Maxwell's Retirement (26 page)

‘Don’t do that, for God’s sake. Those idiots
have got almost all these chairs booby-trapped. It’s like working with children.’

He rearranged himself carefully and, with nothing dreadful happening, continued his questions. ‘You knew him, though, didn’t you?’

‘I have never ever in my life seen that man before Friday. I see him now, though. Every time I close my eyes.’

‘Did you know he was a computer buff?’ he pressed.

‘Max. I don’t know the man. He could be a trapeze artist for all I know.’

‘He was Mrs B’s nephew, you know. He had been hanging around Leighford for a while before he was arrested and sent to prison for computer fraud.’

‘Not so much of a buff, then, if he got caught.’

Maxwell looked thoughtful. That was something he hadn’t considered. He had been unlucky, that two of his marks had known each other, and they had him on CCTV, but surely, he should have had contingency plans. ‘You’ve got a point there.’ He recovered himself. ‘But that’s not all. Why are you going round telling everyone I fell off my bike?’

She just sat, looking at him and tears slowly welled up in her eyes. She shook her head and finally said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Is that it?’ He almost sat back in amazement. ‘You don’t know. You tell Pansy Donaldson that
I fell off my bike, so she goes around treating me as if I am a leper who might give oldness and madness to the whole school and all you can say is you don’t know why you did it. Can you at least give a hint?’

By now she was weeping real tears and it took some time for Maxwell to restore the room to order. Eventually, with a screwed-up hankie in one hand and a fistful of Maxwell’s jacket sleeve in the other, she told her story.

‘I’m trying to get a new job, Max. I need a new job. I can’t stay up here with these idiots for one more day. They do nothing. They know nothing. Every time I ask them to do something, I end up doing it myself. The only thing they ever took on when I asked them to was the internal chat room. It was invented by some guy, at another school, I think it was. Anyway, I asked Ned to do that and he seems to have taken it on board. It’s working, anyway. I check the activity from time to time and it seems to be very popular. Not so much lately, but I think it will pick up again after exams. But, anyway,’ she gave a huge sniff, ‘I know there’s talk of an HR job and so, I thought that if I showed an interest, you know, in people’s welfare, then perhaps … Max, I’m so sorry,’ and she threw herself into his arms in new paroxysms of tears.

By bracing his legs at the last minute, Maxwell managed to prevent them both going over in an unseemly heap. He patted her, he made comforting
little noises and, eventually, he managed to reach over her shoulder and call Sylvia Matthews. Without going into detail, he managed to palm off the hysterical IT girl onto the matron and slip away. Cogs had been whirring, threads had been ravelling and now the fabric was almost complete. Just a few more passes of the shuttle and he would have the whole thing sewn up. Mavis would be so proud.

He clattered down the stairs again, past his own mezzanine floor and on, through the foyer and past the dining room. A small huddle of cooks impeded his progress. He tried to dodge round them, but suddenly they were hanging from his clothing and asking him things. They were like piranhas – small and singly quite harmless, but powerful in a school.

‘Mr Maxwell, have you heard?’ One broke off from the mass. ‘About poor Doreen? We’re having a whip round.’

His heart contracted in his chest. ‘What about Doreen?’ His own voice seemed to come from terribly far away.

‘She was waiting for a bus this morning and a car mounted the pavement. She’s lucky to be alive. She’s in Leighford General with two broken legs.’

‘What sort of car was it?’ He asked the question but he knew the answer.

Mad Max, what a character. They knew he
was fond of all the staff, well, with some major exceptions, but he would come out with silly questions. ‘It was one of those great big things, with the bars on the front. Silly, I call it, in town.’

Maxwell dug in his pocket and hauled out a note. He pressed it into the nearest hand and dashed off down the corridor. Blimey! He might be mad, but twenty quid – that would make the final haul almost twenty-one pounds if they were lucky.

With an exceptional turn of speed, he hurtled down the long corridor across the back of the school. He heard snatches of lessons Doppler as he hurried past. He could see the double doors at the end of the corridor that marked, in happier days, where the library had once stood, hushed and cool, lined with books and filled with silent children. Now, it was a ghost of a library, not even a Learning Resource Centre, the librarian (or Learning Resource Centrifuge) long gone to finish her days shushing old men in the reference section at the main library in town, trying to get used to the long days and the residual smell of wee.

He pushed the doors open and called. ‘Mike? Ned? Are you here?’

There was no answer, but he somehow felt, in the dusty dark, that he wasn’t alone. He twitched aside a blind at the nearest window and let in a shaft of light, which didn’t quite reach across the room.

He could see two huddled forms over by the mainframe cupboard, but they were still almost in darkness and he couldn’t see what they were doing. ‘Mike? Ned? Answer me.’

‘No.’ A husky voice answered him. ‘We don’t want to talk to you, Maxwell. Go away.’

‘It’s no good, lads,’ Maxwell said. ‘I know what’s going on. There are a few gaps. Can I try them out?’

‘Why not?’ The voice was somehow odd sounding. Generic. No one’s in particular.

‘Who am I talking to?’ he asked.

‘Woo hoo. You must be stressed,’ mocked the voice. ‘That was a really bad sentence. Don’t you mean, to whom am I talking?’

‘That would be better,’ Maxwell conceded. ‘But I’m allowed a few mistakes, surely? We’re all allowed that. I don’t expect you meant to kill Colin. It just happened by accident, is that right?’

‘Nope,’ said the voice and Maxwell suddenly understood. It was coming through a voice changer. And the reason the silhouettes looked strange was because they were wearing Troopers’ helmets, from the original Star Wars movies. ‘It was deliberate. He was rubbish. He could write any program you could imagine, and then he couldn’t sell it to save his sorry life. The last one he did …’ The laugh was horrible, metallic and harsh. ‘It would have made us millionaires. But, poor old Col, he has to invent something that
only crooks would want. Dodgy geezers. So we couldn’t ask too much money. So we had to ask for it again and again. And we got caught. Well,
he
got caught. And now, of course, sod’s law, the blokes that shopped us, they’ve come out of the woodwork, going through the courts to get the ownership. So we could have been legit after all.’

‘But why kill him?’

‘Stupid sod, did a runner from Ford and came here. Wanted to come clean all about it. Well, I’d found another use for it meanwhile. So he could bugger that. So,’ Maxwell saw the shoulders shrug under the bulky head, ‘I just twisted his sorry neck for him.’

‘What had he invented?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Only a program that could hack into anything you like. From the bank on the corner to the Bank of England. Weapons. Money. You could do what you like.’

‘And what do you do with it?’ Maxwell could hardly stop himself from adding – you dirty-minded little pillock.

There was an evil-sounding chuckle. ‘I have my bit of fun. With all the girls and their little secrets. I’ve got them running. I’m doing it local for now. I like to see their faces when I’m out in town, at a club. I like to think they’re scared of me, without knowing me. It’s,’ he gave a lascivious wriggle, ‘good.’

‘Look, Ned,’ Maxwell said. He thought it was
time to make it personal. ‘I know it’s you. Mike, you’re safe. I’ll help you.’

‘Mr Maxwell,’ said the voice. ‘How did you work out it was me?’

‘Not hard,’ Maxwell said, creeping closer and closer, not taking his eyes off the two. ‘You quoted from Nostradamus, and I taught you all about that when you were here at school. Then there’s the time I put you in detention for bad grammar. And I know you never forgot that, so you picked me up on it just now. Then, Nicole told me you ran the school intranet chat room. So QED.’

‘Ah, Mr Maxwell, you’re too clever for me.’ One figure rose to its feet and to Maxwell’s horror the other one fell sideways and lay splayed on the floor. ‘Catch me if you can.’ He dashed out through the fire exit at the back of the room and Maxwell could hear his feet on the stairs.

Maxwell gave chase, pausing as he saw the body at the open cupboard. He hoped he wouldn’t live to regret it, but there was something about the position of the neck which told him that there was no point in stopping to check if he was alive. He tore up the first flight, but by the second was relying more and more heavily on the banister. By the top of the stairs, his lungs were screaming for air and he had to stop, hands on his knees, to try to force some breath down into his chest.

He took the force of the blow across the back of his shoulders and went down as if poleaxed.
Somehow, he still had enough energy left to roll sideways, so the next strike missed him and clanged onto the top step. He heard his assailant hiss as the vibrations travelled up his arms. The weapon clattered down the stairs as the pain made him open his hands and drop it. At least they were now equal, or as equal as two men could be when one was not exactly known for his sporting prowess and was thirty-odd years older than the other.

‘Well, Mr Maxwell,’ the voice grated through the helmet. ‘It looks like hand-to-hand. I’ll let you get up. It’s only sporting, after all. Not like running you down in a car or anything.’

‘That was you?’ Maxwell said, struggling to his feet. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘Easy. Bike in the back. Park down the road. I’ve been doing it all year. People tend to ask questions if you drive a thirty-five thousand pound car on nine thousand pounds a year.’

‘Good point.’ Maxwell was walking towards his man, getting him further away from the head of the stairs. ‘And why the Nostradamus?’

‘Like you said,’ the voice calmly explained. ‘You taught it to us at school.’

‘No, Mike, I didn’t,’ Maxwell said. ‘I didn’t start doing that lesson until Ned had left.’

‘I’m not Mike,’ the electronic voice said. ‘I’m Ned.’

‘Come on, Mike,’ Maxwell said, walking
inexorably forward. ‘Not only are you taller and broader than Ned, you have a row of labels stuck to your left sleeve, ready to stick on the parcels you’ve been packing. And it is, after all,
Michel
de Notre Dame, not Edouard. Take the helmet off, now, there’s a good bloke, and let’s talk.’

Slowly, the man raised his arms and pulled off the helmet. He stood there, a crooked grin on his face, his hair standing on end, with the headgear under his arm. ‘There’s nothing to talk about, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘We’re alone up here, I’m taller than you, fitter than you, younger than you. In a minute, I’m going to rugby tackle you and then toss you out of the window. Like the man says, evil ruin will fall on the great man. Well, the Great Man will fall, that’s good enough. Then, I’ll be out of here, into my nice big car and away. It’s not as if I don’t have enough money.’

He never even heard the whish of the laptop through the air as Pansy Donaldson prepared to bring it down on his head. And the rest was silence.

‘Pansy,’ said Maxwell, as he stepped over the fallen murderer to give her as near to a hug as he could manage. ‘I never knew you cared.’

‘Max? What are you doing up there?’ Jacquie called up the stairs. ‘Supper’s on the table.’

‘Just coming,’ Maxwell replied. ‘Just sending an email.’ He looked proudly at the totally
typo-free
document on his screen.

Right, now what was next? Yes, check address. Diamoj at all the usual offices. Click. Send.

The message disappeared as the logo of a little envelope faded into the background. Maxwell literally rubbed his hands together with the pleasure of a job well done.

Early evening in Brazil is a beautiful moment. The sun kisses the tops of the mountains with a beautiful peach blush just before it sinks out of sight. Exotic birds call from the treetops and the monkeys shout their raucous ‘goodnight’ calls from every bough. The smell of blossom and sun-warmed fruit fills the air. A lovely evening. Watch some bastard spoil it.

Hector Diamoj arrived home from work and walked through his still-cool house, scratching a thigh and rubbing some of the dust of the day from his tired eyes. He tapped his computer into life and perched on the chair, waiting for his emails to load.
Madre de Dios!
More spam. If this maxwep didn’t stop sending him this English rubbish soon, he would have no choice but to report him to his internet provider. Hover over the delete icon. Click of the mouse. And that would be that until the next time.

Midnight in Leighford is a beautiful moment. And at 38 Columbine, as Peter Maxwell cuddled into the warm back of his lovely wife, he smiled in his sleep. No more getting up early to go to school. No more marking. No more kids. No more …

We hope you enjoyed this book.
Do you want to know about our other great reads, download free extracts and enter competitions? If so, visit our website
www.allisonandbusby.com
.
Click to sign up to our monthly newsletter
for exclusive content and offers, news of our brand new releases, upcoming events with your favourite authors and much more.
And why not click to follow us on
Facebook
and
Twitter
? We’d love to hear from you!