Page 73 of The Impossible Fortune
Let’s see if his father was right all along.
For the first time since Holly Lewis and Nick Silver came to see him, Lord Townes feels in control.
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Joyce
On a Monday evening on TV they have a lot of quizzes. They haveMastermind, which I can’t do, then they haveOnly Connect, which I can’t do, and then they haveUniversity Challenge, which I can’t do. Ibrahim usually comes over and brings a bottle of wine while I heat something up.
He sits forward, hand on his chin, and happily shouts ‘Anne Boleyn’ or ‘Argentina’ or, if it’s football, ‘Gary Lineker’ at the screen all evening. Sometimes he gets things right and he looks at me as if to say, ‘Well, there we have it, Joyce,’ and, in fact, sometimes he actually says, ‘Well, there we have it, Joyce.’ When he gets things wrong, he makes a fuss and says the quiz has got the answer wrong, and then he goes on Google and we hear no more about it. He enjoys himself, and I enjoy myself because I get to potter in the kitchen and occasionally shout out ‘Marilyn Monroe’ or something, and Alan enjoys it because there are two people to stroke him, and when he can tell you’re getting bored, he swaps over.
OnMastermindthis evening one of the specialist subjects wasCall the Midwife, which infuriated Ibrahim because he doesn’t think anything after 1950 should be allowed onMastermind, but was fun for me. I didn’t get any right, because it goes too quickly, but I enjoyed hearing words Irecognized for once. The next contestant didMiddlemarch, and Ibrahim was much happier. I didn’t hear him get any right, but he nodded an awful lot.
Joanna left a long message while I was out with Elizabeth today, wanting to know if there were any developments. Paul has had no more messages from poor Nick Silver, which tells its own story.
We are having to work quickly on this investigation, which is quite fun. I went to a stately home today. I think it’s the first time I have ever been to a stately home that didn’t have a gift shop.
You can tell that Lord Townes – he says to call him Robert but can you imagine? – needs money, but he was very convincing otherwise. Though lords are convincing, aren’t they? I suppose that’s how they become lords.
Davey Noakes seems a far likelier candidate for the murder. I was saying this to Ibrahim earlier, but he hushed me because there was a question on earthquakes and Ibrahim is now interested in earthquakes because he listened to a podcast.
If you ever visit Ibrahim now, he is listening to a podcast. His favourite one is a scientist and a priest who argue about things but seem to get along. If you see him walking through Coopers Chase, he’ll take his headphones out of his ears and say, ‘The History of Finland’ or ‘Clouds’ or something. Perhaps there is a podcast I might enjoy, but I don’t know where to get podcasts from. I asked Joanna and she said something about ‘downloading’ and I switched off. I think Radio Sussex suits me better than podcasts, because I know the people.
Perhaps I am being naive about Lord Townes. Perhaps because he’s a lord and Davey Noakes was a drug dealer I have made assumptions. People tell you not to make assumptions, but they often save a lot of time. Clever people, by which I mean Ibrahim or Elizabeth, are happiest when something is unusual, or unexpected, or not at all what you think, but normal people, me and Ron, that sort of person, like it when a tree is a tree and a shoe is a shoe, and a drug dealer is a murderer.
The way I see it – again, I tried to say this to Ibrahim but there’s no point – Holly and Nick visited Davey Noakes to ask his advice about the Bitcoin, Davey Noakes thought this might be his last chance to get his hands on the money and saw pound signs, or Bitcoin signs, took out the phone book and got someone to kill Holly Lewis. He must have found out Holly’s code from somewhere, and is probably getting someone to torture Nick Silver’s code out of him as we speak.
In the end I had to say all of this to Alan.
InUniversity Challengeone of the students was originally from Egypt, and every time she got a question right Ibrahim would nod and say, ‘There we go,’ and ‘Quite right, quite right.’ At one point they had a round about flags and I said ‘Venezuela’ for each one, because I always say ‘Venezuela’ for questions about countries. It drives Ibrahim mad.
Anyway, this evening, the third flag they showed actually was Venezuela, and I said to Ibrahim, ‘I told you so,’ and he wasn’t at all happy with me. I whooped and Alan barked and Ibrahim, who had said ‘Ecuador’, said, ‘Venezuela and Ecuador have very similar flags,’ and I said, ‘Similar, butnot the same,’ and he started stroking Alan so hard that Alan had to look to me for reassurance.
Sometimes I ask Ibrahim if he doesn’t find our Monday-evening quiz night too stressful, and he says it’s his favourite night of the week.
As Ibrahim was leaving, I finally had his full attention, and I told him that Davey Noakes is our man, I was sure of it, and he shook his head and said, ‘Joyce, don’t rule out Lord Townes or Nick Silver. Surely we’ve learned to look beyond the obvious by now,’ and I said, ‘Well, I was right about Venezuela, wasn’t I?’ and he very slowly and very politely said, ‘Good evening, Joyce,’ and he walked out into the night, putting his headphones in his ears as he went.
I will say this. I am as confident about Davey Noakes as I was about Venezuela. I Googled it after Ibrahim left, and he’s right, the Ecuadorian flag is very similar, but in life there is only one right answer, and you either get it right or you don’t.
40
Joanna and Paul have been to the theatre, and her verdict, as so often, is that David Tennant was very good, but the legroom was very bad. They are having a post-show supper at a restaurant that throws a warm glow out onto a dark Soho alley. The noise of the diners manages to be both a murmur and a buzz. When she was a little girl this is what Joanna dreamed being a grown-up might be like. Paul is discussing the play.
‘The broken chair was a metaphor for grief, I think,’ says Paul.
Joanna loves him, but this sort of thing she can do without.
‘It was under the clock for a reason,’ he goes on. ‘The clock moves; the chair can’t.’
‘And the Maltesers in the interval?’ Joanna says. ‘What were they a metaphor for?’
Paul laughs. ‘You have to let me be pretentious, I’m afraid. I just need to get it out of my system every now and again. I can either do it here or at home.’
Paul loves theatre, loses himself in it entirely. Joanna envies him. Her concentration span is simply not up to the job. Joyce had once said to her that her favourite thing about the theatre was the ice-cream in the tiny tubs, and Joanna had, on reflex, rolled her eyes and called her a philistine.One day perhaps she will tell Joyce that it is her favourite thing about going to the theatre too. On one of their first dates Paul had taken her to a play calledThe Lehman Trilogy. It was over three hours long, which might have ended their relationship before it began, but Paul explained that there were two intervals, and Joanna knew exactly what that meant. Two tiny tubs of ice-cream. In fact, the moment Paul volunteered to join the ice-cream queue for the second time, without question or judgement, might have been the moment she truly fell in love with him.
There are many things she should probably tell her mum one day. But who can ever really tell their mum anything? Too much static builds up over the years.
‘How’syourgrief?’ Joanna asks. There is something very specific she has wanted to talk about since Friday. Paul and Holly Lewis. Now might be a good time.
