by J P Lomas
‘As a matter of fact I did. I thought it was rather clever, although I’m not so sure how clever you’re going to look with this line of questioning. Are you now trying to blame Agatha Christie for my husband’s death?’
‘No, we’re just considering whether there might be a link between one of her plots and the motive for your husband’s death,’ answered Jane as calmly as possible.
‘And so the next time you find someone stabbed to death on the Paddington to Penzance express, I suppose you’ll arrest the entire carriage and blame it on “Murder on the Orient Express”, Sergeant?’
‘What about the idea of concealing a crime in a sequence of others?’ demanded Osborne.
‘It’s a lovely idea, superintendent, but I’d think you’d be better sticking to Boys’ Own fiction. You and your lovely assistant have such fertile imaginations it’s just a pity to think how repressed you must be in all other aspects of your lives. Though of course you have my number, if you’d like any counselling; I like to think it’s not just the police who can be creative when it comes to making up fantasies.’
‘And how creative are you Mrs Mallowan, we know you went to Art school?’
For a moment, Jane thought she glimpsed something beneath the beautiful mask, but it went just as quickly as it came.
‘I don’t think we sell anything in ‘Scandalabra’ half as creative as the police can concoct. Or dare I say, half as controversial. Your case against Constance Baker could have been entered for the Booker Prize! Now, are you going to bring charges against me in the hope of fabricating another miscarriage of justice, or do the two of you still have some hopes of continuing in your careers? I hate to think about what would have happened to DCI Spilsbury if the cancer hadn’t given him an easy way out…’
It was Osborne’s hand on her shoulder which had stopped Jane reacting at that point. She hated herself for feeling so angry, but Maggie Mallowan could have had a successful second career in acupuncture, given her ability to place a needle so precisely on her pressure points.
‘And what if we told you that we had a witness who could place you at the scene of Calum Baker’s death on the night in question?’
Jane hadn’t meant to ask this question; even she knew it was a last act of desperation, but she had to try something to shake the self-possession of the woman facing her. She knew the face value of the evidence Debbie had given her, but it was all she had left.
‘Would that be our taxi driver friend? If you’re going to rely on perjurers and prefabricated evidence, I think I may as well leave now having rendered plentiful assistance to your enquiries.’
Maggie Mallowan was already rising to leave when Osborne officially terminated the interview.
Any hope that Jez Carberry might have contradicted what she was saying in the other interview suite went unrealised. No knock at the door came to inform them that Carberry had changed his story at the thought his lover might be a multiple murderer. DCI Jordan and DC Clark had been no more successful than they had; although they at least had been dealing with a more compliant suspect. Jez though had been resolute in his lover’s defence and had only become upset when Sandy Clark had suggested he was being taken for a ride. When Jordan had suggested the idea that Jez’s lover might be The Rub-a-Dub murderer, he’d laughed incredulously at the idea.
And now given that Jez had corroborated her alibi and that the search of her house had also revealed nothing pertinent to the case, they were going to have let her go without charging her. The one real hope they’d had was that one of them would crack and neither had given an inch.
It was only when they’d switched the tape off and were preparing to leave that Jane had nearly over-stepped the line. Still shaking at the vividness of the memory, she went in search of Tim’s precious malt whisky.
****
It was in the back of one of the lower kitchen cupboards that Jez discovered Steve’s house warming present. The bottle was buried under a pile of old computer magazines. Well, he had little need of the flat’s capacious food storage facilities given the number of eateries in the vicinity. It was as he was dislodging his booty, that he noticed the small packet jammed at the back of the cupboard. Figuring that a few aspirin might be in order the following day, he went to recover it, only to discover it was a half empty packet of sleeping pills.
Puzzled, he poured the garish liqueur into a clean tumbler and considered the unexpected find. It was possible Luke or Stuart might have left them there, but given their addiction to caffeine in all its forms he’d be surprised, whilst he personally had no trouble sleeping. Sipping on the exotic drink he hardly tasted its vile sweetness as his earlier mood of uncertainty returned to worry him.
There was something the pretty detective had kept harping on about in the interview which was trying to fight its way through the alcoholic wall he’d been trying to build. He’d become indignant in the interview and had been appalled by some of the questions they’d been asking him. Though fortunately he had been prepared; many of the questions were the ones he half expected his father to be asking him about her in the very near future. Of course the facts were that they’d made love and then she’d left him in the morning; she always did. And why would he remember that particular time any better than all the others? It wasn’t as if it was a one off!
Pick a date at random, say 6th July? Could anyone really remember what they were doing, or had done on a date like that? If something special, or out of the ordinary happened then maybe, but why would just another normal weekday stick in the memory? Most normal days were like any other, with perhaps only the weather, the people or the background music changing.
And yet his memory of that particular morning had not been as distinct as he thought he remembered it. Crumpling the packet in his hand, he knocked back another half tumbler of the bright yellow liquid; sometimes oblivion was the preferable option.
****
Pouring some of Jen’s diet coke into Tim’s single malt, her hand still trembled as she recalled the moment when her career had stood on the line:
‘You’re free to go, Mrs Mallowan.’
Jane had looked on as her prime suspect elegantly straightened her clothes, shook back her ash blonde hair and then Maggie Mallowan had had the temerity to return her stare.
It had been deeply unsettling in a way she still couldn’t explain; there was a word she was feeling for which might have described it, but at the same time she instinctively wished to smother the very idea she had almost grasped.
‘I’ve seen you before, Sergeant.’
‘I don’t think so,’ had been Jane’s stiff reply.
‘No, I never forget a face and you’re rather pretty, despite your years. Probably more fun than laughing boy over there.’
She had gestured at Osborne who was still smoothing his hair. And then Maggie Mallowan had touched Jane’s hair in a way which made her feel violated. Even now, looking back, she could still feel her gorge rising at the memory.
‘That’s it! You were in that café behind the coach station. It was the one with all that New Age shit; though it does sell some very decent coffee and proper bread. Can’t say I thought much of the man you were with – I presume it was your husband? Wasn’t he feeding a baby; I think it started yowling as I was placing my order?‘
Jane had tried to turn away, but there was something compelling about the way Maggie’s eyes bore into her.
‘Such a happy family grouping; Mrs Plod and her brood. Your children no doubt? I can’t say I’m really into girls, but your son is rather sweet, isn’t he? I expect he gets his good looks from you. He must be about the same age as Jez when I first met him. What do they say sweet sixteen and never been kissed? Why not have him pop around to my house one day, I can always find an opening for an eager young…’
Maggie Mallowan never had a chance to finish her sentence as Jane’s hand moved to strike her. Fortunately for Jane, Osborne had been even quicker than her. She felt her wrist encircled in a grip of
steel less than an inch from their suspect’s face. If the DCS hadn’t been so quick, or if Mallowan’s solicitor hadn’t already stepped out of the room, then Jane would have found her own career in ruins. But unlike Spilsbury, she’d been given another chance.
As it was Maggie Mallowan gave a triumphant smile and glided out of the room on her high heels.
It had taken an hour for Osborne to have even begun to calm her down. She would have still been in their local with him if her anxiety on checking on her children hadn’t made her fly home as soon as she’d felt a little more collected. As it was she’d already put in two calls from the kiosk outside the pub to a very surprised Tim. Jane realised there was no logic to her feelings and that there was no rationale to the threat she’d received, still she felt a good deal better with her family all accounted for and the front door double locked.
She knew now that she’d given Maggie Mallowan the reaction she’d wanted. Her buttons had been pressed more times than those on a vending machine for chocolate bars outside an overeaters’ anonymous meeting and she’d fallen for it.
Osborne had been very sympathetic, literally pouring wine down her throat, but he at least hadn’t given into Maggie Mallowan’s goading. Although he’d been gallant enough to admit he too had been severely tempted to snap and good humoured enough to joke that only the old school courtesy of his public schooling had prevented him from doing so.
She added more of Tim’s whisky to the glass; well at least the family still had a breadwinner left and she could replace the whisky tomorrow. And she could at least put the lie to some of Maggie’s taunts when Tim had returned from putting Max to bed.
Unfortunately though, they still didn’t have a case to make against Maggie Mallowan. After the failed attempt to prosecute Connie Baker for the murder of her husband, based on very similar circumstantial evidence and a trumped up statement from a supposed star witness, both detectives realised they were going to need a watertight case this time around.
Their one hope of extracting a confession had failed; their lady was not for turning.
Part 4
1990
“The most unkindest cut of all”
‘Julius Caesar’ -Shakespeare
Chapter 28
Only a couple of digits had changed that January and yet the world was changing greatly. The Cold War which had divided the continent was about to end and the fear of nuclear apocalypse was about to be lifted. The Tiananmen Square Massacre in China might have delayed the pace of reform in Asia, but both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would be credited with helping to raise the Iron Curtain which had divided Europe.
Yet Mrs Thatcher’s chance of being a major player in that new Europe was diminishing with every passing month. A decade ago both major parties had been led by their avowedly Euro-sceptic wings; the Labour Party had even pledged to withdraw Britain from the European Union. By the end of the 80s, a more Euro friendly Labour Party had emerged from a bitter civil war and by re-positioning itself at the centre ground of politics it had suddenly made itself electable.
It was now the turn of the Conservative Party to be torn apart by internal wrangling over Britain’s relationship with the European Union. The increasingly autocratic leadership style of the longest serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century was another bone of contention. With opposition rising on the streets to a new Poll Tax, the idea of toppling an increasingly dictatorial leader closer to home than Eastern Europe was becoming increasingly thinkable for many Tories.
****
The cityscape looked like a battlefield. Never had Trafalgar Square been better named thought Sobers as he stared helplessly at the unfolding anarchy which was turning the centre of the capital into a scene more usually associated with Beirut or Belfast, than the tourist hotspot it normally was. Brixton in the riots had never been this bad.
Lines of police in full riot gear had prevented him from going down many of the streets and no-one had believed that a tall black man in smart casuals was in fact a local vicar. He cursed himself for not wearing his clericals, but then they’d probably have had him up for impersonating a priest. At times he felt that this was something which was not so far from the truth. His decision to prefer ‘civvies’ to his dog-collar had been made in an attempt to reach out to those in his parish who were put off by shows of authority; it had also been an effort to try to win over the younger generation by abandoning the more fuddy-duddy image of the Church. And yet there were times when he felt the full regalia might have been useful.
Palls of smoke hung over central London and broken glass from smashed display windows lay strewn over pavements once packed with camera clicking tourists. Burnt out cars and buses marked the path of the rioters and sirens pierced the air. Normally busy shops stood empty; their fronts smashed in and their contents either in the hands of the mob, or lying on the pavements outside. Some scattered Hermes scarves and Mulberry bags added a dash of colour to the usually drab London pavements.
He flinched as a mob of masked people ran past him on the other side before being halted by a wall of riot shields and raised batons.
‘Which side are you on?’ had become one of the chants of the day, as rioters hurled bricks and debris from looted shops at the thin blue lines of unarmed police trying to halt their frenzied and lawless advance.
Having already seen one young recruit being treated for a head wound in the back of an ambulance, Sobers could well imagine the terrified answers of the police in that line. They’d be looking out for themselves and their own. He could remember the fear he’d experienced when standing in a similar line at the so called Battle of Lewisham in the Queen’s Jubilee year. It was the first time he’d ever been issued with a riot shield and though the weight of it gave the semblance of some protection, it had seemed much less hefty when the National Front had been raining down bricks and petrol bombs on him and his colleagues.
The one call he’d dreaded hearing was ‘Man down!’; the shout that meant an officer had been knocked to the ground. Yet on hearing it every policeman in the vicinity would have tried to have gone to the aid of their injured colleague, whatever the cost to their own safety might be. You never abandoned your own.
Though never having been involved in policing the Brixton Riots, he’d seen the wanton destruction the rioters had caused to their long suffering local community. His poor mother had been terrified and his niece hadn’t slept for months afterwards. He sympathised with the grievances which were the cause for that riot, but felt that it was the thugs and the bullies who had become the voices for the locals and not those who were trying to explore other ways of bettering themselves.
In his view the ones who were rioting against society were the ones making a grim parody of the very society they seemingly opposed. Their greed in looting the West End’s shops and their brazen defiance of social norms was just another part of the Me, Me, Me mantra of the 1980s. In attacking police and shop assistants, they weren’t attacking the wealthy or privileged, but young people like themselves who had decided to try and make something of their lives.
They might have claimed they were protesting against Maggie’s new Poll Tax, yet this wasn’t a revolution – it was shopping with violence.
He could never recall the country being so bitterly divided before; so much for a bright new decade!
****
K is for Kismet
It’s another word for Fate or Destiny. It derives from the Arabic word for division, as in apportioning our lot in life. Those people who think that the last words of our greatest ever naval hero sound a bit gay, prefer to think he said ‘Kismet Hardy’, rather than ‘Kiss me, Hardy’ before dying at Trafalgar.
Frankly, I think it’s a lot of nonsense. Nelson was having it off with one of the great beauties of the age, whilst packing his wife off to Exmouth in order to have more guilt free sex with Emma Hamilton in London. He was in no danger of being mistaken for a queer!
And no one minded his extra-marital re
lations! Well, at least not when he was beating the French left, right and centre. He even got away with having a ménage `a trois with Emma Hamilton and her husband in Naples and they still put up a bloody great statue of him overlooking the entire capital! Even the Brontës disguised their Irish origins by naming themselves after one of the many titles and honours heaped upon him, meaning generations of over conscientious school girls have had to agonise over whether to add an umlaut when writing essays on ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’!
A lifestyle like that and the prudes still get aerated about cleaning up his last words! When you’ve destiny on your side, it doesn’t matter how you behave; you’re untouchable.
Perhaps you should have read the tea leaves before taking on Maggie, Sir Anthony? You might have had the temerity to challenge the Iron Lady, but you certainly didn’t possess the Nelson Touch.
And now you’ve been deselected by your own constituency party! That’s what I call being hoist by your own petard. Stabbed in the back by your own supporters; well that’s the price of treachery.
And all those revelations in the tabloids about your decades long affair with a West Indian jazz singer, what a naughty boy you are! And all that guff about your wife condoning it, well that’s the old fashioned Tories for you. Keep all the dirty laundry in the closet and hope it never has to be washed in public. With Fate on your side, you might have ridden your luck, beaten Maggie to the leadership and no-one would have found your dirty little secret, as it is you’ve just become a footnote in the history books. Even Lady Nelson and Sir William Hamilton will be better remembered than you!
Imagine if we’d not only knifed Maggie in the back, but then gone on to choose a leader who was having an affair! The country would never have forgiven us.
