The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set

by Rob Wyllie

  Now Patel was on his feet. 'This must mean that the murder was pre-meditated, doesn't it? And that the killer was trying to leave someone a message or a warning of some kind. Are you following that line of enquiry Chief Inspector?'

  Barker looked at him contemptuously. 'Yes, thank you Mr Patel, we had thought of that, funnily enough. So, if there are no more questions...' There were plenty of questions waiting to be asked, but evidently he did not intend to answer any of them. Instead he gathered up his papers, curtly thanked everyone for attending and made to leave. Less than six minutes from start to finish.

  'What, is that all we're getting?' shouted an indignant Patel, a siren voice above the general mutterings of discontent. 'That's a total disgrace.'

  'Come on guys,' Frank said, 'let's grab the fool before he leaves. I don't suppose he'll listen to us, but we can try at least.' They pushed their way through the throng of departing reporters to the podium.

  'Excuse me sir, do you have a minute?'

  It appeared Barker had not forgiven Frank's earlier intervention.

  'What sort of frigging stunt was that Stewart? I thought they'd stuck you out to grass but here you still are, getting on everybody's tits as usual.'

  'Just trying to be helpful sir, that's all. Many hands make light work and all of that. I thought it might be prudent to keep the details of the MO to ourselves for now, don't you agree?'

  If he did, he wasn't going to admit it. 'If I needed any help Stewart, you're the last person I would ask. Now I don't know why you're here, but whatever it is, I haven't got time for it. In case you haven't noticed, I'm working on a very high-profile murder case.'

  'High-profile? Of course sir. You wouldn't work on any other kind, would you sir? But this won't take a minute sir, I promise you. You might remember my private investigator pals Maggie Bainbridge and Jimmy Stewart? Bainbridge Associates, that's their firm. Well they dug up some information that may be important for your case sir. And of course they felt it was their public duty to share it with the police. So they told me.' He had tried his best to dial down the insolent tone, but he wasn't sure if he had succeeded. He wasn't bothered.

  'Well come on, what is it?' Barker said,' I haven't got all day.'

  Frank smiled sweetly. 'Detective Constable French wrote it all down in his wee notebook. Come on Frenchie, spill the beans.'

  'Right then sir,' French began, furrowing his brow as he struggled to read his own handwriting. 'Those Bainbridge geezers seem to have been the last people to talk to the Fox guy before his death. It was in connection with a divorce case they was working on. Melody Montague, the soap actress. I'm sure you've heard of her. She's that sexy-looking old bird with the big tits. Very high-profile sir. Right up your street sir.'

  Frank smiled to himself. Ronnie French might be fat, lazy and a complete waste of space, but he didn't give a shit about anybody, no matter what their rank. However it seemed that Barker had not tuned in to the not-very-veiled insult.

  'So? What the hell has this got to do with my murder case?'

  'Well as I understand it sir,' Frenchie drawled, 'there's a mega dispute about dosh in that matter. A shed load.'

  'Aye, more than a million quid,' Frank said, 'and that sort of sum is normally enough to be a motive for murder, isn't it sir? Although to be fair, it appears that in this case the ex-wife actually loses out because of his death.'

  Barker gave him a withering look. 'Stewart, do you think I give a shit about your half-arsed theories? You and your bunch of cast-offs?' He spat the word out, not bothering to hide his contempt.

  It didn't seem to bother Ronnie either, self-awareness not being a concept familiar to him. He simply flicked over a page and carried on.

  'This Miss Bainbridge states that she observed the victim in a heated argument with another man. By her account, that account corroborated by her associate, a Mr James Stewart, it got very nasty indeed. According to that Miss Bainbridge, the parties almost came to blows and threats were made against the life of the deceased.'

  'And then not much later Mr Fox was observed having an argument with his new girlfriend,' Frank added. 'It was all caught on camera. On the BBC actually.'

  'Look,' Barker said, forcing a condescending smile, 'we always welcome information from members of the public, and one of my officers will interview the Bainbridge woman in due course. But if you don't mind Stewart, I'm a very busy man.'

  'I think that stuff that Miss Bainbridge reported is pukka,' Frenchie said, giving a shrug, 'but it's your shout sir. I would follow it up if I was you, that's all I'm saying.'

  But Frank could see that Barker wasn't listening. Arrogant and stupid in equal measures, it was only a matter of time before this case slipped down the drain like all his others. Ok, if that's the way he wanted to play it, bugger him. The fat-arse would have to find out for himself about Fox's little run-in with the far-right and about the pre-nup dispute with his ex-wife and about his fall-out with Allegra Ross and about his punch-up with that scriptwriter. Motive? That wee list added up to four of them for starters, but Barker wouldn't recognise a motive if it was carved in stone and inserted up his back passage.

  But that didn't matter. Because Department 12B had the remit to look at any case it damn well liked and when he got back to the office, he was going to get out another wee buff folder and stick a white label on the front. Then all he had to do was come up with a name.

  Chapter 7

  It wouldn't be wrong to say that the atmosphere in the office had been frosty since Maggie had agreed to take on the Grant case. Even Elsa, the sweet office administrator cum secretary they shared with the ten other businesses that occupied their Fleet Street premises, had projected an uncharacteristic coldness in her presence. Uncharacteristic because although she was deeply infatuated with Jimmy, she bore no grudge against her employer, whom she regarded as too old to be a rival for his affections. The infatuation was unrequited, Maggie had always assumed, although it occurred to her it had taken the pair of them rather a long time to fetch three skinny lattes from the nearby Starbucks.

  Frosty atmosphere or not, she had made a promise to Charles Grant and she intended to fulfil it. So she had started where she assumed all investigations started nowadays. By typing 'Jamie Grant abduction' into her search engine. Gathering over half-a-million results. It wasn't difficult to gather together the bare facts of the case from the media reports of the time. Jamie Grant had been snatched in broad daylight as he was being taken home in his buggy from playgroup by his Australian nanny. It had happened on Merton Hall Road, about half a mile from the community hall that hosted the group. A typical residential street, although fairly busy with traffic in the daytime, running out onto the Kingston Road. According to Lydia Davis the nanny, a large blue SUV drew up - she thought it was a BMW but she wasn't sure - and two men got out. Obviously she was taken by surprise and had no idea what was happening. Next thing, one of the men ran over to her and started to attack her. She was coshed violently, suffering a fractured skull which kept her in hospital for nearly eight weeks afterwards. She passed out at the scene and remembered nothing more about it.

  The police assumption was that the toddler was bundled into the vehicle and then driven off somewhere. An ANPR camera positioned at the junction recorded no sign of a car meeting the description, leading them to assume they probably dumped the snatch vehicle and transferred to another one before they got onto the Kingston Road.

  A passer-by had witnessed the incident at a distance but was not able to provide any reliable information other than she thought the SUV was on a 62 plate but wouldn't swear to it, and that it was the younger man of the two who had been driving. There was only one other reported witness, a Mrs Molly Peters, who apparently was in her front garden about fifty yards away and saw it happening, but at eighty-four, her eyesight was poor and she was unable to provide a reliable description of the perpetrators or identify the car. However, she said she did overhear some of their shouted conversation. She was sure th
ey were both Londoners from their accents, and that one of them might have called the other Henry.

  And that was all they had. There was an appeal for any sightings of a BMW on a 62 plate, and a sketchy photo-fit from the nanny's brief sight of her assailant was splashed all over the media for a while, but no member of the public came forward with a credible identification of the man called Henry. From time to time the police had issued positive statements saying they were following up some encouraging line of enquiry or other, but everyone knew that it was the first few days that were critical in an abduction if the victim was to be saved. And during that crucial period that they had found nothing.

  But then, unexpectedly, came the ransom demand. It was never revealed how much the kidnappers asked for, but the press speculation was that it was around one quarter of a million pounds, and that the money was put up by Brightside, the producers of Bow Road. What was known was that the money was handed over but the toddler wasn't. A disaster for the reputation of the Met and a tragedy for his parents.

  As the months passed, the assumption grew that Jamie Grant had been murdered and in all probability his body would never be found. So almost two years to the day that he was taken, the case was shunted off to Frank Stewart's Department 12B.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the return of her colleagues, bursting back into the tiny office. It was obvious from their smirks that they had been sharing some private joke, a joke they did not seem keen to share with her. Elsa banged the coffee down on Maggie's desk with such force that warm liquid spilt out from under the plastic lid and down the side of the cup. Maggie smiled brightly at her and said 'Thanks Elsa,' deciding the best strategy was to ignore the elephant in the room. The secretary gave her a haughty look before walking out, slamming the door behind her.

  Jimmy laughed. 'Don't worry, she'll soon get over it, and yes I know, I shouldn’t have told her what I thought about us taking on the case. She's just a bit protective towards me, goodness knows why. I think I remind her of her dad.'

  Maggie gave a wry smile. Jimmy Stewart, at thirty-two years of age, still either oblivious or indifferent to the stupid effect he had on women. Of all ages too, from school-girly Elsas to high-mileage man-eaters like Melody Montague. Goodness, even her mum fancied him. But she thought she had worked out the real reason for his reticence. Because the one time in his life he had succumbed, to the attractions of the beautiful temptress Astrid Sorenson, it had wrecked his marriage and his life with it. He never talked about it, but she knew. She knew his only goal in life was to get back together with his beloved Flora. But at least he seemed to have returned to the office in a sunnier mood than when he left, which was a relief.

  He smiled at her as he sat down at his desk. 'Got anywhere yet? With our Charles Grant case I mean? Because I've been thinking about it when I was out.'

  Our Charles Grant case. That was more like it.

  She returned his smile. 'Only got the bare facts about the abduction and the investigation. There's not a huge amount to go on. Sadly.'

  'Yeah, that's what I thought. But I guess we have to go back to basics, you know, the old motive, method and opportunity thing. I know it sounds like a cliché but I think it still holds true.'

  She nodded. 'Yes, you're right, I did kind of think about that myself. I mean the method and opportunity bit is simple and straightforward, isn't it? Drive up in a fast motor, take them by surprise and whisk the kid away.'

  'And the motive,' Jimmy said. 'Money. Simple as that, surely? A quarter a million a pop's not to be sniffed at. Find a rich celebrity, track their kid's daily routine, and then grab them. Not hard, is it?'

  But then it struck her. Was the explanation really as simple as that?

  'Jimmy, what if there was more to it? What if there was a deeper motive?'

  'I'm sorry, I don't get where you're coming from.'

  She wrinkled her nose. 'You see, the thing that's odd about this crime is that it's not repeatable. Organised criminals are no different from legitimate businesses in that they need a reliable business model that they can use again and again, one that always delivers results. But don't you see what the problem with this one is?'

  He nodded. 'Aye, I do. If you take the cash, but don't deliver the goods, then that's it. The next time you do one, you're not going to get your ransom money.'

  'Exactly Jimmy. So maybe we have to look at another angle. What if this was a one-off, and the primary motive was to hurt the Grants and the money was just an added bonus?'

  'Could be,' Jimmy said. 'We know a bit about Charles but do we know anything about the wife?'

  'Only that she's politically active like he is. I think she works as an editor for a publishing house but she was also a Labour councillor if I recall correctly.'

  'It would be nice to speak to her,' Jimmy said, 'but maybe that would be one for Frank. Help him to feel involved in our investigation.'

  She laughed. 'If he's still speaking to us, that is.'

  'I've just had a thought,' Jimmy said. 'Charles was due to speak at that anti-fascist rally last week wasn't he?'

  Maggie nodded. 'Yeah, that's his thing. He's very passionate about it.'

  'So maybe that's an angle worth exploring?'

  'Ok, let's give it a try.'

  Punching in 'Charles Grant Activist' returned over a hundred thousand results. Photographs, videos, chat magazine gossip, fan sites, his Wikipedia profile, the sheer weight of information threatened to overwhelm them before they got started. But tucked away, three or four pages down the search, was a headline that simultaneously caught the interest of both.

  Soap star and activist quits social media after Bow Road spat.

  They looked at one another quizzically. 'Yeah, go for it,' Jimmy said in answer to her unspoken question.

  Maggie clicked the link and screwed up her eyes to focus on the article. 'Ah, that's interesting. So maybe this goes some way to explaining his reputation as a difficult man.'

  'Aye, it seems like it.'

  Reading on, it seemed to have started with an inflammatory tweet from Grant postulating that many of his fellow celebrities were guilty of nothing more than virtue-signalling and publicity-seeking when it came to broadcasting their support for what he called his progressive causes. Surprisingly from Maggie's point of view, he had, without naming names, called out some of his Bow Road cast members as being guilty of this crime. Less surprisingly, it had generated a virulent response from some of those unnamed colleagues, who clearly knew whom he had been referring to. Including, most directly, Benjamin Fox.

  'Do you see this?' Maggie said, wide-eyed. 'Somewhat blunt and to the point, don't you think?'

  'Yeah, you could say that,' Jimmy laughed. 'Eff off you conceited twat. Power to the people. Do you think Fox was being ironic with that last bit?'

  'Yes maybe, but it soon gets pretty nasty. And it went on for days and days. It must have been fun on set after all of that.'

  'Aye,' Jimmy nodded, 'so not surprisingly our boy Charlie decides to take a break from on-line life.'

  Maggie laughed. 'Yes, but not for long.'

  She pointed to another of the search results. 'Did you know he has a monthly opinion column in the Guardian? I didn't.'

  'So he's just a normal lefty thesp then. Move along, nothing to see here. Ah, but wait a wee minute...' Another search result had evidently caught his eye. He clicked the link to explore it further.

  'Look at this one, do you see the headline? We ignore the rise of the far-right at our peril. And look, here's another. Far-right apologists pedalling fake news. Jesus, he is the right little socialist warrior, isn't he? Not that there's anything wrong with that of course,' he added.

  He needn't have bothered apologising on her account, since she didn't do politics. Her scumbag former husband had made her immune to all that. But then as she quickly scanned the first article, something struck her.

  'You see, in this one, he talks about the dogs' abuse he gets from what he calls far-right trolls
. He mentions one particular person, who apparently goes by the handle of da Vinci.'

  'Da Vinci? Like in the Dan Brown book?'

  'Yes, the same.'

  'And we are assuming it is a guy?'

  'What, with a username like da Vinci? Maggie said. 'Well, I suppose you're right, it doesn't have to be a guy.'

  Jimmy had clicked on the Twitter link and was scrolling down through some of Grant's posting history.

  'I tell you what, for such a quiet man, he's not scared to share his opinions, is he? Look, here he is, laying into the Catholic church. Half the responses have been moderated out, but I can imagine they wouldn't be very complimentary.'

  Maggie read on. 'Yeah, and now he's accusing the Tories of being evil bastards - that's his actual words - only interested in enriching themselves by exploiting the poor and disadvantaged.'

  Jimmy laughed. 'See what I mean? The socialist warrior right enough. And he doesn't seem to care who he upsets in the process. But you don't think this could have anything to do with the abduction, do you?'

  'Yeah, I know it seems unlikely,' Maggie said, 'but as you say, he does seem to have upset a lot of people. Come on, let's keep looking.'

  He nodded, punching in a few more search terms.

  'So that's interesting,' Jimmy said, pointing at the screen. 'This is him just a few days before wee Jamie's abduction, calling out the far-right again.'

  'Yeah, and look, here's da Vinci back too. It's really nasty, some of this stuff.'

  'Too right,' Jimmy said. 'I don't understand why people do it. But our Charles seems to be addicted to it, doesn't he?'

  Maggie nodded. 'Yeah, he does seem to be. But come on, let's see if there's anything else around that time.

  Jimmy modified the search to include the child's name and the month of the abduction. It took some time to find it, the single Twitter posting buried several pages down in the search. Under the hashtag #GrantAbduction, it had been posted two days after the event and was as brief as it was brutal.