‘Maybe,’ says Andrew Everton. He watches a young man in a tracksuit idle his way along the pier, hands in deep pockets. Where’s he off to this early in the morning? What’s in those pockets of his? The end of the pier is a good place for a private meeting. Who’s this lad meeting? Andrew misses being out on the streets sometimes, back in the thick of things, trusting his instincts. He likes being a politician, but he misses being a detective.
‘So who could get access to her cell?’ Mike asks.
‘Warders,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘We’re looking into them. Other prisoners, if they’re trusted.’
‘Another prisoner could have murdered her?’
‘Lot of murderers in prison,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘But to disable the CCTV as well? Surely a prisoner couldn’t do that?’
‘Some prisoners are better connected than others,’ says Andrew Everton.
‘So another prisoner could just walk into her cell, pick up the knitting needles, and –’
‘Do you mind?’ asks a man in decorators’ overalls, holding out a phone. ‘I wouldn’t normally, but my mum’s such a fan.’
Mike nods, then smiles for a selfie with the man.
‘I’ll keep at it, Mike,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘I promise.’
The man in the overalls walks on towards the café. He stops to put a tin down by some ornate ironwork covered in peeling paint, begins scraping it away and rubbing it down. The boy in the tracksuit joins him, takes a brush from his deep pockets and starts painting. Andrew smiles to himself. Can’t win ’em all. Talking of which.
‘I might …’ Andrew Everton hesitates. ‘I might need a favour too, Mike, only if you can.’
‘Name it,’ says Mike.
‘I don’t really know very much about television, but it’s just, I don’t suppose you know anyone at Netflix? I keep sending them my books, but they haven’t got back to me.’
42
‘Throw a bit more earth over me,’ says Viktor to Bogdan. ‘Just for warmth.’
Viktor, being a professional to his bones, has insisted on being buried naked. He knows that any self-respecting murderer would leave as few clues in the grave as possible. If they are to raise no suspicions with the Viking, then it is the right thing to do. He had waited until the last possible moment of course, nicely wrapped up as he watched Bogdan dig the grave. Viktor has seen many people dig many graves over the years, but few with the speed and efficiency of Bogdan. When this is all over, he wonders if Bogdan might like a job.
‘I could pour you a cup of tea,’ says Joyce, looking down on him over the lip of the grave, flask in hand. ‘But I’m not sure how you’d drink it down there.’
‘It is a kind offer, Joyce,’ says Viktor, as another clod of earth from Bogdan’s spade lands on his chest. ‘Perhaps later.’
‘Hold still,’ says Pauline, kneeling beside him with a brush, and a palette of red-and-black goop. She has been carefully painting a bullet hole on his forehead for five minutes or so.
‘Sorry to make you work on a naked man in a freezing hole,’ says Viktor.
Pauline shrugs. ‘I work in television, darling.’
‘You smell lovely though,’ says Viktor. ‘Eucalyptus.’
Pauline had originally painted on the bullet wound in the comfort of Joyce’s flat. The situation had been explained to her, by Ron, and she had taken it in her stride. She had asked if what they were doing was illegal, and Elizabeth had said ‘define illegal’， and that had been good enough for Pauline. She had also caked his face in powder, making him paler and paler, thinner and thinner, until they all agreed they were staring into the eyes of a ghost. They had then bundled Viktor back into his familiar holdall, and Bogdan had carried him out to a quad bike and driven him up to the woods. The others had followed, at a discreet distance, in the event that the Viking was somehow watching.