Page 10 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)

‘I’m afraid I’m buying a flapjack,’ says Joyce to Elizabeth. ‘And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

It’s funny how relationships change, Joyce thinks, as she walks into Anything with a Pulse, now Fairhaven’s fifth largest vegan café.

Once she would have been full of questions.

‘What are we going to ask him, Elizabeth?’ ‘Why do you have a gun in your bag, Elizabeth?’ ‘Would you like a fruit pastille, Elizabeth?’ But today she’d stayed quiet, knowing there was no use rushing her friend.

It was something to do with Nick Silver, and Joyce would be told precisely what at the point when she needed to be told and not a moment before.

And, to be honest, the silence suited her this morning: she was quite surprised at the ferocity of her hangover.

You shouldn’t still be allowed to get hangovers at eighty years old, there should be some sort of law.

She wishes she had Ron’s constitution; Joyce bets he’s not suffering like she is this morning.

Once Joyce would also not have simply announced that she was buying a flapjack.

Wouldn’t have dreamed of it. She would have floated it as an idea, looking for Elizabeth’s permission.

When Elizabeth has a job to do, she doesn’t like being distracted.

There’s a schedule in her head that you are not privy to, but that she won’t allow you to tamper with.

Elizabeth will not have factored a flapjack break into today’s mission, Joyce is sure of it, but, nonetheless, a flapjack break is happening.

Joyce has come to realize that, just occasionally, you need to let Elizabeth know who’s boss.

‘An almond and date, and a cherry Bakewell,’ she says to the boy behind the counter.

The almond and date is hers; the cherry Bakewell is for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth hasn’t asked for it: she would baulk at the idea that she might get hungry later in the morning.

Indeed, she would say something like ‘Do you think I got hungry walking dissidents across the Czechoslovakian border for nine hours in 1968, Joyce?’ but Joyce now has the courage of her conviction that Elizabeth is not always right.

Joyce glances over her shoulder and sees Elizabeth in the shop doorway, looking at her watch. The annoyance on her face makes Joyce happy, because it’s exactly the look of annoyance that Elizabeth would have given before Stephen died. Her friend is still there.

Joyce pays by tapping her mobile phone on a small handset.

Somehow that takes money out of her bank account and gives it to Anything with a Pulse.

Ron still refuses to pay with anything other than cash, and now the only places in Fairhaven where he can actually buy anything are the bookmakers and the pubs. Which is fine by Ron.

Elizabeth strides away with purpose the moment Joyce reaches her, as if to say, ‘We have two minutes of flapjack time to make up for now, Joyce.’ Joyce happily trots along behind her. You just have to understand each other’s rhythms, don’t you? Time to let Elizabeth take charge for a bit.

‘Do you have an address?’ Joyce asks.

‘8b Templar Street,’ says Elizabeth, still not looking round. ‘It’s just off the front.’

‘And that’s where Nick Silver is?’ Joyce notices Elizabeth’s pace drop slightly, and she allows Joyce alongside. The flapjack break is forgotten, as she knew it would be.

‘It is,’ says Elizabeth. ‘He asked me to meet him there.’

‘And did he ask me to meet him too?’ Joyce asks.

‘We come as a team,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And is he in some sort of trouble?’ asks Joyce, having to step around a seagull that is refusing to move.

‘Someone wants to kill him,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Someone wants to kill him?’ Joyce asks. ‘When did you find that out?’

‘Yesterday,’ says Elizabeth. ‘He came to see me on the terrace. They planted a bomb under his car.’

‘Oh, Elizabeth,’ says Joyce. ‘It was supposed to be a wedding.’

Elizabeth shrugs. ‘An awful lot of murders start at weddings, Joyce.’

‘I did think you perked up a bit during the reception,’ says Joyce. ‘I should have known killing was involved.’

They take a right turn into Ontario Street, a row of lovely three-storey cream stucco-fronted houses, with the sea a wide wall of grey-blue at the end of the road.

‘He says he has information,’ says Elizabeth.

Joyce nods. ‘I know we all played Trivial Pursuit one night, and he was very good at that.’

They take a left onto Templar Street, a narrow road flanked by the back walls of big houses and lined with recycling bins. The sort of street where a busy town keeps its mess and its secrets. Even the seagulls are keeping their distance.

They pass a lamp post to which two rusted bicycle frames are chained, and Elizabeth and Joyce look up at a shoddily built two-storey office building. There are boards nailed over the upper windows. It has a bright blue door on which the number 8 is daubed in white paint.

‘It’s very urban, isn’t it?’ says Joyce. ‘Very gritty. Are you sure it’s the right place?’

Elizabeth waves her hands in the air, and Joyce sees a camera tilt in response to the movement. ‘I suspect it might be.’

Beside the door is an entry pad with two buzzers. The bottom one has been ripped out, and the top one has a sticker reading DO NOT PRESS .

Elizabeth presses it.

They wait, and Joyce strains to hear any sound from within. Nothing.

Elizabeth presses it again, and is met, again, with silence.

‘Joyce,’ she says, ‘go down that side passage and see if there’s any way we can break in.’

Joyce holds the bottom of her coat tight to herself and inches down a narrow, musty alleyway running alongside the building.

There are no doors, and just two windows on the upper floor, both covered by solid metal grilles.

At the end of the alleyway is a high wall topped with barbed wire, so there is no access to the back.

She does notice something interesting, however.

She makes her way back to Elizabeth. Elizabeth is running a slim metal file around the edges of the front door.

‘Locked up tight,’ Elizabeth says, removing the file. No wonder he called it The Compound.

‘No way in down there either,’ says Joyce. ‘But there’s a heating vent poking out of the wall.’

‘Are you suggesting one of us climbs through a heating vent?’ Elizabeth asks.

‘No,’ says Joyce. ‘You don’t always have to be facetious with me. But there was steam coming out of it. So either someone is in there, or has been in there very recently.’

‘Very good, Joyce,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And Nick Silver was expecting you at one on the dot?’

‘He was,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And someone really put a bomb under his car?’

‘Fairly thrilling, isn’t it,’ says Elizabeth, ‘in its own way?’

‘Don’t say that, Elizabeth,’ says Joyce. ‘He’s family.’

‘Joyce, your son-in-law’s best man is not family,’ says Elizabeth.

‘You choose your family these days,’ says Joyce. ‘I saw that on Instagram. We should be cautious and come back another time, shouldn’t we?’

‘We should,’ agrees Elizabeth.

‘But we won’t?’

‘We won’t,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Then how do we get in?’ Joyce asks.

Elizabeth scans the upper floors of the building. Then takes out her phone.