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

by Bourne, Sam

  Speculation as to the motive for the targeting of Ms. Costello centers on Ms Winthrop who, the Times understands, was working on an investigation of the Russian tycoons behind the St. Petersburg operation. “They feared Natasha Winthrop was about to expose them and their illegal online activity,” a source familiar with these events said on condition of anonymity. “They were especially worried about her increasing political profile. Their preferred outcome was Winthrop behind bars, unable to investigate further.” The timing of the attacks on Ms Costello suggests they were designed to halt her efforts on behalf of Ms Winthrop.

  Though there is no suggestion that the Harrison campaign was itself involved in the operation directed against Ms Costello, the campaign’s links to Imperial Analytica have caused concern among allies of the senator. His spokesman said: “Like any nationwide campaign, Harrison for President has employed hundreds of outside contractors, organizing everything from catering to transport. We of course keep all our contractors under constant review, as we try to spread our message of a fairer, stronger America.”

  Imperial Analytica declined all requests for comment, referring the Times instead to their legal representatives . . .

  For the second time Maggie scrolled through the article on her phone. Jake had let her know only at the last moment about the added dimension to the story, but still she could hardly believe it. When they’d met so that she could hand over the memory stick loaded with the ‘Imperial’ folder that had been on Natasha’s computer – ingeniously labelled so that it would be unrecognizable to any software searching for the word ‘Imperial’ in either the English or Russian languages, since it was in neither – she thought she was giving him a story about a US data company with links to Moscow, with a side dish of violent stalking of a former US official, namely her. But she should have realized from Jake’s reaction that there was far more to it than that.

  He’d been interested from the start, of course. ‘If it comes from Maggie Costello, then you’ve got my attention.’ And he nodded in all the right places as she explained what she had: international firm, links to Russia, micro-hacking. He’d smiled when she told him of her surprise on discovering that the ‘mine’ referred to in that contract-on-a-napkin on Natasha’s computer was not digging for zinc or iron ore, but data – often of the most private, intimate kind. He’d been appropriately appalled at her recounting of Liz’s discovery that the Gab threat against her, and the fantasy rapist, traced back to the same point of origin, to say nothing of the act of cyber-intimidation inflicted on her in Natasha’s office.

  But it was when she uttered the words ‘Imperial Analytica’ that he had sat bolt upright. She understood now what should have been obvious then: that Jake and his team had already been looking at Imperial and its ‘secret sauce’, ever since a Times reporter got word that the firm had been hired by the Harrison campaign. What Maggie brought in clicked together with what he already knew to form an explosive story.

  She looked around the waiting area, its blank walls deliberately austere and inhospitable. How long had Natasha been here now? To think that Natasha could have got out if she had wanted to; bail was negotiable, even if expensive. Maybe she thought the politics played better with her jailed: the optics screamed ‘political prisoner whose destiny is to lead her country’. Or maybe it wasn’t as much a hardship for her as it would be for almost anyone else. After all, Mindy Hagen had endured far worse.

  Maggie’s phone vibrated, a text from Jake linking her to a Reuters report that Imperial Analytica had ‘suspended trading’ after a police raid on their offices in London. Maggie was halfway through sending a reply when an officer appeared, giving Maggie a sullen raise of the eyebrow that signalled it was time for her to come through.

  She was taken into an interview room and asked to sit on a hard, vinyl chair at a plain wooden table. Another wait and then, eventually, Natasha was ushered in, guided to the chair on the other side of the table, as if this were a police interrogation. She looked thinner, but not gaunt. Dressed in plain grey, prison-issue sweats, she nevertheless held herself straight: head up, shoulders back. She was still in absolute command of herself.

  ‘Maggie, it’s very good to see you.’ The cut-glass accent. It sounded different now, odd. It induced in Maggie a fleeting sense of admiration, the way you marvel at watching a familiar actor make themselves sound, say, Danish. ‘I hear you’ve been working terrifically hard on my behalf. I am so grateful.’

  Maggie wanted to say, ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to pretend any more.’ Or even, ‘Hello, Mindy.’ On her way here, she had considered both options. But all that came out was a line she had not prepared, or even considered. She said, ‘I’ve been to Maine.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Natasha said. ‘It is so beautiful up there. Stunning in the autumn.’

  ‘I met Aunt Peggy.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘She told me everything. She showed me the diary.’ It seemed wrong to refer to Mindy’s journal as ‘your diary’. Easier to tiptoe around that.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And I know about Judith.’

  ‘I see.’

  They sat in silence for the best part of a minute, each second slow and full.

  ‘Might I ask how you found her? Peggy, I mean.’

  Maggie looked down at her hands, feeling a brief blush of shame, even though she knew it made no sense. ‘Phone records,’ she said. ‘Your bill showed her number.’

  Natasha gave a tight little smile, but her eyes seemed to glitter with sadness. ‘Ah, the Sunday phone call. My one weekly moment of weakness.’ She looked to her side, as if reluctant to let Maggie see her eyes. ‘You see, Maggie, none of us can live entirely without family.’

  ‘I understand,’ Maggie said, instantly regretting the word. ‘I mean, obviously I don’t understand. What you went through. But I see what you mean about family. My sister drives me around the bend. But if I couldn’t speak to her on the phone, I don’t know . . .’ She heard her own voice trail away.

  She cleared her throat and tried again, on a different tack. ‘Can we talk about Todd? Paul.’ She saw Natasha visibly recoil at the mention of that name. ‘How long were you following him?’

  ‘Following him?’

  ‘Monitoring him.’

  Natasha sighed and sat back in her chair. ‘In my head, forever. Not a day went by. Even at St Hugh’s, even when I was studying and learning lines for the school play and being invited to parties and getting into Harvard and becoming “Natasha Winthrop”, every day I remembered. Actually, that might be the wrong word, because it implies an act of the brain or the intellect. But it was rather more physical than that. My body remembered. Does that make sense? Every day. Actually, every night. Every night when I got into bed. Every night when I get into bed, my body remembers.

  ‘But my brain became better at, if not quite forgetting, then putting it to one side. Compartmentalization, though that is a frightfully ugly word. Natasha is good at that. Better than Mindy.’

  Maggie smiled, but for a reason she couldn’t quite explain she felt her skin shiver.

  ‘And then I was at the DA’s office. In New York. I’d been there a matter of months and one day a photograph comes through. That’s perfectly routine, by the way, there’d be dozens of them: law enforcement agencies in other states or cities, asking for help in locating a particular individual. New York would get more than most, for obvious reasons. You know, “Nashville Police Department has reason to believe that a John Doe might have fled to New York City.” One of those. Except the picture was of . . . him.

  ‘Different name. But the face. It was obviously him. Wanted for sexual offences. Dragging a woman into scrubland and assaulting her. I’d seen him do that, of course. As you know.’

  Maggie nodded, guiltily.

  ‘I didn’t do anything, naturally. But I kept an eye on the case. Contacted our counterparts in Nashvil
le or wherever it was on some wholly spurious pretext, just to hear what was happening. And, as night follows day—’

  ‘He got off.’

  ‘Exactly. “Lack of evidence.” Even though I knew, and his victim knew, and he knew, and his parents knew that he was guilty.’ She shook her head at the injustice of it. ‘Well, after that, once I knew his name, it was not too difficult to keep tabs on him.’

  ‘So when did you decide to take things . . . into your own hands?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Maggie. There was no moment, if that’s what you mean. And certainly not while we were all there, working in that office. Naturally, one would notice it in the course of one’s work. We all did. You couldn’t not notice it: it was the most clear, undeniable statistical trend. Of every hundred rapes committed, less than one— I’m sorry, you’ve heard that lecture. You don’t need me to go over it all again. So, yes, we would talk about that in the office. At the water cooler. Over a glass of wine after work.’

  ‘You and the other women? Elsa, Gargi—’

  ‘No, this is my point. Generalized moaning, yes. But the idea, as it were, did not come until many years later. We were at a conference. In Atlanta, I think it was.’

  Maggie nodded.

  ‘Initially, it was only three of us who were down to attend. Then Fiona suggested that we should seize the opportunity, make a reunion of it. So the others came too. The very first day, we’d all sat through an extremely tedious paper by a criminologist – male – and afterward we were saying, “Everyone is missing the obvious here.” And we came up with a phrase for it: “the evidence gap”.’

  ‘Yes, I read the paper.’

  ‘So you know. And that was all it was going to be, I think. A paper. But then we met up at another one, can’t remember where – we used these conferences as an excuse to get together – and began talking. “It’s not enough to have identified this evidence gap. We need to fill it.” I think that’s when it started.’

  ‘“It” being “Operation Judith”?’

  Natasha offered a smile of admiration, as if impressed. ‘As it happens, that’s the very name I gave it. Just in my own head. No one else. “Operation Judith”.’

  ‘Judith beheaded her abuser.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when did that idea come, then? Not just to get evidence against these men, but to—’

  ‘Oh no.’ Natasha looked aghast. ‘That was never the plan. No, no, no.’

  ‘But you called it “Judith”.’

  ‘Yes, but only in the sense that Judith took action. She stood up to her rapist, she refused to be a victim—’

  ‘By killing him, Natasha.’

  ‘I didn’t plan it. You have to believe me, Maggie. Look, you now know what happened to me. You know who I am. You know what I endured.’

  ‘I do. Which is why I can understand how you longed for revenge. Anyone would feel exactly—’

  ‘Not revenge. Justice. The distinction matters, Maggie. The distinction is everything. Why do you think I became a lawyer? I could have been anything. Done anything. I was top of my class, at St Hugh’s and at Harvard. Did I ever tell you I was offered a job in television news before I’d even graduated? Vulgar to say so, but I had very many options. Yet it was always going to be the law. The law was my destiny.

  ‘And then I saw it fail, Maggie. Again and again. And I watched him—’

  ‘Paul?’

  Another recoil, just on hearing the name.

  ‘I watched him doing it to other girls. What he had done to Mindy. That poor child.’ Again, and no less involuntarily, Maggie felt a shudder pass through her. ‘But,’ Natasha continued, ‘that was never a plan. I watched him, I monitored his movements and, slowly and with the other women – though of course they never knew what you now know – the idea took shape: to lead him into a situation where he would commit the crime and be seen.’

  ‘A solution to the evidence gap.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And yet, he’s now in a morgue.’

  ‘Because it went wrong, Maggie!’ Natasha slammed a fist down on the table, prompting the officer on guard to step forward. She resumed in a whisper. ‘Look, I won’t pretend that I didn’t dream of doing exactly what I ended up doing that night. My body dreamed of it. That painting of Judith? Mindy saw it for the first time in a library in Little Rock. She must have stared at it for an hour at least, that first time. She kept going back to it, after school. The power of it. The rage. The justice. She loved it. I love it.

  ‘But it’s a fantasy, Maggie. That’s all it ever was. The plan was to get a much more satisfying revenge. The best revenge there is: justice. Think of it. Imagine how perfect it would have been if he’d have known that it was Mindy who brought him down after all these years, Mindy who banished him to a tiny cell for the rest of his life. But he never had any idea. Even that night, when he was poking and jabbing and touching . . . he wouldn’t have known. It would have been just meat to him; another hole. He wouldn’t have remembered. Not the way she remembered.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Mindy. But he never knew it was her in that house in Georgetown. She never had a chance to tell him.’

  Maggie shifted in her seat. She wanted to look away.

  ‘It went wrong, Maggie. The plan was for others to be there to witness the crime and to apprehend him. But the plan failed.’ Natasha paused. ‘I never meant to kill him. I wanted him to be caught.’

  ‘So how, Natasha, do you explain this?’ Maggie produced printouts of the Chicago and Bangalore stories and spread them out on the table between them. Natasha skim-read them and said, ‘I didn’t know about the Bangalore case. That’s news to me.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Take a look. We both know there are – do you have a word for each other? – I don’t know, let’s use “Judiths”. There are Judiths in both those cities. Gargi went to live in Bangalore—’

  ‘I know who lives where, Maggie.’

  ‘Look at the dates on those stories.’

  She peered forward and then said, ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you? Because all I can see is that these abductions and torture, and murder in the India case, happened after Jeffrey Todd – Paul – was found dead on your floor.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that I think your killing of Todd acted as a signal to the other women. Whether you intended it that way or not, the Judiths took it as a cue. “Right, we’re not just collecting evidence now. We’re taking this further. We’re taking the law into our own hands. We’ll be prosecution, judge and jury – just like Natasha was in DC.”’

  Natasha was silent for a while, studying the printouts in front of her, checking the dates, then checking them again. Finally, and quietly, she said, ‘I can see how this looks, but . . .’ She didn’t complete the sentence. Then she looked up at Maggie, and held her gaze for a while.

  ‘You know, I haven’t spoken to any of them – the women – since it happened.’

  ‘Since what happened?’

  ‘“Todd”. No contact. There was no way to do it. And it would have been too risky.’

  ‘Phone records.’

  A small smile. ‘Exactly. But I can see the implication.’ She nodded towards the reports on the desk. ‘It’s possible that you’re right.’ Another pause, her reluctance to draw that conclusion expressed in the silence. ‘Perhaps they read my action as some kind of signal. But that was not my intention. Not ever.’

  ‘And is it likely they would read your action that way? I mean, were you, in effect, the leader?’

  ‘I don’t know that I’d put—’

  ‘I assume you were. Because you are, Natasha.’

  ‘I am what?’

  ‘A leader. A natural leader. It’s why, if you run for
president, you might even win. And I don’t say that lightly.’

  Natasha said nothing.

  ‘Which is why this question matters. Did you decide on a change of strategy? Did you decide that the Judiths should be like Judith, and torture and violate the men who violated them?’

  Natasha held Maggie’s gaze and then said softly, ‘Maggie, I kept things from you, that’s obvious. The same things I have kept from everyone, my whole life. But what I said to you that night on the Cape is the truth. I cannot live in a world where women and girls are treated as objects that can be seized and used for the pleasure of men. And yet, as of this moment, that is precisely the world we both live in. The law allows it. Justice is meant to be blind, but it is turning a blind eye to this particularly horrific crime. It is saying, not in principle but in practice, that it is not a crime at all, that we tolerate it. And I cannot tolerate that.

  ‘And now you know why. Because inside this clever, accomplished human rights lawyer who you and others think could be president is a different person whose soul was stabbed a little bit every day for four years, six months, two weeks and three days. That person is a child, Maggie, who never healed. Not really. I carry her around in me and I still have to protect her.

  ‘I kept her hidden from you, because she needs to stay hidden. Sometimes – often actually – Mindy hides from me. But everything else I have said to you is the truth. I wanted “Todd” to stand trial. I wanted that very much. Mindy wanted it. But, in the moment, in that split-second, I understood that I needed to defend my life. That’s what I did. No plan, no plot. Just an instinct for self-protection. That instinct is strong in me, as you may have seen. But that’s all it was, a spontaneous, life-or-death decision. What the others did, I can’t speak for them. But it’s important to me that you believe me.’