The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

  Penny had been lying in bed, a light sheet covering her to the neck, a blanket further down, folded back. Tubes running from her nose and from her wrists. Donna had once been on a school trip to the Lloyd’s Building, where everything that should be on the inside was on the outside. She preferred everything tidied away.

  Donna saluted. ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Take a seat, Donna, I thought it would be nice for the two of you to get to know each other. I do think you’ll get along.’

  Elizabeth had taken Donna through Penny’s career. Smart, resilient, opinionated, thwarted at every turn, by her gender and by her temperament. Or rather by the unacceptable combination of them both.

  ‘She’s a wrecking ball,’ Elizabeth had said. ‘I’m a thin blade, you understand. Penny is all brute force. I don’t know if you could tell that now.’

  Donna looked at Penny and fancied that she could.

  ‘It was fashionable in the police back then,’ Elizabeth had gone on. ‘A bit of blunt force. Fashionable if you were a man at least, it never helped Penny, she never made it higher than Detective Inspector. Absurd if you knew her. I’m right, John, absurd, wasn’t it?’

  John had looked up and nodded. ‘A waste.’

  ‘She was trouble, Donna,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And I can think of no finer compliment. That’s why Penny enjoyed looking over the old cases. She could finally be in charge. Could finally be the bull in a china shop. She didn’t have to be polite and laugh at the jokes and make the tea.’

  Donna saw Elizabeth’s hand close around Penny’s.

  Elizabeth looked at her and nodded. ‘We fight on though, do we not? Penny took it all, sucked it up, as they say, day after day, without complaint.’

  ‘She complained a lot.’ This was John. ‘With respect, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Well, yes, she had an impressive temper on her when she wanted to.’

  ‘Very focused,’ John had agreed.

  As they had left, generations apart, but shoulder to shoulder and in perfect step, Elizabeth had turned to Donna and said, ‘You will know better than me, Donna, but I think perhaps not all the battles have been won?’

  ‘I think perhaps too,’ Donna had agreed. They had continued, in companionable silence, out through the front doors of Willows, grateful to be breathing the air of the outside world.

  Back at home – was this really home now? – Donna is not fully concentrating on Instagram any more. The visit to Penny has made her proud and sad. She would love to have met her. Really met her. There are many reasons why Donna would like to be the one to crack these murders, and she adds making Detective Inspector Penny Gray proud to her list.

  Gianni for the Tony Curran murder? Matthew Mackie for Ventham? Elizabeth had told her to look into another of the residents. A Bernard Cottle. She had written the name down.

  And the bones? Are they important?

  What do you say, Penny Gray?

  It would be nice to wrap it all up. A nice tribute to someone who has gone before. She should get back to those passenger lists.

  Donna scrolls through some final pictures. Poppy has just been bungee-jumping for Cancer Research. Well of course she has; that was so Poppy.

  87

  Joyce

  I don’t often write in the morning, I know. But today I am. I just felt I should. So here I am.

  Yesterday was all very interesting, wasn’t it? Those boys and all the murders and the drugs and what have you. I bet they had a lot to talk about when they headed off afterwards. I wonder who they were meeting?

  Really, it was very interesting to someone like me. Very interesting. Gianni certainly sounds a likely culprit, doesn’t he?

  I wonder if … Oh stop it, Joyce, just stop it. You’re putting it off. You don’t want to write it.

  All right then. So I have had some sad news, and the sad news is this.

  I made my ‘All’s Well’ call to Bernard this morning.

  Lots of people have an ‘All’s Well’ arrangement. You buddy up with a pal, ring them at 8 a.m., let it ring twice and put the phone down. Then they do the same back. So you each know the other is OK without it costing you a penny. And, of course, you don’t have to have a conversation.

  So I rang Bernard this morning. Two rings, letting him know I was safe and sound, hadn’t had a fall or what have you. But nothing back. I never worry too much, sometimes he forgets and I wander round and ring his buzzer and he shuffles to the window in his dressing gown and gives me a guilty thumbs-up. I always think, ‘Oh let me in, you silly old man, let’s have some breakfast, I don’t mind the dressing gown,’ but that’s not Bernard.

  So over I trotted. Did I know? I suppose I did, but I also didn’t, because it’s too big a thing to know. But I suppose I did know, because Marjorie Walters saw me on my way over, and said she’d waved but I hadn’t seen, just lost in a world of my own, which isn’t like me. So, yes, I suppose I knew.

  I buzzed and looked up at the window. The curtains were drawn. Perhaps he was asleep? Had a touch of flu and stayed in bed. ‘Man flu’, someone had said on This Morning the other day. It had tickled me and I’d told Joanna, but she said the expression had been around for years and had I really never heard it? Which put me in my place.

  I’m stalling, I know. Let’s get on to it.

  I let myself into the block with the spare key fob, I walked up the flight of stairs and saw an envelope Sellotaped to Bernard’s door. On the front of it he had written ‘Joyce’.

  Sorry, I have to finish there.

  There was even a smiley face in the ‘O’. You really never knew with Bernard.

  88

  Joyce opens up the envelope and slips out a handwritten letter. Maybe three or four pages. She is grateful that her friends have come to her flat. She didn’t want to go out there again today.

  ‘So, I’ll just read it. Not all of it, but the bits of interest. It answers a few questions we had. I know what some of you had been thinking about him. Maybe thought he’d, you know … Ian Ventham. Anyway.’

  ‘You take your time,’ says Ron, and places his hand on Joyce’s for a moment.

  Joyce begins to read, with an unfamiliar waver.

  ‘“Dear Joyce, I am sorry for the nuisance. Don’t try to come in, I have bolted the door. First time I have used that bolt since I moved here. You will know what I have done, and I suppose it’s nothing you haven’t seen before a thousand times. I will be lying on the bed, all things being well, and perhaps I will look peaceful, but perhaps I won’t. I would rather not take that chance, so I’ll leave it to the ambulance men to decide if I look in a fit state for you to say goodbye. That is if you wish to say goodbye.”’

  Joyce stops reading for a moment. Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim are completely silent. She looks up at them. ‘They didn’t let me see him in the end. I’m sure that’s policy, when you’re not family. So he got that bit wrong, didn’t he? And they were both ambulance women.’

  Joyce gives a weak smile and her three friends mirror it. She continues reading.

  ‘“I have the pills by my side and I have a Laphroaig I had been saving for a rainy day. I see the lights turning off around me and it will be my turn next. Next to the bed are the beautiful flowers you bought me. They are in a milk bottle, because you know me and vases. But before I go, I suppose I should tell you the whole thing.”’

  ‘The whole thing?’ says Elizabeth.

  Joyce puts a finger to her lips. Elizabeth does as she is told and Joyce continues reading Bernard’s final letter.

  ‘“As you know, Asima” – that’s his wife – “died shortly after we moved to Coopers Chase, which was a spanner in the works. I know you don’t talk about Gerry very much, Joyce, but I know you understand. Like someone reached in and took out my heart and my lungs and told me to keep living. Keep waking up, keep eating, keep putting one foot in front of the other. For what? I don’t think I ever really found an answer to that. You know I would often walk up the hill and sit on the bench Asima and I u
sed to sit on when we first moved here, and you know I felt close to her there. But I had another reason for climbing that hill, a reason for which I feel profound shame. A shame that has become too much for me to bear.”’

  Joyce pauses for a moment. ‘I wonder if I might have some water?’

  Ron pours her a glass and hands it to her. Joyce drinks, then returns to the letter.

  ‘“You will know that many Hindus have their ashes scattered on the Ganges. These days, other rivers will do, but for a certain generation it’s still the Ganges, if you have the wherewithal. This was Asima’s wish many, many years ago, certainly a wish that our daughter Sufi had grown up hearing about. Asima’s funeral is not something I wish to think about or write about, but two days afterwards Sufi and Majid – that’s the daughter and son-in-law – flew to Varanasi in India and scattered Asima’s ashes on the Ganges. But Joyce – and here’s where the pills and the whisky come in, I’m afraid – they weren’t her ashes.”’

  She pauses and looks up.

  ‘Well. Goodness!’ says Ibrahim, and sits forward as Joyce reads on.

  ‘“I am not a religious man, Joyce, as you are aware. But in her later years, Asima was not a religious woman either. She shook off her faith slowly, like the leaves from a tree, until nothing remained. I loved that woman with everything I possess and she loved me. The thought of her leaving, being placed in hand luggage, Joyce, and then floating away from me. Well, that wasn’t something I was able to comprehend two days after saying goodbye. None of this excuses my actions, but I hope it might explain them. I had the ashes at home, for the first night. Sufi and Majid weren’t in my spare room, they had preferred to stay in a hotel, despite it all.

  ‘“Many years ago Asima and I had been browsing at an old antique shop and she had picked up a tea caddy in the shape of a tiger. ‘Well, that’s you,’ I said, and we both laughed. I called her Little Tiger and she called me Big Tiger, you know the drill. I went back a week later to buy it for her, as a surprise Christmas present, but it had already been sold. Anyway, that Christmas, I opened my present from her, and there it was. She had obviously gone straight back and bought it for me. I have kept it ever since. So, I took the urn and poured the ashes from the urn into the tiger tea caddy, then placed the caddy back in the cupboard. I filled the urn with a mixture of sawdust and bonemeal, it’s surprisingly convincing, then sealed it shut again. And that’s what Sufi took to Varanasi and that’s what she scattered on the Ganges. Bear in mind I wasn’t thinking straight, Joyce, I was paralysed with grief. I would have done anything to stop my Asima floating away. I had forgotten, of course, that she was Sufi’s Asima too. The next day, as soon after dark as I dared, I took a spade from the allotment shed and walked up the hill. I cut the turf from underneath the bench, I dug a hole and I buried the tin. Even then I knew it could only be temporary, but I wasn’t ready to let her go. The turf settled back in, nobody ever noticed a thing – why would they? – and every day I would go and sit on the bench, say hello when people walked by and talk to Asima when they didn’t. I knew then that it was wrong, I knew that I had betrayed my daughter and that I could never make amends. But the pain was so very great.”’

  ‘Some people love their children more than they love their partner,’ says Ibrahim, ‘and some people love their partner more than their children. And no one can ever admit to either thing.’

  Joyce nods, absent-mindedly and begins a new page.

  ‘“The immediate pain goes, however much you might want it to stay, and I soon came to understand the enormity of what I had done. The awful selfishness, the entitlement. I started to think of plans and plots, something to put it right. Maybe I would dig the tea caddy up, I would take it on the bus down to Fairhaven, let some of her go and keep some of her with me. I could never tell Sufi what I had done, but at least her mother would be in the waves, returning to wherever Sufi imagines we return to. I knew it wasn’t enough, but it was the best I could do. Until one morning I climbed the hill to find workmen laying a concrete foundation for the bench. They had dug down, not far enough to find the tin, and filled the hole with cement. They had the job done in half an hour. And that was that, I suppose, so silly when you look at it, but I had no easy way of digging the tea caddy back up. So I would continue to walk up the hill and continue to talk to Asima when no one was listening, telling her my news, telling her how much I loved her and telling her I was sorry. And honestly, Joyce, for your eyes only, I realize that I have run out of whatever it is that we need to carry on. So that’s me, I’m afraid.”’

  Joyce, finishes, stares down at the letter for another moment, running a finger across the ink. She looks up at her friends and attempts a smile, which turns, in an instant, to tears. The tears turn to shaking sobs and Ron leaves his chair, kneels in front her and takes her in his arms. The thing Ron is so good at. Joyce buries her head in Ron’s shoulder and flings her arms around him, weeping for Gerry and for Bernard and for Asima and for the ladies who went to Jersey Boys and drank G&Ts out of cans all the way home.

  89

  It is too late to be in Fairhaven Police Station, but Donna and Chris have nowhere else to be.

  Chris kneels and unblocks the paper jam in the photocopier. Chris finds it hard to kneel without cramping up these days. He isn’t sure what that is. Too much salt, or not enough salt? It’s one or the other.

  ‘Fixed it,’ he tells Donna.

  Donna presses ‘Print’ and makes a series of copies of the reports she’s been sent by the Cypriot Police Service.

  ‘I’ll bind them all together for you,’ says Donna. ‘It’ll take a while, but it’ll be easier for you.’

  ‘Very kind, Donna,’ says Chris. ‘But you’re still not coming to Cyprus with me.’

  Donna sticks out her tongue.

  Chris has a very interesting interview lined up. One that should tell them once and for all where Gianni Gunduz is.

  Gianni’s name has not appeared on any of the passenger lists that Donna had waded through. No flight, no boat, no train, either into or out of the UK. But Chris supposes that Gianni is unlikely to still be using his old name. Not when the police had been hunting him down for the murder of the young cabbie and Tony Curran had been hunting him down for the £100,000 he had stolen.

  But no one could simply disappear. There would be a trace somewhere.

  Chris shuts down his computer. He feels sure that Turkish Gianni is their man, he’s been around long enough to sense when something fits perfectly. Evidence was another thing, but hopefully the trip to Nicosia will help him out there.

  ‘Shall we call it a night?’

  ‘Quick drink?’ says Donna. ‘Pont Noir?’

  ‘Six-fifty flight in the morning,’ says Chris.

  ‘Don’t rub it in,’ says Donna.

  Chris stands and pulls down his office blinds. Gianni was one thing, but Ian Ventham? That was harder. Was it really connected to a murder from fifty years ago? Surely not? How many people could there be? Chris even had two DIs tracking down nuns in case they could remember anything. Surely some of them had left at some point? Lost their calling and gone out into the real world? What would they be now? Eighty-odd? Records were sketchy though, and he held out little hope. Or were they all missing something simpler?

  ‘Don’t crack the case while I’m gone please.’

  ‘I can’t promise anything,’ says Donna.

  Chris picks up his briefcase. Time to go home. Always the worst time. Chris’s dream life remains just one stone away. But in his briefcase there is a packet of Salt & Vinegar McCoys, a Wispa and a Diet Coke. Diet Coke? Who did Chris think he was kidding?

  Sometimes Chris thinks he should join a dating website. In his mind his perfect date would be a divorced teacher who had a small dog and sang in a choir. But he’d be happy to be proved wrong. Just someone kind and funny really.

  Chris holds the door open for Donna, then follows her out.

  What kind of woman would want Chris? Did women really mi
nd a bit of extra timber these days? Well, yes, he was sure they did, but even so? He was just about to solve a murder, and surely, somewhere in the whole of Kent, there was someone who might find that attractive?

  90

  Joyce

  Oh, I can’t sleep. It’s Bernard, Bernard, Bernard, of course. I’m already wondering about the funeral. Will it be here? I do hope so. I know I hadn’t known him long, but I’d hate to think of him in Vancouver.

  So I’m back here at two in the morning, to give you some news. Don’t worry, no one has died this time.

  After Ian we had all been wondering what’s to become of us here at Coopers Chase. Who was going to take it over? I don’t think anyone was too concerned; it seems to be profitable enough, so we knew there would be takers. But who?

  You can probably guess who found out.

  Elizabeth ‘accidentally’ bumped into Gemma Ventham, Ian Ventham’s unfortunate widow yesterday, at the new deli they’ve opened in Robertsbridge. It used to be Claire’s Hairdressers, until Claire was struck off. Is ‘struck off’ the correct expression for hairdressers? Either way, the local GP’s wife lost the top of an ear and that was that. They say Claire’s in Brighton now, and that’s probably for the best.

  Gemma was with a man, who Elizabeth described as ‘a tennis-coach type’, though conceded that these days he might have been ‘a Pilates-instructor type’. Certainly not a grieving widow, and I think we all agreed that she’d earned a bit of happiness, so good for her.

  She has also, it seems, earned an awful lot of money. This is what Elizabeth got out of her. I don’t know exactly how, but I do know that at one point she had pretended to faint, because she had actually grazed her elbow in the effort. She always finds a way, that one.