by M. J. Trow
‘Risus sardonicus,’ Astley was prising the dead lips with gloved fingers, tapping the decayed teeth with something metal. ‘Your classic strychnos nux vomica. It’s almost textbook.’
‘Bear with me,’ Hall said grimly. ‘You and I clearly read different textbooks, Jim.’
‘We’re lucky this is the twenty-first century.’ Astley shone his pencil torch into the dead man’s bulging eyes. ‘Strychnine is a stimulant. It used to be available in patent medicines – Easton’s Syrup, for one. It’s an alkaloid found in a tree in India – er, I’m not boring you, am I? I mean, no snooker or anything on the telly?’
‘I’ve got a sergeant somewhere,’ Hall looked at his watch, ‘whose wife’s going into labour as we speak. His attention may be elsewhere; mine’s here.’
‘Makes you almost philosophical, doesn’t it?’ Astley was going about his business. ‘One life begins as another ends.’
‘You were talking about strychnine.’
‘I was,’ the doctor sighed. ‘The stuff tastes terrible, so it would need to be administered in something sweet – jam, maybe, or custard. This poor old bugger would have had difficulty breathing and would have gone into convulsions. It’s bloody painful. Whoever did this is making a point, Henry.’
‘A point?’
‘He wants to be noticed. There are more humane ways to take a life. The number of convulsions varies. Each one lasts from one to five minutes. Look at his eyes.’
Hall forced himself to.
‘Pupils dilated, eyeballs prominent. What is odd is this.’
‘What?’ Hall couldn’t see what Astley was pointing at.
‘His general position, curled up like a bloody armadillo.’
‘That’s odd?’
‘Happens in less than ten per cent of strychnine cases. Usually, the back arches the other way, so that only the head and heels touch the floor – a little acrobatics we in the profession call opisthotonos. This one’s emprosthotonos – that’s bending forward to you.’
‘What sort of dose are we talking?’ Hall wanted to know.
‘Hundred grams to be certain, but he was an old man … what, seventy-five, seventy-six? It probably took less. He’d have died within hours. Who was he?’
Hall shook his head. ‘I’ve got men going door to door,’ he said. ‘But this is the Barlichway, Jim. The locals’ll be as forthcoming as a Trappist monastery.’
‘Hello,’ Astley’s torch beam was playing behind the dead man’s head. ‘This looks familiar.’
‘What?’ Hall craned forward. A bloodless wound, about an inch wide, gaping and dark, ran across the nape of the old man’s neck, leathery and brown.
‘Either I’m having one of my increasingly common attacks of déjà vu,’ Astley rested back on his booted heels, ‘or this is the same knife thrust wound I saw on the late Elizabeth Pride.’ He looked at the chief inspector. You’ve got a real live one, Henry.’ His smile was as sardonic as the dead man’s. ‘You’ve found yourself a serial killer.’
‘Are we talking about a serial killer. Chief Inspector?’
It had taken the assorted gentlemen (and ladies) of the press precisely five minutes to get around to that one. Henry Hall was mildly surprised – he’d expected it in two.
‘What makes you say that, Mr Barton?’
The cameras were popping and wheezing in the congestion of the press conference room, the two dozen microphones thrust forward to the desk where Hall sat alone. People sat poised with cassettes in their hands, notepads on their laps, ciggies in their mouths. Mobile phones warbled and chattered like demented swallows on a wire. It was the paparazzi in full cry.
‘Come on, Chief Inspector,’ another voice came back at him. ‘Three suspicious deaths inside fifteen days and within a radius of ten miles and you’re telling us it’s coincidence corner.’
Hall held up his hand to quieten the hubbub. ‘We are unaware of any specific connection at the moment.’
‘Who was the dead man?’
‘I cannot tell you that at this precise moment.’
Fingers were jabbing the air, cassette-filled hands probing forward like the lean and hungry men around Caesar, scenting a rent in his toga.
‘What can you tell us?’ somebody else wanted to know. ‘I mean, you called this bloody press conference.’
Guffaws and ‘hear hears!’ filled the morning.
Hall was on his feet, waiting for a modicum of silence. He wasn’t going to get it. ‘When I know anything,’ he shouted at them all, ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Kevin Brand watched him go, white-gilled and rock-jawed. He leaned across to Jacquie Carpenter. ‘Longest time I’ve ever heard it take for anybody to say “No comment”. How long d’you think it’ll be before he gets a red-hot call from the Chief Constable?’
‘As long as it takes for one of these bastards to get through to him,’ she shrugged.
‘DS Carpenter?’ she found herself staring into the cassette-player of a hawk-faced woman from the Telegraph. ‘Janet Ruger. Can you tell me, what’s the link between the dead man and Elizabeth Pride?’
‘No comment.’ Jacquie had tangled with the fourth estate before. They had a habit of smashing defences, uncovering secrets and then printing what they damn-well chose. She swept past the woman in the wake of her retreating DCI.
Brand was either less lucky or less nimble on his feet. ‘How about you, DC Brand?’ Janet Ruger had an NVQ in persistence. ‘The link between the Barlichway body and Elizabeth Pride?’
Brand’s expression didn’t change. He leaned forward and licked his lips with a ‘this is for your ears only’ wink. ‘Siamese twins,’ he said darkly and followed Jacquie out.
The DCI was even greyer when he got off the phone to the Chief Constable than when he’d left the press conference. He was back in the Incident Room at Tottingleigh, the phones jumping, the computer screens flashing messages, the e-mails and faxes coming and going in the communications jungle that was Maxwell’s millennium.
The Chief Constable,’ he announced above the row, ‘has Social Services and I quote “climbing up his arse”. He’d like to see some results. And so would I. What have we got?’
‘The dead man was Albert John Walters,’ a stocky detective volunteered. ‘Lived on the Barlichway …’
‘And died on the Barlichway,’ Hall finished the sentence for him. ‘Anything else?’
‘He lived alone, guv,’ Jacquie was checking her hastily scribbled notes, ‘Fourteen A Coniston Court.’
‘SOCO are going over the place now,’ somebody chipped m. ‘Chances are he died there.’
Hall nodded. ‘So somebody carried a naked man along a balcony, down two flights of stairs, across a quadrangle and propped him thoughtfully in a corner. Why?’ Hall was still standing, his tie-knot loosened, his shirt sleeves rolled, watching every face in front of him, every last member of his team. They’d lost the euphoria of the chase they’d found after the death of Andrew Darblay. Albert Walters had rattled them. They were panicky, jumpy, pressed by the press, leaned on by their guv’nor. People like that made mistakes; missed things. One wrong click on a mouse and Vlad the Impaler could walk free. Worse, it made them desperate for a result, overzealous. People like that put innocent men in the frame.
There were no answers. Just anxious faces looking back at him, hopeful, eager even. It was that old blind faith. That somehow the guv’nor would have the answers. Because he was the guv’nor.
‘Has Astley given us a time of death yet?’ Hall asked. It had only been twelve hours since they’d found the body of old Albert Walters. Time enough for the press to get wind of it and for speculation and rumour to be rife. Not time enough for forensic science though – that, and miracles, took a little longer.
The phone shattered the sudden silence and Kevin Brand got there first. ‘It’s Martin Stone,’ he put his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s a girl.’
There were whoops and applause rippling through the room. Hall looked stern for a moment,
then picked up his plastic cup, the one with the lukewarm instant coffee and raised it in salute. ‘Give them all our best, Kev,’ he said and as the cheering began again, he sat down quietly at the front desk. ‘Whoopee-doo,’ he muttered.
‘You know why I’ve sent for you?’ Peter Maxwell looked up at the scruffy lads across the desk from him.
‘Coursework,’ Darren mumbled, avoiding the Great Man’s eyes.
‘No.’ Maxwell shook his head.
‘Trainers?’ Wayne tried. Both boys were wearing them.
Maxwell shook his head again.
Darren looked at Wayne. He screwed his face up for a moment, then nodded. Sheepishly, Wayne produced a packet of chewing gum from his back pocket and put it down gently on the Head of Sixth Form’s desk.
‘I was hoping for rather more,’ Maxwell said.
‘I don’t smoke ’em, sir.’ Darren passed his cigs over.
‘Not without Wayne’s lighter, no, I don’t suppose you do.’
Wayne’s lighter duly saw the light of day.
‘Anything else?’ Maxwell asked.
The boys shifted uneasily. Then Wayne reached inside his anorak and pulled out a decidedly dog-eared copy of Naughty Neighbours. Maxwell took it and idly flicked through the pages, while the boys stared skyward, awaiting the wrath of Kahn.
‘Corker on page sixteen,’ the Head of Sixth Form commented, ‘but I’d have thought you boys would’ve got that kind of stuff from the Net these days. Or am I hopelessly new-fangled?’
Whatever Maxwell was talking about had gone straight over Darren’s head and didn’t remotely impinge on Wayne’s world.
‘I’m more interested in men,’ Maxwell confessed.
Darren did a double take. Then he realized it didn’t surprise him. Mad Max was a bachelor, wasn’t he? Bound to be gay. Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen him hanging around the hoys’ changing rooms a time or two, after PE?
‘Especially dead ones.’
Darren’s jaw fell slack. Wasn’t there a name for that? Haemophilia or something?
‘Sit down, lads.’ Maxwell came round from his side of the desk, stuffing the magazine and the ciggies and the lighter and the chewing gum back into the hands of their disreputable owners. He perched on the corner of his desk while they had the comfy seats. ‘Word is you found a body last night.’
‘Yeah,’ said Wayne.
‘Well, it’s none of my business,’ Maxwell told them, ‘but I’d like you to tell me about it.’
‘Why?’ Darren asked. It was a fair question.
‘Humour me,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Better still, show me. You free tonight?’
‘What?’
‘Tonight.’ Maxwell was leaning forward, eyes bright. ‘At the Barlichway, say, nine o’clock?’
‘Where?’ Wayne asked.
‘You tell me.’
Darren and Wayne looked at each other. They were sitting in Mad Max’s office, arranging to go out on a date with the mad old git. What this would do for their street-cred they couldn’t imagine.
‘Back of the Spar,’ Darren suggested, ‘and make that ten. Course,’ his eyes took on a shrewdness, ‘this’ll cost yer.’
‘Oh, really?’ Maxwell lolled back, hands clasped around his knee. ‘What are we talking about here? Silk Cut? A year’s supply of Men Only? Your combined weights in Wrigleys?’
‘No, none of that,’ Darren told him, straight-faced. ‘Just don’t wear that teacher gear, all right?’
‘I don’t need it, Count,’ Peter Maxwell was hauling the donkey jacket on over his Aran. ‘Someone who wears the same fur coat all year round, day after day, is hardly in a position to give me any lectures on sartorial elegance.’ He checked himself in the mirror. David Boston’s Props and Costumes cupboard in Leighford’s Drama Department had done him proud. In this get-up he could easily pass for a middle-aged, middle-class teacher dumbing down and going out on the town with two fourteen-year-olds in search of a murder site. He glanced down at the cat, sitting up with eyes wide and tail lashing – the old bastard smelt like Am-Dram potpourri.
‘Don’t wait up,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ And he ambled down the stairs, humming ‘One man went to mow, went to mow Mo Mowlam’.
He didn’t take White Surrey. He’d only have to park the beast and find that when he returned he’d have no wheels left. Instead, he clattered through Columbine in his borrowed hoots and caught a cab on the main road.
The Barlichway was a step into another world, its concrete blocks black and silent in the January night. The rain had stopped but the tyres hissed and spat in the running water as cars purred through the darkness, criss-crossing the hinterland that lay north of Leighford. He was a long way from the sea here, from the brave sweep of Willow Bay and the spur that was the Shingle. The same wind that whipped those dunes hurtled around weed-strewn corners, rattling dark, dead windows and whining in a thousand vortices the architects of high-rise had created, back in the ’sixties when concrete was king.
The Spar was still open, a knot of kids on mountain-bikes lolling with menaces by the door. Puffs of smoke and the odd shout burst from it, obscenities echoing and re-echoing from hostile wall to hostile wall. Maxwell checked his watch. They were late. Idiotic of him to think they’d show at all, really. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited. A police car prowled the night, white like a ghost with its headlights illuminating a cuddling couple. Maxwell turned away, just in case. The car’s occupants weren’t likely to be Henry Hall or Jacquie Carpenter, but there were others who knew him out of Leighford nick and he’d rather not be recognized tonight.
‘Psst!’ he didn’t hear it at first. Then he saw the finger beckoning from the darkness like the Grim Reaper getting hopeful. He crossed the road, pulling up his plastic-lined collar against the cold that nibbled his ears and bit his nose. Two urchins lounged in the shadow of the Spar, both of them checking left and right.
‘All right, Mr Maxwell?’ Darren asked.
‘All the better for seeing you, boys. Thanks for coming. Where?’
Darren led him down the labyrinth that was his home. He knew these graffiti-daubed bricks like the back of his own hand. Maxwell fell into step with his lads, his borrowed boots loud against the velvet tread of their trainers.
‘Got a fag, sir?’ Wayne asked.
‘Gave them up.’ Maxwell watched his breath wreathing on the night air. ‘People said I smelt.’
‘Did you, sir?’ Darren was vaguely amazed.
‘Here it is.’ Wayne stopped the Head of Sixth Form with a tap on the sleeve. It was as touchy-feely as Wayne ever got. He pointed into the shadows. Maxwell noticed that the boys hung back, but he hadn’t come to stare into a black hole. He flicked on the torch he carried in his pocket and crept forward. Astley’s tent had gone, nearly twenty-four hours on, and the fluttering police sign with its warning not to cross. The torch-beam probed the night, the stained pavements, the slimy walls. He half expected to read in chalk the most famous murder clue of them all, from Goulson Street, Whitechapel in the Autumn of Terror – ‘The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.’ But all he got was the assurance, in black spray-can, that ‘Angie shags’. He didn’t doubt it.
“Ey!’ The barked voice made him stand up. Turning, he saw a silhouette the size of a brick shit house standing in the lamp light where the two boys had been moments before. ‘What the fuck are you doin’?’
‘I dropped a fiver,’ Maxwell said, smiling hopefully in the darkness.
‘What was you doin’ with them kids?’
‘What kids?’ Maxwell’s question was genuine enough. Wayne and Darren had vanished.
The shit house was walking towards him. ‘You a pervert or something?’
Maxwell brought his torch up to the level, the beam bouncing off the solid, stubbled face staring accusingly at him, below the shaved head.
‘Fuck!’ the shit house shouted, flinging his hands up instinctively.
‘Barney?’
‘Wha? Who’s that?’
‘Mr Maxwell, Barney. Leighford High.’
‘Fuck me,’ Barney’s saturnine features creased into a grin. ‘Mr Maxwell.’ A pair of chubby, powerful hands reached out to shake Maxwell’s, the torch beam wobbling like some demented searchlight. ‘Wot you doin’ ’ere? I mistook you for some sort of child molester.’
‘Goes with the territory,’ Maxwell winked. ‘How the hell are you?’
‘Oh, you know me, Mr Maxwell. Bit of this, bit of that. How’s that Diamond geezer?’
‘The Headmaster is very well, thank you, Barney.’
‘Bollocks,’ Barney snorted. ‘He’s as much of a tosser now as he was when I left. I know you thought so too.’
‘Christ, was I that obvious?’
‘Straight up, though, Mr Maxwell. What are you doin’ ’ere?’
Maxwell glanced back at the corner. ‘The man who died,’ he said.
‘Old Albert. Yeah, bad shit, that was.’
‘Albert? You knew him?’
‘Course. Part of the furniture was old Albert. Miserable old bugger, mind. Didn’t have a friend in the world. Us kids used to ring his doorbell and do a runner, just to wind him up, you know. Scared the shit out of us every time.’
‘Original,’ Maxwell observed. ‘I hear they found him there.’
‘That’s right. My Nicole only saw him the other day.’
‘Your Nicole?’
‘My trouble and strife, you know.’
‘You’re married, Barney? Jesus, that makes me feel old.’
‘Christ no, not married, Mr M. Shacked up wiv, yeah. You remember Nicole Green – she was in Miss Byfield’s class.’
Maxwell remembered indeed. Nicole Green was one of the whole fleet of faculty bicycles that Leighford High had produced half a decade ago. ‘Where did Nicole see him?’
‘Up on his balcony,’ Barney pointed up to the black ledge with the uneven, crumbling rim that ran the length of the building behind him. ‘He had this habit of looking out on the square. You’d see him there most days, if the weather was fine. Why you involved, anyway?’
‘It’s a long story, Barney. Look, can you give me Albert’s full name? Any other details about him?’