The Maggie Murders (16 page)

Driving up to Dorset on the coast
road, Spilsbury felt dyspeptic. A friendly review meeting scheduled with the
Deputy Chief Constable had in fact been positively hostile and Dent had made it
quite clear he was not happy with the lack of progress they were making.
Spilsbury had met men like Dent throughout his career and was heartily sick of
them. It had been just about bearable being patronised when he was a young
copper; however the fact he was probably a good five years older than his
superior made it doubly distasteful to Spilsbury. Men like Dent had spent most
of their time in service navigating their way to the top by piloting a desk,
whereas real policemen put in the hard time. He had no time for these statistic
spouting non-entities whose obsession with targets and form filling was making
him disillusioned with the service. Let Dent catch the killer if he was so clever!

His stomach hadn’t been so good
that morning and he’d got through nearly a whole toilet roll. Fortunately it
had happened at the station; he was still fairly regular which was lucky, so he
wouldn’t have to replace the toilet paper at the local Spar on the way home. He
tried replacing the Buddy Holly tape with an Animals one, cursing to himself
when the thin magnetic tape caught in the car’s cassette deck. Giving it a
hopeful tug, he only succeeded in snapping the tape and reducing his double
pack of the tragically short lived Rock ‘n’ Roller’s greatest hits to a single
volume. And not even the volume he preferred…

He wondered if he ought to invest
in one of those new CD players for their retirement? Adam had been proudly
showing off the one he and his girlfriend Lisa had bought last Christmas, yet
those little shiny discs in their small plastic containers hadn’t filled him
with much enthusiasm. His son might have banged on about how the sound was so amazing
and yet it hadn’t struck him as being earth shatteringly different. They
weren’t like colour televisions and microwave ovens which he’d put down as the
key technological leaps of the last twenty years. Being able to watch West Ham
in their claret and blue strip on ‘Match of the Day’, whilst having to spend
only a few minutes heating up one of those Vesta curries was really
experiencing the white heat of technology in action!

Besides, most of his collection
was on vinyl, with his favourite LPs taped for the car, or supplemented by the
occasional compilation cassette bought at service stations on a whim. Given
that Felicity had more classical tastes than his, he spent a lot of time
listening to his collection on the car stereo.

Unlike his son, he liked the feel
of having something substantial to hold in his hand when listening to music, as
well as being able to read the liner notes without reaching for his reading
glasses. Some of the albums were works of art, particularly the gatefold ones.
They might crackle and hiss a bit when he overplayed some of his more popular
ones, but that seemed to add to the warmth. He could date the scratch on the B
side of his Dance with the Shadows album to the time England won their World
Cup semi-final against Portugal. At the party after the game he’d crashed down
onto the floor in a moment of over celebration making the needle jump.  The
idea of buying it all over again on compact disc seemed a ludicrous idea and a
ridiculous waste of money.

As he cruised past the yellow
gorse hedgerows, he managed to free the wisps of remaining brown tape from the
deck and inserted a fresh cassette. As ‘We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place’
filled the Ford Cavalier, Spilsbury looked round to check if the road atlas was
still on the back seat. If he was going to find the village Andrew Sullivan was
now living in, he was going to need a bit of help. Yet it was as he turned
around that he glimpsed the first ominous sign of the day.

 Spilsbury had never broken the
law in his life before. Even in the bad old days when corruption had been rife
in the Met, he had been squeaky clean. Not one bribe or other inducement had
ever been asked for or taken. He had never verballed a suspect, smashed a sock
full of wet sand against some hooligan’s head or even turned a blind eye when a
criminal had got a kicking. This would make his behaviour in the next few hours
even more remarkable.

It was on the final part of his
drive to Winterborne Zelston, that Spilsbury did his double take when he saw
the sign for Shitterton. Reversing the car to ensure he hadn’t misread it as
Sitterton; his inner schoolboy was delighted to discover that his first
impression of the very amusing nameplate for the small Dorset village had been
correct. Whether it was his impending retirement making him demob happy, or the
spirit of the fourth form re-emerging, his mischievous nature found him
checking both ways for potential witnesses before disappearing to the back of
the car and taking out a wrench and screwdriver from the boot. Now fully
equipped for mischief he advanced on the sign.

It took him little more than ten
anxious minutes to free the sign from its moorings and pop the stolen booty in
his car. Whatever Mrs S was going to say, this would be displayed in the guest
bathroom of whichever house they would buy for their retirement. Unless of
course the Chief Constable for Dorset was on the guest list!

****

Jane couldn’t believe she was
shouting. She never shouted at her daughter. Well hardly ever.

‘You’re only 16!’

‘I’m old enough to smoke and have
sex!’

‘And you’re not doing those
either!

Jane desperately hoped she wasn’t
closing the stable door after those two particular horses had bolted with that
last edict; however now was not the time to get side-tracked – she returned to
her main campaign:

‘You’re not going!’

‘Dad said I could go!’

‘Your father has reconsidered!’

‘Only ‘cos you interfered!‘

This was true, when Jane had
discovered that Tim had given Jen permission to go to a rock concert at The
Cornwall Coliseum with her best friend, Jane had well and truly decided Tim’s
liberal parenting regime had gone too far.

She looked at Jen’s truculent
face. Her mascara was far too heavy and as for the dye job she’d done on her
beautiful blonde hair, turning it into a glossy black bob, it was ruinous. She
looked like a vampire on day release.

‘You’re too young to go to
concerts by yourself.’

‘They’re called gigs,’ Jen
glowered.

‘It’s too far away.’

‘It’s only an hour by coach and
I’ve booked my ticket.’

‘Well, you’ll have to unbook it.’

‘It’s not fair!’ shrieked Jen ‘I
only want to see a band, not get pregnant!’

‘Which band?’

For the first time, Jen looked
unsure of herself and her lips pursed together.

‘What is the name of this band
you want to see? Level 42? Huey Lewis? Bananarama?’ demanded Jane trying
desperately to think of the last time she had sat down with her family to watch
Top of the Pops.

Jen looked scornful.

‘I’m not even going to consider
letting you go, if you don’t tell me who it is you want to see!’

‘Vaginal Depth Charge,’ muttered
Jen.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You heard.’

‘That’s the name of a band?’

‘Well I’m not complaining about
period pains!’ sneered her daughter as she turned her back on Jane and tried to
slam the door behind her.

Her daughter’s failure to make
the satisfactory exit she had tried to engineer and her rather pathetic attempt
to bang her bedroom door upstairs, at least cut through Jane’s fury and the
half smile she allowed herself helped some of her temper dissipate. The very
conversation she had never wanted to have with her own daughter, having
experienced it with her own mother about a Kinks gig had returned to haunt her.
She wondered when she’d stopped being a liberal, part of her thought it must
have been when that schoolgirl disappeared a few years ago. She’d be telling
Jen next that music today wasn’t proper music if she didn’t watch out… Still a
line had to be drawn and she was now going to need to win Tim around to the
right way of thinking.

****

F is for Floorshow.

He was aroused by the outfit;
I’ve rarely found a man who hasn’t been.

He must have been wondering
what was happening when I slipped ‘Private Dancer’ into the C.D. player and
poured out a couple of whiskies. I don’t think most NHS home visits included
that level of service.

I don’t think he could believe
his luck when I began unbuttoning my blouse. By the time I’d slipped out of my
skirt I think he would have climaxed if he’d still been able to. Mind you the
sight of me in just my stockings and suspenders is one that has caused better
men than him to lose their self-control.

I nearly gagged when he began
nuzzling my nipples, although it made it much easier to slip the sedative into
his drink.

The cheeky sod then asked me
if I’d pleasure myself for him. Still it’s traditional to grant a dying man his
last request.

Thankfully he passed out in
his wheelchair before I had time to turn myself into a complete whore for him.
This also made it easier to move him to the bed; for a man without legs he was
surprisingly heavy.

Continuing the role of the
ministering angel, I tucked him in with hospital corners. The white spirit I
poured over his sheet, pillows and duvet may not have won matron’s approval,
yet I’m quite sure that a lot of sisters out there would have been cheering me
on.

I propped his chair up on the
other side of the door to ensure he’d be warm and cosy in his bedroom.
Thoughtfully taking the time to clean all the surfaces I’d touched, before
changing into less conspicuous clothes, I slipped out through the French
windows and on to the patio at the back of the house. The vent window to his
room had already been opened when I arrived for the floor show and it was
simple enough to drop a burning taper onto the spirit soaked carpet below the
window.

Despite the sudden whoosh and
glare of the fire, I waited some moments to make sure it had caught. There’s
nothing worse than underdone meat is there?

I slipped a Walkman over my
ears so I wouldn’t hear his screams as I left via the side gate.

****

The cottage and its outbuildings
were located so far from the outskirts of the village it could almost have
qualified as a hamlet by itself. No more than a mud track led up to its
concealed entrance in the hedgerow. If someone ever set light to this building,
it would be just a smoking shell by the time the emergency services arrived.

A young girl wearing a ‘Curiosity
Killed the Cat’ T-shirt and nothing much else, unless you counted the pink
varnish on her toe-nails, finally answered his knocks. A roll up fag balanced
on her lower lip only served to emphasise her tender years.

‘You old enough to smoke?’
demanded Spilsbury.

‘And who rattled your chain?’
sneered the teenager from under a dyed blonde fringe.

‘Detective Chief Inspector
Spilsbury, Devon and Cornwall police.’

‘Bit lost aren’t you, this be
Dorset,’ came the surly reply.

‘Name, date of birth and address
unless you want me to give you directions to the local nick.’

Pouting, the slim and pale girl
informed him of her personal info:

‘Tina, Tina Bastin, 30th Jan ‘71
and I live ‘ere!’

‘Was that January, or June?’

If it was June then she was
underage, though even if it was January he would be surprised, as in his
estimate she looked no more than 13 or 14, though the heavy and artless use of
make-up might have contributed to her immature look. Whatever her answer, he
made a mental note to check with Social Services, as the girl’s state of dress
didn’t seem to indicate she’d been working on her homework.

‘January. And yes my mum knows I
live ‘ere, before you get any ideas about contacting the Social.’

So she was a mind reader, or else
had been having this conversation with other officials…

‘Does an Andrew Sullivan live
here?’

She turned and called into the
house ‘Andy, it’s for you.’

He was relieved to see that Tina
was at least wearing a pair of neon pink knickers as her waif like figure
disappeared up a flight of uncarpeted stairs leading to the cottage’s upper
storey, leaving Spilsbury to let himself into an untidy sitting room. The whole
room was dimly lit, with little natural light coming through the two narrow and
un-curtained windows. Empty beer tins, an overfilled ashtray and a pile of
‘Just 17’ magazines made uneasy bedfellows on the glass topped coffee table. A
mismatched two-seater sofa and armchair, both covered in matching wraps to give
an appearance of uniformity surrounded the table. A portable TV was hooked up
to a video recorder, which in turn was balanced on an upturned packing crate. A
selection of hired video cassettes on the floor included:  ‘Porky’s’, ‘Bolero’
and ‘Rambo.’

To the left of an open fire place
(which in fact contained a portable two bar electric fire) two roughly
fashioned shelves contained a selection of more highbrow literature.  As well
as a selection of books which included titles by the likes of: D.H. Lawrence,
Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and J.G. Ballard there were also
well thumbed paperbacks by European writers like: Camus, Kundera and Nabokov. A
poster advertising Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ had been framed and hung over the
fireplace.

He was investigating the
knick-knacks on the mantelpiece as likely stashes for cannabis when Sullivan
came in. A tall, haughty looking man, he was dressed in a Depeche Mode tour
T-shirt and a pair of football shorts. His handsome figure did nothing to dampen
Spilsbury’s feelings of revulsion.