The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

  Elizabeth gets out of her chair and walks to the side of the bed.

  ‘A real murder to investigate, Penny. I promise I won’t let you miss a thing.’

  She kisses her best friend on the forehead. She turns to the chair on the other side of the bed and gives a small smile.

  ‘How are you, John?’

  Penny’s husband puts down his book and looks up.

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘I do know. You always know where I am, John.’

  The nurses say Penny Gray can hear nothing, but who is to say? John never speaks to Penny while Elizabeth is in the room. He comes into Willows at seven each morning and he leaves at nine each evening, back to the flat that he and Penny had lived in together. Back to the holiday trinkets and the old photos and the memories that he and Penny shared for fifty years. She knows that he talks to Penny when she is not there. And every time she walks in, always after knocking, she notices the fading white prints of John’s hand on Penny’s. His hand back on his book, though he always seems to be on the same page.

  Elizabeth leaves the lovers together.

  15

  Joyce

  Every Wednesday I take the residents’ minibus into Fairhaven to do a spot of shopping. On Mondays it goes to Tunbridge Wells, half an hour in the other direction, but I like the younger feel of Fairhaven. I like to see what people are wearing and I like to hear the seagulls. The driver’s name is Carlito and he is generally understood to be Spanish, but I have chatted to him a number of times now and it turns out he is Portuguese. He is very good about it though.

  There is a vegan café, just off the seafront, that I found a few months ago and I am already looking forward to a nice mint tea and an almond-flour brownie. I am not a vegan and have no intention of ever becoming one, but I still feel like it’s something that should be encouraged. I read that if mankind doesn’t stop eating meat, there will be mass starvation by 2050. With respect, I am nearly eighty and so this won’t be my problem, but I do hope they sort it out. My daughter Joanna is vegetarian and one day I will take her there. We’ll just drop in, as if me visiting a vegan café is the most natural thing in the world.

  The usual crowd are always on the bus. There are the regulars, Peter and Carol, a nice couple from Ruskin, who take the minibus down to visit their daughter who lives on the front. I know there are no grandkids, but nonetheless she seems to be at home during the day. There will be a story there. There’s Sir Nicholas, who just goes for a mooch now they won’t let him drive any more. There’s Naomi with her hip that they can’t get to the bottom of and a woman from Wordsworth whose name I have never quite caught and am now too embarrassed to ask. She is friendly enough though. (Elaine?)

  I know that Bernard will be in his customary position at the back. I always feel like I would like to sit next to him, he is jolly company when he turns his mind to it. But I know he visits Fairhaven for his late wife, so I leave him in peace. That’s where they met and that’s where they lived before they moved in here. He told me that since she died he would go to the Adelphi Hotel where she used to work and polish off a couple of glasses of wine, overlooking the sea. That’s how I first found out about the minibus, if I’m honest, so silver linings. They turned the Adelphi into a Travelodge last year, so now Bernard sits on the pier. That is less desolate than it sounds, as they recently revamped it and it has won a number of awards.

  Perhaps I will just sit next to him at the back of the bus one day, what am I waiting for?

  I’m looking forward to my tea and brownie, but I’m also looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet. The whole of Coopers Chase is still gossiping about poor Tony Curran. We are around death a lot here, but even so. Not everyone is bludgeoned, are they?

  Right, that’s me. If anything happens, I will report back.

  16

  As the minibus is about to leave, the doors slide open for a final time and Elizabeth steps in. She takes the seat next to Joyce.

  ‘Good morning, Joyce,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘Well, this is a first,’ says Joyce. ‘How lovely!’

  ‘I’ve brought a book, if you don’t want to talk on the journey,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Ooh no, let’s talk,’ says Joyce.

  Carlito pulls away with his customary care.

  ‘Splendid!’ says Elizabeth. ‘I haven’t really brought a book.’

  Elizabeth and Joyce settle into conversation. They are very careful not to talk about the Tony Curran case. One of the first things you learn at Coopers Chase is that some people can still actually hear. Instead, Elizabeth tells Joyce about the last time she went to Fairhaven, which was sometime in the 1960s and whose purpose concerned a piece of equipment that had washed up on the beach. Elizabeth refuses to be drawn into details, but tells Joyce it was almost certainly now a matter of public record and she could presumably look it up somewhere if she was interested. The journey passes very pleasantly. The sun is up, the skies are blue and murder is in the air.

  As always, Carlito stops the minibus outside Ryman’s. Everyone knows to meet back here in three hours’ time. Carlito has done this job for two years now and not a single person has ever been late. Except for Malcolm Weekes, who, as it turned out, had died in the lightbulb aisle in Robert Dyas.

  Joyce and Elizabeth let the others out first, allowing their assault course of ramps and sticks and frames to disperse. Bernard doffs his hat to the ladies as he exits and they watch as he shuffles towards the seafront, his Daily Express tucked under his arm.

  As they step down from the bus and Elizabeth thanks Carlito for his considerate driving in perfect Portuguese, Joyce thinks to ask for the first time what Elizabeth is planning to do in Fairhaven.

  ‘Same as you, dear. Shall we?’ Elizabeth starts walking away from the seafront and Joyce chooses to follow, keen for adventure, but still hopeful she might have time for her tea and brownie.

  A short walk away is Western Road and the broad stone steps of Fairhaven Police Station. Elizabeth turns back to Joyce, as the automatic doors open in front of her.

  ‘Here’s the way I see it, Joyce. If we are going to investigate this murder …’

  ‘We’re going to investigate the murder?’ asks Joyce.

  ‘Of course we are, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Who better than us? But we have no access to any case files, any witness statements, any forensics, and we are going to have to change that. Which is why we’re here. I know I don’t need to say this, Joyce, but just back me up, whatever happens.’

  Joyce nods, of course, of course. They walk in.

  Once inside, the two ladies are buzzed through a security door into a public reception area. Joyce has never been inside a police station before, though has watched every ITV documentary going and is disappointed that no one is being wrestled to the ground and dragged to a cell, their obscenities thrillingly bleeped out. Instead there is just a young desk sergeant, pretending he isn’t playing patience on his Home Office computer.

  ‘How can I help you, ladies?’ he asks.

  Elizabeth starts to cry. Joyce manages to control her double-take.

  ‘Someone just stole my bag. Outside Holland & Barrett,’ weeps Elizabeth.

  So that’s why she didn’t have a bag with her, thinks Joyce. That had been bugging her in the minibus. Joyce puts her arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘It was awful.’

  ‘Let me get an officer to take a statement from you and we’ll see what we can do.’ The desk sergeant presses a buzzer on the wall to his left and within seconds a young constable enters through a further security door behind him.

  ‘Mark, this lady has just had her handbag stolen on Queens Road. Can you take a statement? I’ll make a cuppa for everyone.’

  ‘Certainly. Madam, if you’ll follow me?’

  Elizabeth stands her ground and refuses to move. She is shaking her head, cheeks wet with tears now.

  ‘I want to talk to a female police constable.’

  ‘I’m sure Mark can so
rt this out for you,’ says the desk sergeant.

  ‘Please!’ cries Elizabeth.

  Joyce decides the time has come to help her friend out.

  ‘My friend is a nun, Sergeant.’

  ‘A nun?’ says the desk sergeant.

  ‘Yes, a nun,’ says Joyce. ‘And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what that entails?’

  The desk sergeant sees that this is a discussion that could end badly in so many ways and chooses an easy life.

  ‘If you’ll give me a moment, madam, I will find someone for you.’

  He follows Mark back through the security door and Elizabeth and Joyce are alone for a minute. Elizabeth stops the waterworks and looks over at Joyce.

  ‘A nun? That was very good.’

  ‘I didn’t have much time to think,’ says Joyce.

  ‘If pushed, I was going to say someone had touched me,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You know how hot they are on that these days. But a nun is much more fun.’

  ‘Why do you want to see a female officer?’ Joyce has a number of other questions now, but this is first in the queue. ‘And well done on not saying WPC, by the way. I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Thank you, Joyce. I just thought that, as the bus was going into Fairhaven anyway, we should pop in and see PC De Freitas.’

  Joyce nods slowly. In Elizabeth’s world that is absolutely the sort of thing that makes sense. ‘But what if she’s not on shift? Or what if she is, but there are other female constables?’

  ‘Would I have brought you here if I hadn’t already checked that, Joyce?’

  ‘How did you check th—’

  The security door opens and Donna De Freitas steps through. ‘Now, ladies, how can I –’ Donna registers who is in front of her. She looks from Elizabeth to Joyce and back again, ‘– help you?’

  17

  DCI Chris Hudson has been given a file on Tony Curran so thick it makes a pleasing thud if you drop it on a desk. Which is what he has just done.

  Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had read a headline about Diet Coke once, which was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.

  He opens the file. Most of Tony Curran’s dealings with Kent Police were from before Chris’s time in Fairhaven. Charges for assault in his twenties, minor drug convictions, dangerous driving, dangerous dog, possession of an illegal weapon. A tax disc misdemeanour. Public urination.

  Then comes the real story. Chris opens an indeterminate sandwich from the garage. There are transcripts of a number of interviews held with Tony Curran over the years, with the last one being after a shooting in the Black Bridge pub, which left a young drug dealer dead. A witness recognized Tony Curran as firing the fatal shot and Fairhaven CID called Curran in for questioning.

  Tony Curran had been in the middle of everything back then. Ask around and anyone would tell you. Tony ran the drugs trade in Fairhaven, and plenty more besides. Made a lot of money.

  Chris reads the depressingly familiar stream of ‘no comments’ on the Black Bridge transcript. He reads that the witness, a local taxi driver, had disappeared soon after. Scared away, or worse. Tony Curran, local builder, walked away scot-free.

  So what was that? One death? Two? The drug dealer shot at the Black Bridge and, perhaps, the poor taxi driver who witnessed it?

  Since 2000 though, nothing. A speeding ticket, promptly paid, in 2009.

  He looks at the photograph the killer had left by the body. Three men. Tony Curran, now dead. With his arm around Tony was a local dealer from back in the day, Bobby Tanner. Hired as muscle. Whereabouts currently unknown, but they would track him down soon enough. And the third man, whereabouts very much known. The ex-boxer Jason Ritchie. Chris wonders what the newspapers would pay for this photo. He has heard of officers doing this. The lowest of the low, as far as Chris is concerned. He looks at the smiles, the banknotes and the beers. It was probably sometime around 2000, when the boy was shot in the Black Bridge. Funny to think of the year 2000 as ancient history.

  Chris opens a Twix as he studies the photo. He has his annual medical in two months and every Monday he convinces himself that this is finally the week he gets back into shape, finally shifts the stone or so that holds him back. The stone or so that gives him cramp. The stone or so that stops him buying new clothes, just in case, and that stops him dating, because who would want this? The stone or so that stands between him and the world. Two stone if he’s really honest.

  Those Mondays are usually good. Chris doesn’t take the lift on Mondays. Chris brings food from home on Mondays. Chris does sit-ups in bed on Mondays. But by Tuesday, or, in a good week, Wednesday, the world creeps back in, the stairs seem too daunting and Chris loses faith in the project. He’s aware that the project is himself, and that drags him further down still. So out come the pasties and the crisps, the petrol-station lunch, the quick drink after work, the takeaway on the way home from work, the chocolate on the way home from the takeaway. The eating, the numbing, the release, the shame and then repeat.

  But there was always next Monday and one of these Mondays there would be salvation. That stone would drop off, followed by the other stone that was lurking. He’d barely break sweat at the medical, he’d be the athlete he always secretly knew he was. Text a thumbs-up to the new girlfriend he’d have met online.

  He finishes the Twix and looks around for his crisps.

  Chris Hudson guesses that the Black Bridge shooting was the wake-up call that Tony Curran had needed. That was certainly how it looked. He had started working with a local property developer called Ian Ventham around this time, and perhaps he decided life would be simpler if he turned legit. There was good money in it, even if it was not what he had grown used to. Tony must have known he couldn’t keep riding his luck.

  Chris opens his crisps and looks at his watch. He has an appointment and he should probably head off. Someone saw Tony Curran having a row just before he died, and that someone is insisting on talking to him personally. It’s not a long trip. The retirement community Curran had been working at.

  Chris looks at the photo again. The three men, that happy gang. Tony Curran and Bobby Tanner, arms around each other. And, off to the side, a bottle in his hand and that handsome broken nose, maybe a couple of years past the height of his powers, Jason Ritchie.

  Three friends, drinking beer, at a table covered with money. Why leave the photo by the body? A warning from Bobby Tanner or Jason Ritchie? A warning to them? You’re next? More likely a red herring, or a misdirect. No one would be so stupid.

  Either way, Chris will need to have a chat with Jason Ritchie. And, hopefully, his team will find their missing man, Bobby Tanner.

  Actually, their missing men, thinks Chris, tipping the last of his crisps into his mouth.

  Because, who took the photograph in the first place?

  18

  Donna motions for her two visitors to sit. They are in Interview Suite B, a boxy, windowless room, with a wooden table bolted to the floor. Joyce looks around her with the excitement of a tourist. Elizabeth looks at home. Donna has her eyes on the heavy door, waiting for it to swing shut. The moment it clicks into place she looks straight at Elizabeth.

  ‘So you’re a nun now, Elizabeth?’

  Elizabeth nods quickly, raising a finger to acknowledge that this is a good question. ‘Donna, like any modern woman, I am any number of things, as and when the need arises. We have to be chameleons, don’t we?’ She takes a notepad and pen from an inside coat pocket and places them on the table. ‘But Joyce takes the credit for that one.’

  Joyce is still staring around the room. ‘This is exactly like you see on television, PC De Freitas. How wonderful! It must be so much fun to work here.’

  Donna is not sharing in the sense of awe. ‘So, Elizabeth. Have you had a bag stolen?’

  ‘No, dear,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Good luck to anyone trying to steal my bag. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Then can I ask what the two of you are doing
here? I have work that needs finishing.’

  Elizabeth nods. ‘Of course, that’s very reasonable. Well, I’m here because I wanted to talk to you about something. And Joyce was here for shopping, I presume. Joyce? I realize I haven’t asked.’

  ‘I like to go to Anything with a Pulse, the vegan café, if you know it?’

  Donna looks at her watch, then leans forward. ‘Well, here I am. If you want to talk, go ahead. I’ll give you two minutes before I go back to catching criminals.’

  Elizabeth gives a light clap of the hands. ‘Excellent! Well, first I will say this. Stop pretending you are not pleased to see us again, because I know that you are. And we’re pleased to see you again. This will be so much more fun if we can all just accept that.’

  Donna does not reply. Joyce leans in to the tape recorder sitting on the table. ‘For the purposes of the tape, PC De Freitas refuses to answer, but is attempting to hide a slight smile.’

  ‘Secondly, but connected to that,’ continues Elizabeth, ‘whatever it is we are keeping you from, I know one thing for certain, it isn’t catching criminals. It is something boring.’

  ‘No comment,’ deadpans Donna.

  ‘Where are you from, Donna? May I call you Donna?’

  ‘You may. I’m from south London.’

  ‘Transferred from the Met?’

  Donna nods. Elizabeth makes a note in her book.

  ‘You’re taking notes?’ asks Donna.

  Elizabeth nods. ‘Why so? And why to Fairhaven?’