CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It was a relatively quiet day for the metropolitan police. London had not been the scene of riots and there had been no major crimes that occupied the press. It was it had to be said a welcome respite. Seldom was there a day in one of the most dynamic capital cities in the world which could be described as incident-free. But this day, so far, there had not been an incident of such proportions that public concern was raised. At least not on the UK mainland.
In Northern Ireland there was a case that was grabbing the headlines, not of a murder but of plans to commit murder. It was a good twenty-four hours after the attempt that the BBC reported that a recently retired police officer had been targeted by pipe bombers who placed the device at the entrance to her house in County Down, a locality where dissident Republicans had attempted to kill many members of the security forces over the years. In the process it forced many local residents to vacate their homes.
The local Chief Superintendent said the deadly device was definitely an attempt to murder the police officer and that had it gone off anyone passing by would also have been killed or at least seriously injured. Instead, Army bomb disposal experts had examined the pipe bomb and carried out a controlled explosion. The incident was regarded by many as a throwback to the past, but one which would prove only to galvanise the determination of local citizens.
That was also the sentiment being expressed by David Maguire who was sharing a quick lunch break with his partner Martin Walden, perched on the concrete wall to the side of the entrance to New Scotland Yard in the middle of Victoria. They had temporarily escaped the confines of the building into the brisk fresh air outside and were munching on salad baps and downing mouthfuls of sweet liquid from Dr Pepper bottles.
“Police are the targets of hoodlums and crazies,” he said. “Even pipe bombers if they happen to live in Northern Ireland. But what really gets my goat is when bloody politicians who can’t control what happens in their own backyard start sticking their noses into ours and firing blame bullets. That really does piss me off.”
“Come on Dave,” said Walden. “That’s always been the case. What’s suddenly got into you now?”
“Oh I’m just pissed off that’s all. This case is beginning to get me down.”
“We’ve had cases just as bad in one way or another. I can recall one or two that kept us working longer hours than this.”
“I know.”
“I mean,” said Walden, “we have so little information to go on that we can’t work more hours. We have nothing to follow through on.”
Maguire leapt off the wall. “That’s what’s getting to me Mart. We are in the dark. Completely in the dark.”
He barely finished his sentence and Walden was about to offer a comment in response when the beeper on Maguire’s belt buzzed. He unclipped it and read the text.
“Well that puts an end to this,” he said.
*
An hour and a half later Maguire and Walden parked their car in Bodney Road just off Downs Park Road in Hackney. Downs Road and Downs Park Road are separated by the green fields of Hackney Downs. Hackney Downs is not quite a square but it almost is and it is largely bare except for the trees that stretch around the perimeter and which criss-cross from the four corners, making an oasis of trees in the centre. It was opened as a park in the mid eighteen eighties and is now a premier inner city space right in the heart of the borough. As such it is popular with youngsters. There is a children’s play area, basketball courts, a football pitch, tennis courts, an athletics track and a multi-use games area.
There is also a Mad About Meadows project in which the local council planted the new meadow on the Downs as part of a London-in-Bloom initiative that was in turn inspired by the Olympic Park wildflower meadows. For the horticulturists in the area there is a mix of rainbow annuals that grow quickly and within a year there are in a full showing of colourful flowers designed to attract important wildlife. As part of Hackney’s biodiversity action plan it is designed to be part of an overall one hectare of new meadow developed over give years.
None of this interested Maguire or Walden. Their interest lay, literally, in a clump of trees twenty meters to the side of the tennis court and football pitch. A bitumen path ran through the clump but it was still rather dark and dense and shielded from the sunlight and their attention was firmly fixed on what appeared to have been wrapped in swathes of black plastic.
“This one is different,” said Maguire.
“What do you mean?” asked the uniformed police constable who was standing nearby.
“She’s fresh,” Maguire answered without looking up. “Not like the others. This one was dumped here very recently. Maybe last night or even early this morning.”
“Is it what I think it is?” asked the constable.
“You’ve not looked at it?” asked Walden who now stood and faced the constable.
“No sir. A couple of the youngsters over there found it and phoned it in. We were walking the area and were directed here. It was my colleague who radioed on.”
“And where might he be then?”
“She’s over there with the two boys. They are the ones who found it and she thought it best to ask a few questions right away.”
“Good thinking,” said Walden. “Stay here and I’ll go and have a chat with her and the boys too.”
“Yes sir,” said the constable and tried to peer past Walden as he moved off to get a better look at the bundle on the ground.
*
The streets around St James’s, the attractive part of central London which lies between Green Park and St James’s Park and the tourist highlights of Piccadilly and Buckingham Palace, are lovely. It is renowned for its splendid buildings and opulent shops and hotels which line the pavements and it is just a short walk from the seat of government in Whitehall. St James’s is the oldest royal park in the capital and was once a marshy water meadow. In the thirteenth century a leper hospital was founded, and it is from this hospital that the park took its name. Over the centuries is has of course been shaped and reshaped, first by Henry VIII, then by Elizabeth I, followed by James I and finally and most significantly by Charles II. Its twenty three hectares of groomed landscape and lake that is home to ducks, geese and pelicans draws tourists with their cameras from around the globe.
A stone’s throw away from the park is the Blue Posts pub. As it too is located in the St James's area it too attracts tourists most of whom have been visiting Buckingham Palace at the weekends. During the week though it plays host to local business people from many walks of life.
The Blue Posts is only a hundred meters or so from the glamorous Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly and has been described as “a handsome old gent, more loyal butler than landed-gentry in a solid and dependable vein”. Dark woods, patterned curtains and deep burgundy walls make it feel cosy and traditional. It is rather small for a London pub and so patrons often spill out onto the pavement. Sometimes the neighbourhood of St James’s can be a bit presumptuous, but not The Blue Posts. It covers all the basics simply and economically. For these reasons, as well as my having my base not that very far away, it was a pub that I dropped into from time to time usually on my way home from an assignment in the area. It was still mid evening and I reckoned I could manage two Fosters lagers before I should call it a night.
Rather than stand inside where it was pretty crowded I elected to take my beer outside onto the pavement. And because I decided to do that I also decided I would treat myself to a cigar. Not a cigar of quality that I had last enjoyed at Boisedales but instead a cheap and small Hamlet. As I was taking my first puff having borrowed a lighter from one of the other drinkers outside, and straight away wishing I had not gone down market with the cigar which was cheap rubbish compared with that at Boisedales, my mind turned to that unusual problem I realised I had and which I knew that if I did not do something about quickly I would find myself in a really awkward and potentially very risky situation. Joan Maguire.
Joan Maguire was an ache that refused to go away. As the wonderful free encyclopedia Wikipedia defines it, the ache was a chronic, painful sensation. Chronic because it was persistent and long lasting, and painful because it was definitely unpleasant. Joan Maguire was pleasant but the sensation she caused me was not. The remedy was not one that any medical concoction offered. The cure was within my control. I knew that and I also knew that my even thinking about the detective’s wife was tantamount to juvenile stupidity of the most ridiculous kind. All I had to do was regain my senses, grow up, stop fantasising about the unobtainable and unreachable, and move forward as a sensible adult. That was all. Simple. So that was what I resolved to do and after my first pint I was absolutely confident I was on the way to achieving it. After my second pint my resolve had hardened so I decided a third would put the Joan Maguire fantasy out of my mind completely. And in fact it seemed to work so I reckoned it was time to leave the Blue Posts and head home.
As I was leaving I bumped into a couple leaving the bar. It was my fault. I had headed out the door into the street and then decided to use the toilet downstairs first. As I spun about I walked straight into the woman who was looking over her shoulder, smiling and waving to a group of other young women inside. She bore the appearance of a typical office employee, dressed in mainly black with a white blouse underneath and black knee-high boots. There was nothing special about her and she was not strikingly attractive. Indeed, the man she was with was more likely to draw admiring glances. He was tallish, trim, with dark hair and a well clipped moustache. A good looking man.
I apologised and descended down the stairs to the toilets. On the way I vowed once more to erase Joan Maguire from my fertile imagination.
When I arrived home about three quarters of an hour later I instinctively switched on the television and clicked the button for the Sky News. The eleven o’clock bulletin had started a few minutes before and the main newscaster Anna Botting filled half the screen while in the background I could see a field or a park where police and sundry other officials in white and yellow garb were milling around under trees that were bound together with black and yellow scene crime tape. I turned up the volume and listened to the unfolding early reports of a body being found in north London. Then I stood stock still as it was announced that the body of a woman had been found in a Hackney park, that it was a young woman, and that unconfirmed information suggested she had been mutilated.
Quickly I began surfing the terrestrial television channels and found they all had broken into their regular programmes with news just in that the body of a woman had been discovered stuffed in black plastic bags in the undergrowth in Hackney Downs. The Channel 4 newsreader informed viewers that sources had reported the woman had been violently killed and that while the police on the scene would say nothing the question had to be asked: Was the dead woman another of the serial killer’s victims? It was clear the evening’s electronic media were having a field day with the breaking story.
*
At first he thought he had picked the wrong bar to prowl.
It was well away from where he lived and was one that he had never visited before. But he had searched the internet using definite criteria; it had to far from his locality, it had to be in a nice area so that it attracted a respectable clientele, and it had to be small enough for him to work in but not large enough to simply be one of an unapproachable crowd, and there had to be an easy route from the bar to his vehicle.
He drove to the area and as he had discovered while web searching he found a place to park some distance from the pub and yet not unduly distant. After all, if he was fortunate they would have to walk from the pub and he did not want that to be over such a distance that a lot of people would notice them. People had memories and he did not want to do anything that would aid too many people to remember them. Of course some of the people in the pub would recall him but there was no sense in adding more witnesses than was absolutely necessary. There were also a couple of side streets that would take them off the most popular street on their way from the pub to his car.
But it seemed fairly soon after his arrival and early on in his scanning the people in the pub that he might actually be lucky, that his luck might have changed for the better. It was about time.
The pub was pretty crowded with customers of both sexes and a wide range of ages. Mostly they were office workers though there were a few men who were dressed too casually to have come straight from their places of work. All of the women he noticed were smartly dressed and while some of them were clearly with partners there was a group of five who were standing together in the middle around the central shelves where they balanced their glasses. Sparkling Rose wine seemed to be the fashion of the day and there were already two empty bottles on the shelves.
As one of the women, a large blonde with a red streak across the front of her hairline, left the group and headed to the bar another of the group looked around the room and her eyes settled on his. He smiled slightly and then looked away. When he looked back she was looking at him and she smiled. In turn he raised an eyebrow and again looked away and studied the other people in the room. But as he was doing this he was registered details about the women.
She was aged probably in her mid-thirties. She was not slim but not fat, on the full side as someone who did not belong to a gym and who did not work out regularly. Her figure was full also. She had short black hair and an average face. Certainly not pretty but not plain either. Pleasant is how he would describe her. While her stature suggested she was not the athletic type he saw that she was tanned so he suspected she might have recently returned from a holiday, or that it was from a salon or courtesy of expensive cosmetics she applied. When he looked back again she was laughing with her friends, the large blonde filling the glasses from the fresh bottle of Rose she had purchased at the bar. For the next few minutes he glanced in the group’s direction from time to time but each time he saw that the woman was enjoying happy conversation with her friends.
He had been drinking wine also, a dry white, and his glass was now empty. He left the plastic bag with the day’s copy of the Times inside on the stool he had been using near the windows and approached the bar and catching the barman’s attention ordered a refill. As he was handing over payment the person next to him said “hello”.
He turned and saw it was the woman with short black hair.
“Hello,” he said.
She said nothing.
“I think I saw you over there with your friends,” said the man.
“You did,” she replied. “I know you did.” She paused. “And I saw you over there by yourself. You smiled at me.”
“Did I?” he said.
“Yes you did,” said the woman. Her voice was slurred but only slightly. “You certainly did.”
*
Jacqui Harrison was full of anticipation. The wine had done wonders for her optimism and as she looked again at the man by her side she was excited about her prospects.
He was certainly good looking and he had been polite and not too pushy even though it was she who taken the first step and had made it pretty obvious she found him interesting and was prepared to see where things went.
When he had paid for his wine at the bar she had collected her glass and they had gone to the raised table where he had been sitting and the conversation had continued along fairly innocuous lines. They introduced themselves, she simply as Jacqui and he by his first name Brendon, and she went on to explain she was the personal assistant to the chief communications officer of a Caribbean island tourist authority which had its offices in Bennet Street about fifty meters from the Blue Posts. It was a job she enjoyed immensely with one of the perks being a trip to the island paradise every two years.
“Have you just come back from there?” he asked and gently touched her forearm with his finger to indicate the tan which he had already suspected had nothing to do with island sunshine.
“No,” she answered and giggled. “This is courtesy of a lamp. But I plan to be going in a few months so I have been getting ready. No sense in arriving looking like the typical English albino. I don’t spend much time on the beach but I want to look like I have.”
He smiled. So far his senses had been correct.
“What do you do?” Jacqui Harrison asked as she took a sip of her Rose spilling a little that ran down the side of her chin without her noticing it. “Are you a lawyer or something?”
“No such thing,” he replied. “I am a humble public relations consultant.”
“What sort of clients do you have? Any travel or tourism companies?”
“Not one unfortunately. If I did I would be happy to take payment in travel in lieu of cash. Maybe you could convince your boss that he should hire me.”
“It’s all done in-house. We don’t use outside PR. So what do you work on?”
“Mostly tech companies. But also some property clients. Pretty well anything that comes along really.”
Jacqui remained silent for a short while and then asked: “What’s the name of your company?”
“I’m a freelance,” he answered. “I do bits and pieces for various agencies. No-one specifically.”
Again she was quiet.
“Do you live around here?” she asked suddenly.
“Not far actually. Not around here. I can’t afford that. But just across the river.”
“Do you have a car?”
“Yes. It’s parked in St James’s Square.”
Once more she said nothing. But she looked straight at him and smiled just a little so the corners if her mouth turned up which at the same time caused little rivulets to form under her eyes.
He mentally noted this and once more told himself he had been right about her age. She was definitely in her thirties.
“Would you like to see where I live?” he said. “We could have a drink and then I could drive you home.”
“You don’t know where I live,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he countered. “If it’s in London I am sure we could find it together.”
Jacqui slid off her stool and straightened her skirt. “Let me just have a chat with my friends.”
And now here they were walking down King Street approaching the predominantly Georgian-designed St James’s Square which during its first two hundred years was one of the most fashionable residential addresses in London and which now was home to the headquarters of a number of well-known businesses and the exclusive East India Club. The square’s main feature is an equestrian statue of William III dating back to the early eighteen hundreds.
“The car’s just on the other side there, opposite Chatham House,” he said. “You can see the flag there,” and he pointed off to his left.
They crossed the road and began walking along the pavement separated from the square by high black iron railings.
Jacqui stopped as they were about to round the bend.
“I think I have changed my mind,” she said. “I’ve had a few wines and I think I should just go straight home.”
“That’s ok,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”
“No, I’ll get a cab I think.”
“Come on,” he said and moved towards her. “I’ll drive you. Come on, forget the taxi.”
She backed away a step. “No,” she said. “I’ll take a taxi.”
He took another step towards her and put his fingers around her arm. “Don’t be silly now, I’ll drive you home. Where do you live?”
Jacqui pulled away. “Let go of me,” she said loudly. “Let me go.”
Instead he reached for her with his other hand and grabbed her other arm tightly.
At that point she screamed: “No. Help. Let me go.”
Across the road two men in suits were coming down the steps of the East India Club. They heard the shout and looked across the road. Both of them stepped off the pavement as a taxi rounded the corner from King Street into the road that circled the square.
They waited for the taxi to pass and as soon as it had they quickened their pace. But by the time they arrived near the cars that were parked on their side of the square, Jacqui Harrison had moved to meet them.
“Are you alright?” one of the men asked and craned his neck to look past her. The other man put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m ok, but I think he was going to attack me,” she said.
“Who?” said the man who had asked the first question. “Where is he?”
But when the three
of them looked back though the gaps in the parked cars they could see no-one.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” asked the second