The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

  Jason shakes his head. ‘None of our business. We just asked what we asked. We just wanted to know for sure. That was enough.’

  ‘Shame,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Well, if the police don’t track him down, I’m sure you four will,’ says Jason. ‘And listen, me and Bobby, we just wanted to say thank you. For bringing us together and for helping us get to the truth. None of this would have happened without you. Let’s be honest, without you I’d probably be banged up for this. So I got you all a little something, if that’s OK?’

  That’s definitely OK. Jason unzips a sports bag at his feet and pulls out his gifts. He hands a wooden box to Ibrahim.

  ‘Ibrahim, cigars; Cuban, of course.’

  ‘That is the height of urbanity, Jason, thank you,’ says Ibrahim.

  The next gift goes to Ron.

  ‘Dad, a bottle of wine, and a nice one too. You can stop pretending you still prefer beer in front of me.’

  Ron takes his gift. ‘Ooh, a drop of white. Thanks, Jase.’

  Jason hands Joyce an envelope. ‘Joyce, two tickets to come up and see Celebrity Ice Dance being filmed next month.’

  Joyce beams.

  ‘VIP, all that. I thought you could bring Joanna.’

  ‘Not Joanna,’ says Joyce. ‘It’s ITV, and she won’t have that on.’

  ‘And Elizabeth,’ says Jason, with nothing in his hand but his phone. ‘My gift to you is this.’

  Jason holds up his phone and, very deliberately, swipes his finger across the screen and then puts it back in his pocket. He looks to Elizabeth, who isn’t sure how to react.

  ‘Well, thank you, Jason, although I was rather hoping for some Coco by Chanel,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘I think I know what you’d like more than that though,’ says Jason. ‘To catch whoever killed Ian Ventham?’

  ‘Is that in your gift, Jason?’ asks Elizabeth.

  ‘I reckon it is. Dad and I worked it out. Didn’t we, Dad?’

  Ron nods. ‘We did, Son.’

  ‘And, without wanting to sound cocky,’ says Jason, ‘I reckon that one little swipe will confirm it.’

  103

  Joyce

  I wonder if you know about Tinder?

  I had heard about it on the radio, heard jokes about it, but I had never seen it before Jason showed me.

  If you know what it is then you can skip through this bit.

  So Tinder is for dating. You post pictures of yourself on an app. An app is like the internet, but only on your phone. Jason showed me some of the pictures. The pictures of the men are usually on a mountain, or chopping down a tree. Sometimes the pictures have been cropped down the middle to cut out a former partner. Thanks to my picture in Cut to the Chase I know how they do that now.

  The pictures of the women are often on boats, or with groups of other women, and you’re not sure which one you’re supposed to be looking at, so I suppose you take pot luck.

  I asked him if people use it for ‘one-night stands’ and he says that, by and large, people use it for little else. Well, that’s a bit of fun, you could say, but the whole thing felt unhappy to me. And the more smiles I saw, the unhappier I felt.

  Perhaps that’s just me. I met Gerry at a dance I had decided to go to at the last minute to spite my mother. If I hadn’t gone then we never would have met. So I know that’s an inefficient way of finding true love, but it worked for us. From the moment I laid my eyes on him, he didn’t stand a chance. The lucky thing.

  So, on Tinder you scroll through photographs of single people who live nearby. Or sometimes married people who live nearby. There is a picture of Ian Ventham on Tinder, in a karate suit, even though he’s dead.

  Every time you like the look of someone you swipe their picture to the right (or to the left, I can’t remember). Meanwhile, somewhere nearby they are scrolling through pictures too and if they like the look of you they also swipe to the right (or left) and the two of you are a match.

  Honestly, it breaks your heart to scroll through. It’s reminded me of those photos of lost cats you see on lamp posts. It’s all that hope, I think.

  Anyway, when Jason swiped left or right he was confident of a match. And he was confident that match would be the killer. I trust his confidence on the first matter, I am more dubious about the second.

  There is another dating app for gay men called Grindr. Perhaps it’s for gay women too? I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Would they use the same one? That would be nice I think.

  So Jason imagines he has solved the case. And perhaps he has, though I doubt it very much. He says it’s obvious, but often, in these matters, the answer isn’t obvious at all.

  At least I have discovered that online dating is not for me. You can have too much choice in this world. And when everyone has too much choice, it is also much harder to get chosen. And we all want to be chosen.

  Goodnight all. Goodnight Bernard. And goodnight Gerry, my love.

  104

  Having spent a very happy morning preparing, changing outfits and texting friends, Karen Playfair is now alone for a moment, sitting in an unfamiliar armchair. She is shaking her head, thinking about the optimism of this morning and then the reality of the lunch she’s just had.

  Karen has had some bad dates on Tinder. But this was the first time that someone had accused her of murder.

  The match had pinged onto her phone yesterday evening. Jason Ritchie. Well, I don’t mind if I do, she had thought. This is a cut above your average. He’d messaged, she’d messaged, and before you knew it, there they were in Le Pont Noir, ordering a crayfish salad with radicchio. A whirlwind romance in the offing.

  Karen shifts in her armchair and idly picks up a magazine from a pile on the coffee table. It’s more of a newsletter really. Cut to the Chase.

  Back to the date. There had been some small talk, not too much, Karen knew very little about boxing and Jason knew very little about IT. Lightly sparkling water arrived, and that’s when Jason mentioned Ian Ventham. Karen immediately realized that this wasn’t a date, and felt foolish. But worse was to come.

  She can hear Ron Ritchie in his kitchen now, he’s opening a bottle of wine. Jason’s nipped to the loo. She starts flicking through Cut to the Chase, but her mind keeps going back to Le Pont Noir.

  All those questions Jason had fired at her. Hadn’t she been there the morning Ian Ventham was killed? Yes she had. Wasn’t her dad refusing to sell his land to Ian Ventham? Well, yes he was, but, look, here comes our crayfish. Didn’t she want her dad to sell the land, to take the money? That was her advice, yes, but it was her dad’s business. Surely if he sold, then some of that money would be coming to her? Well, you could certainly assume that, Jason, but why not just come out with it and say what you want to say?

  And so he did. It was almost funny, thinks Karen, reliving it. She hears the loo flush. What was it he had said?

  Jason had leaned forward, very sure – certain, in fact. You see, the police had been looking for someone who was there in the 1970s and was still there now, and they had been right in a way. They’d found bones and maybe someone had been murdered, all those years ago. But forget the bones, they were missing the simplest trick in the book: greed. Ventham was in the way of Karen making her millions. Her dad wasn’t budging, and so Ventham had to go. Jason mentioned some drugs you could only get on the dark web and didn’t Karen work in IT? Wasn’t that convenient? Jason had solved the case and felt sure he was about to get a confession. Honestly, some men!

  He hadn’t expected Karen to laugh in his face and explain that she was a database administrator for a secondary school, who could no more access the dark web than fly to the moon. That she had misheard Jason’s mention of fentanyl as Ventolin and had wondered what he was on about. That she lived in one of the most beautiful places in England, and while she would certainly swap that for a million pounds, she would rather be there with her dad happy, than in some executive new-build in Hove, with her dad miserable. Jason looked like he was going to co
me back with a clever response but, when he tried, none came.

  Jason walks back into the room and Karen remembers how crestfallen he had looked. He knew she was telling him the truth. That his little theory was wrong. He had apologized and offered to leave, but Karen had wondered if they shouldn’t make the best out of a bad deal and enjoy the rest of their lunch. What if they ended up together? Wouldn’t this be the greatest ‘and how did you two meet’ story of all time? Which set them both laughing and set them both talking and turned the whole thing into a lovely, long, boozy lunch.

  Which is why Jason had asked her back here for another drink and to do a bit of explaining to his dad.

  Right on cue, Ron Ritchie walks in with a nice bottle of white and three glasses.

  Jason sits down next to her and takes the glasses from his dad. He really has been charm itself since he accused her of murder.

  Karen Playfair puts her copy of Cut to the Chase back down on the pile. And as she does, she sees the photograph. Halfway down the page. She picks the newsletter up again and stares closely. Just to make sure.

  ‘You all right, Karen?’ asks Jason, as Ron pours the wine.

  ‘The police wanted someone who was here in the seventies, who’s still here now?’ asks Karen, slowly and carefully.

  ‘That’s what they reckon,’ says Jason. ‘Obviously, I thought they were wrong, but we saw how that played out.’

  Jason laughs, but Karen does not. She looks at Ron and points to the face in the photograph. ‘Someone who was here in the seventies and is still here now.’

  Ron looks, but his brain won’t take it in.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he manages to ask.

  ‘It was a long time ago, but I’m sure.’

  Ron’s mind is travelling at speed. This can’t be. He’s searching for reasons why this must be wrong, but can find none. He puts the wine down on the coffee table and picks up Cut to the Chase.

  ‘I need to go and talk to Elizabeth.’

  105

  Steve’s Gym looks a lot like its owner. A squat, brick building, intimidating at first sight, but with the door always open and everyone always welcome.

  Chris and Donna step over the threshold.

  After the excitement in the graveyard yesterday, Chris and Donna had gone back to Fairhaven and checked on Joe Kyprianou’s hunch about the original investigation. No one from Kent Police had ventured into Northern Cyprus. There was no mention of Gianni’s family connections. There had been no meaningful investigation at all. Chris had seen the names of the two officers who had been sent to Nicosia. No surprises. They’d have come back with tans and hangovers and nothing else.

  He and Donna had then been having another look at all those passenger lists, coming in from Larnaca to Heathrow and Gatwick in the week before the murder. Nearly three thousand names, mainly men and mainly Cypriots.

  Looking through list after list of names, Chris remembered something else that Joe Kyprianou had said. If Gianni had come to the UK, he would have needed help. A fellow Cypriot would be the obvious choice. Did Chris know any?

  As the names flashed before his eyes, he realized that he did.

  They had then gone back to the original Tony Curran file. There was no doubt that, in the early days, Steve Georgiou had been in and around the Tony Curran crew. Mentioned in dispatches, but never anything to bring him in for. And whatever he had been doing for Tony hadn’t lasted long. He’d opened Steve’s Gym ages ago and it had gone from strength to strength, as it were. Chris and Donna both knew officers who trained there. Decent officers too, not fools. The place had a good reputation, and that wasn’t the case with all gyms.

  Even today the gym was packed. A Wednesday afternoon, an atmosphere of quiet hard work, no preening and posturing. Chris has been meaning to join a gym, but at the moment he was waiting for his knee to stop hurting. No point aggravating it. As soon as it has settled down, he’ll join. Take the bull by the horns. He had felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his arm after the run up the hill to the graveyard to save Elizabeth. Almost certainly nothing, but even so.

  Steve had been expecting them and met them by the door with a crushing handshake and a huge smile. They are now in his office. Steve is sitting on a yoga ball and chatting happily.

  ‘Listen, you know as well as anyone, we don’t have trouble here, and we don’t cause trouble here,’ says Steve Georgiou.

  ‘I do know that,’ agrees Chris.

  ‘The opposite, innit? You know that. We take people in, we turn them around. No secrets, you just ask whatever, yeah?’

  ‘I was in Cyprus recently, Steve.’

  Steve stops smiling and bounces a little. ‘OK …’

  ‘I didn’t really know much about it before I went, I just thought holidays, you know.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘Are we just gossiping or what?’

  ‘What are you, Steve? Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot?’ asks Donna.

  There’s a beat, very short, but very telling to a good copper. Steve shakes his head. ‘I don’t get involved in all that, not for me. People are people.’

  ‘We’re agreed on that, Steve,’ says Chris. ‘But even so. What side of the line were you? We can probably find out another way, but since we’re here …’

  ‘Turkish,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘Turkish Cypriot.’ He shrugs; it’s of no concern.

  Chris nods his head and and writes something down, just keeping Steve waiting for a moment. ‘Like Gianni Gunduz?’

  Steve Georgiou tilts his head to the side and looks at Chris anew. ‘That’s a name from a long time ago.’

  ‘Isn’t it, though?’ says Chris. ‘Anyway, that’s why I was in Cyprus. Trying to track him down.’

  Steve Georgiou smiles. ‘He’s long gone. Gianni was crazy. Good luck to the guy, but someone would have killed him by now. Guaranteed.’

  ‘Well, that would explain why we can’t find him. But, you know, Steve, I’m a police officer, and sometimes something doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘That’s the job, innit?’ says Steve Georgiou.

  ‘I want to suggest a story,’ says Chris. ‘Just something we’ve been thinking about. And you don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to react, just listen. Can you do that?’

  ‘I’ve got to be honest with you, I’ve got a gym to run and I still don’t know what you’re doing here.’

  Donna holds up a hand and concedes the point. ‘You’re right. But just hear us out. Two minutes and you’ll be back out there.’

  ‘Two minutes,’ accepts Steve.

  ‘You’re one of the good guys, Steve,’ says Chris. ‘I know that, I don’t hear a bad word about you.’

  ‘I appreciate that, thank you,’ says Steve.

  ‘But here’s what I worry has happened,’ continues Chris. ‘I think a few weeks ago you get a message, or maybe it’s just a knock at the door, I don’t know. Either way, it’s Gianni Gunduz.’

  ‘Nope,’ says Steve Georgiou, shaking his head.

  ‘And Gianni needs help. He’s back in town for something. Maybe he doesn’t say what, maybe he does. And he turns to you, a little favour, for old times’ sake. Somewhere to stay? Maybe just that. He doesn’t want a record of whatever his new name is anywhere in town. And no one’s to know?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Gianni Gunduz in twenty years. He’s dead, or he’s in prison, or he’s in Turkey,’ says Steve Georgiou.

  ‘Maybe,’ says Chris. ‘But Gianni could be trouble if he doesn’t get what he wants. He could burn this place down pretty easily, I’d have thought. He’s the type to do it too, so maybe you had no choice? And it’s only a couple of days. He’s just got to deliver a couple of things, then tie up a loose end. Then he’d be gone. How does that sound to you, Steve?’

  Steve Georgiou shrugs. ‘Like a pretty dangerous story.’

  ‘You’ve got a flat above the gym?’ asks Donna.

  Steve nods.

  ‘Who stays there?’

  ‘Anyon
e who needs to. Not everyone who comes in here is from a stable background. A kid tells me he can’t go home, I don’t ask the reason, I just hand him the keys. It’s a safe place.’

  ‘Who was staying in the flat on June the seventeenth?’ asks Chris.

  ‘No idea, I’m not the Hilton. Maybe some kid, maybe me.’

  ‘Maybe no one?’ asks Donna.

  Steve Georgiou shrugs.

  ‘But you think maybe someone?’ says Chris.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Gianni is very well connected, Steve. In Cyprus?’ says Chris.

  ‘Not my world.’

  ‘You’ve still got family over there?’ asks Donna.

  ‘Yes,’ says Steve Georgiou. ‘Lot of family.’

  ‘Steve, if Gianni Gunduz had come here and asked if he could stay,’ begins Chris. ‘If he put pressure on you of any kind. Or maybe he paid you? If you agreed. If he slept upstairs on June seventeenth. There’s no way you would tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Consequences too great? Consequences for family in Cyprus?’

  ‘I think that’s been two minutes, if we’re honest.’

  ‘Agreed,’ says Chris. ‘Thank you, Steve.’

  ‘Any time. You’re always welcome here. I mean that. We could sort that gut out in a heartbeat.’

  Chris smiles. ‘It had crossed my mind, Steve. I don’t suppose there’s any way I could take a look upstairs before I go? Just see if Gianni left anything?’

  Steve Georgiou shakes his head. ‘You could do me a favour though.’

  ‘Go on,’ says Chris.

  ‘Could you stick this in Lost Property? Someone dropped it a couple of weeks ago and I’ve asked and asked, but I don’t know who it belongs to.’ Steve reaches into a drawer and pulls out a clear plastic wallet, filled with cash, and hands it to Chris. ‘Five thousand euros. Some tourist must be kicking themselves.’

  Chris looks at the cash, looks at Donna, then back at Steve. Would this have prints on it? Doubtful, but at least Steve is letting him know he’s right. ‘You don’t want to keep it?’