Maxwell’s Reunion (10 page)

‘The Fridge’ did some of them; Mad Max did most. UCAS reports, that is, those gems of truth-economy that got generations of hopefuls into universities. As he wrote the platitudes, as his nimble pen hurtled across the page prior to work by Thingee Three, the lady in the office who had to decipher his scribble for the necessary word-processing, he comforted himself thinking that the world’s greats would never have got to university at all. Einstein was still having trouble speaking, wasn’t he, at seventeen? And Shakespeare was quite capable of spelling the same word three different ways in the same sentence; rejections aplenty there.

‘The Fridge’, Mrs Maitland, was Assistant Head of Sixth Form, a huge apparition in the virginal colour that had prompted the late, great Wilkie Collins to rush into print with his first crime novel. Not that Helen Maitland was remotely the criminal type – a fact that the policemen facing her that Tuesday afternoon quickly took on board.

‘I’m afraid he’s teaching, Chief Inspector,’ Helen had said, UCAS form in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. ‘Is it urgent?’

‘A little.’ Henry Hall put away his warrant card and stood motionless in the corridor outside the Head of Sixth Form’s offices. Unlike other year heads at Leighford High, the Heads of Sixth had an office each. This was simply, explained Maxwell, because an ego the size of his needed its own space.

‘Well, I’ll lead the way, then, shall I?’ and she waddled along passageways without number. Posters told the detectives that Leighford High were putting on
Grease
in December. Judging from the chewing-gum wrappers that littered the floor, the entire school seemed to be method actors getting into character.

There was a wail from H4 as the two arrived. Helen Maitland tapped on the glass and went in.

‘There, t-h-e-r-e, Ian, has nothing whatever to do with their, t-h-e-i-r. They don’t even sound the same, man. I’ve been telling you that since Year Seven. Be assured that when this lesson is over, I shall be straight on the phone to that nice Ms. Morris to insist that elocution be placed on the National Curriculum forthwith. Only in your case, of course, it’ll be pronounced – and spelt, no doubt – electrocution. Mrs Maitland?’ He spun to face her as she hovered at the door.

‘Sorry, Mr Maxwell, there are two people to see you.’ Helen Maitland didn’t use the ‘p’ word. She knew 11B2 of old. One whiff of scandal and it would be all over the school and town by desk-shut time. ‘I’ll hang on here, hold their hands. What are you doing?’

‘Usual old crap.’ Maxwell sighed. ‘Hider’s foreign policy. Anschluss followed by Munich and the Polish corridor.’

There were jeers from the motley crew of psychopaths and jailbirds that were 11B2. ‘I’ll just teach them some biology, shall I?’ Helen Maitland offered.

‘Whatever,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m not sure they’ll notice the difference.’ And he was in the corridor. ‘Mr Hall, this is a not altogether looked-for surprise. Have I parked my bike somewhere illegal?’

‘This is DS Rackham, Mr Maxwell.’ The sergeant flashed his warrant card. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

‘My office,’ Maxwell said, and led them back the way they’d come. ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked as he closed the door. ‘Tea? Coffee? Signed photograph of the Secretary of State for Education?’

Both men shook their heads. ‘This isn’t a social call, I’m afraid,’ Hall said.

Oh dear, thought Maxwell, clichés already and it’s only Tuesday.

Hall sat in the proffered chair, Maxwell behind his desk, Rackham standing with his back to a pile of poo newly delivered from that very Secretary of State for Education of whom Maxwell had just spoken; that was usually Maxwell’s position. The Chief Inspector opened the batting. ‘How well do you know a Mr Anthony Wayland Bingham?’

‘Cret?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘I knew him very well.’

‘In the past tense, sir?’ Rackham asked. Maxwell looked him up and down – a man bucking for promotion if ever there was one.

‘I mean I knew him well in the past,’ the Head of Sixth Form explained. ‘Now we are what you might call acquaintances. Has anything happened?’

‘Happened, sir?’ Hall threw at him. ‘Why would you think that?’

Maxwell looked at Hall. The two men went a way back, ever since the murder at the Red House. Then it had been one of Maxwell’s own sixth form and he had taken it up close and personally. Hall knew he was about to again. ‘Because,’ Maxwell told him, ‘I was due to meet him last night and he never turned up.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Five-thirty. Unless she’s erased it, Thingee in the office can let you hear the answerphone message he left.’

Rackham was writing things down.

‘And what time was that?’

‘The phone call? I don’t know. Mid-afternoon? You’d have to ask Thingee. Messages aren’t always relayed very quickly. It was nearly three weeks before I knew Mafeking had been relieved.’ No one was laughing least of all Peter Maxwell. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about, Mr Hall?’ he asked.

Hall looked at Rackham and nodded. The sergeant took up the tale. ‘The body of Mr Anthony Wayland Bingham was found by a jogger early this morning. Needless to say, we have reason to suspect foul play.’

‘Jesus!’ Maxwell sat back in his chair. ‘Then there were five,’ he said.

‘Where were you, sir,’ Rackham felt obliged to ask, ‘around nine or ten last night?’

‘That was the time of death?’ Maxwell asked.

Hall leaped in. That was typical of Maxwell – give the man a criminal inch and he’d go the whole green mile. ‘Could you answer the question please, Mr Maxwell?’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘At home,’ he said.

‘Alone?’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Apart from the cat, of course.’ He held back the obvious Macaulay Culkin joke, lest it gave offence.

‘Ah.’ Rackham grinned. ‘Not very reliable witnesses, are they, cats?’

Maxwell fixed the man with his cutest smile. ‘Mine isn’t, Sergeant. He’s never forgiven me for cutting his nads off – not that I did it personally, of course. But that probably makes it worse, in his eyes, don’t you think? Coward that I am, I get a hit-man in a white coat to do it.’

‘You’re unusually flippant, Mr Maxwell.’ Hall frowned. ‘We tell you a friend of yours is dead and you’re joking about your cat.’

Maxwell’s smile had gone. ‘Perhaps it’s just my way of coping,’ he said. ‘Where was the body found?’

Hall nodded at Rackham. ‘Ryker Hill,’ the sergeant said. ‘On the edge of Tottingleigh Woods. Know it, sir?’

Maxwell nodded. ‘Like the back of my hand,’ he said. ‘I often walk there – along, I should think, with half the population of Leighford.’

‘When did you see Mr Bingham last?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘Let me see.’ Maxwell was scanning the plaster board ceiling for an answer. ‘It would be … er … Sunday afternoon. We’d all been to the nick … Oh, God.’

‘Yes, Mr Maxwell,’ Hall said quietly. ‘We know about Mr Quentin.’

‘Jacquie. Of course,’ Maxwell said.

‘Your friends are popping off in all directions, aren’t they, sir?’ Rackham chirped. Maxwell didn’t care for his bonhomie.

‘There’s probably only one direction,’ Maxwell murmured. ‘I just can’t see it yet.’

‘I’d like you to make a statement, Mr Maxwell,’ Hall told him. ‘To cover your relationship with Mr Bingham. Would you be prepared to do that?’

‘Of course.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Anything I can do.’

Hall was on his feet. So was Rackham. The interview with the vampire was over. ‘There is one thing you can do,’ Hall said as he looked his man squarely in the face. ‘You can do us all a favour and stay away from Jacquie Carpenter. In a professional sense, I mean.’

Staying away from Jacquie Carpenter was the last thing on Peter Maxwell’s mind. Over the months of knowing her, he, the crusty old bachelor whom half the kids thought to be gay, had fallen in love. He didn’t think he would again, could again, not after Paula. But Paula lay in a cemetery far, far away, with her daughter by her side and Maxwell’s ring on her finger. There was lichen on her headstone now and Maxwell hadn’t the heart to brush it off. He went back from time to time when the solitude and the silence seemed too much to bear. Just to hear the wind in the trees. Just to hear her voice.

But now it was different. Paula was still there, in his heart, where she’d always be, but she’d moved across. And the girl with grey eyes was there too.

‘I’m not allowed to talk to you, apparently.’ He was sitting on his settee that night, his feet up on the coffee table. The cat, Metternich, yawned. Why, oh why did he persist in talking with that plastic thing in his hand? The one that made those terrifying noises occasionally?

‘Max …’ Jacquie’s disembodied voice sounded distant, tired.

‘So I’ll make it easy,’ he went on, ‘in case, in this free country of ours, they tap our phones.’

‘Max, we don’t do that. At least, not routinely …’

‘Jacquie,’ he let his head loll back, ‘I’ve dropped you in it enough in the past.’

‘Look, Max,’ she said. ‘I won’t bullshit you. Hall has come the heavy on this one. I know he’s been equivocal in the past, but that was then. I am not to discuss the case. He knows you’re involved.’

‘Too right I am,’ Maxwell agreed.

‘No, I mean, involved – as a suspect.’

‘A suspect?’

‘You rang Bingham’s chambers.’

‘How did you know?’ Maxwell asked.

‘The Met have checked for us, logged his calls. The one timed at nine-thirty this morning was from Leighford High School.’

‘Don’t hang around, you blokes, do you?’

‘So why didn’t you tell Hall you’d rung?’

‘It slipped my mind,’ Max told her.

‘Yeah, and I’m Joan of Arc. Why didn’t you tell him, Max?’ She sounded concerned.

‘I needed, in the American phrase, to cut a little slack. I’m going for this one myself.’

‘You can’t, Max, not now.’

‘Why not? You didn’t seem too opposed at the weekend.’

‘That was then,’ she said, and her voice had changed, grown louder. ‘Now is now. It’s my patch and I’m part of the case. You’ll do what you have to do, you always have, but you’ll do it without me.’

The line went dead. He didn’t see her switch on the answerphone immediately she hung up. He didn’t hear her fight back the tears. But he knew Jacquie and knew she had done both those things.

Peter Maxwell looked at the pile of sixth-form essays taunting him from across the room. He picked up the first then threw the whole pile into the corner. Metternich knew the signs. Even before the drinks cupboard door had opened and the clink of Southern Comfort on glass hit his ears, Metternich was, in the American phrase, out of there.

‘Your views then, Donald?’ Jim Astley sat in his swivel chair, playing patience on his laboratory computer.

‘Rather fond of his port, I’d say,’ Donald called from the cadaver across the morgue. ‘A cardiac waiting for an arrest.’

‘Quite.’ Astley sighed. ‘Come on, come on. Where’s the bloody Jack of Hearts? I was rather hoping for a squint at the cause of death, though.’

‘Oh,’ Donald chirped. ‘Blows to the back of the head. I count three.’

‘Well done, Donald,’ Astley patronized. ‘Coming on like a pathologist. What do you make the time of death?’

Donald was a large young man who had a history of glandular trouble and KFC abuse. He bent down with difficulty and fished out the fallen chart he knew to have landed a moment ago in the area where logic told him he ought to have some feet. ‘Er … approximately nine, nine-thirty Monday night.’

‘Monday.’ Astley was dabbing at his mouse with a ferocity unusual in a middle-aged man.

Donald waddled across to the wall calendar. ‘That’s right,’ he confirmed.

This was the first time Dr Astley had given him free rein on a murder victim and it had gone to his head a little. On the other hand, he had seen Mickey Mouse in
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
and didn’t want to make any mistakes; especially with the sorcerer only feet from him.

‘Weapon?’ Astley was keeping an eye on the clock counter. Didn’t time fly when you were enjoying yourself?

‘Heavy blunt instrument.’ Donald nodded, his face creased in effort, his glasses sliding down his ski-jump nose. ‘Wooden.’

‘Type of wood?’

‘Oh, come on, Doc.’ Donald’s composure had cracked, but he found himself looking into the deadly twin barrels that were Jim Astley’s blue eyes. ‘I mean, I don’t know,’ the Apprentice said, limply.

‘Then I suggest you find out. Third shelf up. Red cover. It’ll give you a chemical breakdown of any British tree type and not a few American and African hardwoods. Made a slide yet?’

‘Er … not while we’ve been chatting, no.’

A pinging sound proclaimed Astley’s success on the computer screen. ‘Do I want to play again?’ he growled at the PC. ‘What do you think this is? A game?’ He slid back in his swivel chair. ‘Prepare a slide, Donald, from the fibres you dug out of the hair. Henry Hall is a patient man, but he’ll want some answers. Seems like they had a similar killing in the Midlands and I think we’re in some sort of race.’

David Williams, Chief Reporter on the
Mail
, went to town on Anthony Wayland Bingham in Thursday’s edition. A double-page spread showed the great man, bewigged like a spaniel, staring arrogantly from his perch on the Queen’s Bench. ‘What price justice?’ Williams asked, and the Lord Chief of that rare commodity was quoted as saying how black the day was for England. The editorial, elsewhere, howled its protest too. If His Lordship was the victim of some vengeance killing, what was the country coming to? Who was safe?

‘Who judged the judge?’ the
Sun
wanted to know, before it got down to the nitty-gritty of Kirsty’s breast measurements on page three. On his way back from the Tesco’s run, Maxwell had paused to scan the lot. He read the tabloids as they stood and took the others home. He was starting to get funny looks from the security staff. He pedalled in the gathering dusk over the flyover, the dynamo of his bike, White Surrey, humming like the bees’ wings that were his legs. His old college scarf flapped around him and his hat was rammed low on his head as he whistled round the corner into Columbine and wheeled his faithful boneshaker to bed in the outhouse.