by Paul Charles
“I’ll be fine; I’d prefer to use Coastside Net.”
“No problem,” Grace said.
“Then I’d like us to meet up and interview Officer Mactoo and then Coach Goldberg,” Kennedy said, mentally working his way through his list, “and then I’ve a bit of research to do on my Camden Town case.”
“You’ve come up with something on that too?” Grace asked, looking impressed.
“Something Chief Nolan said to me, but I need to do some serious checking,” Kennedy replied, sounding a wee bit impatient now. “Right so, if you’ll go put on your uniform…”
“That was the reason I took up the chief’s offer for a nightcap last night. As I’ll be working with a New Scotland Yard inspector for a few days, I was checking if it would be okay to dump my uniform for now. He agreed, as long as we travelled in the patrol car.”
Today, with her checked shirt over a white T-shirt, denim jeans, leather boots, and a leather jacket in her hand, she looked more cowgirl than policewoman. Her one concession to the Half Moon Bay Police Department was her trusty baseball cap proudly bearing their crest.
Grace Scott dropped Kennedy at Coastside Net at eight-thirty.
Kennedy figured it was four-thirty in the afternoon in Camden Town, still time to sign on, pick up messages, and then nip down to Kelly Street station house to call James Irvine. One slight problem; Coastside Net didn’t actually open until nine o’clock.
Earlier on the way down Main Street with Grace, he’d noticed a growing crowd of men at a small space known as Mac Dutra Park, at the junction with Kelly Avenue. They were waiting for an infrequent supply of pick-up trucks that would pull up by the pavement on Main Street to, Kennedy assumed, take them off to do some casual, cash only work. He stared at all the faces for as long as was socially acceptable, hoping to see the overweight intruder with the green baseball cap from the other night, but no luck.
At eight fifty-seven, he headed back towards Coastside Net. They still weren’t open. Kennedy walked on up Main Street as far as the bridge under which Steve Scott’s body had been found. The earth on the bank looked more solid today. He would have a closer look later.
He pulled some dollars from a hole in the wall using his credit card. He liked the feel and look of the dollars. There was something reassuring about having the same notes in your pockets as the cowboys did, back in their day.
He considered going to visit Jennifer Rainbow at Moon News, but noticed a white van with the legend Coastside Net displayed on the side pull up outside the Internet store.
Five minutes later, Kennedy was up, albeit on fawn-like legs, on the World Wide Web. The reason he didn’t want to use a computer down at the Half Moon Bay police department on Kelly Avenue was because, still a novice in this arena, he found he got on much better without people looking over his shoulder. There was a pile of junk, several New Scotland Yard circulars, and messages from DS James Irvine, the Home Secretary’s office, DC King, and even one from ann rea.
DS James Irvine had interviewed Maggie Littlewood in the company of her husband Roger and, according to DS Irvine, Maggie - prompted by Roger - admitted that not only did she “introduce” - “introduce” was apparently the word Maggie used to describe her pimping, posh pimping but pimping nonetheless - Miss Chada and Miss Chloe Simmons to Patrick Mylan. She had also introduced him to the pervious concubine before Miss Chada, who was called Gina Webb, and before that Patrick Mylan’s woman was the very same Maggie Littlewood herself. Roger’s theory was that when Patrick “outgrew” Maggie, which happened just before Roger and Maggie met, she continued to love him through the girls she procured for him. Irvine’s theory was Maggie was doing it to pay off her substantial gambling debts.
Kennedy thought it wasn’t the first time in a case that people like Maggie tried to head the police off at the pass by giving them relatively harmless information like, in this case, the tale about her bookie friend, in the hope of hiding a bigger secret. Maggie could have saved everyone a lot of time. Although it wouldn’t have solved the case immediately, it would have helped Kennedy and his team rule out a lot of unimportant information.
Maggie Littlewood also admitted to Irvine that she had been very happy when Mylan had moved on from Chada to Simmons, claiming that Miss Chada was obsessive and appeared to be gaining some kind of hold over Patrick Mylan.
The email from the energetic and resourceful DC Dot King advised Kennedy that she’d tracked Gina Webb, now Mrs Gina Perfect, down to an address in the suburbs of Chicago, where she’d been living for the last ten years, happily married and bringing up a family.
Dot King also advised Kennedy that ann rea had been on to North Bridge House wanting to know how to get a message to Kennedy. King had suggested email would be the best route, and assuring her it would be completely private. The Camden Town journalist also wanted to know when Kennedy would be back in Camden Town. King, honestly, told Miss rea she didn’t know.
The email from the Home Secretary’s office was friendly, asking Kennedy how he was getting on with his investigation, giving him more information on the extradition process and requesting that Kennedy keep them in the loop.
Kennedy had saved ann rea’s email until last.
“Hi, Kennedy,” she started. “I hear you’re in the USA, you always said you wanted to do that. Anyway I recently went to see the Blue Nile perform at Somerset House, and when I got home I wrote this to you. It’s not really a letter, in that I need or want a reply. Think of it more as a journal page I wanted to share with you. I needed to get it to you before I lost my bottle. I think the note says things, important things I’ve not been able to say. It’s helped me come to terms with us. I’ve scanned the actual page and attached it - here’s hoping you’ve managed to master the art of opening attachments.
That’s all.”
Kennedy opened the attachment. Not only could he open it but he also printed off a copy for himself. He folded the copy, put it in his pocket, paid his very reasonable bill to Steve and headed out into the hot Half Moon Bay morning.
He wandered back down Main Street into the town and found a seat on a street bench opposite the Spanish style Half Moon Bay Inn. Although the sun was hot, there was a pleasant breeze. He opened the copy of ann rea’s email and read:
Christy, Sunday past, I forced myself to go to the Blue Nile Concert at Somerset House. It was just so spiritual. He (pb) opened his mouth and I almost melted, it was like the perfect concert, the perfect final concert to see and I’d quite happily stop doing everything after being allowed to experience that. I thought of you Christy in every word he sang. When I heard him sing I knew we were all over; I knew you had to be the last true love of my life. Equally I knew and accepted that due to my lack of trust or belief in what we had I’d shattered something fragile, precious and although I was afforded enough of an insight into what we had, I knew we could never get it back. The thing that scares me most about love Christy is how close success and failure are. As Paul Buchanan sang not so much about lost love, as about losing the ability to love, you knew he knew that happiness was not always something to be desired; sometimes there’s just too great a price to pay. I know I’m waffling but during the concert all my thoughts were collected in perfect order and I could see this flawed perfection that he sang about - wipe the tears from your face - and I really experienced something special. But then… you come out of the concerts and you feel your jeans are too tight; you feel you should have washed your hair before you left home; the first two buses are packed so full you can’t even get on, even to stand; someone hits on you and you seriously wonder do these people really believe that anyone with even half a brain will react to them; the taxi driver doesn’t want to take you because he’s going in the opposite direction and then it rained and rained and rained and I just sat down on someone’s doorsteps and cried and do you know why I cried Christy? I cried because I didn’t have you to come home to. With you to come home to all of the above is just the daily crap that you brush
out of your way. Without you to come home to all of the above becomes your life, my life. I swear to you I couldn’t stop crying and then this man with grey hair and wearing a leather jacket came up to me. He was very gentle, quietly spoken with a Scottish accent and he sat down beside me. He didn’t say anything obvious like, ‘it’s going to be okay.’ I think he actually said, “I wonder what Wayne Rooney feels when he misses an open goal?” He just sat with me and stayed with me until I stopped crying. When I stopped crying he helped me up and he whistled at the top of his lungs until he found a cab that would stop for him and then he put me in it and he waited until I gave the driver the instructions and when he was satisfied that the driver was going to take me home without complaint he closed the door. But as he closed the door we looked each other in the eye for the first time since we met. And he nodded a gentle, “I know.” That was it, just, “I know.” And as he closed the door and the cab pulled away from the pavement I realised it was Paul Buchanan. I turned around and looked out the back window of the cab just in time to see him pull up the collar of his coat and head off into the crowd and the wind and the rain.
Kennedy reread her words two more times and realised why she’d been so desperate to get a copy to him. Her note, the page from her journal, or whatever it was, really summed up what they had and, equally, what they didn’t have. Without actually saying it, she’d spelled out that there was no sense in trying to get back to what they had and she put the blame firmly at her own door step.
He felt a weird sensation; he felt so far away from both Camden Town and ann rea. But he acknowledged he didn’t feel sad. He found himself more preoccupied by what was ahead of him rather than what was behind him. He realised that he and ann rea probably started to deal with their break-up from the moment they got together, which was probably why it took so long to get it together in the first place.
Kennedy had always figured men and women say more about themselves by what they do rather than by what they say.
When Kennedy met up with Grace ten minutes later in the Half Moon Bay station house, he didn’t tell Grace about the note from ann rea. He tried to work out what that said about himself.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Good, you’re here,” Grace said enthusiastically when she spotted him walking into the reception area of the station house. “Mactoo is waiting for us, and then we’re treating Coach Goldberg to an early lunch.”
“Now tell me this,” Mactoo said by way of greeting Kennedy, “how come every time you guys go to the elections, you always, but always, pick the wrong guy, and the only time you didn’t pick the wrong guy was when you picked a woman?”
“Why don’t you ask me one on cricket,” Kennedy suggested.
“Funny you should bring that up,” Mactoo replied, looking as if he were moving in for the kill.
“Kevin, for heaven’s sake, can we get on with this please?” Grace pleaded.
“Sorry, Officer Scott,” Mactoo backtracked. “Please fire away with your questions, Inspector Christopher Kennedy.”
“Christopher is it?” Grace said, raising her eyebrows. Kennedy sank his head, “Sorry, sorry Inspector, but you have to admit it’s a funny name.”
“How long had you known Officer Steve Scott?” Kennedy asked.
“Since we were kids.” When neither Kennedy nor Grace stopped him he kept talking. “Okay, there were three of us, three buddies, that’s Steve Scott, Don Miller and me, and we were all the same age. When we were nine we used to go and search for these beautiful Japanese glass floats. Don Miller’s mother collected these floats, which were used to buoy fishing nets. Anyway, for some reason or other these glass floats, some very big and like balls and some smaller and oblong like large sausages, would always float in with the first spring shower. So we’d all take a day off school and go to the water over at Princeton, and on the way we’d stop at the bakery in Half Moon Bay, collect a few bottles of milk, a few bottles of buttermilk, and a few chunks of butter. We’d take off our shoes and socks, roll up our trousers and walk the beach looking for the Japanese floats. At the same time, we’d collect the cork floats that had come off the local fishermen’s nets, and we’d trade those back to the fishermen for crab meat, and then we’d nip back into Half Moon Bay and get some freshly baked bread - still hot from the oven - and we’d sit on the pier, butter our bread, eat our crab meat and bread with the butter now melted into it, and drink our milk. I can actually taste it now. Those were the best days of my life, and Mrs Miller used to be so happy when we managed to get her some of the Japanese glass floats.”
“I never knew that story, Mactoo,” Grace whispered.
“You know, I’d forgotten it myself, Grace. It was just when the inspector here asked me how long I’d known Steve, the scene of the four of us, Steve, Don Miller, his mum, and me, sitting on the pier enjoying our feast flashed into my mind.”
“Good. Thank you,” Kennedy continued, happy for the insight into the young Steve Scott’s life.
Kennedy felt that too often on cases, the victim is sadly nothing more than a corpse. He felt it was vitally important that in someway, he give them back a bit of their lives again, if only so people outside the immediate family would be allowed to steal a glimpse of the magnitude of the life lost and how devastating for the loved ones the loss can be. Too often the focus of attention falls on the family of the murderer, while those family members of the deceased try, mostly unsuccessfully and in total obscurity, to cope with the fact that their lives will never, ever, be as enriched as they were before the loss.
“Mactoo,” Kennedy began, “would you mind talking us through the last few cases you worked on with Officer Scott?”
“Your run of the mill Half Moon Bay stuff.” Mactoo consulted his notebook through his wire-framed spectacles. “We both went to a disturbance up on Spindriff Way, just off Highway One, where two female senior citizens, neighbours, both well in their seventies, who should have known better, were physically fighting with each other. One of them had a truckload of topsoil delivered so she could reseed her garden. The truck driver tipped his load across the border of both their properties, and the lady who was doing her garden took her time clearing her soil from her neighbour’s garden. The other woman started spraying the first woman and her pile of dirt with her hose. The wet woman started shoving the other woman around, and that’s apparently when the scuffle broke out. We arrived and separated both ladies, and both filed battery charges against each other which we had to forward to the district attorney’s office.”
Noting that Kennedy’s new notebook was still unused at the end of Mactoo’s information, Mactoo agreed, “Yeah, you’re probably right, nothing there.”
Kennedy experienced a quick flash that Mactoo might be the person behind the intruders up at the chief’s ranch. Now that would make sense, Kennedy thought, as Mactoo continued to study his notebook. He could know of something in the case file that he felt was for some reason incriminating and he needed to get rid of. Kennedy couldn’t believe anyone outside of the Half Moon Bay Police Department would be aware of his endeavours. But then, if Mactoo were aware of something, surely Chief Donohue must have access to the same information? If the chief and Mactoo were sitting on something, that might account for the case’s not being solved.
“Here’s a bad one for you,” Mactoo announced, breaking into Kennedy’s thoughts. “On Friday, March 24th of this year, Officer Scott and myself were called out to investigate a brutal attack by one teenage girl on another.”
“The Florence Asher Case?” Grace said, her face growing very serious.
“Yes, that’s the one.” Mactoo continued, glancing at his notes. “It happened just after school, outside City Hall by the bus stop. A local girl pulled another girl off a bus and beat her up really badly using her fists and a hardback reference book. There were several other adults and teenagers around at the time of the incident, but no one seemed willing to interfere.
“By the time we got there she’d run off,
but enough people had identified her as being one Florence Asher, and we had no trouble tracking her down to a coffee house on the opposite side of the street. When we arrived, she was offering a BJ to one of her male classmates to give her an alibi for the time of the beating. The negotiations were still going on when we arrived.”
“Jesus,” Grace said, “I hadn’t heard about that bit.”
“It was all a bit stupid. She still had the reference book with her other books, and it was visibly splattered with blood on the cover. On top of which, several people had positively identified her. We arrested her, took her to the station house where she was charged with assault. She didn’t even spend a night in jail. Her dad’s lawyer worked away efficiently behind the scenes, and she was released later that evening.”
“Her father is a big IT man,” Grace started to explain, “a billionaire a few times over.”
“Was Officer Scott annoyed about her being released without charge?” Kennedy asked.
“I think we were both more bemused by the whole incident.”
“What happened when it came to trial?” Kennedy asked.
“It didn’t,” Grace declared.
“Word around town was that Mr Asher paid off the other girl’s family. They went away quietly, refused to press charges, and claimed the stress of going to court would disrupt the victim’s forthcoming exams.”
“Did you discover what the beating was about?”
“A boy,” Mactoo claimed.
“A boy?” Kennedy said. “What age was Florence?”
“Sixteen,” Mactoo replied. “The boy was Aaron Mullkerin. He’s from a good family here in the town. A nice lad, good at basketball. He was apparently more attracted to the less sexually experienced victim than the promiscuous Miss Asher.”
“Would it be possible to see the case notes?” Kennedy asked.
“Of course,” Grace replied before Mactoo had a chance to consider the request.
