James Craig - The Enemy Within

Propped up on a couple of pillows, Fran Mullin fired up her second post-coital Embassy Regal, placed it between her lips and took a drag. ‘It all sounds very thin to me,’ she said, folding her arms as she exhaled a stream of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘Mm.’ Rob Holt listened to his stomach rumbling. He was starving. He also needed a piss. Getting up, however, was just too much of a chore for him to be able to manage it immediately. Edging away from the wet patch in the middle of the bed, he tried to slip out a modest fart without his lover noticing.

‘I’m serious, Rob.’ Mullin took another drag on her cigarette. ‘If this doesn’t hold up, you are going to end up looking stupid. Really stupid. It could be the end of your career.’

‘Ha!’ he laughed. ‘What career? My so-called career came to an abrupt end the day I left London and bowled up in this hell hole.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ she pouted.

‘You know what I mean.’ Sticking his head under the covers, he planted a kiss between her legs, breathing in deeply as he did so.

‘Get off!’ Stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, she pushed him away.

‘C’mon,’ he protested, coming up for air. ‘You are the only reason this place is bearable. If it wasn’t for. .’

She shot him a look that said: Be careful what you say right now.

He stuck a big smile on his face. ‘If it wasn’t for you being so totally wonderful, I don’t know what I would have done.’

‘Don’t try and butter me up, Rob,’ she said sternly, trying to beat down a smile.

‘Would I?’ he grinned, knowing that he had done exactly that.

‘Yes you would. Anyway, all I am saying is that it is very convenient for the police to have found someone to take the rap for Beatrice Slater’s murder so quickly.’

Take the rap? Holt frowned. It sounded like Fran had been overdosing on Hill Street Blues again.

‘After all,’ she continued, ‘this is the biggest crime there’s been here, on your patch, for God knows how long.’

‘By miles,’ he agreed. ‘It’s the first murder in the district for more than a decade.’

‘Quite. . and you’ve managed to make an arrest in less than forty-eight hours.’

‘Well,’ he pouted, ‘it’s not like I’m some inexperienced village bobby. I did come up here from the throbbing metropolis, remember.’

‘Still, this is the first murder case that you’ve had since you’ve been here.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And you’ve solved it almost immediately, even though the whole place is a war zone at the moment and all of your officers are stretched to the limit.’

‘It’s not that surprising,’ Holt shrugged. ‘If you’re going to catch the bloke who did it, you’re usually going to get him in the first day or so.’ He remembered reading an article about it in the Police Review .

‘Only when they are caught red-handed,’ Mullin protested, trying to resist the craving for another cigarette.

‘So, what are you saying?’ he snapped.

‘Who fingered Ian Williamson?’ she shot back. ‘Was it that gormless boy from MI5?’

‘Who says he’s from MI5?’ Holt stuck an exploratory foot over the side of the bed. He really did need that piss.

Mullin let her gaze drift to a point near the window where the brown, orange and yellow Apollo wallpaper had started peeling off. ‘C’mon Rob,’ she said wearily, ‘it’s a bit late to be tight lipped.’

‘Mm.’

‘Anyway, the junior spook showed me his ID. He was very proud of it. It was quite sweet really.’

Holt slumped back on the bed. ‘Christ! What a berk!’

‘It’s good to know our security is in the hands of people like that,’ Mullin laughed. ‘Just as well they’re only up against poor old Arthur Scargill.’

‘You cannot write any of this,’ Holt groaned. ‘Never, ever.’

‘I don’t want to write any of this,’ she replied, exasperated with her boyfriend’s total lack of faith in her powers of discretion. ‘However, there will be plenty of people writing the story when Ian Williamson is paraded in court tomorrow. And more than a few of them will ask the same questions as me.’

‘He did it,’ Holt said sullenly.

‘Uh-huh. Isn’t the idea that you’re supposed to prove that he did it?’

‘He did it.’

Mullin raised her eyebrows. ‘Did he confess?’

‘We have two witnesses who saw him near Slater’s house.’

‘That’s very convenient. Who are they?’

‘C’mon,’ he frowned, ‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

‘Do they really exist?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Have you spoken to them?’

Holt hesitated.

‘Rob?’

‘Not yet,’ he admitted quietly.

‘And yet you’ve nicked this guy?’

‘I’ve seen the statements.’

‘How did you find them, the witnesses?’

‘They came forward.’

‘Very handy.’

‘They were concerned citizens.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘They did,’ he protested. ‘They independently say that they saw Williamson entering. . and leaving Slater’s house around the time that she was killed.’

Unconsciously, Mullin eased into full-on journalist mode as she changed tack. ‘Beatrice was found in the woods. Are you saying that she was killed in her home?’

‘We think so.’

‘And your witnesses saw him leave with the body?’

Holt grimaced. ‘I need a piss.’

But her mind was in overdrive now and she kept pressing. ‘If he went to the trouble of moving the body, why didn’t he make more of an effort to hide it? It wasn’t going to take people long to find her in those woods. They’re small and there are kids crawling all over them all the time. Presumably, if he had left her in her house, it would have taken a lot longer for the body to be discovered.’

‘People do stupid things,’ was all Holt could offer. He’d read that in Police Review too.

‘So, what are you saying? Williamson went to the house to rob her? There was a scuffle and he tried to hide the body in the woods?’

‘He diddled her too, remember.’

‘So what is he, a robber or a rapist?’

‘Looks like both.’ Unable to face any more questions, Holt slipped out of bed. ‘Sorry, but I really, really need to take a piss.’

She followed him into the bathroom, watching dispassionately as he sent a stream of golden urine into the bowl. ‘I’m sorry Rob, but you really haven’t thought this thing through, have you?’

Shaking himself, Holt flushed the toilet. ‘That’s the great thing about you, Fran,’ he said, hands on hips, ‘you’re always at least one step ahead of us poor old public servants.’

It’s not that hard, Mullin thought glumly. She gestured at his cock with her chin. ‘Are you going to wash that?’

‘For God’s sake, Fran!’ he hissed, grabbing a towel and stomping out of the bathroom.

‘It doesn’t take a genius to see how this could play out,’ she replied, following him down the hall. ‘Local activist murdered. MI5 snooping around, busy telling the local police what to do. A well-known NUM supporter nicked almost immediately. The conspiracy theorists will have a field day.’

‘Fuck off,’ he grumbled, running a hand through his unruly hair. ‘Can’t we have a simple shag without it turning into the bloody Spanish Inquisition? I need some food.’

The kitchen in Holt’s flat was devoid of any decoration, save for a huge poster advertising Led Zeppelin and the other acts headlining the 1979 Knebworth music festival which covered almost the entire far wall. Having borrowed one of her boyfriend’s fetching green and red Shetland sweaters, Mullin sat at the small round table that had been squeezed into the middle of the room, munching on a slice of toast smeared with strawberry jam.