Page 67 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)

Ron sits in the darkness and waits. The lights are off, the curtains drawn. A casual observer would think there was nobody home, but Ron knows he was followed. He’s frightened, because what if? What if?

But Ron is tired of being frightened.

‘You’re sure I can’t make you a cup of tea?’ Pauline asks.

‘Shh!’ says Ron. He told Pauline she shouldn’t be here, with what’s about to happen. But it’s her flat, and she’s Pauline, so she’s staying put. Ron has also told her that’s she’s not allowed to play bingo on her phone while he’s hiding, and, because of the prospect of gunfire, she has agreed.

They hear footsteps in the hallway. Ron motions to the bedroom.

‘Good luck, lover,’ says Pauline, and kisses him on the top of the head before slipping away to leave him there alone.

Ron wonders where the others are. They’ll be worried, he knows that. Ron’s phone is off, but Joyce has been ringing Pauline. Pauline has had to lie to her and tell her she doesn’t know where Ron is.

Ron didn’t like asking Pauline to lie, but Pauline said not to worry, and that she enjoyed it. He’s found a good one there.

The whole gang would be straight round if they knew where he was. And Elizabeth would blow her top if she knew what he was about to do.

They’d all blow their tops.

So much of what he’s about to do would upset them.

But that’s okay. They weren’t just the Thursday Murder Club, were they?

They were four people, with their own stories, and, right now, Ron has his own story to tell.

The story of an old man who still wants to prove he can protect his family. Even if it kills him.

He hears what he has been waiting for, somebody picking the lock on Pauline’s front door.

Ron closes his hand around a small piece of paper worth a quarter of a billion pounds.

He slips it into the right-hand pocket of his jeans, before remembering himself, and transferring it to the left-hand pocket.

Somebody is now slowly pushing open the front door, and there are soft footsteps in the hallway.

He thinks of the gang again. They’ll forgive him, he knows that.

They might give him a hard time, but the four of them will work out who killed Holly, and everyone will be friends again. That’s if he makes it through.

Ron is blinded by the lights being switched on and finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ says Danny Lloyd.

Well, you got that right, thinks Ron.