Maxwell’s House (12 page)

There was a murmur. ‘Which is still’, he accurately read their minds, ‘a possibility. Grey had no effective alibi for the time of the girl’s murder. And he may have had any one of the usual run of motives.’

‘Are we talking about revenge, then, guv?’ a particularly scruffy detective constable asked.

‘Mr … er …’

‘Halsey.’ The detective instinctively straightened in the chair. ‘George Halsey. Stationed at Chichester.’

‘It’s possible, George,’ he said. ‘The girl’s father has a short fuse, we believe, and a powerful build. But we mustn’t let our hypotheses run away with us.’

For all the silent social revolution of the twentieth century and for all the rigours of modern police examinations, there were still one or two in front of him who wouldn’t know a hypothesis if it got up and bit them. He knew who they were. Their heads were down and they suddenly found their shoelaces absolutely fascinating.

‘Jacquie, you’ve been working with the mother. What have we got?’

The girl stood up and smoothed down her skirt. George Halsey turned his wolf whistle in the nick of time into a click of his teeth. The new boy couldn’t afford to antagonize anybody yet. He’d noticed no ring on the policewoman’s hand. And he liked the curve of her bum. He’d give her a day or two, then chance his arm.

‘Mrs Grey is a simple, working-class woman,’ Jacquie said, her voice trembling a little as it always did in moments like these, which she hated, when the guv’nor asked her to hold forth. ‘She’s bearing up quite well, really, everything considered. She left home before her son this morning and assumed he’d already gone to school. She knows he went out last night to see a teacher, but we don’t know who.’

‘Dave?’ Hall cut in.

Johnson jerked back to his feet. ‘Mr Hall and I will be paying another call to Leighford High tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘The bastards do no work after four o’clock.’

Guffaws and snarls all round. ‘Bit like pathologists,’ somebody sneered. Whistles and applause. Then the team fell silent again.

‘We don’t know’, Jacquie Carpenter hated the sudden silence she stood in the centre of, ‘if Tim had any enemies. The mother didn’t know anything about that, but she didn’t seem to know much at all. Bit out of her depth, really.’

‘Is there a dad?’ Halsey asked.

‘Joe Grierson’s on that now,’ Johnson told him. ‘Bloke works shifts at Leonards. Meek sort of bloke from my conversation with him. Less so, I understand, with the gentlemen of the press. But then I had just told him his only kid was dead. Wonder how we’d react.’

There were nods and murmurs. These men had kids too. It was hard. Bloody hard. Best not to think about it. But you had to think about it. Divorce it, then, from reality. It’s all pretend. A game. Like that
Prime Suspect
. Except it wasn’t a game. And it wasn’t raunchy Helen Mirren up there but the sullen, sour face of DI Dave Johnson, a man you didn’t cross.

Hall was on his feet again. ‘We’ve got to restart,’ he said. ‘Everything. From the beginning. Jenny Hyde. Her friends. Her enemies. Her acquaintances. Everybody she ever talked to. Everybody she bought her sweets from. Everybody she sat by on the school bus. The same for Timothy Grey. She went missing the week before she died. Why? Where was she from the Sunday to the Friday we found her body? What was Grey’s involvement in it all? What was he doing on the Dam last night? And who was this teacher he went to see?’

Questions. Questions. And not an answer in it. But there was a new urgency in his voice. A new fire down below. The lights came up and the team hauled itself into action, filing cabinets grating open, VDUs flashing on, telephones ringing. An incident room back, like Lazarus, from the dead.

‘Jacquie,’ Hall said as he swept into his office, ‘get me the BBC. I want Nick Ross to do a follow-up.’

George Halsey, the new boy, shook his head. He wasn’t fooled for a minute. For all the clash and hurry, he saw right through it.

‘What a lacklustre bastard,’ he muttered.

And everybody knew he wasn’t talking about Nick Ross.

They just sat there, Peter Maxwell and Sylvia Matthews, staring disbelieving at the set. Sylvia had called round to see how he was. She’d put it off for two days, not quite knowing what to say, how he’d react. She’d been married for seven years, before her husband got the itch, and she knew the last thing men wanted was sympathy. So she’d stayed away. Then her maternalism had got the better of her and she’d gone round there, all concern and cocoa. She’d just finished patting him, asking him how he was, probing, when they both heard it simultaneously. The Meridian newscaster, whose name neither of them could remember, just sat there, as newscasters will, reading his autocue.

‘The body of seventeen-year-old Timothy Grey from Leighford was found this morning on the Dam, a well-known beauty spot in the area. Chief Inspector Henry Hall heading the enquiry said that there may be a link with the so far unsolved killing of teenager Jennifer Hyde who attended Timothy’s school last July.’

Sylvia was on her feet first. ‘Max,’ she said, blinking as the south’s unemployment figures replaced the smiling school photograph of Tim Grey. ‘Oh, Max.’

He was beside her, patting her shoulder. She turned to him and he saw the tears start. He cradled her head against his chest, running his fingers through her hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he smiled, ‘you come over to comfort me and I end up comforting you. Women!’ and he tossed his head in mock disgust.

She pretended to kick him in the shins and ended up laughing into his solid, warm chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘Carrying on like this. It’s just… well, I can’t believe it.’

‘Neither can I.’ Maxwell rummaged in his pocket. ‘Here,’ and he gave her his handkerchief. ‘Now, then, big blow for the Queen.’

‘Shan’t.’ She smiled up at him though the tears. ‘Bellowing into someone else’s handkerchief is not very ladylike, Max,’ she said.

‘You’re right.’ He held her at arm’s length. ‘Remember the old Hancock sketch? The blood donor? Where he’s walking around singing “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases” to the tune of “Deutschland, Deutschland”? Ah, they don’t make ‘em like that any more.’

There was a sharp, brittle ring of his door bell. ‘Christ,’ he muttered.

‘I’ll go,’ she said.

‘But you’ve been crying,’ he told her. ‘Aren’t women supposed to go away and fix there faces or something? Bette Davis always did.’

She swiped him with his own hanky. ‘You’re a fraud, Peter Maxwell,’ she said. ‘On the surface, you’re a chauvinist git, but deep down you’re just a chauvinist git … Unless you mind me answering the door? It’s not going to ruin your reputation, is it?’

He sprawled on the settee. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘that little ol’ thing is going through rather a bad patch at the moment, but I suppose I’ll have to live with it.’ And he watched her pad off down the stairs.

He wasn’t ready for the raised voices. Or the crash of his own front door. And he wasn’t even on his feet by the time two burly strangers stood in his living-room. At least, one was a stranger. The other he’d met before. Once. And he hadn’t enjoyed the experience.

‘Peter Maxwell.’

‘Detective Inspector Johnson, isn’t it?’ Maxwell stood up slowly.

‘This is Detective Constable Halsey.’ The stranger nodded curtly.

‘We’d like you to accompany us to Leighford police station.’

‘My God,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘you really do say that sort of thing, then, you policemen. Well, well.’

He wasn’t really ready for what followed either, Johnson squared up to him, his face inches from Maxwell’s. ‘Look, you fucking shit, I’ve just come from helping a father identify his dead kid. I’ve not had a lot of sleep in the past few weeks and I’ve got a feeling you know something about the cause of that. If you want a coat, get it.’

‘You can’t talk to him like that.’ Sylvia Matthews spun the man round.

‘Can’t I? Mrs Maxwell, is it?’ Johnson asked, knowing perfectly well it wasn’t, ‘well, let me tell you something about your husband …’

‘He’s not my husband,’ she corrected him. ‘Not that that’s any of your business. You don’t have to go, Max. You’ve already told them about the diary …’

‘Diary?’ Johnson turned back to his man.

Maxwell closed his eyes. ‘I’ll get my coat,’ he said.

‘Right. You don’t mind if DC Halsey has a look round?’

‘Yes.’ Maxwell was level with his man now, his eyes burning into Johnson’s. ‘As a matter of fact I do. And you won’t mind dropping Mrs Matthews off at her home? She came on the bus.’

‘No.’ Sylvia said, almost deafened by the thump of her own heart. ‘No, Max, I’m coming with you.’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Johnson looked at her coldly.

‘No.’ Maxwell held her shoulder gently. ‘No, Sylv, I’ll be all right. After all, Criminal Procedure Act, FACE, the Sheehy Report. The days of people falling downstairs while in police stations are over, aren’t they, Inspector?’

‘Let’s go,’ Johnson sneered at him. ‘Miss?’

‘Thanks,’ Sylvia Matthews snapped. ‘But I’ll catch the bus.’

12

They left him alone for a while. Made him sweat. But Peter Maxwell had been a couch potato for longer than he could remember.
No Hiding Place, Gideon, The Sweeney
. He knew all the moves. He sat as relaxed as he could be on the hard, tubular steel chair, his hands clasped across his chest, his eyes closed, and he recalled to himself as much as he could of Palmerston’s foreign policy.

He’d just reached the Don Pacifico affair, when the terrible milord had despatched the British fleet to the harbour of Piraeus in defence of one rather dubious Portuguese-Jewish-Englishman, when the door crashed back. Clearly, Detective Inspector Johnson was fond of the grand entrance. The solid, averagely good-looking George Halsey was with him.

‘Right.’ Johnson sat on the chair opposite Maxwell. ‘We’ve done the introductions,’ he said, calmer than when they’d taken their leave in the yard outside. ‘Let’s get down to business.’ He nodded to Halsey who flicked a switch on a machine stacked in the corner of the bare room.

‘Interview commencing,’ Johnson leaned forward to talk into a microphone on the table, checking his watch simultaneously, ‘at ten thirty-eight. DI Johnson and DC Halsey in the interview room with Peter Maxwell. Speak into that, please.’

Maxwell glanced at the microphone, then chewed his little finger. ‘The day war broke out, my missus said to me …’

‘Your own voice,’ Johnson growled.

Pity really. It was the best Rob Wilton Peter Maxwell had ever done.

‘Aren’t I allowed a phone call?’ Maxwell removed the finger from his mouth, but his body hadn’t moved.

‘Who you gonna call?’ Johnson sneered. ‘Ghostbusters?’

Halsey sniggered and pulled up a second chair. The policemen now faced Maxwell, they on one side of the table, he on the other, like strangers obliged to share in a restaurant. No one was comfortable. No one intended to show it.

‘You are here under your own free will?’ Johnson put the formalities forward for the benefit of the tape. ‘No one has forced you?’

‘No,’ said Maxwell. ‘No one.’

‘I have to advise you,’ Johnson was glancing over a sheaf of notes, ‘that Mr Hall and I were not entirely happy about the answers you gave us in connection with the murder of Jennifer Hyde.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell allowed his left eyebrow to crawl upward. ‘In what way?’

‘I’ve read the file too,’ Halsey butted in. ‘It sucks, mate.’ He fixed Maxwell with his steely, dark eyes. ‘From beginning to end.’

‘Take this bit, Peter …’ Johnson said.

‘If you don’t mind, Detective Inspector,’ Maxwell broke his clasp for the first time and all six legs, his and the chair’s were on the floor, ‘I’d rather you called me Mr Maxwell.’

Johnson’s grin was a sneer. ‘Well, now, Peter,’ he said, ‘I was hoping to keep this friendly.’

‘So was I,’ said Maxwell, ‘and your rather feeble attempt to patronize me is not the way to go about it.’

Johnson straightened up, stacking his papers with a thump that made the tape’s needle bounce to the far side of its arc. Maxwell leaned back again. For all Johnson seemed to be a graduate of the school of body language, Maxwell had founded it.

‘Very well,’ the senior policeman said. ‘When you … broke up, I believe is the phrase you teachers use … when you broke up at the end of last term, where did you go?’

‘To Cornwall,’ Maxwell told him. ‘On holiday.’

‘Bit unusual, that, isn’t it?’ Halsey frowned.

‘To go to Cornwall?’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I think you’ll find thousands of people do it. I couldn’t get into Mevagissey on the Thursday morning for the queue of traffic’

‘No,’ Johnson grinned, ‘no, Peter … er … Mr Maxwell. See, you’re missing the point. What my colleague means is that you left school rather precipitately.’

Maxwell was impressed. This wasn’t bad for a man with three O levels to his name. He must have been to night school. ‘Did I?’ he asked.

‘We made some enquiries,’ Johnson told him, ‘up at the school. Seems you’re the life and soul of the end-of-term party usually. Knees-ups in the staff room, presentations to leaving teachers, that sort of thing. Some of your colleagues claimed you’re usually one of the last to leave.’

‘Nothing to go home to, I guess.’ Halsey lit a cigarette. ‘Bachelor like you. Must be a lonely life. Empty. Desolate, even.’

Maxwell leaned forward and his eyes burned back into Halsey’s. ‘I’m not the type’, he said, ‘to kill for company.’

Johnson’s mouth fell open. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice stunned with mock exasperation, ‘whoever said anything about killing? Did you, George? Did you say anything about killing?’

‘Not a word, Inspector.’ Halsey hadn’t taken his eyes off Maxwell’s. ‘Not one blessed word.’

‘So you see our dilemma.’ Johnson wasn’t at all bad at playing the nice policeman, considering he’d had so little practice. ‘Here we’ve got half a dozen of your colleagues – your friends – who have told us you usually hang about in the staff room at the end of term and here you’re telling us you buggered off to Cornwall.’

‘So I broke the habit of a lifetime,’ Maxwell shrugged. He could tell the police weren’t impressed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there was a deal with Hamilton’s Coaches, here in Leighford. If you caught the coach that left Tottingleigh at four thirty, you’d be in Exeter by seven and Penzance by two in the morning. Cheap excursion rates because of the weird timing. Check with the company.’

‘We did, Mr Maxwell,’ Johnson said, still smiling with his thin, smug lips. ‘You see, they don’t have a record of you travelling on any of their coaches that weekend.’

‘What?’ Maxwell sat upright again.

Johnson flashed a look at Halsey. He sensed his man’s composure about to crack. ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s all just a mistake,’ he went on. ‘You know how it is, computer error or something. It’s just that all records from that Friday to the Monday have been wiped. Almost as if … Are you familiar with Apple Macintosh, Mr Maxwell?’

The pending Head of Sixth Form looked his man in the face. ‘As far as I am concerned,’ he said, ‘one of those is a fruit, the other is a type of raincoat.’

‘Oh, very droll,’ Halsey scoffed. ‘I’m glad you’re still laughing, sunshine.’

‘One of those little coincidences, I expect.’ Johnson was getting into his stride now.

‘The driver,’ Maxwell snapped his fingers. ‘I gave the driver my ticket.’

‘Of course you did.’ Johnson frowned and nodded in mock-earnest support. ‘But unfortunately Hamilton’s drivers don’t keep their stubs once they’ve collected them. Normally, you see, the computer records all bookings, so there’d be no need.’

‘Cheque stubs,’ Maxwell said. ‘Look at my cheque book. My bank statement.’

‘Oh, we have no doubt that you booked on that coach,’ Johnson said. ‘Or a coach, certainly. You probably even paid the fare.’ He rested his elbows on his papers and jutted his jaw forward so that he and Maxwell were eyeball to eyeball. ‘But the fact is, you don’t have the first bloody bit of corroborative evidence to prove you caught the four thirty from Tottingleigh, do you? None whatsoever.’

For the second time in his life, Peter Maxwell couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. And he’d been wrong. The nightmare he thought had begun when he’d seen Nick Ross reporting Jenny Hyde’s murder on the television had not started then. It was starting now.

‘Well,’ Johnson leaned back, thoroughly enjoying Maxwell’s predicament. ‘We’ll leave that for now, shall we? So you left the school at what time?’

‘Er … I don’t know. Just before three, I think.’

‘The kids went home at two,’ Halsey reminded him.

‘That’s right. Last day of term is always short. Assembly followed by a bash in the staff room – a “knees-up”, as you put it.’

‘Anybody retiring this time?’

‘No.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘The odd supply bod, that’s all. They come and go.’

Johnson nodded, peering at Maxwell through Halsey’s cigarette haze. ‘How far would you say it was from Leighford High to the Red House?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Maxwell weighed it up in his mind. ‘About a mile and a half, I suppose.’

‘How long would it take? For you to do the journey, I mean?’

‘Why would I want to do the journey?’ Maxwell was careful enough to ask.

‘Ah,’ Johnson beamed, ‘that’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it? Why indeed? Just humour me, Mr Maxwell. How long would it take?’

‘Well, by car …’

‘No, not by car,’ the Detective Inspector was quick to cut in. ‘You don’t drive, do you?’

He saw Maxwell’s eyelids flicker. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not any more.’

‘By bike,’ Johnson narrowed it down. ‘Say you were travelling by bike.’

‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Let’s see. It’s uphill towards the house, isn’t it? About twenty minutes; perhaps more if you hit traffic at the flyover.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Johnson said. ‘So if you left the school at three o’clock, you’d be there by half-past.’

‘Assuming that’s what I did.’

‘Yes,’ Johnson nodded acidly, ‘assuming that. And of course, Jennifer Hyde didn’t die until about four o’clock. That means that you had half an hour with her.’

‘Long enough,’ Halsey pointed out, ‘long enough to rip the poor kid’s blouse and bra …’

‘Long enough for me to run seven miles if I was Superman.’ Maxwell refused to be ruffled. ‘I wasn’t there.’

‘Your bike was,’ Johnson countered.

‘What?’

‘Or one very like it. Seen leaning up against the wall of the Red House on the afternoon in question.’

‘If Jenny died at four o’clock,’ Maxwell said, ‘I was already in the waiting-room at the coach station.’

Johnson slid his chair away from the table and crossed purposefully to the window. The blinds were down, but he parted the slats and looked out. The rain trickled like tears down the glass with the cold, hungry darkness beyond. ‘How did you get there?’ he asked.

‘Where?’ Maxwell had lost his thread. For all his outward coolness, he was a mass of jangled nerves inside.

‘The coach station.’ Johnson turned to him, wide-eyed. ‘Isn’t that where you said you were?’

‘I walked.’

‘Where was your bike?’ Halsey asked.

‘At home,’ Maxwell said.

‘How did you get to school that morning?’ Johnson worried his man like a terrier.

‘I walked.’

‘Who saw you?’

‘On which journey?’

‘Either.’

‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell flustered. ‘In the morning, kids. In the afternoon …’

‘The kids had all gone home,’ Halsey blurted at him.

‘Nobody. Somebody. I don’t remember.’

There was a pause. A mocking silence that hung on Maxwell like a stone. Johnson wandered back to his seat as if it was the last place he actually wanted to be. ‘You know,’ he said, grinning broadly at Maxwell, ‘there’s one line in the course of our enquiries which is always music to my ears.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell couldn’t quite see what was coming.

‘Yes.’ Johnson nodded, as though to the village idiot. ‘That line “I don’t remember.’”

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Johnson put his face close to Maxwell’s, ‘when I hear it, it usually means someone’s lying.’

Maxwell said nothing. Just sat there and looked at his adversary.

‘Questioning paused at ten fifty-eight,’ Johnson said and switched off the microphone. ‘I expect Mr Maxwell could do with a cup of tea, George,’ he said, genially. ‘I know I could.’

‘Right, guv.’ The beefy detective hauled up his chair and slid it against the wall, a smirk hovering around his lips. Then he was gone and the world was full of David Johnson.

‘Right, you self-satisfied bastard,’ the policeman loomed over Maxwell, ‘I’m going to tell you a story

Maxwell looked levelly at him. ‘Not the best Max Bygraves I’ve heard,’ he said.

‘Cut the crap!’ Johnson ordered. ‘If you think a double murder is anything to laugh at, you pervert, I’ll soon change your mind about that.’ He slapped a buff envelope down on the table between them. ‘Have a look,’ he snarled. ‘A bloody good look.’

Maxwell hesitated. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?’ Johnson’s eyes were bright under the strip light.

Maxwell fumbled with the manilla and half a dozen glossy black and white photographs fell out. They showed the twisted body of Jenny Hyde, her lips drawn back from her teeth, her hair splayed wide, her eyes staring. And cold. And dead.

Maxwell shut his eyes. Just because he still could. They snapped open again when he felt Johnson’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Take a good look, I said,’ the Inspector was shaking him, ‘because that’s what you did to her. That’s how you left her, all alone in the house. Wouldn’t play, would she?’

Maxwell’s hand clasped over Johnson’s and wrenched it from his jacket.

‘Wouldn’t let you touch her? What did you do, get her tits out? Put your hand up her skirt?’

The door clicked open with a sharpness that made Maxwell jump.

‘Not now, George.’ Johnson hadn’t turned, hadn’t taken his eyes off his man.

‘Dave,’ a soft voice said.

The look on Johnson’s face said it all. The lacklustre bastard had arrived with that impeccable bloody timing of his. Just when he’d got his man on the ropes. In another minute, he’d have got a confession out of him. Either that or he’d have rammed that bloody college scarf down his perverted throat.

‘Your shift finished twenty minutes ago, Dave,’ Hall said, patting his man on the shoulder. ‘You get off home, now. I’ll finish up here.’

‘Guv …’ Johnson straightened.

‘Now, Dave.’ Hall’s jaw was firmer than Johnson had ever remembered it. He knew an exit cue when he heard one and took it.

Hall closed the door in the Inspector’s wake, then turned to Maxwell, still sitting in his chair. ‘We’re all a bit on edge,’ he said, by way of explanation. It was not an apology.

‘You can say that again,’ Maxwell nodded.

‘You had a right to call your solicitor,’ Hall told him.

‘I haven’t got one,’ Maxwell said. ‘Nor an accountant. Nor a dentist and not much of a doctor.’

Hall sat down and opened the file, then he saw the photographs still scattered on the desk. He gathered them up. ‘If you feel there have been any irregularities here …’ He looked over his glasses at Maxwell and watched the Head of Sixth Form shake his head.