The Maggie Murders (5 page)

After reversing out of one of the
endless cul-de-sacs which seemed to make up most of the roads leading off the estate,
he finally extricated himself from the maze of crescents and closes. Passing by
the recently shut shoe factory, he found the correct turning for Littleham
Village.

Sitting at his desk in the
incident room, Sobers was already regretting that the layout of the village
hall made it into an open plan office space, when he found the envelope at the
bottom of his case. He knew his late arrival had already been reported to his
seniors and that no-one had bothered to cover for his absence. He’d half hoped that
Jane Hawkins might have taken the initiative to brief the team for the day,
although his better self partly hoped that she might not have done so out of
actual respect for his rank. It was only later that he found the post-it note
on his desk from Jane explaining that she’d been absent that morning as she was
meeting a journalist.

Having arrived half an hour late
and unshaven (which was not his style at all - whatever others might call
‘designer stubble’ he still called laziness), to find his team either smoking,
drinking coffee or reading the papers had not put him in a better mood. Perhaps
he was being paranoid, but he felt that at least with another officer they
might at least have put on a show of being hard at work. When he’d gathered
them together in front of the white board (which only seemed to emphasise their
lack of leads), it did nothing to dispel his feelings that his team did not
respect him. At least Macbeth commanded ‘mouth honour’ he thought as one of the
young PCs questioned the point of following up any holidaymakers who had
returned home from their vacation who might have been passing through Littleham
Cross on the night in question.

As a young constable he would
never have had the temerity to even ask a question of a senior officer. He
wished he possessed the casual savagery of his last DI who had responded to questions
from the rank and file by snarling ‘If you ever speak to me again, I’ll rip
your bloody balls off and shove ‘em so far down your throat you’ll be singin’
the high notes for the rest of your miserable life’. Yet Sobers had always felt
reason was a better way of leading and had gone as far as lowering himself to
answer the question with good grace; he could tell by the stony faces of the
squad that this was not the way of winning their respect.

If he’d been a smoker, then maybe
he could have generated a fug of nicotine fumes to hide behind, but as it was
he felt the other dozen desks in the room all focussed on his. At first he
believed the excitement generated by working on a murder case would have united
them behind him, yet they were now at the stage where they were bogged down in
the minutiae of the case and where a quick result was not even at the race
course, let alone on the cards.

The fact that the only new angle
he’d been able to offer them was a homophobic one had only served to further
dampen their enthusiasm for catching the killer. In the toilets, which were
also lacking in privacy, he’d overheard one of the local bobbies, either
Salmons or Rundle joking that the victim’s shop had been set on fire to burn
all the faggots. It hadn’t surprised him, apart from the relatively
sophisticated level of the pun, as he had heard just as many similar comments
when serving with the Met - even so it had sown yet another doubt in his mind
about his chosen vocation.

Having dealt with most of the
routine and monotonous paperwork in his briefcase at home the previous night,
he was left with the letter from Ronnie. Ronnie being the main reason behind
his transfer down south and the very someone he hadn’t given his new address
to. An explanation that she had wheedled the address out of his younger sister
was one of the least inflammatory things in the package; the Polaroid snaps of
them together were the most explosive. He surreptitiously scanned the room, but
apart from a couple of uniforms collating information and typing up statements
he was alone. He gazed down on a full frontal photo of Ronnie in just her underwear
and felt a flicker of lust rekindle itself. There was a second snap of them
cuddling on a sofa the time he had almost given in to his passion; thank the
Lord he’d forgotten to bring any protection that night… The final part of this
unholy trinity was of them kissing at Chris’s 21st birthday; he must have been
the oldest one there that night.

Ronnie was so beautiful. Her
athletic and slender physique, come to bed blue eyes and wide lips still moved
him. How often he had wanted to feel those lips on him… Yet she had only been 19
and he was over 40; it just wasn’t right. He’d been drunk on champagne the
night they’d met and believed her when she claimed to be 25. It was funny,
people usually took years off their age rather than adding them on.  There were
other things wrong with her too; she hung out with a fast set which both dealt
and took drugs; she was selfish and capricious and she shared none of his
cultural tastes. She had also flirted with other men and slept with them. She
had denied this, but he knew and could hardly blame her when he was unwilling
to give into her completely… And yet for one whole summer he had put his career
and soul on the line for her; Ronnie.

There had been so many risks
involved. One time he’d only just got her out of a party before it got busted,
another he’d had to use his badge to persuade security not to call the police
when she collapsed in a club. It wasn’t only the police. If his family knew
they’d disown him. As for his faith, well it wanted him married and having
children by his age.

Why had Ronnie sent him this
stuff? He’d finally broken up with her when she’d brought drugs back to his
flat and yet the breaking up had been going on almost since they met. She of
course manipulated him every which way, yet when he’d loved her he hadn’t minded
being taken for a ride. Now though, he was sure it was just money she was
after. She had expensive tastes and he’d provided – become, he flinched at the
expression, her Sugar Daddy.

Sobers suddenly became aware of a
WPC in his peripheral vision and in a panic shoved the photos and letter into
his desk drawer.

‘Sorry, sir.’

Was that sarcasm in her voice –
had she seen?

‘Constable?’

‘It’s D.S. Hawkins, sir. She
wonders if you got her note – you weren’t answering your radio.’

It was only now that Sobers
discovered the yellow post-it under his briefcase and realised he’d left his
radio in the car.

‘Thank you –‘

‘Clark, sir.’

‘Yes, thank you Clark. Tell her
I’m on my way.’

Was that a purse of her lips as
she walked away? He’d known her name. Sandy Clark had just been on the tip of
his lips when she’d beaten him to it. He looked again at the note – the Clock
Tower at 11.00am. He’d have to hurry if he wasn’t going to get a reputation for
being late.

Jane met Debbie on the seafront.
The High Season was about to begin and the resort was already getting busy.
Exmouth beach stretched from the Jurassic era red cliffs of Orcombe Point at
one end, past the sand dunes and all the way down to the docks at the other.
From where Jane was standing, close by the clock tower, she could make out
neither of these extremities.

 Holidaymakers packed this
section of the beach with their windbreaks, rugs and toys. Little children
played on the foreshore, while some braver people bathed in the area between
the yellow flags, avoiding the more hazardous red flagged stretches. Other
children (and some dads) dug holes or buried relations under horizontal barrows
of sand until only their heads poked out. Some constructed traditional sand
castles using colourful plastic buckets moulded into the shape of medieval
keeps, before decorating them with cockle shells and pieces of seaweed; others
made more elaborate fortifications which put even the castle building
endeavours of Edward I to shame. A few young women had stripped down to their
bikinis and were optimistically trying to tan themselves. A game of beach
cricket, with a single wicket and an unorthodox arrangement of fielders had
broken out towards the dunes. A mum enthusiastically threw a Frisbee at her
oblivious toddler and further along towards the rocks, a few donkeys straggled
along with their rides.  On the horizon a few sailing boats took advantage of
the breeze, whilst further out a coaster negotiated its way through the
treacherous waters of the estuary as it left the docks behind.

Jane made a mental note to try
and bring Tim and the children down here on Sunday; she owed them a treat after
the long hours she had been putting in that week. Today’s appointment was at
the appropriately named Octagon Café situated just behind the swing-boats and
donkey rides. At an open serving hatch in an eighth of the polygonal perimeter,
they bought ninety-nines and then walked down the esplanade towards the docks.
By the time they reached one of the ornate seafront shelters  overlooking the
man-made sea defences at the far end of the beach, they’d licked their ice
creams into shape and were able to move on from pleasantries about Debbie’s new
boyfriend and how Jane’s kids were looking forward to breaking up for the long
summer holiday.

Given it was  midday, the wide
seats in the covered shelter were even devoid of the perpetually wrapped up
pensioners, who had headed back to their hotels and guest houses for lunch.
They were free to cut to the chase.

‘I found several mentions of
George Kellow in the archive. His dad was also a butcher, seems to have been a
family business and there was a sister Winnie, well you’ve met her and a
younger brother…’

‘Harry, the only one Winnie would
admit to,’ added Jane.

‘Harry Edward Kellow – he was
killed shortly after D-Day. Anyway, the main reports about what happened to
George after prison are mainly from the mid-fifties. I don’t think he reported
the attacks, but several other shopkeepers in Littleham made claims in the mid
to late Fifties of a gang of youths, ‘Teddy Boys’ according to the published
account,  throwing stones and breaking windows in Littleham Cross. There were a
couple of arrests in ’58, though only one man was ever charged and that was
with being drunk and disorderly. Seems he got off with a fine.’

‘Who?’

‘A Paul Francis Reed of
Withycombe Road, Exmouth.’

Jane added the details to her
notes.

‘So when do I get to meet Shaft?’

Jane tensed, before realising
Debbie was just trying to be light hearted about her boss’ skin colour – it was
no more annoying than the endless banter the boys had of calling her ‘Miss
Marple’; far better than their incessant jokes about trying to find out if she
was a natural blonde.

Jane nodded in the direction of
Orcombe Point –

 ‘He’s on his way now.’

Debbie temporarily banished her
internal debate over whether Adam, the man with whom she had now enjoyed drinks
with on three occasions and a meal on one was her soul mate, when she saw the
tall, handsome man with close cropped dark hair and eyes that made her insides
melt like honey, walking towards her. The well cut blue suit, white shirt with
French cuffs and elegant ankle boots were things her mother would certainly
approve of. Of course he must be at least twice her age and he was the only
black man she’d seen who hadn’t been on the telly.

Sobers extended a well-manicured
hand to the boyishly dressed girl in front of him –

‘Miss Rowe, I believe you’ve been
a great help, let me buy you some lunch.’

Without waiting for a reply, he
gently turned her towards the direction of the Imperial Hotel; the closest
Exmouth got to its bygone age of Victorian splendour.

****

Half an hour had passed since
Sobers had walked Debbie past the Imperial to the fish ‘n’ chip café opposite
the Octagon. Still they were now on the Derek and Debs stage of the
conversation, having dropped their more formal opening gambits, so things
weren’t all bad. Derek had spun a few tales about policing in London to help
give some colour to Debbie’s article, though he’d been surprised about how perspicacious
her questions could be.

She’d taken some time to do her
background research and had asked him some quite tricky questions about both
inner city policing and his personal experiences of policing the Brixton riots.
Fortunately for him, he’d been able to truthfully tell her he had been
investigating an armed robbery in Wembley when the relationship between
Brixton’s largely black community and the Metropolitan Police had broken down
and descended into street fighting in the summer of ’81.

Debbie had been keen to play up
the race angle and yet Sobers had made sure that he’d pointed out that social
deprivation had contributed not only to the riots in inner city London, but to
those in Bristol and Liverpool too. Having grown up in South London, Sobers still
felt the need to try and be even handed; not all the rioters had been young
criminals on the make. He also told her how often he’d been stopped and
searched, although he made her promise not to include it in any finished
article, furthermore he also managed to gain her agreement to letting him see
the article first. He certainly couldn’t be seen to be attacking the
institution from the inside if he was going to make a go of his career.

He’d most surprised her with his
answer of what he would have done if he hadn’t joined the police. She thought
he was pulling her leg until she saw the grave look on his face. She promised
to keep that out of the article as well.

****

It should have been an idyllic
summer’s day, the sort of day that made people in the city idling through their
Sunday supplements want to move to the countryside. And for those visitors to
Devon not finding it hard to negotiate the high hedged, narrow country lanes,
or who had avoided the tailbacks on the M5 into Exeter, there still may have
been the dream of owning that lovely thatched cottage, with roses trailing up
the sun warmed walls. Perhaps some of these urbanites even hankered after a
permanent holiday among the rolling hills and golden sands? Some may even have
been wistfully calculating the option of a long commute to jobs in the city from
the perfect cottage they had just discovered. Yet there were also many
Devonians for whom the more mundane metropolitan delights of a multiplex might
have won out over these rural delights. The bored teenagers of Leeds and London
had nothing on the claustrophobia experienced by their country cousins.

Jez Carberry had been waiting all
morning for someone to call him. His mother kept suggesting he went to the
beach, but he was bored of the beach and tired of windsurfing. His A’ level
results were still three weeks off and he couldn’t wait to get them; they were
his passport out of here. He glanced down at his computer and saw the game was
still loading. Everything seemed to be taking a long time today. He lolled his
head back on his pillow and caught Kate Bush’s eyes on the poster over his bed.
Steve had been right; you could make out her nipple underneath the tight top
she was wearing.

 Steve had given him quite a lot
of stick for getting off with Katy’s younger sister, but did it really matter?
They hadn’t done anything after all and he wouldn’t now; not after all their
piss takes about him being a cradle snatcher. To be logical about it, Liddy was
only 3 years younger than him, which was a far narrower age gap than that
between his own parents. She was also only a year younger than the girl Steve
had met at Nicky’s last night and no-one had given him any stick. The fact that
he hadn’t got off with anyone last night, let alone in the last month was frustrating
him and making him feel that this summer was not going to be the carefree end
to school and the one long party he had anticipated. The fact that there were
now five early morning shifts at the bakery between now and the next Friday
down the Wheatsheaf also depressed him.

He wondered where Liddy might be
right now? Katy and her friends had been at the pub on Saturday, yet she seemed
to have made a determined effort to ditch her younger sister since her party.
He’d overheard someone say he’d seen her at the Dog, yet he couldn’t go there –
that really was the kids’ pub – you didn’t even have to look 18 to get served
there. The Bennetts lived off Exeter Road, but he could hardly go round there
on a Sunday…  Katy was more Steve’s friend than his and if she was in, she’d
know she’d see through his smokescreen.

His computer beeped, the game had
finally finished loading. Yet now he was no longer in the mood for ‘Elite’. He
grabbed a less dirty T-shirt from the floor, squirted some Brut under his arms
and headed for the door. Going out now seemed a better option. Despite the open
windows and wide balcony overlooking the sea, the flat seemed stifling. Anyway,
his Mum was always telling him to get more air.

****

George Dent never felt it easy to
relax. He would have much preferred to have worn his smart, blue dress uniform
to the endless round of barbecues and Sunday Roasts his wife inveigled
invitations to on seemingly every weekend that summer. This was when not
returning the unwanted hospitality by having to host their own over planned and
overpriced ‘Sunday Gatherings’… These return visits were even worse, as they
forced him to fumble over charcoal and lighting bricks as he struggled with the
demands of the Modern Caveman by burning various cuts of meat for plummy voiced
guests who insisted on offering tips and advice at every opportunity. The main
point of these too frequent occasions was for Delia to demonstrate their new
found status as owners of a large des res in the pricey and picturesque village
of Knowle.

 In many ways he felt the system
of pairing off, as adopted by Conservative and Labour MPs from far flung
constituencies might be better adapted for the social gatherings of the
chattering classes. Like their political masters, they could all agree it was
far too much effort to meet up and just agree to cancel each other out by
consuming their own charred steaks at home, without any need for reciprocation.

The weather felt close and
therefore made him more irritable than usual. Of course he’d had to drive out
here and of course his children had made their usual fuss about not wanting to
go. Delia chose not to drive and that meant he was usually limited to a single
drink. This would not stop people putting pressure on him to have endless
refills and he would hear the endless refrain that if the Assistant Chief
Constable couldn’t drink and drive then who could! The fixed grin he had
adopted for this inevitable joke had now become a part of his repertoire on
these occasions. He had only just now placed his hand over his glass, as one of
the host’s children had come around with a jug of badly mixed Pimms.

In the far corner of the
Newsomes’ garden, he saw his younger daughter sitting desultorily on a swing
that she was a good four years too old for nowadays; her complaint about having
no-one to talk to, seemed to have been borne out. A few very young children,
most likely pre-school splashed around in a blue inflatable pool under the
watchful eye of a woman who was probably the nanny. The Newsomes' older children
had been press-ganged as waiters and were hefting jugs of Pimms and bottles of
wine around their newly bought ancestral home.

 Clive, his never off-duty estate
agent friend,  had already pointed out the garden was newly laid out and not
mature and though not a short coming per se, houses often looked better when
complemented by a less minimalist look in his opinion. Fiona was over with her
mother, being kept on a very short leash having embarrassed them at the Gordons
over Easter, when she’d been caught smoking in the conservatory. He still
wasn’t sure whether it was the smoking, or the fact that she’d stolen the
cigarettes from Angela Gordon’s bedroom table that had been the real
embarrassment for Delia. The fact that Angela Gordon and her husband were part
of the group making small talk with his wife below the awning the Newsomes had
erected over their patio did not mean Number One Daughter was necessarily
persona grata again. He wondered if Delia was having to make more capital out
of the fact that he had helped Rob Newsome’s brother escape a drunk and
disorderly charge four years ago when he was still a Chief Super?

He estimated there had probably
been about fifty people in the garden when the party was at its height. Delia’s
rule for socialising was always that they arrived half an hour after the start
and left half an hour before the end. When the end was reached became a moot point;
it always appeared to be when Delia had run out of people to gossip with and
before they were easily identifiable as the last of the freeloaders. There had
certainly been enough food for at least a hundred people and enough booze to
float a battleship – which given the amount the retired Commodore had been
knocking back was probably fortunate. Their ‘turn’ on the August Bank holiday
weekend was looking like it was going to be more expensive than he’d bargained
for, especially as Delia was always finding yet more names to add to their
address book, or Filofax as she insisted on calling it.