The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set by Rob Wyllie

Author:Rob Wyllie [Wyllie, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-11T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

It was only a couple of weeks since they had taken on the Charles Grant case, advisedly or otherwise, but regular progress meetings had been part of the arrangement and the first of them had now fallen due. And what a momentous period it had been with the brutal murders of Benjamin Fox and Allegra Ross still front page news in every paper. Maggie and Jimmy had learnt from Frank that Darren Venables of the White British League had been arrested for the crime, but all the media had been told at this stage was that a forty-six-year-old man was helping them with their enquiries. Reflecting the priorities of their readership, the entertainment correspondents seemed more concerned with the impact of the killings on Bow Road, speculating how the writers would deal with the loss of two of its leading characters. And now Maggie and Jimmy recognised they would need to watch what they said in front of Grant, knowing his link to Venables, however tenuous it might be.

They had offered to meet him for lunch, forgetting that eating in public could often be more pain than pleasure for those in the public eye, so instead agreed that he would come into their office at around eleven.

'And no selfies,' Jimmy had said to Elsa as he arrived earlier that morning, but he needn't have worried since she claimed never to have heard of Grant.

The actor arrived promptly, the young receptionist ushering him through to one of the office suite's shared meeting rooms.

'I've booked it for an hour,' Maggie said, smiling. 'Should be enough I would think.'

He nodded. 'I guess that means there's not been much progress?'

'To be fair, it's only been a couple of weeks,' Jimmy said, 'but actually we have got some ideas. Although it's early days it's not looking unpromising.'

Early days was one of his brother's favourite sayings, although Frank seemed to describe every case as being in its early days until five minutes before he solved it.

'Yes,' Maggie said, 'so I think I'm right in saying that from the start, the police always assumed it was about the ransom. You were targeted because you are a famous actor and they assumed therefore that you would be able to raise the kind of sum they were looking for '

Grant shrugged. 'Yes, well that's what the police thought. What else could it be?'

'And you definitely had no reason to think otherwise?' Jimmy asked.

He shook his head. 'No, why should I have?'

Maggie gave him an uncertain look.

'It's just that looking at your social media postings and your Guardian pieces, you're an advocate of what I think is described as progressive politics, is that right?'

The question did not seem to perturb Grant.

'Yes, that's correct. I've always been a strong supporter of the fight against inequality. It's in my DNA I think.' To Maggie's mind, there was more than a hint of superiority in the way he said it.

'But we can't help but notice that you seem to attract some pretty vitriolic trolling online,' Jimmy said.

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