The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club #3)(82)

‘He’s a pro,’ says Donna. ‘He’ll be charming. It’ll be tougher for him if they find Bethany’s body.’

‘He’ll walk away,’ says Chris. ‘Don’t you think? Doesn’t matter if he owns the property; there’ll be no forensic evidence after all this time.’

‘I saw this Polish film where they dug up a body after thirty years or something, and a tattoo had imprinted itself on a leg bone,’ says Donna.

‘You’ve been to see a Polish film?’ Chris asks.

‘It’s left here,’ says Donna. They had given up on the sat nav some time ago. Jack Mason’s house was on a private road, leading off a private estate, leading off a small track, leading off a country road. Deliberately hard to find, especially in this pitch darkness. As they take wrong turn after wrong turn, Chris thinks it would be easier to approach by boat and climb the cliff face.

Also, Jack Mason would be able to see anyone approaching from a mile away. Has he seen the lights of the yellow Ford Focus yet? Is he waiting for them? Does he know what’s in store?

They finally reach a pair of iron gates. The gates remain firmly shut as they approach, so Chris leans out of his window and tries the intercom. He buzzes intermittently for thirty seconds or so, but there is no response. So perhaps Jack has seen them coming after all.

Old Chris would have got back in the car and driven the perimeter of the property wall, looking for a way in, tutting all the while. But new Chris, slim, athletic Chris, starts to climb the gates instead. This brings Donna out of the car. He feels the pleasing burn of his muscles as he climbs, the gratifying response of muscles doing what they’re told. He must look great, he thinks, just as he snags and rips his trousers on an iron spike. Donna climbs up after him, at twice the speed, unhooks him, and they both clamber over the top of the gates and down onto Jack Mason’s driveway. New security lights flick on with almost every step.

Chris’s trousers are ripped beyond repair, and Donna gets full sight of a pair of Homer Simpson boxer shorts.

‘Honestly,’ says Donna, as the seat of Chris’s trousers flaps in the wind. ‘This is a perfect example of you being yourself. Did my mum choose those boxer shorts?’

‘No, I forgot to take my washing out of the machine last night,’ says Chris. ‘These are my emergency boxers. Let’s just arrest Jack Mason, shall we?’

As Chris walks up the driveway, Donna stoops to tie a shoelace. He keeps walking, until he hears a click.

‘Donna, did you just take a photograph of my arse on your phone?’

‘Me? No,’ says Donna, putting her phone back into her pocket.

The house itself soon appears, a silhouette in the halogen security lights. It is huge. Chris has never seen a private house this big. The only time you ever saw a house like this it had a gift shop and a tea room.

The wind is whistling around Chris’s backside now. Perhaps Jack will have a sewing kit? Can you ask for a sewing kit when you’ve just arrested someone?

As they climb the stone front steps to Jack Mason’s front door, Chris makes sure he is a step behind Donna. As he reaches to press the baronial bell, he notices the door is ajar, light streaming through a small gap out into the night. He and Donna share a look.

Donna pushes open the door, revealing the vast entrance hallway. There are sofas and side tables, portraits of men in wigs, a locked cabinet full of shotguns, a suit of armour on a plinth.

And, on the hallway carpet, the body of Jack Mason.

Running, Donna reaches him first. He is on his back, a gunshot wound to the head. In his hand is a small gun. He is freezing cold, and very dead.

Donna starts to secure the scene as Chris calls it in. They will have a long wait with the body.

Chris takes a closer look. That really is a very small gun. Chris tucks this thought away.

‘You OK?’ he says to Donna.

‘Of course I’m OK,’ says Donna. ‘You?’

Chris looks down at the body. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m OK too.’

They are both OK, but they put an arm around each other regardless.

Chris is thinking. The Thursday Murder Club starts looking into the Bethany Waites case and, before you know it, the two main suspects in her killing are dead. Hell of a coincidence. He glances at Donna. It looks like she’s thinking the same thing.

‘I’m just thinking,’ says Donna, ‘that we should really do something about your trousers before the circus arrives.’





68





Fiona Clemence thought she had heard the last of Elizabeth Best.

With her questions about Bethany Waites. With her accusations.

How wrong she was.

It was no secret that Fiona and Bethany hadn’t got on. What of it? It doesn’t mean you are going to drive someone off a cliff, does it?

So what if Fiona hadn’t cried on the tribute show? There had been two letters in the Evening Argus about it, which was the South East Tonight equivalent of a Twitter storm. But it meant nothing. Everyone cried at everything these days. You got rewarded for it. Fiona had pretended to cry at the BAFTAs, for example, and it had gone down very well. The Mail Online headline had been ‘TV Fiona turns on waterworks as she flaunts gym-honed body in figure-hugging dress’.

Does anyone ever actually cry for real, or is it always for attention? Her mum cried when her dad died, and within a week she was on a yacht with a dentist from her golf club. So spare us the histrionics.