The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)(95)

I take Mervyn a casserole every now and again, always enough for two, just to see if he takes the hint, but he just says, ‘Thank you, that’ll last me two days.’ But the way he says it, in that deep, commanding voice – well, it’s worth it just for that. He hasn’t yet shown any real sign of interest, though the other day he did bring round his copy of The Times and said, ‘There’s an article in there about Margaret Atwood. About how she writes her books. Thought you might be interested.’ That must be the longest sentence he has ever said to me, so you never know. I read the article, so we will have something to talk about next time I see him.

Christmas is just around the corner, and I’m hoping Joanna and Scott might come down. I haven’t really asked what everyone is doing. I wonder if Ron will be with Pauline? Perhaps they’d like to come round here? And Ibrahim, without question. I wonder what Viktor is doing for Christmas? I will ask him tomorrow, as we have all been invited for lunch at his. This time I will be bringing my swimming costume, I don’t care how cold it is.

My crypto account, which was somewhere over sixty-five thousand pounds at one point, is now worth eight hundred. I emailed Henrik, and he replied saying, ‘Joyce, you must believe.’ Believe what, I don’t know. But, whatever you might say about cryptocurrency, it’s more fun than Premium Bonds.

Such a lot has happened this year, and my favourite thing of all has just bounded into the room looking for trouble. Alan thinks it is time for bed, and, as so often, he is quite right.





89





Greed, that was the thing. The fatal flaw. Why wasn’t he happy with what he had?

Actually, it was greed and being too clever. The two fatal flaws.

Sitting here in Belmarsh, when he should be on a Spanish terrace with a cold beer and a hot typewriter.

‘A cold beer and a hot typewriter.’ Andrew Everton writes that down in his notebook. The new book, Guilty or Not Guilty, is going to be his best yet, just as soon as they let him use a computer. Perhaps after he’s been convicted they’ll let him use one? How many books will he have to sell to pay back ten million pounds under the Proceeds of Crime Act? A lot, that’s his guess.

The VAT scheme, so simple, so victimless. How had it gone so wrong? The plot for a book, turned into a real-life crime. He should have left it as a book. Trusted his writing. ‘Grisham-esque’, someone had called it, he forgets who.

He should never have sent the bullet to Bethany either. He had hoped it might scare her off. Never should have emailed asking to meet her. He should have stayed in the shadows. Life was not a book.

So many bodies and he had only murdered one of them. He’d told Jack and Heather he had murdered Bethany, sure. That was a masterstroke: blackmail them with a corpse that was never there. The coastguards had told him that if the body hadn’t washed up within a week, it was probably not going to be washed up at all, and that’s what gave him the idea. Such a clever idea. Too clever in the end; it was so unfair. You shouldn’t be penalized for being too clever.

And he’d told the guy with the pebbly glasses that he’d killed Bethany too. Because that’s what he thought the guy wanted to hear. That’s how he thought he was going to get his money.

Greed. And being too clever. Look where it gets you.

Who had killed Bethany Waites? Andrew Everton has no idea. It wasn’t him, and he knows it wasn’t Jack Mason, or his little blackmail scheme wouldn’t have worked. And where did all that money end up? He has no idea about that either. Who was the guy in the glasses? Was Elizabeth Best everything she seemed? His whole life had begun to unravel after he’d first met her. So many questions, and so few answers.

As he looks at the four walls of his cell, segregated from fellow prisoners, locked up for twenty-four hours a day for his own safety, and doing his business in a metal bucket bolted to a wall, it occurs to Andrew Everton that, for someone so clever, there seem to be an awful lot of things he doesn’t know.

There is some good news, and you should always focus on the good news. There was no material evidence to link him to Bethany’s or Heather’s death. His solicitor would make short work of the ‘eyewitness’ at Darwell Prison. Maybe he would beat the murder charges? The public was baying for his blood, but the public was always baying for something. They would move on soon enough, Mike Waghorn had been right about that.

Perhaps he would only be convicted of the fraud. And what would he serve? Maybe he’d do five years of a ten-year sentence? Write a series of bestselling books where a prisoner solves crimes from inside his cell? Call it ‘Hard Cell’ or ‘The Wing Man’.

Yes, focus on the good things.

Ironic that in the one murder he actually had committed, it looked like he wasn’t even going to be a suspect. The moment Jack Mason started talking, Andrew’d had to kill him. No choice. Make it look like a simple suicide. Jack knew it the second he opened the door.

‘Death Comes Knocking.’ Andrew Everton writes that down in his notebook too, under ‘Good Titles’.

If he can beat these murder raps, five years will just fly by.





90





Chris is celebrating solving the case in the way that all hard-bitten cops have done throughout the ages. He is drinking blueberry kombucha and dipping celery sticks into organic hummus, as he watches the darts.