The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club #3)(59)

Ron turns the radio on: talkSPORT.

Viktor is lost in memories. ‘She did things to me that no woman –’

Ron nods down towards the radio. ‘Liverpool are buying Sanchez? Waste of money.’

Bogdan is tempted to join in the conversation. To talk about love. To ask a question maybe? But without giving anything away. Would he look foolish? The big Polish brute, what could he know about love? He decides to say something. He won’t know what it is until it is out of his mouth.

‘How much are they paying for Sanchez, Ron?’ Oh, Bogdan.

‘Thirty mill,’ says Ron. ‘In instalments, but still.’

Bogdan nods. He’s really only here to drive, and to carry Viktor to and from the car.

While Ron is telling a joke about a parrot that used to live in a brothel, Bogdan thinks a little more about the case. Viktor had taken him through a few things before being zipped into his holdall. He now has a cushion in there, and also a copy of the Economist and a small torch.

Viktor had explained the basics of money-laundering, the complex network of anonymous shell companies and offshore accounts that could turn dirty money into clean money via a trail almost impossible to follow. Almost impossible.

Bogdan has missed the punchline of the parrot joke, and Ron has moved on to one about a nun on a train.

The real secret was to dig back in time, to follow the money back and back and back to try to find the original sin. The first transactions were the vulnerable ones. Viktor said it was like pulling up a carpet. You just needed to get your fingernail under a tiny fragment in the corner, and sometimes you could lift the whole thing up in one go. That’s what had happened with Trident: an early transaction, a mistake. But that had led nowhere. So maybe they had to track back even further.

They reach the house at around two. It is an Elizabethan manor perched high on a Kent clifftop, the English Channel stretching off into the distance beyond. They park in a copse around a mile away, and zip Viktor back into his bag. How they will explain this Ukrainian in a holdall to Jack Mason is not Bogdan’s concern. He just has to carry it.

Bogdan drives the Daihatsu up the long drive, and parks as close to the stone entrance steps as he can. The holdall sneezes, and Bogdan says, ‘Bless you.’

If Jack Mason is surprised to see a large Polish man unzip a small Ukrainian man from a holdall, he hides it well.

‘I will come back for you this evening,’ Bogdan tells Ron and Viktor.

‘Thanks, old son,’ says Ron. ‘I’m not going back to Coopers Chase though. Staying at Pauline’s place, but it’s in Fairhaven if that’s easy for you?’

‘Is no problem at all,’ says Bogdan.

‘You’re a good lad,’ says Ron. ‘It’s Juniper Court, just off Rotherfield Road.’





49





Joyce is combining business and pleasure. There was an advert on TV years ago, for sweets maybe, and the song went ‘These are two of my favourite things in one.’ And here she was, about to watch a television show being recorded, and, she hopes, interviewing a murder suspect.

Last time she and Elizabeth were on a train, Elizabeth had had a gun in her bag. Perhaps she has one today? She is certainly looking distracted.

‘You seem distracted,’ says Joyce, as Elizabeth peers up and down the carriage.

‘I seem what?’ says Elizabeth.

‘Distracted,’ says Joyce.

‘Nonsense,’ says Elizabeth.

‘My mistake,’ says Joyce.

They had changed trains at London Bridge, and then again at Blackfriars. Blackfriars Station is on a bridge, and Joyce was thrilled about it. Although there was only a Costa Coffee. Apparently there was also a WHSmith, but it was down the escalator, and Joyce didn’t want to risk missing the next train. She would catch it on the way back. They spoke about Ibrahim’s discovery. That the note found in Heather Garbutt’s drawer was written by someone else. The killer presumably, but why would the killer mention Connie Johnson? Unless the killer was Connie Johnson, and even then it would make no sense.

They are now on a commuter service up to Elstree & Borehamwood, which is where Fiona Clemence films Stop the Clock. Joyce explains the rules to Elizabeth for the umpteenth time.

‘Really, for an educated woman, you can be very slow, Elizabeth,’ she says. ‘Four players each have a hundred seconds on their clock at the start of the game. The longer they take to answer questions, the more time they lose, and once they get down to zero seconds they’re out of the game.’

‘No, that much I understand,’ says Elizabeth. ‘It’s all the other nonsense.’

‘Nonsense? Hardly,’ says Joyce. ‘They each have four lifelines. They can steal ten seconds from an opponent, they can freeze their own clock, they can speed up an opponent’s clock, or they can swap a question. Steal, Freeze, Speed or Swap, simple as that. Though if your opponent steals from you or speeds you up, you receive an additional lifeline, Revenge, which you can play even when you’re out of the game. All the winner’s remaining seconds are converted to money, and to win the money they have to answer twelve questions, working their way around the clock from one to twelve before their time runs out. It couldn’t be simpler.’

‘And they put this on television?’ Elizabeth watches closely as a man walks past them.