The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)(88)

‘Agreed, agreed,’ says Andrew Everton. He is going to get his money, he can just feel it. All those years slogging away, and it’s finally going to come good. A house in Spain, a room to write in, overlooking the sea. He’ll pretend he’s signed a lucrative publishing deal, very hush-hush, and he’ll quit his job for good. This man, with his oversized glasses, is the final piece of the jigsaw.

‘But I need to trust you too,’ says Viktor. ‘I feel that I will. I feel that we are similar men. That we believe similar things about this tough world we live in.’

‘Goes without saying,’ says Andrew Everton. He saw a place online, on the Costa Dorada. It had two swimming pools, for goodness’ sake.

‘So I need you to tell me the truth,’ says Viktor. ‘About the journalist. And about your two friends. Three deaths, all connected to your fraud. I want to trust you, so I need you to come clean with me. You killed them, yes? It’s OK.’

Andrew Everton mulls over his reaction. What does this man want to hear? That he killed them? That he didn’t kill them? What is the ‘moral’ answer here? He makes up his mind.

‘I didn’t kill them,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘I am not a killer.’

Viktor nods. ‘So they each just died?’

Andrew Everton nods. ‘Yes they each … just died.’

‘I am disappointed, Chief Constable,’ says Viktor. ‘I had hoped for the truth.’

This puts Andrew Everton in a bind. Can this man possibly know the truth? He weighs up the different lies he might tell. He’s so close. Don’t blow it now. Stick to your guns; he will respect that.

‘I didn’t kill them.’

Viktor pulls a pained face. ‘Andrew, that is hard for me to hear. Given the information I have.’

‘What information?’ says Andrew. This has to be a bluff. It’s just a test. Keep denying, keep denying, and you’ll be in Spain before you know it.

‘That you murdered Bethany Waites. You buried her body in the garden of a house in Sussex, and used it to blackmail your co-conspirators, Jack Mason and Heather Garbutt, into keeping quiet about your fraud. That you had Heather Garbutt murdered in Darwell Prison, and, further, that you murdered Jack Mason two evenings ago.’ The Jack Mason bit is guesswork, but Andrew Everton doesn’t need to know that.

Andrew Everton is stunned, paralysed. Where could he possibly have got the information about Bethany’s body and the blackmail? It was impossible. Jack Mason would never have named him, not in a million years. And Heather Garbutt was too scared of what he could do. So how did he know?

‘Just the truth, Andrew,’ says Viktor. ‘And then we are sure what we’re dealing with. Then we can move forward with trust.’

Andrew Everton has to make a big decision. Confess? How can he stick to his version of the story when this Yuri seems to know the whole truth? Trust Yuri, and trust the Viking? Say the words? It’s just three men in a room, miles from nowhere. He’s very aware that the next sentence out of his mouth could make him ten million pounds.

‘OK,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘And you guarantee this information never leaves this room?’

‘No one is watching,’ says Viktor. ‘And no one is listening.’

Andrew Everton clasps his hands together, as if in a prayer of forgiveness.

‘I murdered Bethany Waites.’





79





Connie Johnson is watching the action unfold on her flat-screen TV. The Wi-Fi is behaving itself for once, and she is watching a feed of the action on YouTube.

That was that, then, all wrapped up. Andrew Everton in the frame. The Chief Constable. She’d met him a couple of times, seemed nice enough. But a killer? Who’d have thought? And how handy for Connie.

One person he definitely hadn’t killed was Heather Garbutt.

Connie had found Heather’s body when she’d gone back to visit her for another chat. Knitting needles and all. There had been a suicide note by the body, a few last goodbyes, etc. Heather Garbutt was terrified of something, and, watching Andrew Everton on screen, Connie now at least knows what.

Connie had thought quickly. Ibrahim and his gang were on the trail of Bethany Waites’s killer, and, in her estimation, would probably find the killer. She was right about that, wasn’t she? Connie figured it wouldn’t do any harm to get involved. To help out. The court might look a bit more kindly on her if she’d helped track down a murderer.

So she’d torn up Heather’s note – Farewell, can’t take it any more, something or other like that, she’d only skimmed it – and written her own. Made Heather sound like a murder victim, and cast herself as someone with information. A saviour.

Now Connie knows that Andrew Everton killed Bethany Waites, she can put part two of the plan into action. She just has to invent a bit of evidence to show he killed Heather Garbutt too. The guy in the admin block, the one with the Volvo who had wiped the tapes of her going into Heather’s cell that night? She bets he might just remember Andrew Everton visiting the prison that evening. And Connie will, no doubt, remember something Heather had said to her. Something innocuous about the police. ‘This goes right to the top,’ some nonsense. She’ll have fun inventing the memory.

Everton will be convicted, and Connie will get a few years knocked off her sentence for cooperating with the authorities. Beautiful. And the sooner she’s out, the sooner she’ll deal with Ron Ritchie.