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‘OK,’ she says, stroking his hair. ‘I’ll give him his breakfast then come straight back. I’ll call work, tell them I’m taking the day off, OK?’
‘Thank you. You’re so good, thank you.’
She kisses him, holds him tight, tells him she loves him, that she’s here, that it will be OK. He lets her go. When she leaves, he is shockingly, instantly bereft, like part of his physical being has been removed.
Stuart coaxes him down into the basement. It is cold and smells strongly of coal from the pile at the bottom of the chute. He punches in the number, a combination of his and Joyce’s dates of birth, pulls out three A4 envelopes with cardboard backs.
‘Wow,’ says the cop, eyebrows rising. ‘How much is in these?’
‘I’m not sure. A hundred grand? Two hundred maybe? I’m not sure. I know she ordered hundred-pound notes from her bank, wrapped in the little paper slip things. She liked new notes, you know?’
‘Didn’t she have an account?’
‘Yes. She’s got shares, accounts, but she always kept some cash. For emergencies. But it’s not been touched, so…’ He closes the safe, muddles the numbers. ‘Whoever it was didn’t know about it.’
‘Yeah,’ says the cop, nodding. ‘It’s looking like burglars who panicked. The key has gone from under the plant pot, by the way; my colleague checked. You said the spade was missing. They haven’t found it on the premises. We really need to find it. And the keys.’
‘You’re saying… you’re saying that’s the murder weapon?’
‘I’m saying we need to find it. Your grandmother sustained a bad head injury, which is looking like the cause of death, though I can’t confirm. And yes, this is a murder inquiry.’
CHAPTER 43
Dear Sam,
No matter what you find out about me, I’m not a psychopath and I do care about you. But Joyce was the fly in the ointment, and I needed things to move on. I could hardly take a chance on her living another ten years, could I? She had to be dead by the time we got married.
I actually figured out how I was going to do it the day we did the garden together. Funny, because that morning my horoscope said: New information will light your path.
And it did. That’s the thing, you see. When you read your stars, you know what to look for. So when Joyce told me where the keys to the back door were, I thought: that’s it. It wasn’t new information as such. I knew where the keys were from before, but I’d completely forgotten, hadn’t I? But as soon as she said it, I was like, yeah. That’s it.
Because the thing I’d already realised was: I’m not going to be able to make it look like an accident with you hovering around all the time. I realised that when I tripped her up. I thought she’d go rolling down the stairs like they do on the films, but she just sort of stumbled and reached like she was saving a goal or something. She didn’t even break a wrist. Aren’t old people’s bones supposed to be brittle?
You didn’t really believe that was an accident, did you? I saw the way you looked at me when she fell. I mean, in the end the moment passed and I thought, well, I might get you to believe me maybe once more, but even with idiots, you don’t get many chances before people start suspecting. People start putting two and two together and thinking, hang on a minute, how come Naomi Harper was always the duty manager when those nurses went home in tears or when those complaints came in about staff rudeness or whatever? Or how come the till is always short on a Saturday, oh, hold on, isn’t Naomi Harper the Saturday girl? Or weren’t Naomi and Jo Harper in the girls’ loos that time the towel dispenser caught on fire?
And I can’t have that. I’ve got to be perfect. I’ve got to be a changed woman.
I have to tell you, it is so tiring being nice – biting your lip, not reacting when people are rude to your face like Joyce was to me. You feel like the Barbie doll at the end of Toy Story, you know when she’s on the luggage thing and her face is hurting from smiling all the time? That’s how I feel. Honestly, when I get in the car and relax, it’s like when you take your shoes off after work, do you know what I mean? You’re like, aaaaah.
Knowing where the keys were lit my path, so to speak. Not just the back-door key but the shed key too. And that’s where all the tools are, isn’t it? Some pretty heavy-duty stuff in there.
All I had to do was pick my moment. And when you said you were going out with the boys, I thought: that’s it. That’s my chance.
The thing is, Sam, I’m not even sad. Joyce’d had enough life. She told me that herself that time we were planting the veggies. She said she was starting to get a bit wobbly on her pins so it was only a matter of time. If I hadn’t helped her along, she would probably have ended up in a home, and they look after them way too well in there. Harry – that’s Cheryl’s other half - his mum was in one and he said they did her hair and her nails every week, gourmet food every day, all the tea, all the cake. She lived way longer than she should have. I mean, when you think about it, it’s no wonder they don’t do the decent thing and shuffle off. If I was getting my nails done once a week, I think I’d hang around too. For a lot of them, life is better than they’ve ever had it. It’s almost anti-nature, really, when you think about it. Like artificial life support, do you know what I mean? Joyce would have hated it. She was so independent. And those places are so expensive; they literally chug through all your inheritance. I couldn’t have watched that happen, no way. It was you who said that when you know what you want for the rest of your life, you want that life to start as soon as possible, right? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you said that, babe.
You, not me.
So anyway, I’m just waiting for Tommy to wake up and thinking how great it is that now I know the number for the safe. I’ve put it into the notes on my phone for safekeeping – safekeeping, get it? Honestly, though, I’m so glad I dashed over in the role of sympathetic fiancée. That was the one thing I couldn’t figure out: how the hell I’d get you to give me the number without it being obvious, and then, bingo! I knew the safe was still full of course. Burglary was never the intention; we just knew we had to make it look like that.
You’re probably wondering how anyone could summon up the courage or whatever to do something like that. Hit someone with a spade, I mean. Well, I’ll let you into my little secret. It’s rage, babe. It’s amazing. It’s like cocaine or something. It’s better than coke actually. I’m not seeing my therapist anymore, but it was her who told me I had a lot of anger. She told me to write you a letter, which is what I’m doing, so you can’t say I didn’t follow her advice, can you? She didn’t mean send it or anything – she just meant as a way of getting my feelings down and helping with the rage. I never saw the point. Not a big writer, am I, and it wasn’t like it could change anything. It’s too late for that. But I’ll admit, whenever I update my little letter, I can feel my shoulders coming down. Literally, my hands get steadier with every word.
But, saying all that, writing a letter is nothing compared to swinging that spade and watching old Joycie hit the deck. Judged me for years, she did. She wasn’t judging me then, was she? Not looking down her nose anymore, is she? Wishing her grandson had found someone better than skanky old Naomi Harper. I tell you something else, when you rang me to tell me she hadn’t made some sort of miraculous comeback, it was all I could do not to shout Yesss down the phone. Thank God she did the decent thing. Honest to God, I was worried sick waiting for your call. How I managed to pretend I was asleep I will never know.
You’ll be wondering why all the rage. Well, since you’re asking, I suppose it’s because I never got to the bottom of why – why you left, I mean. You, Sam Moore, leaving me, Naomi Harper? You were so punching, mate – anyone could see that. It just doesn’t even make sense. You weren’t supposed to do that, Sam. I mean, who do you think you are? Especially when you never really told me you weren’t happy, and even more especially when you knew you were leaving me to face lockdown completely on my own. I didn’t think you were capable of doing something like that, honestly I didn’t. It just felt like you were throwing everything away, and for what? To go and live with your granny?
Classic Virgo, you see? You have to fix things, don’t you? And of the two of us – me and Joyce, I mean – I suppose she was the creaking gate, wasn’t she? No offence, I just mean as in old. And you always said I was the strong one. I reckon you thought if you said it enough times, you’d convince yourself it was true. Maybe it made you feel better. Maybe it was your way of talking yourself out of the guilt. If I was strong, you could leave. If Joyce was vulnerable, that made it OK.
Look, I know we were having problems before. I get that, I absolutely do, but I just thought we could have made it work without you having to physically move in with your actual grandmother, do you know what I mean? You put me in a completely impossible position, Sam. How could I have moved into your gran’s place when she doesn’t even like me? She never liked me. I know if you were here you’d say that’s not true, but I know you know it is. What was it Princess Di said – there were three in the marriage? My point exactly, Diana.
