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  She took out a packet of hygienic wipes from her handbag and cleaned her hands before thoroughly scrubbing clean every surface she might have touched. Then she scattered a handful of blonde hairs that she had picked up earlier at her local salon on the back of the passenger seat. The rain was finally stopping. She got out of the car and took one last look at Simon Loewy’s corpse. It seemed even more blubbery and charmless in death than it had been in life. Thin lips, she thought. Never liked ’em. Never trust a man with thin lips.

  5

  Monday October 1. Buckinghamshire. 8.45am

  Jackie Sutton ran her hand up William Broadwick’s upper thigh, softly grazing his right testicle. He quickly brushed it away. What was wrong with the woman? He was forever telling her they had to be discreet in public and their train was packed with sullen Monday morning commuters. Jackie turned away and pretended to sulk. Broadwick buried his head in the Times. They’d been seeing each other on the sly for three months now. She was a secretary – sorry “executive assistant” – at a PR firm who worked for David Cameron’s new Blairite Conservative Party. He was the author of the country’s most determinedly right-wing newspaper column: Broadwick’s Broadside, a weekly rant against the country’s ceaseless descent into sopping wet social liberalism.

  Broadwick’s column, his no-nonsense radio talk show, and to a lesser extent his short-lived, critically-ridiculed satellite TV show had made him a hate-figure for the Left and an iconic figure (wags said “fuehrer”) for the Thatcherite rump of the Tory Party, disenfranchised by their leadership’s headless flight to the soggy centre on course for what William often called “Eurogeddon”. Broadwick was the voice of reason; the voice of freedom, patriotism and family values – which was why he had to keep their affair firmly under wraps.

  Jackie’s mobile rang. If Broadwick had recognised the ring-tone, it might have disturbed him even more. It was Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘I Wanna Have Your Babies’.

  She answered it eagerly.

  “Hello…oh hi Mum…on a train…yes, coming back from Milton Keynes…business…yes, with Willie…”

  Oh God. Broadwick glared at her angrily. A couple of young men in suits a few seats down had spotted him. This wouldn’t do. He got up and walked out into the corridor and stood by the toilet, watching the Buckinghamshire countryside roll by. He looked at his Tag Heuer watch. It was 9am. Four hours ’til his deadline. He called the Editor.

  “Paul? It’s William. Just on my way in. Anything happening?”

  “Two deaths,” the Editor said gleefully. “Good ones too. There’s been a paedophile murdered in Kent and a porn baron gunned down in Essex in his own car.”

  “Double bubble! Good riddance to both.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Will you say that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Excellent. Right, well, we’ll do a leader disassociating the paper from your views.”

  “Any other details known?”

  “The paedo was one Timothy Brown. He raped an eleven year old boy in Hastings when he was 17, did eighteen months for that, and was recently released from prison early after two similar offences. Bit of an outcry in the local papers about that, apparently. His body was found dumped in some rocks the other side of Tonbridge. The porn baron was Simon Loewy. Scum of the earth, ran a chain of provincial shops in Essex and Hertfordshire, known links with organised crime; had been prosecuted and fined several times for supplying hardcore filth under the counter. You wrote about the travesty of his latest trial only last month.”

  “Of course!”

  “Whoever killed him stuffed his mouth with pages torn from one of his own porn magazines, Schoolgirl Bondage Sluts.”

  “Poetic justice.”

  “Quite. They shot him through the heart.”

  “Who would have guessed he actually possessed one? That Brown case rings a bell as well, Paul, I...”

  Jackie came through the doors, holding her bag and his briefcase. Broadwick held a finger to his lips. She nodded and walked ahead to the buffet car.

  “I’ll get cuts emailed through. OK, guv’nor, I’m about half an hour away.”

  “See you in the office, superstar.”

  He closed his phone. “Mr Broadwick?”

  William looked at an elderly man in thick spectacles and a suit the colour of wet cement. He was smiling. A reader?

  “Yes, how do you do.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” the stranger said, proffering a limp hand.“David Graham. I’ve long been an admirer of your work.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wondered, as a reader, how you would solve the problems of the railways. It strikes me the trains have been getting worse. They were bad when they were nationalised, but since they’ve been privatised standards of service have slipped even more.”

  William breathed in sharply and went into auto-rant mode. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “The trains were useless when they were nationalised, and they’re certainly no better now. The wrong kind of privatisation has just allowed a few greedy spivs to get richer out of our misery.”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “Well, the first step would be for the government to extend standard franchise terms to twenty years, to encourage greater investment and stability.”

  “Yes, that’s sensible.”

  “They should also encourage a major transfer of freight away from the roads and onto trains and canals and expand the rail network by re-opening lines where there is a proven need.”

  Jackie came back. He motioned to her and carried on, trying to conceal his relief. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to talk to my PA.”

  “No, that’s perfectly fine,” the man replied. “Thank you so much for your time. You ought to go into politics, I often tell my wife that.”

  “Thank you, Mr Graham, pleasure to meet you.”

  “And brick up the Folkestone end of the Eurotunnel.”

  “Ha, ha, yes.” Broadwick forced a laugh.

  “You’re so good with people,” said Jackie, brushing the fine smattering of dandruff off his collar. “You really ought to go into politics, you know, he’s right – you’re a natural. You’re like Simon Heffer with a non-toxic personality.”

  “Maybe, some day.”

  “I mean it,” she said with feeling. “Everyday people are rudderless, they feel let down by conventional career politicians, and understandably so, because they have become a caste apart. You reach the common man, Willie, you could fill that vacuum.”

  “Hmmm,” Broadwick replied. His face twisted into a sulk, his smile melting away like a Salvador Dali clock.

  “All okay?” Jackie asked, sensing it wasn’t.

  “You really shouldn’t talk to anyone about us, Jack.”

  “It was my mother.”

  “Secret means secret.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “You know I think the world of you, but if any word of this gets out, I’ll be crucified.”

  “I know, I understand. I’m not a bunny-boiler.”

  “I know.” More of a slow-roaster, he thought.

  “Come here.”

  She opened the toilet door and pulled him through. His protests stopped within ten seconds of her unzipping his flies. Her hand plunged in. He was hard almost instantly and when she took all of him into her mouth in one smooth and wonderful movement it was all he could do to stop himself from coming on the spot. His moans were coming out in spurts. William Boardwick lasted a full thirty seconds before Little Willie gratefully did the same. God, this girl was fantastic. His wife had never liked oral sex and wasn’t any good at it. She sucked, in fact, but not in a good way.

  William rested against the cubicle wall, beaming. Jackie pulled out some toilet paper and spat the great man’s seed into it.

  “That’s better, Willie,” she said. “Grumpy Mr Hyde is happy Doctor Jekyll again. Now give us a kiss.”

  “You’re joking! I know where those lips have been.”<
br />
  She smiled. “I’ll leave first. You give me a head start.”

  As Jackie slipped out, a young shaven-haired yob in paint and plaster-splattered work clothes came straight in.

  “Oi Oi,” he said. “Khazi for two, don’t mind if I do.”

  The builder did a double take.

  “Don’t mind me, mate,” he said. “Give her a broadside! She’s well fit, innit?”

  He slapped the columnist’s back as he hurriedly left the toilet.

  “See what I mean?” Broadwick hissed as her caught up with Jackie.

  “He’s a building worker, William, what harm can it do?”

  “These things have a way of getting out.”

  The train pulled in to London Euston. Broadwick shot out and made for the cab rank. Jackie ran to keep up, tottering in her heels.

  “Can you drop me off at Portland Square? I’ve got a 10 o’clock.”

  “Can’t. I’m off in the opposite direction.”

  She shot him a look he could have shaved with.

  “It’s copy day!” the thunderer thundered.

  “How about a drink in the Walrus after work?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  She went to kiss him on the lips. Broadwick pecked her cheek and jumped in a cab. As it drove off, Jackie waited for him to wave, but he was too busy picking the blonde hairs off his crotch.

  6

  Tuesday, October 2, 2012.8.30am.Kent.

  There weren’t many murders in Royal Tunbridge Wells. Certainly none like the execution of Tim Brown. Detective Inspector Gary Shaw knew that the rotten little toe-rag was no loss to the world, but even so, this was too much. Shaw’s wife Joanne had led the Child Exploitation and Investigation Team which had collared Brown in 2010. He’d been bang to rights – guilty not just of “engaging in sexual activity” with eleven year old twins, a boy and girl, but of making indecent images of them. It was known locally as the Hansel and Gretel case because he’d lured them into his “candy-shack” flat on Halloween. There had been uproar when Brown had received a three year sentence and more when he had been released even earlier following a successful appeal based on minor technicalities.

  Shaw called his team into the incident room at Tonbridge police station for the briefest of briefings. “Get me information on everyone who might have a grudge against Timothy Brown, including family and friends of the twins. Get me names of all his known associates, including any other creeps and sex offenders he was in touch with.”

  Shaw sipped his coffee, which was as tepid as a baby’s bath water and did nothing to lift his mood. He turned to his Detective Sergeant, Rhona ‘Wattsie’ Watts. “Rhona, any word yet on the weapon?”

  “Still waiting for forensics, guv.”

  “Well, put a rocket up their arse. The quicker we move on this, the better. The press are looking for someone to kick and I don’t want it to be us. What else is there?”

  “One vague eyewitness report of a man in a flat cap and Barbour jacket moving suspiciously, no other description; and the size 12 footprints, Airwair soles...Doctor Marten boots,” replied DC John ‘Womble’ Piddlington, an overweight 35-year-old with breath that could strip wallpaper. “And that’s it, guv.”

  “Age? Height? Colouring?”

  “Nothing... except an old dear with insomnia saw a Land Rover driving away pretty sharpish at about the right time. She didn’t see the plate.”

  “OK, check CCTV, just in case he came back through town. Pictures?”

  DC Jim Woodward produced a see-through stud wallet containing the crime scene snaps. Shaw shifted through them absent-mindedly. If he were hoping for divine inspiration, none came. When the briefing was finished, Wattsie took him to one side.

  “You seen the Express today, guv?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  She showed him the William Broadwick column. Shaw groaned as he read the relevant passage. ‘I do not advocate vigilantism, but we should shed no tears for the likes of Brown and Loewy. There is no doubt Britain is a better, safer place without them. My only regret is that they didn’t suffer as painfully as their victims.’

  Gary Shaw shook his head. “This isn’t helpful,” he said.

  “The man’s a prick,” Rhona Watts concurred.

  7

  Sunday October 7. Woking, Surrey. 10am.

  William Broadwick settled outside the high street coffee bar with his small mountain of Sunday papers and a Jiffy bag full of his weekly mail from readers, some of it not scrawled in green ink. He generally avoided the high street during the week. It was always full of lumbering lard-arse punters, aggressive, feral kids and semi-bewildered ancients, many of whom, half-recognising him from his by-line picture, would attempt to strike up a mind-numbing conversation. But it was the bolshy white teenagers with their Jaifaican ‘multi-ethnic yout’ accents’ – the wannabe gangstas – that got under his skin the most. This was Surrey, for God’s sake, not the arse-end of Lambeth or the People’s Republic of god-forsaken Newham. They were a lost generation. Nothing national service, the birch and a short war wouldn’t put right, though.

  Mercifully, Sundays were different, especially this early in the morning. There were fewer ‘sheeple’ about for a start, and when the sun was out, you could sit outside with a broadsheet, a Gauloise Disque Bleu and a freshly squeezed orange juice and feel almost continental.

  Fiona had gone inside to order brunch. Broadwick stared with disdain as a pair of middle-aged women dressed like teenagers strolled past, their pierced navels on unattractive and unnecessary display. At least Fiona knew how to dress. His wife was effortlessly stylish. Even around the house, she looked classy in Tory Burch tunics and £150 Habitual jeans. He began to flick through the Sunday Telegraph.

  “Mr Broadwick?”

  With half a sigh, Broadwick looked up at the unshaven man rapidly moving into his personal space. He smiled warily.

  “I thought so. I liked the piece you wrote on refuse collections last week. Of course they should be weekly.”

  Broadwick nodded vigorously, another satisfied customer.

  “It’s outrageous,” he said. “It’s been the British householder’s right to have a weekly waste collection since Disraeli.”

  “There has to be weekly collections,” the man continued. “Otherwise there would be huge mounds of filth accumulating on our streets…”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “By which I mean discarded William Broadwick columns. You are one sick old bastard.”

  “What?”

  “That column of yours, it's fascist filth. Last week you were virtually encouraging people to attack anyone they suspected of being a paedophile.”

  The man’s face had suddenly become as cold and hard as an ice queen’s nipples. Broadwick switched immediately into attack mode.

  “Our laughable justice system leaves these animals walking the street,” he said, raising his voice angrily.

  “So fight to change the law, don't encourage lynch mobs.”

  Broadwick glared at him. “That's easy for you to say,” he retorted. “But this particular scumbag, Brown, had struck before, and was freed to strike again because of our toy-town courts – and the ‘law’ that you obviously look up to has become so perverted by grasping left-wing lawyers that it has become a tool to beat the honest and hard-working. No wonder parents are worried.”

  “What about when stupid tabloid readers attacked a paediatrician?”

  “That is entirely the fault of the politicians and the law-makers. People wouldn't need to take matters in to their own hands if the scum were locked up and properly medicated or preferably executed. Half the MPs in Parliament are morally suspect, so we can't rely on them to change anything.”

  “I'm wasting my time with you.”

  “You probably are if you expect me to go easy on perverts.”

  “Nazi.”

  “Oh that’s it, very clever. If you can’t argue the point, roll out the insults.”

  The man scow
led and walked on as Fiona returned with a tray of croissants. “What was all that about?”

  “Just the usual Guardian-reading ninny letting his heart bleed in public. Oh, ‘pity the poor paedophiles’. What a poltroon, what an arse. I wonder if he’d be so understanding if some big swarthy ‘victim of an uncaring society’ sodomised his grandmother and left her for dead.”

  “Willie!”

  He frowned and then smiled weakly as she placed his bacon and egg Panini and grande latte in front of him.

  “Thanks,” he grunted. “These people! I despise them, with their trendy pink blinkers, second-hand opinions and worthless degrees from the University of Smug...no doubt formerly the Polytechnic of Lingering Envy and Embittered Entitlement. After a while you can’t even hear what they’re saying, you can’t distinguish the words. All you can hear is the soundtrack of a once-great civilisation sliding irreversibly into babbling madness.”

  Fiona shifted uneasily.

  “Are we going to the reunion, dear?”

  Broadwick groaned. An old classmate had been in touch, inviting them to what was threatening to become an annual get-together for four old school chums and their less than fragrant wives. They had been to grammar school together, but that was about all they had in common. None of his old friends had done as well as he had.

  “Can’t we say we’ve got a wedding to go to? Or a paint-drying display? I could say I’m going in for a hernia operation.”

  “Willie! They’re your friends!”

  “Correction, they were my friends.”

  “We should go.”

  “I’d rather watch a row of abandoned skips rust in the rain.”

  “Two hours tops. Just show your face. You’ve got enough enemies.”

  He grunted.

  “Can I open the fan mail?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Broadwick read his paper moodily as Fiona sorted the opened mail into piles – autograph requests, questions that required an answer, column suggestions and letters she felt might lift his mood. She resented it when people were mean to Willie, it was hard enough to get him out of the house at the best of times and she’d hate it if their Sunday brunches became even rarer. There were emails too, which she’d printed out and separated into similar precise piles.