The Maggie Murders

by J P Lomas

  Her maternity leave had at least made it easier for her to repair some of the breaches in her relationship with Jen and the pregnancy had brought them closer, though she hoped it wasn’t giving her eldest any ideas. Jane had been pleased by the pregnancy, though worried at first over the age thing – not helped by her sister-in-law Fiona who thought any woman over 30 who had a child was just asking to die in the throes of labour… In the end it had seemed even easier than when she had had Leo and the break had come at the right time for her. A few years back she would have killed to make D.I. and lead her own team, but now domestic bliss seemed much preferable to the stresses and strains of command. The late nights and anti-social hours no longer seemed to be worth the few extra grand a year she’d be paid for them. Now she was happier to clock off on time and share her time with Max and Tim. And quite possibly Jen and Leo if they were ever content to share an evening with the old ‘uns…

  She knew Spilsbury had opted for early retirement and imagined him sunning himself on the Costa Brava. He was probably only a few sun loungers away from some of the old lags he’d helped to send down in Essex. Perhaps they were reminiscing together over a few beers for old times’ sake? She’d grown to tolerate him, but he’d clearly been winding down throughout the 12 months they’d spent on the Baker case and now only a D.S and a couple of D.Cs kept the files open.

  Spilsbury had fancied the wife for it, but they’d never been able to prove it. It seemed to her that it was Connie’s lifestyle he had wanted to punish, or had he been jealous of it? Jane banished the thought. Unlike quite a few in the force Spilsbury’s marriage had worked out well. She and Tim had even been invited to his Ruby Wedding; however after their falling out over whether to charge Connie for Baker’s murder she had lost the warmer feelings she’d begun to generate towards him and had refused to attend. She’d heard a rumour that Spilsbury had come down with something nasty shortly after leaving the force, but had dismissed it as canteen gossip. Some of them had never taken to his London ways.

  As for her, the arrival of baby Max had given them a second wind, not that they’d really needed one. They were financially secure, having sold their old house for nearly three times what they had paid for it and had been able to move into an even bigger place into the bargain.

  It was Sobers she pitied. They’d set him up and watched him fail. Derek had often said that no-one noticed if a white man failed in England, because they did it all the time, but let a Black, Asian or Female have anything less than a perfect record and they’d be thrown to the wolves.

  Perhaps Maggie was right after all? When the men in her government had sensed weakness, they’d tried to bring her down; she’d led them for ten years and they’d plotted against her. Though Tim had said the only reason she was successful, was because she had more balls than her entire cabinet put together. In his view, she might be known as the Iron lady, yet she got away with it because she acted like a man of steel.

  She reflected that she’d never really seen her husband angry, until lately. A few years ago his jokes about Thatcher would have been just that. Normally so good at keeping home and seeing to the kids, he’d got politicised of late: berating Tory MPs when watching ‘Question Time’, delivering leaflets for C.N.D. and organising coffee mornings in aid of the Sandinistas. She was just grateful Greenham Common was women only; otherwise she’d probably have found him running the coffee stall there, whilst Jen and Leo distributed copies of Socialist Worker…

  Well, it had certainly improved his sex drive!

  Her mind fluttered back to Derek. She had quite fancied him at first… silly, really. She had then fallen deeply in love with him, but not the type of love that got the young WPCs giggling as they joked about his ‘black mamba’, or even the desire she’d seen in that young journalist’s eyes. Maybe it was why she got to thinking about having a son, because by the end it was a much deeper love she had felt for Derek. His resignation from the police had devastated her and for a time she had considered joining him; a selfish gesture when you were the breadwinner for the family.

  It was her memory of that first failure and her later conviction that the case was not finished that had made her so determined to be seconded to this murder. She’d warned the Super the night before and had bent his ear for at least ten minutes about her theory. It had been probably to shut her up that Osborne had agreed to let her tag along with him on the off-chance that another murder might follow on the heels of the Conservative leadership election.

  She could still remember the look of incredulity on D.I. Spilsbury’s face when she had first made the connection with the nursery rhyme during the Baker murder:

  ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker…’

  ‘So do you think we should put out an alert to all candlestick-makers if Maggie decides to call another election?’ had been Spilsbury’s scoffing retort.

  But now the candlestick-maker was dead.

  ****

  Jez Carberry towelled his lean and toned body in the shower room just off his office. The gym membership had certainly paid off he thought as he gave a narcissistic look at himself in the wall’s mirrored surface. At his age there was little danger of running to fat, but he liked the look of hunger on her face whenever they were together.

  Having bought an expensive canal side apartment in Exeter, he had saved himself some of the money it had cost him by using it as both a home and his business address. Chez Jez as he liked to style it was his way of showing the world that he had made it, or was certainly well up the ladder of success.

  In many ways it was like sharing a flat at university. His two hirsute staff hunched in front of their computers with take-away cartons and comics littering the floor were not a million miles away from the boys he’d studied with at UEA, in either the looks or conversational department. Both Luke and Stuart sported longish hair, and always wore jeans with T-shirts that advertised various combinations of metal bands: Def Leopard, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Saxon, AC/DC and Rush being among the favourites– occasionally he felt tempted to cry ‘Snap’ when the bands on both his software designers matched, but usually he was just relieved when a favourite T-Shirt had been changed after a week or two.

  At times he’d even been driven to giving new tops to them in a bid to freshen the often stale air of JAC Games Ltd (the A stood for Adam – his middle name); even so he would not have swapped his staff for all the perfumes of Arabia. What they lacked in personal hygiene, they made up for in genius. It was their dedication and application to game design which had seen the projected figures on his business plan leap off the charts. Under his direction they’d cornered the market in real time strategy games for home computers.

  ‘Superpower!’ had been the release that had propelled them to a front page cover on ‘PC Gamer’ and had made JAC Games a lucrative return on their investment. Players had to manage not only the military budget of a Superpower, but also finesse its economic development, build alliances and fight wars via client states to gain world supremacy in this turn based strategy game. Players could choose to control the USA, USSR, China or the UK in their quest for total power.

  The back room of the shop from which they used to work, had now been given over to its proper purpose as a storage facility and the front of the premises gave them an outlet to sell and trade computer games on Exeter High St, manned by another couple of metal-heads. Though to be honest, that revenue stream was now all but redundant given the fact they now had six titles being distributed both nationally and internationally.

  At this moment though, it was his personal turn based strategy game with Mags that mattered. He knew now that this was most certainly the endgame. She’d made the opening gambit three years’ ago and now he was about to take her king. After his last move he had a feeling it was now going to be mate in one.

  ****

  Connie’s gaze had become attuned to the azure waters of the Mediterranean and her skin had acclimatised to the
unseasonal warmth of the Spanish sun. Even with Christmas approaching, it was still clement enough to sit outside. She knew many people still wanted her banged up in a tiny cell and denied all but the basic staples of life. These were the same people who would happily welcome back hanging and who might not flinch at stoning for adultery. To be honest it was the latter which had caused most people to censure her and been the cause of her enforced exile in Majorca.

  She sipped her coffee listlessly as she awaited Carlos to return from the hypermarket. Tamping one of the dirt cheap cigarettes on the plastic table top of the sea front café, she was about to turn away from the newspaper carelessly discarded by the English pensioners in search of winter sun, when she caught sight of her photograph under the lurid headline.

  ‘Maggie Murders Mount – Has the Sexmouth Slayer been Stitched Up?’

  Having made a deliberate attempt to cut herself off from all news back home after her trial, Connie had still sensed there was something in the air. She kept herself apart from most of the ex-pat community and shunned most of the holiday hotspots, but news of the leadership election had filtered through to her sub-consciousness and part of her had half hoped to hear of another murder. She may have been acquitted by a jury of her peers and yet the General Public in all its wisdom had never forgiven her.

  She went over to the table and flicked through the tabloid. There was a box out on Calum’s murder which included details of her trial and acquittal. Inevitably the focus had been on her sex life. As with the court case she had been painted as a heartless whore and ruthless bitch. Even her defence barrister had seemed uncomfortable with her alibi. The fact that she had loved Calum deeply and missed him each day with a searing sense of regret was never mentioned. The fact that she was appalled by his death and had nursed him back to something resembling health after his dreadful experiences in the Falklands didn’t get a look in.

  To the outside world she was the bad girl. Even her father had finally cut her off. The fact that he had been so opposed to her marrying Calum in the first place was now replaced by his contempt for the way in which he regarded her as having betrayed him. Like the public he perceived her as a tramp and hadn’t spoken to her since the trial. She still felt he didn’t believe in her innocence and knew that most of the people she had once counted as friends believed her to be guilty.

  Her own legal team had even advised her to try and make a deal. They hadn’t put much effort into finding witnesses to prove her alibi. It was a combination of luck and the brave testimony of an undergraduate who had worked that summer as a part time chambermaid at the Royal Standard Hotel, which had got her off a life sentence in some lesbian hell hole. The nineteen year old Geology student from Newham had come forward in Connie’s defence, when she saw reports of the case on the national news. Given the sensational coverage of the case in the Media, Yvette could just as easily have been watching the reports in Outer Mongolia as Inner London.

  The fact that the police had missed Yvette’s statement in their enquiries was one of the many blunders in the Crown’s case against Connie. The seasonal nature of the work and the cash in hand payment culture at the hotel had meant that there had been no accurate rota of who had been working there on the night of the murder. Having found a better paid job at another hotel, closer to her university in Exeter, the young geologist hadn’t known at the time the importance of what she had witnessed on her last Friday shift at the Royal Standard; whilst the police hadn’t been overly concerned about establishing an alibi for their prime suspect.

  Yvette Fielding had held up well under cross examination and verified that there had been a man in Connie’s room there that night; but the fact that Connie hadn’t known the name of the man she slept with that night and could not even be sure of his description had become another damning plank in the Prosecution’s case and an easy piece of leverage for the tabloids to besmirch her character with. Yet Connie had wanted sex and not a relationship – she had Calum at home who gave her intimacy, he just couldn’t give her the physical side and why should she have to spend the rest of her life as celibate as a Catholic priest? They hadn’t taken any vows before God when they’d married in the registry office and so she had felt no need to go for the ‘in sickness and in health’ crap. Although if that referred to the amount of care and attention she had nursed him with, she felt the very saints and angels in whom she didn’t believe should be singing hallelujahs to her!

  Yvette’s corroboration that the man had existed and her repeated assertion that she had seen Connie leave the following morning had sowed the first seeds of doubt in the jury’s mind. These doubts undoubtedly flourished when the overdressed mini cab driver, who was the Prosecution’s star witness, broke down under cross examination and was revealed as a man of very peachable character with a string of minor convictions. Without Byrne’s perjured testimony, there was only circumstantial evidence left against her; although very convincing circumstantial evidence.

  Fortunately, any seeds of doubts in the jurors’ minds must have germinated into sunflowers given an equally unimpressive performance in the witness box from the Prosecution’s next witness; the overly florid and increasingly rotund Chief Inspector who had arrested her, or former Chief Inspector she had learnt in court, as the man had now wisely retired. At least her very expensive lawyer had partly redeemed his handsome fee by digging up the dirt on Spilsbury. The story about him allegedly assaulting a school teacher in his quest for the truth had been uncovered and this added further weight to the defence’s case that the police had done more than a little leaning on witnesses to get a conviction. For once the focus had been taken away from her own moral shortcomings.

  Even then, it was an anxious wait for her in the cell beneath the courthouse. She wouldn’t be the first person to suffer a miscarriage of justice, but unlike the Guildford Four she was unlikely to be the centre of a campaign to get her released. A life sentence would take her well into her dotage and the idea of prison filled her with horror. She knew the saying that if you had survived public school you could survive prison; however she very much doubted whether her privileged schooling in Cheltenham had been in the minds of whoever had coined that particular saying. Her cut glass accent was more likely going to get her cut with glass if they locked her up with council estate junkies and state schooled drugs mules.

  After her acquittal it had been impossible to remain living in Exmouth. Even though the damage to their home had now been put right she could feel every stare, gawp and glance as she went about her daily life. Her friends and colleagues had not stuck by her and she had no family in the town. The one friend whom she thought would understand her hadn’t even turned up at her trial and no longer answered her calls. Much of the money that she had supposedly murdered Calum for had been spent on securing her own freedom. In desperation, she had raised some cash and tried to repair some damage to her reputation by agreeing to sell her story to The News of the World, although the fee would have been far higher if she’d complied with their suggestion of posing topless for the accompanying photo shoot. Naturally she’d refused; she did have a shred of dignity left.

  Well that was until the article came out, she didn’t recognise the person named as Connie Baker, or any of the words she was quoted as saying in Britain’s bestselling Sunday paper and any hope she might have had of being quoted sympathetically had gone. They’d found an old photo of her dressed as a tart at one of the charity events she used to attend and surrounded it with photos of six of her lovers. ‘The Queen of Tarts Confesses!’ was the banner headline they’d run it under. The only confession had been her attempt at explaining why she went with other men. Unfortunately for her, The News of the Screws lived up to its nickname and delivered the guilty verdict on her that the jury had been unable to reach.

  Having holidayed often in the Balearics, she decided they would be the best place for a bolthole. Selling up in England gave her enough to buy a finca on the less touristy side of Majorca and another two bedroom
apartment to rent out in Palma Nova. With her savings and the income from the holiday let, she figured she’d be able to survive if not in the lap of luxury, at least comfortably.

  She looked up as Carlos returned with the shopping. He’d been teaching her Spanish and helping her get the other villa let. In many ways he reminded her of Calum before the accident. She left the paper lying on the table and went to help him load up the car. Sometimes it was best to leave the past behind. Perhaps this year she’d finally find the gift of peace which had eluded her for the last six Christmases?

  Chapter 21

  It had been very evidently a summons to the Chief Constable’s office. Clearly the top brass were in a flap about the latest killing. The press were already setting up for the duration outside the Constabulary’s headquarters at Middlemoor on the outskirts of Exeter. Driving through the gates Jane noticed that it was not only the locals and the nationals, but that a fleet of foreign TV vans had joined the armada of media vehicles parked outside.

  Chief Constable George Dent was seated between the flanking presence of both Deputy Chief Constable Chris Harding and Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Osborne when she was escorted in to what was more of a suite than an office by Dent’s P.A. Of course he would be far too grand to have just a secretary. The top brass were clustered around the polished mahogany conference table watching a BBC news reporter giving the latest details on the killings from Cathedral Close. Further down the table was DCI Neville Jordan; at one stage they had both been sergeants together, now he was nominally leading the enquiry.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Hawkins, Sir, ‘announced the flunkey.

  Dent waved an imperious hand and indicated she should sit down on one of the empty chairs at the end of the table.