In return for her silence, and because of the risk of Joseph finding them, she asked Kelly for a favour. This must have been for Kelly to pass information to the police about Joseph’s ongoing crimes. Maybe she arranged protection for Kelly and that’s why Jen saw the police cars circulating. Maybe that’s why they arrived so soon on that night, way before the ambulance. They were waiting to intervene, but just too late, too late.
Nicola must have been harmed by Joseph two nights before Todd commits his crime. The section 18 wounding with intent Jen overheard in the police station. Joseph must have worked her out. Now out of prison, he would have been watching every single contact of his for signs they were not who they said. It would have been easier to work her out as police, given she never left. That’s why Nicola looked so different in Wagamama’s: she wasn’t in her undercover role.
And figuring out Nicola will have led Joseph to Kelly.
So Joseph finds out, and comes for Kelly in the middle of the night at the end of October. And wasn’t he armed? Didn’t he reach into his pocket for a weapon?
The police appeared almost immediately after the murder. They probably already knew something was brewing.
And then they betrayed Kelly: they arrested Todd. Even though Kelly had asked Nicola for help. No wonder he was furious at the station.
And what of Todd? Well, it seems so simple now that Jen knows. He wanted to protect his father. So, on hearing about Nicola, he bought a knife. On his way home, he recognized Joseph, saw he was armed, and panicked. Then he did the only thing he could: protected his dad, at all costs.
Ryan
718 Welbeck Street.
That’s the address Joseph has given Ryan and Angela. They’re ready to go. Angela’s going to keep a watch outside, and Ryan’s going in. And, afterwards, the rest of the squad is going to arrest Joseph now that Angela and Ryan can identify him. He’s trusted Ryan and Angela, and as a result there’s enough to incriminate him. The text message, Ryan and Angela’s evidence … it will be enough to demonstrate he was running a crime ring, enough to send him down for decades.
The only thing missing is the baby. Still lost.
As they’re walking over, another message appears.
Go into the address in the previous text and say you’re here to do painter/decorating. Once you get to the proprietor’s office, say I sent you. JJ.
Ryan turns to Angela. ‘This is it,’ he says. ‘This is how he gets the addresses of the empty houses. This office. We’ve got him. We’ve fucking got him.’
‘I know,’ Angela says, buzzing. ‘I know.’
Ryan and Angela walk along the rainy March streets, Ryan thinking of his brother and of Old Sandy, too. Thinking about how he kind of has changed the world. Just a little bit. In his own small way.
Ryan blinks back some emotion or other that he can’t name. They reach the address. Nicola walks away from him, perfectly in character, leaving Ryan to enter the building. A law firm, apparently. Looks well-to-do.
A woman is sitting in reception. She’s pretty. Cascades of dark hair, big eyes.
‘Need any painting or decorating done?’ he says, a big, fixed, hopeful smile in place.
‘What, just – spontaneous decorating?’ she says with a dry laugh. Something turns over in his stomach at that laugh. He didn’t expect this. He thought she’d be in on it. He’d thought she’d understand the code.
‘Er, yeah?’ he says.
‘Sure, we’ll just pull all the furniture away from the walls right now then, shall we? Do the legal work while you paint?’
‘Okay, I’m game if you are,’ he says easily.
‘We’re all right, thanks,’ she says. ‘But if we ever want some unplanned decorating done – you’re our man.’
She ignores him, turning her gaze back to her computer.
‘Can I just check with the owner?’ he asks.
‘How do you know I’m not the owner?’
‘Well, are you?’
‘… No.’
They hold each other’s gazes for a second, then explode into laughter. ‘Well, pleased to meet you, not-the-owner,’ he says.
‘Likewise, spontaneous decorator.’
She smiles at him, like they know each other, and shouts over her shoulder. ‘Dad?’ she says. ‘Someone here for you.’ She glances at Ryan just as he heads into her father’s office. ‘I’m Jen.’
‘Kelly.’
Day Minus Seven Thousand One Hundred and Fifty-Seven, 11:00
Jen’s eyes open. Please be 2022. But she knows it isn’t.
Hip bones. An old phone. A really, really old bed, God, it’s that low one that had the wooden sides. Air rushes out of her lungs. It isn’t over.
She sits up and rubs her eyes. Yes. Her flat, her first flat. The one she bought when she’d just started work. She’d put down a three-thousand-pound deposit; laughable in 2022.
It has one bedroom. She gets up and follows the worn path in the tattered brown carpet into the hallway and then into the living room. It’s been made boho by her soft furnishings: a chintzy curtain separates the sitting room from the kitchen, purple cushions line a deep windowsill to disguise the damp. She gazes at it now, in wonder. She’d forgotten almost all of this.
Morning light filters in at the grimy windows.
She checks her phone, but it doesn’t have the date on it. She turns the television on, goes to the news, then to Ceefax. Fucking hell, is this what they used to do to work out the date? It’s March the twenty-sixth, 2003, eleven o’clock in the morning.
It’s six months earlier, and it’s the day after she met Kelly for the first time. Today is the day of their first official date.
She looks at her phone, though she can hardly use it. It can send texts, make calls and she can play Snake on it. She navigates to SMS. Kelly’s last message is right here, in the thread of conversation with a man listed in her contacts as Hot Painter/Decorator? The man who she didn’t know was going to become her husband. Cafe Taco, 5.30pm? From work? xx he wrote, the text blocky and old-fashioned, the screen illuminated a neon calculator-green.
Her reply must be in a separate box, the messages unthreaded. Ancient.
She goes to the sent items. Sure, she’d said, a study in casual language. She doesn’t remember obsessing over it, but she’s sure she will have.
It’s late. She used to binge drink and binge sleep. She feels hung over. She doesn’t remember what she did the night after she first met Kelly, but she presumes it involved alcohol. She runs a finger over the kitchen counters – fake marble – and gazes at her possessions: legal textbooks, but lots of paperbacks with high-heeled women on, too. Candles in jars and stuck in the tops of wine bottles. Two pairs of suit trousers balled up on the floor, pants and socks still visible in them.
She takes a long shower, marvelling at the dirt between the tiles. Funny how we get used to things. She’s sure she never gave it more than a passing thought when she lived here. Just put up with the mould on the windowsills, the constant noise outside, that she had to budget for every penny.
When she’s out, in her towel, she heads to her desktop computer. Something occurred to her in the hot, scented steam and she wants to look it up now.