A Beginner's Guide to Murder by Rosalind Stopps

Author:Rosalind Stopps [Stopps, Rosalind]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Meg

Wednesday, 27 February

I was the one who made the phone calls. I wanted to, but I was scared and I couldn’t believe they trusted me to do it. I was sure that Daphne or Grace, probably Grace, would be better at it but they said I’d be fine and I was. I didn’t completely mess up, even though I was shaking like a leaf. I gave myself a pat on the back afterwards and I tried to calm down. I wondered for a moment what else I could have done in my life, what job I might have had if things had been different. I could have been a spy, maybe, making international deals and rescuing people stuck in countries they didn’t want to be in. Or head of a big multinational corporation, flying from one city to another to negotiate with other important people. I wouldn’t have looked at a no-hoper like Henry, I’d have had a different sort of husband altogether. Someone supportive, a little taller and maybe with a moustache.

The second phone call was way more difficult even though I was on a roll. In the first, toad man had been positively gleeful at the thought of getting one over on us, and once he realised that we were offering money he could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice. The second one, the call to the small killers with the dog called Shoe, that was a different kettle of fish. I had to think on my feet, work hard. Start as you mean to go on, Henry used to say. Not everything he said was unhelpful.

‘It’s tonight,’ I said.

‘That’s quite soon,’ Clara said, sounding for all the world as though she was consulting her diary.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but best not to hang around. Give him time to think of—’ I was going to say more but she cut me off.

‘Let’s not talk about anything extraneous,’ she said.

She pronounced each syllable of extraneous as if she was sounding it out from a book, and it was a new word to her. I caught an edge of pride in her voice and I had a flash, just a flash of how it might be to watch a child learning to talk.

‘OK,’ I said.

I was trying to sound as businesslike as she was but my voice may have been shaking. Everyone can read you like an open book, Henry used to say, you wear your heart on your sleeve, and all your other organs as well.

‘OK, there’s a road runs up the back of Hilly Fields, leads to the café. The café near the stone circle. It closes at five so there won’t be anyone there. It’s called Eastern Road. It ends in a kind of car park. He’s going to meet us there at midnight, and we’re—’

‘Over and out,’ Clara said. ‘I roger that completely. We’ll be there.’

I ended the call and looked over at the others.

‘Was that OK?’ I said. ‘Only it’s not the kind of thing I usually do.

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