The Last Devil to Die

Chris, Patrice, Donna, Bogdan, Joyce, and Ibrahim are having a dinner party. Ibrahim has created a WhatsApp group called “Who Killed Kuldesh?” to bring everyone up to speed. He’s using the opportunity to recap, starting with who is dead: Kuldesh, Dom, Samantha, and a man named Lenny who worked for Mitch and was killed in Amsterdam (a fact Donna learned from someone at the police station).

He then moves on to who is alive: Mitch, Luca, Garth (presumably), Nina, and Jonjo. Donna suggests adding the middle-aged woman who keeps visiting Connie in prison.

Donna asks where the heroin is now. It’s in Joyce’s microwave, and the box, now clean, is beneath her sink. To spread the news of finding the heroin, Ibrahim will tell Connie and ask her not to tell a soul.

After their therapy session, which was more professional than usual, Ibrahim tells Connie about finding the drugs. Connie figures that the amount they have could be worth four times as much once it’s cut, and she suggests they give it to the police. In her professional opinion, 1.2 kilograms is not a lot of heroin. She doesn’t believe Mitch and Luca would kill people over it. She thinks it’s about something bigger.

Connie touches Ibrahim’s arm as he leaves, something she’s never done before. As he gets into his car, he sees a middle-aged woman walking into the prison.

Mitch, Luca, and Garth meet atop a multistory car park at Garth’s request. Luca says he was sorry to hear about Garth’s wife, but Mitch hasn’t heard that she was killed. They’ve all heard the heroin is at Coopers Chase. Garth wants to know how they’re going to get it without killing anyone. Mitch suggests a deal, and Garth says Mitch and Luca should give the gang £100,000 for the drugs and give him £100,000 for his help and emotional anguish over Samantha’s death. Luca suggests that they should just kill Garth. Mitch counteroffers £50,000 for Garth and £50,000 for the gang and no more guns or killing.

Luca pulls a gun on Garth, who lunges forward and throws Luca off the car park, killing him. Garth asks Mitch how Luca knew Samantha had died; only the cops and the killer would have known. Garth suggests they drive to Coopers Chase to get the drugs. Mitch pleads that there be no more killing.

Jeremmy is coming over to get Tatiana’s money from Mervyn. Joyce, channeling Elizabeth, has a plan, and everyone will meet at her place at six o’clock. Ibrahim has invited Computer Bob over to his apartment before they go to Joyce’s. Ibrahim and Bob discuss the unknowability of the soul and the flowers Connie sent to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim then tells Bob about being a 20-year-old medical student in London. He was poor and on a scholarship, but he liked to go to cafes and pubs and to hear jazz. He met Marius at a pub that had a jazz quartet. Marius was at the next table. They spoke briefly, Marius bought him a pint, and they listened together. Ibrahim bought another round, and then they had dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. At the end of the evening, Marius said he would be at the pub the same time the next week if Ibrahim was interested.

Ibrahim was interested. The same quartet played, and they went to the same restaurant, and they talked about the homes they left behind and things they didn’t speak about with others. Marius held Ibrahim’s hand under the table because they had to be careful. They moved into a two-bedroom apartment a month later; Marius got work as a cycle courier, and Ibrahim took a job in a shop. Marius’s university course was ending, and his job was taking him to Manchester. Ibrahim decided to take a risk on love and go with him.

One day, a police officer knocked on the door and informed Ibrahim that Marius was hit while on his bicycle. He asked if Ibrahim knew how to contact Marius’s parents, which he didn’t because they didn’t speak to Marius, so Ibrahim handled the arrangements under the guise of doing it for them. Marius’s ashes are in a safe behind the boat painting that Ibrahim is always staring at. No one has held his hand under the table since.

They realize that it is time to leave for Joyce’s. Ibrahim thanks Bob for listening, and Bob says he looks forward to hearing more of Ibrahim’s story.

Garth drives Mitch to Coopers Chase in Mitch’s own car. He drives however he likes and is very much in charge of the situation.

The Thursday Murder Club and Computer Bob await Jeremmy’s arrival in Joyce’s flat. Joyce sent Donna outside to hide behind a bush. Jeremmy rings the bell, and Joyce welcomes him in. Bob recently discovered that Jeremmy and Tatiana use the same IP address, so it is official: There is no Tatiana. Jeremmy learns he won’t be getting any money and threatens to shoot someone. Elizabeth, of course, also has a gun, so they tell him to listen to their proposition.

Chris and Patrice are dining at Le Pont Noir when Regan walks in looking for him. She tells him that she needs help and that everyone she works with hates her. She asks what Chris has learned from tailing Mitch and Luca, which he claims he hasn’t been doing. She then tells him that Luca is dead, which is a shame because he was working for the NCA. Regan is in trouble because Luca was her responsibility. They’d been disrupting Mitch’s operation for a few months, and this was meant to be the big sting. She’s asking Chris for help because she knows he’s been investigating. She let him do it because she doesn’t trust her own team. If he helps her, she won’t show anyone the surveillance video of Chris breaking into the hangar the day Dom was murdered.

Regan knows Chris found Dom’s body; she knows Donna went to the Everton match; she knows Ibrahim visits Connie and that he visited Samantha with Joyce, who she knows was outside the hangar when Dom’s body was found; she knows Joyce took photos of Dom’s body; she knows Ron helped; and she knows Chris visited Jason Ritchie. She also knows about the Sunday lunch and about Donna finding Kuldesh’s phone. She also knew that the more Chris and Donna hated her, the more they’d want to continue investigating, which was her only chance of saving her job. She asks if they’ve found the heroin and if she can have it. Chris says that depends on whether she can help them find Kuldesh’s killer. Regan knows for sure who didn’t kill him, which is a start.

The gang has asked Jeremmy to sell the heroin for them and split the proceeds. They say they know it’s worth £25,000, and he says it’s worth only £15,000. They ask for only £5,000 by bank transfer, and he can have the heroin. Jeremmy transfers the money back to Mervyn’s account and leaves. Joyce calls Donna to let her know he’s heading her way.

Garth and Mitch are at Joyce’s. Both are pointing guns at her, but they’re being very polite about it. The gang says they’ve only just given the heroin to the police, and Mitch breaks down, assuming he’s now a dead man. Garth starts to laugh.

Jeremmy—real name Thomas Murdoch—has been arrested. Regan knows neither Mitch nor Dom killed Kuldesh because they were both being followed, and she knows Luca didn’t kill Kuldesh because he was at her place. Regan agrees to help find Kuldesh’s killer, but she has no idea who else could have known about the shipment or why the Afghan smugglers would care enough to track them down. She thinks there have been a lot of deaths over a single bag of heroin.

Garth takes the floor. He wonders if anyone else thinks it’s weird that all this has been happening over one bag of heroin. He asks whether anyone can guess why all these rich people care so much about £100,000. Elizabeth can guess. The reason why Kuldesh would care, and why he would ask Stephen for help, and why Stephen would help him, is that it was never about the heroin: It was about the box.

The box is bone, not terra cotta, and it is 6,000 years old. The Afghan smugglers weren’t smuggling heroin; they were smuggling the box. Mitch points his gun at Joyce and demands the box. Garth points his gun at Mitch and demands the box. Joyce says that she no longer has the box. She says she put it in the bin yesterday because it smelled funky.

Joyce lists all the exciting things that happened that day:

1. The shop has almond milk now.
2. Alan was chased by a squirrel.
3. Mike Waghorn is hosting a new quiz show.
4. Mervyn has his money back, and Jeremmy is going to prison.
5. Ibrahim was a bit different somehow.
6. Garth and Mitch showed up with guns.
7. The heroin wasn’t the issue; it was the box.
8. When Joyce said she’d thrown out the box, Mitch ran out the door, but Garth laughed it off and had some tea with them. He complimented the gang’s handling of the case and then spoke with Elizabeth for a bit.
9. As he was leaving, Garth spotted Joyce’s Picasso print, the “forgery” she took from Kuldesh’s lock-up, and said that it was real. He told her that most of the fakes out there were made by Samantha and that this one wasn’t hers.
10. Elizabeth congratulated Joyce on her quick thinking, as Joyce had not in fact put the box out to the bin. Elizabeth said she now has a good idea who killed Kuldesh.

Elizabeth takes the box to Jonjo for authentication. She guesses that it’s Mesopotamian based on Stephen’s constant references to the museum in Baghdad. Jonjo explains the process of authenticating and repatriating the box to Baghdad, which will take a while, but Elizabeth says she wants to take the box to Baghdad with Stephen’s ashes in it, as that’s what he wanted. Plus, she reasons, they only have the box thanks to Kuldesh and Stephen, and Kuldesh even died trying to protect it. Although taken aback by this request, Jonjo ultimately agrees.

As they discuss how to secret the box to Iraq through a “back channel,” the fire alarm goes off, most likely pulled by Joyce. Jonjo tells Elizabeth to leave the box there; it’ll be safe in his office. He tells her to go down to the quad while he checks out what’s going on. Once the fire alarm stops, Elizabeth rejoins Jonjo in his office, but the box is gone—just as she anticipated.

Kuldesh’s killer waits at a British motorway service station to hand the box to Garth for £5 million.

Bogdan drives the gang to a British motorway service station. Chris, Donna, and Regan are driving up separately, but Elizabeth told them to arrive at three o’clock when the deal is actually occurring at two o’clock. They arrive, park, and almost immediately spot Garth.

Garth had been prepared to leave England, possibly for Italy, when Elizabeth showed up at his safe house. He had no idea how she found him. Elizabeth told him who killed his wife and how he could get revenge.

When he enters the motorway station, his phone is already recording. He sits across from his wife’s killer: Nina. Elizabeth knew that either Nina or Jonjo was the killer as soon as she realized what the box was, so she set a trap. She allowed the person to steal the box and then had them followed. She needed Garth’s help to prove that the culprit killed Kuldesh, however.

Nina shows Garth the box, and he asks why she killed Kuldesh. Kuldesh trusted Nina and had asked her to take it to a museum; she knew he wouldn’t keep quiet if she stole it. They agreed to meet somewhere away from prying eyes, and once there, she shot him in the head. There was no fear or pain for him, and no more debt or poverty for her.

Garth realized Luca didn’t kill Samantha—that he was actually working with the cops—when talking to Elizabeth. Garth confronts Nina about killing his wife, and while she’s denying it, Joyce, Elizabeth, and Bogdan sit down at the table. Elizabeth tells Garth he has 20 minutes to disappear and asks where he’s going; he says Spain.

Mitch digs through trash at the landfill. He is determined to find the box, but if he can’t, he has already sent his family to Paraguay, where they’ll start a new life. He struggles to climb to the top of the trash heap. He finally makes it, promptly has a heart attack, and dies.

Elizabeth and Joyce have left in a taxi with the box, so only Bogdan, Ron, and Ibrahim are at the motorway station with Nina and the recording when Chris, Donna, and Regan arrive. Regan is a bit crestfallen that there is no box and no Garth—and that the cops were told to be there at three o’clock when the deal clearly went down at two o’clock—but Donna tells her just to accept it. Chris asks where the box is, and Ibrahim says Elizabeth needs it.

Hanif is waiting for Mitch, who he now knows will not show up. The plan to smuggle the box alongside drugs was Hanif’s idea, and the box was to be sold to a Swede in Staffordshire. Hanif had hired a cousin to follow the box on his motorbike the entire way, but then it went missing anyway. Hanif won’t be going back to Afghanistan.

Connie is emailing her hitwoman to let her know Luca is already dead so there is no need to kill him. Connie, the leading cocaine dealer on the South Coast, has been in touch with Sayed in Afghanistan, so she is now the leading heroin dealer too. She feels some guilt, which is new for her, and she allows herself to experience that emotion.

Connie didn’t know who killed Kuldesh, but the moment Ibrahim told her about him, she started planning. The first thing she did was order Dom’s murder. Caroline, the hitwoman, killed him and then subcontracted the hit on Lenny, who worked for Mitch. Luca was next. After Samantha visited Connie to suggest they go into business together, Caroline killed her, too, and she would have killed Garth if he’d come home.

Connie doesn’t feel guilty about any of these deaths, but she does feel guilty about lying to Ibrahim. She couldn’t bring herself to say sorry, but she at least sent him flowers.

In her final diary entry of the book, Joyce lists all the important things going on. Stephen’s ashes are now in the box, which Jonjo flew to Iraq. Elizabeth will fly over next month to visit. While she’s away, she’s also going to Dubai with Viktor to investigate Bethany Waites, the woman at the center of the mystery in The Bullet That Missed. The gang has been made aware of Mitch’s death at the dump. Joanna bought Joyce an air fryer. Mervyn is heartbroken and almost fell for an investment scheme. Ron and Pauline took a trip to Copenhagen. Ibrahim and Computer Bob had lunch together. Joyce would like a few months of weddings instead of murders and drama. Edwin Mayhem was a typo; his real name is Edwin Mayhew, and he’s a widower. Joyce brought him a lemon meringue, and he said to come to him if she ever needs anything fixed. She said she has a Picasso that needs hanging. Joyce gets more philosophical than usual as she wraps up. She feels less alone when she writes.