“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” says Elizabeth.
“I should warn you now, my photos are mainly of sheep. What is it you’re looking for?”
92.
Joyce
So we told Gordon Playfair about the body. And we all had a good old chat about who might have buried it there all those years ago. All those years ago, when Coopers Chase was a convent and a young Gordon Playfair sat in the very same house, with his young family, on this very hill.
The offer for his land, by the way? It was from our mysterious friends at Bramley Holdings. That name is still driving me crazy. But it’ll come. He was just cutting off his nose to spite his face with Ventham, refusing to sell simply because he couldn’t stand him. The moment Ventham was out of the picture, the sale was on.
I asked Gordon what he might do with the money, and it won’t surprise you to know that most of it will go to the kids. There’s three, and we know one of them, of course: Karen, who lives in the small cottage in the next field over, and who was supposed to be teaching us about computers, until we were so unexpectedly interrupted.
Unmarried, but then so is Joanna. So am I, come to think of it.
So, the kids are lucky, but Gordon says he has enough left over to buy himself a little place somewhere nice, and—you will see where this is going—we’re going to give him a guided tour of Coopers Chase in a few days and see if anything takes his fancy. Wouldn’t that be fun? Gordon is craggy rather than conventionally handsome, but he has broad, farmers’ shoulders.
Anyway, back to the bones. Gordon understood now why we wanted to hear his memories of the 1970s. And why we were studying his photo albums so intently. Just to take a look at any shots he’d taken on those trips down the hill all those years ago? See if anyone rang a bell.
In the end, it was in the second album we looked through. It started with wedding photos, Gordon and Sandra (or Susan—I had glazed over, I’m afraid; you know other people’s wedding photos), then pictures of a baby suspiciously soon afterward. That will be their eldest. Then, and I’m not making this up, page after page of pictures of sheep, and the way Gordon was telling it, all different. And then, just as the wine and the fire and the sheep were making us drowsy, we reached the final photos in the album. Six in all, black-and-white. All six photos taken at a Christmas party at the convent. Probably not a party as such, but certainly Christmas.
It was in the fifth photo, a group shot. At first you couldn’t really see it. We’ve all changed a lot over fifty years. I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize Elizabeth, or she me. But we all looked, and we all looked again. And we all agreed.
And so we have our evidence, and we have a plan. Well, Elizabeth has a plan.
And speaking of photos, I found a nice one for my column inCut to the Chase. It’s an old photo, which I know is vain, but you’d still know it’s me. Gerry is also in it, but Anne tells me she can crop him out on the computer. Sorry, love.
93.
There is still a confessional stall in the chapel at the heart of Coopers Chase. It is used as storage for the cleaners now. Joyce had helped Elizabeth clear it out, stacking up the boxes of floor polish on the altar, neatly tucked behind Jesus. Elizabeth had given the whole place a spruce-up, even polishing the grille. As a final touch, she had put a pair of Orla Kiely cushions on the hard wooden seats.
Elizabeth had conducted many interviews in her time and brought many people to some kind of justice. If tapes existed of any of these interviews, they had long since been buried, erased, or burned. That was her fervent hope, at least.
Lawyers? No. Procedure? Certainly not. Just whatever worked quickest.
Nothing physical, ever; that wasn’t Elizabeth’s style. She knew it happened from time to time, but it was never effective. Psychology was key. Always try the unexpected, always approach from an angle, always lean back in your chair, with all the time in the world, and wait for them to tell all. Like the whole process was their idea in the first place. And for that you always needed an angle, something unexpected. Something bespoke.
Like inviting a priest to a confession.
Elizabeth had realized she was very fond of Donna and Chris. The Thursday Murder Club had got lucky with those two. Imagine the bores they might have been saddled with. She knew that even Donna and Chris would have limits, though, and that this was way beyond those limits. But if she could work her magic with Matthew Mackie, she knew they would forgive her.
And if she couldn’t work her magic? If her magic was just a memory? She had been wrong about Ian Ventham murdering Tony Curran, hadn’t she?
But Matthew Mackie was different. Here was a man who had scuffled with Ventham. A man who didn’t seem to exist, yet was in a photo taken in this very chapel. A man who both was a priest and wasn’t a priest. A man who had brushed over his footsteps.
Until someone had decided to dig up a graveyard. His graveyard?
And a man who was on his way this very moment, when it would have been easier for him to stay home. Was he coming to confess? Was he coming to find out what she knew? Or was he coming with a syringe full of fentanyl?
Elizabeth has never been afraid of death, but all the same, in this moment she thinks of Stephen.
It is cold in the ageless dark of the chapel, and she shivers. She buttons her cardigan, then looks at her watch. She would soon find out, one way or another.
94.
Chris Hudson is in a small cell opposite a large man. The small cell is an interview room in the Central Prison of Nicosia, and the large man is Demir Gunduz, the father of Johnny Gunduz.
Chris is in a concrete seat bolted to the floor. The back is ramrod straight. It would be the most uncomfortable chair that he had ever sat in had he not just made the flight to Nicosia on Ryanair.
