The Maggie Murders (27 page)

Jane watched her daughter
sleeping peacefully. Jenny’s bobbed hair lay gracefully against her pillow and
she looked like the little girl Jane had always seen her as. A poster of an American
GI with the words   ‘Meat is Murder’ was blue tacked to one peach coloured
wall, whilst a more restful image of a dolphin cub was positioned above her
desk. Mr Snuggles, the little teddy she’d had from birth was still perched
above her books and a Paddington Bear kept it ursine company.

Her choice of reading was now no
longer Enid Blyton or Judy Blume. Nowadays they were well thumbed A’ level
texts. ‘Othello’ and ‘The Miller’s Tale’ were two she remembered studying
herself.  Soon Jen would be going to Warwick to read Drama, leaving just Leo
and Max at home. They grew up too quickly she sighed – it seemed much less than
seventeen years since she was breastfeeding Jen, whilst Tim was still working
in sales. She sometimes felt guilty that she had allowed him to give up his
career to look after them and that she had gone back to full time work;
although Tim had been keener to give up it was true and the career prospects
for her had once been better.

She brushed some dust off Jen’s
pink ghetto blaster with her hand and wondered whether to get angry with her
daughter about the condoms she had found in her bag.  They’d had a blazing row
about the smoking last year and Tim had supported her on that one, and yet she
was fairly sure Jen had ignored her advice. There was no longer any evidence of
it in her room – unless of course the joss sticks were covering it up?

Perhaps she needed to take a
sabbatical and spend more time with the family? The long morning she’d spent in
bed with Tim had made her remember why she loved him so much and gave her no
residual guilt about pulling a sickie. She tucked the duvet up and envied Tim
his parenting skills. He’d been the one to allow Jen to go the concert at the
Cornwall Coliseum last year and that had worked out ok. At least she if was
having sex then thankfully she was having safe sex, would most likely be Tim’s
view of her discovery. He was becoming such a pinko-liberal nowadays she
wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t make up the spare room for her boyfriend!

Did Jen even have a boyfriend?
She’d recently moved on from talking about a boy called Rob, who she had been
obsessing about last year. Hadn’t she said something about someone called Jake,
or was it Jack that she’d met at her Sixth Form College? Tim would know she
thought a little jealousy.

And anyway finding evidence of a
condom packet was only that. It just meant Jen had access to condoms it didn’t
mean she was having sex. And if Jen was having sex, then she was sensibly
taking care not to get pregnant, or pick up some STD.  Perhaps Jen had wanted
her to find it? It certainly had been more carelessly hidden than the cannabis
they’d argued over…

She thought back to her first
time. It had been at Charlie Rutherford’s house in Devonport. They’d both
celebrated their O’Level results with a bottle of cider and an attempt at
recreating some of the spirit of that year’s Summer of Love. In the end it had
been among the least romantic experiences she’d ever enjoyed. And it certainly
hadn’t been safe. She could still recall the anxious weeks wondering if she was
pregnant and panicking about what she would do if she was. It wasn’t until
she’d met Tim that she’d decided to try and repeat the experience. And then
she’d got pregnant with Jen after their very first time!

She walked into Leo’s room. A
hand stencilled ‘No Entry – Biological Hazard Warning’ sign was tacked to his
door. Inside a huge ‘Guns ‘n’ Roses’ poster dominated one wall, against the
other a tottering pile of computer games was stacked up against the old black
and white portable TV they let him use as a computer monitor. A picture of a
girl in a bikini was above his bed, although it was not as revealing or
provocative as the poster of Madonna he’d once put up. Leo’s absence surprised
her, until she remembered that he was going to the football with Kev and Ben
that afternoon. He’d probably hared off already for the pre-match analysis.

If Kevin hadn’t been a colleague
from work – a D.C. whose son Ben was at school with Leo, she probably wouldn’t
have allowed Tim to let their son start attending home games at Exeter City.
Especially as her dad’s family were all Argyle supporters. And yet it had been
the television coverage of the fans dying in their dozens at Hillsborough at
the end of last season which had nearly made her forbid it. The images of them
trying to clamber over the security fences and on to the pitch to escape the
fatal crush on the terraces behind them had made her think long and hard before
allowing her boy to start going to the Grecians’ home games the following
season.

She’d then tried to use the fear
of football hooliganism as a valid reason for denying Leo the pleasure of
spending a couple of hours on a Saturday standing in a dilapidated grandstand
watching two teams kick lumps out of each other, but Leo, with his unwavering
logic, had said Kev would look after him and Ben. This seemed a fair enough
point as the DC not only had a warrant card, but an imposing physique to go
with it. One she sometimes considered Ben’s mum as having been daft to leave
him for.

With an image of Kev fresh in her
mind, she decided to return to bed. If she was taking the day off and the
children were taken care of, then she and Tim would have the time to make last
night’s guilt sex more than a one off.  It was then that she heard Max waking
up in his cot. Reflecting that they’d been very lucky the previous night, she
went to rescue her youngest from whatever had troubled his innocent dreams.

****

Debbie couldn’t decide if Exmouth
was more or less beautiful in the winter? There was certainly something very
atmospheric about the near deserted caravan park perched high on the cliffs.
When she’d been living down here, she’d hated the closed down feel that the
town had acquired once the holiday season came to an end; however her metropolitan
exile had given her a new taste for the charms of rural living and the wild
seascape helped her reconnect to her Devonian roots.

Having walked the coastal path
which led from the end of Exmouth beach, over the high land of Orcombe and
across the crumbling, red cliffs to Littleham she’d felt rejuvenated, not that
a girl in her early twenties should ever have a pressing need to feel young.
Although scrambling up the ladder which connected Rodney Cove to the cliffs
above had reminded her that it had seem an easier ascent as a child, even when
the tide was closing in and eating up the rapidly disappearing sand. Perhaps it
was time to take out one of those gym memberships everyone seemed to be taking up
in London? Nevertheless, she now felt she had deserved tonight’s glass of wine,
as she could have hired a scooter, or even borrowed her mum’s car, for
transporting her round East Devon as she  researched into the lives of those
caught up on the peripheries of these murders. Yet she’d missed the sea and
this was the best way to experience its timeless grandeur. Even the stunning
photographs of the swelling sea crashing against the shore, she’d taken to
accompany her piece, could never truly capture this first-hand experience.

It was on the perimeter of the
holiday camp where she found her quarry. Passing row upon row of empty mobile
homes, not that many of them appeared to be mobile given the ways they appeared
anchored to their berths, she’d finally found the origins of the park. Well she
presumed they were the origins, they may well have been the dumping ground, as
on the far side of it and away from the breath taking views of the sea, were
three vehicles which were certainly caravans and which must have been dumped
there in the 1960s.

Unlike the mobile homes, you
could imagine these being towed behind an Austen Allegro, or Ford Granada. They
were no more than a third of the size of their sleeker cousins and at least
looked as if they’d been lived in, even if at least two of them were deserted.
She presumed that the far caravan, at the end of a deeply rutted path, which
had AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ blaring out of its one visible and begrimed
window was where the subject of her latest interview was now living.

At least there were more signs of
life about this address than there had been when she’d gone round to interview
Catherine Sullivan. With that woman it would have been easier to do what a few
of her less scrupulous colleagues did and make up the details. Sullivan had
appeared either drunk, stoned or both. Her journalistic skills had uncovered
the prescription strength tranquilisers in the bathroom cupboard and the empty
vodka bottles in the kitchen when her interviewee had passed out on the sofa,
but her heart had not been up to including these details in her background
article on the ‘Rub-a-dub Killings’; some slices of life were better left on
the shelf.

The interior of Nigel Byrne’s
caravan was even less welcoming than the battered outside, though at least she
had persuaded him to turn off the music and surprisingly he had been gracious
enough to offer her tea and biscuits. She just hoped she wasn’t going to regret
accepting his offer given her previous experience of Exmothian home comforts;
Catherine Sullivan’s kettle seemed to have collected all the fur her cat had
lost. Well at least his offer would give her a chance for a quick nose around
whilst her host collected water from the stand pipe outside. This caravan came
with just one cramped room and she just hoped it wasn’t Byrne’s bed that she
was perched on. If the more modern ranges outside came with exotic names like
Arizona, Nebraska and Wyoming, she presumed this range would be called Rhode
Island.

Byrne looked a lot better than
the last time she had seen him, in the sense that he now fitted his natural
environment. He was still a slob, but at least he was slob in a pig sty. He was
not a slob in an ill-fitting collar and tie giving perjured evidence in court.
He might have made a more credible witness wearing the stained ‘Hawkwind’ T-shirt
and torn jeans he was modelling today than pretending in court to be an upright
member of the community.  And prison food had clearly agreed with him; he had
put on weight if anything during the 12 months of the sentence he’d served for
perjury. It probably made him impervious to the bitter cold inside the caravan,
as the heat from the small camping stove certainly did nothing to provide her
with any warmth.

She picked up a photo frame
perched precariously on top of a stack of records. It displayed two boys, who
appeared to be around five and six years old. The picture had been cut crudely
at one end; a woman’s hand was still visible around the shoulder of the older
boy.

‘They’re Rob and Mikey. Mikey’s
the one on the left.’

‘They’re very good looking,’
Debbie lied.

‘Take after Dad then,’ grinned
Byrne handing her a surprisingly good cup of tea.

‘You must miss them.’

Byrne’s pasty face darkened
noticeably.

‘Haven’t seen ‘em since being
sent down.’

‘That must have been hard,’
Debbie replied in a voice she hoped conveyed sympathy.

‘Mandy took the kids to her
missus and now she’s started seeing someone else. Moved the boys over to
Dawlish.’

Byrne made the town located just
across the Exe, sound like it was as distant as Yorkshire, or Scotland.

‘Well, as I said earlier, our
readers are going to be very interested in hearing about the other victims of
these killings.’

‘Is there any money in this
then?’ asked Byrne, more in desperation than in hope.

‘Not so much money, more a chance
for you to put the record straight.’

She waited as her host squeezed
his portly bulk on to the bunk opposite her. Given one or two of the emanations
coming off him, she felt sorry for his former cellmate.

‘I could have been someone you
know?’

‘Really?’ asked Debbie trying her
hardest to sound sincere.

‘See these guys?’

She looked at the picture on the
stained T-shirt he was wearing.

‘I use to roadie for them when
they rehearsed down here!’

Debbie tried her hardest to
express her admiration at this, though her more cynical self, assumed that he
might at most have helped unload a van when in presumably a younger and
healthier incarnation.

‘Wrote songs too! They told me I
had talent. Want to hear one?’

What Debbie really wanted to get
to the bottom of was how and why this man had identified Connie Baker as the
passenger he’d picked up on the night of Calum Baker’s murder and yet her
experience had taught her that you had to get through a lot of the chaff,
before you got through to the wheat in her line of work.

Before she could answer, Nigel
Byrne was already loading a cassette into the stereo next to the sink. The
stereo appeared to be the most valuable thing in the caravan and was probably
worth more than the vehicle too. And yet to the former cabbie and erstwhile
factory worker, the most valuable thing aside from the photo of his kids
appeared to be the mix of guitar, drums and screaming vocals coming from the
hi-fi. Despite the lanky hair he was banging along to the track and the rather
childish ‘Satan is Lord’ salute he was making with his chubby fingers, there
was still something about the man’s passion that the mother of his children
must once have fallen in love with.

‘Let’s all run amok, journey to
the Jabberwock!’ blasted out from the stereo.

‘Let’s get ready to rock, journey
to the Jabberwock!’ was the only other lyric Debbie could make out.

An eternity and two guitar solos
later, a beaming Byrne announced -

‘That’s ‘Journey to the
Jabberwock’. Loads of people have said that it should have been huge!’

Debbie nodded in tacit agreement;
she hadn’t had the heart to point out that it should have been journey to the
Jabberwocky.