Maxwell's Crossing (23 page)

‘I haven't had a reply to my email yet, but basically, Jeff O'Malley was kicked out of the police, as I suspected,
and was and is into anything dodgy that's going. He – Harry Schmidt, his name is – thinks that that is why O'Malley was so keen to come to England with Hector and Camille. The condo would have been big enough for Paul and the family … What's that face for?'

‘Condo?'

‘Well, I was staying in character. What are you humming?'

Maxwell had found over the years that direct questioning was no good. Sidling up was much more productive. ‘Bit of Simon & Garfunkel. Before your time, doubtless. “El Condo Pasa”. My Spanish is rather rusty, but I believe it means an old block of flats.'

She gave him a look and continued. ‘He said the raid on Paul and Manda was just something they do from time to time on principle because it is likely that O'Malley has done something, even if they don't yet know what it is.'

‘Is that allowed?' Maxwell felt sure that barging into people's homes with guns must have some kind of law against it, even Over There, as he continued to think of America.

‘I don't think O'Malley complains. The boat won't need too much rocking to tip him out completely.'

‘So, if he was thrown out, what about his pension?'

‘Doesn't have one. Camille's nail bar does fairly well, and Harry thinks that she gives her father some of the proceeds. I don't know whether it is normal for a nail bar to do so well. I don't even know what they do or how much they charge.'

‘I don't look after you properly,' Maxwell crooned, ironically. ‘You should be nail-barring on a regular basis, heart.'

‘Right back atchya,' she said. ‘But the annoying part is that Harry—'

‘Magnum.'

‘… Schmidt has no reason to suppose that O'Malley would be our murderer. He's violent, yes, but only when in a temper and can be quite charming when he wants to be. That's how he gets things done in the first place. Then he gets rough later.' Jacquie sighed. ‘He really is a nasty piece of work, but he didn't do any of the murders, I'm afraid.'

‘It was clutching at straws, surely?' Maxwell asked. ‘He'd hardly been here five minutes before Matthew Hendricks was killed. I can't help thinking that was something to do with … oh, I don't know. Drugs? Money?'

‘Jeff O'Malley to a tee,' she said.

‘Yes, but … not so soon, is all I mean. I agree he could look good for Sarah Gregson.'

She shrugged. ‘Why, though? Why kill her and not take the money?'

‘Anger. Then he thought if he took the money it would point the finger.'

‘Possible. But what about Ja—'

‘Jacob Shears. Solicitor, divorced, no children,
forty-five,
found this morning by his secretary Ms Tia Preece in his office off the High Street, Leighford. It's all over the local news. Neighbour Mr Michael Melling told our
reporter that Mr Shears was very quiet and kept himself to himself. They occasionally met on the stairs but that was all.' He dropped the newsreader tone. ‘Why on the stairs?'

‘Mr Melling's flat is above the solicitor's office. The office is a kind of sandwich in the middle of the shop and the flat.'

‘Funny sort of arrangement.'

‘Funnier than you would think. The houses kind of lean around there, so the top floor is over next door. Only the ones at the end match up. That's why he didn't hear anything.'

Maxwell thought for a moment. ‘Is stabbing loud, as a rule?'

‘Not the stabbing, no. The screaming, that can be quite loud, I'm told. There hadn't been a struggle by the looks of things, but there could easily have been screaming.'

‘So he probably knew the person, do you think?'

‘He was in the office on a Sunday, so we are assuming that it was a specific appointment. Remind me, why am I telling you this?' Jacquie looked at him with a severe expression.

Maxwell had secretly been wondering himself why she was being so forthcoming. Could it be because this was merely the tiniest layer of frost on the tip of the iceberg, and in fact she was keeping most of it quiet after all? ‘I can't imagine, but do go on.' He still had the prostitution to find out about. ‘Could he have been crept up on?'

‘Yes. But that still begs the question why was he there in the first place? With all the bad weather he might have missed the odd day and wanted to catch up, but honestly I don't think he was that busy.'

Maxwell decided to bite the bullet. ‘You mentioned prostitution.'

‘Did I?' She tried to look innocent.

‘Definitely. “Prostituting herself”, you said, someone in your team.'

‘Oh, probably I meant that silly girl who is moonlighting at Domino's Pizza. Silly way to behave.'

‘Hmm. You seem to be blushing.'

‘It's the gin. Anyway, you'll get no more out of me. We're done here.'

‘My word. That sounded a bit American. Something you picked up from Harry, perhaps?'

‘That's enough,' she said. ‘I've had enough Americans to last me a lifetime. I'm off to bed.' Swinging her legs off the sofa, she went to the door. ‘Cocoa, sir?' She wasn't wearing a duffle coat, but otherwise she was any petty officer in any war film you cared to name. It was her way of telling him that police secrets were told for tonight, the madness of being a Maxwell was back on the menu.

‘Good man, Number One. Make that two sugars.' It was Jack Hawkins to a T.

After she had gone across to the kitchen, he sprawled for another minute, thinking. Everything told him this trio of deaths was connected. But try as he might, he couldn't join even a single dot.

Breakfast was breakfast at 38 Columbine, no matter what the day was likely to bring. Metternich was still convinced that he might like Coco Pops this time and so was in his normal position below Nolan's chair and in the way as much as possible. Jacquie was dressed in full detective inspector fig and eating a slice of toast standing up. Maxwell was buttering toast for general consumption and occasionally managing to eat a slice, but was at least sitting down, to give the Boy a good example. Hector Gold was the only unusual feature, sitting at the end of the table, bandbox fresh and tidy, as though his family had not just imploded and his
father-in
-law was, if only technically, on the run.

‘Have you heard from Camille this morning?' Jacquie asked, for something to say.

‘I rang her last night,' Hector answered. ‘After the … excitement. I asked her to let me know when her father got back. I haven't heard. But that means nothing, to an O'Malley.'

Jacquie made a polite question mark with an eyebrow.

‘The O'Malleys are secretive to an almost pathological degree,' he said. ‘I know Jeff does the big bluff Californian thing, what you see is what you get, but in fact he's real deep. Camille thinks she knows him, but she doesn't. She never stops to wonder why her nail bar does so well, in a street of nail bars all the same.'

‘And why does it?' said Maxwell, almost afraid to hear the answer.

‘Because all the wives, girlfriends, their sisters, their cousins and their aunts of Jeff's customers all get their
nails done and pay over the odds and tip real well. That's how they pay Jeff without it being dirty.'

Maxwell was impressed that the man could quote from Gilbert & Sullivan whilst talking about money laundering in the same sentence. Class!

‘You know that for a fact?' Jacquie asked, swallowing a big bit of toast.

‘How much do you pay for a set of acrylics over here?' He looked at their puzzled faces and then at Jacquie's nails. ‘OK, stupid question. At home, I guess it averages at about sixty, possibly seventy-five dollars. Well, Camille charges a hundred seventy-five. When I asked her how she got so much, she said it was because she was simply the best. I think just “simple” describes her. Jeff set the prices. Some of these women come in for maintenance once a day and pay for a full set.'

‘Aren't the staff suspicious?' Maxwell asked.

‘Like I say, these ladies are heavy tippers.' He glanced up at the clock. ‘Had we better be going?' he asked. ‘Are we dropping Nolan off, or are you doing that, Jacquie?'

‘I want to go with Dads and Hector,' Nolan said at once, jumping down and running round his mother.

Jacquie was not used to not being chauffeuse. ‘That would be wonderful, Hector, if you don't mind. Nolan, go and get your reading book and your coat.' She turned to Hector. ‘Do you mind being called Hector by Nolan?' she asked. ‘He should be calling you Mr Gold.'

‘Mr Gold's my dad,' the American said with a grin. ‘I prefer Hec, but Hector's fine with me.'

‘As long as you're sure. Max, don't forget it's Bob Thorogood's leaving do tonight.'

Maxwell looked bright but ignorant, hoping for more information.

‘Tonight. After work. Bob Thorogood's leaving do.'

‘Am I coming to it?' he asked, plaintively. If there was one thing he hated more than his own colleagues' leaving do's, it was someone else's colleagues' leaving do's.

‘You certainly are,' she said. ‘If you think I'm spending an evening with a whole load of policemen while you are at home in the warm, you've got another think coming.'

‘I thought that was what they paid you for,' seemed a little harsh in the circumstances, so Maxwell held his counsel.

‘Can I watch Nolan for you?' Hector asked.

‘Thanks,' Maxwell said. ‘It's Troubridge Tuesday, but he might be home before we are. How long is this bunfight likely to last, heart?'

‘Not long,' she said. ‘In and out, I hope. I'll pick you up from school if you can amuse yourself till about five. Thanks, Hector, if you don't mind being here by about six, that would be great. Mrs Troubridge has a key. Now, you boys had better be off if you don't want to be late. Pearls before swine, and all that.'

She lined them up to see them off and felt like Snow White sending the dwarves off to the mine – in diminishing order of size, Grumpy, Skinny and Cutie. They thundered down the stairs and she wondered how these mothers of a dozen kids managed it. Three was ample. She poured a second cup of coffee as a treat
and flipped open her laptop, logging on to the secure remote server. Now, let's see what Magnum had to say for himself.

Compared with the day before, Tuesday was a veritable breeze. Hector Gold managed to get through his lessons with no more profanity and of course had the complete attention of any class he taught, simply because they didn't want to miss a single golden four-letter word should it fall from his lips. But Hector's explosion of Monday morning seemed to have sufficed and so they listened – as they considered it – in vain, although had they but known it, they absorbed some excellent history.

Mad Max had another crooked finger from Pansy Donaldson as he tried to sneak past her office. She wanted to know if he had replied to Mr Moss's email or not. Obviously, the answer was ‘not' as he hadn't got any further along the road to sorting it out and also because he really didn't care to embark on sending emails halfway round the world. Down the corridor was not always a guaranteed success. He managed to schmooze her into sending a generic reply to show he cared and that he would be in touch soon.

Nolan was not destined to have a good day. Sarah Gregson had been what passed for a librarian in Mrs Whatmough's establishment, and although everyone had been shocked to hear of her death, those children who were ripping through the book list were already missing her more than most.
Magnus Powermouse
having come to its hilarious conclusion, Nolan had gone
to change it in the lunchtime and had come up against the implacable rock that was the Mighty Whatmough. He had heard a rumour that she had actually been
in his house
while he was asleep and this made him nervous. When Nolan was nervous he became rather smart-arsed. Mrs Whatmough didn't like smart-arses and this was the only thing, by and large, that she had in common with the rest of humanity. Nolan ended up with his first ever lunchtime detention and spent the afternoon planning how to kill Mrs Whatmough and yet escape detection; you didn't have parents like his for nothing. It was for this reason that he missed the secrets of long division, laying the foundation for what would become a lifelong hatred of maths.

Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell was late for work. The email from Harry Schmidt had been long and complicated and she had become quite enravelled in its toils. Essentially, whatever they arrested Jeff O'Malley for, it would only be because he had it coming. Taking and offering bribes, graft, extortion, illegal betting, a tad of pimping when times were hard, money laundering – well, she knew about that – and a lot of other things with numbers instead of words which she had heard on telly but would have to look up to be sure about. About the only thing he didn't have what Harry called a ‘rap sheet' for was murder. The final paragraph was perhaps the most interesting.

‘This is off the record, Jacquie,' Harry Schmidt had written, ‘because it's kind of a personal opinion and I've got no proof. I was only a rookie when I met Jeff
O'Malley first, and he took me under his wing. He did that with the rookies, got them on his side so they wouldn't rat on him if they saw him doing a deal, things like that. I'd find a little stash of weed in my lunchbox, something Jeff saw as a favour. When I said I didn't do weed, he said no problem, what did I want? He didn't seem to get it that some people didn't want drugs. Anyway, one night we were out on patrol. He didn't have to come, he just liked being out with the rookies – better if they were girls, but he didn't mind. He said he liked being out on the streets, gave him an edge. So you never forgot where the bad guys were. We saw a guy we'd picked up the week before – pimp, violent – but he got off on a technicality.' Jacquie felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. ‘Jeff got out of the car, told me to wait and he followed the guy. They weren't difficult to spot, the guy was wearing real bright colours. Jeff was bigger then than he is now, I reckon. I trailed them, kerb-crawling at a distance, and when the pimp took a left down an alley, Jeff went in after him. I can't tell you what happened, because I wasn't there, but I heard later the guy was in hospital for three weeks. I don't know what you can make of that, but I heard later that wasn't the first time he'd made sure someone didn't really get away. I guess he doesn't like to lose – so watch yourselves and Alana. He's a loose cannon, Jacquie. Best, Harry.'