Clock Face of Ills

by Paige Elizabeth Turner

  A nurse discusses family visits. Gloria McMaster is faintly inked on his suspect list. Whilst content to live on ‘her side’ of the home, the lure of life insurance and a healthy payout from the police pension fund would provide her an incentive to shed the matrimonial burden. For some, a simple, no-fault divorce carries no excitement. The aggrieved enjoy bouncing tales around the gossip table, clutching each sympathetic consolation: ‘Oh you poor dear, you shouldn’t have to put up with that’; ‘Come and stay with me for a while – we’ll put all this behind you’.

  McMaster hands the nurse a slip of paper: Jeff Main. 0755 245 1314. The name shadows his wife’s on his suspect list. Main, threatened with career-ending exposure to the Law Institute, has the number one motive at his fingertips: self-preservation.

  McMaster wakes mid-morning on the following day with enemies duelling in his head. Fulfilling one of Nostradamus’s unwritten predictions, one of those enemies enters the ward. En-route to an early court appearance, Main mutters the patronising: ‘Hi. How are you Phil?’

  McMaster casts a contemptuous glare. ‘You know who’s behind this?’

  ‘Behind what? I see you’re in a bad way. What happened?’

  McMaster details the incident, voicing greater concern over the destruction of his prized trees than his injuries. He recounts a fuzzy memory of a young woman consoling him; his strained words to a paramedic who caused more pain through inserting the intravenous drip needle than he had suffered from the impact; and he replays the painful extrication of his shattered body from the crumpled wreck.

  ‘And why would anyone want to see you hurt?’ Main asks.

  ‘I could give you a thousand reasons, right, but let’s start with the topic of our previous discussions. That’d help, wouldn’t it?’

  Blood drains from Main’s face. ‘I followed your instructions to the letter. Mechanisms had been put in place to accelerate the transaction. I’m sure that’d have nothing to do with the painful spot you now find yourself in.’

  ‘Bullshit. You speak to Jill?’

  ‘Yes. And she confirmed acceptance.’

  ‘She’s reported back? Is there a result?’

  Main looks at his watch as if to say: What do you expect? ‘It’s not yet twenty-four hours. I’m sure these things take some planning. Look Phil, I’ve had a complex case fall in my lap that requires undivided attention for the next three months. I have to release a few clients; I know this isn’t the best time, but you could consider it an opportunity to source another practice.’

  McMaster sees Main’s backpedalling as more than cold feet – he sincerely believes that his compulsion to withdraw is clear admission of his involvement. ‘What the fuck are you on about? If I wasn’t incapacitated, I’d throttle you on the spot. You don’t dictate terms. Weston know about this? I bet not. You can’t just go picking and choosing your clients like you do with your swanky aftershaves: “Ooh, I’ve had enough of Gucci. I think I’ll go a splash of Armani”. Plus, as I’m sure you’re aware, the Law Society would show great interest in a practitioner who plays one client against another.’ He wheezes a lungful of sanitised air: ‘Now what say we set a time for me to receive the fully executed documents so that when I’m out of here, and I expect to be within a few days, I can start planning my new property. And I’m over this for now so I thank you for your compassion and interest. I’ll touch base with you soon.’ He rolls over and feigns sleep.

  Main withdraws and swears he will no longer yield to McMaster. He didn’t get the chance to relay the mining information he’d unearthed. Twenty-four pages of obligations under the Land Registration Act 2002, Land Registration Rules 2003, and a host of information about ‘Mines Royal’ – administered by The Crown Estate. With McMaster now placing more emphasis on the property transaction than his rehabilitation, Main believes the vital information must be linked to the land purchase.

  He steps into his Range Rover. Glares at the windscreen. McMaster’s words bounce off: ‘… the subject property may have a fortune lying beneath it. There’s evidence of untapped natural resources on my land with the prospect of it extending into the adjacent property. The prophecy rattles around his head like coins in a tumble dryer. He wonders if Blackshaw’s Mill might be worth more to McMaster for its subterranean potential than its improvements above ground. And, his knowledge of McMaster’s investment portfolios confirms two points: McMaster would not embark on a half-hearted mission; nor would he invest half a million pounds in a dream.

  Main vows to learn more, but how? Professionally adept with archives and files, he is totally inept with field investigations.

  Elasticised minutes and hours in a hospital bed affords patients time to reflect, and chart future hopes. Few people prepare for death. By the time they’re in hospital, it’s too late. McMaster is nonchalant about committing to a Last Will and Testament. He’d once applied to see a specialist, but cancelled after his wife and daughter vacated the new home within months of moving in. His wife’s subsequent return failed to reignite his enthusiasm to restore the will-signing appointment and the marriage.

  A doctor performing morning rounds shatters his reflections. Doctor Ramesh checks McMaster’s pulse, enters 142 on the chart and murmurs: ‘Nurse will advise you of discharge details. For the moment, you’re fine.’

  ‘For the moment?’ McMaster’s question chases Ramesh from the ward. Bloody doctors. Won’t commit – pass the buck to the poor nurses. “For the moment” contaminates his mind.

  McMaster had parroted the same spiel to the seriously injured: ‘You’ll be fine, it’s only a small cut’ (to an elderly road casualty whose leg was severed to the bone); and, ‘It’s missed the major arteries,’ (speaking to a gunshot victim whose stomach seeped from two ·22 calibre bullet holes.) He is, therefore, cautious of Ramesh’s dispensable consultation and chooses to ‘get his house in order’ as is the office euphemism.

  He presses the nurses’ station buzzer: ‘I’m sorry. It might not be an emergency, but I need to call the police association to arrange my will.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not going anywhere soon, Mr McMaster,’ the nurse consoles. ‘I’ll arrange a phone, so long as you confine business to visiting hours.’

  That same evening, Walton Bryant attends with a briefcase of documents. Salesmen forgo seats at the FA Cup final or a Royal Command performance just to clinch a sales opportunity. Such is the power of commissions. McMaster signs over his estate not to his estranged wife, Gloria, but to Gillian Trotter.

  Walton advises against the decision, given that the McMasters are not divorced. He predicts lengthy legal battles if the legal wife is excluded in favour of a part-time lover.

  Phillip McMaster is prepared. ‘Gloria won’t fight,’ he replies. Whilst easily led on by the ‘take-him-for-all-he’s-worth’ brigade, her over-abundant pride would yell: Stuff Phillip. Let his floozy have her share. I hope she’s happy with it.

  He does not know his wife as well as he should.

  Walton leaves the ward, treasuring McMaster’s signature like a philatelist holding a Penny Black. He has the signature. And the commission.

  Gloria McMaster shares women’s sixth-sense about infidelity. She’d long ago joined the throng of sisters who coined the term ‘PWS’ (policeman’s wife syndrome). Its symptoms are universal. Hours of agony sweated in the pressure cooker of wonder: what time will my husband arrive home? Will he come home? And then there’s the second- and third-hand tales of locker room frolics with new WPCs; the need to stomach the ‘something’s just come up’ excuse; and forgiving their husband’s (often welcome) wilting passion.

  When Phillip is at home, Gloria wears the strain of initiating or continuing a conversation unrelated to police matters. Her husband has become so one track that shop talk is his sole contribution to domestic communication. ‘We’ll enjoy a good break soon,’ he says. Days later he cancels or reschedules, all in the name o
f the job. No attempt is ever made to rebook.

  Not content to pander to his needs and demands after being discarded to meal-making and laundry duties, Gloria took over the remodelled wing of the home, preferring to carve her own life as an artist, rather than rely on friends’ or council’s emergency accommodation. With no interest in immediate divorce or financial settlement, she fully supports her husband’s negotiations to buy Blackshaw’s Mill, knowing full-well that one day she will take him to the cleaners.

  During an afternoon’s sporadic pleasantries, Gloria pours her husband a tumbler of whisky and purrs ‘we need to talk.’ Most divorcees will attest that when a marriage enters its final chapter, there is little left to discuss. Gloria allows the marriage to float across the seas like a message in a bottle that will never wash onto a distant shore. A bottle full of unrequited love, unspoken apologies, and silent wishes for a prosperous future, all left to fade away on a piece of rose bordered parchment. But she fights to delay the inevitable: ‘We need time, Phil,’ she says, ‘to discover ourselves and contemplate the future.’

  Phillip replies with trademark sarcasm: ‘If we haven’t discovered ourselves in twelve years of marriage, we’re not likely to. And don’t think sweet words will make us stronger. They might just encourage ants to eat us both.’

  They continue to share the home, by address only, in their respective wings. Gloria is not blind to the goings-on in her husband’s life; the flow of female visitors; his implausible offer to acquire the adjacent property, and his inexplicable interest in farming. She’s queried the growing mountain of soil, the huge shed, and the hired excavator.

  Phillip fobs her off. ‘You don’t want to go down there. Boy’s toys,’ he smiles. ‘Going to make the place pay for itself at last.’

  Since the day Eve trained her eyes over Adam, curiosity embedded itself in the genetic makeup of the female gender. Gloria McMaster has inherited an overabundance. During a tranquil afternoon while Phillip is at work, she ventures to the shed to satisfy that curiosity. As expected, the snooping mission leads to a locked door. Through a pinhole in the covered window, she sees rows of lights, channels of white troughs sprouting plant life, and an outdoor setting for six. I’ve never even seen two people here, let alone six. Gloria cannot fathom the purpose of the huge shed, but knowing Phillip as she does, she is sure there is more to his new-found interest in primary production. She resolves to find the side door key or bound into his botanic paradise with a tray of coffee and biscuits.

  If the farm is going to pay for itself, she will ensure that she, too, will share its benefits.

  XXII

  Jill sits in her rental car, envelope open, the musty bouquet of aged banknotes transporting her to an exotic place. One thousand pounds. Little value in England. Riches in Bulgaria. ‘Half now, the other half when you’re done,’ Jeff Main had whispered.

  She’s honed her trademark assertive manner in dealings with middlemen and their associates: talk hard and act fast. Strong character is the vertebrae of her industry – and it must reign at all costs. Lying in wait is a kingpin-elect anxious to snap in two any underling who threatens, or has the potential to threaten, her journey to the pinnacle of Gangland Management. If Jill were to display a trace of indecision or physical frailty, she could fall to second best – a ranking she will not accept. She respects the need to maintain those ideals, for Main is a man of two faces – and she trusts neither of them.

  For three days, she’s tailed Angelo from morning until night, logging lunchtime café visits, profiling habits, and recording weekend activities – all of which form a databank of intelligence from which she will later create a calamity.

  Jill aspires to fulfil engagements with efficiency and neatness – and without complaint. She insists a textbook ‘hit’ should confuse investigators and remain for many years – perhaps forever – a crumpled page or incomplete document in the ‘unsolved’ file. Complex hits have, in the past, seen the deceased falling from a cliff face – no witnesses of course; a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head – with the victim’s own handgun; and conceivably her best handiwork, a job that earned her accolades throughout the underworld – death by electrocution.

  That particular job sits in Jill’s repertoire as her most callous, and one envied by colleagues around the world. She had been contracted by a disgruntled husband – the name’s not important – whose young wife, Stacey, was involved in an affair with a male work colleague. Mimicking similarly adventurous women, Stacey created sound alibis of nights out with the girls: surprise lingerie parties and unforeseen overtime.

  Her husband discerned that Stacey spent far too much time pampering herself in the bathroom if she were attending a ‘boring party’ of overpriced lingerie or perfume.

  Jill agreed.

  ‘Ideal setting for her downfall,’ suggested the husband.

  Jill didn’t argue. Nothing safer, from her perspective, given that suspicions surrounding a spouse’s death will first fall to the partner.

  A self-anointed entrepreneur of human termination, Jill advocates originality and abhors copying others. She is not content to battle with drownings, for the ironic reason that the victim would suffer an agonising death. She is also not prepared to regurgitate common film and television crime scenes – tossing a toaster into the bath, for example – that have been done to the death. Jill always fulfils client’s wishes with an extravagant plan. And this job was no exception. From a 10-metre electrical cord, she stripped back two metres of the external insulation, snipped the earth wire, and stripped back the two remaining wires to bare, shiny copper.

  The next stage required talent recovery from her youth. Basket weaving. Jill wove the two wires over and under a bath mat’s platted fabric until they resembled the sidings of Paddington Railway Station. The material’s density concealed the wires, but did not hinder their function. Content with her handiwork, she rolled up the mat, coiled the remaining six metres of flex, and stared at the clock. At that precise moment, Stacey’s husband would be disabling the master circuit breaker on his electrical fuseboard. Jill hoped he’d not have the common sense to use gloves.

  At the prearranged time, she attended Stacey’s home where the excited, and soon to be widowed husband, snuck her into a spare-room wardrobe – conveniently adjacent to the bathroom – where she would hide until alerted by the hissing shower. The husband darted off to the local pub to drink down a watertight alibi.

  After forty-five minutes of modelling a wardrobe of outfits, Stacey made final preparations for her evening dalliance. Footsteps pattered from bedroom to bathroom, transferring clothes, robe, makeup bag and other items the pretentious, over-adorned, philandering woman would wear to impress her beau. Silence took over until the shower spluttered and gushed – as did Jill’s heartbeat.

  She pulled the mat from her bag, crawled along the hallway, slithered beside the bathroom door and removed a damp shower mat. Stacey didn’t have a clue what was going on as she lathered up and gurgled a Celine Dion hit from twenty years’ earlier: my heart will go on forever…

  Jill smiled: I don’t think so.

  Jill could have re-enacted the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho – but she had something better. She took her bespoke mat, slid it in front of the shower cubicle door, and then ran the extension lead to a hallway power point. Flicked on the switch. Instant 220-volt shower mat – no towel required.

  After an agonising wait, the singing stopped, the water ceased, the shower screen slid open and Stacey stepped out. Buzz. Shriek. Buzz. Thump.

  Jill crept to the bathroom door. Stacey lay lifeless, her white feet criss-crossed like a serve of toasted waffles. Jill reached back, and with gloved hand flicked off the power switch. Ripped out the plug. Rolled up the mat and replaced the original. And then slid out unnoticed.

  A rehydrating lemon squash at the local, a subtle nod to a gentleman at the bar, and she was on he
r way.

  Jill snaps back to the present. One thousand up front. Balance on completion. Angelo’s exodus presents an interesting challenge because he is more alert than previous targets – save for his lapse at Blackshaw’s Mill. He knows there is always someone bigger, and tougher, in the world of drugs, scams and illegal gambling. Occupational hazard. If you’re crooked, there’s always someone wanting your piece of the action, just waiting to undermine you. Jill has learned of McMaster’s accumulated enemies, not only a consequence of ripping off colleagues but also because his aggressive temperament has alienated so many people. Jill figures that will provide a background for Angelo’s demise. And since he hasn’t taken heed of the first warning, the second will be an ultimatum.

  The plan is simple. She’d once likened the task to writing a memoir-based novel: conceive an idea; write the draft; refine and adjust, and then sit back and critically analyse the plot. She applies the formula to Angelo’s blueprint, starting with three ideas: a night-time bashing outside a club – that particular environment being one where everyone is blind and patrons daren’t whisper a word about anything or anyone. Jill knows the drill: ‘I don’t take notice of who’s who and who’s not. Sorry.’

  The second option carries a higher degree of risk, but is quick and easy: knock him from his beloved Harley on the motorway. A seventy-plus miles-per-hour motorcycle accident on a motorway would be horrific, more so should an eighteen-wheeler be gobbling his slipstream. If he didn’t die, he’d surely get the message.

  The third alternative has been successfully practised since Horace Smith and Daniel B.Wesson joined forces in 1852: shoot the bastard.

  XXIII

  Recent intelligence hastens my urgency to discover how deep Gillian Trotter is enmeshed with McMaster. It is an honour to be engaged by police to pursue a file. For that reason alone, I am incensed that Gillian seemingly sat by, watching the scene unfold in which her target was nearly crushed to death. In contrast, her compassion at the hospital leaves me at odds with her motives.