The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set

by Rob Wyllie

  'Hurry up, for God's sake,' Jimmy yelled. 'This wee thing's bloody heavy.'

  'It's tight. It's tight. I need to try and loosen it first.'

  Frantically she pushed her fingers into the tiny gap between the looped rope and the knot that was holding it in place.

  'Come on, come on,' Jimmy shouted.

  'It's budging... nearly... yeah, I can feel it.' With her free hand she grabbed the knot and pulled with all the strength she could muster. And then suddenly it gave, causing her to lose her balance. But before she collapsed on top of Frank, she just managed to flip the loop over Yazz's head. 'Got it!'

  Instantly, Jimmy took Yazz's full weight and gently lowered the little girl to the ground.

  'Here, sit down and we'll get you untied.' Beside him, Frank and Maggie were untangling themselves. Thankfully they seemed none the worse for their fall.

  'Here, let me help you Jimmy,' Maggie said. 'And Frank, take her mother out of our sight. I don't think Yazz will have anything to say to her, do you?'

  'Aye, I'll do that. I'll stick her in the car and chain her to the German woman. I can see them spending plenty of time together in the future.'

  ◆◆◆

  It was all under control by the time the response team arrived. Jimmy had managed to cut down Robert Trelawney's body and had laid him on the floor, untying his hands but leaving the blindfold in place for reasons he could not explain. Maggie had taken Yazz up to the kitchen and was helping her sip from a mug of hot chocolate, holding her hand whilst offering occasional but useless words of comfort. She knew from her own experience that kids could bounce back from even the most appalling experiences, but this was different. In the last twelve hours Jasmine Morgan had witnessed the murder of her beloved sister, and now she had found out that it was her own mother who had been responsible for the killing. No-one was going to come to terms with that, not ever. With a heavy heart, she realised that Felicity Morgan, driven to madness by bitterness and jealousy, had succeeded in her warped mission. Actions have consequences and the murderer Hugo Morgan was never going to forget it.

  Chapter 29

  It was Friday night, and they were meeting in one of their favourite watering holes, the Ship over in Shoreditch. A bit of a fancy gastropub, it had gravitated to becoming their special occasion place, their patronage infrequent mainly on account of the steep prices. Maggie knew that Frank in particular found them objectionable, not because he was tight with money, because he wasn't. It was just he felt the place, or rather its regular clientele, was a bit pretentious, and he didn't like pretentious and he didn't like having to pay seven quid for a pint either.

  They were six-strong, Jimmy, Frank, Elsa, Asvina Rani, Jill Smart and Maggie, gathered together for what was part-celebration, part-explanation. Because there was a lot to be explained.

  Food had been ordered and they were now propping up the bar, waiting for their table to be prepared. Already the group had attracted inquisitive looks from their fellow diners. What was it these two guys had, they were asking, to be able to pull four beautiful women like them? It must be a works do, couldn't be anything else, surely? Or maybe they had money, that would figure. Because the smaller guy wasn't exactly Brad Pitt, although to be fair the tall guy was amazingly good-looking. Had they been able to look inside the head of one of the women, they would have been surprised to find it swimming with inadequacy. Asvina Rani, Jill Smart, Elsa Berger. Slim, beautiful, assured, sexy, each and every one of them. Maggie Bainbridge. None of the above. With an effort, she banished the negative thoughts to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on the positive. An amazing night lay ahead, with amazing friends. What more could a girl ask for? Except, perhaps, for an amazing man to share it with. She had entertained high hopes for Robert Trelawney, but now that plan lay in ruins. But it hadn't worked out too well for him either.

  'The Sunday Times Insight team are running a big story on it this weekend,' Frank said, propelling their drinks along the bar. 'They've dug up a couple more of these Oxbridge scholarship kids and apparently they're going to spill the beans on the whole operation.'

  'Cheers bruv,' Jimmy said, raising his glass. 'So that's Morgan well and truly finished as far as his reputation goes, isn't it? Good, that's what I say.'

  'That's right,' Asvina said. 'Although he's had our law firm talk to the paper and warned them against even the slightest insinuation that he was involved in the deaths of Chardonnay Clarke and Luke Brown.'

  'So is he going to get away with it then?' Maggie asked, 'because that would be depressing and a complete denial of justice.'

  Jill Smart gave a resigned look. 'We had him in a Paddington Green interview room for two days but we didn't get a thing out of him. Just sat beside his lawyer and gave us the no comment treatment. And Vinny Hadley is denying any involvement in these killings, even although it's odds-on he was responsible. So unless we turn up some other compelling evidence in the meantime, then yes, he's going to get away with it, I'm sad to say.'

  'And the CPS are not that bothered,' Frank said. 'They've got our boy Vinny one hundred percent for Rosie Morgan's killing. Her mother's admitted that she paid him to do it. And of course he was caught in the act trying to kill all of you guys. So he's going down for thirty years just for those two alone.'

  'But it's not right, is it?' Jimmy said angrily. 'Surely there needs to be closure for these kids' families, and for Liz Donahue too.'

  'You're right,' Jill said, 'and I'm as angry about it as anyone. Rest assured the cases won't be closed until we've exhausted every angle.'

  'And then they'll get quietly shelved and chucked over the wall into Frank's department,' Jimmy said, with some bitterness.

  'Could do worse than that mate,' Frank said, 'And being serious, we'll happily take on these three cases if we have to. And then I'll nail that bastard if it's the last thing I do. Believe me, I bloody will.' Maggie wasn't quite sure whom this show of bravado was aimed at, but she shot a smile in his direction and was amused to see him redden.

  'And what about Felicity Morgan?' Asvina asked. 'What's going to happen to her?'

  'Going down for conspiracy to murder,' Frank said, 'although her lawyers are already trying to argue diminished responsibility on the grounds of her mental condition. I feel sorry for her in some ways.'

  'She was completely crazy, wasn't she?' Jill said. 'And I guess her husband dumping her just pushed her over the edge.'

  'I think she always was nuts, even before then,' Jimmy said. 'But aye, this was off the scale.'

  'So come on,' Asvina said, 'who's going to take me through this thing from start to finish?'

  Maggie smiled. 'I'll have a go, shall I? Although it's rather a long story.'

  'We're in no hurry,' Frank said, downing his pint. 'But maybe wait until the food turns up. But hey, it looks like our table's ready now. Let's wander over, shall we?'

  They picked up their drinks and made their way across the busy bar, Maggie watching with amusement as Elsa manoeuvred herself alongside Jimmy to make sure she was seated beside him. Which left her sitting next to Frank. Entirely fine by her.

  'So, first, Felicity Morgan,' she began. 'Yes, when Hugo dumped her, she completely flipped, and her whole existence became dedicated to making him suffer. Actions have consequences, that was her mantra, and of course she had the money to make it happen.'

  'So can you explain how she came to get Griselda Hauptmann involved?' Asvina asked. 'I've never really understood that.'

  'Well, I think her original plan was simply to watch Hugo fall in love with another woman and then have her dump him, so he got to experience the same pain that she had. She had begun a relationship with Robert Trelawney and knew he was looking for an intern, and of course she knew of her husband's tie-up with the Oxbridge Agency. So she put Trelawney in touch with Sophie Fitzwilliam, who just happened to have the perfect candidate on her books.'

  'A graduate in the History of Art,' Asvina said.

  'Yes,' Maggie said, 'to Feli
city, it was as if it was destined.'

  'So she was paying them both for their part in this crazy scheme?' Jill asked.

  'Yes. A lot. Tens of thousands of pounds, I think in Griselda's case. But the only fly in the ointment was that Griselda was too young. She was worried that Hugo would think twice about having a relationship with a woman so close in age to his daughter.'

  'So Griselda became Lotti,' Jimmy said.

  'Exactly. Robert knew of the Brückner family through his contacts in the art world. He'd met the real Lotti Brückner several times and as a consequence knew quite a lot about her.'

  'Like her Heidelberg degree,' Elsa said. 'I spoke to University there. Lotti was real person.'

  'Yes Elsa, that's right, she was. So Robert helped Griselda put together a convincing back story, and then all it needed was for Hugo to take the bait when she dangled it in front of him.'

  'And he couldn't resist,' Jimmy said. 'I mean, what man could?'

  'No indeed,' Maggie said, giving him a wry smile. 'Men are so shallow. But the problem was, Felicity in her blind anger, found that this wasn't enough for her.'

  'And that's when she decided to murder her own children,' Jill said. 'God, the thought of it sends a cold chill through me, it's just too awful. Of course we do get cases like that occasionally but it's always the men taking revenge on the mother. I've never known it the other way.'

  'Yes,' Maggie said. 'I think when Rosie and Jasmine decided to live with their father, that's what pushed her completely over the edge, and she decided to take the ultimate revenge.'

  'So what about Justice for Greenway?' Jill asked. 'What was that all about?'

  'Aye, well that was her half-arsed attempt to cover her tracks,' Frank said. 'It was Karl Tompkins who was responsible for the first couple of incidents, we're pretty sure of that. His was just the early low-level stuff, you know, the graffiti and the threatening letters. But when Felicity got to know about it, she saw the opportunity. So she stepped in, took over their identity and upped the ante. Or at least Vinny and Griselda did on her behalf. What they did to his Bentley, that really caused him some pain. Forty grand's worth of damage and Morgan got to see it all on video. And that's when we first saw the threats against the Morgan children.'

  'So how did she get Vinny Hadley to switch sides and work for her?' Asvina said.

  'That wasn't difficult,' Frank said. 'Hadley is a cold bastard, a professional hood who's happy to work for anyone who can afford him. He'd worked for her husband for years so she knew exactly what he was like. It was just a matter of agreeing a price, and when you have thirty million quid in the bank that wasn't going to be an obstacle.'

  'And Griselda?' Asvina asked. 'Was she involved in that too?'

  'Yes, she was,' Maggie said. 'She helped him with the harassment campaign, and worse than that. You see, she was there, on the platform. When Rosie was killed. I saw her. I didn't realise at the time who it was, but it came to me in the end.'

  'There's no evidence at the moment to charge her other than Maggie's testimony,' Frank said. 'But we're hoping that we may be able to get a statement from wee Jasmine when she's feeling better. Because Griselda was involved in all of it, you can count on that.'

  'And Robert Trelawney?' Jill said. 'What about him?'

  'He didn't know Felicity's real plans, we're pretty sure of that,' Frank said, shooting Maggie a sympathetic smile. 'As we said, he was in on the Lotti cover-up, but in some ways he was as much a victim as a perpetrator.'

  'And he paid a terrible price,' Jimmy said. 'I'm really sorry Maggie.'

  She shrugged. 'It's Magdalene Slattery who's hurting, not me.'

  Of course, it wasn't true. But as she scanned the table, she felt herself bathed in a fuzzy warmth that she knew she could never put into words. An amazing night with amazing friends. And a million miles from where she had been just two years earlier, despite still having no amazing man to share her life with. She looked at Elsa, bursting with life and quite certain she had already found her amazing man, although Maggie knew that she was to be disappointed, for Jimmy she had long known to be irreconcilably in love with his estranged wife. And then there was Jill Smart. An enigma. Improbably slim and elegant, attracting admiring and lustful looks wherever she went, but cool and inscrutable, revealing nothing of her true feelings to the world. And finally her dearest and truest friend, the friend who had rescued her from despair when her life had reached rock bottom. Asvina Rani, the super model beauty with the perfect life. The stellar career, her two boys, the adored husband, and so lovely in spirit that Maggie didn't bear an ounce of jealousy towards her.

  And there was Jimmy. Dear Jimmy. Several pints into the evening, he was in sparkling form and presently speaking.

  'Frank my boy,' he said, with the faintest of slurs and a wicked smile on his face. 'Frank my dear brother, there's just one think that I'm still puzzled about. Really puzzled. So tell us, how it was you just happened to be outside Maggie's house when Mr Vincent Hadley tried to kill us all?'

  The table fell quite silent and five pairs of eyes stared at him.

  Expectantly.

  A THANK YOU FROM AUTHOR ROB WYLLIE

  Dear Reader,

  A huge thank you for reading The Aphrodite Suicides and I do hope you enjoyed it! For indie authors like myself, reviews are our lifeblood so it would be great if you could take the trouble to post a review on Amazon. Here's the link to my Amazon page.

  If you did enjoy this book, I'm sure you would also like the other books in the series, A Matter of Disclosure and The Leonardo Murders, available on Amazon.

  Thank you for your support.

  Regards

  Rob