‘It’s a game, Elle. You pick a team of footballers who you think are going to do well this season, from all the teams. Then at the end of the season you see which players scored most goals, who assisted with goals, all of that, and you work out whose team has done best.’
‘What’s the point of it?’
‘That’s where the charity money comes from,’ says Em. ‘They don’t raise it. They just bet an obscene amount against each other, and at the end of each year they give the pot to the children of Balham. I bet they write it off against tax.’
‘We can’t know that,’ says Elle. ‘It’s still basically a good thing they’re doing.’
‘I guess so, love. Oh,God. This has absolutely nothing to do with Davy’s death. It’s just a load of rich pricks who like football.’
‘Want to keep listening?’
‘What? Oh, no, Jonny, stop the recording, it’s too depressing. I don’t think Wallace is suddenly going to confess Davy’s murder to his other three closest friends in the world.’
Jonny hits a few keys and gently shuts the laptop.
I take the notebook from the centre of the table and thumb the empty pages. ‘Why would Davy come here today? You’re hiding, in fear for your life, and you make two appointments you’re intending to keep – one to confess to the police, and one for fantasy football?’
‘I think some men just really, really like football,’ says Em. ‘I didn’t know you knew anything about it, Jonny.’
‘Oh, I don’t.’
‘Then how did you spot the initials?’
‘I memorised the top two hundred players in the Premier League last year, to test my memory on subjects in which I have no interest.’
‘… Right. Well, thank goodness you did.’
‘Whatever else we say about Davy, he was insane.’
‘Why?’
‘Picking the same shirt numbers every year. That is the act of a mad sentimentalist. It lowers the odds of you succeedingby …’ Jonny screws up his face. ‘I’ll need a minute to do the maths, but he’s not done himself any favours.’
Em finishes her drink. ‘Shall we go, then? I don’t think we’re going to achieve much more here.’
As we sit in the Uber home – not home, of course, just back to Balfour Villas – we all stay quiet. At a guess:
Em is thinking about what we can do next. That was just a setback, she’ll be saying to herself. We’ll work it out soon.
Elle would never admit it because she’s identified the dominant mood in the cab, but she’s rather proud of how well she acquitted herself after the first microphone took a bath. She’s disappointed not to have made more progress with the case, but effectively she’s just happy to have helped the team.
Jonny is really gutted about his microphone, which he’d been excited to debut all morning. To avoid any more of his kit suffering the same fate, he’s now establishing a mental checklist of tech protocols, which he will circulate to the rest of us later.
And me? I don’t have Em’s optimism, or Elle’s sunny disposition, or Jonny’s … habit of formulating detailed lists. I don’t know what we’re doing. It still feels like Wallace is the man with the most questions to answer, but what if the killer was just on the end of one of Davy’s laundering scams gone wrong? What if he was simply a client Davy had cheated, who’d sworn vengeance and turned up with a shotgun one night?
Then, of course, we’d have almost no useful information when the police inevitably catch up with us.
Back at the house, we take some time to regroup. I lie down on my bed – just to think for a second – and am disgusted to wake up half an hour later and realise I’ve had an involuntary nap. I shouldn’t be needing daytime naps for another thirty years.
Downstairs, Em and Elle are having an argument, and don’t hear me approach, partly because I approach as quietly as possible in an attempt to eavesdrop.
‘… totally irresponsible.’ That’s Em.
‘Who cares? She’s been like that her whole life. But she still owes us.’
‘She’ll pretend she doesn’t. And I’m not giving her the satisfaction.’
‘Then we tell her that we’ll turn ourselves in, make our surname public, and ruin her career unless she helps us.’
