Page 57 of The Impossible Fortune

‘And since Nick Silver disappeared,’ says Ron, ‘we’ve been keen to find it.’

‘Disappeared?’ says Bill, seemingly surprised.

‘The day before Holly died,’ says Ron, looking up at the screen again, ‘someone put a bomb under his car too, and it’s all something to do with The Compound, only we don’t know h–’

Ron had a fair old way to go in this speech, but he stops, because he sees a look of profound horror on Bill’s face.

‘Bomb?’ says Bill. He edges closer to Ron and grabs his arm. ‘Bomb?’

Bill hadn’t known Holly was dead; he’d just found out from a blustering Ron. This is why it’s always best to bring Ibrahim.

‘Someone killed her?’ Bill scans Ron’s face for some evidence that it isn’t true. He doesn’t find it. ‘Holly’s dead?’

‘We need all the help we can get, Billy,’ Ron says.

At the big table, the man with the napkin is looking down into his lap, where he has dropped some of his food. His wife picks it off his lap with one hand, while stroking his hair with the other. The other friends continue their conversation around them.

Bill nods at Ron. ‘I can trust you?’

‘I’m Ron Ritchie, of course you can trust me,’ says Ron.

‘No police?’ Bill asks.

‘No police,’ says Ron. ‘Never.’

‘Okay,’ says Bill. ‘Let’s go to The Compound.’

31

‘It was your great-great-uncle,’ says Joyce. ‘Harry Ablett. He was a magician. He travelled round with circuses in Germany.’

‘I didn’t know any of this,’ says Jill Usher, a sniffling baby on her lap and two toddlers zooming around her sitting room.

‘People so often don’t know the first thing about their families,’ says Joyce. ‘Elizabeth will tell you the same. We uncover all sorts, and we come and tell lovely people like you and they’re amazed. Aren’t they, Elizabeth? Aren’t they amazed, some of them?’

Elizabeth nods. She has to accept that she’d been the one who had told Joyce to use her imagination. And use her imagination she had. Magicians, circuses. Normally the rule was to keep your cover story as simple as possible. But this was not a rule that Joyce chose to follow.

‘He died in a hot-air ballooning accident,’ says Joyce. ‘In Sweden.’

Jill shakes her head. ‘All news to me.’

Jill Usher. The woman Holly Lewis rang before she died. But why? What was the connection? Today’s job was to get as much information as possible.

‘Do you have relatives in the south of England, Mrs Usher?’ Elizabeth asks.

Jill shakes her head. ‘Worked down there for a few years, Brighton, but Manchester born and bred.’

Brighton. Possible connection there. Jill must be ten years younger than Holly Lewis, but that’s not unusual in friends. Elizabeth would love just to say the name ‘Holly Lewis’, but what if the two aren’t, in fact, friends? What if they were quite the opposite, and Jill was involved in Holly’s death? The key thing for now is not to spook her. Sometimes you have to unwrap the truth a layer at a time. Elizabeth will be patient.

‘So I don’t want you to get too excited,’ says Joyce. She really is loving this. ‘But he left no children, and his estate is unclaimed, so either it gets spread among his surviving relatives or it goes to the Crown.’

Joyce assured Elizabeth that she’d seen a programme about unclaimed estates and knows exactly what to say.

‘So we’d rather find those relatives,’ says Joyce, ‘than let the bloomin’ government get their hands on it.’

An awful lot of what Joyce says in situations of pressure comes from television.

‘And so,’ says Elizabeth, ‘the more details you can give us about yourself, the better. Family history and so on. Just helps us fill in the gaps, and makes sure the right money goes to the right people.’