Chapter 86
Donna has spent the evening looking through airplane passenger lists to and from Cyprus for the past two weeks. As if Johnny Gunduz would be using his own name these days. But you never knew.
Fun though the passenger lists had been, however, Donna is now back on Instagram.
Toyota was history already, but Carl wouldn’t wait around.
Who was he seeing now? Donna was nothing if not a natural detective.
Was he seeing that woman from his work, Poppy?
Poppy, whose photo he liked on Facebook?
Not just liked, but replied to with a wink emoji?
Poppy who seemed incapable of having her photo taken without being shot from the left and pouting?
Yes, she was obvious enough for Carl. Donna had run her name through the Home Office computer on the off chance, but nothing.
She knows it is time for bed, but she is still thinking about Penny Gray.
After the Thursday Murder Club meeting, Elizabeth had told her she wanted her to meet someone and then had led her into Willows, the nursing home attached to Coopers Chase.
They had walked down quiet beige corridors with dim strip lighting and seaside watercolors lining the walls.
It all carried an appalling weight, and the hopeful sprigs of flowers on cheap MDF side tables were powerless against it.
Who brought the flowers in every day? That was a losing battle, but what was the alternative?
Donna had gulped for air at one point. Willows was a prison from which no escape was possible.
Where release could mean only one thing.
They had walked into the room and Elizabeth had said, “Constable De Freitas, I’d like you to meet Detective Inspector Penny Gray.”
Penny had been lying in bed, a light sheet covering her to the neck, a blanket farther down, folded back.
Tubes running from her nose and from her wrists.
Donna had once been on a school trip to the Lloyd’s Building, where everything that should be on the inside was on the outside. She preferred everything tidied away.
Donna saluted. “Ma’am.”
“Take a seat, Donna. I thought it would be nice for the two of you to get to know each other. I do think you’ll get along.”
Elizabeth had taken Donna through Penny’s career. Smart, resilient, opinionated, thwarted at every turn by her gender and by her temperament. Or, rather, by the unacceptable combination of them both.
“She’s a wrecking ball,” Elizabeth had said. “I’m a thin blade, you understand. Penny is all brute force. I don’t know if you could tell that now.”
Donna looked at Penny and fancied that she could.
“It was fashionable in the police back then,” Elizabeth had gone on. “A bit of blunt force. Fashionable if you were a man, at least, but it never helped Penny; she never made it higher than detective inspector. Absurd if you knew her. I’m right, John—absurd, wasn’t it?”
John had looked up and nodded. “A waste.”
“She was trouble, Donna,” said Elizabeth. “And I can think of no finer compliment. That’s why Penny enjoyed looking over the old cases. She could finally be in charge. Could finally be the bull in the china shop. She didn’t have to be polite and laugh at the jokes and make the tea.”
Donna saw Elizabeth’s hand close around Penny’s.
Elizabeth looked at her and nodded. “We fight on, though, do we not? Penny took it all, sucked it up, as they say, and put on the uniform day after day, without complaint.”
“She complained a lot.” This was John. “With respect, Elizabeth.”
“Well, yes, she had an impressive temper on her when she wanted to.”
“Very focused,” John had agreed.
As they had left, generations apart but shoulder-to-shoulder and in perfect step, Elizabeth had turned to Donna and said, “You will know better than me, Donna, but I think perhaps not all the battles have been won?”
“I think perhaps too,” Donna had agreed. They had continued in companionable silence, out through the front doors of Willows, grateful to be breathing the air of the outside world.
Back at home—was this really home now?—Donna is not fully concentrating on Instagram anymore.
The visit to Penny has made her proud and sad.
She would love to have met her. Really met her.
There are many reasons why Donna would like to be the one to crack these murders, and she adds making Detective Inspector Penny Gray proud to her list.
Johnny for the Tony Curran murder? Matthew Mackie for Ventham? Elizabeth had told her to look into another of the residents, a Bernard Cottle. She had written the name down.
And the bones? Are they important? What do you say, Penny Gray?
It would be nice to wrap it all up. A nice tribute to someone who has gone before. She should get back to those passenger lists.
Donna scrolls through some final pictures. Poppy has just been bungee jumping for Cancer Research. Well, of course she has, that’s so Poppy.