The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)

by Richard Osman

Ron feels the adrenaline pumping a little. This is the stuff. A bit of TV. Where are the others though? He told them they could come along “if they fancied, no big deal,” and he will be gutted if they don’t show.

“I play squash, I moisturize, and nature takes care of the rest.”

“He is testing the microphone level.” “I had worked that out,” says Joyce, and Ibrahim nods. “Thank you for getting him to stay for dinner—you never know, do you?” “You never do know, Joyce, that is true. Perhaps the two of you will marry before the year is out. And, even if not, which is an outcome we must prepare for, I’m sure he will have plenty of information about Bethany Waites.”

“You want a drop of red, Mike?” Ron asks, bottle raised. “What is it?” asks Mike. “How do you mean?” “What wine is it?” Ron shrugs. “It’s a red, I don’t know the make.” “OK, let’s live dangerously, just this once,” says Mike, and lets Ron pour.

“I’ve always been a magnet for trouble,” says Ron. Pauline tops up Ron’s glass. “Well, watch yourself, Ron, because I’ve always been trouble.”

“Ooh, snap!” says Joyce. Ibrahim notes that this evening’s combination of wine and celebrity is making her quite the giddy goat.

PC Donna De Freitas feels like someone has just punched a hole through the clouds. She is flooded with heat and warmth, alive with a pleasure both utterly familiar but completely new. She wants to weep with happiness, and to laugh with the uncomplicated joy of life. If she has ever felt happier, she cannot immediately bring it to mind. If the angels were to carry her away this very moment—and if her heart rate was anything to go by that was a possibility—she would let them scoop her up, while she thanked the heavens for a life well lived.

“Everyone wants to feel special, but nobody wants to feel different,” says Bogdan.

Hmm. Is this Bogdan’s downside? He’s a serial murderer? That would be tough to overlook. Not impossible though, given those shoulders.

“I read a lot,” says Bogdan. “What’s your favorite book ever?” “The Velveteen Rabbit,” says Bogdan. “Or Andre Agassi’s autobiography.”

That night she had been seen leaving her apartment building—we used to call it a block of flats, didn’t we—at about ten p.m.,

Before we knew it, it was nearly eight p.m.! Alan was beside himself when I got in. I say “beside himself”: he was curled up on the sofa and raised an eyebrow at me that said, “What sort of time is this for my dinner, you dirty stop-out?”

I am Googling Heather Garbutt and listening to the World Service. She is difficult to Google, because there’s also an Australian hockey player called Heather Garbutt, and most of the results are about her. I actually ended up quite interested in the hockey player, and I follow her on Instagram now. She has three very beautiful children.

Night-time is for questions without answers, and I have no time for questions without answers. Leave that to Ibrahim. I like questions you can answer.

Chris gives a “no bother” wave, and means it. Why is Chris so happy? The answer is simple, but also complicated. Chris is in love with someone, and that same someone is in love with him.

Chris is not certain it went well, but he caught her humming “A Whole New World” in the car over here, so he has his suspicions.

I hope you understand that I wouldn’t ask, were it not that the situation in which we find ourselves requires it.

The Thursday Murder Club brought him Donna, Donna brought him Patrice, Patrice brought him stir-fried tofu. And all of that, it turns out, brought him happiness.

“Which one?” asks Ron, trying to eat his soup with a little decorum.

Pauline puts a finger to Ron’s lips to help him out of his cul-de-sac of a sentence.

Would they have hit Stephen too? Or not seen the need? Is he here with her? Elizabeth wriggles backward across the floor of the vehicle—she has now deduced it must be a van—until she brushes up against another body. They are back to back. She knows it is Stephen, she can tell by the electricity.

There are scars, yes, but that at least means the bleeding has stopped.

Although one has to be careful: she is a ruthless killer and, without wishing to be judgmental about it, that is fairly bad.

Girly chat, what’s your star sign, did you push a car off a cliff.”

Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.

“I’m sure,” says Elizabeth. “If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.”

Bogdan is currently in the bathroom, and Donna is frantically rehydrating, and trying to recall if she has ever been happier.

The enemy who became . . . her lover? Had they? Elizabeth doesn’t recall, but she wouldn’t put it past herself.

They listen to the owls talk for a while, and hold each other close for warmth as they walk. How often do you walk down a new road with an old lover? Elizabeth looks at the moon, and at her husband, and thinks to herself that this is an unusual time to feel happy.

But the real memories are never the ones that make the highlights reel. The real memories were of quiet afternoons watching Bethany work. The skill with which she found and told stories. The small jokes, the private looks, the squeeze of the hand every evening when they were “five seconds to air.” Every day, “Anything from the canteen, Mike?” “No, thanks, Beth, my body’s a temple.” The Twix she would then bring him back. Not rollercoasters, not skyscrapers, just the accumulation of small moments that turn acquaintance into friendship.

Mike has the peculiar sensation that he is being manipulated, but in such an enjoyable way that perhaps he will stay on the ride for now? See exactly what they’re capable of.

Connie looks at Heather Garbutt, eyes back down to the floor, shoulders slumped. Why can’t she charm this woman? It absolutely infuriates Connie when people are resistant to her charms. She simply won’t allow it. Connie starts crying, and that gets Heather looking up all right.

“I spend a lot of time on Rightmove,” says Donna. “Looking at houses I can’t afford.”

That’s all it was in the end. People were always trying to tell you something, and all you really had to do was let them.

Gray hair shaved to the scalp, deep brown eyes never missing a moment of action—you’d never kill Jack with a bullet, you’d have to use a bulldozer.

Jack takes his first shot. Ron is glad they are playing snooker. It can be quite hard for two men to have a conversation together, but snooker, or golf, or darts, always seemed to make it easier. Men didn’t really meet for a coffee. Perhaps they did these days? Perhaps the coffee shops of Ramsgate were full of men chatting about their hopes and dreams, but Ron doubts it. Ron bends down over the table and takes his shot.

Two men playing snooker—you can’t beat it. Fewer and fewer people to play against these days though. There used to be a whole gang of them, London, Kent, wherever you were you could get a game. But between death, prison and living in exile on the Costa del Sol, the gang was all gone.

Andrew turns back to the text. He will sell a few copies, he thinks. Then he will thank Ibrahim for his questions, and ask a few of his own. He takes a sip of the water provided on the lectern. It turns out to be a vodka and tonic. Probably for the best.

‘teak-tough’

Ibrahim is going to Darwell Prison on Wednesday, to talk to Connie Johnson. He asked me what magazine she might like to read, but I wasn’t sure. I like Woman & Home, but I didn’t think it would be Connie’s thing, so I asked Joanna, and I told her that Connie was a thirty-something drug dealer who always wore lovely shoes, and she suggested Grazia.

Chris would love to find a clue that Elizabeth has missed. Should he really be that competitive with a woman in her late seventies?

“I’m afraid I was terribly boring,” says Joyce. “I wanted to get married.” “God, that’s not boring, Joyce,” says Pauline. “To really mean it, that’s the dream. How did you fall in love with Gerry, can you remember?” “Oh, I didn’t fall in love with him,” says Joyce. “Nothing like that. I just walked into a room and there he was, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and that’s all there was to it. Like I had always been in love with him, no falling necessary. Like finding the perfect pair of shoes.”

“But why a bag over your head and a blindfold?” asks Joyce, as the train races through the horizontal English rain. “That’s a bit much.” “Belt and braces,” says Elizabeth. Joyce nods. “I suppose I’ve packed a raincoat and an umbrella today, so I can hardly talk.

jape,

The whole place feels very expensive yet deeply inoffensive, like a business hotel a divorcé might choose to kill himself in.

“Please, come with me and sit. It is too cold to sit outside, but we can enjoy the view. I hope you like gray clouds and red buses?”

If you took everyone with mental-health issues out of this place they’d have to shut it down. Most people in here were, one way or another, just taking another step in a life of chaos, pulled by the tides of a world that neither wanted them nor needed them. Very few people in here were like Connie. Just plain bad.

“We meet up every Thursday,” says Ibrahim. “Usually at eleven in the Jigsaw Room, but you are forgiven on this occasion. And we try to solve murders. Though today seems to be about committing murders, so the remit is elastic.”

People drift in and out of your life, and, when you are younger, you know you will see them again. But now every old friend is a miracle.

Looking up, Viktor realizes just how lonely his penthouse is. How lonely his life has become. Young, beautiful people taking photos in a pool that everyone could see, but no one could visit. Where were his friends?