Epilogue
TWO WEEKS LATER
‘I didn’t know people were dying,’ says Eric Jacobs. ‘I just enjoyed the travel.’
‘If you had known?’ says Georgie.
‘Would have really taken the edge off,’ says Eric, ‘I don’t mind telling you.’
Georgie had asked Eric Jacobs if they could meet.
She had something to give him, and, besides, it would be lovely to meet up again after all these years.
He’d asked if she was happy to come down to Sussex, as he’d been doing a lot of travelling recently, and she’d said she would be delighted.
He wondered if she knew the Notcutts Garden Centre just outside East Grinstead, and she had replied that, while she didn’t know it, she was sure it would be easy enough to find.
So here they are. In the café. Georgie has a spinach flan and Eric has a vegan sausage roll. Thinking back all those years, Eric might have been the first vegan Georgie had ever met. They didn’t have any in Kensal Rise.
‘I’m sure of that, Eric,’ says Georgie. ‘Vern would just send you on little trips?’
Eric nods. ‘Never told me why. But I didn’t see there was anything to be gained in saying no. You and Mr Blackwood had always been very good to me. And, as I say, no word of murder.’
When Vern had first made a bit of money, they’d bought a place down in Sussex.
Eric had looked after the garden for the previous owner – a pop singer who had been sent to prison for attempting to murder a jockey, but that’s a story for another day – and had wondered if Mr and Mrs Blackwood might be at all keen on keeping him on?
They had been. Eric was a very good gardener.
‘I’ve been all over,’ says Eric. ‘Finland, America, Czechoslovakia.’
It must have been nearly thirty years ago now.
Eric would have been in his mid-forties, but already looked like Death himself.
Bald, thin and gaunt. Georgie had once bumped into him at the side of the house carrying a scythe and had nearly had a heart attack.
Eric had taken to wearing baseball caps after that incident.
‘Do you have money?’ Georgie asks. ‘Did Vern pay you well?’
Eric shakes his head. ‘￡15 an hour. Same as before.’
Georgie had to laugh. That was Vern all over. Ask your old gardener to pose as the most dangerous man in the world so you could run an absurdly lucrative criminal empire, and pay him minimum wage. It wasn’t, as it turns out, the worst of Vern’s crimes, but it certainly added a layer to the man.
‘He let me keep my air miles though,’ says Eric. ‘If you know where you can spend air miles? I’ve never worked it out.’
Georgie wants to put things right for the old man. That’s why she’s here. To atone for Vern’s sins.
‘What would you do if you had a bit of money?’ Georgie asks.
Eric shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. Move out of my flat, I suppose. I’ve only got a window box. Can’t grow marrows in a window box.’
‘Find somewhere with a garden, then?’
Eric nods. ‘There’s a place I fancy. It’s got allotments, and you get to keep the gardens nice. That would suit me.’
‘Here in Sussex?’ Georgie asks.
‘Just across the border, in Kent,’ says Eric. ‘A retirement village. They say it’s good fun.’
‘The thing is,’ says Georgie, ‘I’ve got a bit of money, Eric. And I’d like you to have it.’
‘I couldn’t take your money,’ says Eric.
‘It’s Vern’s money,’ says Georgie. ‘And he owes you.’
Georgie hasn’t counted all of it, but she’s guessing it’s the best part of a million. Ernesto had taken the other half. That had been the deal when he’d caught her at Vern’s villa. Seemed fair enough at the time. She hadn’t known what was going to happen next.
Ernesto had taken her up into the loft and, once it was apparent he wasn’t going to kill her or kiss her, he had shown her the money, and they’d agreed to split it down the middle.
In return, she had told him everything. The most important thing she had told him was that Jakob Eriksson was a seventy-two-year-old gardener called Eric Jacobs.
She had seen the pound signs in Ernesto’s eyes immediately. Or, more correctly, euro signs.
Had she known that Ernesto would spot an even greater opportunity?
Perhaps she had. That he would kill Vern?
That he would kill Mark Drury too, all to hide the secret of Eric Jacobs?
She was certainly not responsible for everything that had happened, but neither can she pretend to be entirely innocent. She has blood on her hands.
Georgie slips her jacket on. She will buy Eric Jacobs somewhere to live. A retirement village sounds altogether too quiet for her, but if that’s what his heart desires, then so be it. She doesn’t need Jakob Eriksson, because there will be no more murders.
Of the six men who met in Vegas, the men who had carved up the market between them, five of them were now dead, and the other is a retired gardener from Haywards Heath who wants to grow marrows in peace.
And the only other man who knows the whole story, Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuéllar, will never tell her part in it.
There will be no more murders, because there is nobody left to kill.
And, as there are no rivals left, Georgie has decided she will quietly get on with Vern’s business.
Which seems fair, after everything she’s done over the years.
The only thing that seems unfair is that it wasn’t something she could drag Steve into. He was too good a man. ‘Too good’ in that she didn’t want him tainted by her business, but also ‘too good’ in that he wouldn’t have hesitated to arrest her if he’d found out.
So much has been faked in this whole story. But when they met up last week, and they said they couldn’t see each other again, they were both telling the truth.
Eric has finished his vegan sausage roll and is now reading a seed catalogue. She smiles and puts her hand on his.
‘Come on, then, Eric. Let’s go and look at this retirement community.’