The Maggie Murders (15 page)

‘Dramatic,’ added Jane.

‘Yes, we never did find Joseph
again in the ensuing confusion. Fortunately Mr Braddock was able to make us a
new one for the following year.’

‘Small mercies…’

‘Everyone turned and stared.
Andrew came running out of the kitchen. But then she just started screaming
like a banshee ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard!’ She then began keening if you know
what I mean, agonising in that way which only hurt Irish women can agonise in.

Jane nodded. She was still
surprised to have heard the Sister swearing, although very little about Sister
Ruth was living up to her preconceptions of how a nun should act.

‘She didn’t use any of that
language I’ve heard some parents ascribe to her – just those three words.’

‘Did Catherine Sullivan threaten
to harm either Connie Baker or her husband?’

‘I managed to lead Catherine out
of the hall, she wouldn’t let her husband come near her, with the help of Miss
Keep. The parents and children were parting like the Red Sea in front of us.
Yet she broke free of us at the doorway and turned round to face the crowd. She
then screamed “Don’t let that fucking whore think I’m finished with her yet!”
Although it might be best for you just to write an ‘f’ followed by a line of
asterisks in your notes, my dear. Such language Sergeant! Not since I was a
novice helping the homeless on the streets of London have I heard such words in
the mouth of such an angelic looking girl.’

It took Jane a little while to
catch on that Sister Ruth had been ironic about her lack of worldliness; the
exaggerated Irish lilt she had used when talking about helping the down and outs
should have told her that.

‘We do sometimes see a little
more of life, Sergeant,’ continued Sister Ruth with a smile, ‘some of us even
watch the telly!’

Jane wrote Catherine Sullivan’s
threat down verbatim and smiled at the formidable woman in front of her.

‘It was unfortunate that Connie
had run after Andrew and was at his side when Catherine re-entered – the way
the two of them looked, they might as well have spelled their guilt out using
fairy lights!’

‘How surprised were you by
Catherine’s behaviour?’

‘Well I’ve seen the quietest
young girls roused to fury when provoked like that. Although there had been
nothing in her character so far to suggest such passion, though I always
suspected she had an inner steeliness. She was still very young, as well as being
pregnant with their first child and had been betrayed by her husband. I expect
even you, Sergeant, might have reacted in a similar way.’

Jane reflected that she would
have served Tim’s balls up on toast if he’d done that to her when she was
pregnant.

‘What was Catherine like?’

‘Young. She was straight out of
training college. Quite pretty. Besotted with Andrew – that was one
relationship I did foresee. Very committed to her pupils and in love with the
Church. If it hadn’t been for Andrew we might even have seduced her into
joining our order, ‘she smiled.

‘And Andrew Sullivan?’

‘Mr Rochester, but without the
fortune. Oh, he was a good teacher and very popular, he just had an air of
impatience about him. I felt he married Kate partly because he had to.’

‘She was pregnant?’

‘We’re not living in Ireland,
Sergeant. No, I think it was more to do with his age. He was in his mid-30s and
getting married was something he hadn’t yet done.’

Jane reflected that she had been
pregnant with Jenny, when Tim asked her to marry him. And whilst neither of
their families was particularly religious, Tim’s parents were very old
fashioned and whilst their approval wasn’t being actively sought, their
assistance in buying a house was…

‘Do you still see Catherine?’

‘I no longer see her at Church. I
did hear that her baby was stillborn. So very sad.  And that she refused Andrew
a divorce.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Some would say she’s a good
Catholic girl, I’d say she still loves him.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘I had a reference request a year
ago from a school in Dorset. Not one of our schools fortunately, ‘she smiled,
‘I gather they offered him a post. I’ll get my secretary to give you the
address.’

‘And Connie?’

Sister Ruth’s face darkened.

‘I shouldn’t be judgemental, and
yet I found her the hardest to forgive of the three. She was married and to
sound my age, she should have been old enough to know better. Colleagues told
me Andrew wanted to marry her, but that she was not won over by his charm. And
yet I don’t believe she killed her husband to be with him.’

Again Jane had been beaten to it.

 ‘Might she have had other
reasons to kill him?’

‘Having never been married, I can
only imagine what those reasons might be, ‘smiled Sister Ruth.

Jane left the interview feeling
that although she may not have shed much more light on the case, she had
certainly been enlightened as to nuns. She also had addresses for both
Catherine and Andrew Sullivan to follow up.

Spilsbury inspected his shit with
more than professional interest. He had been expecting a difficult one, perhaps
even one which would have pebble dashed the porcelain and made for awkward
questions from Mrs S (which was why he would usually try and save those for the
relative anonymity of the police station bog), but this was one firm and good
sized stool. Perhaps the hurriedly eaten takeaway curry last night had yet to
work its usual effects, or maybe skipping that third pint of beer last night
had been a good decision after all. It made for an easy wipe job and he buckled
his belt with a self-satisfied smile. Maybe today was going to be a good day.
As he washed his hands in the rose and white tiled bathroom of the bungalow
they were renting he felt good.

Perhaps Mrs S was right and they
should buy in Devon after all? The lure of Spain had been pulling him when he
was stationed in Essex, yet Felicity might be right about there being both too
many ex-colleagues and too many cons over there. At times he wondered who might
make the worse neighbours?

Quietly slipping out of the front
door, he had time to admire the bright red and pink geraniums each side of the
drive and the blue River Exe on the horizon.  He’d never had any time for
gardening and wondered if there would be enough time to learn its art when he
retired? The day was warm without being close and he thought about taking a
gentle drive before heading in to the station. He might even check out
Littleham Cross where Hawkins had said the first murder happened – there was no
point being a complete grouch about her theory.

****

Jane had been more than a little
surprised to see the note telling her to meet her boss at Littleham Church.
After Sobers’ sudden Damascene conversion was she going to lose another boss to
the God Squad?

The drive from the town centre to
Littleham Village, whilst not exactly taking her through the countryside, at
least gave a view of the fields and cliffs on this side of the town. Passing
Littleham Cross, she noted again the rather squalid looking amusement arcade
which had replaced Kellow’s butcher’s shop. It was made more depressing for her
by the fact that the bars on the flat above were still in place. One of the
newsagents had been replaced by a video rental shop and the convenience store
had expanded into the former bakery next door and been rebranded as one of the
smaller chain stores which were now springing up all over the place.

Passing a small industrial site
on one side and the low rise council estate on the other, she nearly gagged on
the smell of slurry coming from the nearby farm. Jane’s car nosed towards the
more rural part of Littleham, though it was only when she had crested a hill
that she could see down into the village on the other side. Over on the far
side she could make out the parish hall which had served as their incident room
in the Kellow Case.

****

Littleham Church would have been
marked by a cross above a square on the Ordnance Survey maps Spilsbury had
pored over in his uncle’s stationery shop in Lewisham. He had loved tracing the
topographical features and esoteric names on these charts; they helped open up
a bright and unfamiliar world to him. As a boy, he had spent a year as an
evacuee in a Yorkshire village, but the actual experience of living in rural
England had never been as satisfactory for him as seeing the world spread
before him on paper. On a map the contours were concentric lines to be enjoyed
and not steep hillsides to be rambled over. If the next decade was going to
mark his retirement to the countryside, then it would be the ‘A’ roads and ‘B’
roads on the map which would open it up for him, rather than the dotted
footpaths and winding bye-ways.

The fact that the church dated
from 1234 appealed to Spilsbury’s sense of mathematical order. He wondered if
the medieval villagers had seen significance in that date, just as so many
people had got worked up three years ago when the Orwellian year of 1984 had
come into being.  Personally, he could have done with a few more of the
surveillance devices from that novel’s vision of the future when solving this
crime. At least in Essex he had had far more joy in gaining CCTV images when
investigating cases, down here he’d be lucky to find a Box Brownie to help
photograph a suspect.

Still, as he settled his bottom
onto the wooden bench, which displayed a brass plaque dedicating it to a
recently deceased parishioner, he couldn’t help but think how beautiful the
spot was. The cool, south wall of the church lay behind him and tall trees
extended their shade over the more ancient graves in this part of the church
yard. Sometimes he wished he was one of those fictional detectives who could
always quote an apt line from poetry in situations like this. His rote learning
from school only supplied his memory with a choice of ‘The boy stood on the
burning deck’ or ‘The mirror crack’d from side to side, out flew the web and
floated wide’ neither of which adequately summed up his current feelings of
contentment and good humour. At least he’d had the good sense to buy a snack on
the way.

****

Sobers noticed the flowers tied
to the railings; it was nice that people still remembered.  The pavement which
ran around the centre of the central London square was where WPC Yvonne
Fletcher had been gunned down three years ago, whilst policing a demonstration
outside the Libyan embassy. He’d left the force by then and yet he had still
felt a part of it when he heard the news. The sight of her coffin being carried
past serried ranks of her colleagues, lining the route in their dress uniforms
had moved him deeply. Yet still her killer had escaped justice; diplomatic
niceties apparently excused cold blooded homicide. Though a former colleague,
still in the Met, had told him the police had been straining at the bit to
storm the embassy that day; Sobers wasn’t supposed to agree with revenge and
yet part of him was drawn to the ‘eye for an eye’ approach over this.

Commending her soul to God, he
moved further up the wide street. His long legs quickly ate up the distance as
he hurried towards Soho. The gold watch on his wrist may have dulled in terms
of its brightness since his mum had presented it to him on his confirmation
three decades earlier and yet it still worked and showed him he was in plenty
of time to meet up for birthday drinks at ‘The Rear Admiral.’ For a man who
always ensured his socks and cuff-links were co-ordinated, the old fashioned
timepiece might have seemed at odds with his studied elegance and yet it seemed
to off- set the smart chinos and Oxford shirt he had chosen to celebrate his
46th birthday in.

He’d been glad to receive a card
from Jane. There was something more permanent about the written word, which
however brief, made all their telephone calls seem transient in comparison. He
knew the Christmas cards were always sent by Tim – if he was lucky Jane would
sign her own name and squiggle a couple of kisses, but she was the one who had
incredibly managed to remember three out of his last four birthdays and to get
cards there on time. This one had even contained a few lines about the Maggie
Murders. Sobers himself had not been entirely convinced by the media circus
linking the killings to the Prime Minister as he very much suspected he knew
who the next victim might be; however he was no longer a policeman and no-one
in authority down there would have been interested in his theories…

And yet if he was right, he
trusted that Jane would be more than capable of finding her own way towards the
answer. 

****

Walking through the lych-gate
into the churchyard, a pretty wooden arch flanked by willows, Jane recalled the
last time she had visited the church in 1983 for George Kellow’s funeral. She’d
merely gone out of professional reasons, as she’d been curious to see if there
might be any mourners there whom she could link to his murder, yet in the end
she’d been glad to attend as there were so few people there. She thought if it
hadn’t been for the drama of his violent death, she might have been the only
attendant.

A couple of the local shopkeepers
had gone along, though most had placed staying open over attending, perhaps
fearing the next funeral they’d be attending would be that of their own
businesses. His solicitor was there and had arranged the service according to
instructions left by Kellow for ‘a Christian burial, but no hymns.’  Debbie,
plus three other print and radio journalists from the local media (there was
understandably no interest from the nationals at the time) had also been in
attendance.  There were no relatives. Not even a wreath or card from his
sister.

The only information she gained
from the locals was pretty much what she knew already – he was a moody old sod,
who pretty much kept himself to himself, apart from when he occasionally needed
change from the newsagents when one of his rare customers had the failure of
foresight to offer a £10 note as payment. The only other news she had gained
was that his cat had been found killed the day after he died, the newsagent’s
wife thought it had been knocked over by one of the tourists driving too fast
along the road to the camp.

The vicar hardly seemed to know
the subject of his elegy; she assumed that Kellow had been a Christian in name
only. Yet Jane thought he had made a decent stab of it by focussing on his
wartime record and the importance to small communities of the local traders who
kept them going; very much placing public service as the main theme of his
address. Though the constant use of Kellow’s Christian name had jarred with
her; the constant refrain of George just sounded over familiar and wrong to her
ears. She rather suspected that the last time anyone had addressed him so
personally, was when there had also been a George on the throne.

Refreshed by a Danish pastry and
a cup of tea from the local bakery, Spilsbury sat on a bench in the tranquil
churchyard listening to Hawkins rehashing her ideas. Jane was puzzled as to how
her superior’s earlier belligerence had seemed to vanish overnight. Perhaps if
she had seen the mess her boss had made in the incident room toilets the day
before (which he had ascribed to a dodgy battered sausage at lunch time) and
been able to compare it to the more satisfying stool he’d deposited at home,
then she might have had some reason for understanding the beatific expression
on his face. Sadly, she was as much at the whims of his digestive system as he
was and would never have the long term knowledge gained by Felicity Spilsbury
into how her husband’s eating habits affected his moods.

‘That’s Lady Nelson’s grave.’

Spilsbury pointed to an ornate
monument across from where they were sitting.

‘Emma Hamilton’s?’

‘No, she was his mistress, Lady
Nelson was his wife. He packed her off down here, so he could play silly
buggers with Emma up in London.’

Jane felt that she should have
known this and not Spilsbury. It would be alright if he knew more than her
about sport, or whisky, but local history was something she felt was her
preserve. She got up to take a closer look at the grave.

Spilsbury wiped the grease off on
his trousers and continued –

‘Lady Byron was packed off down
here too. Seems it was quite a respectable resort in the 19th Century.’

‘The type of place men could dump
their wives whilst playing away?’

‘Don’t blame me for the double
standards of the past.’

‘It’s the double standards of the
present I’m worried about.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ll make D.I.
yet. Once the old farts like me are packed off to the Costa del Crime, it’ll be
the turn of the bright young things with their computer skills and management
training.’

‘I don’t have either of those.’

‘No, but I think you’re a good
copper and the job’s not going to change that much, whatever PACE says.’

‘Yesterday, you thought I was
barking up the wrong tree.’

‘I still do, but that doesn’t
mean there’s anything wrong with barking up the wrong tree. Half the cases I’ve
worked on wouldn’t have been solved unless someone had taken an outside punt
from time to time. That’s not to say there weren’t some pretty stupid ones
too.’

‘So what are we doing down here?’

‘I wanted to take a look at the
scene of the Kellow case and I thought you could take me through your thoughts
on it over lunch.’

‘Lunch?’ Jane shot a quizzical
look at the remains of the Danish.

‘That was just an aperitif. I was
told the pub does a good scampi and chips. Coming?’

Trailing in her boss’ bulky wake,
he was surprisingly agile for a fat man, Jane followed him to The Lady Nelson.