The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set

by Rob Wyllie

  Maggie laughed. 'I like the way you're telling the story Elsa but I'm desperate to know the ending.'

  'But for you, it may not be happy ending,' Elsa said. 'Because to cut long story shorter, we found out that Fraulein L Brückner is graduate of Heidelberg University, with first class honours in Fine Arts with English Language.'

  Jimmy gave Maggie a look of disappointment. 'In twenty-eleven. Making her by my calculation, thirty or thirty-one years of age.'

  So that was it then. It seemed that in all regards Lotti Brückner was who she said she was. A quick update for the benefit of Hugo Morgan and that investigation could be closed down. At least she would now be able to enjoy the auction, and when she was there she would be sure to ask Lotti the secret of her youthful looks. Then that could be Mrs Magdalene Slattery's final appearance before she mysteriously vanished off the face of the earth. But would she disappear, that was the dilemma? Because after the success of their first date, the lovely dinner which led to coffee at his sleek townhouse and much more besides, Robert Trelawney had asked to see her again.

  And she had said yes.

  ◆◆◆

  They knew of course where he parked the Bentley, in a so-called secure underground garage just off Strafford Street, no more than five minutes walk from his office. So-called secure, because it had only cost fifty quid to persuade the fat Greek guy they'd laughably put in charge of security to look away for as long as they needed. Morgan's Continental GT W12, to give it its full name, had been ordered with all the extras, the 21-inch diamond-cut alloys alone adding three grand to the price, the in-your-face St James Red paint-job another four. Nearly a quarter a million just for a motor-car. It was obscene, especially considering what he'd had done to all these poor bastards up in Cumbria. Now they were looking forward to see his face after what they had planned for his precious wheels. And they would get to see it too, because that was part of the deal with the fat Greek. Make sure you point a CCTV camera in that direction and don't bloody miss it when he turns up.

  Naturally it needed to be done with care, because concentred sulphuric acid was nasty stuff. Firstly they donned gloves, eye-protectors and masks, checking each other to make sure they were properly protected and no flesh was exposed. Then moving slowly and deliberately, they removed the heavy one litre glass bottle from the back-pack and carefully unscrewed the top, making sure to hold it at arm's length. It was only half-full because they didn't want any spills, but that was plenty enough for what they had planned. Starting with the bonnet, they poured a generous measure onto the surface just below the windscreen, allowing gravity to spread the pool of caustic liquid forward and sideways across the gleaming paintwork. Not that it would be gleaming for very long, not once the acid got to work. Already black patches were beginning to appear, the atmosphere turning toxic as fumes rose from the blistering layer of acetate lacquer. Then on the roof, the spread made easy by the sleek fastback styling. That was twenty grand's worth of damage already, not that the money side of it would worry Hugo Morgan. That wasn't the point. It was all about the message. Actions had consequences. If he didn't know that before, he would now. And just in case there was any doubt who was responsible, they had come prepared with a neatly-printed calling card, which they slipped under a windscreen wiper.

  Justice for Greenway

  It was a nice touch to add the pictures of the two daughters to the card. Then he would know that this was just a little aperitif before the serious action started. When people started to die.

  Chapter 13

  It had been a while since Frank had been to a snooker hall, at least fifteen years by a quick calculation. That was back in Glasgow, a seedy little dump just off Ballater Street, which formed the northern boundary of the original Gorbals before the whole area was raised to the ground in the sixties. To be replaced by the disturbing fantasies of the celebrated French Modernist Le Corbusier, a nutter if ever there was one. Naturally no-one mourned the passing of the old tenement slums, but it had taken over a hundred years for the area to become an uninhabitable dump, a feat the French architect had achieved in less than twenty. At the time Frank was just beginning his career, posted to Cumberland Street nick. There, Thursday night snooker was a ritual, attended by anyone whose shift allowed it, and plenty more who turned up for a game and a couple of pints when they should have been pounding the beat. He'd been back to the area a couple of times since, and now the Corbusier experiment had been swept away, to be replaced by something more in keeping with the present aspirations of his home city. Neat low-rise social and private housing, unobtrusive commercial development interspersed with dots of green space. It looked so much better, but it was still the same low-lifes who lived there, which is why his old cop shop had been treated to a multi-million pound upgrade, the new building looking more like a mid-market hotel in its subtle pastel blue and grey paint job, with CCTV everywhere and equipped with three times the holding cell capacity of its predecessor. On the corner where Cumberland Street met Jane Place, a statue of a figure stood mounted on a four-metre high stone column, one of a handful that had been erected around the area in the forlorn hope that easy access to object d'art would encourage the locals to take a pride in their neighbourhood. This one, for no obvious reason, depicted and was titled Girl with a Rucksack. Wags speculated she was there in homage to the area's thriving drugs trade, and that the rucksack must be full of speed, the drug of choice amongst the locals.

  The old snooker hall had been swept away too, but the leisure needs of the community were now met by the bingo emporium that had replaced it, the dole money disappearing into the gaudy slot machines, recently equipped with contactless technology to make it easier to take money from people who didn't have it in the first place. So much for progress.

  The Romford Snooker Centre was also quite a new development, a faceless tin shed erected on a retail park on the outskirts of the Essex town. Nondescript on the outside, it was perfectly presentable if somewhat bland on the inside. There was a bar with a choice of just two beers, a fizzy bitter and a fizzy lager, and a tiny cafe that served an unappetizing range of over-priced microwaved fast food. But the snooker facilities themselves were top-notch, sixteen tables equipped with ironed-smooth baize and laid out to allow plenty of elbow room for the players.

  Back in the day, Frank had been quite good at the game, and he was pleased to discover that he still had it. Ronnie French on the other hand didn't have it, and self-evidently never had, despite his protestations. Unless of course he was setting up Frank for a sting, which he doubted. Frenchie wasn't bright enough to pull a stunt like that.

  'Bit rusty Frank my old son,' he was saying as Frank prepared to pot an easy black to win the match. 'Don't get the chance to play much nowadays, what with work and all that.'

  Frank shot him a wry smile as he bulleted the ball into the pocket with a confident stroke. 'I'm your guv'nor Frenchie, remember? But I'll try and remember not to overwork you in future. Come on, let me buy you a pint to cheer you up.'

  They wandered over to the bar and grabbed a vacant table.

  'When's Terry Clarke coming?' Frank asked. 'Shall I get one in for him?'

  'Should be here in a few minutes guv. He's a lager man, so yeah, get one in for him.'

  That first meeting with the victim's family. You never got used to it, no matter how long you were in the job, and if you did, then you were probably in the wrong line of work. He'd done a few suicides too, and if anything they were worse. With a murder, at least there was someone to blame, somewhere to direct the bitterness and anger. With a suicide, there was the same crushing loss but the only person to blame was yourself. Surely you could have done more to prevent it happening? How could you not have known their state of mind? So in a funny way, maybe the fact that Chardonnay Clarke's death was looking less and less like a suicide might bring some comfort to the family. He hoped so at least.

  Clarke appeared just as Frank was swiping his card across the contactless terminal proffered by t
he teenage barman. Expertly, he picked up the three pints and shuffled back to the table, setting them down without spilling a drop.

  'This is Terry guv,' French said, needlessly. 'Terry Clarke. Chardonnay's dad.'

  'Pleased to meet you Terry,' Frank said, extending a hand, 'and I'm really sorry for your loss. It must have been awful for you and your family. I'm Frank Stewart. I'm a DI with the Met. Same crew as your mate Frenchie here. Department 12B.'

  'You're a Jock, ain't you?' Clarke said. 'We had one of them back in the old Upton Park days. Frankie McAvennie, remember him? Scored a shed load of goals. He was a bit of a lad mind you.'

  Frank nodded. 'Aye, I remember him. Blonde streaks. Went to the Celtic for a spell, didn't he? On the front pages nearly as often as he was on the back.'

  Clarke gave a half-smile. 'Yeah, you're right there. But a great player, and a Hammer through and through. Still comes to watch us at the new place from time to time. Gets a big welcome.'

  But they both knew they weren't there to talk about the football. His voice barely audible, Clarke said,

  'So is it a murder enquiry now Frank? 'Cos I know my Chardonnay would never have killed herself. Never in a thousand years.' His eyes, dull and bloodshot after weeks of grief, began to fill up.

  'Look Terry, I'm sure Ronnie's told you what we do in our department. We just dig around in things where there's grounds for suspicion. And when I heard the circumstances surrounding your daughter's death, well of course we had to investigate. The way it works is if we dig up enough stuff, you know, solid evidence, then it gets handed over to the murder squad. But no, we're not there yet.' He could see Terry Clarke's shoulders droop with disappointment, but there was no point in raising false hopes.

  'But he's the best Terry,' French chipped in, unexpectedly. 'Once the guv'nor gets his teeth into something, he never lets go.'

  Frank gave him a surprised look. 'Well cheers for that mate, I didn't know you cared. Look Terry, we think we might have something here and I'll get to the bottom of it if I can. But I need your help, and most of all, I need you to be really honest with me about your daughter. Is that ok?'

  'Sure Frank, sure.' That's what he said, but Frank wasn't convinced he meant it.

  'She was a special girl, your Chardonnay, wasn't she?' Frank said. 'Brains, beauty, brilliant qualifications. You and your wife must have been... must be very proud of her.'

  Clarke smiled weakly. 'Yeah, we was. She got her looks from my Sharon. She was a beauty too. Still is, though this thing has broken her. Totally broken her. Chardonnay was our only child, see?'

  That was what made these encounters so impossibly difficult, because there was just nothing you could say that provided any relief for their suffering. All you had was the old platitudes, but you were expected to trot them out nonetheless. So he did.

  'I know Terry, I really feel for you and Sharon.' That much at least was true. 'So, can you tell me something about this job she had at the bank?'

  'HBB.'

  'Aye, that's it.'

  'Yeah, she was really loving it. She was always great with numbers my girl was, and they had her in the corporate finance area. Took to it like a duck to water. And she was making a packet too. Way more than I do on the tools and that's a fact.'

  Frank gave him a puzzled look. 'Hang on Terry, what do you mean she was making a packet? She was just an intern, wasn't she? They don't get paid, at least not so far as I'm aware.'

  'Well, I don't know all about that,' Clarke said stiffly, 'but I know what she told me. Seventy-five grand she was pulling down, without a word of a lie.'

  'Are you really sure about that?' Frank said, unable to hide his surprise. 'She wouldn't be exaggerating or making it up?'

  'My girl wasn't a liar,' Clarke said, the tone now combative.

  'But didn't you think that was a lot of money for a young person with no experience?'

  'She was special, my girl,' he replied sharply. 'They must have thought she was worth it. Look, I don't like where you're going with this.'

  That was always the danger when dealing with the families. Lose their trust or piss them off and they just clammed up. Frank sensed that Terry Clarke would have to be handled with kid gloves if he was going to keep him onside. He gave an apologetic smile.

  'No, sorry Terry, it's just my normal clumsy way with words. It's the Glasgow upbringing. You can take the boy out of Glasgow but you can't take... well, you know the saying I expect. Come on, let's have another beer. Frenchie, your shout I think.'

  They filled the few minutes it took French to sort the drinks with more football talk. The subject was some guy called Christian Dailly, another West Ham Scot who Frank didn't remember but pretended he did.

  'Class he was,' Terry was saying, 'always had time on the ball. But a bit of a nancy. Didn't like the rough and tumble.'

  'Aye, that's right,' Frank said, not sure what he was agreeing with. 'Look, to get back to Chardonnay. I think Ronnie told me that she was socialising quite a lot with some folks from HBB. A fast set, that's how you described it. What can you tell me about that?'

  'They was always out on the town. Bars, nightclubs, fancy restaurants and all. And I'm sure they was doing drugs too. Though she says she wasn't.' To Frank, it sounded like the bog-standard lifestyle of any reasonably well-off twenty-something, and while he wasn't going to share this observation with her father, recreational drug use had long been a fact of life amongst that age group. But as he'd often remarked, the parents were usually the last to know.

  'And did you meet any of these pals Terry? What were they like?'

  'She was seeing a guy. From the office.' It was dropped into the conversation as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And it was something that Ronnie French had omitted from his case briefing, probably because he didn't know.

  'Posh guy, Jeremy something or other,' Terry continued. 'Me and Sharon met him the once. He was a lot older than her, but he wasn't married or nothing. It was all straight up, regular like.'

  'And he was one of this fast set?'

  'Yeah, there was eight or ten of them. All loaded, swanky types the lot of them. But that Jeremy was all right. Sharon liked him the one time they met.'

  Frank nodded. 'And was it serious, would you say? The relationship I mean.'

  Terry forced a smile. 'I don't know, you'd need to ask my Sharon about that.' He raised a hand, the index and middle fingers intertwined. 'They were like that, Chardonnay and her mum. Shared everything they did. Two peas in a pod.'

  'She sounds nice, your Sharon,' Frank said truthfully. He wondered if the relationship would survive the terrible blow it had suffered, having seen plenty that had crumbled in similar circumstances. Terry Clarke was a decent guy, he'd already made up his mind about that, and now his solid marriage was all he had to cling on to.

  'Yeah, she was really supporting Chardonnay when she was having her problems.'

  Frank gave a double-take, not sure that he had heard him properly.

  'What was that Terry? What problems?'

  'We don't know what it was, honest we don't. But she was in a right state them last two or three weeks before she died. Totally depressed she was. Although she never would have done herself in, not my Chardonnay. I know she wouldn't.'

  And to Frank it sounded exactly what it was. Hope, not belief.

  ◆◆◆

  Of course, this had all been so totally typical Ronnie French, the very definition of the lazy half-arsed corner-cutter, Frank could see that now. Frenchie didn't have a clue about the fancy boyfriend and he wouldn't have even bothered to ask Terry Clarke what state of mind his daughter had been in the days before her death. A mate says my girl wouldn't have killed herself and that was good enough for him. Tomorrow when they were back in the office, he was going to wring his bloody neck.

  But maybe something could be salvaged from the mess. He would go and talk to the boyfriend anyway, and it was definitely worth paying Mrs Sophie Fitzwilliam another visit. On second thoughts,
that would be a nice wee job for that fat lazy so-and-so French. Get him off his backside and send him up the M40 to see what he could make of it. Find out if someone really had been paying Chardonnay Clarke seventy-five grand per annum. And if so, why? That was a question that wanted answering and Ronnie French was just the man to ask it. As long as he hadn't forgotten by the time he got there.

  Chapter 14

  As Maggie had predicted, it hadn't been too difficult to arrange an audience with Gary McGinley of the Chronicle. Jimmy had found his email, not exactly a challenge since it was printed under his by-line at the top of his weekly column, and shot off a quick two-liner that explained they were lawyers working for Hugo Morgan and wanted to talk about the Greenway Mining affair. No more than a minute after it hit his inbox, McGinley was on the phone, ranting and raving about powerful individuals interfering with the freedom of the press, and if they thought they could now buy his silence, then they had another thing coming.

  'Wait a minute,' she heard Jimmy saying, trying to stem the torrent of invective, 'we don't know anything about any injunction. That's got nothing to do with us, I can assure you. Really.'

  So, a bloody press injunction. Something that Morgan had conveniently omitted to mention to them. She guessed it was something to do with the Greenway Mining report, whatever that was, and also that he hadn't used Addison Redburn, Asvina's firm to get it, otherwise she would have told them about it.

  Eventually Jimmy managed to calm him down, and just two hours later they were meeting with him in their favourite Starbucks on Fleet Street, somewhat apt Maggie thought, although the national papers hadn't carried that famous address for more than twenty years now.

  'We witnessed that little scene at the Park Lane Hilton,' Maggie said, as they queued to order their drinks, 'and I was looking forward to reading what it was all about. But now I'm beginning to understand why I haven't seen anything.'