But that wasn’t really true. Being pollen allergic, she’d passed the bouquet on to the ancient lady who lived next door. As for champagne, the bubbles gave her hiccoughs and the magnum was still in her fridge.
Now as she drove back to her modest flat in Southwark, Maggie contemplated her next move.
She could ring Beanie at her apartment again, but when she would return from the party was anybody’s guess. Also she’d probably changed her number. Anyway, getting was different from giving information. For getting you wanted face-to-face.
She parked the car and climbed the stairs to her flat.
In the corner of her living room was a filing cabinet in which she kept anything she didn’t want her employer to have access to. From this she took an envelope, and out of the envelope she took an invitation to Tris Shandy’s party.
David Gidman the Third was definitely a somebody. Also, he’d appeared on Truce! to be confronted by a couple of angry constituents whom he had placated with considerable aplomb. The whole event had of course been carefully stage-managed, otherwise Maggie wouldn’t have let him anywhere near Shandy.
But the Shah-Boat party was something different. No way was Maggie going to risk seeing Dave head off from the Centre opening to such a potentially scandalous event, so she’d simply hidden the invitation.
Now it could come in useful.
She thought of changing her clothes, decided nothing in her wardrobe was going to make her look more like one of the Shandy crowd, and contented herself with adding an a to David on the invitation.
The security guards by the gangplank had clearly been chosen for their muscle rather than their political awareness. They checked her invitation against the guest list, showed no surprise that Davida should have been misprinted there as David, and even less that a female Member of Parliament should be plain and drably dressed.
On the boat the party was in such full swing that probably no one would have noticed if Captain Jack Sparrow himself had come mincing up the gangplank at the head of his band of cutthroats, but this did not stop her from taking precautions as she went in search of Beanie Sample. Moving unnoticed among crowds of people whose sole desire was to be noticed might seem an easy option, but there were dangers. She was long practised in the art of scia-mimicry, but the sight of Gidman’s shadow moving independently of Gidman might provoke someone to draw attention to her presence in order to draw attention to himself.
At one point in the main saloon she passed close to Tris Shandy and felt those shrewd Irish eyes register her. Happily before he could rummage through the bran tub of his memory for her identity, one of the three bimbos competing for his attention upped the ante by letting her left boob loose from the confines of its halter with all the subtlety of a cannon ball bursting out of a paper bag.
As Shandy, with the scholarly wit for which he was justly famous, called, ‘Fetch a warm spoon someone- better make that a shovel!’ Maggie slipped out of the saloon and found herself on a narrow walkway on the seaward side of the boat. Her luck was in, for there was the Bitch in all her flesh-flaunting finery, talking to a pretty black man Maggie recognized as a premiere league star. Coming between the goddess and her prey was not a good idea, and Maggie was preparing herself for a long wait when from the other direction arrived a young woman who clearly had no such inhibitions. Bearing all the episematic markings of the WAG, she shouldered Beanie aside with the gentle courtesy of Wayne Rooney on a bad day and bore her man along the walkway, filling his ear with the sedimentary vowels of estuary-speak from which Maggie, who could interpret whispers at fifty paces in a gale, excavated the phrases old enough to be your gran and fuck knows where she’s been.
The Bitch was ready, Maggie decided. Getting no joy from the substitutes bench, she would be in no mood to feel protective about her absent Welsh striker.
Plus she owes me!
But for all that, as Beanie Sample came along the walkway towards her, Maggie felt about as confident as Androcles in the Coliseum. Just because you’d once helped a lion didn’t always mean it would be grateful next time you met.
The editor’s mood as evidenced by her greeting didn’t hold out much promise.
‘So Dave the Turd came after all, did he?’ said Beanie. ‘Rattle the swill pail, even the fattest pig comes running.’
One of the few things Maggie found to admire about the Bitch was that she’d stated publicly she’d rather bed a porcupine than a politician.
She said, ‘In fact I’m here by myself. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Yeah? You want a job on Bitch!, hon, you’ll need to smarten yourself up.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve got a job. That’s why I’m here. I want to know what Gwyn Jones is up to.’
Beanie’s face went blank.
‘What makes you think he’s up to anything?’ she asked.
‘Because he came to the opening of the Gidman Memorial Community Centre instead of strutting his stuff here as your Stud of the Month.’
There was no point, Maggie had decided, in beating about this bush. Directness would get her what she wanted, or get her thrown overboard.
For a moment she thought the odds were on the latter.
Then a phone rang.
Beanie dived into her Vuitton bag and plucked out a mobile whose diamond-studded case matched her earrings and choker.
She checked the display then turned away from Maggie and walked out of earshot, or so she thought. But the acoustic of the walkway, plus her priceless acuity of hearing, allowed Maggie to catch Beanie’s half of the conversation.
‘Hi, honey. Where are you?’
‘Jesus! So what’s going on?’
‘Hell, that’s truly terrible. How long will it take?’
‘No, I understand. Families are important. Of course you’ve got to put them first.’
‘Yeah, it’s OK here. No fun without you, though. I probably won’t stay long.’
‘I love you too. Hope everything goes OK. You take care now. Bye.’
Her tone as she spoke was affectionate and concerned, but her expression as she made her way back to Maggie was gorgonian.
‘Bad news?’ said Maggie.
The Bitch glowered at her for a moment, then her features relaxed into a smile that would have made Jones nostalgic for Llufwwadog.
‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘You got a car? Don’t know about you, but I’m ready to abandon this rust bucket before I get sea-sick. You can drive me home and on the way we’ll have a nice little chat about Jones the Mess.’
15.50-16.15
Dalziel looked out of the window of 39 Loudwater Villas.
The view of industrial dereliction across the Trench wasn’t pretty, but it was preferable to the view inside. Even his normally cast-iron stomach had experienced a spasm as he looked down at the body. It wasn’t just the ruined head that made him queasy, it was the idea that he’d been responsible for putting Novello close to this carnage.
‘Shotgun-sawn-off, from the spread,’ said Pascoe. ‘Death instantaneous.’
‘Often is when you lose most of your head,’ said Dalziel.
It was a feeble attempt to assert control.
On arrival he’d found the street in front of the Villas had been cordoned off. This was easy to do as it was a dead-end for vehicle traffic, narrowing down within fifty yards to a rutted track following the course of the river. An incident room caravan had already arrived, reminding the Fat Man how far behind the game he was. Pascoe emerged from it as he approached. Before he could speak, Dalziel had barked, ‘What’s the news on Ivor?’
