Chapter 64
There was a lot less to Connor Brooks when you saw him hunched and cuffed. He didn’t look like the monster Rosie knew him to be. The bogeyman who had stalked the globe killing for profit and fun.
They are assuming that he is Connor Brooks who faked his own death all those years ago in Málaga. They’re about to find out for sure.
Whoever he is, and whatever he might have been, he now looks like a lost old man, Ernesto pushing him through the entrance doors at We Solve Murders.
Felicity had been there to let them in, which was handy because, although it has been made clear to Rosie that she has been given a set of keys and access codes, she is beggared just for the moment as to where and what they are.
Rosie was hoping that Felicity might make them a cup of tea, but Felicity had taken one look at Connor and told Rosie she didn’t want to be in the same place as the man who tried to have her boyfriend killed.
Rosie can understand that, people get very sensitive around loved ones and attempted murder.
In one of her early books a schoolteacher murders a Mafia boss for exactly this.
So she understands Felicity’s sensitivities, but she would still really, really like a cup of tea, and, as with keys and access codes, knows that she cannot be trusted with a kettle.
‘Ernesto,’ says Rosie, ‘you couldn’t be a doll and make me a cup of tea, could you?’
Ernesto gives her a shy bow. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure. However, I am escorting one of the world’s most dangerous men, and so I fear I must focus.’
Rosie nods, understanding. She looks through to the kitchen and sees the kettle standing there. There’s always someone to make you a cup of tea. Or a delivery service to order one from. When was the last time she made one by herself? Thirty years ago? How hard can it be?
Ernesto guides the prisoner into the conference room. From the stooped, bald man, there is not a squeak of protest.
‘Chatty thing, isn’t he?’ says Rosie.
‘I’ll make him talk,’ says Ernesto. Rosie doesn’t doubt it.
Rosie looks into the kitchen again. The kettle bit is easy, she’s not an imbecile.
But the teabag and the milk and the order, and how long should it take?
Come on, Rosie, this is ridiculous. You can also make tea in a microwave, she has seen that done.
But the difficulties remain. The process of the thing.
She will have to give it up as an impossible dream.
She curses, and not for the first time, that they don’t seem to have Deliveroo in the New Forest.
Rosie follows Ernesto and the prisoner into the conference room, but Ernesto holds up his hand to block her.
‘Sorry,’ says Ernesto.
‘If you’re talking to him, then I’m talking to him,’ says Rosie.
Ernesto gives a tiny smile. ‘Rosie, please, not this time. Senor Brooks is under arrest. He must be interviewed by police officers alone, and not by crime novelists, however beautiful they may be.’
Rosie tries to find an argument. Ernesto puts the blocking hand on her shoulder now.
‘You understand, Rosie? Maybe you make a nice cup of tea and wait?’
Would that I could, thinks Rosie. She steps back and the conference-room door shuts.
The whole thing is beginning to feel like an anticlimax.
Doesn’t seem quite fair to Rosie. Where are the gunfights?
Where are the breakneck chases? Where is ‘You’ll never take me alive’?
If this was the end of one of her books, her publisher would send it straight back and tell her to write a proper ending.
But life doesn’t always have proper endings. And, thanks to the sales figures for And the Devil Blinked First, Rosie no longer has a publisher.
She never did come up with a grand plan to get back to number one. She is losing her touch, she supposes. How do you stay famous in this new world? What on earth do you have to do?
Whatever you have to have, Rosie no longer has it.
Ernesto is going to snatch the whole thing from them.
The glory. Take Connor Brooks back to Barcelona.
Try him in a Spanish court, get all the medals.
He has no other choice, Rosie knows that.
Ernesto is not trying to snatch the glory, he’s just doing the job of a police officer.
All the same, Rosie would like some closure.
To sit across the table from this man and ask him everything from start to finish.
Have him swear and spit and struggle against his cuffs.
Watch him scream spittle-flecked swear words at her, while she sits calmly and sips a nice cup of tea. That’s how the thing should end.
There are questions Rosie still wants answers to.
She can well understand why Brooks might have killed Vern.
Why he killed Tommy Griffin and the other men who sat around that table in Las Vegas.
That all makes fine sense. But the two bodyguards?
Where did they fit in? Why kill them? And now the blond man too. Why kill your own hitman?
Somewhere, somehow, they are missing a piece of information, and Rosie hates missing out on anything.
She heads into the kitchen and finds a glass.
If she can’t be in the interrogation, the least she can do is eavesdrop.
Rosie takes the glass from the kitchen, places it against the door of the conference room and holds it to her ear.
It’s a trick that has worked in her favour many times, through contract negotiations and divorce proceedings alike.
This time though, nothing. She twists and turns the glass, as if trying to tune a faulty radio, but to no avail. There is a light murmuring, but nothing else.
Removing the glass, Rosie remembers that she had insisted on Ecuadorian walnut for all the internal doors at the We Solve Murders office.
She had read an article about it in Architectural Digest. It was around thirty to forty times more expensive than oak and, when it was actually installed, it didn’t look particularly great, but at least when she showed people around the offices she could say ‘and the doors are all Ecuadorian walnut’.
She should have picked something much thinner.
Cheaper too, she supposes. If her publishing money dries up, might she have to start making economies?
Rosie shudders at the thought. Would people still like her as much if she didn’t have a private jet?
Rosie smiles at this. Amy and Steve would still like her as much if she didn’t have a private jet. Steve might even like her a little more.
Where are they, by the way?
Rosie takes the glass back into the kitchen, none the wiser as to what Ernesto was getting from the taciturn Brooks. She hears a car approaching down the long driveway towards the office. Perhaps that’s where Steve and Amy are?
If it is Steve and Amy, then perhaps the three of them together can persuade Ernesto to let them get involved.
Steve and Ernesto get along, don’t they?
Amy could punch Ernesto if needs be? That’s what makes them a great team.
Rosie will sleep with you, Amy will hit you, Steve will tell you a fact about public transport. They’ve got all angles covered.
The office door opens, so whoever is in the car has a key, which means it can only be Steve and Amy. Thank goodness for that.
Rosie fills up the kettle, so when they come in they will at least think that she was about to make a cup of tea, and one of them will offer to make it for her.
The internal door to the We Solve Murders reception opens.
Rosie turns and is disappointed to see that it’s not Steve and Amy after all.
Felicity has returned to the office. It’s always nice to see Felicity, but Rosie is unsure of what use she can be in the current situation. Of course! Tea! Every cloud.
‘Couldn’t stay away in the end?’ says Rosie.
‘Where’s Brooks?’ Felicity asks.
Rosie gestures with her head towards the door. ‘He’s in there with Ernesto. Confessing everything.’
‘I might pop in,’ says Felicity. ‘See if they need anything. That’s why I came back, felt like I was being a bad host.’
‘Door’s locked,’ says Rosie.
‘I have keys,’ says Felicity.
‘I think leave them,’ says Rosie. ‘Just for now.’
‘I won’t be a second,’ says Felicity.
‘Whatever Ernesto and Brooks are talking about,’ says Rosie, ‘I suspect they don’t need you popping in with a plate of biscuits.’
‘I’m going in,’ says Felicity, looking for the keys in her bag.
‘I think,’ says Rosie, ‘that’s unwise.’
Felicity has finished searching in her bag. She pulls out a small revolver. Nothing much has surprised Rosie since around 1975, but this does the trick.
‘I’m sure it is unwise,’ says Felicity. ‘But I’m going in anyway.’