Page 69 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)

DCI Varma is eating a sandwich at her desk, and failing to solve a murder.

There are no forensics of any use. They haven’t found Holly’s phone, and her personal emails are so heavily encrypted as to be unusable.

She thought there had been a breakthrough when a partial fingerprint had been found on a fragment of the bomb, and it had been fast-tracked through the lab.

To everyone’s great disappointment it had turned out to be Holly’s own fingerprint.

She must have touched the bomb before she died.

Perhaps that was even what set the thing off?

Records from Companies House show that Holly Lewis runs some form of storage facility, but, despite a week of investigations, this facility has yet to be located.

Her partner in this endeavour is a man named Nicholas James Silver, but he seems not to be at home.

An obvious suspect but currently proving impossible to track down.

Varma should probably be doing more about this, but, well, you know?

Then there was the lead from what’s her name, De Freitas, about the Bitcoin. Three hundred and fifty million. Actually proved useful in the end.

The Financial Intelligence Unit had got in touch after she’d emailed them about the Bitcoin lead.

A man called Lord Townes had been talking to everyone in town about a huge Bitcoin deal he was involved in.

It raised a few flags, not known to be his style.

She’d looked into it, and, well, what do you know, he was local, so that was a possible connection.

A couple of uniforms had popped round, but he wasn’t in, so they’ll go again tomorrow. Again, maybe she could be doing more.

They say you always want to solve your final case, but Varma doesn’t see it happening.

She scrolls her way down her computer screen. If she’s going to do her pottery full time, she’s going to need a pretty good kiln. You can rent them or you can share them, but Varma wants to buy one, really. To really commit.

Varma has a photo of Lord Townes, so maybe she’ll go round to Coopers Chase again to see if anyone noticed him around on the night of the murder. You never know. While she’s still a detective, perhaps she should do some actual detecting.

She won’t miss the job, and she knows the job won’t miss her. It’d be nice to solve it though, of course it would. Nice to tie up all the loose ends. Maybe Lord Townes is –

Ooh, someone in Horsham has got a second-hand kiln for sale!