CHAPTER SIX
“MINISTER: MONSTER ON LOOSE” screamed the headline in The Mirror newspaper beside a picture of a forlorn looking Adrian Thomason.
“MONSTER STALKING OUR STREETS!” shouted its rival The Sun. In their front page picture the Home Office Minister was smiling, and the caption beneath read: “After creating panic with his monster claim, Adrian Thomason tries to shrug it off as a myth-quote.”
The more measured Independent ran the story at the bottom of Page One. It quoted Thomason as saying that his comments had been general in nature and that there had been a misunderstanding: “It was a throw-away line, which perhaps I was a little too casual with. But I can now set the record straight. We have the best police force in Europe. Our crime rate clearly is always too high because even one crime is one too many, but we are actually reducing the rate of violent crime.” He added: “The only monsters I personally know of are those which my children seem to enjoy blasting with ray guns on their PC at home.”
And a police spokesman supported the Minister in an issued statement which read: “The police at all times make every effort to apprehend law breakers of all kinds. The detection rate throughout the country compares favourably with rates elsewhere in Europe.” In what was obviously intended to show the absurdity of the press coverage of the television interview and to kill the story, the statement went on: “People break the law. The world of the police and the criminal is the real world. Monsters are in comic books and films. Comic book and film monsters are fantasy world creatures that the police leave to those with imaginations and who can put them to entertaining purposes.”
The other broadsheets had picked up the story also and gave it inside page attention. Despite the tabloid hype it was news that would proverbially die as quickly as the fish and chips it wrapped.
Or so the authorities hoped.
*
“Deliver me from fucking politicians!” Detective Inspector David Maguire gulped his favourite red wine, a Pinot Noir, through clenched teeth. “Can anyone explain to me why politicians, whatever shade they are, think they have to stick their bloody noses into every area under the sun?” He shook his head sadly. “If only they would stick to politics which they know something about allegedly and let the experts handle the rest about which they know nothing.” It was six thirty and Maguire and his best friend Martin Walden were in Gordon’s Wine Bar in Villiers Street.
They had been friends since they were youngsters, attending the same schools, shoplifting together from the local Paki news-agents, and later making a pact to become modern-day Batmen and Robins in the Metropolitan Police Force.
Maguire had risen more quickly through the ranks but they had managed nevertheless to stay close and now were working together in the same serious crime unit. They had been working sixteen hour days for three weeks without a break, except for one Sunday when they packed their rods and went north to a stream Walden knew where the fish could not wait to leap out of the water into their creels. But naturally it had been nothing of the sort and they were glad in a way to get back into the office shortly after dawn the following morning since when they had been content with visits closer to home, like the wine cellar.
Gordon’s was an establishment they went to fairly frequently before taking the tube home to Wimbledon where they lived a few miles apart. It is three hundred years old and lies hidden from ordinary pedestrian traffic which walks past its scarred bottle brown door on the way from Embankment to The Strand. Its stone walls and roof actually drip with condensation and the candles on the ancient oak table tops add to the dim intimate atmosphere.
“You know what the old comedians say about politicians,” said Walden. “If a hundred of them are standing up to their chins in shit, what do you have?”
Maguire had heard the punch-line more than a few times, but he was not in the mood today for jokes, old or new. There was quite enough shit as it was to go around thank you, and big mouthed politicians trying to make names for themselves did not help.
The junior Minister from the Home Office had really put his foot in it this time. Stupid bastard. Almost ruined everything. Not just hindered enquiries but really, one hundred per cent, fucked it up. There were minds, good minds, and more than just a couple, working around the clock to make sure dumb politicians like Thomason did not fuck things up. So what happens? Snafu. Situation normal. All fucked up. Well, not quite, but damn close.
“Oh Christ Dave,” tried Walden. “Come on. Let’s give it a break for an hour or so at least. This is already getting to all of us. If we’re not careful it will really knock us out.”
Maguire knew his friend was right. It was getting to him and to everyone working it.
He had no similar experience to fall back on, no cushion of having seen it before. Nobody had, he was sure. There was not even a learning curve. One day you were a normal human being doing a normal tough job on the streets and the next you were hurtled into a world nothing could have prepared you for. Jesus H Christ! He was going home late at night, sneaking in so he would not wake Joanie, and refusing to talk about it when they awoke. For the first time in his life he was keeping everything inside and she was being left out.
What was it she said only the day before yesterday? Don’t treat me like I have done something wrong to you. That was it. He was starting to treat everyone on the outside as if they were guilty of doing something to him personally. But goddamit, how was he supposed to behave? As if it was all routine? Just get on with it?
His pager vibrated and he ripped it from his jacket pocket and glanced down. Outside, out from under the dripping cellar walls, he used his mobile to dial the call number and listened for just half a minute.
Walden looked up sharply as he reappeared. “What is it?”
“We gotta go,” was all Maguire answered.
As they walked quickly away from Gordon’s Wine Bar, Maguire said gravely: “It’s another one. He’s thrown away another one.”
*
Gerrards Cross nestles in woodland about fifteen miles along the A40 to the west of London. The homes in the area, made up of names such as Chalfont St Peter, Amersham and half a dozen others, are mostly three stories and detached, so it is considered stockbroker belt. It is on a normal day no more than three quarters of an hour by car, on a good day half an hour. By train it takes twenty minutes. It took David Maguire and Martin Walden twenty-five minutes.
An area of woodland, or pretend farmland as the locals regarded it, was cordoned off with black and yellow tape wrapped abound saplings, and police cars were parked along the verge of the road, and uniforms moved around between the trees forty to fifty paces inland.
Maguire and Walden identified themselves and walked to where nobody else wanted to be any more, a rainproof ground sheet spread near a three foot high bush.
“Oh dear Jesus,” choked Walden. “What the godalmighty...”
Maguire dropped the sheet and walked away, ashen, less steady on his feet than when he had approached.
The body was like the others found in the last ten months.