Judas Horse Read online

  Later that evening, the squad room was buzzing with the overlapping chatter of invigorated officers reliving their exciting evening and comparing scrapes and bruises. ‘Thank you, Jack.’ Stanford’s tone was sincere. Although he knew that Ridley had an inter-station duty to help when help was requested, he also knew that Jack’s input was above and beyond anything he’d expected. ‘DCI Ridley’s lucky to have you.’

  Jack’s eyes twitched in pain as the adrenaline began to fade and his body started to complain about being slammed to the ground, then jumped on by four policemen. ‘Enjoy your victory, sir. It was hard-earned.’

  Jack turned and, to a chorus of ‘’Night, sir,’ he headed home for a hot bath, a glass of wine and a cuddle with his beautiful, beached whale of a fiancée.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jack got home around nine. As he turned into the end of his street, he was still imagining the fantasy evening ahead of him: Penny would be out, Maggie would be in her pyjamas, the wine would be open, and the dinner would be in the oven ready for him to serve. He was exhausted from the obbo with Mike Haskin and Richard Stanford but also elated from their success and subsequent arrest of Panagos. Stanford would be dining out on that one for years to come.

  This part of Twickenham was lovely compared to where their old flat had been in Teddington. They’d purchased the three-storey terraced house just under four months ago. It was a doer-upper. The kitchen, lounge and master bedroom had been the priority – these rooms were now painted plain white with cheap, mis-matched furniture that would ultimately be replaced when they’d had time to decide on the ‘look’ they wanted to go for. The second bedroom would slowly become a nursery but, for now, was nothing more than a pink-plastered box. The top floor had two bedrooms and one bathroom – this was his mother’s domain. She’d moved in with them at the old flat within weeks of Charlie’s death, as both Jack and Maggie were absolutely insistent that she was not going to live on her own. They initially assumed that, regardless of the love they had for her, Penny would be an added ‘burden’ – for want of a better word – but, in truth, she’d been the one to hold everything together.

  Since moving to the Twickenham house, Penny had been a godsend. She stepped into Maggie’s life at exactly the moments when Jack wanted to step out – the nestbuilding, the conversations about pelvic floors and piles and sickness, the fear and trepidation about life after the baby was born. All of the things Jack would have been totally crap at, Penny was in her element. And when it came to the everyday stuff, Penny made Maggie’s life easier and better than Jack ever could – and being constantly occupied helped Penny to rally from the death of her beloved husband far more quickly than if she’d been allowed to wallow in some supervised-living accommodation, full of other old people with dead partners. She had a new generation to live for now and she was going to love the new baby with all of her heart. Penny likened waiting for the birth of Maggie’s baby to waiting for Jack to be handed over from Social Services all those years ago.

  Jack was very lucky that Maggie and Penny got on so well, but Penny was also surprisingly astute about their need for privacy. She’d signed up for a couple of evening classes and had even bought herself a little TV for her bedroom, turning the top floor into a proper little granny flat. She was secretive about the evening classes, prompting hours of humorous speculation, Jack eventually deciding that Penny was doing pole dancing and woodwork.

  Jack loved returning of an evening to his ever-changing home. This house, or one like it, had been their dream ever since they moved from Totnes. They’d been priced out of the London market for so long, but after Jack’s ‘windfall’, they jumped on this property by quickly offering £15k below the asking price, in cash. Within a week, they were in. The windfall was attributed to an impulsive lottery ticket purchase, which Maggie never questioned. Jack didn’t know whether she thought he was lying, or whether she was just too scared of hearing the truth. All Maggie knew for sure was that her husband was a changed man after the Rose Cottage case. He was found. He now knew where he belonged and that, for any person, was life-changing.

  *

  Penny didn’t know that Jack had even looked for his real dad, let alone that he’d found out he was the son of Harry Rawlins, one of London’s biggest gangsters in the 1980s. That was Jack and Maggie’s secret. But the ‘gift’ of £250,000 was Jack’s secret alone. Jack knew it was the proceeds of crimes from back in the ’80s; he knew it was untraceable; he knew the thieves were long gone; he knew the case file was closed. No one knew or would care . . . and all that made it easy to keep, and easy to spend.

  The money had now dwindled, but Penny’s pension and Jack’s sergeant’s wages kept them ticking over. As a new young family, they were firmly on the social ladder – they wouldn’t fall off unless Jack got sacked, but on the other hand they wouldn’t climb unless he got promoted. For the first time in years, it felt as though life was where it should be.

  The baby would complete the family, and Jack and Maggie would get married once she’d got her figure back – her words, not his – he was loving her big breasts and ample backside . . .

  But Jack’s dream evening vanished in a split second when he saw the car parked in his space on the street. They had visitors.

  Jack recognised the deep, howling laughter as soon as he opened his front door. Regina was a nursing auxiliary in the same hospital as Maggie and they’d bonded over both being pregnant. She was nice enough, but loud. The moment the front door closed, Maggie was out of the kitchen and in Jack’s arms. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .’ Her words were punctuated with a kiss. ‘She’s had a rough day and I wanted to cheer her up.’ Maggie dragged Jack down, over her heavily pregnant belly and hugged him tightly round his neck. He could have fallen asleep on her shoulder right there, but instead he allowed himself to be led into the kitchen where he would spend the next couple of hours pretending to want Maggie’s friends in his home.

  Regina and Mario were both drinking non-alcoholic wine, and there was a buffet-style feast on the table. Jack briefly raised his dark eyebrows; widening his beautiful brown eyes at Maggie with the unspoken message: ‘We’re not a food bank.’ Maggie had previously told Jack that Regina and Mario were struggling financially in the run-up to the birth of their baby, so he knew why Maggie had taken it upon herself to treat them to a feast every now and then. They’d also be forced to take home doggy bags, whether they were embarrassed to or not.

  Regina had been to the house numerous times, but tonight was Mario’s first visit. Jack knew it was his job to talk ‘man stuff’ with this stranger and as Jack got himself a beer from the fridge, Mario made a comment about abstaining from alcohol in solidarity with Regina. Jack quickly assumed that his evening would go downhill from there.

  In fact, Mario was decent company and, by ten o’clock, he was on the beer too. Mario was a painter and decorator, existing on word-of-mouth recommendations. It was a tough job, with long hours and no security, but he had the sort of friendly demeanour that won people over quickly. Slowly but surely, Jack began to understand why Maggie gave so much to this couple and was happy to get nothing practical in return. They were worth helping.

  At 11.15, Regina and Mario said their goodbyes at the front door, and Jack confirmed that he’d be in touch to talk about dates and times for decorating the nursery. The men shook hands, the women hugged, and Jack finally had his wife all to himself.

  Maggie brought Jack a whisky and they settled into their newly adopted positions on the sofa. Before Maggie was too pregnant, they’d sit close together, using only one half of the sofa, but these days, they sat at opposite ends so that Maggie could bring her feet up and rest them on Jack’s lap. ‘Was it your idea for Mario to paint the nursery?’ she asked. Jack’s smug little smirk told her that it was. ‘I love you, Jack Warr.’

  ‘I know.’ From where he sat, he could hardly see her face above her bump. He stroked his hand across her belly. ‘Ah! She’s a footballer
!’ Jack closed his eyes and felt his baby slowly turn and stretch and kick. ‘There is only one in there, isn’t there, Mags?’ For a moment, there was genuine worry on Jack’s face. ‘Regina’s much smaller than you and I can definitely feel three legs.’

  ‘She’s only five months, you idiot; I’m close to my due date. And I imagine that third leg might be an arm.’ By midnight, Maggie was hauling herself up the stairs by the bannister, and Jack was pushing her bum skywards from below. They were both giggling as quietly as possible, so as not to wake Penny. ‘That doesn’t actually help, Jack.’

  He knew. She told him every night. But he liked doing it.

  At the top of the stairs were three boxes from Amazon. Maggie went into the bathroom, leaving Jack to have a nosy at what she and Penny had been buying. With no distinguishing pictures on the delivery boxes, Jack scrabbled about on his hands and knees trying to decipher the labels. Nursery stuff was about all he could discern.

  As he knelt on the third stair down, his elbows on the landing floor; he smiled. Penny and Maggie’s nestbuilding had accelerated over the past few weeks. They’d shown him material swatches, paint charts, online nurseries and asked his opinion, which they didn’t really want or need, and Jack didn’t want to give. Being asked his opinion put Jack in very dangerous territory: if he said it was up to them, he’d be scolded for being uninterested; but if he offered an opinion that differed from theirs, he’d be scolded for not understanding the needs of his unborn child. Jack much preferred the mind games of criminals to the mind games of his wife and mother: they mercilessly ganged up on him all the time. But the masochistic part of him adored being bullied by the women he loved – and it was tragic that Charlie wasn’t here to share the burden. He deserved to be here. He’d worked hard all his life to mould Jack into a man to be proud of and now, when Jack needed his dad to be on his side against ‘the women’, Charlie wasn’t around. The very thought of Charlie brought tears to Jack’s eyes – the pain stage of his grief was merging with the anger stage and resulted in short-lived, intense moments of heightened emotion. Jack deep-breathed through it and the tears subsided.

  Then a strange memory popped into Jack’s head and he sat on the stair to relive it.

  *

  The sonogram burst into life and showed them an indistinct, grainy picture like something on a water-damaged VHS tape. In this uniquely beautiful moment, Jack’s mind leapt to one of his first cases for the Met, in which he was asked to watch illegally produced porn tapes found in a toilet cistern, to see if any of them starred James Daniels, a well-known, yet highly elusive local pervert. Jack closed his eyes – ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he thought as he desperately tried to get rid of the memory. Maggie squeezed his hand, and he was back in the room.

  She repeated the question they’d been asked and which he hadn’t heard: ‘Do we want to know the sex?’ The romantic in Jack didn’t want to know, but the practical decorator in Maggie definitely did. So, for the sake of painting the nursery in the appropriate colour, they both said yes.

  ‘It’s a girl!’

  The tears welled up in Jack’s eyes. He had no idea why and he could do nothing to stop them. He and Maggie looked at each other through the blur of tears, and they laughed with joy, hysteria, fear, anxiety, anticipation. ‘She’s amazing’ Maggie blubbed, as she looked at the grey snow on the screen with a black bubble, inside which was their baby. But all Jack could see was James Daniels’ bare arse bobbing up and down . . .

  When they got home, Penny had made spaghetti bolognese and opened a bottle of non-alcoholic wine. With only two places set at the table, they knew that this meal was for them and that she’d retire to her granny flat to watch reruns of Lovejoy. In the centre of the table was a large white box tied with a bow. ‘You don’t have to use it,’ Penny said before heading upstairs and leaving them to serve themselves.

  Inside the box was the most stunning christening gown either of them had ever seen. On the hem, in faint, worn lace, were the letters P and C. ‘Oh my God.’ Jack’s words fell from his lips in a long, exhaled breath. ‘This is her wedding dress. Her mum made it – look, she sewed P and C just above the hem. Penny and Charlie. No one knew the letters were even there apart from the three of them. It was for this moment, Mags, it was so that when Penny made her wedding dress into her own baby’s christening gown, the initials would sit on the hem of that too. And I didn’t even know Mum could sew!’

  ‘She couldn’t.’ Maggie smiled. ‘I guess she wasn’t learning how to pole dance at her evening class, after all.’

  *

  The toilet flushed, Maggie came out of the bathroom and waddled past Jack towards the bedroom. In bed, Jack snuggled in behind her and kissed her neck. She stirred in his arms, her hand reached back and settled on his naked thigh. Within minutes, they were both asleep.

  *

  Ridley hadn’t accounted for Jack returning from Wimbledon quite so soon. He’d received a phone call late the previous night from Richard Stanford, thanking him for sending such a diligent and astute DS to help catch the Prowler. As Jack walked into the squad room, Ridley was still deciding how much of Stanford’s praise to pass on.

  Ridley nodded Jack into his office. ‘You OK?’ Ridley had never asked Jack if he was OK, not even at Charlie’s funeral, when Ridley stepped in to carry the coffin on account of most of Charlie’s friends being too old to do it. ‘DS Stanford said you were hurt during the arrest.’ Jack assured Ridley that he was fully recovered and fit for work, regardless of the fact that, this morning, his back was as stiff as a board and he felt like he’d played forty minutes against the All Blacks. ‘You’ve got two weeks Maternity Support Leave to take, half on full pay, half on statutory pay. You have to take it soon, or you’ll lose it.’ As Jack stood silent, Ridley could see the fear in his eyes. ‘The baby’s coming, Jack, whether you’re ready or not.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Within three days, Jack’s decision about when to take his Maternity Support Leave was made for him, when Maggie went into labour. She waddled up and down the kitchen, stopping every ten minutes or so with her palms on the cool fake-marble worktop and her forehead on the back of her hands. Whenever this pause occurred, Penny rubbed circles into the small of Maggie’s back and both women breathed noisily as they waited in horrible anticipation for the building pain to peak and then left Maggie alone for another ten minutes. The women were like a finely tuned partnership – both knowing exactly what to do, when, and for how long.

  Jack stood in the kitchen doorway with a birthing bag in one hand and the car keys in the other, waiting for the signal. After two hours, Maggie said she was ready to go to hospital.

  *

  In the delivery room, Jack knew the nurse’s chant of ‘breathe, breathe’ wasn’t for his benefit, but it was working, so he went with it. He was completely out of his comfort zone and, worse than that, had no idea what his purpose was in this room – he wanted, needed, to be in control, but he was a million miles away from that. He was annoyed with himself for being this useless. This is why expectant dads are told to stand at the head of the bed and hold the mum’s hand: it’s to keep them out of the way! he thought to himself.

  Maggie, on the other hand, was being wonderful and strong. She didn’t seem to be frightened, and calmly did exactly what she was told, when she was told. As Jack watched her prepare to push out the baby’s head, his mind raced. He’d witnessed many a police officer run towards danger in the name of the Job, but he’d never seen anyone face this degree of pain, with such unfaltering bravery. Maggie had no choice, of course, he knew that, but still – the pride he felt at this moment for his amazing wife swelled in his chest and ended as tears.

  Maggie caught sight of Jack’s face. ‘What the fuck are you crying for?!’ she screamed. Her scream turned into a grunt of pain, then back into a scream. Then a higher-pitched, gurgling scream joined hers and it took Jack a few seconds to realise that his baby had arrived.

  The baby’s head was covered
in a thin layer of white, paste-like vernix and her face was screwed up so tight that it was nothing more than a lumpy red ball. But once on Maggie’s chest, the baby stopped crying and her little face took shape. She was beautiful, Jack thought, beaming at her through his tears. Maggie was beautiful, too. The baby seemed to look around the room, her eyes rolling in their sockets as though she had no control over them, then they settled on Maggie’s face. Seconds later, Maggie’s smile and warm body making her feel safe, she fell asleep.

  In the corridor of the maternity wing, Penny flicked through pictures on her mobile. After Charlie’s death, Jack had scanned every grainy old photo she owned, going right back to when Jack was little, onto her mobile so she could reminisce whenever she needed to: Charlie teaching his boy to ride a bike; Jack, aged ten, blowing out the candles on his birthday cake; Penny crying at his graduation; Jack, Maggie and Charlie, complete with paper hats and eggnog, celebrating a long-ago Christmas. Penny could feel the love in her heart as it yearned for Charlie at this moment – it was physical, like a lump. Penny was so engrossed in her reminiscing that she didn’t immediately see Jack walking towards her. Then she saw the bundle of handknitted blankets in his arms, gasped, leapt to her feet and rushed to his side. From beneath the patchwork blankets, two big puffy eyes were closed tight shut. The vernix had gone, and the baby’s skin was now a mix of perfect pink with the tiniest tinge of yellow. ‘She’s got hair!’ Penny screeched, making the baby jump and her eyes flicker. Penny toned her excitement down to a whisper. ‘Sorry, my darling. I’m just so thrilled to meet you. Oh, Jack, she’s . . . Oh, Jack.’

  ‘I’ve got to take her back in, Mum, to get properly cleaned up,’ Jack said gently. ‘Go up to the ward. We’ll be with you in a bit, then you can have a hold.’ Penny watched Jack walk back towards the delivery suite, moving so slowly and carefully, as though he was holding the most precious cargo in the world.