Page 75 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)
Joyce
The photos from the wedding have just arrived. At first they were just on a memory stick for a computer and I told Joanna that I had no idea what use that was, and when would the actual photos I could hold in my hand arrive?
She said I could take the memory stick into Snappy Snaps and they would print them for me, but I doubted that very much. So Joanna said she would get them printed out for me, and that’s what’s arrived.
She told me to choose my favourites, and I said I wanted all of them, and she said, Mum, there’s over a thousand and some of them are practically identical, and I said I didn’t care and I wanted all of them.
Seeing them now, in a big stack, I realize she was quite right.
I was flicking through earlier, and there were ten photos of one of Paul’s aunties raising a drink to the camera.
While I liked this particular auntie, I’m afraid those went straight in the bin. Please don’t tell Paul.
There was also another guest, an older colleague of Paul’s from the university, and she was wearing the same hat as me. I’m afraid those went in the bin too. It was bad enough she was waltzing around in it all day, I don’t need a permanent reminder.
Joanna looks so beautiful, and so happy. Which are often the same thing, aren’t they? I look very old in them, I can see that, but I look happy too. And if you can be that happy when you get to my age, you must have done something right.
There are lots of shots of Nick Silver pre-vomiting, fewer afterwards. They still haven’t found him. Davey Noakes has a plan to find him that involves drones, and Elizabeth has a plan that involves a new machine to do with DNA that she’s not allowed to tell me about but did.
Paul and Joanna came round for a cup of tea yesterday.
I keep getting in trouble with Joanna for saying ‘Paul and Joanna’.
She says I should say ‘Joanna and Paul’ once in a while, but I told her it didn’t sound right, something was wrong with it, and she said, yes, you’re the something that’s wrong with it, and so I will try to remember every now and again, if only for a quiet life.
Paul also has a plan to find Nick, but Davey and Elizabeth seem to have more resources.
If they do find Nick, he’s in for a shock, isn’t he? Holly dead, the money worthless. I’m very glad Holly wasn’t at the wedding. There would be so many more photos to throw away.
The police seem to have their own theory about Holly’s murder.
DCI Varma came round the other day with a few further questions.
She agreed, after quite a lot of badgering, to join us for a cup of tea, and told us that a man named Lord Robert Townes had been boasting to some of his London friends about coming into some Bitcoin money, and she had wanted to question him.
A few days afterwards he took a boat from the harbour in Newhaven and hasn’t been seen since.
So, in the absence of any firmer leads, she’s leaning towards him as a suspect.
We ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the appropriate moments.
She asked if we recognized him at all, and I said he did look familiar, and she asked if perhaps he might have been at Coopers Chase on the night of Holly’s murder, and I said I couldn’t rule it out, which seemed to make her happy.
It makes you wonder where he has gone though? My worry, having met him, is that he might have done himself in. Apparently they haven’t found the boat though, so who knows?
But the last few weeks haven’t really been about the murder of Holly Lewis, have they?
I thought they were, of course: her car blew up in the overspill visitors’ car park, and that was bound to catch our attention.
By the way, despite the appalling mess and the police investigation, the overspill parking area was back up and running the following afternoon.
The Coopers Chase Parking Committee do not take weeks to fix things.
They remind me a lot of China in that regard.
When a bomb goes off in life, it tends to grab your attention, doesn’t it?
But when I think back to that evening now, all I remember is Kendrick, in his pyjamas, holding Ron’s hand.
That was where the story was all along, wasn’t it?
A frightened young boy, his frightened mum trying to protect him, and his grandad trying to protect them both.
We were all looking at the bomb. All that heat and all that noise. So we missed what was important. When things are noisy, and everyone is asking you to look at something right this instant, we mustn’t forget all the things still going on in quiet corners. There’s the news, and then there’s life.
In the end there was no money, and in the end no one really killed Holly.
She was killed by her own greed. I mean, there’s an argument that Davey shouldn’t have put the bomb in her car, but it’s not an argument you’ll hear me make, and certainly not something we’ve passed on to the police.
‘I’m not grassing twice,’ was Ron’s take on the thing.
But there was Ron’s bravery, and Kendrick’s bravery, and, most of all, Suzi’s bravery. Ron must have felt very low, mustn’t he? I can’t imagine it. And I know a thing or two about sons-in-law now.
Danny Lloyd is in custody, and that’s down to Suzi and Kendrick, and to Ron.
He might not be able to kick and punch any more, but he still knows how to fight.
I do hope they find Nick Silver, but, despite the excitement, this is not his story either.
And I know I have all these photos spread out in front of me, of a wonderful day with my wonderful daughter, but it also doesn’t feel like my story.
It’s the story of those quiet corners, I suppose?
The stories that don’t get told, because no one is there to hear them, or people are too distracted by louder noises.
It wasn’t a story about codes and secrets and gunmen and money, and a young woman blown up in her car.
It was a story about a strong woman stuck with an abusive husband, and a story about one lonely man with too many cat ornaments, and another lonely man in a cold house at the height of summer.
I am travelling up to Purley tomorrow to see Jasper. I am bringing him a nice teapot they had at the Sue Ryder charity shop in Fairhaven. And also some milk.
It’s not much I know, but perhaps it’s a start?