The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

  Anyway, Bernard was saying that he wouldn’t take orders from the police. Bernard was staying put and that was that.

  Ron said that he’d once been chained to a pit shaft in Glasshoughton for forty-eight hours and they’d had to defecate into sandwich bags, though he didn’t say ‘defecate’, and that was when Father Mackie introduced himself.

  I had seen him at the meeting. He had sat at the back, quiet as you please and slipped biscuits into his pocket when he thought no one was looking. As I’ve said, no one ever realizes I’m watching. I just have one of those faces.

  I have to say he was very polite and he thanked us for protecting the Garden. Bernard told him the Garden was only the start of it and once you give someone an inch, then we all know what they’d take. Ron then had to have his say and told Father Mackie that ‘his lot’ (the Catholics) had not always been squeaky clean when it came to graveyards, but that a liberty is still a liberty and he didn’t like to see one being taken. Father Mackie said that ‘wouldn’t happen on my watch’ and it all got a bit cowboy film, which was fine by me. I like to see men being men, up to a point.

  This is when Ventham must have caught sight of Father Mackie, because over he rushes, with Chris, Donna and Ibrahim chasing behind. And so, the stage was now set.

  52

  Bogdan has been digging for a long time. Why not? Might as well be getting something done. He started at the very top of the Garden of Eternal Rest, where the earliest graves are now permanently under the shadow of the wide branches of the trees behind the wall. The ground is softer, with no sunlight in many years, and Bogdan knows that the older, grander coffins here will be intact. They will be solid oak. They won’t be split or rotten. There will be no skulls staring up at him, hollow and eaten and hopeful.

  He hears the odd bit of excitement from down the hill, but still no rumble of the low-loader, and so he keeps digging. One of the machines could uncover a whole row of graves in minutes, especially if not much care is taken, which Bogdan knows will be the case. So he chooses to be neat and tidy, for as long as it is just him and his shovel.

  The next grave he chooses to tackle is tucked tightly in the top corner of the graveyard. As he digs, he is thinking about Marina, the woman he met on his way up here. He has seen her before in the village, but mainly people don’t talk to him, they don’t even notice him, and that’s OK. He doesn’t suppose you are allowed to visit people here, but maybe one day if he bumped into her again, then that would be OK. He misses his mother some days.

  Bogdan’s shovel finally strikes something solid, but it is not the lid of the coffin. There are many stones and tree roots, which make the job harder, but more fun, for Bogdan. He reaches down and clears thick earth off the obstruction. It is pure white. Beautiful, in fact, thinks Bogdan, in the moment before he realizes what it is.

  This was not part of Bogdan’s plan. The very point of digging here was that there would be no rotten coffins and no bones. And yet here they were. So even 150 years ago they were cutting corners? Cheap coffins, who would ever find out?

  Should he just fill the grave back in? Pretend it never happened and wait for the diggers? Something about that makes him feel uncomfortable. Bogdan has uncovered a bone and that makes him the guardian. He has no smaller tool than the shovel with him, so kneels down on the compacted earth and starts to work with his hands alone. He is as gentle as he can be. He shifts his kneeling weight to get a better angle to clear away more dirt, and as he does so he realizes he is not kneeling on compacted dirt but on something much more solid. He realizes that he is kneeling on the solid oak lid of the solid oak coffin. Which can’t be. A body can’t escape from a coffin. Bogdan tries to force out a horrific thought. Had someone been buried alive? Had they managed to somehow clamber out of the coffin, but no further?

  Bogdan works quickly, with no room for ceremony or superstition. There are many bones and then a skull, though he tries not to disturb it. He uncovers enough of the coffin to jam the blade of his shovel under the lid. After considerable effort he breaks open the lower third. Inside is another skeleton.

  Two skeletons. One inside the coffin and one outside. One small, one big. One grey and yellow, one cloud-white.

  What to do? Somebody should take a look at it, that was fairly certain. Though that would take a long time. They would dig with tiny trowels, Bogdan had seen it on TV. And they wouldn’t just be digging into this grave, they would be digging into all of them. And Bogdan knows it will end up being nothing. It will just be how they used to bury people in this country, or one year there was a disease and they buried people together, or a million other possibilities. Meanwhile the development will be delayed and he will be waiting to work. So, the question remains. What to do?

  Bogdan needs thinking time, but unfortunately he doesn’t have that luxury. In the distance, Bogdan hears a siren. He waits a moment and the siren comes closer. It sounds like an ambulance to Bogdan, but he knows, logically, that it must be the police. Which means the barricade will be clear soon enough and the circus will begin. Bogdan hauls himself out of the grave and starts to fill it in once more.

  Ian will tell me what to do, he thinks, as the sirens reach the bottom of the path.

  53

  Ian Ventham, exiting the police car, is calm, happy even.

  The police have had a placatory chat with him. He’ll come back tomorrow. The graves aren’t going anywhere. Perhaps sending in the diggers so early was a mistake. But it was a cool thing to do, so a mistake worth making. It was a statement, and making statements is important, whatever they are.

  He doesn’t mind the residents being up in arms, they’ll soon lose interest. He can just give them something else to complain about. Sack one of the waiting staff that they like, or ban grandkids from the pool on health-and-safety grounds. Then they’ll be all ‘what graveyard?’ He has to laugh, really, and so he does.

  But, at that very moment, he sees Father Matthew Mackie.

  Standing there in his frock and little white collar, like he owns the place. As bold as you like.

  This is Ian’s land, for Christ’s sake! It’s Ian’s property! He storms towards the barricade, and has his finger in Father Mackie’s face in seconds.

  ‘If you weren’t a vicar I would knock you out.’ The crowd starts to surround them, like a fight in a pub car park. ‘Get off my property, or I’ll get you thrown off.’

  Ian aims a shove at Mackie’s shoulder, knocking the older man backwards. Mackie reaches out for balance, grabbing Ian’s T-shirt, and the two men lose their balance and fall to the ground together. Donna, with the help of a horrified-looking Karen Playfair, pulls Ian up and off the priest. A group of residents, including Joyce, Ron and Bernard, then surround and restrain Ian Ventham while a group of residents on the other side form a guard around Father Mackie, now sitting, dazed, on the ground. School playground really, but he looks shaken.

  ‘Calm it, Mr Ventham, calm down,’ yells Donna.

  ‘Arrest him! Trespass!’ yells Ian, now being pulled away from the scene by a group of determined septuagenarians, octogenarians and even one nonagenarian, who had missed Second World War call-up by a day and has regretted it ever since.

  Joyce finds herself in the scrum. How strong these men must have been in their time, Ron, Bernard, John, Ibrahim. And how diminished they were now. The spirit was still willing at least, but only Chris Hudson was really able to hold Ventham back. The testosterone was lovely while it lasted though.

  ‘I’m protecting sacred ground. Peacefully and lawfully,’ says Father Mackie.

  Donna helps Father Mackie to his feet, dusting him down and feeling the frailty of the old man beneath the loose black cassock.

  Chris pulls Ian Ventham from the scrum of bodies surrounding him. He can see the adrenaline surging through Ventham’s body, the sort of thing he’s seen a thousand times before, in the late-night drunks of too many towns. The veins riding the muscles that poke out from his T-shirt, a giveaway of steroid abuse. />
  ‘Home now, Mr Ventham,’ orders Chris Hudson, ‘before I arrest you.’

  ‘I didn’t touch him,’ protests Ian Ventham.

  Chris remains quiet, to keep the conversation private. ‘He stumbled, Mr Ventham, I saw that, but he stumbled after you made contact with him, however light. So if I want to arrest you I will. And, allow a policeman a hunch, there might be one or two witnesses to help me in court. So, if you don’t want to be charged with assaulting a priest, which wouldn’t look good in your brochures, then you get in your car and you drive away. Understand?’

  Ian Ventham nods, but without conviction, his brain already somewhere else, making some other calculation. He then shakes his head, slowly and sadly, at Chris Hudson.

  ‘Something’s not right here. Something’s up.’

  ‘Well, whatever’s up will still be up tomorrow,’ says Chris. ‘So get yourself home, calm yourself down and mop your brow. Be a man and take a defeat.’

  Ian turns and walks towards his car. Defeat? As if. As he passes the low-loader he bangs twice on the cab door and cocks his thumb towards the exit.

  He walks slowly, thinking. Where’s Bogdan? Bogdan is a good guy. He’s Polish. He needs to get Bogdan to tile his swimming pool. He’s too lazy, they all are. He’ll talk to Tony Curran. Tony will know what to do. But did Tony lose his phone? Something about Tony.

  Ian reaches the Range Rover. The car has been clamped! His dad will be furious, he’s only borrowed it. He’ll have to get the bus from town and his dad will be waiting for him. Ian is frightened and starts to cry. Don’t cry, Ian, he’ll see. Ian doesn’t want to go home.

  He searches his pockets for change, then stumbles and topples backwards. He reaches out for something to hold on to, but, to his surprise, there is only air.

  Ian Ventham is dead before he hits the ground.

  Part Two

  * * *

  EVERYONE HERE HAS A STORY TO TELL

  54

  Joyce

  I tripped over a loose paving slab in Fairhaven a few weeks ago. I didn’t mention it in my diary because of murders and trips to London and my pursuit of Bernard. But it was a nasty tumble and I dropped my bag and my things went everywhere. Keys, glasses case, pills, phone.

  Now, here’s the thing. Every single person who saw me fall came over to help. Every single one of them. A cyclist helped me to my feet, a traffic warden picked up my things and dusted down my bag, a lady with a pushchair sat with me at a pavement table until I’d got my breath back. The woman who ran the café came out with a cup of tea and offered to drive me around to her GP.

  Perhaps they only came to help because I look old. I look frail and helpless. But I don’t think so. I think I would have helped if I saw a fit youngster take the tumble I did. I think you would too. I think I would have sat with him, I think the traffic warden would have picked up his laptop and I think the woman in the café would still have offered to drive him to her GP.

  That’s who we are as human beings. For the most part, we are kind.

  However, I still remember a consultant I once worked with, at Brighton General, up on the hill. A very rude, very cruel, very unhappy man, and he made our lives a misery. He would shout and would blame us for mistakes he made.

  Now, if that consultant had dropped dead in front of my eyes I would have danced a jig.

  You mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but there are exceptions to every rule and Ian Ventham was of the same type as this consultant. Come to think of it, he was called Ian too, so that’s something to look out for.

  You know those people. People who feel the world is theirs alone? They say you see it more and more these days, this selfishness, but some people were always awful. Not many, that’s what I’m saying, but always a few.

  All of which is to say that, in one way, I’m sorry that Ian Ventham is dead, but there is another way to look at it.

  On any given day lots of people die. I don’t know the statistics, but it must be thousands. So somebody was going to die yesterday and I’m just saying that I would rather it was Ian Ventham who died in front of me than, say, the cyclist or the traffic warden, or the mum with the pushchair, or the woman who ran the café.

  I would rather it was Ian Ventham the paramedics failed to save, than that it was Joanna, or Elizabeth. Or Ron, or Ibrahim, or Bernard. Without wanting to sound selfish about it, I would rather it was Ian Ventham who was zipped into a bag and wheeled into a coroner’s van, than me.

  For Ian Ventham, though, yesterday was the day. We will all have one and yesterday was his. Elizabeth says he was killed, and if Elizabeth says he was killed then I expect he was. I don’t suppose he expected that when he woke up yesterday morning.

  I hope I don’t sound callous, it’s just that I have seen a lot of people die and I have shed so many tears. But I have shed none for Ian Ventham and I just wanted you to know why. It is sad that he is dead, but it hasn’t made me sad.

  And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and help solve his murder.

  55

  ‘Well, here’s the big headline.’ Chris Hudson is standing at the front of the briefing room, his team spread out in front of him. ‘Ian Ventham was murdered.’

  Donna De Freitas looks around at the murder squad. There are a few new faces. She simply cannot believe her luck. Two murders and here she is, right in the middle of it all. She had to hand it to Elizabeth. She definitely owed her a drink, or whatever else Elizabeth might prefer. A scarf? Who knew what Elizabeth would like? A gun, probably.

  Chris opens a folder. ‘Ian Ventham’s death was caused by fentanyl poisoning. A massive overdose, delivered into the muscle of his upper arm. Almost certainly in the moments leading up to his collapse. You’ll tell by the speed that this is not official; this is me calling in a favour, OK? And they see enough fentanyl overdoses at the path lab these days to know one when they see one. We’re the only people who have that piece of information at present, so let’s keep it that way as long as we can, please. No press, no friends and family.’

  He gives Donna the briefest of looks.

  56

  ‘So, we were all witnesses to a murder,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Which, needless to say, is wonderful.’

  Fifteen winding miles away, the Thursday Murder Club is in extraordinary session. Elizabeth is laying out a series of full-colour photos of the corpse of Ian Ventham, alongside every conceivable angle of the scene. She had taken them on her phone while pretending she was calling for an ambulance. She then had them privately printed by a chemist in Robertsbridge who owed her a favour, due to her keeping quiet about a criminal conviction from the 1970s that she had managed to uncover.

  ‘Tragic too, in its way, if we wanted to be traditional about our emotions,’ adds Ibrahim.

  ‘Yes, if we wanted to be melodramatic, Ibrahim,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘First question, then,’ says Ron. ‘How do you know it was a murder? Looked like a heart attack to me.’

  ‘And you’re a doctor, Ron?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘As much as you are, Liz,’ says Ron.

  Elizabeth opens a folder and takes out a sheet of paper. ‘Well, Ron, I’ve already been over this with Ibrahim, because I had a job for him, but listen carefully. The cause of death was an overdose of fentanyl, administered very shortly before death. This information is straight from a man who has access to the email correspondence of the Kent Police Forensic Service, but it hasn’t yet been confirmed by Donna, even though I have texted her repeatedly. Happy, Ron?’

  Ron nods. ‘Yeah, I’ll give you that. What’s fentanyl? That’s a new one on me.’

  ‘It’s an opioid, Ron, like heroin,’ says Joyce. ‘They use it in anaesthesia, pain relief, all sorts of things. Very effective, patients rave about it.’

  ‘Also you can mix it with cocaine,’ says Ibrahim. ‘If you were a drug addict, say.’

  ‘And the Russian security services use it for all sorts of things,’ says Elizabeth.

  Ron nods, sat
isfied.

  Ibrahim says, ‘And, as it must’ve been administered very shortly before his death, then we are all suspects in his murder.’

  Joyce claps her hands. ‘Splendid. I’m not sure how any of us would have got hold of fentanyl, but splendid.’ She is arranging Viennese whirls on a plate commemorating Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s wedding, something Joanna had assumed she would like many years ago.

  Ron is nodding, looking at the photos of the scene. Looking at the faces of the residents craning for a better view of Ian Ventham’s slumped body. ‘So, someone at Coopers Chase killed him? Someone in these pictures?’

  ‘And we are all in the pictures,’ says Ibrahim.

  ‘Except for Elizabeth, of course,’ says Joyce. ‘Because she was taking the photos. But she would still be a suspect for any half-decent investigation.’

  ‘I would hope so,’ agrees Elizabeth.

  Ibrahim walks over to a flip chart. ‘Elizabeth asked me to make a few calculations.’

  Elizabeth, Joyce and Ron settle into the Jigsaw Room chairs. Ron takes a Viennese whirl, to the relief of Joyce, who now feels able to do the same. They are own-brand, but there had been a Gregg Wallace programme which had said they were made in the same factory as the proper ones.

  Ibrahim begins. ‘Somebody in that crowd administered an injection to Ian Ventham which killed him, almost certainly within a minute. There was a puncture wound found on his upper arm. I asked you all to compile a list of everybody you remembered seeing, which you kindly did, although not all of your lists were alphabetized in the way I had asked.’