19. A CONFESSION

THE FANCY DRESS BALL (19)

More years ago than I care to count my ex-wife and I laid our daughter Tiffany to rest, and it was now time for me to acknowledge that it had been a mistake to resurrect her name in my personal campaign against the wave of crime that I blamed for the damage that had been done to her before she was even born.

There had been a wave of black market drugs from which the criminal gang made some of their income, and among them was a hallucinogenic little pill that had the side effect of causing damage to the unborn child, and my ex wife had been susceptible to trying anything new that might help her fill the empty hours and sometimes days when I was away at work. It was foolish, especially when she was pregnant, but it happened.

The result of this was the damaged state of Tiffany when she was born and the way our once loving relationship was torn apart and ended in the divorce court.

That is all I want to say about that painful corner of my life other than to repeat that I was determined to fight to the end of my life against the profiteers I blamed for Tiffany’s life-limiting disabilities, and fight I did, using my journalistic skills and well known reputation throroughly researching my materials as a weapon in my arsenal.

I had thought the battle was over until the events leading up to the Fancy Dress ball taught me otherwise. I worked out that the two scumbags who had haunted me around that time had been hired by somebody to kill me as punishment for the way my efforts had messed up criminal lives. My problem was I had no idea who was paying them and the list of possibilities was endless.

I had withdrawn from my trade and sought refuge where I believed I might be safe: the Swanspottle Manor house near Brumpton, and I was welcomed by Sir Jeffery Absinthe, his wife and twin daughters as a friend.

Somewhere in the world was a powerful figure-head who could order the murder of people like myself and probably think nothing of it. Who had the power and influence to get away with it, to never even be questioned. I had known such a person existed, which is why I had taken refuge in Middleshire, a county in which very little ever happened, and its small market town of Brumpton which hardly ever even appears on maps.

Now it was time for me to put a stop to the remnants of Tiffany once and for all, and I set off for the Manor House in order to consult with Sir Jeffery. I could drive again, but I need a walking stick when I climbed out of the car. I wasn’t the man I’d been before a gunshot and its accompanying terror had brought on the severe heart attack that had almost seen me off. There was a small convoy of us, security for what might prove to be a dangerous confrontation, but I led the way.

Cynthia met me, with a willing smile on a lovely face, and almost fully dressed unlike the Lady Godiva appearance she had used at the Ball. Looking at her it was hard to believe that she was old enough to have two adult daughters. Or had produced two. One, Jessica, was deceased, had not survived the night of the ball. She had been shot, another gun crime, but nobody knew who by. Millie had been accused until the weapon she wa holding was shown to have not been fired. The two men had left the milk float in the middle of a road nearby and hadn’t been seen since. They left no trace as to who they were, but the sound equipment they were intending to use as dancing accompaniment at the Ball was hired from a London company that kept poor records.

“He’s in his office, if you want him,” she smiled, “or would you prefer a nice cup of coffee?”

“The coffee would be welcome,” I replied.

“I dared say you have worked it all out,” she said, and that jolted me, because I had.

“I have?” I asked, puzzled.

“It’s why you’re here, surely?” she asked, still smiling.

“They say Millie shot our Jessica,” she murmured, “and that was unforgivable. I’m glad she’s behind bars and I’m not a vindictive woman, but there’s not a mother anywhere who would see her daughter shot and not be filled with anger. Now let me see, Millie was your lover, wasn’t she?”

I nodded. Of course she was, and still is, and not behind bars.

I heard the sound of Sir Jeffery arriving in the room. He must have heard my arrival and come down from his high perch to join us.

“She’s right there,” he said, “a mother’s love is boundless, like a mighty ocean, it breaks on different shores but always tells the same story of maternal love.”

“And a father’s?” I asked, “there was my Tiffany...”

“And you loved her. Of course you did!” smiled Cynthia. She did an awful lot of smiling and I reckon I’m a good judge of character. That smile was genuine, warm, from the heart, had no deceitful qualities at all.

“But she was destroyed,” I said quietly, “whilst in the womb and by the devils who sold the drugs to Rosalind who only really wanted a prettier life, a tragedy waiting to happen while the pockets of those who sold the stuff were filled to overflowing with tarnished gold.”

“Very sad,” frowned Jeffery, “but why mention it now?”

“Because it was you, Jeffery, who was the shadow behind that foul organisation. You who held the reins. You who still passes orders down the line so that if there was a come-back someone else would receive it. Nobody knew who you were, just the Mr Big who would take no blame for anything. And when you could see your number might be up it was you who shot your daughter Jessica! You say no mother could shoot her child, and I agree, but maybe a father might.”

“Nonsense!” he said.

“Jessica would have been arrested for murder,” I pointed out, “and then the truth would have been forced out. Your story would have been edged out of her, but by bit, how you played the priest for her, how you made her giggle, made her laugh, had her picture taken and passed it to me, created Tiffany from a child of your own blood. I don’t know why because it was bound to eventually cause your monolith to collapse if I was right. Maybe that’s what you wanted. An end to the money machine, because it had already made you more than enough.”

“You killed our Jessie?” screamed Cynthia, “and not Millie?”

“Don’t worry, darling, there’s no proof,” he said quietly, “is there, Roger? Just words like Tiffany was just words.”

“Words,” I said, “can bring empires down. One little word, and you’re a nobody. Behind bars. Watching the years tick by until you’re an old man.”

“But nobody knows,” he almost giggled, “your word, a failed hack, against mine, a knight of the realm. So what, if I did what you say, and it was no easy task, when the woman in the cross-hairs is your own flesh and blood, but really, it’s only really one life out of billions.”

“And you killed her,” I whispered, “your own daughter?”

He grinned at me. “Of course I killed her!! Just like I’m going to kill you,” he said as if it was an everyday sort of thing, “killing is so easy when the alternative is … hard.”

It was then that the door swung open and Detective Inspector McManus, flanked by two uniformed officers, walked in.

“We heard that,” he said, “every evil word of it...”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 05.08.20