Best Friend, Worst Enemy Read online

  BEST FRIEND, WORST ENEMY

  A NOVEL

  BY DAVID MENON

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A version of this story first appeared in another book called ‘Outside the Rain’. I’ve now revised and updated it and given it a new title and cover.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  About the author

  David was born in Derby, England in 1961 and has lived all over the UK but now he divides his time between Paris, where his partner lives, and the northwest of England. In 2009 he gave up a long career in the airline industry to concentrate on his writing ambitions. He’s now published several books including the series of crime novels featuring Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton that are set in Manchester and the series of Stephanie Marshall mysteries set in Sydney. He’s also created the DCI Sara Hoyland series beginning with Fall from Grace. When he gets any spare time he teaches English to foreign students, mainly Russians, and works part-time for a friendly low fares airline. His other interests include travelling, politics, international current affairs, all the arts of literature, film, TV, theatre and music and he’s a devoted fan of American singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks who he calls 'the voice of his interior world'. He loves Indian food, he likes a gin and tonic that’s heavy on the g and light on the t, plus a glass or three of red wine. Well, it doesn’t make him a bad person.

  www.davidmenon.com

  www.facebook.com/davidmenoncrimefictionauthor

  www.amazon.co.uk

  Also by David Menon

  DCI Sara Hoyland crime mystery series

  - Fall from Grace.

  - Beautiful Child

  - Best Friend, Worst Enemy.

  Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton series.

  - Sorcerer.

  - Fireflies

  - Storms.

  - No Questions Asked

  - Straight Back – coming spring 2015.

  Stephanie Marshall private investigator, Sydney.

  - What Happened to Liam?

  - Could Max Burley be a Killer? Coming early 2015.

  Other titles

  - The Murder in His Past.

  - The Wild Heart

  - Kind of Woman.

  - Losing Grip.

  This is, as always, for Maddie who is always there with a wise word or two …and to thank the universe for a summer of family reconciliations and meeting new friends.

  BEST FRIEND, WORST ENEMY

  ONE

  Christian Zionist Movement Family Barbecue Day,

  Holy Ghost Tabernacle Church, Houston, Texas, USA.

  Robert Jackson had been sent by his editor at the Manchester Evening Chronicle to investigate Senator Cheryl-Ann Bainbridge in the light of her alleged ties to the Cheshire MP and disgraced former foreign secretary Nicholas Trent. Now that the Senator had made it clear that she would be a candidate for the Republican nomination for President at the next US elections in 2016, the editor wanted Robert to find out if the relationship between Bainbridge and Trent had in any way led to Trent’s downfall and he also wanted to know just how much they were involved with each other and what implications that could have for the ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK.

  Robert had managed to persuade the editor that he needed to be put up in a city centre hotel and a trawl of hotel booking websites meant that he’d been able to secure one at a discounted price. He was so glad of being able to stay there instead of having to languish in some grey anonymous suburb. Back in Manchester he had a flat in a 200-year old building in the centre of the city where everything was right outside his front door. Everybody here lived out in ‘districts’ where you had to drive to get a pint of milk. He’d managed to find a little shop near the hotel that was run by Egyptian immigrants who sold everything he needed at all hours. He didn’t have to go to the expense of room service if he felt like a snack.

  Robert wondered what on earth he had in common with these four hundred people. He was one of those Brits who’d never really ‘got’ America and this was a real redneck crowd who believe in bearing arms even when children are being shot dead almost every week in high school shootings. They believed in God, family, and The American Way. They believed it was right to kidnap someone so that they can be tortured in a foreign country over allegations that prove to be unfounded, but if you use a swear word in public then that’s immoral. Your country can illegally invade another leading to the deaths of thousands of people and that’s okay but if your President gets a blow job from an intern in the Oval Office then that’s grounds for impeachment. And of course, there was no alcohol served at this God awful event. Round here if you have more than one glass of wine of an evening then you’re considered a moral delinquent who won’t face up to their drinking problem.

  And they call this The Land of the Free?

  He thought he’d better show willing so he went up to the food counter and asked for a cheeseburger. He was offered a choice of cheese between ‘American’ which was cheddar and ‘Swiss’ which looked like American but with holes in it. He opted for American and was told that the meat in the burger was from cows that had fed on ‘God’s own grass on God’s own prairies’ and that he’d be ‘filled with the blessings of God almighty’ with every bite. He smiled and thought they were all mad.

  He sat down on one of the benches in the park where the barbecue was taking place and decided to engage with some of his fellow party goers. He sat amongst a couple of families with half a dozen teenage children between them and he steered the conversation around to what he thought they might have an interest in, namely Harry Potter.

  ‘Oh my gosh, no!’ said a teenage girl called Kim who had braces fitted on her teeth and was wearing a t-shirt with ‘EVERYTHING I DO IS FOR JESUS’ emblazoned on the front. ‘I do not read any of the Harry Potter books’.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Robert. ‘I think they’re really exciting’.

  ‘But they’re full of Satan worship!’

  ‘Have you actually read any of them?’

  ‘Well no, but I truly believe that unless Harry Potter goes through a born again experience and gives control of his life to Jesus Christ, then he will always be working for the devil’.

  ‘Working for the devil? They’re just really good stories’

  ‘No stories about Satan are good!’ she exclaimed.

  Kim’s mother who was wearing a name badge that said ‘Janice’ and ‘I do the work of Jesus’, ran her fingers thorough her daughter’s hair and then said ‘I’m so proud of my daughter. She knows right from wrong. I thank God almighty every day for blessing me with her’.

  ‘But to label Harry Potter as some kind of devil worship?’

  ‘All those wizards and magic’ said Janice. ‘It’s evil’.

  ‘I really have to disagree with you there’ said Robert who was getting deeper into this than he really wanted to. ‘They’re just about firing up kids imaginations and making them think’.

  ‘With images of wizards and magic and spells?’

  ‘And the good guy always wins in the end’.

  ‘The good guy?’ Janice questioned. ‘Harry Potter is a satanic image created in the head of the author by the devil himself’.

  ‘Oh please’ Robert scoffed.

  ‘Sir, I wish you to leave our companionship but may God save you’.

  Robert walked away bewildered at the madness he’d just witnessed. A while ago he’d done a piece about men in South Africa who believe that by fucking little babies they can immune themselves from AIDS. These people here were cut of the same absolutely barking mad cloth. He was one of the pitifully few black faces at the event too. He’d read so much a
bout American conservatives opposition to everything President Obama stood for and the way they got at him in such a personal way led Robert to believe that it was all barely disguised racism. He’d listened to a local radio phone-in that morning and one lady had said how much she missed the Bush family because they seemed like such a nice American family. The radio DJ asked if she thought the same of the Obama family and she replied that she didn’t and she went on to say that she thought Michelle Obama in particular was a disgrace to the position of first lady because she doesn’t stand up for traditional American values. When pressed further she couldn’t clarify her view at all.

  He managed to get himself a ringside seat for the main event which was the speech by Texas Senator Cheryl-Ann Bainbridge. Senator Bainbridge was a rising star among America’s ultra-conservatives because she was an all-shooting, hunting, fishing, church going, anti-abortion, anti-gay, ‘let’s bomb Iran before they bomb Israel’ type of Conservative who was providing a focus for all the anti-Obama forces in America. Her views were described by her supporters as the ‘only moral way forward for America’. She already had a group of staff who were advising her ahead of the 2016 election.

  But before Cheryl-Ann in her expensive looking navy two-piece was able to take the stage and get going, Pastor Gerry Richards was serving as her warm-up act.

  ‘… and I tell you, praise Jesus Christ I tell you my friends, that we must pray our hardest for the soul of our brother in Christ, Dale Atkins … ‘

  Robert knew all about Dale Atkins. He was a man on death row in a Texas penitentiary for the murder of Dr. Elizabeth Strong. Dr. Strong was one of the few doctors in America who was prepared to carry out late abortions on women, particularly if they’d been raped. Dale Atkins filled her with half a dozen bullets outside her Houston home one morning, in cold blood and within earshot of her three young children who were inside having breakfast before going to school. What made it a cause célèbre for the pro-life movement, apart from the fact that they didn’t see any wrong in the slaughter of an abortion doctor, was that at the same time Dale Atkins was convicted, a man called Greg Harris had a charge of murder reduced to involuntary manslaughter and was jailed for five years. Harris was a gay man who’d been set upon by a gang of youths outside a gay bar in Houston but he’d had the nerve to fight back and in the process one of his attackers had been killed.

  ‘ … my brothers and sisters in Christ, I tell you when I think of the sinner Greg Harris and compare his situation with that of our brother in Christ Dale Atkins, I’m reminded of the time they crucified Jesus. A murderer they save, the prince of life they slay. That’s what is happening today in America my friends and that is what we must fight with all of the might instilled in us by our faith in God almighty …’

  Robert noted everything down and wondered if he’d be forgiven for thinking that he’d stepped through a time slip into the Middle Ages.

  ‘ … Greg Harris should be the one on death row, my friends, not Dale Atkins …

  Robert smiled. These people were so predictable. Then a loud roar went up when Cheryl-Ann Bainbridge took to the podium. The sun, high in the Texas sky behind her, made her extended copper shade of brown hair shine like something golden. She had a good figure, accentuated by a personal trainer and all the plastic surgery money could buy. Her husband Ross was the multi-millionaire owner of a Houston-based civil aircraft maintenance company. He’d made such a packet that questions were being asked about his ‘offshore’ investments but so far it wasn’t making any kind of dent in his wife’s campaign.

  ‘ … my dear friends in Christ, and it makes me so happy to say that … ‘

  Rapturous applause and cries of ‘Go Cheryl-Ann for Jesus!’ filled the air leading Robert to squirm slightly. What was it with Americans and their obsession with the bible, especially the Old Testament? Hadn’t anybody told these people that the New Testament had been intended as the way forward? Wasn’t that what Jesus had come down to earth for?

  ‘ … I would’ve been here earlier but I was preparing a lunch for my husband and my family. The feminists would expect my husband Ross to do it so that I could get back to my work in Washington. But I see it as the duty of a wife and a mother to look after her family at whatever cost to her personal wishes … ‘

  Robert didn’t buy any of that. He knew she had staff to keep house. She’d probably never cooked a meal at home since she married the multi-millionaire Ross Bainbridge and taken on his Mexican servants. Robert wondered why all these idiots with their cheeseburgers and their fat arses were buying all this shit? Is this what they needed to feel part of the system? Cheryl-Ann and Ross Bainbridge were part of the untouchable royals of America and all because they had stacks of money and stated a belief in God, family, and The American Way.

  ‘ … my dear friends, we live in desperate times in our country. A socialist health care system has been railroaded through the congress … ‘

  Well, thought Robert. He wondered how many of the people around him could afford health care under the system supported by Cheryl-Ann. Some of them didn’t look like they had two dimes to scrape together and that this barbecue was the only square meal they’d have this week. What happened to them when Cheryl-Ann was swept out of the neighbourhood and whisked back to Washington on her husband’s private jet? They went back to their food stamps and praising the Lord until the next charity barbecue. Just like the poor back in Britain who’ve never had anything to their name but who would think nothing of waving the Union Flag if they knew the Queen was going to be driven by their house. What had the Queen ever really done for those people? What had Cheryl-Ann Bainbridge ever really done for these people around her today? Nothing except to play lady large every once in a while and give away cheeseburgers.

  ‘ … and I tell you this, my friends. I want an America where the likes of Greg Harris is not able to escape justice by hiding behind the law that does not protect those who are doing God’s work! Homosexuality is an abomination and should be rooted out. Dale Atkins would be at home praying with his family this Sunday in the America that I dream of instead of which he’s held by the liberal consensus that is strangling the life out of our freedom and liberty … ‘

  Except, thought Robert, that there’s no freedom or liberty afforded to you by Senator Bainbridge’s America if you’re gay. And a woman’s freedom and liberty could be violently snatched away from her by a rapist but if she wanted to have an abortion then that made her a criminal. Twisted wasn’t the word for this, he thought.

  ‘… my fellow Texans, we are coming up to a decisive crossroads in our nation’s history. We have been bullied by the liberal consensus into tolerating homosexuality, abortion, divorce, and drugs. I say an end to that tolerance … ‘

  Rapturous applause from the audience.

  ‘ … we need to take back the streets of America from those who fill them with violence and my friends, to those who say we need to think again on the rights and wrongs of the death penalty, I say we are not executing enough of the folks who break the laws of freedom and liberty! … ‘

  More rapturous applause even louder than before.

  ‘ … and this is the choice we face in America today, my friends. A choice between traditional American values or the liberal fundamentalism that will destroy our great country. It is a choice that we, with God’s help, must win and will win. We will attack those who preach political correctness with the charge that they are being morally incorrect. We will put the fear of God into all those who don’t fear Him now. We will reach out through our Christian Zionist movement and stand by our friends in Israel. Thank you, God bless you, God bless Texas, and God bless the United States of America!’

  Robert found it hard to resist the emotional pull of all the applause given to the Senator. There were people in tears for God’s sake! Who did they think this senator was? The messiah? They were acting as if she was. Please God don’t let politics ever get like this at home, he thought.

  Back at the hotel
, Robert continued his research. He’d only had some very basic details about the Senator when he’d attended the barbecue and they were mainly to do with her political record. But now he wanted to fill in all the gaps and get a hold on her family life and background. She was fifty-one and she had been married to her husband Ross for twenty-six years and they had two children, Tyler, 24, and Meredith, 22. Meredith had just finished at Yale University, the must-have on the CV of any rich upper class American who wanted to head for a job with a firm of New York stockbrokers to gain experience before going to sit beside her Daddy and wait to take over the family firm. Meredith was as sharp as a fox when it came to business matters but she was all American apple pie when it came to her private life. She’d publicly made a pledge to remain celibate until she was married and was a prominent member of the pro-life movement.

  It was curious to Robert that despite their wealth, the Bainbridge family had never really travelled much as a family outside of America. Ross had been on numerous business trips to several countries across Europe and the Middle East, but he’d never stayed longer than he’d had to before heading straight back to the States. Cheryl-Ann had been to Canada twice and the Bahamas once but that was it. Meredith had never been outside of the US and they’d taken nearly all their family holidays in Florida. The only one who looked anything approaching interesting in this respect was Tyler, who’d travelled extensively in Europe and Asia. Tyler had fought bitterly with his parents when he was growing up and had not been back to the family home now for several years. He lived in Los Angeles and was a set designer at NBC studios in Burbank. He had an apartment that he shared with a make-up artist called Ethan who also worked at the NBC studios. Robert smiled. He’d worked the rest out even before seeing a picture of Tyler and Ethan on a gay rights march in support of a California referendum that would’ve allowed same sex marriages but which was ultimately defeated. He wondered what Mummy Dearest thought of all that. No wonder she never spoke about her son in public.