The Maggie Murders (31 page)

Maybe it was time to take another
look at those files he’d found on her Mac?

****

The sudden explosion which lit up
the night sky in a shower of pink and green sparks didn’t concern Jane as much
as the report of Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech on the BBC. The belated
firework outside was just a leftover from Guy Fawkes’ Night; the manner of
Howe’s departure was the real bombshell.

Jane tensed when she heard the
news. The fact that her daughter wanted to join a kibbutz and drop out of
Warwick left its place as the most pressing thing on her mind, when the
breaking news on the bathroom radio announced that a second Tory leadership
contest would be held less than a year since the last one.

The ‘Maggie Murders’ was still an
on-going investigation and Jane headed up the team investigating any new leads
into the killings of the three men. She was certain of Margaret Mallowan’s
guilt; however she had no proof which would convince a jury of this, nor even
enough to convince The Crown to charge her. The misguided attempt to prosecute
Connie Baker over her husband’s death had made the powers-that-were afraid of a
second mistrial.

Powers-that-were being the key
phrase as Dent had finally gone. He’d resigned at Christmas – they’d cited ill
health, but everyone knew it was down to pressure from on high over the failure
to find the killer in the most sensational murder story to hit Devon since ‘The
Hound of the Baskervilles.’ Story being the relevant word according to the
rumourmongers, as an internal investigation had been opened into the force’s
handling of the case, as it seemed Dent had been more than a little creative
with the truth.

Canteen gossip tended to be right
more often than not, even if chief gossip Mark Salmons had also taken gardening
leave recently. Well, you couldn’t just threaten prisoners any longer, especially
when those drunken women in your custody suite turned out to be London
solicitors down on a hen night…

Jane felt that if she and Osborne
had been allowed to mount a case against Margaret Mallowan for the murder of
her husband, then they might have got a result if Dent’s meddling in the Baker
murder hadn’t handed a potential open goal to any hypothetical defence team, as
it would be difficult to find a dozen jurors who weren’t aware of the police’s
catastrophic mishandling of the case against Connie Baker. It was just going to
look like they were persecuting women for their sexual appetites.

Without that shadow hanging over
them, she felt they might have made their case. Even if it was only on
similarly circumstantial evidence, she felt many of the jurors might have been
swayed. Especially if no perjured evidence was offered this time. And if they’d
been able to charge her, she felt she and Osborne might finally break Jez
Carberry.

The news of a second leadership
election meant they would now be under even more pressure with the world’s
media likely to descend on the city in droves in the expectation of another
murder.

At least she felt certain that
the killings were over – Margaret Mallowan had disposed of her husband among
the other victims and had quite literally got away with murder. ‘The Butcher,
The Baker and The Candlestick-maker’ were all dead.

That had to be it, didn’t it?

Yet the fact that all three
killings had happened on days when Margaret Thatcher had won elections made her
wonder who might die when she succeeded again on November 20th?  Then again
what if she lost? Tim seemed to think that her time might be up and that
Kinnock would lead Labour to victory in the New Year. He was cock-a-hoop at the
news and had embarrassed them all with his celebratory dancing, which had
resembled an epileptic elephant on ‘E’ according to the increasingly world
weary Leo.

But Maggie losing? That really
was unthinkable.

****

In London, Sobers watched the
news unfolding with disbelief. As a man of the cloth he was supposed to be
above party politics, but given the often public spats between the palaces of
Lambeth and Westminster, the Church had become seen, in the inner city at
least, as one of the few forces daring to oppose the extremes of Thatcherism.

The poverty he came across every
day in his parish shocked him. Many of the people he came into contact with
lived in conditions which were more of the third world than the first world.
And yet just a stone’s throw away from many of the poorest people, some of the
most expensive addresses in the world brashly thrust themselves into the
skyline. London was still the divided city described by Dickens. Fagin’s gang
might be a little more multicultural these days and Scrooge might now be
working in a glass and steel skyscraper; however there still remained the ever
widening gap between rich and poor that the consensus politics of the post war
period had tried to narrow. It was the best of times and the worst of times all
over again.

He felt his former lover’s hand
move under the thin sheets of the hospice’s bed.

Ronnie only had enough strength
to attempt to mouth the question.

Sobers leant over the bed and
gently kissed Ronnie’s pallid forehead.

‘Yes, my darling, I’m afraid it
looks bad for her.’

He watched the young man close
his eyes and listened to his irregular and shallow breathes. It wouldn’t be
long now.

Politics had been the least of
the moot points between them. The fact that Ronnie had become a celebrity
cheerleader for the Tory Party was only one aspect of the story which might
make it catnip for the tabloids. The unrequited love between a black Anglican
vicar and an agnostic children’s TV host was the very type of story which The
News of the World would have loved to unearth and it would need very little
embellishing.

Even being here was taking a
risk; he’d just have to hope the paparazzi would not look beyond the dog-collar
and his role as someone ministering to the dying. He’d only found out about
Ronnie’s illness through the celebrity gossip provided by Mrs Forrester and had
felt duty bound to attend him in his last months. He wasn’t entirely sure who
he was trying to help bury, the ravaged man before him, or his own feelings
about his past.

He mouthed a silent prayer.

Chief Constable Harding was
already in Jane’s good books for simply not being Dent; the full support he
offered her for extra bodies to help ensure nothing untoward happened during
the latest leadership election had now made him completely adorable in her
book. Her team was quickly supplemented by as many detectives as she could wish
for and DCS Simon Osborne although placed in nominal charge, made sure he gave
her every opportunity to lead the case.

All she had to do now was to find
a potential target for her reserves of manpower to investigate… This was the
focus of the morning’s meeting, as in a few days Michael Heseltine would be
making his long anticipated challenge to Margaret Thatcher for leadership of
the Conservatives. A politician who had been waiting in the wings for almost as
long as Dent, the blond maned Heseltine looked to have the determination and
support which just might cause a sensational upset. With her reputation badly
wounded by Howe’s attack on her the previous week, the Iron Lady was suddenly
looking very brittle. Although Maggie at least seemed confident of victory
having chosen to miss the vote herself in order to attend a European leaders’
conference at Fontainebleau.

Some commentators had ascribed
this as bravery, others as a sign of the arrogance which had caused major
figures in her party to abandon her.

Jane added the first line of the
nursery rhyme to the white board in the operations room. A photo of their prime
suspect Margaret Mallowan had already been tacked to the board. Time for a
brainstorm:

‘Rub-a-dub-dub?’

‘It’s Cockney rhyming slang for a
pub, ma’am,’ volunteered one of the new officers.

‘So the target could be a pub –
well there are far too many of those for comfort. If we lose surveillance on
her, it could be one of dozens of targets…’

‘Three maids in a tub? That’s one
of the versions isn’t it?’ volunteered DC Clark, one of the long standing
members of the team.

‘And your point is, Sandy?’

‘I’m not sure. Maids are
traditionally girls or virgins.’

There was some tittering from the
recently delegated squad members.

‘Go, on. At least some of us take
the idea that we have a serial killer on the loose seriously.’

Jane’s rebuke ensured a more
respectful silence met Sandy Clark’s next point.

‘Well, think about it – three
girls in a tub or bath, what does that sound like?’

‘A bloody good idea!’ guffawed
one of the more irrepressible detectives.

‘And where would you find three
girls in a bath, DS Turner?’ asked Jane with steel in her voice.

‘Well there’s a few clubs like
that around here, from what I’ve heard…’

‘What about that club on Frith
Street? The White Rabbit. It’s supposed to be a gentleman’s club, but when I
was working vice there were rumours of some high class escort girls working
there. It’s supposedly Jacuzzis and masseuses for top end executives, but
there’s been more than a few rumours it’s nothing more than a high class
knocking shop, ‘interjected DC Warman.

‘I think that’s worth looking
into Bruce.‘

‘But then again why would she
target girls? We are still presuming the killer’s Mrs Mallowan, aren’t we?’
asked Sandy.

‘Yes, both the Chief Super and I
agree that Margaret Mallowan is our most likely killer.’

‘And she’s only killed men
before,’ stated Sandy.

‘But that’s only from following
the main characters in the rhyme. She may have become so fixated on Thatcher that
she’s willing to change her M.O.?’ offered Osborne as he took a seat at the
back of the briefing room.

‘What if Thatcher loses?’

There was a general chorus of
scoffing from the assembled company.

‘I’m serious, ma’am! ’ Sandy
called above the hubbub, ‘Then she might want revenge on the type of people she
believes stabbed Maggie in the back.’

‘You’re not thinking of another
Guy Fawkes are you Sandy? I know we’re dealing with a ruthless woman, but she’s
hardly in the same league as the IRA!’

‘Maybe not blowing up the Houses
of Parliament, but I could see her wanting to burn down the local Conservative
Club…’

Jane met Osborne’s eye, Sandy had
made a very perceptive point. Not only were they going to have to keep a team
on Mallowan, but they were also going to need to check out both The White
Rabbit and the local Conservative Club. Given that Gerald Mallowan had been a
prominent member of the latter, Jane felt that their killer would favour that
as a possible target. Though what if he had also frequented the former; their
marriage had been at the separate bedrooms stage?

As she was leaving the briefing,
another thought suddenly came to her. What if ‘tub’ meant a boat? There were
plenty of boats in Devon and hadn’t Gerald Mallowan had a yacht moored at
Exmouth Marina? All her new manpower suddenly seemed in very short supply…

****

Sobers had been visiting his
Auntie Ida when they’d heard the news that President Kennedy had been
assassinated. He could still remember hearing Uncle Desmond swearing and then
the look his Aunt had given him for turning the air blue with what many people nowadays
would have considered a comparatively mild expletive. They’d then popped round
next door to watch the pictures on the Gayles’ TV set that evening. Half the
street seemed to have been clustered around the tiny black and white screen
showing the pictures from Dallas. The fug of cigarettes and the smell of
alcohol on the breath of many of the men folk had given the event the air of a
wake, which he supposed in many ways it was.

When Mrs Forrester burst into the
vestry in a manner that suggested she’d forgotten her GP’s advice about keeping
her blood pressure under control, he’d been in the middle of using the Church’s
Letraset to make posters advertising their Christmas Fair. He’d just realised
he had spelt nativity with a double ‘t’ when Barbara Forrester’s cry of ‘She’s
resigned!’ conveyed the historic news of Mrs Thatcher’s political demise.

Posters and flowers now
forgotten; the two of them clustered over the portable radio Mrs Forrester had
been listening to by the altar. Unable to quite believe the news on LBC, he’d
retuned it to the BBC for confirmation.

‘But she won the election?’ cried
the puzzled, but delighted flower arranger.

‘Not by enough to avoid a second
round it seems.’

‘So she’s really gone!’

‘So it seems.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Ring dem bells?’ Sobers smiled.

Instead they’d gone outside and
bought coffee and buns to celebrate. To Sobers it seemed an odd coincidence
that like Kennedy she’d also gone on November 22nd.

****

Jane was at home when she too was
wrong footed by the news of Thatcher’s resignation. She’d been up until two the
previous night staking out the Conservative Club and there had been no
suggestion there that anything momentous would come of the result from the
ballot in the first round. One old boy, who looked as if he had been a member
since the days of Disraeli, had been boring for Britain about how Thatcher
wouldn’t even have needed to stand in the second round if the rules hadn’t been
amended from the margin of victory being calculated on 15% of the electorate to
15% of those whose who had voted, or something like that. Another of the red
faced old majors seemed to think she’d scored an own goal by not voting
herself.

There had been a few cheers for
Heseltine, yet most of the members she’d met seemed very pro ‘The Lady.’ A few
seemed to remember Margaret Mallowan, though more for her striking looks than
anything else, whilst most recalled her husband fondly. They hadn’t seen the
widow there since the funeral, which seemed to preclude a premeditated attack
on the premises; however she got Clark and Turner to do a recce of the place
for any jerry cans of fuel, or bicycle chains over emergency exits; just in
case.

Most of the members seemed
disappointed by the result which now meant there would have to be a second
ballot to decide the leadership; having beaten Heseltine by 204 votes to 152,
the Prime Minister was just shy of an outright victory. Under the new rules
Heseltine was within the required 15% margin to force a second round. The only
person who seemed cheered by the news was the bar manager, claiming another
ballot would be good for business; in his view both candidates would surely
support that. The inconclusive nature had a few nay-sayers muttering about a
divided party being a Godsend for Labour, yet at least they could all be
cheered by the fact they all made it out of the club alive that night. It
seemed the Maggie Murders, if not Maggie had finally come to an end.

Unless of course the killer was
waiting for a more certain result?

When Tim woke her up to tell her
Thatcher had resigned she was shocked.  She was well into her second mug of
coffee before the news began to assume the shape of a tangible fact. A year
before, she’d been consoling her normally unemotional elder son when he had
discovered that ‘Doctor Who’ was to be cancelled after 26 years on the telly.
Given that Leo’s love of the long running sci-fi show was one of the few
constants in her son’s ever changing tastes she’d tried to empathise with him.
And yet she still couldn’t get worked up about a TV programme; unlike Tim she
never got the sniffles when a long running character was bumped off in one of
their favourite dramas.

With Maggie’s departure she
wasn’t sure how to feel? She’d never voted for her, though she’d considered
doing so in ’79 and had been delighted to see the astronomic rise in her pay
packet that Thatcherism had brought in. Tim might mutter about ‘blood money’,
but after years of trying to make ends meet they’d found themselves very
comfortably off on a salary which had at last seemed to reflect the important
status of modern policing. And yet the way some members of the public now
seemed to regard the police with active hostility made her feel less enamoured
of their former premier.

 All in all, Mrs T had become a
constant presence in her life over the last decade or so and the thought of her
going had become inconceivable. Like the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the
sudden speed of Maggie’s political demise had caught her unawares. Perhaps that
explained her ambivalence to the news and the shock had yet to register fully
yet?

It was only on the way into the
station that the thought hit her. If Maggie was gone did that mean an end to
the murders, or might her namesake have something else up her sleeve? In a way
she hoped for the latter, otherwise it would be very difficult to get a
prosecution in the case. It was terrible to hope there might be another
killing, albeit she needed Mrs Mallowan to make a mistake.

****

L is for Lust

Tony found us together. Not
just in bed, but in flagrante delicto. I remember looking up and seeing him
framed in the doorway of our bedroom as I rode his best friend.

He should have been in London;
I should have stopped. Yet I didn’t, some things are difficult to stop just
like that. And he was there. Watching me come.

According to our calendar he
was coming back on the Saturday.  After meeting a designer, he was supposed to
stay with his friend Jerry in Earl’s Court. They were meant to enjoy a few
beers, catch up on old times and generally chew the fat. He wasn’t meant to
catch me and Patrick at it.

By the time I’d got to the
landing, I could hear the front door banging shut and the sound of our Mini
starting up on the gravel. There was just a cloud of dust on the drive by the time
I was standing starkers in our studio doorway; watching him disappear.

Tony was the only man I have
ever loved. That probably sounds bollocks to most people. Well, it happens to
be true. It was just we’d bought into a lot of that new age hippy shit flying
around at the time and we’d both thought a bit of free love on the side was
alright as long as no-one got hurt. The trouble was we had forgotten the rules
of our game.

It was the end of the
seventies and I’d just gone through the trauma of turning 30 and was trying to
hold onto my youth, whilst Tony had hit the wrong side of 40 and was beginning
to back pedal on the whole liberal philosophy he’d shown me, by becoming too
involved with the heavy stuff as he used to call it. He’d kept on at me for a
decade that money didn’t matter and it was all about that peace and love shit,
yet when he started making some serious bread from our New Age designs he was
no longer my Tony.

Gone was the happy go lucky,
pot smoking free spirit who had swept me off my feet at Art School. The man who
had been both my seducer and tutor. I thought he’d teach me the secrets of the
universe. Tony was the poet, artist and lover who opened my eyes to a nomadic
life of festivals, love-ins and star crazed nights under open skies. We had
embraced the principles of free love and so the occasional time when we struck
out on our own had never been a big deal to me.

 I think the cracks began
appearing when we settled down. It wasn’t that I missed the travelling, far
from it. The material benefits we were now accruing made my life very
comfortable and I enjoyed the commercial side of our venture. It was just that
Tony was investing so much time in the creative side of the business, it meant
I was feeling very neglected indeed. He had changed from the energetic and
youthful lover I’d married one Winter Solstice into just another runner in the
rat race.

It wasn’t even anything
special about Pat; he was just a body on hand that night. Although perhaps it
would have been better if Tony had caught me with one of the others? It’s just
friends had never been off limits before…