Page 56 of The Impossible Fortune

‘I can spot a miner a mile off,’ says Ron. ‘It’s the hands.’

Bill indicates that Ron should be his guest, and Ron lowers his frame slowly onto the wooden chair, and his pint onto the wooden table. Bill’s neighbours had told him that Bill liked a Sunday drink in the Dove on the seafront.

‘This is quite the honour,’ says Bill. ‘The next pint’s on me.’

‘We’ve met, have we?’ Ron asks. He loves all this. You get recognized less and less these days. That’s understandable. But stick Ron in a proper old pub, with some proper old drinkers, and you’d think Harry Styles had walked in.

‘’74,’ says Bill. ‘You wouldn’t remember, I was on the picket line at Betteshanger, and you gave a speech that kept us all warm.’

Give Ron a crate in those days and he’d stand on it. He can feel the adrenaline now. The crowds, the fists pumping, the flames leaping from oil drums, the sirens. God, Ron loved a picket line.

‘I shook your hand,’ says Bill. ‘And then a copper hit you with a truncheon.’

Ron raises his pint. ‘Happier times.’ Bill clinks and agrees.

There’s football on the telly and a sea-view out the window. There’s a waitress bringing out roast dinners with huge Yorkshire puddings. There’s no music, and no one under fifty. It’s bliss. Ron could happily pass the day here, five or six Sunday pints, a good natter with a good crowd. But he has a murder to investigate.

What’s Bill’s connection to The Compound? This solid slab of a man, his features broad and marked, like an open coal face.

‘What brings you to the Dove?’ Bill asks. ‘Your boy’s in this neck of the woods, isn’t he?’

Ron nods. ‘Jason, yeah. And I’m just up the road, near Robertsbridge.’

‘Oh yeah,’ says Bill. ‘Not in the big old people’s home up there?’

‘Nah,’ says Ron, not sure why he’s denying it. Perhaps talk of 1974 is making his current age seem absurd. ‘Not me. And I think they call it a luxury retirement village. No, I came in to see you, Bill.’

‘Me?’ says Bill, enjoying his pint. ‘The great Ron Ritchie’s come to see me?’

Here we go. ‘To talk about Holly Lewis.’

‘Holly Lewis.’ Bill shakes his head. ‘You’re talking to the wrong bloke. I know a Len Lewis, from bowls. Never heard of a Holly Lewis.’

Ron looks at Bill Benson. He’s a good liar, he’ll give him that. But why is he lying?

‘You trust me, Bill?’

Bill looks at him and puts his pint down. He takes the briefest of glances over his shoulder.

‘Strictly, Ron, I’m not supposed to know Holly,’ says Bill, ‘let alone talk about her. You know what I mean?’

‘Hush hush?’ says Ron.

‘Hush hush,’ agrees Bill.

Ron looks up at the football match on the big screen. Arsenal are playing Man City, and he hopes they both lose. ‘Tell me about her.’

Bill picks his pint up again now. He looks at Ron with more suspicious eyes.

‘How’s it your business? Sorry, Ron.’

In the far corner there’s a table of six tucking into their roast dinners. Three couples, one of the women cooing over the gravy, one of the men letting his wife tuck a napkin into his shirt. You’d probably find a photo of the same six somewhere from thirty years ago, tanned and smiling, all raising glasses of sangria to the camera as a Spanish waiter took their photo. There’d be no napkin being tucked in, but the friendships would be the same, and the six of them would swear they hadn’t aged until you showed them the photograph.

‘First off,’ says Bill. He’s trying to stay calm, Ron can tell. ‘No one knows I know Holly. And the fact you do know makes me suspicious. Even though it’s you. You understand?’

Fair enough, thinks Ron, he’d be the same in the circumstances. How would Ibrahim navigate this conversation? Time to be honest but also to appeal to Bill’s better instincts.‘Just between us, Billy boy, I heard you might be connected to a place called The Compound?’

Bill shrugs.