Chapter 3

As I was close to Grimsby, I went and had a first-hand look at the dumping places. I could see similarities with them all, except that one at Hewitts Circus. If Gordon retired at seventy, that would have been 2017. The murders and dumping had stopped at that time. Perhaps we were really looking at a strong woman with a dildo, rather than a pervert with condoms.

I then started to wonder if the dumping points had meaning. They all seemed to be random, at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it looked like they may have been chosen, on purpose. The last one, I was sure, could have been just the finger gesture to the police, telling them that they had failed.

Back at the Annex, I gathered my team together in the lunchroom.

“I’m going to be away for two weeks, flying to Australia to talk to Quentin, now Queenie, Merrilands. I hope that she’ll be able to give me a clear picture on how the actors were chosen. With her own change, I think that I can guess some of it. When I spoke to her, she said that she had known the second victim and told me both the given and femme names, so it looks promising.”

“Jean Holdfast gave me another name, today. It’s Harriet Young, known at the school as Young Harry. She was the gym teacher and left when the headmaster changed, something to do with not being a true believer. I want to know her life history and where she is now. From Jean’s description of her, she would have easily carried the small bodies. I want to know what she drove during that period, and what she drives now.”

I went and tidied up my desk, taking my little recorder and a charger. I needed to shop for an adaptor so that I could keep it, and my phone, fully charged. Before I left, my team all wished me a good trip. I drove away with a feeling of being with a family, something that had eluded me since my encounter with the boxcutter.

Saturday, I went to Boston to shop. At an electronics store I bought the adaptor and then saw a special bag that would stop the wrong electronic wavelengths from wiping my phone and recorder. I went to a place where they sold luggage and got a decent sized case with four wheels on the bottom so I could wheel it easily, along with a large matching handbag that I was told was the best to have as carry-on luggage. At home I set to cleaning the place and making sure that, after Sunday, I’d have nothing that would go off in the house.

Sunday was my packing day, I packed the carry-on first, with spare underwear and all my potions and lotions, as well as a bag of cosmetics, and my case file. I had decided that I would travel as the hard-nosed PI, with the black leather jeans, a dark cherry-red blouse, and a black jacket. With new compression hose and my calf boots, I was sure that I could keep the dreaded thrombosis away. Monday, I drove down to London, finding the airport hotel by mid-afternoon. They gave me a ticket for the long-term car park and the directions for the bus to bring me back, so I parked the car and returned to the hotel for a light dinner.

Tuesday morning, I was in the terminal in good time, and getting a surprise. The PA had booked by phone, telling the airline that I was on official police business, so found myself bumped to business class. That made the trip a lot easier. After we took off, I settled back, thinking about other flights I had taken. My earliest had been a school trip to Rome, a frantic couple of weeks with all us lads taking side trips to booze outlets. I didn’t remember a lot of that one. My last flight had been a short hop to Paris with the girl of my dreams for a naughty weekend. All she wanted to do was spend hours in the Louvre and then she told me it was her time of the month.

Since my transition, I had immersed myself in the PI business, not really thinking of myself as a genuine woman, even if I had the looks and the plumbing. I can’t say that I’d even felt anything different with the guys I had met. I sighed, wondering if I was going to spend my life as neutral, and started reading the book I had picked up in the throw-out pile at the bookstore in Boston. There was no way I’d pay the full price for a book in the airport.

With meals, waiting to use the toilet and a bit of reading, I was ready to scream by the time we reached Doha. I had close to twenty-four hours here, with eight of those able to stretch out in a hotel bed. After going through immigration and getting the bus to the hotel, I was feeling a bit better so checked in and asked where I could do a little shopping. The hotel laid on a car to take me to the main shopping area, saying that all I need to do was to tell the cab driver where I was staying when I wanted to come back, with the hotel having an account with the cab companies.

The shops were like nothing I’d ever seen, all bright lights and top brands. I window shopped for a while but had to stop when I saw a peach dress that would be ideal as a bridesmaid outfit. Angela had told me that the wedding to Steve was set for July and that I should look for something in peach, seeing that I wasn’t the Maid of Honour. A lady must have been on the lookout and called me into the shop to try it on, and that she would do a special price for a pretty lady.

By the time I got back to the hotel, I had the peach dress, as well as another in ivory and the underwear to suit. All name brands and well below what I would have expected to spend. With those packed carefully, I was out early the next day to see the gold bazaar, well worth it, the hotel reception had told me. They had settled my account and my driver was told to go with me to ensure I wasn’t ripped off. When I boarded the plane for the next leg, I had a gold necklace that I loved, as well as gold studs in my freshly pierced ears, and a couple of pairs of gold hoops.

When we arrived in Sydney, it took a little while for me to go through immigration, with me being pulled aside because of the file with pictures of bodies that was in my bag. A phone call later, I was escorted through a side door to an unmarked police car. They took me to the station first where I showed them my paperwork and told them a little about the case I was on. After assuring them that I wasn’t here to actually arrest anyone, they took me to my hotel, on Darling Harbour. It was dinner time, so I ate in the hotel dining room and went to bed, to make sure that I didn’t get any jetlag.

Thursday morning, I spent some time just walking along Darling Harbour and the over the footbridge to the main shopping streets. I could not believe how similar it was to being in London, with just the dollar signs on prices instead of pounds or euros. Window shopping, I found a place that sold locally made outfits, suitable for country folk. I had to have a look and tried on a calf length skirt that was beautifully made yet sturdy. It was an ideal winter skirt and they had boots in a matching colour with trailing leather thongs on the sides. I had a light lunch in the city and then walked back to the hotel, where I laid on my bed and dozed off for a few hours. I had dinner at the hotel and retired early, once more.

Being the middle of winter, Friday was cooler, but still around the sort of weather we were more used to in autumn. I wore my new boots and skirt, with one of my own blouses, and added my leather jacket. I was ready to see a few of the sights before my meeting, tomorrow. That day I saw the Opera House, and the Taronga Zoo, taking special care at the seal pool.

On Saturday, I dressed in jeans, blouse, the leather jacket, and my new boots, took it easy in the morning exploring the length of Darling Harbour, having lunch, and then taking the light railway around to the main city. Following the street map, I had picked up at reception, I strolled to Kings Cross, finding the fountain that Queenie had described. It had to be her, sitting on a seat, looking like an actress waiting in the wings. I walked up, and she saw me, looked at the picture I had emailed, stood, and embraced me in a hug, and then stepped back.

“G’day, Detective Inspector, or can I call you Polly?”

“You can, Queenie. Although this will be an official record in a case I’m working on, it would be nice to just talk. I find that people tend to remember more when they’re at ease.”

“Right, then, did you walk all the way here?”

“Yes, I have found the place fascinating, so much like home but with lots of different languages on the shopfronts. That Hyde Park is a lovely garden. This is more like a holiday for me than a job, and I’ve already spent more money than I should have.”

“That’s what holidays are for Polly. Have you seen Bondi, yet?”

“No, I’ve just walked Darling Harbour and the city, and yesterday I saw Taronga Zoo and the Opera House.”

She waved to a taxi, in the rank nearby, and it came to stop beside us.

“Polly, this is Hassan, one of my past pupils. Hassan, Polly here needs to see Bondi and then some of the sights on the North Shore. We can’t have her going back to the Old Country without a trip across the Bridge.”

For the next few hours, I was shown Bondi Beach so I could take a few holiday snaps, and we had an ice cream from the kiosk. Then we came back up, through Darlinghurst and over the Harbour Bridge. The viewpoint of going over it in the cab showed me just how massive it was. Then we went across another bridge at The Spit, and out through Brookvale to Dee Why to see the beach there. It was, so I was told, a better place without the tourists and a favourite of both Queenie and Hassan. I had no idea how many beaches Sydney had, really only hearing about Bondi. The others we stopped at, from Dee Why, Curl Curl, and then to Manly, where we stopped for coffee and cake, were places that I agreed looked more inviting than Bondi.

All the way, we chatted, and I learned a lot about Queenie and her new teaching job. I was glad that my recorder had a long battery life, although the voices may be a bit muffled as I hadn’t taken it out of my bag. The school she now taught in was here, on the North Shore, and was where a lot of the richer merchants sent their children. I wondered how Hassan had been able to attend, as a taxi driver, and then was told that his father owned the taxi, along with about fifty others, and that Hassan only drove on weekends, the rest of his week taken up with studies at University.

We were finally dropped off at the Sydney Eye Tower, or, as my companions both called it ‘Centrepoint’. Queenie and I rode the fast elevator to the restaurant level, where we were greeted by another of her students and shown to a table with a fantastic view across the city. When we sat down, I asked the first question on my mind as I put my recorder on the table.

“Queenie, we just spent a few hours in a taxi without the meter running, and now we are sitting in what must be one of the most expensive restaurants in the country. How is it possible?”

“That one is easy, but I think that we should get to it after I tell you how I got here, it might answer some of your other questions.”

I nodded and sat back. For some reason, I was enjoying my time with Queenie, and was interested in her life.

“I started out as a child growing up in a village outside of Norwich. In High School, I befriended a boy called Richard. By that time, I knew I was gay and used to borrow my sister’s clothes. Richard was also gay but had not fully accepted it. We both gained places at Cambridge and shared a room. That’s when we began our affair. I was studying English Literature and he was doing Physics. While there, I got into the Footlight Revue and took a short course on Drama. When he graduated, Richard emigrated, and I did an extra year to graduate in Drama to add to my qualifications.”

She stopped for a sip of her wine, then carried on.

“The school at Grimsby was my first real job. I threw myself into it and was rewarded, after a few years, by being put in charge of producing their plays. Now, one thing you have to know is that the school takes in pupils from primary, through to the GSCE’s. Old Gordon had made the rule that only pupils from the age of eleven to fourteen could take part in the plays. He made sure that they spent their last two years in study for the exams. After that, the pupils would be on their own, some going to university, others going into trades and the rest working for their parents or in other jobs. It wasn’t one of those schools that sent the boys off to a seminary. That, I had been told, was something the next headmaster wanted, after Gordon retired.”

“That fits in with what I’ve been told, the new headmaster tightened up the rules to the point where only practising Christians were allowed as teachers.”

“There’s a few that I knew who would have found that difficult, I can tell you!”

“How did you get on as a gay man in a boy’s school?”

“I hid it, very carefully. I lived alone and went off to the bigger cities to get my clothes, only venturing out on weekends as Queenie. Anyway, back to the life history. My first play that I produced was ‘The Importance of being Ernest’ back in ’07. At that time, the only female leads had been played by boys who looked like drag queens, mainly for laughs. I wanted the two girls in that play to look, sound and act like girls. I had been going out to a dance on Saturday nights, in Hull, and saw Andrew, with his mate, Simon, dressed as girls with a group of others. Andrew was in his second year of high school and looked so good I decided to call him in for a private discussion. Simon was still in primary; they were neighbours and Andrew would look out for him.”

“Whereabouts was this dance?”

“It was near Dairycoates. I think they demolished the place to build a supermarket a few years later.”

“So, what happened at the meeting?”

“Andrew was happy to play one of the girls, I think that he had wanted an opportunity to come out to his parents. They were shop owners, grocers, I think. I asked him about the others in his group at the dance and he told me that most went to the public schools, and he knew that some were serious about transitioning, later in life. We made an appointment, the next Saturday night, for me to meet them all, at the dance.”

“Did you manage to get them interested?”

“Oh, yes. They were over the moon at playing a girl on stage. For a few, it was a dream come true. One of them, she called herself Melanie, was perfect for the other female lead. We had the headmaster’s wife as Lady Cracknell, and another boy, quite a chubby one, playing the nursemaid. Jean was fantastic, I couldn’t see why she stayed with Gordon, I suppose it was because of their faith.”

“I spoke to her last week; she is the sort of woman I’d like to be when I get to her age. She made me feel too ordinary for words. I’ve read the review, it went well. So why ‘Godot’ the following year?”

“That was the work of the teacher who was slated to take over from Gordon. He got the ear of the school board and complained about having girls acting in the plays. The fools never bothered to ask me, so they followed his suggestion with that lump of a play. I don’t think the reviews were bad enough, probably because the reviewer was an old boy. Anyway, I got the nod to do something different in ’09 but was told to keep it within the bounds of decency. So, I put on ‘Romeo and Juliet’, with Julia, one of the group, brought in as Juliet, and Jean playing Lady Capulet. That one was a success, so Gordon gave me the go-ahead for another in 2010. That one was one of my best. It was ‘At Sword’s Point’ a stage version of a ‘B’ movie, and a lot of fun. The boys loved playing Musketeers and the audience lapped it up.”

“That was Maria, playing Claire?”

“Yes, she was fantastic in a big skirt and falsies that nearly fell out in rehearsal. 2011 was my last show. I had received a good sum when my father died, so was ready to move when Richard called me. He told me that the school he taught at was in dire need of a good English Literature teacher with a flair for the dramatics. As you can see, that’s one thing I’m not short of. I left after that play, another film adaption called ‘A Flea in her Ear’; I’d shown the script to Jean, and she told me that, no matter what anyone else told me, she loved it. Simone, by this time, was in first year and played Lucienne, with Gloria, another of the public-school students, playing Olympe. When that school year was over, I packed up and came here.”

“I see that you didn’t start teaching until 2012?”

“You’ve done your homework, full marks. Yes, I got here and went to live with Richard, he and I are now married. The school years here start in January, so I went off to Thailand for my operation, being legally Queenie when I started work. Where did you have yours if I can be so bold to ask?”

He had been frank with me, so I felt that I should be frank with him.

“Mine wasn’t planned. It came about with an encounter with a mad woman with a box cutter. That was a few years ago. I’d never considered becoming female and it has been a steep learning curve. How did you pick me?”

“Polly, I’ve worked as a woman for some years, now, and before that I always wanted to be one. You are very good, but there are some small things that you can’t hide. The length and size of your fingers, some old gestures. I can’t believe that you looked like that without wondering.”

“The face was because of a rounders bat across the nose. I had several months of operations to rebuild it. I think the surgeons did well, and I’m proud to look like this, now, although, after it happened, I wasn’t pleased with how my life had been shattered. Now, this school of yours, and why are we sitting here, waiting for our meal?”

“Right! The school is a fee-paying one, with most of the students being children of businessmen or politicians. It’s a mixed school, so we don’t have boys in girl’s clothes, but there’s a few I see who may enjoy that. The parents come from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, with the majority being Lebanese, Greek and Italian, with about a quarter of the school being white Anglos. It’s non-denominational and we send nearly ninety percent of our kids to university, even if they do end up working within the family. Those ethnic groups are strong on family, and with Richard and I helping their children reach their potential, we are part of that family. We get invited to a lot of high-brow events and there are many who don’t mind doing me a favour, or two. Now, I’ve told you my story, can you tell me why you’re even here?”

“What I’m going to tell you has to stay between us, for the moment. I don’t want you to tell Richard what I’m going to say, promise?”

“Cross my heart, Polly. It must be serious to have brought you here.”

“Right! We have some dead boys who were found dressed as girls. The first was dumped near the Fish Dock in Grimsby. That was the one you knew as Melanie. She was murdered in 2010.”

“I didn’t see that in the papers.”

“No, it was just one body among several others. What made things different was that the second body was the one you knew as Andrea. She was found, in 2011, in the grounds of Havelock House. After you left the country, we have had five more. In 2012 we found Julia, outside the Sea Cadets clubrooms. In 2014, we had Maria in the carpark of the KFC at Meridian Point.”

“No wonder you needed to talk to me, then, this is horrendous.”

“It gets worse. In 2015, Adrian Jeffries was pulled in as a result of an Identikit picture, in relation to us finding the body of the one you knew as Gloria, at Hewitts Circus. The odd thing about that was that he had an alibi, citing a meal with Gordon and his wife, and yourself, to discuss the next play. The Inspector who was in charge of the case never bothered to follow it through, seeing that he was an old boy.”

“That’s five, you suggested six.”

“The last one was young Simone. She was dumped in the carpark of Sainsburys, across the water from the police station. That was the last, until the case that led us to look into Adrian and yourself. That was a minor case that led us to finding a box with bones in. It was in the garden shed at the house where Adrian lived. I believe it may have been the bones of a lad called Jason Parsons, who had appeared in a presentation of ‘Twelfth Night’ in 2014, and, as Yorick, in Hamlet in 2018.”

“You said ‘lived’?”

“Yes, Adrian was a victim of Covid, as was Gordon. At the moment, you’re the only living witness from those early plays, other than Jean.”

“What about Harriet Young, she was heavily involved.”

“Jean only mentioned her last week. Her name had not appeared in the reviews. She resigned in 2017 when Gordon retired, and we don’t know where she is at the moment. My team may have found her since I’ve been away.”

“I expect that Jean would mention Young Harry. They never got on, Harry being the most butch lesbian I’ve ever met. Even the ‘Dykes on Bikes’ we have here haven’t the presence that Harry put on. She had her office, in the gym, near the back door, so she could pop out for a smoke. It also stopped any students leaving that way for a cigarette, themselves. That woman could lift more weights than any guy I’ve ever met. I believe that she had a sister, totally the opposite, who was a model in London. I saw her once, a petite girl. I took posters of her into the discussions for my plays, to get my ‘girls’ fired up. They were all small, seeing that they were only just into their teens, ideal for portraying a feminine character.”

“You say ‘had a sister’, was that in past tense?”

“Yes, that was the only time I felt sorry for Harry, the sister had been at a fashion show and wasn’t far from her flat, so she decided to walk home. I don’t know the details, but she didn’t make it. I think that it would have been around ’07.”

Marianne Gregory © 2023