Jason shakes his head. “None of our business. We just asked what we asked; we wanted to know for sure. That was enough.”
“Shame,” says Elizabeth.
“Well, if the police don’t track him down, I’m sure you four will,” says Jason. “And listen, me and Bobby, we just wanted to say thank you. For bringing us together and for helping us get to the truth. None of this would have happened without you. Let’s be honest, without you I’d probably be banged up for this. So I got you all a little something.”
He unzips a sports bag at his feet and pulls out his gifts. He hands a wooden box to Ibrahim.
“Ibrahim, cigars. Cuban, of course.”
“That is the height of urbanity, Jason, thank you,” says Ibrahim.
The next gift goes to Ron.
“Dad, a bottle of wine, and a nice one too. You can stop pretending you still prefer beer in front of me.”
Ron takes his gift. “Ooh, a drop of white. Thanks, Jase.”
Jason hands Joyce an envelope. “Joyce, two tickets to come up and seeCelebrity Ice Dancebeing filmed next month.”
Joyce beams.
“VIP, all that. I thought you could bring Joanna.”
“Not Joanna,” says Joyce. “It’s ITV, and she won’t have that on.”
“And Elizabeth,” says Jason, with nothing in his hand but his phone. “My gift to you is this.”
He holds up his phone and, very deliberately, swipes his finger across the screen and then puts it back in his pocket. He looks to Elizabeth, who isn’t sure how to react.
“Well, thank you, Jason, although I was rather hoping for some Coco by Chanel,” says Elizabeth.
“I think I know what you’d like more than that, though,” says Jason. “To catch whoever killed Ian Ventham?”
“Is that in your gift, Jason?” asks Elizabeth.
“I reckon it is. Dad and I worked it out. Didn’t we, Dad?”
Ron nods. “We did, son.”
“And without wanting to sound cocky,” says Jason, “I reckon that one little swipe will confirm it.”
103.
Joyce
I wonder if you know about Tinder.
I had heard about it on the radio, and I’d heard jokes about it, but I had never seen it before Jason showed me.
If you know what it is, then you can skip through this bit.
So Tinder is for dating. You post pictures of yourself on an app. An app is like the internet, but only on your phone. Jason showed me some of the pictures. The pictures of the men are usually on a mountain, or chopping down a tree. Sometimes the pictures have been cropped down the middle to cut out a former partner. Thanks to my picture inCut to the Chase, I know how they do that now.
The pictures of the women are often on boats, or with groups of other women and you’re not sure which one you’re meant to be looking at, so as far as I can see it’s a bit of a lottery. I asked him if people use it for one-night stands and he says that, by and large, people use it for little else. Well, that’s a bit of fun, I suppose, but the whole thing felt unhappy to me. And the more smiles I saw, the unhappier I felt.
Perhaps that’s just me. I met Gerry at a dance I had decided to go to at the last minute to spite my mother. If I hadn’t gone, then we never would have met. So I know that’s an inefficient way of finding true love, but it worked for us. From the moment I laid eyes on him, he didn’t stand a chance. The lucky thing.
So, on Tinder you scroll through photographs of single people who live nearby. Or sometimes married people who live nearby. There is a picture on Tinder of Ian Ventham in a karate suit, even though he’s dead.
