The Maggie Murders

by J P Lomas

  Again he thought that was an odd expression – if you were a bloke you never went round to a boy friend’s – unless of course you were a bender…

  Sure, Liddy was a bit younger than him, though he was pretty sure she was in Year 11 and she’d certainly seemed in to him when they’d got off the previous night. Part of his brain felt that they might have gone a lot further on the beach if some of Katy’s friends hadn’t started taking the piss out of them. The hormones which powered his bike trip over to the Bennetts’ house certainly argued that it was worth a chance and when he discovered that a rather hung-over looking Liddy was by herself he felt the gods were with him.

  Yet in the broad light of day, Liddy seemed different – if he’d been more attuned to matters feminine he might have realised she wasn’t wearing the make-up which had added a good few years to her last night. She was also a lot coyer, it took him quite a bit of cavilling to get through the front porch of their 30s semi and into the off-white lounge of the house. He’d had to point out that the absence of her parents’ Volvo gave the lie to her claim they were in and it had taken several glasses of cider before she’d even begin to cede as much territory to him as he had advanced on last night.

  They were fooling around on the sofa, with a good half of a bottle of cooking sherry he’d purloined from the kitchen emptied when he began to think Liddy’s resistance was at an end. Her ‘Frankie Says’ T-shirt was now draped over the magazine rack and Tears for Fears on the stereo were doing their best to help him sow his seeds of love. It was just Liddy’s denim cut offs and a black bra whose support she hardly seemed to need which were preventing him from making further encroachments on last night.

  He was peeling off his own T-shirt when his eye was drawn to the photos above the wood effect gas fire. An even younger Liddy in school uniform looking down at him suddenly caused his ardour to abate. The difference of a year can be a big divide in teenage relationships and that of several years becomes the type of abyss which no-one would blink at in later life.

  Disappearing to the downstairs toilet on a pretext, he splashed water on his face and resolved to make his excuses. On his return he was disconcerted to discover that Liddy had not only drained what was left of the sherry, but had also removed virtually all remaining obstacles for him. Her pair of white cotton knickers was more a flag of surrender than a last redoubt.

  A flickering flame of desire rekindled his lust as she drunkenly embraced him, the sherry sweetening Liddy’s eager if inexperienced kisses. Yet just as he made his final advance, the sound of her parents’ car turning onto the gravel drive panicked him into a most ungallant exit. Leaving Liddy to hurriedly gather her clothes from all points of the parquet floor, he made a dash for the kitchen door and the back gate he’d last used when playing hide and seek with Katy back in the 70s.

  He never had found out if Liddy had managed to blag her way out of the situation he left her in; for the next week he anxiously screened all incoming calls to his parents’ apartment in the fear that he would face repercussions for that afternoon and even sacrificed a Friday at the Wheatsheaf in case he ran into Katy or her mates. Recovering his racer from the house at dead of night, he’d been sure there was a twitch of curtain from Katy’s room and yet apart from a distinct sense she was avoiding him he had managed the remaining weeks between then and leaving for Norwich with little sense of reciprocity for his actions that day.

  Yet UEA had not provided him with the hedonistic bacchanalian lifestyle he’d begun to associate with the frat houses presented in the American films Steve had been renting. Freshers’ Week had, for a moment, seemed to hold out the possibility of recreating the teenage shenanigans of ‘Animal House’, when he met Barbara from London. A vivacious Drama student with flame red hair and a nasal piercing, she had captivated him with her exuberant personality, cracking smile and tight tops which emphasised her breasts. Breasts which he’d spilt a pint over in the student bar, only to see her shriek with laughter and remove her top leaving her in just a bra and leggings with no hint of embarrassment.

  For a week they’d been the best of friends and Barbara’s flirtatious touchy feely personality had made him expect it was only a matter of time before they became lovers and yet when she called him over in the library that Wednesday afternoon it was to announce to him (and whoever else might be listening – Barbara was only ever able to perform stage whispers) that she had decided to become a lesbian. She had chosen a good venue for this announcement, as the basilisk stares of the librarians soon put an end to his incredulous protestations.

  He’d looked on dumbly as she walked out of the library into the arms of a leggy blonde he’d also had the hots for in the opening week. The finale to her performance was planting a long, lingering kiss on the other girl’s gorgeous red lips. Jez hadn’t known whether to feel jealous or envious. He’d entertained a quixotic hope she might reconsider; however her T-shirts now told a different story. It seemed a woman needed a man like a fish needed a bicycle.

  The fallout was made doubly awkward by the fact that he had already signed up for the Drama Soc in Freshers’ week and owing more to his boyish good looks than any innate talent for acting had been cast opposite Barbara as her younger lover in Rattigan’s ‘Cause Celebre’. She’d been far too much of a Feminist to let him pull out of the production and he’d been forced to endure at close quarters her very public displays of affection with her girlfriend, who just happened to be the ASM on their production. The negative notices in the student paper had spoken of ‘seeing more chemistry in a Classics lecture than in Rattigan’s doomed lovers’. His only consolation had been that he had at least been correctly cast as the adulterous, young chauffeur in terms of his age and looks, whereas Barbara was completely miscast as the older woman.

  His romantic journey moved from the ridiculous to the sublime during his second year when he fell in love with Sunita from Birmingham. This beautiful Fresher had just begun her Computer Science degree and for Jez she was the most exotic girl he had ever met; her Indian ancestry made her both alluring and sophisticated in his eyes. For once a friendship with a girl seemed to blossom in a natural rather than forced way. They’d got talking over cigarettes one break time and for once Jez’s immediate agenda didn’t end with a picture of the two of them in bed together.

  With no non-white students at his school, Jez was a long way from being immersed in the multi-cultural society which was said to be sweeping Britain. In Exmouth even the local curry house had white waiting staff, whereas Sunita seemed to have stepped out of Channel 4’s production of ‘The Far Pavilions’. It sent Jez on a headlong quest to immerse himself in Indian culture – this was before he discovered that the almond eyed, henna haired Sunita had more of a taste for Hollywood than Bollywood and preferred Indie to Bhangra. He was even more mortified to find that her musical tastes were far more avant-garde than his. He’d given her a mixer tape of songs by the likes of: Paul Young, The Human League, Wham!, Spandau Ballet, and Culture Club hoping to impress her, only to discover her playlists were more likely to consist of: The Smiths, The Cure, U2, The Jam and Kate Bush.

  They had kissed just the once – tenderly, but passionately and to his surprise Sunita had initiated it. Sunita had suggested that they went to see The Sherbet Lemons play the Corn Exchange in Cambridge and on the way back she’d reached over to him as the others slept and parted his lips with her tongue. The trace of sweetness left by the Menthol cigarettes she always smoked remained with him to this day. He still recalled it as the most romantic moment of his life, being kissed by Sunita on the return coach to Norwich.

  It had been a goodbye kiss, not that he knew it at the time. Sunita’s family was never going to allow her to have a serious relationship with someone like him. He’d already known she had been promised to another; however he had harboured some idea that the two of them might run off into the sunset together. Yet Sunita had been too pragmatic for that, given that her family had supported her and had tolerated some of her
‘Western vices’ in the expectation that she would marry the man they’d chosen for her. She had liked the man they chosen for her, had no strong objection to marrying him and would not dishonour her family by losing her virginity before her wedding. She didn’t love Jez enough to allow something she annoyingly referred to as ‘a youthful passion’ to direct her life.

  It took him a long time to get over his feelings for Sunita.

  His Mrs Robinson moment came on his gap year after university. Having no interest in his father’s plans for him to make a career in The City, he’d decided to work for a year in order that he could afford to take a Masters the following year – Dad’s generous funding had dried up once Jez had declared he saw no future for himself in futures. An accomplished junior tennis player, there had been some talk when he was eleven that he might even have the potential to go pro, he’d kept it up at uni and had done enough to convince his former tennis club to employ him as a coach.

  Exmouth’s prestigious Crofton Club allowed the moneyed elite the opportunity to play on its exclusive outdoor courts, as well as to sip Camparis and Cinzanos at its members’ only bar. It also possessed a heated, outdoor pool, bowling green and an immaculate croquet lawn. Some of its junior members had gone on to play at County level and one girl had even gained a wild card for Wimbledon, going on to stir the nation’s press to bang on the patriotic drum as she knocked a Czechoslovakian player out in the first round, before crashing out in straight sets to a French girl in the second. Still, in the fallow years for British tennis following Virginia Wade’s centenary triumph in 1977 this was counted as a success.

  Jez found he was popular with many of the women he coached. Most of them were clearly just looking to improve their game, yet more than a couple made it quite clear to him that they found their athletic, young coach a tempting proposition. In The Wheatsheaf on a Friday, Jez would often exaggerate the hints and suggestions he had been given that week, as well as the attractiveness of his clients. Most were nowhere near as attractive as Steffi Graf; however one or two had certainly put Jez off his serve on more than one occasion. Yet when the proposition came it was done with an alacrity which took him by surprise.

  After a session, in which he’d picked up no signals whatsoever from his newest and most stunningly attractive client, a tall, lithe women who seemed to require no adjustments to her excellent technique and perfect poise, she suddenly asked him if he knew where the Radcliffe Hotel was. He began giving her directions when she stopped him with a sudden kiss and instructed him to be there by 8.00pm.

  He’d spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if it was a wind up. He kept expecting Jeremy Beadle to jump out of the shrubbery with a camera crew in tow and embarrass him on live TV. Quite what his last two clients made of his shaky and distracted coaching sessions was shown by their decision not to book him again. He showered twice before departing for the short walk from his seafront apartment block to The Radcliffe. The evening was cool and the red, green and yellow light bulbs strung between the lamp posts on the front were only needed for decorative purposes, as he reached the short flight of steps leading to its portico.

  Wondering whether they might be meeting in the bar, or even going for a meal, he had even taken £50 from his savings as a contingency, as he didn’t want anything going wrong tonight; the packet of condoms he’d purchased before going to university nestled alongside the notes in the front pocket of his stone washed jeans. The girl behind the small reception desk looked as if she might just have finished her O’ Levels and he was relieved to feel unthreatened by her. She simply gave him directions to Room Six. Given the amount of time and effort spent by the hotel on making its corridors and landings reflect Exmouth’s bygone Regency glories, it was a pity (if perhaps unsurprising) that Jez noticed very little of his surroundings on the short walk to her room.

  The fact that it happened so perfunctorily took him by surprise. He lost his virginity almost before he was aware of what he was doing. She’d opened to his tentative knock in nothing more than a towelling robe. Her foreplay was to drop the robe and lead him to the bed. Having never seen a naked woman in the flesh before, Jez was glad his body seemed to be responding to some sort of auto-pilot. The condom quite forgotten, he was enjoying the experience so much he was almost unaware of how quickly it had ended.

  ‘Your first time,’ had been her statement to him afterwards. He was pleased to see that there was a smile playing across her face as she said it, as a sudden feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment had replaced the elation of a moment ago. Jez realised that far from being displeased by what he now realised was an inept and rushed performance, his lover (how he was beginning to savour that word) was actually turned on by his inexperience. Her long hair tumbled on to his tanned chin and she began to caress him with a lightness of touch which made all his previous fantasies about this moment pallid conjecture. If he had noticed the ring on her wedding finger, then had not been the time to take issue.

  Even now he was uncertain of her true status. She was never one for revealing intimate details about herself in their meetings. He didn’t even know how old she was, if he had to guess he’d place her in her late 20s to mid-30s. Yet she had schooled him into becoming an able lover and their regular and frequent couplings were so intense that he didn’t really care for anything more than the moment. Once he had wished his weekdays away on looking forward to Fridays in The Wheatsheaf, now he hovered by telephones desperate for her to ring. As his father’s mantra said - ‘The sun shines on those who help themselves.’

  Chapter 12

  Exmouth Hospital was located just off the top of Marple Hill, halfway between the seafront and Littleham Cross. Jane supposed from the upper floors that you might possibly be able to see the estuary and the beach. She wondered why it was known as a cottage hospital. To her the building seemed relatively large, though of course it would have been dwarfed by the concrete and glass colossus of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Wonford. Perhaps the Edwardians had bigger cottages she mused. At least trying to trace the staff that had provided palliative care for Sgt Baker should be a relatively simple task given its size.

  She guessed most of the cases in the summer were either from sunburn or related to the town’s growing geriatric population. In her view, it seemed a town which seemed to be polarised between young families and an older retired population. She and Tim had once considered trying to buy in Exmouth, the thought of raising a family by the seaside had appealed to them, yet the house prices had put them off. Inflated by the incoming tide of retirees from the Stockbroker belt, Jane had felt she wasn’t the only local or at least relatively local person priced out of the market down here.

  Following the receptionist’s directions to the Day Clinic, she passed through an institutional colour scheme of puke green walls, which under modern strip lighting did nothing to soften the atmosphere of the windowless corridor. An abrupt turn brought her to a door leading into some pretty, but overgrown grounds to the rear of the hospital. Here a red brick extension had been added on to the Edwardian wing she’d just left. Unfortunately, these newer buildings were smaller and stifling, whereas at least the high ceilings of the older part had made it relatively cool compared to their more modern counterparts.

  Having passed by signs advertising surgery on seemingly every type of medical condition she had heard of and quite a few she hadn’t, she finally found directions to the Day Care Unit. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single nurse in sight and the waiting room looked like it was aptly named. Flashing her badge she walked past the rows of septuagenarians and octogenarians seated on the orange plastic chairs (a few might even have been nonagenarians) to the untended reception desk. She sometimes wondered why people got so passionate about preserving the NHS when at times it seemed to be on its last legs, not that she or Tim could afford private healthcare. And at least their children had always experienced excellent care and attention, even if one or two of the health visitors had seemed a little bossy in he
r opinion…

  Having pressed a doorbell which was taped to the otherwise immaculate counter top, she was suddenly assailed by one of the older patients demanding a closer look at her warrant card. The man had begun a polite, but impassioned monologue on how the local police had been advising people not to get taken in by con men who came to their doors with fake identities. Despite Jane politely trying to get into the logic of his argument by pointing out that this was not one of those situations, she still found herself handing over her warrant card and waiting whilst he and his neighbour peered myopically at her photo and details. It was when David (by now she had learnt his name, as well as the fact that he used to be a floor manager in a department store in Bromley and that he had once apprehended two shoplifters) announced that he needed to change his normal glasses for his reading glasses that Jane nearly lost her sangfroid. It was fortunate that at this moment she was finally rescued by the arrival of the duty nurse.

  Later, typing up her notes in the incident room in a part of Exmouth police station they’d re-opened for the duration, she reflected on what she had learnt from Sgt Baker’s carers. It seemed he’d had regular aftercare in the form of regular visits from a team of nurses. He’d usually see at least one healthcare professional on a weekly basis. Though the senior nurse had said his wife had cancelled last week’s visit on the telephone. The nurse couldn’t be absolutely certain it was Mrs Baker who had called, nevertheless what other woman would have called up pretending to be his wife?