Henk shrugs at Jeff, and Jeff smiles. The team is back.
The porter returns with a bottle of wine. “I took the liberty of bringing a rosé.”
“Oh, lovely,” say Jeff and Henk together.
100
From the Cell of Mickey Moody
All right, Susan? Don’t know if you’ll get this, but I read your name in the papers, and thought I’d give it a whirl. No ChatGPT when you write in pen and ink, is there? What you see is what you get now: Mickey Moody, large as life and twice as ugly!!!
I’m banged up, as you’ll know, and fair enough too. I was stupid, and some other geezer was cleverer. That’s the game, innit, Susan? Pissed me off, though, thought I had it all worked out. Now I’m crapping in a bucket. Takes me back to my childhood!
Sorry if I killed anyone you liked, and sorry they caught you too. I hoped you’d get away with it, to be honest. Pictured you dipping your toes in the Med or whatever. Still, Downview’s not a bad prison. I had an aunt who did a ten-stretch there in the nineties, and she only said nice things.
If I can give you some advice from one prison cell to another, it is this. No regrets. We live our lives forward, not backward. So always make the best of what’s in front of you.
You don’t have to tell me, but I’ve got time on my hands. No telly, no golf. What’s your story?
Cheers,
Mickey
Dear Mickey,
I’m glad I didn’t “get away with it.” I’m exactly where I belong.
As for my story, it’s the same as yours. The same as so many people’s now. Money.
I worked for Jeff Nolan, the man you tried to kill. And, in the end, the man I tried to kill too.
I had been “topping up” my salary for years and years from a few of Jeff’s accounts. He gave me access to them over the years, so I could take care of things that bored him. Eventually everything bored him. It was just a few thousand here and there at first, and I invested wisely. I sometimes even invested in things that Jeff told me to, actually, though he didn’t realize it was his money I was using. I bought a few properties. But I always paid back what I’d taken from any profit that I made, and no harm was done to anyone.
Recently, though, I’d started losing bits here and there—you know how interest rates have been, the global economy and suchlike. I had thought I was something of a financial genius, but I had merely been investing at a time when a fool could make money.
And I am a fool.
I started chasing my losses, and suddenly the money I could access from Jeff wasn’t enough to cover what I was doing. And so I turned to you with my proposition, which I hoped would be lucrative and trouble-free. I’m not from a world of murder, Mickey, but I was desperate, and I accept that I walked through that door of my own free will. It was a mess, and it was a mess of my own making, so I have got everything I deserve. They have locked me up and I hope they throw away the key.
I will never forgive you for resorting to murder, Mickey, but that pales into insignificance against the fact that I will never forgive myself.
Money does the funniest things to people, doesn’t it? I know your job is to wash it clean, but, Mickey, how on earth do you wash yourself clean afterward?
I now have a long time to ponder that question. Sin in haste, repent at leisure.
I have no interest in beginning a correspondence with you, so I shall bid you farewell, and hope we both find some form of forgiveness.
Yours sincerely,
Susan Knox
101
It is three a.m., and the village of Axley is gray-blue under a low moon. A lone pony stoops his head to drink from the village pond, and Steve Wheeler sits on his favorite bench. How many times has he sat here since Debbie died? Talking to his wife, sharing his day, trying to hear the faint echo of a reply?
“It’s nice to be home,” he says.
The pony looks up. He knows Steve, of course, but who are the other two?
“I think Debbie would be proud of you,” says Amy, her head resting on Steve’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
“I’m proud of you too, Amy,” says Steve.
To Steve’s left, Rosie D’Antonio mimes being sick, then downs the rest of a can of Red Stripe. “Has anyone ever told you two that you’re too sentimental?”
“Says the woman who just had a half-hour conversation with her boyfriend,” says Amy.
“Eddie is not my boyfriend,” says Rosie. “I’m mentoring him.”
“We’ve all heard you mentoring him,” says Amy. “Through the hotel walls.”
“Where to next, Amy?” Steve asks.
“How do you mean?”
“Mickey Moody and Susan Knox both under arrest. You’re in the clear. So where are you headed? What’s the next job?”
Amy shrugs. “I think I’m done.”
