To Kill a Man - Maggie Costello Series 05 (2020)

by Bourne, Sam

  ‘Benson, yes.’ Natasha made the slightest quizzical expression, curious as to how Maggie knew about that. Maggie held up her phone, the all-purpose answer to how anyone knew anything these days. ‘It was good of him to give me safe harbour for a few hours. But it goes without saying that it’d be idiotic for me to trust him.’

  ‘Is his boss running?’

  ‘He certainly wanted to. But even if he isn’t, he’s close to Senator Harrison, and probably fancies that he might prosper under a Harrison administration.’

  ‘So he doesn’t want you bursting on the scene and sucking up all the oxygen.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s all perfectly absurd. And of course, third, a case like this – man attacks woman, woman kills man – was always going to be political, whoever I was.’

  Another smile passed between them, acknowledgement of the truth Natasha had voiced and the fact that both recognized it. Then Natasha leapt to her feet, startled. ‘You must forgive me. I have been appallingly rude.’ She was now behind her desk, searching for something at knee level. ‘I’ve not offered you anything to drink.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Not even a Scotch?’

  Maggie hesitated. She was meant to say no. ‘What Scotch have you got?’

  ‘I’ve got a ridiculously expensive bottle of Talisker single malt.’

  Another beat of hesitation. ‘You must have known I was coming.’

  Winthrop poured two glasses – no ice, drop of water – handed one to Maggie and then returned to her seat. Maggie watched as Natasha took a first sip, her eyes closed. Maggie suspected she was not savouring the taste so much as allowing in the exhaustion.

  ‘My first assumption was that I could handle this myself. I’m a lawyer and quite a good one, if that isn’t an awful thing to say. Homicide cases are not my specialist area, but I have colleagues here and elsewhere who could help me. But this morning’s events have altered my view.’

  ‘Tell me about the police interview. You said that you felt that your, um, history had coloured their response to you. What happened?’

  ‘After a while, you learn how these people operate. They were terribly fixated on the idea that I might have opened the front door to my assailant and ushered him into my home. Which is, of course, a perfectly natural line of inquiry, albeit one that is wholly false in this case. But what I have learned is that, to a detective, facts are divided into two distinct sets. They’re either confirming or contradictory of their operating hypothesis. If they’re the former, then great: more evidence to support the hypothesis. But if they’re the latter, also no problem: they can be absorbed into the hypothesis. They are reshaped as the exception that proves the rule.’

  ‘And is that how they treated this CCTV footage of you opening the door, as the exception that proves the rule?’

  ‘No. The opposite. Once they started talking, I understood that their theory of the case was the reverse of what I had been telling them. They don’t believe I acted in self-defence, they don’t believe my account at all. They believe that I killed this man for whatever reason and that I invented some story to explain it. The emergence of this supposed video footage – which, by the way, neither I nor anyone else has seen and which either does not exist or has been entirely misinterpreted – fits their hypothesis perfectly. Which is that I am a liar. Or fantasist. Or both.’

  Maggie sipped slowly from the glass. She felt the hit of the taste on her tongue, then the warmth of the burn as it moved through her mouth and into her throat. She closed her eyes for a second, enjoying the sensory blast, then opened them again, suddenly conscious of Winthrop’s eyes on her. Drinking was different for her these days, after all she’d learned. Now it came with a pang of self-reproach that had never troubled her before. She didn’t want to be her mother’s daughter.

  She straightened in her chair and said, ‘And did you?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Did you open the door to that man?’

  ‘No, I did not. I was in my study the whole time. The first I saw of him was when he appeared in the doorway to that room. But, as I say, that’s not the point I’m trying to make.’

  ‘Your point is that the police’s starting assumption is that you’re guilty till proven innocent.’

  Winthrop took a swig and nodded.

  ‘And that should obviously inform your strategy. But I still don’t see why that can’t be a legal strategy. Why can’t you deal with this as a lawyer?’

  Natasha held the glass to her lips as she smiled broadly, revealing a set of perfect white teeth as her eyes brightened. ‘You mean, why do I need you?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Maggie looked down at her glass and back up again. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of that starting assumption, Maggie. What’s the reason for that? Why have they set out on this case wanting me to be guilty of murder, rather than a victim of a violent sexual assault and attempted rape?’

  ‘Because you’ve fought them and won. The Guantanamo cases.’

  ‘Couple of corruption ones, too. But those are symptoms, not cause. What’s the cause?’

  ‘Because while the Chief of Police was handpicked by the mayor, the rank and file tend to tilt pretty rightward and you’re the socialist, libtard enemy within.’

  Natasha leaned back and nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘And are they right?’

  ‘Right? About my politics?’

  Maggie put her glass down. ‘Are they?’

  ‘I was raised with immense privilege, Maggie. Expensive school, expensive college, no debts. My home was so big and gorgeous, we had our own stables and I didn’t just have my own pony, I had my own horse. Several horses, in fact. It was a life of ludicrous privilege. I now live in a beautiful, tasteful home in Georgetown, in Washington, DC, which, even though I may never want to set foot in that house again, is in one of the smarter neighbourhoods in the capital city of what is both the richest country in the world and the richest country there has ever been in the history of our planet. Ludicrous privilege.

  ‘My most recent job was advising a committee whose members belong to a body that can spend billions and billions of dollars in an instant. They just have to press a button on their desks: aye or nay. I watched these people, Maggie, and – believe me – there are not many contenders for the Nobel Prize among them. These are not the finest brains. And yet, just by raising their hands or pressing that little button, they can buy an airplane or a ship that costs hundreds of millions of dollars. They can make a tiny tweak to the tax code that puts yet more millions into the pockets of people – usually their donors – who already have so, so much. Maggie, these are people who have homes with twenty-five bedrooms, along with a second or third house in Montana or Florida or Vermont, and an apartment in London or Paris or both for the occasional weekend shopping trip. And climate-controlled closets for their suits. And another for their shoes.

  ‘And meanwhile, you can go out that door,’ she raised her right hand, ‘and walk ten paces and you will find a man shaking a paper cup for pennies. Because he is hungry and thirsty. Because he literally does not have enough food to eat tonight. He might well have served in the military, where he saw such horrors that he couldn’t sleep at night even if he did have a bed. Which he doesn’t.

  ‘And you can walk maybe ten minutes more and you’ll be in a neighbourhood where it’ll be normal to find ten people sharing two rooms – grandma and six kids in a room the size of my en suite bathroom – where there’s a little girl whose belly is rumbling, because she too has had nothing to eat, who has nowhere to sit down, let alone a space to do her homework or, God forbid, read a book. There’ll be mould creeping up the walls, damp that will get into her lungs and give her a bronchial infection. But she won’t go to the doctor, because her family can’t pay the bills. And what tiny help they once got from the government is no longer there, because the
president decided to “play to his base” and cut the food stamps programme.

  ‘I desperately want that to change. I would love kids like that little girl to have a library that’s open and has actual books in it or a school whose roof is not leaking and a hospital that’s there when they’re sick, even if they don’t have a dime in their pocket. I’d like the air to be clean and the rivers not to have barrels of toxic shit dumped into them, and for us to stop choking every glorious sea creature in the ocean with so much plastic their guts look like the contents of a trash can. I want us to stop cooking the planet and stop the ice melting and stop dropping bombs on people who are far away, and stop calling people who flee their homes out of desperate fear “invaders” or “aliens”, but instead offer them the helping hand we would want if we were in their shoes. I want the world to be kind. For us to shout at each other a little less and to smile a little more. I’m sure we can do it. We’re rich enough. We’re smart enough. We just have to want to do it. And I want to do it.’

  Maggie’s tiny intake of breath was too quiet to count as a gasp, but a gasp was what it was. She realized she had been holding her breath as Natasha Winthrop spoke, afraid to break the moment. It was involuntary. She did not think about anything except the words the woman in front of her was saying and the woman saying them. She was mesmerized.

  Only now that Natasha had stopped talking did Maggie’s conscious brain start formulating thoughts. Jeez, she would make one helluva candidate. And then: Is that a rehearsed speech? Has she said those words a hundred times before? Because it didn’t sound like it. Or is she just very good?

  A memory returned to Maggie, or more precisely a feeling. It was that unmistakable quickening of the pulse she had felt when she’d first been called to Washington a decade or so earlier – summoned there by the man who insisted that idealism and realism were not incompatible foes, but allies just waiting to be fused together. The first time she met that man, tramping around Iowa, she had been struck by his commitment, his principles and his basic humanity. Despite everything, including her loathing of all things Washington, she had allowed him to persuade her to join his presidential campaign and, when he won, to come with him to the White House. She had, said her friends – including the man who would become her direct boss, mentor and friend, Stu Goldstein – ‘been seduced’.

  She’d laughed that off at the time: there never was anything like that between her and the former president, not even a hint of it. (That man would never have inflicted on any woman the unsolicited shoulder squeeze Maggie had endured that morning.) And yet ‘seduced’ was the right word. A candidate had to do more than persuade a would-be aide – or voter, for that matter – of the merits of their arguments. They had to strike a chord that resided not in the brain, but somewhere between the heart and the gut. Maggie had had that feeling at the State Fair in Iowa a decade ago. She had it again now.

  And by God, she needed it. Everyone did. Politics had been so desperate for so long, one awful outcome after another, in this country and almost anywhere you cared to name: the good guys on a losing streak and all the wrong people in control. Even the notion of finding someone with talent, charisma and their heart in the right place was thrilling in its novelty. Maggie, her former White House colleagues, the people she knew and loved, her sister Liz, they all felt the same aching lack – the absence of someone to believe in. The absence, corny as it might sound, of hope.

  ‘I understand,’ Maggie said at last. ‘And I want to help.’

  Natasha gave a smile that somehow demanded of Maggie further elaboration.

  ‘I’m on board. Whatever you need to get through this.’

  Natasha Winthrop was reaching across for a handshake when there was a strong buzzing sound, her phone vibrating between them. The screen was face up and Natasha was so distracted by it, she immediately and instinctively diverted her right hand away from Maggie’s to pick it up. She glanced at it and said only, ‘Christ.’

  Now Maggie’s phone buzzed too, several times in succession. More messages began to buzz into Winthrop’s phone. There was the low chirrup of landlines as phones in the outer office started to ring, joined by Natasha’s direct line in this room.

  Maggie took one look at her screen and instantly understood why everyone suddenly wanted to hear the voice of Natasha Winthrop.

  She opened up the first message, a news alert from CNN:

  Breaking: DC Police say man killed overnight in alleged attack on Washington lawyer Natasha Winthrop was the wanted rapist and suspected murderer Jeffrey Todd.

  Chapter 10

  Long Island, New York, three weeks earlier

  The woman was much younger than the man. They were separated by more than four decades. They were also separated at work by not just a few rungs but the entire corporate ladder. The man was the head of the news division while the woman was in the first year of an entry-level job. So when the man asked the woman to help him work through programme proposals for the coming season, the woman did not feel she could say no. Even when the man explained that this was work that fell outside regular hours and was best done at his beach house.

  The woman was wary, but also conscious that this was an opportunity. Some of the woman’s more experienced colleagues hinted that they too had been given similar opportunities when they were starting out and it was clear that they had taken them, even if they were now reluctant to say much more. She registered that it was only women who tended to have been singled out in this way, but she decided that that was no more than a reflection of the demographics of the television news industry at this level.

  The man picked her up at the nearest station. He wore jeans and drove his own car. They reached the house in ten minutes, and the man immediately showed the woman where she would be working. It was a stand-alone guest house, complete with its own bathroom, small kitchen and view of the ocean. The shelves were covered with awards, trophies and statuettes, as well as photographs of the man with famous personalities associated with film and television. The man called this house ‘the cottage’.

  The woman worked for several hours on her own, while the man remained in the main house. Later she saw the man going for a run along the beach. On his way back, the man stopped and knocked on her door. The man did not wait for the woman to reply, but walked right in. The man was flushed and sweating. He told the woman he wanted her to come with him to the main house, so that he could show her the next tranche of work to be done. The woman was apprehensive, but did not feel she could say no.

  The man led her into his office. At its centre was an enormous glass desk. In front of it were picture windows so close to the water you could see the surf of the waves. On the shelves were yet more awards – Peabody, Emmy, Grierson – as well as photographs of the man with presidents, prime ministers, two kings, a queen and a pope.

  The woman was looking at these pictures when she realized the man was no longer at her side. He had walked through a second door that led into a bathroom. The woman could hear the sound of a shower running. The man had left the bathroom door ajar.

  The man called the woman’s name. She pretended not to hear him, focusing instead on the documents piled on the desk which he had mentioned as the basis of her next task. But he called her name again and then again.

  The woman replied that she was working. But the man called out that he could not hear her. The woman approached the bathroom door, so that she could be sure to be heard.

  With her back to the opening, so that she could not see inside, the woman repeated that she was getting on with the work he had asked her to do. Again, the man said he could not hear her.

  The woman turned her head, just enough, she hoped, to ensure her voice would carry. But the shower was not what she expected. Instead of containing a glass cubicle two or three yards away, this was a wet room – a single, unbounded space. So when the woman turned, she caught a glimpse of the man at the centre o
f it. He was facing towards the door. He was naked and he was soaping himself, even as he called out her name. His eyes were shut.

  The woman turned away in less than a second and returned to the desk. The woman told herself that she had seen nothing, that the moment was too fleeting, that perhaps it was only her imagination.

  In the seconds that followed, the woman shuffled the papers several times, trying to focus on the work she had been given.

  A minute later the man came out of the bathroom. Because her head was down, focused only on the papers on the desk, the woman did not hear or see him emerge. She did not see that he was wearing only a bathrobe, white and open, with no cord tied at the waist.

  It meant that the woman jolted with surprise when she saw the man suddenly appear next to her, his penis, exposed and erect, a matter of inches from her face.

  The woman flinched and turned away. The man said, ‘I was calling you. Didn’t you hear me?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I was just here doing my work.’ Only now, hearing her own voice, did the woman realize that she was weeping.

  ‘Ah, baby. Don’t cry,’ the man said softly, and she wondered if he was about to be gentle. Instead, while he continued to whisper, ‘Don’t cry, baby,’ he grabbed a fistful of her hair, tugging at the base of her scalp. She heard herself yelp.

  The woman felt the man grip her head with both hands, holding it so tightly that she couldn’t turn it in any direction. She thought of her phone just a few inches away, on the desk where she had placed it a moment ago. She could not use it to escape or to summon help. It was out of reach. Instead she stared into the phone’s unblinking eye, braced herself and hoped that what she had heard was true.

  Chapter 11

  Washington, DC

  There’s badass and then there’s kaboom. #IStandWithNatasha

  Paging Marvel. You just got yourself a new Avenger. #IStandWithNatasha