by Jean Chapman
‘He’s opened his eyes, looked at Margaret and winked at me.’ He shook his head and tutted as if it had been an outrageous thing for Jim to have done. ‘He’s going to be all right, and Margaret wants me to go back to the farm as soon as I can.’
Liz asked if he would like to go back to the pub with them and stretch out on a bed for a few hours, but he refused. ‘I’ll drive straight back, reassure those girls, and tell them some of what their father has been involved in.’
‘I’d keep the detail to a minimum for the time being,’ Cannon advised. ‘Katie, in particular, has been through a lot.’
They saw Mark off then went to the doorway of the intensive care suite and were allowed to the bedside for a few moments. Maddern’s eyes brightened as he saw Cannon. ‘Thanks,’ he managed in a gruff croak. Margaret beamed; it was the first word he had managed.
The nurse moved in again and once more they were gently shepherded out.
‘We’ve got to do something about the cottage,’ Cannon said as they walked to Liz’s car. ‘I’ll have a word with Austin and the local boys.’
‘Yes, but not tonight,’ she said.
‘No,’ he agreed.
It was only when they were climbing into bed that she asked, ‘By the way where’s the jeep – and Jim’s car?’
‘I hardly remember,’ Cannon said, his head sinking gratefully to his own pillow.
‘Never mind, we’ll sort it out tomorrow,’ she said, ‘they’re not that important anyway in the order of things.’
There was no answer. She studied his face, lined and sallow with exhaustion. ‘You needn’t do any of this,’ she silently harangued him, ‘you crazy ex-policeman, you!’
His head fell slightly towards her as he slept and a wing of his black hair fell over his forehead. She instinctively and gently pushed it back away from his face, and remembered Margaret doing a similar thing for Jim’s hair as he lay in intensive care.
Margaret Maddern had come near to losing her man. John had undoubtedly saved him from bleeding to death. How could she wish him any different? She leaned over to touch his forehead with her lips, switched off the bedside light and slid down beside him.
Chapter 27
‘At least they left the garden alone,’ Margaret said, staring steadfastly out of her kitchen window. Liz wondered at her control, wondered if she had turned away to hide tears, but when she turned back she was dry-eyed, her face quite resolute.
Margaret had arrived by taxi from the hospital and walked in on Liz and John organizing the beginning of the clean-up operations. She had been shocked and appalled but insisted on seeing everything – and as she went from room to room had become stiffer-backed and tighter-lipped.
‘So Jim knew all about this and he never said a word.’ She shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t. Knowing him he would have been more upset for me when he saw my Beatrix Potter figures,’ she said, ‘but I am not having his dream retirement home ruined. I presume forensics have finished here and I can go ahead?’ She opened a kitchen cupboard and took out a broom and dustpan. ‘No time like the present.’
‘Why not come back to The Trap with me,’ Liz suggested. ‘John’s got several off-duty policemen coming in about an hour to help clear things up. You won’t want to stay here….’
‘Won’t I?’ Margaret said, and there was a set about her chin that made Liz realize that was just what she intended to do. ‘They said Jim could come home by the end of the week, I’m having this place ready for him.’
None of them spared themselves. Cannon organized the working parties of off-duty policemen to clean and redecorate and when Margaret insisted on sleeping in her own home, police wives made a rota of sleeping over, shopping and taking Margaret to and from the hospital every afternoon. Too impatient to wait on official sources, Cannon put a collecting box on his counter to help towards decorating materials. Then money from police sources replaced destroyed appliances and the damaged back door.
Cannon took special pleasure in seeing the threatening messages scrawled on the bedroom walls obliterated and did the ‘Wreaths for All’ one himself.
Margaret became notably more cheerful, as each day she went to tell Jim news of how the renovations were going and how Mark was bringing the girls back a day or two after he was home. ‘Give you time to settle in,’ she told Jim, adding that the one good thing that had come out of it all was that the dinner service she had always described as ‘bile-yellow’ which his great-aunt had given them as a wedding present had been broken and she would be able to buy one she really liked.
Austin appeared on television giving guarded amounts of information about the rival gangs and the recovery of gold bullion hijacked by one gang from the other immediately after the original robbery – and then the local press came to the house. Pictures of the remains of Margaret’s collection of figures resurrected by the photographer from the refuse bin were taken in close-up and appeared on the front page.
The ‘Bad Apple’ headline appeared on the third day, when a local reporter made himself a nice little profit, having seen Inspector Brian Jones in handcuffs and selling the story on to the nationals.
The ‘Family Face’ revelation and the name of the sergeant observant and dogged enough to follow his instincts was reported the next day – Cannon made sure of that.
A few days later, Maddern rang The Trap. ‘You two,’ he said in mock tones of severity, ‘had better come over for tea and see what your actions have done.’
‘They started to arrive yesterday,’ Margaret said, leading them into the dining-room where the table had numerous small boxes on it. Jim followed, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘Some are addressed just to ‘Sergeant Maddern, Lincolnshire’. Others have come via the police station, or police headquarters.’
Margaret displayed the contents and Liz and John soon realized they all contained Beatrix Potter figures, everything from Squirrel Nutkin to Jemima Puddle-Duck, Hunca Munca to Mrs Tiggy-Winkle – often with notes wishing them both well and saying they had seen the broken pieces of the figure they enclosed in the picture of the fragments published in the newspapers. They hoped their contribution would be some compensation.
‘People are so kind,’ Margaret said, ‘and some of these are quite expensive figures.’
‘Ah! But I’ve got something far more valuable here,’ Maddern told her and sat down at the table. ‘You haven’t seen this yet. He held up a reproduction of a rabbit which looked as if it might have been picked up at some rather downmarket car boot sale.
She frowned at him
‘Read the note,’ he told her.
In a round boyish hand, it said: ‘I read about it in the paper, Sarge.’
‘Oh! That’s what Danny Smithson used to call you.’
‘That’s right,’ he said with a humph of ironic laughter, ‘and I used to call him Young Jakes.’
‘Oh, Jim!’ Margaret went to stand behind him, ran her hand gently down over his shoulders and put her cheek on the top of his head. ‘I wish you’d take early retirement if they offer it to you.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said, ‘we’ll see. I need to speak up for Jockey Jakes. Danny might have finished up being used as he was. I’m hoping he can join up with Danny and his mother eventually.’
‘Is he hoping for a fairy-tale ending?’ Liz asked, as they drove back to The Trap.
‘Stranger things than that have happened,’ Cannon said. ‘You never know.’
‘So do you think Jim will retire?’
‘He’s lost weight, his uniform will hang on him for a bit,’ Cannon said.
A month later Jim Maddern was back on duty, after he, his daughter, Kate, and Cannon had all been to Cardiff to see the family of her friend. It had not been an easy visit, but it had been right, and Amy Congreve’s mother had given Katie her daughter’s favourite ‘whale-tail’ necklace. ‘We bought it for her when we all went to Canada on holiday before she started uni; she’d like you to have it.’ She had taken Katie’s
hand. ‘You, my dear, must go back and finish your course,’ she said. ‘Don’t let these evil people win.’
There was a photograph of Sergeant Jim Maddern in the newspaper when he received a police commendation and alongside it …
Cannon exploded with anger.
‘They had to do it, didn’t they!’
Liz came back into the kitchen from the bar where she was cleaning, to find him furious about an inset picture of ‘ex-Inspector Brian Jones’.
‘It’s as if they glory in the bad news,’ he went on.
‘Jones will be in for a rough time in prison,’ Liz commented. ‘Neither the officers nor the prisoners will have any time for him. He’ll have to watch his back.’
‘Tell you what,’ Cannon said with a grin, ‘he’d better not suck his teeth.’
By the Same Author
Both Sides of the Fence
A Watery Grave
Copyright
© Jean Chapman 2013
First published in Great Britain 2013
This edition 2013
ISBN 978 0 7198 1246 0 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1247 7 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1248 4 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0880 7 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Jean Chapman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988