Chapter 45
I’ve just realised, I’ve no idea where the name ‘Bridling’ comes from.
I do like a bit of amateur etymology – eventually when you’ve stayed in enough villages with weird names in off-season you start to get a bit nerdy about local history – but I never got around to researching Bridling.
There’s Bridlington up in Yorkshire, which apparently means something like ‘the estate of Berhtel’ in Old English, but nobody has any idea who Berhtel was and it seems unlikely he had a second home in Oxfordshire.
You get to reflect on these things when you spend twenty hours a day in your cell. Anyway.
This chapter opens with me back in – surprise surprise – Bridling, the village that started this whole farrago, the village containing Davy’s very big house in the country. The one we last saw in the rear-view mirror as we got out of there at triple the speed limit.
And now here I am again. Tariq provided a car on credit.
I told him I needed not to be conspicuous, and in the sorrowful tone of a slandered man he said, ‘Al, my friend. When are my cars conspicuous?’ He even sent a lad from Mr Toad’s Motors down from London, all the way to the coast, after I explained the outer edges of my current difficulties.
Thoughtful man. I picked the little Hyundai up without trouble, and drove, carefully and methodically, to the Cotswolds.
If I ever get out of this mess, I’m going to give Tariq first refusal on my first-born son.
I’m sitting on the bench outside Davy’s front door.
The gate opened when I pressed ‘0’ on the keypad, so I just drove in, with no difficulty.
The house is locked, although if you squint through the outer door you can see the shattered glass of the inner hall door.
I haven’t been in yet. It’s important that they can tell I definitely haven’t been in.
One of the porch’s upright beams has a yellow ribbon tied round it, which seems romantic and mournful until I look closer and realise it’s police tape.
There’s a crunch from the other end of the gravel, and the gates swing open. Em and Elle hop out of a cab. They don’t say anything until it’s left again, and the noise of the engine has faded to nothing.
Em gives me a wary look. ‘Hiya.’
‘Hi.’
‘How’s it going?’ asks Elle. I knew she’d crack first.
‘So-so. How about you? How’s Jonny?’
‘Really good.’
‘He’s fine,’ says Em. ‘He keeps saying he’s double-plus stable, so at least the bullet didn’t knock the Orwell out of him. He’s trying to persuade the hospital to let him plug into the NHS IT mainframe.’
‘They should absolutely not do that.’
‘No.’
The silence between me and Em at that moment is so thick and forbidding that not even Elle is willing to skate out across the surface. She turns and wanders along the front of the house, examining the wisteria. Em and I are left together.
‘I’m really sorry for how I …’ I was hoping we’d both start speaking at the same time, which would give me a good reason to tail off, but Em lets me twist, and so I have to continue. ‘How I behaved. Throughout.’
She shrugs. ‘We don’t have to talk about it now, Al. Still want me to refer to you as Al?’
‘I think so. Maybe I should change my name to that. You know, by deed poll. So I’m actually telling the truth from now on.’
She doesn’t quite smile, but it’s close. ‘Well, Al. You think this will work?’
‘Maybe.’
She wobbles her head in agreement, then looks out at the drive.
‘So, did they buy it? They didn’t mind coming out here?’
‘Seems like it,’ she says. ‘I told them that you’d only meet us here at the house, and I think they liked that.
Gave them a little sense of drama. Hard to tell over a draft email, but they seemed to love the sound of betraying you and splitting the proceeds.
They think we’re going to get into the account, drop you as soon as we’re in, and then they say they’ll split the money with us. ’
‘Well, if they do shoot me as soon as they’re in, try to take them up on that before they shoot you too.’
‘But who is it? Who are we waiting for?’
I pat my pocket. ‘I’ll show you afterwards, assuming I was right. Anyway. Only the person who has access Davy’s inbox knows we’re here now. And they’ve as good as told us they killed him.’
She’s not listening to me. Her attention is on the gates. ‘Look lively. Here we go.’
A third car is approaching up the gravel drive, a grey Audi which looks almost respectable but for the tinted windows in the front. We’re not the only ones who know how to get round security codes. Elle comes back over to where we’re standing and takes her sister’s hand.
The Audi pulls up next to my car. The driver’s door opens, and Mr Bowling Ball unfolds out of it.
He’s formally dressed, which makes him look more than ever like a manosphere vlogger arriving for a court appearance.
His shoulders are giving the suit’s seams a hard time, along with the gun he’s clearly got holstered under his arm.
He gives my borrowed Hyundai a look of pure disdain as he walks round the back of the Audi and bends to open the rear door.
Out of the car steps … Conor Vane. No. Wait, what? The person who gets out is, inexplicably, not Conor Vane. Conor Vane is who I was hoping for, who I’d have bet my last ￡65 on. Conor Vane is the man whose name I wrote on a piece of paper with brown Crayola to impress Em with once he arrived.
And yet, indisputably, out of the car steps Davy’s ex-wife, Charli.
She’s looking fab, as per. No coat, just a purple satin blouse, spray-on jeans and a clutch bag big enough for a single five-pack of Vogue Slims. Her heels are as thin and metallic as kitchen skewers, and she trots neatly to the front door despite the inches of gravel underfoot.
The impression she gave in the past was so shallow, so – will you forgive me for using a gendered term here?
– so ditzy, that it’s quite hard to recognise her now.
Her face seems to have rearranged itself.
But then I remember how she looked when I first met her at her friend Guggy’s launch party, and the thought that fleetingly occurred to me.
Even in those fluffy, self-helpful surroundings, something suggested she had known difficulty, and was determined she would never know any more of it.
Shit.
As Charli approaches, Em leans over to me. ‘Was that who was on your piece of paper?’
‘… No.’
‘Thought not.’
‘Good morning, all of you,’ says Charli.
She addresses Elle. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.
Related to this one?’ Elle nods, and Charli looks her up and down.
‘Mm. Two years younger, I’d guess, always in the shadow of big sis, never quite worked out how to be yourself, compensated by being terribly nice and hoping someone would notice?
Thought so. This is Alfie. He’s met you a couple of times, I believe, and you’ve made his working life very stressful. Alfie, can you check the exterior?’
Alfie nods. He gives me a look of particular venom, and the girls one of subsidiary grumpiness, then stalks off to examine the house.
‘I must say, you all look a bit surprised to see me. Were you looking forward to making a speech about why it was whoever you thought?’ Charli plucks a vape from her tiny bag and puffs on it.
Nobody else is saying anything, so I suppose it’s my turn. ‘You killed Davy?’
‘Hope so. And you were here, on the other side of the door. Nice to have these little reunions, isn’t it? How’s your friend?’
‘He’s doing much better.’
‘Oh, that’s marvellous. Should never have happened, of course. Botch job. You want something done in this country, do not ask a professional. They’re all unionised time-servers.’ My head is swimming.
Alfie is back from the exterior. ‘They haven’t been in.’
‘Oh, good.’ She plucks a key from her micro-bag, unlocks the front door, steps around the shattered glass still lying in the hall – treading on the outline of her husband’s neck– and leads us through to the back. Alfie follows us.
Once we’re in the study, Charli takes a seat behind the desk, and the three of us are plonked once again onto the sofa. Last time we were here, Davy was pointing a gun at us: this time, Alfie’s gun is still in its holster. So actually we’re doing much better, thank you.
Charli thinks of something. ‘Alfie, can you do a sweep of these three and the room? Don’t want to be recorded, do we? I mean, we’ll be in a non-extradition country this time tomorrow, but there’s no harm in maintaining operational security.’ OPSEC again. She and Jonny would get along.
Alfie gives us a pat-down and I get a glimpse of his gun under the suit. Perhaps I could grab it? Upside down? And then, what, blow these two away? Don’t be daft, Al. Remember the rules and you’ll be all right.
I can’t remember a single one of the rules.
Calm down, Al. God. You’ve been in worse trouble than this before.
Don’t check the truth of that statement, it’ll only upset you.
After some heavy petting, Alfie seems satisfied that we’re unarmed, and gives the room itself a good search for any cameras or microphones.
This takes about ten minutes, which we spend sitting in awkward silence, but eventually he pronounces himself happy and stands behind Charli, looking like a shaved Dobermann.
‘I thought it was Conor Vane who killed your husband,’ I say.
She exhales a cloud of strawberry. ‘I mean, he’s involved, but he’s not committed. Why him?’
‘The phone records. Davy was so hopeless that Mrs P at his firm did his phone contract for him. So she got all his bills, itemised. I rang her, and she sent them over. Conor claimed he hadn’t spoken to your husband in the weeks leading up to his death, but in the fortnight before Davy died, they spoke eight times.
I assume Davy was asking about dark police stations, and Qumar, and what he should do. ’