Maxwell's Summer

by M. J. Trow

  Donald was in a lifelong struggle with his weight. Currently, partly because of the long stretch of hot weather and the unlikely advent of a girlfriend who didn’t mind the slight lingering smell of Cidex, he was at the thinnest he had been for years. Even so, he sucked in his stomach when the light tap on the door was followed by the welcome sight of Jacquie Maxwell’s head peeping round. She was one of the few coppers at the nick who didn’t mind the mortuary and so she had been a slam dunk choice when Henry Hall had needed to send a gofer.

  ‘Okay to come in, Donald?’ she asked, looking round for unswathed bodies.

  ‘Yup, come in. No body’s out at the moment.’ It was a little mortuary joke of which Donald never tired.

  ‘Do we have anything on Colonel Hale-ffinch?’ She stepped inside and sanitised her hands immediately. That wasn’t the only thing Donald admired about Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell, but it was important, in his world; proper respect for cleanliness and safety. What a woman!

  ‘No titles here, Jacquie,’ he said. Some years ago, he had ventured to use her name and she had said nothing, so he continued to push his luck. ‘He’s Hale-ffinch, R, NHS No 231 ...’

  ‘Yes, yes, I am sure you haven’t had too many old men in with their throats torn out by dogs. Not this week, in any case.’

  Donald chuckled. ‘Not any week.’

  ‘But ...’

  ‘He may have had a dog, but his throat wasn’t torn out by one. Or several.’ He stood leaning against the steriliser, looking smug.

  ‘So what did kill him, then?’

  Donald mimed a slash, first left, then right.

  ‘No, Donald, I’m not buying that,’ Jacquie said. She wasn’t a pathologist, but she could tell a simple knife attack when she saw one.

  ‘Not just that, of course,’ Donald said. ‘Whoever did the slashing,’ and he couldn’t resist miming it once more, to show off his almost defined abs. ‘The person who did that also did some ... I want to say cosmetic, but that isn’t really the word ... some tiddling about after he was dead. Roughed up the edges, so to speak. Make it look more ... animal.’

  Jacquie’s face said it all.

  ‘I know. It would have taken a strong stomach to do that and whoever it was didn’t stint on detail. It was a while before I noticed that it wasn’t teeth that did it. It was too even, no tearing, just evenly spaced cuts. When an animal attacks, it is anything but even.’ Donald had seen enough David Attenborough to be quite sure of his facts. And The Revenant. Though to be fair, there weren’t too many bears in the immediate vicinity.

  ‘You sent swabs, I guess.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The lab are on them now, checking for canine DNA, all that. But I can guarantee, it wasn’t a dog. Or dogs.’

  ‘What does Astley think?’

  Donald mulled that question over. Did it have any merit? Need he answer it? As it turned out, no.

  The double doors slammed back like something out of Tombstone and Jim Astley walked in, in a pale pink Lacoste polo shirt and a pair of plaid trousers. Unless standards in pathology had fallen unusually far, he was clearly not planning on doing any work today.

  ‘Astley thinks,’ he said drily, ‘that Donald, as is so often the case, is talking through his arse. The good Colonel was killed by having his throat torn out by a couple of lurchers and that’s the end of it.’ He looked at Jacquie as if she was a particularly unwelcome sand trap on the eighth. ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘Erm ... no.’ Jacquie looked at Donald and raised an eyebrow. He glanced at Astley, who was busy with his phone, then did a lightning mime of a savaging dog, then shook his head vehemently. Then, he mouthed a name he could scarcely bring himself to utter. ‘Angus,’ his lips said silently. ‘Ask Angus.’

  Flo sat with her sisterhood in the drawing room, her eyes red with crying, her face drawn. Bo had passed her a brandy but she hadn’t touched it. Jada sat next to her, patting her hand and crooning.

  ‘They shouldn’t be long now,’ Maxwell said, as the only one in the room with experience of the British emergency service system. On his way back to the house, leaving James with the body, he had bumped into Jack, the security man, and had delegated the job of directing the police and medics when they arrived. He didn’t want the first thing Flo knew about it to be the sound of sirens.

  ‘I just don’t believe this,’ Bo was shaking her head. ‘What kinda goddamned country is this? I’m from Boston and that’s supposed to be the drive-by shooting capital of the States and I’ve never known anyone so much as winged by a stray bullet. But we come here, to this cockamamie backwoods place and this ...’ Like so many people on the periphery of tragedy, Bo was managing very well to make it all about her.

  For once, Maxwell didn’t have a comeback line, no anti-colonial crack to soothe and deflate, while at the same time taking the piss.

  ‘What the Hell happened, Mr Maxwell?’ Jada asked. She was younger than the others, a beautiful African-American with tightly braided hair and blonde highlights; all in all, she didn’t look like a culture-vulture desperate to soak up the nuances of the Old Country.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Maxwell said. He didn’t want to talk strychnine at this juncture and the word itself was bound to unleash more hysterics. When he’d broken the news to Flo, she’d screeched and he just held her tightly as her body shuddered and struggled. No, she couldn’t go to her husband, not now, not yet. And, as they both knew, not ever.

  Then, all four of them sat in silence, waiting for the wail of sirens.

  Jacquie never enjoyed the drive to Chichester from Leighford; the road was always choked in the summer with beach-goers or sightseers and it was best to just put the brain in neutral and crawl along with the rest. She mulled over the situation. Neither she nor Maxwell had believed in the dog-mauling, but to have it confirmed was something altogether different. She could see trouble ahead. Not only did Neil Gamage only have one brain cell, when it was imprinted with an idea, it was next to impossible to dislodge it. She could almost picture, in the echoing silence of his head, the filing cabinet with just one drawer, labelled ‘Solved, okay’. Hopefully, Angus would have something more concrete.

  Her phone rang and she pressed the button on the steering wheel, offering up a silent prayer to Mr Bluetooth, who Maxwell claimed was a Viking, but what did he know?

  ‘Jacquie?’

  ‘Yup.’ She manoeuvred past a lorry with Polish plates which was being indecisive at a roundabout and turned off into the industrial estate that housed the lab.

  ‘Where are you?’ Henry Hall liked to keep tabs, but this was ridiculous. He had sent her out to do things and she was doing them.

  ‘Umm, just turning into the lab.’

  ‘Good. That will save me another call. Can you send a SOCO team out for me, please? I’ll do the paperwork later, tell them.’

  Jacquie stuck her tongue out at the phone. Who would do the paperwork? ‘Postcode? No, tell you what, I’m driving. Text me it.’ She winced – thank goodness Peter Maxwell hadn’t heard that apology for a sentence.

  ‘No need. They’ll know where it is. Haledown House.’

  Jacquie frowned at the phone. ‘Haledown? Has someone found the dogs?’

  ‘No. Someone’s found a body.’

  Her heart lurched and even as it did, she knew it was stupid. Even Henry, who liked to play by the rules, wouldn’t tell her her husband was dead in quite this way.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who found the body or who is the body?’

  ‘Either. Both.’

  ‘The body is a guest, an Elliot Schwarzenegger. He found yesterday’s body, as it happens.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ It seemed only minutes since she and Maxwell had been giggling over the man’s supremely inappropriate name. ‘And the finder?’

  Henry Hall didn’t laugh, but he did sometimes do a small snort down his nose. He did that now. ‘Guess.’

  And the line went dead.

  Jacquie parked in the small space allocated to the forens
ics laboratory and unplugged her phone from the dashboard cradle. She punched in MMM for Mad Max Maxwell, the shorthand she had used since her first meeting with the man. Then, he was a suspect and she was a rookie cop. Now, he and the chip of the block who was their son was her world. She also nodded to the Count, who was as much a part of the family as any of them. She had plenty of time to think about the men in her life, as the phone simply rang to voice mail. She sighed and rang off. That was what happened when a phone was left on the draining board, she supposed. She knew he was all right. He was the finder, after all, not the findee, but it would have been nice to hear his voice.

  At Reception on the ground floor, she passed on Henry’s message to the job handler and was buzzed through to go up the echoing concrete stairs to where Angus ruled. Angus tended to take people aback when they first saw him – if you simply took every preconception about what a boffin looked like and then found its opposite, you would have Angus. But he was meticulous and painstaking with that tiny spark of intuition which lifted him out of the normal and almost into the magical. Hard-bitten coppers who didn’t believe in science, nonetheless believed in Angus.

  She didn’t need to tap on the door. Up here under the flat metal roof, doors had to stand open or the occupants would fry. A struggling air conditioner rattled and hummed in a corner and the combined smells of everything that was going on in there mingled to make her nostrils twitch.

  A tousled head bent over a bench in the corner moved to display Angus’s smile. Jacquie had a soft spot for the boffin and she walked over to where he was working.

  ‘Here about the dog, I expect,’ he said, his gruffness hiding his fondness for his favourite DI.

  ‘So, there was a dog?’ she said. It wasn’t like Donald to be wrong.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah ... that’s confusing, then.’

  ‘I just thought you were expecting a dog, so I thought I would ...’ he looked at her and it dawned on him. ‘You’ve already talked to Donald, I assume.’

  ‘Yes. Is he right?’

  ‘As ninepence. There isn’t a scrap of animal DNA on him. None except his own, as a matter of fact. Let me see ...’ he leafed through his notes. ‘Hmmm ... yes ... hmm ... he had had a bath, but nothing to eat unless he had washed afterwards and cleaned his teeth.’ He looked up and added a personal thought not in his notes. ‘These old geezers are messy eaters as a rule, so if they’ve had so much as a snack you can find it, sometimes as low as the navel.’ She grimaced and he nodded his head. ‘I know. Anyway, nothing of that nature, just some ... hmmm ... long story short, some Imperial Leather soap caught in some bristles he missed when shaving, and ... that’s it. Except the glue, of course.’ He smiled, with a smile that said ‘gotchya!’

  ‘Glue?’ Jacquie opened her eyes wide, something that always turned Angus’s knees to water.

  ‘There were traces of glue around his mouth, going right across his cheeks to the ears. Donald is really thorough and labels well, so we have an unbroken patch from ear to ear. Duct tape or similar. So we aren’t talking about a random attack, if you were hoping for the wandering stranger theory being right for once. This was premeditated ... unless ...’

  ‘Unless?’

  Angus blushed, just a little. ‘We had a case ... well, Donald would tell you better than me, but basically, it was this couple who liked to tie each other up. One at a time, of course.’ Angus had not lived a rackety life, as lives went, but he knew the basics. ‘Otherwise what would be the point? Anyhow, she was a bit too enthusiastic, if you know what I mean, suffocated him with duct tape. It took Donald hours to cut him free.’

  ‘I think I remember that,’ Jacquie said. ‘Manslaughter, wasn’t it, in the end?’

  ‘Suspended sentence. We couldn’t believe it. She’d actually started a second roll. Apparently, though, according to Donald, he was smiling when he cut off the last layer.’

  Jacquie looked doubtful.

  ‘According to him, anyway. So ... do we know if this old geezer had any such ... proclivities?’

  Jacquie shook her head. ‘We don’t know, but I doubt it. There were guests at the house, but mostly couples and anyway ... I know this has nothing to do with it, but my husband knew him ...’

  Angus sighed. Of course he did.

  ‘And he was so full of himself, if he had anything like that going on, then he would have told him.’

  ‘Euuuww. Too much information.’ Angus tidied away his notes. ‘So, that’s it. No dog slobber. But some glue.’

  ‘Do we know what kind?’

  ‘As yet, not specifically. But the glue on duct tape tends to be the same the world over, so hard to really pin it down. And anyway, can you track sales of duct tape? Any house has probably got half a dozen started rolls under the stairs or in the shed. I know I have.’

  Jacquie patted him on his white-coated arm. ‘Thank you, Angus. That’s very handy.’

  ‘Another one, I gather,’ Angus said. He sometimes tended to speak in shorthand, but Jacquie followed this one.

  ‘Yes. SOCO are on the way. Not you today?’

  ‘No. I try not to do these country ones.’ He sniffed. ‘Hay fever. So they let me off when they can. You?’

  ‘No. I’m not involved in this one, really. I was just doing DCI Hall a favour today. Busy with County Lines, you know the score.’

  Angus tutted. Boooring!

  ‘Thanks again, Angus.’ She hefted her shoulder bag and made for the door. Angus watched her go, with a sigh. The one that got away.

  Harry and Tom Hale-ffinch had taken the latest disaster on their combined chins. When it came to presenting a united front, they were Olympic level. It was simply done. Harry told Tom what to do and what to say and Tom did precisely that. Simple. He wasn’t very good at flying by the seat of his pants, but he could follow an order to perfection. He had just come back from the station, where he had dropped the nanny and the children, en route for a protracted stay with an old school friend of his. He didn’t have many friends, poor Tom, but the ones he did have were sterling chaps. And the kids would enjoy Aberdeen, he was pretty sure. Because he was a bit distracted, what with seeing off the children and more especially the nanny who often smiled at him, he hadn’t performed very well in his interview with Neil Gamage, who almost twirled the handcuffs as they spoke in the green drawing room in the family’s private quarters. But good old Harry had reminded him in the nick of time that at the supposed time of Mr Schwarzenegger’s demise, they had been in a connubial situation, and so that was all right. He didn’t remember it – and he was sure he would have – but as in everything to do with the smooth running of Haledown House, Harry was the woman for the job.

  When the policeman had gone, Tom had turned to Harry. ‘I say,’ he said. ‘Were we ... only, I don’t remember, not as such.’

  Harry had raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, Tom, that’s not much of a compliment to me, if you don’t mind my saying so. There I was ...’ she bent down and whispered in his ear.

  ‘Oh, that. Well,’ he pecked her on the cheek, ‘that does tend to make my brain go funny, so you’re probably right.’

  ‘Of course I am, darling,’ she said. ‘Did the kids get off all right?’

  ‘Yes. I can see this is no place for them ...’

  ‘Of course it isn’t!’ She tried not to let frustration win. ‘There’s a fucking homicidal maniac around, Tom. Whatever are you thinking?’

  ‘Harry,’ he said mildly. ‘I thought we had spoken about the language. You know I don’t like it. Father ...’

  ‘I never knew your father, Tom, as you know, but your mother curses like a docker and Uncle Roddy ... well, who knew what he was talking about most of the time, but I have known him let rip. So let me, just sometimes, have a bit of a curse.’ She kissed him again, this time in a way that reminded him of their morning doings. ‘There’s a darling.’

  She jumped up from the arm of his chair and he looked at her as she stood outlined against the light, before she turn
ed and left the room, her decisive heels clicking on the parquet that had been down since before the monasteries had been dissolved. God, she was lovely. He was so lucky to have her. He must look after her, if there really was a maniac on the loose. Perhaps she ought to go to Aberdeen too? But no – how would they manage? He was still sitting there, in a fog of indecision when the bell sounded for morning coffee and he hauled himself to his feet. If Tom Hale-ffinch knew one thing – and he did know almost exactly one thing – it was where his duty lay and Texan trophies didn’t like taking their cappuccino and biscotti alone.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘M

  r Maxwell.’

  ‘DCI Hall.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to bother you again ...’

  ‘Because yet again, you were the first to find a body,’ Gamage put in.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant Gamage,’ Hall said, acidly. ‘If you could just take notes, please. On both occasions, Mr Maxwell was not the first person and I would like to make it clear both in the notes and to you, that he is not a suspect in this case.’

  ‘Thank you, DCI Hall,’ Maxwell said, with a formal smile. ‘I ...’

  ‘Got an alibi, have you?’ Gamage asked.

  ‘Gamage.’ Hall was a hard man to read and Gamage had not yet learned to do it. ‘Get out. And not only out, but back to the nick. I’ll see you in my office today at ...’ the DCI glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantle. ‘It’s eleven now. Let’s say two thirty.’

  ‘But, guv ...’

  ‘Two thirty. It’ll take you that long to walk back to town from here.’

  ‘Walk?’ Gamage was incredulous. He was an urbanite through and through. He didn’t do walking.

  ‘Yes. I need the car. If you set off now, you should be all right. And don’t accept any lifts from strange men.’