Maxwell’s Curse

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Yeah, not that I know much.’

  ‘Where’s your local, Barney? I’d like to buy you a drink for old time’s sake.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Barney grinned. ‘Best years of your life, ain’t they, schooldays?’

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘And of course, I’ve had more than most.’

  ‘’Ere,’ Barney led the way, ‘do you remember that old shit Thompson? Taught Maths or something.’

  ‘Arnold? Do I ever,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘Arnold, was it? Fuck, we thought A stood for arsehole. Tom Ridley’s doing time, you know.’

  ‘No? GBH?’ Maxwell remembered the boy’s knuckles dragging the ground of A block.

  ‘Computer fraud,’ Barney told him.

  Maxwell had stopped walking and was staring straight ahead. He was watching a figure, rain-coated, collar turned up, standing looking at the pair.

  ‘Who’s that Mr Maxwell?’ Barney followed his old teacher’s gaze.

  ‘Er … nobody, Barney, nobody. Just looked like somebody I know, that’s all. Where’s this hostelry of yours?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Pub!’

  ‘Oh, right. The Rat. Just round the corner. They do a fucking brilliant pizza.’

  ‘My favourite flavour,’ Maxwell beamed. And he glanced behind him as the rain-coated figure made a dash for the shadows. Now what, Maxwell asked himself as he vanished with Barney into the raucous neon-lit bowels of The Rat, was Willoughby Crown doing on the Barlichway? And why was he in such a hurry?

  10

  He was leaning against her doorbell the next night, blond hair a little more dishevelled than usual, leather coat open to the elements. January had taken another turn, this time for the better and the night air struck less cold.

  ‘I do have a workplace,’ Jacquie said, holding the door slightly ajar. She’d recognized the silhouette at once; then, when she’d switched on the outside light, the blond curls and the shape of the forehead. She was looking him in the face now. It was a face she’d loved once.

  ‘And you keep anti-social hours,’ Foulkes said, straightening. ‘We’ve got to talk.’

  ‘Crispin …’

  He held up a hand. ‘It’s business, Jacquie,’ he assured her. ‘Strictly business.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Albert Walters.’

  She hesitated for a moment, holding the door. Then she relented and let him in. He followed her through into the lounge and she took his coat and scarf.

  ‘Did you jog this time?’

  ‘Drove,’ he said. ‘I’d kill for a g ‘n’ t.’

  ‘Scotch,’ she told him flatly. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘Scotch it is.’ He helped himself to a chair, and took in his surroundings, the dim lamps, the telly still flickering with the sound off, the gas-effect coal glowing in the twenty-first century twilight. She rummaged in what passed for her wine cellar, a cupboard through in the neon-lit kitchenette and poured him a drink.

  ‘Ice?’ she asked. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he called. ‘Just as it comes. I don’t want anything else on the rocks in my life.’

  She ignored him and handed him the glass. ‘Albert Walters,’ she said.

  For an instant, their fingers met, then she whirled to her side of the lounge, a world away from the social worker who’d come calling, and switched off the television.

  ‘There are things you should know,’ he began, sitting upright and concentrating, watching the lights sparkle in the cut facets of his glass.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s … something going on in the Barlichway, Jacquie. Something not right. Not natural.’

  She blinked slowly, sitting back in the folds of her armchair, watching his face. She knew that look, that focus, that intensity. It was a look that had frightened her once. But that was then. Before Leighford. Before she was plainclothes. Before Peter Maxwell. She was a different person now. She wasn’t going to get involved again.

  ‘How?’ she asked. ‘Not natural?’

  ‘Tell me how Albert Walters died,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t do this, Crispin.’

  He tried another tack. ‘Who’s your DCI?’

  ‘Henry Hall,’ she told him.

  ‘Decent bloke?’

  ‘He’s a listener,’ she nodded. ‘Good brain. Not exactly a man you can get close to.’

  ‘Getting close to men was always a bit of a problem for you, wasn’t it, Jacquie?’

  She sat upright, sighing. ‘You said this was business.’

  ‘It is,’ Foulkes nodded grimly. ‘This is all about your friend Maxwell.’

  ‘We’ve had this conversation, Crispin,’ she stood up, ready to show him the door. The social worker sat tight, looking up at her, the curve of her hips and breasts, remembering. ‘Not exactly. You told me he was a Cambridge man?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she found herself sitting down again, listening. ‘Jesus College. Why?’

  ‘And he read History?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t Chemistry?’

  ‘Chemistry?’ Jacquie frowned. ‘Talk sense, Crispin. Why would a Chemistry graduate end up teaching History?’

  ‘Because there’s more to Mr Maxwell than meets the eye.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Jacquie was unconvinced. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the calendar. He told me where he got it.’

  Jacquie paused for the first time. ‘He did?’

  ‘Foulkes nodded. ‘Or at least where he said he’d got it.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Crispin?’ Jacquie blurted. ‘I don’t have a crystal ball, you know.’

  ‘They’re linked you know,’ Foulkes said darkly. ‘Like some demented bloody daisy chain I don’t yet understand.’

  ‘What are?’ Jacquie asked, but she knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘Elizabeth Pride,’ he was leaning forward now, fire in his eyes, burning into her soul, ‘ends up on Maxwell’s doorstep. When did she die?’

  ‘Er …’ he’d caught her on the hop and she answered despite herself, without thinking; exactly as she used to answer him those years ago. ‘December 20th or so the police surgeon thinks.’

  ‘Can he be that accurate?’

  ‘Probably not,’ she shrugged, frightened suddenly by where all this was going.

  ‘Let’s suppose he’s wrong,’ Foulkes was in full flight. ‘Oh, not by much. By just a few hours, let’s say. Let’s suppose the old girl died on December 21st – St Thomas’s day according to Maxwell’s calendar, but in fact the pagan Midwinter Solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year. This was the time, people once believed, that, ghosts were allowed to walk – witches, bull beggers, hags, pans, kit-with-the-canstick, dwarfs, giants, changelings. Incubus, the spoor, the mare, the hell-wain and the man in the Oak. Tom Thumb, Hob Goblin, Boneless and the firedrake. We are afraid of our own shadows.’

  ‘Crispin …’ But her voice tailed away. She’d forgotten his voice, how rich it sounded, how deep. ‘Those names …’ She was afraid.

  He brightened the moment with a smile. ‘Not my names, Jacquie, Reginald Scot’s. From his Discovery of Witchcraft, that was back in 1584. It’s just the idea that’s carried down the centuries. And the fear. Let’s just suppose that Elizabeth Pride didn’t die randomly on December 21st – let’s suppose she was a sacrifice.’

  ‘A sacrifice?’ Jacquie Carpenter tried to laugh at the hypothesis, but it came out as a whisper.

  ‘How is the vicar connected?’ Foulkes asked.

  ‘Darblay?’ Jacquie was thrown, flustered, trying to concentrate. ‘Who says he is?’

  ‘Journalists various,’ Foulkes told her. ‘I don’t think they were very impressed with the police press conference. They’re talking about a serial killer.’

  ‘That’s bollocks.’ Jacquie’s hands were in the air and she was shaking her head vigorously.


  ‘How did he die, this Darblay?’ Foulkes wanted to know. ‘The telly said he was beaten to death.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What else was there?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jacquie!’ Foulkes suddenly thumped her coffee table with his fist and the Scotch glass jumped. ‘If you’re going to sit there with blinkers on all night, you’ll never catch this bastard. I think I know what he’s doing, though I don’t know why. And if I’m right, he’ll make you look like bloody amateurs, believe me.’

  ‘All right!’ she shouted, then calmer, ‘all right, he was laid out in the church. Somebody arranged him carefully.’

  ‘Like Elizabeth Pride?’

  She nodded. ‘His feet were towards the altar and he was holding a crucifix in his hands.’

  ‘A crucifix?’ Foulkes frowned. ‘Which way up?’

  ‘The head towards his feet.’

  ‘Upside down,’ Foulkes nodded. ‘Inverse magic. The cross upside down. Was there anything else? Any other symbols?’

  There was no turning back now. She nodded. ‘A pentagram, drawn in blood. We think it was Darblay’s. There were black candles, a sheep’s heart.’

  ‘Darblay’s heart.’

  ‘No …’

  Foulkes was thinking, shaking his head. ‘No, not literally, symbolically. White is the colour of purity, of goodness, of light. So they’ve used black for the candles. Inverse magic again. They should ideally be made from human fat, by the way. Tell me, was Darblay’s throat cut?’

  ‘What? Er … no. No, it wasn’t. His head … his head was smashed in.’

  ‘No mutilations,’ Foulkes was thinking, staring into the glass. ‘They were disturbed.’

  ‘They?’ Jacquie threw back at him. ‘Crispin, who are they? Who are you talking about?’

  The social worker leaned back in his chair, rubbing his hands through his hair. He looked exhausted, frightened, old. ‘There’ll be thirteen of them,’ he said softly, as though explaining a mental arithmetic problem. ‘Twelve plus one. It’s a mockery of Christ and his disciples. The One will be the horned god – old Nick, Satan, Lucifer, the light carrier.’

  Jacquie sat there with her mouth open.

  ‘They meet in secret at certain times of the year – Beltane, Samhain, Lammas. They hold these times sacred. They are the sabbats, when the witches ride on the backs of their familiars, flying to their ancient appointment with Old Nick. Tell me, have you found any evidence of drugs yet?’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Specifically hemlock. It’s an hallucinogenic. Gives the illusion of flight. They rub it on their naked skin and it’s absorbed through the pores.’

  ‘No.’ She couldn’t remember suddenly. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Jacquie,’ he broke the spell that bound them both, reaching out and gripping her hands. ‘Jacquie, don’t you see? I’ve met all this before in Broxtowe. There it was children. Here? Well, all three victims have been old. But that’s not important. It’s the same pattern, the same damned circle and the five pointed star.’

  ‘The witches’ star,’ she remembered.

  He nodded solemnly. ‘How well are you in with your guv’nor?’

  ‘Hall?’ she managed a chuckle. ‘Not very at the moment as it happens.’

  ‘Right. Here’s what we do. We don’t tell him – yet. If those people get wind that you’re onto them, they’ll clam up and the evidence will be gone. The media had a field day at Broxtowe and we lost whatever credibility we once possessed. I don’t want that to happen again.’

  ‘And Maxwell?’ she asked him.

  He stood up, taking her with him, staring into her eyes. ‘Watch him, Jacquie,’ he said softly, ‘like the proverbial hawk. He’s a nice guy. But even nice guys get sucked in to things like this. I know – I’ve seen it happen.’

  And he pulled her to him, kissing her long and hard on the mouth. Then, as he held her at arm’s length, the doorbell shattered the silence between them.

  In the hall, she recognized the silhouette again – the shapeless tweed cap, the red and blue of the scarf. An eternal student was standing there in his cycle clips, his eyes watering from the wind in his face as he’d pedalled over the dam, taking the short cut to reach her. His ears burned from the same wind, as he thought, but it could have been the conversation of the social worker, who’d held his fingers to his lips and seen himself out of Jacquie’s back door.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s late,’ Maxwell said, sweeping off his cap and kissing her. ‘Got a minute?’

  He missed the way she held herself stiffly, uncertain in the whirlwind of Foulkes’s information what to think or where to turn. ‘Watch Maxwell,’ he had told her, ‘like a hawk.’ And here he was, large as life and twice as sassy.

  ‘You’ve poured one for me already,’ Maxwell threw his scarf and hat down next to the glass on the coffee table. ‘Is that spooky or what?’

  ‘That’s Scotch, Max,’ she swept it up quickly. ‘I’m out of Southern Comfort.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ he wagged a finger at her. ‘When a woman’s out of Southern Comfort, she’s tired of life – or something like that. I’ve just come from one of two visits to the Barlichway.’

  ‘The Barlichway?’ she sat down on the settee, looking at him.

  ‘Albert Walters.’

  ‘Max, what are you doing?’

  He looked at her. ‘Murder has a momentum all its own, Jacquie. You know that. I know that. It carries you along, sucks you in.’

  ‘Sucks you in?’ Jacquie repeated. Had Maxwell been listening to her conversation with Foulkes? Had he bugged her flat?

  ‘Mixing my metaphors again. Sorry,’ and he slapped his own wrist. ‘Leighford’s a small place, Jacquie. It was two of my kids who found old Walters’ body.’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘We’ve talked to them.’

  ‘Have you talked to Barney?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Barney Butler,’ Maxwell was in reminiscent mood. ‘Class of ’91 if my memory serves. Probably hasn’t got a GCSE to his name, but he’s got a City and Guilds in being a nosey bastard. You should have a chat.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘He lives on the floor above Albert Walters. The old boy had been there, on his own, for as long as Barney could remember. They were scared of him as kids. Thought he was a magician.’

  ‘A magician?’ the hairs began to crawl along Jacquie Carpenter’s neck, her worst nightmare unfolding.

  ‘Wizard, warlock, wicca man, whatever,’ he amplified. ‘He used to do tricks with coins and marbles. He also used to terrify the local child population.’

  ‘So … what are you saying, Max? Somebody killed Walters in retaliation for some childhood fright?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ Maxwell lolled back in her armchair, his feet on her coffee table, ‘except that he had a visitor the night before he died.’

  ‘Really. Did this Barney tell you this?’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘And he got it from an old duck who lives next door but one to the dead man.’

  ‘Did you talk to her?’

  ‘That’s where I’ve been tonight,’ Maxwell told her. ‘And that’s why I’ve come to you, hot foot. She’s Adele Atkinson – are you writing this down?’

  Jacquie wasn’t. ‘There’ll be time enough,’ she said.

  ‘Sharp as a razor, that one,’ Maxwell went on, ‘for all she’s got to be pushing eighty.’

  ‘What did she see?’

  ‘Walters’ visitor called about ten p.m. She was putting the rubbish out for the binmen and saw him. He seemed lost, unsure which door to knock.’

  ‘Did this Atkinson give you a description?’

  ‘Medium height, black bomber jacket, white trainers, wavy hair, dark she thinks. Stocky build.’

  Jacquie screwed up her face. ‘I’ve heard better,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘but it was dark on that ledge – I’ve been there.’<
br />
  ‘Did Mrs Atkinson hear any conversation?’

  ‘No. She may have a mind like a razor but her hearing’s gone home. She does have a hearing aid – the social gave it to her, so I’m told – but she’s getting used to it by keeping it on the mantelpiece.’

  Jacquie wasn’t in the mood to smile.

  ‘Old Walters and his visitor had quite a little chat, that’s all she knew.’

  ‘On the doorstep?’ Jacquie asked. ‘Didn’t he go in?’

  ‘Mrs Atkinson went in before that, so she doesn’t know. Feels the cold, does Mrs Atkinson – three cardie sort of woman, you know. Haven’t your boys talked to anyone yet?’

  ‘Everyone,’ Jacquie sighed. ‘At least everyone in Coniston Court. But this is the Barlichway, Max. Most of them would eat broken glass rather than talk to coppers. Thanks, though. We’ll see this Adele Atkinson and your boy Barney again.’

  ‘Jacquie,’ he was frowning at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘All right?’ She blinked. ‘Yes, of course I am, why?’

  Maxwell shrugged, smiling. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You seem a little … well, distant, preoccupied.’

  ‘Murder, Max,’ she said. ‘It does that to people. Let me get you a coffee for the long ride home.’

  Martin Stone was running on pure energy. He’d watched as little Sam had been born, holding Alex’s hand and wiping the sweat that dotted her forehead. It was gas and air and cold blue lighting and a hideous little pink thing that would become the little sister to Janey. He’d brought his eldest in to the Maternity ward at Leighford General later that day and Janey had stroked and prodded the little bundle wrapped in her mummy’s arms. How long it would be before she was trying to gouge its eyes out, only time would tell. He’d left Janey with his mother and left Alex and the baby to the tender mercies of the NHS, with its ice packs and its wholesome institution food.

  Now he was back at the crime-face, sifting the mountain of paperwork on his desk, cursing anew the epidemic that had decimated the constabulary’s inspectorate with such deadly accuracy that someone had called it Bullshitters’ Flu, a sort of mild CJD. He was reading the history of Albert John Walters, the man found in a derelict corner of the Barlichway Estate, grinning forever at the world he had left. Walters had had a multiplicity of jobs. He’d been a farm labourer, motor-mechanic, postman. During the war he’d served in the Western Desert with the 7th Armoured Brigade, which made him, if Stone remembered his O-level History, a Desert Rat. But what interested the Detective Sergeant more than anything was his place of birth. Albert John Walters had been born and spent the first twelve years of his life in Wetherton, the little village below the Chanctonbury Ring, the little village whose Rector had recently been taken from it.