Chapter 11
Coopers Chase always wakes early. As the foxes finish their nightly rounds and the birds begin their roll call, the first kettles whistle and low lamps start to appear in curtained windows. Morning joints creak into life.
Nobody here is grabbing toast before an early train to the office or packing a lunch box before waking the kids, but there is much to do nonetheless.
Many years ago, everybody here would wake early because there was much to do and only so many hours in the day.
Now they wake early because there is much to do and only so many days left.
“I have a job for you, Ibrahim,” says Elizabeth, sipping a mint tea. “Well, a job for you and Ron, but I’m putting you in charge.”
“Very wise,” says Ibrahim, nodding. “If I might say.”
Elizabeth had rung him the night before with the news about Tony Curran. She had heard from Ron, who had heard it from Jason, who had heard it from a source yet to be documented. Dead in his kitchen, blunt force trauma to the head, found by his wife.
Ibrahim usually likes to spend this hour looking through old case notes, and sometimes even new ones.
He still has a few clients, and if they are ever in need, they will make the trip out to Coopers Chase and sit in the battered chair under the painting of the sailing boat, both of which have followed him around for nearly forty years now.
Yesterday, Ibrahim had been reading the notes of an old client of his, a sad-eyed bank manager from Godalming who took in stray dogs, and had killed himself one Christmas Day.
No such luck this morning, Ibrahim thinks. Elizabeth had arrived with the sunrise. He is finding the break in his routine challenging.
“All I need you to do is to lie to a senior police officer,” says Elizabeth. “Can I trust you with that?”
“When can you not trust me, Elizabeth?” says Ibrahim. “When have I let you down?”
“Well, never, Ibrahim,” she agrees. “That’s why I like to keep you around. Also, you make very good tea.”
Ibrahim knows he is a safe pair of hands.
Over the years he has saved lives and saved souls.
He was good at what he did, and that’s why, even now, some people will drive for miles, past an old phone box, past the farm shop and the wooden bus stop, and take the right turn before the bridge, just to speak to an eighty-year-old psychiatrist, long retired.
Sometimes he fails—who doesn’t, in this world?—and those are the files that Ibrahim will reach for in these early mornings. The bank manager who sat in the battered chair and cried, and cried, and could not be saved.
But this morning there are different priorities; he understands that. This morning the Thursday Murder Club has a real-life case. Not just yellowing pages of smudged type from another age, but a real case, a real corpse, and somewhere out there, a real killer.
This morning Ibrahim is needed. Which is what he lives for.