Check Mate_The third Posh Hits murder mystery Read online

  “You’re not worried about me?”

  “No,” he said, “I know all you need is action. Seen it before on active service. When you’ve done what you need to do, you’ll feel better and life will be worth living again. S’obvious innit?”

  Hmm. A little light-bulb glowed softly in my mind. It’s always nice when someone else, someone you really respect, confirms your half-formed instincts. He has always got my back, Sid. At the same time, I was thinking active service? Sid?

  “So,” he said, reaching for a third cookie, “what are you going to do?”

  I sighed then. It would be such a relief to unburden myself. I was tired of being brave.

  “I want to kill Monica,” I said, “but it’s so hard to know where to start. I don’t know where she is. I tried sitting outside the house of some friends in the hope she’d turn up to their party. But if she did, I didn’t see her. And I’ve been to her house—but she’s not there; I think she may have moved. So now I’m completely stumped, I just don’t know what to do next. Where do I go from here, Sid? How can I kill her when I don’t know how to find her?”

  “I know where she is,” said Sid. He stuffed a fourth cookie whole into his mouth. I stared at him again, then had to look away. I poured myself another cup of tea and offered him the cookie plate.

  “No, fanks, I’m cutting down. Gotta watch me figure,” he said, patting his hangover complacently. Surely he was kidding? Then I set myself to calmly addressing the elephant in the room.

  “What do you mean, you know where she is?” I asked. “How could you know that?”

  “Well,” he hedged, “what I mean is, I will know where she is soon.”

  I glared at him, and he had the decency to fidget and look abashed.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean I already knew where she was right at this very moment. I just meant, I’ve got some ideas and in a few days I should know exactly where she is.”

  Well, I thought, that’s almost as good. In any case it was more than I had. I smiled.

  “Go on, Sid. Tell me all your secrets.”

  He laughed. And again, with a repeat of his mysterious hinting at a past to be both proud of and kept under wraps, he said, “oh I’ll never tell anyone all my secrets, Cress, they’ll go wiv me to my grave. But this thing with Monica, I’ll back you all the way, you know that. So anyfink you need, anyfink I can do, just say the word.”

  I waited. I sipped my Assam like the lady I am. I waited a bit more.

  I was just about to get cranky when he finally said, “I’ve got this mate, he used to work in an estate agent’s. Now he’s mostly in—um—financial—um, arrangements, I s’pose you’d call ‘em. But he’s got contacts all over. Well, see I’ve been watching the Internet for the last six months as I figured your pal Monica might sell her house. Sure enough, three months ago there it was, advertised on the net: des res, all mod cons, nice area, blah di blah di blah. Then about three weeks ago it come off the market—which meant the property was sold. And when it got sold—well, I got in touch wiv my mate and asked him to find out a few details—such as new contact address, for example. He should be back to me any day now.”

  “That’s wonderful news.” I said, and got up to lean over and kiss him on the cheek. “What would I do without you, Sid?”

  He blushed. Gave me his typical ‘aw shucks ma’am’ smile and shrug of the shoulders. Thus distracted he reached for another cookie and had almost finished it before remembering his promise to his waistline.

  Tuesday June 9th—9.20pm

  The last few days have been a little better. Probably due to my renewed sense of purpose and sudden feeling that life is not a total waste of time or a pile of crap, and that I might be about to see some progress at last.

  And this happy frame of mind has led to a breakthrough in the romantic department with Matt who’s now sleeping back in my our room again as, much to his delight, marital relations have been resumed and the rest of the family seemed happy and relieved about this, because obviously it’s too much to hope that this matter could remain private and just between the two of us. I even went out for a coffee with Madison. She’s rung and asked me so many times and in the end I just thought, yes, I’d like that.

  Was a bit nervous though. It’s been forever since I met anyone for coffee. I was quite shaky, and even when I actually got there, I was still toying with the idea of simply turning round and heading back home. Possibly I would have actually turned and run away if she hadn’t noticed me hovering there in the doorway, leaning on my stick. She actually stood up and coo’eed to me loudly across the café, and it was too late for me to escape. But really I was grateful to her for helping.

  I was worried we wouldn’t be able to think of anything to talk about. But that wasn’t a problem. She did all the talking; she seemed to be on an absolute high. She kept saying how wonderful it was to get together, how wonderful it was to be having coffee with me, and how wonderful I was looking compared to the last time she’d seen me—and on and on and on she talked. All I had to do was listen and smile and nod. It was easy.

  If my poise has deserted me since the accident, she is more confident that I have ever seen her—and so happy now in spite of the divorce having gone through. She even talked about ‘getting back on the horse’. This peculiar phrase, I soon discovered, was her way of saying she was ready for a shag again, and it seems she is ready to start meeting men. She said she had signed up to several online dating agencies.

  “And not a single one of my friends has a good word to say about online agencies,” she said. So I didn’t feel able to add my cautions to the mix. Therefore, I just lied through my teeth and said I was happy she was moving on with her life, and that I thought it was very modern and brave of her.

  “And have you had many dates yet?” I asked. Out of politeness mainly—I didn’t really care either way. But she seemed to want me to take an interest. I suppose that is what friends do, after all, and we had to talk about something.

  She looked a bit crestfallen and said no, she’d only heard from a geriatric and a weirdo. Two people, not the same one. But hardly a momentous surprise.

  “Could you come round and help me beef up my profile?” she begged. “I know you’ll be so much better at it than me. I just can’t think what to put. I feel as though I’m bragging if I say I’ve got any good points, so at the moment I just sound a bit sad and unexciting.”

  And so now, I, Cressida Barker-Powell-Hopkins, advisor to the lovelorn, am committed to spending tomorrow evening ‘beefing up’ Madison’s profile to make her more appealing to the opposite sex—particularly those who are not geriatrics or weirdos, but something a little nicer in between those two rather revolting extremes.

  Matt’s sister Leanne has finally gone home—though I’m not sure what she’s gone home to. She and her husband are getting divorced now, it seems it’s contagious. I think the marital home is up for sale and they will each have to start looking for a new place of their own. I don’t know why she doesn’t settle down here. In the last twelve months she’s been here for a total of about eight months. She could rent one of the cottages in the village, Mavis and Henrietta’s for example, and be close to her parents without us having the pleasure of her presence in our house all the time. I’m relieved she’s gone. I know I should be grateful (once again!) for all she’s done for us since my accident, but already the whole feel of the house is more relaxed, and I’m so glad she’s no longer here touching all my stuff—yes, she was still doing that whenever she thought no one was looking, fondling my possessions with love and jealousy. She is so creepy!

  Wednesday June 10th—11.50pm

  Actually had quite a fun time with Madison this evening. She plied me with wine. I made her do her hair and put on some make-up. Then I made her go and take it all off again and then I did her make-up for her—much better! So nice finally to bring her into the twenty-first century. I took a few pics of her and we fiddled about with the files on her computer to find t
he best one and tweak it to make her look fabulous, then uploaded it onto her LoveMePlz profile. And then I got to work ‘beefing up’ her profile, with a few little adjustments here and there, so she now sounds sweet and girly and not like a desperate old frump. It was the most fun I’ve had in ages.

  Was a bit tipsy by the time Matt (wonderful Matt!) came and picked me up so I didn’t have to walk the 200 yards home from her little cottage in the village. He is so sweet, I love him so much.

  Ooh dear, don’t feel too well…

  Thursday June 11th—12.15pm

  Just went into the kitchen to find Lill on the phone to her bloody daughter (already!), who appeared to be sobbing. Reading between the lines, ie Lill’s side of the conversation which consisted of: “Yes, dear. I know sweetheart. Oh dear. Oh my gawd. Oh yes, I do know sweetheart.” Followed by a slightly less patient, “Well I told you not to marry him. Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Yes, I know he’s a total bastard.” I am assuming things are no longer proceeding amicably in Leanne and what’s-his-name’s divorce case.

  When she had hung up, Lill turned and saw me there, and so she said, “My Leanne’s having some trouble with her divorce—he’s refusing to leave the marital ‘ome. She says he’s still there, sleeping in their old bedroom, and he won’t get out. She’s at her wit’s end. Doesn’t know what on earth she’s going to do about it.”

  I tsked in what I hoped was a sympathetic fashion and said very sincerely that I hoped it would all get sorted out quickly. Which is true, because if there’s anything I’m anxious to avoid, it’s her coming back here!

  Tuesday June 23rd—9.50am

  It’s been almost two weeks since I last wrote anything. Now we’re well into June, and it’s a really lovely day today. The wind is blowing softly—text-book British summer weather—and flowers are crowding around the lawn from the borders and trees and bushes. Our garden looks like an entry for a Best Garden competition, the Boys have done wonders. There are birds and butterflies and happy laughing children and lazy cats everywhere.

  I’m feeling a little bit better. Things don’t seem quite so hopeless. I think those vitamin B tablets I started taking about a couple of months ago are finally having an effect. I’ve been out walking and I think that’s helping not just my depression and my confidence but my leg seems to be getting a bit stronger and less stiff. If I lean on the buggy when I’m tired, I don’t need to take my stick everywhere, and of course without that, I feel more normal, which leads to even more of a boost to my confidence.

  I even went out for a walk with Lill and the children yesterday. I’m feeling less terrified walking down the lane through the village too. Even though a car went past quite close to me, I managed to stay calm and think about the children and not panic. I know Lill guessed how I was feeling because she stood back to let me herd the little ones in front and as I went past, she patted me on the arm.

  I don’t even feel quite so angry and irritated by my therapist, though he is quite obviously a moron. Has he ever experienced any genuinely terrible event in his happy little life? I bet he hasn’t, he seems so damned happy all the time. Every time I see him I feel like asking how many traumas he’s overcome in his life. I know from what he’s said previously that he still lives at home with his Mum and Dad. He’s only about twelve. Feel a bit resentful being lectured on mental health by a child with no life experience. All he’s got is a bunch of certificates hanging on his wall. What good are they?

  I suppose it is a bit unfair to blame him for his lack of understanding of the situation. After all, he is horribly young, and on top of that he doesn’t know any of the salient facts—has no idea of the majority of stuff that’s gone on in my life over the last two years. It’s one of those iceberg situations where the amount of information I’ve been able to impart is just a trifle compared to what I’ve actually had to keep hidden in the depths of my psyche. I hate to think what he would do or say if I was really honest with him—he’d probably have a stroke. Or resign.

  But how can I tell him the truth? First I planned to kill my mother-in-law because she was making my life a misery, then when I got to her house, she was already dead. Monica—up to that point my best friend—allowed me to think she had killed my mother-in-law for me as a ‘favour’. Even worse, she persuaded me into thinking she wanted me to kill her husband and his mistress in return, which I obligingly did, as a true friend, only to discover that she just wanted the girlfriend dead, not her husband. So in a rage-filled quest for revenge, Monica murdered my hubby Thomas, whose death was then dismissed by the authorities as a tragic accident slash sheer stupidity with a hunting rifle.

  Then, Monica tried to kill me, and then I tried to kill her, blah blah blah, until she ended up killing our kind-of friends, drippy Jeremy and his beloved, dopey Nadina, due to them becoming suspicious. Meanwhile, mainly for something to do and to help out my friends, I bumped off Simon, the ex-husband of my elderly friend Henrietta’s girlfriend Mavis so he’d stop trying to screw money out of her, and let her enjoy her twilight months with her octogenarian gal-pal, now sadly passed away from an entirely natural heart attack last winter.

  And I got rid of my new man Matt’s ex-girlfriend’s new man (it is a bit complicated…) in his drug-and-alcoholic squalor, so that our children could be brought up in a clean, loving and safe home. Oh and not to forget I bumped off one of my mother’s ex-husbands too, when we found out he’d abused one of her step-daughters and it was giving her nightmares slash teenage-suicidal depression.

  See? This is why I can’t really and truly open up to Junior. Partly because it is all very complicated, and partly because you just don’t know how someone will respond—he may not be the type to observe a professional confidence and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a women’s prison doing Open University and sharing a cell with a biker chick named Darlene.

  Huff. I’ll have to be really careful. Hope he never tries to persuade me to try hypnosis—goodness knows what I might blurt out! It was bad enough when I was half out of it on painkillers in the hospital. One of the nurses told me,

  “You know when you were doing one of your delirious rants? You yelled out ‘don’t let them find my anti-freeze!’ What on earth was that all about?”

  Gave her some old guff about how I forgot to put anti-freeze in the car last winter and the engine froze and I had to get it replaced at huge expense. Fortunately, I think she believed me. But…

  …it does worry me rather. What else have I shouted out in an unguarded moment? I must be extra careful!

  I would like to carry on keeping a journal though, it did used to be fun, no matter what I said I thought about it when he first broached the idea. All my thoughts, all my guilty plans and the plotting I used to do, all written down and squirrelled away…it was fun. So I’ve ditched the skanky exercise book Junior gave me, and bought myself a lovely new journal with a gorgeous floral-patterned cover.

  But anyway—yes—this is an improvement on the past few months. Everyone keeps saying I’ve ‘turned a corner’, another ghastly phrase that sets my teeth on edge but they will keep trotting it out. Be that as it may, some days when I wake up in the morning I feel full of dread and I don’t want to get out of bed, let alone go out of the house into the big wide world of the village where I will meet people. Really I think it’s only knowing that Sid is helping me to locate Monica that is keeping me buoyed up with the courage to meet each new day.

  Although there doesn’t seem to be much happening on that front since my chat with Sid. His mate said he tried to get in touch with his ‘contact’, only to find he has been ‘let go’. So now Sid’s mate is trying to get to know someone else in the firm, putting himself forward as some internet insurance guru in the hopes of getting a list of customers from this person with the aim of foisting insurance on them to cover their lovely new homes. I feel a bit impatient. I feel a bit annoyed. But it’s not Sid’s fault, and at the moment it’s the only lead I’ve got, so I’ll just have to grit my teeth
and get on with my life until something useful happens.

  I’ve been longing for the summer to arrive. After the long, terrible winter we had, all I wanted was for the sun to finally appear—metaphorically as well as actually. And now we’ve had two or three glorious days. I hope it’s like this next month when we go on our hols.

  Matt wants us to go away, just him and me and the three children. He’s booked something for the end of July, then a day or two after we come back, Lill and Sid are off to Fuerteventura. Not my idea of a fun holiday destination, especially at that time of year—it will be scorching hot, I should think. And there’s a reason that place is called Strong Wind but no doubt the break will do them good; they haven’t been away for ages due to keeping watch over my recovery.

  It seems like a huge undertaking for us to go away, and I’m frankly terrified, but then, at least we will be away from here, and in a place where no one knows me and no one can possibly have a reason to hurt me or my family. Matt says it will all be okay. He tells me not to worry, he will make all the arrangements—enough to worry anyone, that—he says all we’ll do is sit on the beach and eat ice creams, or go for walks along the seafront—nothing too strenuous. He promises me we will have fun.

  I can’t remember the last time we had fun! So perhaps it would be a good thing for all of us to get away. It was lovely last year watching Paddy and Billy splashing in the sea and building sandcastles. Their innocent and unashamed pleasure in simple fun was very therapeutic.

  Looking at my reflection in the full-length mirror after my bath last night, I realised that I’m almost back to normal now. My right knee and pelvis/hip-sort-of-bit are still a bit below par, but much, much better, and the rest of me is pretty much there now, I just want the scars to heal a bit better, they are still pretty red and noticeable, especially the ones on my wrist, cheek and chin. The ones on my leg can at least be hidden by jeans etc, and my arm is hidden by clothes too. My hair has grown back over the worst injury on my scalp, although there’s still a little kink in the hair on one side, where it grows a little oddly, but it’s barely noticeable to anyone other than me.