything is OK for Costas and Andreas. The years roll by, bikes and cars, cars and bikes. And the cars mean a bigger workshop, and a bigger lorry, and bigger crates.’

  ‘And bigger money for Costas?’ asks Chris, looking at Costas.

  ‘Bigger money, for sure. So all is calm and everyone is happy, and Costas and Andreas do very nicely, thank you so much. And then 1974 and Turkey invade. You know the story?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Chris. He doesn’t, but he really wants a meal before his flight and he can bet the story is a long one. He will look it up on Wikipedia if it becomes important.

  ‘So the Turkish invade, they take over Northern Cyprus. Pretty much. The Greek Cypriots in the north come down south, the Turkish Cypriots in the south go up north. And that’s Costas and Andreas.’

  ‘So Costas moved north?’

  Joe Kyprianou laughs. ‘You moved north, eh Costas? Like three streets north. Nicosia was cut in two, Turkish in the north of the city, Greek in the south. So they just moved north of the Green Line and found themselves in a whole new world.’

  Google ‘Green Line’, thinks Chris.

  ‘And Costas, you sensed opportunity in this new world, eh? Started a new business.’

  ‘Drugs?’ asks Chris. ‘Naughty Costas.’

  Costas shrugs.

  ‘Drugs,’ confirms Joe Kyprianou. ‘They paid the right people. Drugs from Turkey come into Northern Cyprus. Then from Northern Cyprus on to wherever, whoever. Huge business very, very quickly, and all protected. Frontier country, you know? Ten years on, the brothers run everything, they’re Kings of the North. Untouchable, Chris, the whole family. They pay charities, open schools, the whole match. Gunduz. You just say the name in Northern Cyprus and see what you see.’

  Chris nods, he gets it. ‘When Gianni landed back here in 2000, he disappeared, never to be seen again. There was a warrant, we had officers fly over, the Cypriot police searched, but f
ound nothing.’

  Joe nods. ‘It’s simple, Chris, really. If Gianni has to get out of England quick, he just calls his dad. He lands at the airport, Costas sends people to pick him up, burn the passport, new one straight away. New guy, new name, back up to Northern Cyprus, back to business. Next day, back to business, I guarantee. Is that what happened, Costas?’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ says Costas.

  ‘And the search?’ asks Chris. ‘Our guys? Your guys?’

  ‘No chance. No chance at all,’ says Joe. ‘I won’t say bad things, Chris, because you know how it is. But no way they even looked. Not in the right places. See if your boys wrote it up. They won’t have set foot in Northern Cyprus. In 2000, you can’t believe the power Costas had. You owned everything and everyone, eh, brother?’

  Joe looks at Costas. Costas nods.

  ‘Still does, even from prison. So, however good a cop you are, why even try? Gianni could be here, could be Turkey, could be US or back in the UK. You can see Costas knows where he is, but he’s never going to help you.’

  Costas holds out his hands.

  ‘He could have flown into the UK?’ says Chris. ‘Under any name, killed Tony Curran and flown back out, and we’d be none the wiser?’

  Joe nods. ‘Definitely. Though if he flew to the UK he’d have had help when he got there. Any Cypriots there who could help him? Put him up? Anyone who might be scared of Costas here, and what he can still do?’

  Chris shrugs, but tucks this away.

  Costas has had enough, and stands. ‘Are we done, gentlemen?’

  Chris nods, he is out of ammunition. He knows a pro when he interviews one. Chris takes out his card and puts it on the table in front of Costas.

  ‘My card, if anything comes back to you.’

  Costas looks at the card, then at Chris, then back at the card and lets out a belly laugh. He looks over at Joe Kyprianou and says something Chris can’t catch. Joe Kyprianou laughs too. Costas looks back at Chris for a final time and shakes his head, firmly, but not unkindly.