The Maggie Murders (25 page)

 Those Republican cowards who
tried to murder her said she only had to get unlucky once, whilst they would
have many more opportunities to get lucky. Well they were wrong and now they’re
paying for it. And then they had the nerve to moan about her shoot to kill
policy, what else do you shoot people for?

When she emerged from the
ruins of the Grand Hotel I wept. I almost felt that was the signal to kill
again. To get rid of the second barrier to my success, but that would have been
no fitting tribute to her. My plans for the second death were still gestating
and needed care and nurturing. I could have got carried away and bungled
everything out of a moment of weakness. She would not have approved.

 Far better for me to view
that outrage against her in Brighton as yet further proof of her inviolability;
not even the IRA could kill Maggie!

I’ve learnt composure from
her. The graceful elegance with which she carried on with the conference that
morning, despite escaping death hours before was truly sublime. When they stood
and gave her an ovation in the conference hall, I was standing in front of the
television clapping my hands for all they were worth. They valued her then. Her
courage put them all to shame and yet some of them now have the temerity to
think they could do the job better!

Well, let my plan be my
tribute to her! By waiting, I’ve shown I’m as calm and collected as she is.
Rather than botch it by rushing it through, I’ve created a masterpiece through
being patient and prepared. A true picture of Britain under Maggie.

 The final piece of the jigsaw
slotted in as easily as all the rest. To have completed the whole picture
within this decade was a most suitable time frame, as the 1980s will always be
hailed as her decade and I’m glad to feel a part of her success.

What now? Well once the dust
has settled, it will be time for me to move on. There’s nothing to tie me to
this life now. One more year here for the sake of appearances and then I can
begin a new life in a new decade somewhere else. The Irish have always been
good at moving on and making a new start elsewhere, well this is one lesson I
can learn from them! Not that I’ll have to begin again on the bottom rung of
the ladder!

The
‘Abbot and Costello’
was a trendy pub off Kensington High Street. The very fact it wasn’t a ‘Red
Lion’, or ‘Turk’s Head’ conveyed the fact that they weren’t just geographically
distant from Devon. This fact was reinforced by the very agreeable choice of
wines on the card in front of her. It was no longer a simple case of red, rosé
or white. Jane now had over a dozen of each colour to choose from as she
settled herself into the comfortable, leather contours of the sofa Sobers had
marked out for them. Relaxing, she reflected it was more like sitting in a
study, or clubroom than a pub. She presumed they’d spent a fortune achieving
this level of studied distress, even the gallimaufry of objects displayed on
the shelves looked like high class junk.

As he returned from the wide and
airy bar, bearing her choice of New World White and his own pint of lager, she
reflected how well her former boss looked. In her mind’s eye, vicars were
supposed to be plainly dressed in black clericals and dog collar; however
Sobers appeared as elegant as ever, in a graceful pair of chinos, buttoned
Oxford shirt and stylish jacket. He also looked relaxed and content – yes, that
was the word content.

‘So joining the Sky Pilots turned
out alright, guv?’

She sipped her wine, as Sobers’
clear gaze returned her look.

‘His name’s Joe.’

Jane looked quizzical at the
sudden non sequitur.

Sobers steepled his fingers and
smiled.

‘He teaches Film Studies at the
local comprehensive, that’s where the future lies he says.  He’s also taking an
M.A. at King’s – that where I met him. As ever God places temptation in my
path.’

Jane relaxed. As ever Sobers was
the better detective, knowing what she wanted to ask, before she asked it.

‘So your family are okay about
it?’

‘No.’

Jane dropped her gaze into her
glass.

‘But I am. London’s a big place,
no more running away.’

Jane looked up and saw that he
meant it.

‘And the Church?’

‘Let’s just say it’s fortunate my
calling lies with Lambeth and not with Rome. I have to sift my own conscience
to find an answer to this one.’

A troubled look passed over
Sobers’ handsome face and the unusual warmth of his countenance was replaced by
the more diffident expression she had become accustomed to seeing in Devon.

‘Anyway, you haven’t come all the
way up from Camberwick Green just to chew the fat about your old boss’ love
life, have you?’

His wolfish grin only reminded
Jane of how seldom she had seen him smile in the months they had worked
together. She pushed over some Photostats from the case file. The smartly
dressed people at the bar probably thought she was an estate agent, only she
didn’t have a mobile and the pictures she was sliding across the low table were
far more gruesome than the type of images hawked by London’s property gurus.

He flicked through the sheets, as
Jane enjoyed the remainder of her wine.

‘Who benefits?’

‘No-one really benefits from the
first murder, though a local entrepreneur has been able to make a profit by
turning the site into an amusement arcade. The estate was left to his estranged
half-sister – blood being thicker than water and all that. She died last year
leaving a couple of grand to the local donkey sanctuary and nothing else; her
brother’s bequest just about helped her pay the fees for the last few years of
her life. If she hadn’t died, she would probably have ended up in a local
authority care home.’

‘Probably willed herself to die
then...’

‘Wouldn’t have surprised me, she
looked as if she could have lived for another thirty years if she’d put her
mind to it.’

Sobers’ glance fell on the
bookshelves lining the wall behind Jane’s head. An assortment of hardbacks
offered an eclectic mix ranging from popular thrillers to autobiographies by
the no longer rich or famous.  The smile which suddenly lit up the former
detective’s face seemed to illuminate their whole corner.

‘Tell me about her library.’

‘Her library?’

‘Remember when you called me
last, you were gushing over some property programme you’d seen and having grand
ideas about moving Tim and the children to some cottage on the edge of the
moors which you’d be able to renovate in your spare time?’

Jane recalled the Chardonnay
fuelled conversation she had had, or at least parts of it. It had been a two
bottle Friday night after a very long week and she’d been flitting from police
work, to home life, to gushing on about her property fantasies. The ‘spare
time’ and the ‘it’s only another fifty thousand’ aspects of the conversation
had dissolved more quickly than the aspirin as she struggled to get Max changed
the following morning.

‘You kept returning to the
subject of Mrs Mallowan’s house and how it wasn’t fair that such undeserving
people, I think ‘rich bitch’ may have been your precise phrase, could afford
such houses, when hardworking police officers had to work all the hours God
sends?’

Jane grinned. ‘I’ve been
listening too much to Tim. He’s gone all Che Guevara on me at the moment. You
should see the list of things he doesn’t let me buy – this South African wine
for a starter!’

‘As a brother, I must say I agree
with him.’

It was one of those
conversational points where Jane couldn’t decide if he was being ironic. She
decided to make a point of getting a gin next.

 ‘As well as envying the
dimensions of her ill-gotten fortune, you said she’d make a good killer.’

Jane furrowed her brow, but for
the life of her this part of the conversation seemed lost in the alcoholic
miasma it had been made in. Had she been serious?

‘You said it was her choice of
books?’ prompted Sobers.

Light scattered the clouds
obfuscating Jane’s memory.

‘She had dozens of crime
thrillers! All those books which make our jobs seem easy – the ones where a
brilliant revelation at the end catches the killer and all the loose ends are
neatly tied together. At least her taste appealed to me more than all that
military stuff her husband seemed to enjoy.’

‘At least her books were about
fictional deaths.’

Jane swirled the remains of her
wine around in her glass as she tried to follow Sobers’ thinking.

‘Reading about crime doesn’t make
one a murderer. Half the population of East Devon would be banged up if that
was the case!’

Sobers smiled and indicated his
empty glass.

‘Time for one of those blinding
revelations,’ he grinned ‘but first for one of those annoying advertising
breaks whilst you refresh my glass. Make sure it’s a nice, liberal Dutch lager
please!’

****

Dent glared at the telephone on
his immaculately tidy desk. When his personal assistant had told him who was
calling he had initially been pleased, as he’d had so many pats on the back
from those in high places lately that he had been feeling positively spoilt. At
the club’s AGM he’d been almost certain that he had been sounded out about
whether he would be prepared to accept a knighthood in the next honours list.
There had been more than one idle moment lately when he had been practising how
to introduce himself as ‘Sir George’ and reflecting on whether he should have a
new uniform run up for the occasion. Even Delia would get another outfit out of
it.

The fallout from the Connie Baker
case had been the final nail in his predecessor’s coffin and had left him as
the obvious replacement – well to be honest he had been pretty much running the
show for the last few years anyway. Sir Robert having been quite content to let
his ambitious deputy take the plaudits, though Dent had been quite careful to
let the right people know who had ultimately been responsible for the
prosecution’s failure in the case of Regina versus Baker.

The fact that the case might be
coming back to haunt him was not one of the options he had foreseen. With the
world’s media now camped outside his headquarters he was for once finding the
limelight a less than comfortable place to be in. He’d left Jordan and Hawkins
to deal with the more awkward questions yesterday and had not been overly
impressed by their lack of media savvy. Having ensured the assembled pack that
he had his best men on it, he’d tried to use the usual platitudes to reassure
them that a result was on the cards, but several awkward journalists kept
harking on about the Baker case.

There had even been one chit of a
girl who kept badgering him about the conduct of the investigation and making
absurd parallels with the conviction of the Guildford Four; absurd, but
potentially damaging for him. The Media had effectively sided with the
prosecution in the matter of Connie Baker and so there had been no clarion
calls from them for the head of his predecessor. Those calls had come from
within and if he had been instrumental in both persuading Sir Robert it was the
right time to go, whilst at the same time putting himself forward at his
replacement, who could blame him? Dent had spent over thirty years climbing the
ladder; it was his turn at the top.

 The write ups now though were
beginning to be less warm. The editorial in last night’s ‘Express and Echo’ had
certainly had a line or two in it he had taken to heart.  None of the tabloids
had yet run anything about his handling of the case, yet they could be a fickle
lot. And with the resignation of Sobers and the death of Spilsbury he was
running out of people to take the blame. He needed another scapegoat…

****

‘
The ABC Murders
.’

As soon as Sobers said it, Jane
got it. In Agatha Christie’s classic novel a single murder had cleverly been
hidden in a series of killings fashioned to look like the work of a serial
killer.

‘But in her book, there’s one out
of sequence – once the real killing is out of the way, the murderer made a
mistake.’

‘By killing someone with a
surname beginning with ‘E’ in Doncaster, rather than killing someone whose name
began with a ‘D’.

‘You’ve a good memory.’

‘It was the only detail I didn’t
like. I just felt the surname should have been at least more than one letter
distant – a Jackson, or a Poole or even a Fox. When everything else is so
right, I always hate it when a detail like that bothers me.’

‘So which is the odd one out? If
we go for this nursery rhyme thing, the Baker is the only one whose surname is
used to fit the rhyme rather than their occupation; though I’d say it was
stretching it a bit to describe Mallowan as a candlestick-maker?’

Sobers steepled his fingers and
half closed his eyes.

‘The politics complicates it,’
judged Sobers. ‘Are we dealing with The Butcher, The Baker and The
Candlestick-maker Killings, or The Maggie Murders?’

‘Or both?’

Sobers’ brown eyes widened and he
stared deep into her face.

‘That may be the key,’ he
exhaled.

He ran through it for both his
and Jane’s benefit –

‘To summarise, as Hercule Poirot might
do at a moment like this, we have had three murders in the last seven years,
each one linked by both a nursery rhyme and a victory for Maggie Thatcher. One
of those murders, unless they really are the work of a crazed killer holds the
key to the case. Now no one benefits from the first death, apart from the
Amusement Arcade Man’.

‘And the donkeys.’

‘And the donkeys. It’s also the
murder least likely to be the intended one.’

‘Because of the time between the
crimes?’

‘Yes, the gap’s too long. If
there was any real link between the murderer and the first victim, then the
police would have had four years to find it, before the idea of there being a
serial killer on the loose was fed to them.’

‘So, it’s going to be the second
or third murder, presuming there’s not going to be a fourth one?’

‘Well, unlike the ABC murders,
our killer hasn’t taken the luxury of having a whole alphabet of victims to
kill.’

‘Whilst at the same time being
economic with the killings, as you said Christie’s killer quickly got it wrong
after the intended victim was bumped off.’

‘So, who benefits out of the two
widows?’

Jane scanned the notes she’d made
and yet she knew the answer already.

‘Margaret Mallowan. Her husband
was a property developer and financed a chain of up-market boutiques for the
grieving widow, leaving her a millionaire several times over. Connie Baker
already had her father’s money and the only thing she gained from her hubby’s
death was yet more guilt free shagging and not having to care for a cripple.’

Sobers raised his eyes at his
former colleague, ‘It’s not like you to be so censorious, Jane? How has that
woman’s lifestyle affected you? Are you jealous?’

‘Given the newspapers I must be
the last monogamous person left in the UK! Everyone seems to be at it all the
time! You must know what it’s like.’

‘Because I’m gay?’

She saw she had hurt Derek by the
way he drew into himself. She reached out for his hand, instantly wanting to
apologise and wished she had a time machine to take her back to her pre-gaffe
conversation.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘We’re not all fucking like
monkeys, Jane. I told you that I’ve accepted my sexuality, I didn’t say I was
having sex.’

Jane blundered on.

‘But you’re in a relationship…
You said you had a boyfriend?’

‘I am and I do, though Joe and I
aren’t sleeping together. He humours me, while I feel guilt and angst about my
reluctance to act on my feelings. I have desires which my family thinks of as
unnatural and some of my fellow Anglicans think of as abhorrent and
un-Christian.’

 ‘But that’s awful.’

‘Some people might feel it would
be much worse if we were actual lovers. I know that he finds it more difficult
than me and sometimes I turn a blind eye to occasional lapses in Joe’s fidelity,
as I don’t want to be responsible for his unhappiness.’