Page 128 of The Impossible Fortune
Paul and Joanna came round for a cup of tea yesterday. I keep getting in trouble with Joanna for saying ‘Paul and Joanna’. She says I should say ‘Joanna and Paul’ once in a while, but I told her it didn’t sound right, something was wrong with it, and she said, yes, you’re the something that’s wrong with it, and so I will try to remember every now and again, if only for a quiet life.
Paul also has a plan to find Nick, but Davey and Elizabeth seem to have more resources.
If they do find Nick, he’s in for a shock, isn’t he? Holly dead, the money worthless. I’m very glad Holly wasn’t at the wedding. There would be so many more photos to throw away.
The police seem to have their own theory about Holly’s murder. DCI Varma came round the other day with a few further questions. She agreed, after quite a lot of badgering, to join us for a cup of tea, and told us that a man named Lord Robert Townes had been boasting to some of his London friends about coming into some Bitcoin money, and she had wanted to question him. A few daysafterwards he took a boat from the harbour in Newhaven and hasn’t been seen since. So, in the absence of any firmer leads, she’s leaning towards him as a suspect. We ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the appropriate moments. She asked if we recognized him at all, and I said he did look familiar, and she asked if perhaps he might have been at Coopers Chase on the night of Holly’s murder, and I said I couldn’t rule it out, which seemed to make her happy.
It makes you wonder where he has gone though? My worry, having met him, is that he might have done himself in. Apparently they haven’t found the boat though, so who knows?
But the last few weeks haven’t really been about the murder of Holly Lewis, have they? I thought they were, of course: her car blew up in the overspill visitors’ car park, and that was bound to catch our attention. By the way, despite the appalling mess and the police investigation, the overspill parking area was back up and running the following afternoon. The Coopers Chase Parking Committee do not take weeks to fix things. They remind me a lot of China in that regard.
When a bomb goes off in life, it tends to grab your attention, doesn’t it? But when I think back to that evening now, all I remember is Kendrick, in his pyjamas, holding Ron’s hand. That was where the story was all along, wasn’t it? A frightened young boy, his frightened mum trying to protect him, and his grandad trying to protect them both.
We were all looking at the bomb. All that heat and all that noise. So we missed what was important. When things are noisy, and everyone is asking you to look atsomething right this instant, we mustn’t forget all the things still going on in quiet corners. There’s the news, and then there’s life.
In the end there was no money, and in the end no one really killed Holly. She was killed by her own greed. I mean, there’s an argument that Davey shouldn’t have put the bomb in her car, but it’s not an argument you’ll hear me make, and certainly not something we’ve passed on to the police. ‘I’m not grassing twice,’ was Ron’s take on the thing.
But there was Ron’s bravery, and Kendrick’s bravery, and, most of all, Suzi’s bravery. Ron must have felt very low, mustn’t he? I can’t imagine it. And I know a thing or two about sons-in-law now.
Danny Lloyd is in custody, and that’s down to Suzi and Kendrick, and to Ron.
He might not be able to kick and punch any more, but he still knows how to fight.
I do hope they find Nick Silver, but, despite the excitement, this is not his story either. And I know I have all these photos spread out in front of me, of a wonderful day with my wonderful daughter, but it also doesn’t feel like my story. It’s the story of those quiet corners, I suppose? The stories that don’t get told, because no one is there to hear them, or people are too distracted by louder noises.
It wasn’t a story about codes and secrets and gunmen and money, and a young woman blown up in her car.
It was a story about a strong woman stuck with an abusive husband, and a story about one lonely man with toomany cat ornaments, and another lonely man in a cold house at the height of summer.
I am travelling up to Purley tomorrow to see Jasper. I am bringing him a nice teapot they had at the Sue Ryder charity shop in Fairhaven. And also some milk.
It’s not much I know, but perhaps it’s a start?
75
‘I was clearing a few things out of the flat yesterday,’ says Paul, getting into bed. ‘And I had a call I thought you might be interested in?’
‘Mmm?’ says Joanna. She is reading about Uruguay in theEconomist.
‘Mmm,’ confirms Paul. ‘I spoke to a man named Jeremy Jenkins.’
Joanna stops reading about Uruguay in theEconomist. ‘Oh.’
‘Eager to talk to me, it seems,’ Paul says.
‘I see,’ says Joanna. ‘How’s the flat look–’
‘Funny though,’ says Paul. ‘He asked if my wife had passed on his message about the envelopes?’
Joanna nods. ‘Mmm hmm. Huh, okay. Did you like someone referring to me as your “wife”, by the way? It’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ agrees Paul. ‘Warmed my heart. He said he spoke to you on the phone?’
‘Do you know what?’ Joanna says. ‘Yes, now I think about it. Jeremy Jenkins. A solicitor maybe?’
‘A solicitor,’ confirms Paul. ‘He told me what he told you. About the two envelopes. The envelopes that we know contain the codes.’
‘That was it,’ says Joanna. ‘Yes, it’s coming back to me. The codes. Sorry, mind like an absolute sieve sometimes.’
