The Bullet That Missed (The Thursday Murder Club)

It is far too cold to swim, but Joyce would not be
dissuaded. Elizabeth had told her not to be so silly, and that the pool would still be here in the summer.

‘Ah, but we may not be,’ Joyce had replied, and she was right. It was best to grab everything while you could. Who knows when your final swim might come, your final walk, your final kiss? Elizabeth has an idea what secret Bogdan is keeping from her. So be it.

Joyce sees Elizabeth looking, and gives her a wave. Elizabeth waves back. You keep swimming, Joyce. You keep swimming, my beautiful friend. You keep your head above the water for as long as you can.

‘You know,’ says Viktor, ‘I remember being at the bottom of that hole, having all that earth shovelled over me. I remember looking up at everybody, and wondering if this might be the life for me. Coopers Chase. The tea, and the cake, and the birds and the dogs, and the friends. If it might be where I belong. You will understand that.’

‘Only too well,’ says Elizabeth.

‘It has been an adventure,’ says Viktor. ‘I am grateful for that. I have been shot, buried and brought back to life. And I’ve played a lot of snooker.’

‘Welcome to the Thursday Murder Club,’ says Elizabeth.

Chris is celebrating solving the case in the way that all hard-bitten cops have done throughout the ages. He is drinking blueberry kombucha and dipping celery sticks into organic hummus, as he watches the darts.

He doesn’t say much, but sometimes that can be a relief, can’t it? With some men you spend most of your time just nodding in agreement.

You could get pretty much anything you wanted in Dubai if you had ten million pounds in your pocket. And what Bethany Waites bought was anonymity.

Back when she was investigating the VAT fraud, Bethany had been learning everything she could about money-laundering. Taking professors and criminals out for lunch. Bothering all the experts. A German police investigator had told her that the best alias for a fraudster was that of a famous person. ‘It makes you impossible to Google,’ he had said. And he was quite
right. Google ‘Alice Cooper’ now, and you will have to scroll through an awful lot of pages before you get to her ‘Media Training and PR Solutions’ company on the eighth floor of an office building in the Dubai Marina.

Donna and Bogdan kiss outside the car, they kiss in the hallway, they kiss by Elizabeth and Stephen’s front door. Bogdan is unused to public displays of affection. What if somebody sees? Also, he has a bag full of food that needs to go in the fridge.

But he is in love, and he accepts that will bring its own challenges.

The sky is cloudless, so if Bethany is in a position to look down, she’d see them all today. Ron doesn’t hold with that sort of thing in his head, but there is plenty of room for it in his heart.

Before he gets out of the car, Bogdan turns to Donna.

‘I have an award for you.’

‘You have an award for me?’

‘Sure,’ says Bogdan. ‘I feel bad.’

Bogdan reaches into a holdall in the back of the car and presents Donna with the statue of Anahita, goddess of love and battle.

‘Donna, I highly commend you.’

‘Bogdan!’ says Donna.

‘I wanted to get it engraved, but apparently you’re not supposed to.’

Donna can’t believe what she’s holding. ‘Bogdan, it was two thousand quid! We could have had two weeks in Greece for that.’

Bogdan smiles. ‘Kuldesh sold it to me for one pound. And he said to tell you to keep dodging the bricks.’

Donna looks at her statue, her award. And then back at Bogdan.

‘Why did he sell it to you for one pound?’

‘Well,’ says Bogdan, opening his car door. ‘He asked me if I was in love with you. And I said yes.’