Page 47 of The Impossible Fortune
‘Mum and Elizabeth will know what to do about the messages,’ Joanna says. Joyce knows what to do about a lot of things these days. She’s still uniquely annoying, but Joanna accepts that she’s the only one who thinks so. Her friends at the wedding loved her. Her friends have always loved her. But then her friends say the most awful things about their own mums, some of whom are delightful. And Paul loves Joyce (‘Because you don’t know her yet,’ Joanna tells him). Only yesterday he said, ‘Your mum’s glaucoma really seems to be clearing up.’
‘Do you think the car will still be there?’ Paul asks. ‘Holly’s car?’
Joanna puts her hand on his leg. ‘Mum says it’s gone. They worked on it all last night.’
What is Paul feeling about Holly? Joanna can’t tell. He is very upset about Nick, she can see that. Perhaps he feels the whole thing is his fault somehow?
But how he feels about Holly is a closed book for now. Paul is a very straightforward man, and, the few times you can’t see exactly how he feels on his face, he will tell you how he feels. Joanna likes to know where she is, and she always knows where she is with Paul. But a good friend has just died in an awful way, and Joanna can’t get an easy grip on how it is making him feel.
‘You can cry you know?’ Joanna says. ‘Or shout? Not at me but out of the window. I know I never met Holly, but this must be horrific for you.’
Paul looks out of the window. ‘I hadn’t seen her for so long. I kept meaning to.’
Joanna understands that. She’s got friends she won’t see for a year, but when they do meet up they just go back to the same conversation they were in the middle of when they’d last met. She remembered speaking to her mum about this one day, in that way she supposes someone does, speaking as if she’s the only human being on the planet ever to experience a perfectly common phenomenon, and Joyce had said, ‘When old friends die, you’re furious, because you’ve never quite finished what you were saying to them.’
The whole gang are meeting this morning round at Mum’s. Joanna has told Joyce about the text messages fromNick but hasn’t forwarded them on. She thinks that she and Paul should present them. Nick was Paul’s best man, he knows him, knows the language he uses, knows that the messages are not from him. It’s important that Paul conveys that fact; quite what her mum’s friends conclude from that is up to them. Joanna has asked everything she can about Nick and Holly’s business, but Paul, investor or not, seems in the dark. Joanna doesn’t think he’s hiding anything from her, just that Holly and Nick had, over the years, hidden things fromhim.
‘What if they’re both dead?’ Joanna asks.
‘Don’t say that, Jo,’ says Paul.
‘But the business,’ says Joanna. ‘What happens to it?’
‘I know you’re just trying to distract yourself by thinking about money,’ says Paul.
That’s true. Joanna doesn’t want to think about burning corpses. Spreadsheets and cash balances are a great deal easier.
And, quite apart from anything, Paul owns five per cent of the company, and has never thought to ask what that might be worth. It is unimportant in the grander scheme of things, but it’s surely something to think about?
So a short honeymoon, that’s for sure, but not everyone gets to visit their mum to talk about murder, do they? With a man they love by their side?
Would any of this have happened if her dad had still been alive? Mum and murder? You could never say, could you? Perhaps Mum and Dad might have moved to Coopers Chase together? Joyce might still have met Elizabeth. Elizabeth might still have introduced her to Ibrahim andRon. Her mum’s life might still have been filled with jewel thieves and spies and drug dealers and men waving guns. Her dad sitting in his gardening trousers doing the crossword as the madness played out around him? ‘Cup of tea, Dad?’ ‘Only if you’re making one.’ ‘Mum out, is she?’ ‘Being shot at in a warehouse.’ ‘That’s nice – need any help with the crossword?’ ‘7-down, six letters, a fish beginning and ending in T.’
The conversations you took for granted and will never have again. She looks over at Paul. He is deep in thought. He’d suit gardening trousers.
‘What are you thinking?’ Joanna asks. Not a question you should usually ask a man. By and large if a man is thinking anything halfway acceptable, he’ll say it, and, if not, he’ll just carry on thinking it instead.
‘I’m thinking,’ says Paul, ‘if you don’t mind my saying this. I’m thinking that all of this would be unbearable without you.’
No, I don’t mind your saying that. I don’t mind your saying that at all.
Joanna takes a right turn over a familiar bridge. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question? You might not know the answer.’
‘Ask me anything,’ says Paul. ‘Always ask me anything. No secrets.’
They pass an old wooden bus stop. ‘What’s a fish, six letters, begins and ends in T?’
‘Easy,’ says Paul. ‘Turbot.’
Joanna smiles and they pull into Coopers Chase. The two lovers clunk, clunk, clunk over the cattle grid.
24
Danny Lloyd steps out onto the balcony of his hotel, and the heat dances on his skin. He can hear church bells from the local village, and he can see an ex-pat foursome holing out their putts on the 15th green below. He’d flown out from Gatwick on the Friday evening. He’d spent most of Friday working out what to do. First a chat with his lawyer. The house is in Suzi’s name, and not a lot can be done about it. He’d asked about her will, and, as it stands, the whole thing would come back to him if she dies. Or, more accurately, when she dies, but that was another meeting.
But, while Suzi might be a psycho, she’s no fool, so that will won’t be in play for long. Long enough for him to get his hands on it maybe. If she changes it before she dies, so be it. If she doesn’t, then win-win.
Finding someone to murder Suzi won’t be easy. If she dies any time soon, there’s only one suspect, and that’s Danny. He needs to put lots of layers between himself and the killer, money has to go through lots of different hands, and each of those hands gets to keep a bit of it on the way. But Danny trusts someone who trusts someone who trusts someone, and Suzi can meet with the sort of accident that might make the police suspicious, but will send them chasing their tails for a few weeks before they get dizzy and stop running.
