The Maggie Murders (26 page)

‘So what will you do? I mean it
just seems so awful for you…’

Sobers indicated his glass.

‘Right now I’ll probably drown my
sorrows, a lesser sin if you like. Then I’ll probably admit my life with Joe
isn’t working out and I’ll try to subsume my energies in my theological studies
and helping out my parishioners.’

It took Jane several more large
gins to think that she was getting her head around her friend’s dilemma and
several more for her to try and stop persuading him that a loving God would forgive
his nature. She kept failing to appreciate that his difficulty lay less with
his personal beliefs and more with his evangelical upbringing. When’d he
described watching an exorcism performed on a girl in his church when only a
child himself, she hadn’t been able to believe that he wasn’t kidding. She felt
he’d been telling her next he was best friends with The Witch-Finder General…

It was only when he got her to
reflect on her desires that Jane even got half of what Sobers was telling her.
When the memory of her own near miss with DS Carl Roberts was awakened by the
gin hitting home, she could see a little more hazily into the family/desire
conflict her former boss was going through. And she didn’t have to add God into
the mix. Well she did, but she figured that the shame of having to live with
cheating on Tim would have made her feel worse than any lapsed Anglican
scruples about adultery and its likely bearing on her immortal soul. But then
again, maybe that was what all this religious stuff was about anyway; guilt. If
only you could live without the guilt!

She emptied her glass and
insisted on making her way to the bar to buy their next round.

J is for Journalism

Well at last they’ve made out
the picture I was painting for them! The tabloids are now calling them the
‘Rub-a-dub’ killings. I had to drive all the way out to Topsham to buy the red
tops, well there’s no point in becoming careless, is there? It’s always some
little detail like that which catches out the over confident ones.

Photos of all three of them
were splashed side by side on the cover of The Daily Sleaze with ‘The Butcher,
The Baker and The Candlestick-maker’ plastered underneath in a banner headline.
‘Today’ even had colour photographs; which to my eye made the whole thing more
fantastic. Death needs to be reported in monochrome.

The coverage was at least more
accurate than some of the left wing drivel on the BBC. One of their so-called
journalists (no more than a poster boy for Kinnock in my opinion) had even
tried to link the killings to Mrs Thatcher’s economic policies! They’d wasted
even more taxpayers’ money in getting some expert or other to analyse how the
three victims symbolised the decline of traditional industries in the UK...

 What rubbish!

The killings are simple –
they’re about personal freedom. The philosophy of the free market applied to
relationships. They’ll allow me to sleep with whoever I want, whenever I want
and give me the money to do it with for as long as I want. If that’s
Thatcherism, then I’m a Thatcherite. She swept away the old ways of doing
things and I’m just following her example.

Look what a joke this country
had become before she took over. We won the last war and yet we had to beg the
French and Germans to let us into the Common Market and then they started
getting us to pay for everything! Just so a few wops could have free
healthcare! Well, thank God for Maggie! At least she told them where they could
stick their demands and got us some of our cash back. No one else would have
stood up to Europe like she did.

And thanks to her we’re
beginning to root out the shirkers, dole scroungers and benefit cheats over
here who take advantage of everyone else’s hard work, as she rewards those who
reward themselves. If you work hard, you get what you want. Sometimes people
might get in the way, but they represent the past and cannot be allowed to hold
back the future. You have to cut back the dead wood every spring; it’s the only
way for new growth. That’s Nature and that’s also Thatcherism.

My journal is a testament to
the new world we’re now living in. It may take time before people begin to
appreciate it, but even Christianity took a few centuries to catch on. In our
new secular society, the money changers have moved back into the temple and the
tablets of stone are being re-written. Thatcherism helps those who help
themselves is the new commandment.

****

It took Jane a while to realise
where she was. The familiar feeling of a gin hangover seeping through her brain
made navigating her surroundings more difficult. She was clearly in bed, though
clearly not the one she shared with Tim. For a moment she wondered if she was
on a waterbed, yet the only thing making this room sway was the dregs of last
night’s drinking session. Last night. She moved her head on the plush pillow
and her eyes fell on the serene features of a sleeping Sobers.

Shit.

She carried out an inventory of
her clothing. An unfamiliar man sized T-Shirt reproducing the classic paperback
cover of ‘Hangover Square’ was where her blouse had been last night. The corner
of her eye caught her bra and panties draped over a smart wooden chair.

Double shit.

She felt Sobers moving next to
her. His modesty was barely concealed by a pair of boxers. Her hand brushed
against a very large erection. At least some stereotypes lived up to
expectation she thought guiltily as it hardened further under her caress.

‘Naughty.’

His large, brown eyes were
smiling at her as he gently removed her hand. Well, if she had crossed the
Rubicon, she had certainly crossed it with a beautiful, intelligent and
sensitive lover she thought as she gazed at his fit, athletic upper body.
Whether this would make up for the guilt welling up on the other side of her
brain was another matter? At the moment she had her hangover to protect her,
yet when that went she knew months of self-loathing lay ahead.

And the worse of it was she
couldn’t even remember it!

Derek, surely she had to stop
thinking of him as Sobers, was kissing her, although not passionately on the
mouth as she both craved and feared, but more chastely on her cheek.

‘Don’t worry. I’m still a
repressed homosexual and you’re still the good little wifey!’

So they hadn’t done it. Why was
her huge sigh of relief tinged by a pang of regret, perhaps it was the sight of
Derek’s tight bum as he got out of bed to go to the kitchen, which made her
still drunkenly regret her unrequited lust.

 Fragments of last night began to
rearrange themselves for Jane. Talking about the case in ‘The Abbot’ and then
getting on to the personal stuff. Finding out that Derek was still not coming
to terms with his sexuality and then emotionally dumping on him her near miss
with Carl. They’d gone on to Soho. A gay pub called ‘The Rear Admiral’ if she
remembered correctly. She had a sudden horrible recollection of trying to pick
up a man for him. She must have had the best part of a bottle of gin by this
point. A poster advertising a club called ‘Paradise Lust’ spiralled into her
mind. She guessed they must have got a cab back to Derek’s place in Westminster.

Why hadn’t she caught the 4.50pm
from Paddington as she’d intended? She’d only meant to meet Derek for lunch to
chat about the case. What would Tim and her children be thinking? And why, oh
why, was her underwear on the back of a bedroom chair?

He returned with coffee, water
and a couple of aspirins for her. He’d make the perfect lover, if only he
wasn’t gay!

‘Thanks for trying to straighten
me out,’ Derek grinned.

‘Oh God, what did I do?’

‘Threw your inhibitions to the
wind and tried to make a man out of me.’

Jane pulled the duvet over her
head.

‘Don’t worry, you were very sweet
and I was very flattered.’

He handed her the water and the
tablets which she gratefully swallowed.

‘Did I? Did we?’

‘You were just beginning to try
and rouse my interest when you fell asleep. I popped you in a T-Shirt and
passed out beside you.’

Burying her head in the pillow
Jane couldn’t work out what was worse: failing to seduce a gay man or waking up
in a vicarage with no underwear on and a pounding hangover? At least she supposed
it was the vicarage?

‘Don’t worry - I called Tim from
the pub. Told him you were crashing here. He might have flattered my ego a bit
by sounding jealous, but I think he was just pissed off you’d forgotten your
evening out at the cinema.’

 She groaned.

‘It happens, Jane. Temptation
waits around every corner. I’ve been struggling with the sins of the flesh ever
since I realised I was gay.’

‘I want to die.’

‘No you don’t. You need a cup of
coffee, some breakfast and perhaps some time reflecting on what drew you and
Tim together in the first place.’

‘You’ll be asking me to pray
next, ‘she complained.

‘Forgiveness comes in all sorts
of ways, Jane. We just have to want to be forgiven.’

‘And do you think I don’t?’ she
blazed throwing herself back on to the bed in a fair imitation of Jen’s latest
tantrum.

He sighed, walked to the kitchen
and returned a few moments later with a plate of toast.

 ‘You’ve been having a stressful
time. You’re a detective, a wife and a mother. Being good at one of those would
be enough for some people. Like everyone you’re allowed to make mistakes. The
God I believe in is a loving one, not a vengeful one. He knows we keep getting
it wrong and yet he still holds out forgiveness for us.’

Jane took the toast sulkily ‘One
of your sermons?’

‘No, that’s one I’ve borrowed
from a colleague. Just think how this might look for me. Getting plastered and
waking up with an attractive, married woman would probably get me defrocked if
my bishop found out!’

‘Now that would be ironic, having
lost your last job for being gay,’ she smiled.

He grinned ruefully – ‘The Lord
does work in mysterious ways.’

She put her mug down and hugged
him.

‘At least we cracked the case,’
he smiled, ‘or do you need one of those recaps they give you on the telly?’

****

Osborne, Jordan and Dent stood
amid the serried ranks of mourners, as Gerald Mallowan’s coffin was borne along
the nave of Exeter Cathedral. The pall bearers were immaculately fitted out in
dark, funereal dress and the hefty corpse inside the expensive coffin seemed no
more than a light weight on their broad shoulders.

Osborne felt uncomfortable being
so close to the Chief Constable. If this was purely a police occasion he could
have tolerated it better; however Dent’s attempts at making small talk before the
ceremony had made him feel like a schoolboy being asked by his headmaster to
discuss the latest trends in Pop Music. He also felt that there was something
else underneath Dent’s apparent need for light banter about sport and
television, that of a certainty anxiety about the case. Some very awkwardly
engineered questions about progress on the case had tangentially followed a
bizarre question about whether he thought Elton John’s latest album was any
good.

Fortunately, Hawkins had warned
him in advance that Dent was beginning to feel under pressure from certain
questions now arising from the press about the management of the investigation
into the Baker case and the evidence they’d brought against his widow. Given
the interest in the case, as evinced by the scrum of journalists outside the
Cathedral (now supplemented by both national and international TV crews),
Osborne supposed it had been inevitable that questions would be asked. One of
the Sundays had gained access to Spilsbury’s widow, who had not only ably
defended her husband’s memory, but had also made several assertions about how
he’d been put under unbearable pressure to gain a conviction. The tone of the
published article had clearly conveyed Felicity Spilsbury’s inevitable
bitterness towards the service. This was underscored by a suggestion that her
early widowhood had been hastened by the ways in which her husband had been
manoeuvred into charging Connie Baker.

According to Jordan, Dent wasn’t
far from having to take a premature retirement himself. Better that he had
suggested than an internal investigation. This seemed to be why Dent was paying
such close attention into getting a result in the most high profile case to hit
Devon since Sir Walter Raleigh had been arraigned as a traitor!

As the last verse of ‘Abide with
me’ faded away, Osborne sat down amidst the sumptuous Gothic splendour of the
cathedral. A suitably grand setting he reflected for a suitably grand man. The
great and the supposedly good were in attendance, the massive columns supporting
the roof of the nave weren’t the only pillars of the community present. From
what Dent had told him, in rather envious tones, most of the City’s councillors
were in attendance, along with the local grandees and most of the hunting
fraternity. Osborne wasn’t sure if they were there merely to pay their respects
to this former yacht broker turned highly successful property developer, or
hoping that some of the attendant media interest might fall on them.

He glanced across and saw the
slender figure of Maggie Mallowan in the front pew. This case seemed to leave
beautiful widows trailing in its wake – he recalled Hawkins telling him how all
the eyes at Baker’s funeral had been drawn to the alluring and elegant Connie.
He found himself distractedly wondering if George Kellow had had a beautiful
lover who was an in-the-closet Rock ‘n’ Roll star? He hoped he hadn’t smirked
at the idea, but there was something about funerals which made him want to
behave inappropriately. It was even worse with people he knew, it wasn’t that
he didn’t care, it was just he found it hard to be as solemn as everyone else.

At least, unlike Dent, he wasn’t
turning around and trying to catch the eyes of the local big wigs. He hoped at
least Hawkins was feeling better, he would have much preferred to be sitting
next to her on an occasion like this.