‘You’re a good lad,’ says Ron. ‘It’s Juniper Court, just off Rotherfield Road.’
49
Joyce is combining business and pleasure. There was an advert on TV years ago, for sweets maybe, and the song went ‘These are two of my favourite things in one.’ And here she was, about to watch a television show being recorded, and, she hopes, interviewing a murder suspect.
Last time she and Elizabeth were on a train, Elizabeth had had a gun in her bag. Perhaps she has one today? She is certainly looking distracted.
‘You seem distracted,’ says Joyce, as Elizabeth peers up and down the carriage.
‘I seem what?’ says Elizabeth.
‘Distracted,’ says Joyce.
‘Nonsense,’ says Elizabeth.
‘My mistake,’ says Joyce.
They had changed trains at London Bridge, and then again at Blackfriars. Blackfriars Station is on a bridge, and Joyce was thrilled about it. Although there was only a Costa Coffee. Apparently there was also a WHSmith, but it was down the escalator, and Joyce didn’t want to risk missing the next train. She would catch it on the way back. They spoke about Ibrahim’s discovery. That the note found in Heather Garbutt’s drawer was written by someone else. The killer presumably, but why would the killer mention Connie Johnson? Unless the killer was Connie Johnson, and even then it would make no sense.
They are now on a commuter service up to Elstree & Borehamwood, which is where Fiona Clemence films Stop the Clock. Joyce explains the rules to Elizabeth for the umpteenth time.
‘Really, for an educated woman, you can be very slow, Elizabeth,’ she says. ‘Four players each have a hundred seconds on their clock at the start of the game. The longer they take to answer questions, the more time they lose, and once they get down to zero seconds they’re out of the game.’
‘No, that much I understand,’ says Elizabeth. ‘It’s all the other nonsense.’
‘Nonsense? Hardly,’ says Joyce. ‘They each have four lifelines. They can steal ten seconds from an opponent, they can freeze their own clock, they can speed up an opponent’s clock, or they can swap a question. Steal, Freeze, Speed or Swap, simple as that. Though if your opponent steals from you or speeds you up, you receive an additional lifeline, Revenge, which you can play even when you’re out of the game. All the winner’s remaining seconds are converted to money, and to win the money they have to answer twelve questions, working their way around the clock from one to twelve before their time runs out. It couldn’t be simpler.’
‘And they put this on television?’ Elizabeth watches closely as a man walks past them.
‘Every day,’ says Joyce. ‘You can watch it instead of the news, that’s why it’s so popular.’
The train stops at Hendon, home of the famous police training college. Joyce texts Chris to say, Guess where we are? Hendon!’， but Chris texts back and says, I didn’t train at Hendon. Joyce texts the same thing to Donna but no reply yet.
‘Tell me about Fiona Clemence,’ says Elizabeth.
‘She was a junior producer when Bethany was the presenter of South East Tonight,’ says Joyce. ‘When Bethany died, she became the presenter. Ever so ambitious, but they only use “ambitious” as a criticism about women, don’t they?’
‘I have been called ambitious many times,’ says Elizabeth.
‘She hosted the show for about two years – you could really see she was starting to bed in – and then she went to work for Sky News. I always liked to keep up with her, you know, just in case she mentioned the South East. Then she started doing Breakfast News on the BBC, and now she presents everything. I even saw her doing Crufts the other day.’
‘I’m sure she’s famous, Joyce, but I’m really only interested in what she can tell us about Bethany Waites.’