The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club #3)(7)

I will be honest with you. I’d hoped that this evening I would flirt with Mike, and he would tell me how much he liked my necklace, and I would blush and giggle, and Elizabeth would roll her eyes.

But nothing doing, I’m afraid.

‘All wag, no horn,’ was how Ron put it. Mike gave me a peck on the cheek, and at one point he brushed my hand and there was electricity, but I think that was the combination of the deep carpet outside the restaurant and my new cardigan.

He interviewed Ron this afternoon: they’re doing a piece about retirement living on South East Today. This was all Elizabeth’s suggestion; she made me email one of the producers. If you want to lure someone, go to Elizabeth.

I have to admit Ron was actually rather good. He knows when to turn it on. He talked about loneliness and friendship and security, and I was very proud of him for being so open. You can see that Ibrahim rubs off on him. At one point he got distracted and started talking about West Ham, but Mike steered him back on course.

What we really wanted out of this whole plan, though, was information about Bethany Waites, and Mike was certainly happy to chat. He was three sheets to the wind, and he told us a lot of things we already knew from the files, but he was fired up.

The basic facts are these. Bethany had been investigating a huge VAT fraud. To do with importing and exporting mobile phones. The scheme had made millions.

A woman named Heather Garbutt had been behind it. She worked for a man named Jack Mason, a local crook, and it was widely believed that she was managing the operation on his behalf. Heather later went to jail for the fraud, but Jack Mason did not. Lucky Jack Mason.

One March evening, Bethany had sent Mike a text message, and Mike had expected to see her bright and breezy the next morning. But the next morning was never to come for Bethany.

That night she had been seen leaving her apartment building – we used to call it a block of flats, didn’t we – at about ten p.m., and had then gone AWOL for several hours, no one knows where. She next reappeared on a CCTV camera near Shakespeare Cliff at nearly three a.m. She had an unidentified passenger in her car.

The next time the car is seen is at the bottom of Shakespeare Cliff, wrecked, and containing her blood and her clothes but not her body. Which makes me suspicious, but is apparently common, with the tides around there. A year later, without the faintest sign of her, and with her bank accounts having not been touched, a Presumption of Death certificate had been issued. Again, par for the course, but still you must ask yourself, where’s the body? I didn’t say that out loud to Mike, because you can tell Bethany Waites means a great deal to him.

He gave us one new piece of information. A text message Bethany had sent him. She had discovered some new evidence, something important. Mike never found out what it was.

Heather Garbutt was obviously the key suspect, with all the evidence Bethany had been gathering about her, but they couldn’t link her to Bethany’s death in any way. Try as they might, they couldn’t link Jack Mason either. Soon enough, Heather Garbutt was in prison for the fraud, and everyone moved on to something else.

But Mike never moved on. The key questions, as Mike sees them, are:

What was the new evidence Bethany messaged him about? It was nowhere in the court documents, but had she kept a record somewhere? Would it link Jack Mason to the crime maybe? He is still a free man today. A very rich one too.

Why did Bethany leave her apartment at ten p.m. that evening? Was she going to meet someone? To confront someone? And why did it take her more than four hours to reach Shakespeare Cliff? She must have stopped somewhere, but where? Did she meet someone?

And finally, of course, who was the passenger in her car?

There’s enough for us to be getting on with there. I could tell even Elizabeth was taking an interest by the end.

After that we all had a few more drinks. Pauline and Ron shared a dessert, which might sound normal to you, but I’ve never seen Ron willingly share food, let alone a Banoffee Pie. So watch this space.

Before we knew it, it was nearly eight p.m.! Alan was beside himself when I got in. I say ‘beside himself’: he was curled up on the sofa and raised an eyebrow at me that said, ‘What sort of time is this for my dinner, you dirty stop-out?’ You know how dogs can be. I had brought him back some steak though, so that soon changed his tune. He wolfed it down without a backwards glance. Alan is many things, but he is clearly not a Buddhist.

I am Googling Heather Garbutt and listening to the World Service. She is difficult to Google, because there’s also an Australian hockey player called Heather Garbutt, and most of the results are about her. I actually ended up quite interested in the hockey player, and I follow her on Instagram now. She has three very beautiful children.

Heather Garbutt is still in prison (not the hockey player, but you know that). In fact, it turns out she is in Darwell Prison, which might work out very nicely for all concerned. Because, of course, we already know someone in Darwell Prison. I’ve messaged Ibrahim with an idea that he will like very much.

They are talking about cryptocurrency on the World Service now, so I’m going to look that up too. Bitcoin, that’s the big one. It sounds very interesting, and it’s all the rage according to this programme, but quite risky. They just spoke to someone who made a million from it before his sixteenth birthday, and he was all in favour.

Gerry and I used to have some Premium Bonds, but that’s as far as I’ve experimented with money. Maybe I should live a little? Do something different? Be someone different? Different to what, though? Who am I?