Maxwell's War

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Jesus!’ Maxwell muttered.

  ‘Exactly,’ Weston nodded. ‘You see what I mean about anybody?’

  ‘You didn’t keep the caravan locked?’

  ‘Remember the party, Mr Maxwell?’ the props man said solemnly. ‘The one your little kiddie was going to? And the rugger match. How often in the last twenty-two years have you said “If only”? I think they call it being wise after the event, don’t they?’

  ‘I think they do,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘The only thing,’ Weston took up the bottle again, then he put it down and rammed the cork back into its mouth, ‘is that with Miles Needham, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bastard.’

  ‘Anyone, Count.’ Maxwell lay in the Badedas suds, his hands clasped across his chest like some medieval knight. The only thing wrong with the image was that he was stark naked with a glass of Southern Comfort between his fingers. He was staring up at the steam that swirled above his head. ‘Anyone. Can you Adam and Eve it?’

  Clearly, the cat could. He thrust out an elegant leg, offside rear and licked what on Peter Maxwell would have been his popliteal fossa.

  ‘Dan Weston was hectically busy. His number two wasn’t there. He hadn’t locked the props caravan. He estimated there could have been anything up to an hour that it was totally unattended. And by the time you add up all the extras and technicians and Joes Public in the area, well, Dan Weston’s right … anyone.’

  He closed his eyes. It was well past two and he had a full teaching day tomorrow, but he couldn’t sleep. He sipped the amber drink, felt it warm his cockles. ‘No, you see, that doesn’t help, Count.’ The cat looked at him in mid-lick. He hadn’t said a word. ‘I know not everyone had a grudge against Miles Needham, but I’ve found precious few who haven’t. Whaddya think?’ He turned to the abluting animal, raising one tired eyelid, ‘Get on with Lieutenant Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley Maxse and get out to Glove Farm before breakfast? Yes. You’re absolutely right. My thoughts exactly.’

  Glove Farm lay on the downs high over the sea where the gulls and rooks fought each other in the clear air and dawn was still aurora on their wings. The trees slanted up from the sea where the winds of eternity had battered them to their bidding. It was strangely silent at this altitude, the hiss of White Surrey’s tyres invading the privacy of the morning. Maxwell pedalled past the silver silos standing sentinel in their mist shrouds. There were still cobwebs dancing gossamer in the stunted hedgerows as he swung out of the saddle and leaned the bike against the rough bark of the cedar.

  The farmhouse was Georgian, he guessed, with a lot of Victorian afterthoughts, B&Q make-do and EU money. The fields were laden with the greasy smell of rape and linseed. The yeomen farmers who had withstood the blast of the ages had sold out to Brussels, bowed to Maastricht. Once they fired arrows at the Belgian buggers; now they just took their money. He didn’t have to hit the dulled brass knocker before the dogs told the house there was a stranger in the yard. He saw the nets shiver to one side and a ghost of a face peered out.

  ‘Mrs Sparrow?’ he tipped his hat.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Peter Maxwell, from Leighford High.’

  The woman was tight-lipped and her eyes red-rimmed. She looked a stranger to food and sleep. ‘Oh, yes, Giles has talked about you. What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to see him,’ Maxwell said. ‘But the police have told me that’s impossible. So I’ve come to see you instead.’

  She shook her head. ‘Won’t do no good,’ she said, the door only half ajar. ‘He’s confessed.’

  ‘What?’ Maxwell stood rooted to the spot.

  ‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Susan Sparrow corrected herself. ‘But he’s told the police he aimed deliberately at that Needham bloke. And my Giles don’t miss. Not ever.’

  ‘He doesn’t?’ Maxwell blinked.

  ‘His dad taught him. Ever since my Giles was little. Shooting’s been second nature to him. Twelve bore, .303, you name it, Giles’s shot it.’

  ‘But he didn’t know it was a real gun, Mrs Sparrow,’ Maxwell persisted. ‘Did he?’

  Peter Maxwell had never seen a look so strange cross anyone’s face before. ‘I hope not, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘As God is my judge, I hope not.’ And she closed the door quietly in his face.

  On his way back, down the long drive that led to Glove Farm, he passed the first of the day’s paparazzi arriving by the car load. They watched him carefully and one of them took a photo of him, just in case.

  ‘Who killed Diana?’ he shouted at them. It wasn’t a question worthy of Peter Maxwell, but the chill reaction of the farmer’s wife had unnerved him. Who’d have thought that the harmless kid in the frame was Davy Crockett, Annie Oakley and Sergeant Yorke all rolled into one?

  ‘Still at life’s door then, John?’

  Irving lowered his paper. ‘Max, Bwana,’ he almost smiled. ‘Joining me for breakfast again?’

  ‘Just coffee,’ Max said to the Grand’s waiter, astonishingly, one he didn’t know. ‘A little darker than this gentleman here.’

  The waiter’s eyes widened. He was under twenty-five. He couldn’t remember a time before the Flood, when political incorrectness ruled OK and Posh Spice was an expensive brand of aftershave. He got away before the fists and lawsuits flew.

  ‘What news, oh eminence noir?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Max, you look like shit.’ Irving folded his paper and flung it aside. ‘You’re not working today, are you?’

  ‘No, just teaching,’ Maxwell told him. ‘What’s the scuttlebut on Miles Needham?’

  ‘I thought you’d dug up all the dirt there was.’

  Maxwell shook his head. ‘I’ve got a feeling I’ve only scratched the surface,’ he said.

  ‘What about your friend in the police?’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell patted the side of his nose. ‘My copper’s nark. Well, her hands are tied …’

  ‘Her? You dark horse, Bwana!’ and Irving downed the last of his scrambled eggs.

  ‘Giles Sparrow, it turns out, was a crack shot.’

  ‘Never!’ Irving swallowed his coffee quickly. ‘Doesn’t that make life a little difficult for the boy?’

  ‘It does,’ Maxwell nodded, mechanically taking the coffee pot from the waiter. ‘I’ve got to talk to that solicitor bloke again. I got nowhere with the parents.’

  ‘They’re not likely to be very forthcoming,’ Irving commented. It was no more than the truth. ‘Listen, Bwana. Something’s come up. I’ve got to get back to Cambridge. You don’t really need me any more, do you? I mean, this new director is as much of an unknown quantity to me as he is to you.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Maxwell risked his upper lip in the hot, brown cup. ‘No probs as I believe the Young People say. Will you be back?’

  ‘What?’ Irving seemed preoccupied, elsewhere. ‘Oh, yes, yes, probably. I’ve got your number. Must dash.’

  Maxwell was in the middle of a sentence when his old oppo from the Granta days was gone. He’d left his newspaper, his glasses case and an awful lot of crumbs. Maxwell grabbed the case and made for the foyer, but John Irving had merely hovered for a moment in front of the revolving doors and had dashed through them, nearly knocking over a woman in his haste.

  Maxwell steadied her as she tumbled into the foyer. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, regaining her dignity and her composure with a speed that astonished. ‘Thank you, I am,’ and she swept away from him to the counter.

  ‘May I help you, Madam?’ the receptionist asked with a sienna voice.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘My name is Barbara Needham. You have a room for me.’

  7

  Grant Prothero had pulled his team together as best he could. June’s long-lighted days gave him time to drill his men, practise his shots. The Fencibles and the Castlemartin Yeomanry were down by three men, the two who had homes to go to and the third who was in custody, charged with murder. Even so, Maxwell w
ould have been proud of them and Bob Pickering had them fine-tuned by evening, film in the can, mini-series in the bag. There were just three more days to go, Prothero estimated and then The Captain’s Fancy could have its soundtrack dubbed in and all the hype could start. The credits team was already working on the stark ‘For Miles Needham’, plain white on a black drop. But publicity like that could go either way; and whichever way it went, the paparazzi were there that Thursday evening under the purple-orange of the sunset as they took down the arc lights. A veritable army of Eight Counties men with shoulders like wardrobes kept them back, away from the action.

  He saw her sitting on an upturned keg, staring at the ocean. She was Hannah Morpeth, the darling of the ’90s, with a string of lovers and public spectacles in London’s and New York’s hottest hotspots behind her. But that evening, sitting there with the gentle rush of the sea, she looked lost, a little girl again, her sandcastle overturned and no one to play with.

  ‘You know,’ Maxwell approached from the Shingle, padding softly through the sand, ‘Jemima Nicholas was rather a mannish lass.’

  ‘Who?’ Hannah Morpeth was far, far away.

  ‘Your character,’ Maxwell sat on the sand and crossed his legs at the ankles. ‘Jemima Nicholas. The Welsh called her Jemima Vawr – Big Jemima. She was a cobbler, biceps like Sly Stallone’s. I don’t see you fitting that pattern.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Hannah Morpeth had a way of looking at men that sent shivers across the darkness of their souls. Her long pale auburn hair blew across her face and just for a moment, even Mad Max was caught in the magic of it.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, reaching out a hand, ‘I’m Peter Maxwell. I’m working with John Irving on the historical accuracy bit.’

  ‘Oh, right. Look, do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. How’s it going? I mean … You were there when Miles Needham died.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly looking out to sea where the glow of the sun was spreading over the watery ridges like molten gold. Then she turned back, ‘So were you, weren’t you?’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘How well did you know him?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d never worked with him before,’ she said, her jaw firm, her eyes clear. ‘I think as directors go, he had huge talent.’

  ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Maxwell sat upright, clasping his hands, choosing his words. ‘Hannah,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind if I call you that?’

  ‘I’d prefer it to Jemima Vawr,’ she almost smiled.

  He did too, ‘Hannah. The boy in custody, Giles Sparrow, he’s one of my students at Leighford High.’

  ‘Really? I see.’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m not sure you do. You see, Giles didn’t do it.’

  ‘But the police …’ she frowned.

  ‘… Are taking it all too literally,’ he interrupted her. ‘It’s too obvious. Too pat. No one was more surprised than Giles when Miles Needham went down, believe me.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to his solicitor, his mother,’ Maxwell sighed and rested his elbows back on the sand again. ‘I’d talk to his fairy godmother if I thought it would help me make sense of all this.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, genuinely bewildered.

  ‘Why?’ Maxwell wasn’t just sitting up now, he was standing. ‘If you have to ask that, Hannah, then I’m asking the wrong person the wrong questions.’

  He didn’t know after that what to make of her. Could it be that the Face of the ’90s was just that? A pretty bimbo with no heart? Or was there more to her? Something that Maxwell hadn’t seen, perhaps would never see?

  ‘Well, it’s not your problem, is it?’ she asked.

  He squatted down beside her again. ‘Yes,’ he persisted, ‘it’s everybody’s problem.’

  She turned away, watching the gulls fighting at the water’s edge. ‘You didn’t know Miles,’ she said.

  Maxwell sank to the sand again. ‘But neither did you,’ he said. ‘You just told me, you’d never worked with him before.’

  The girl looked at him wistfully. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘I haven’t. Look, Mr Maxwell, I don’t know what the Sparrow boy’s agenda was. Maybe he’s a gun freak. You hear about it all the time.’

  ‘But this isn’t Hungerford, Hannah,’ Maxwell said, ‘it isn’t even Dunblane. If Giles Sparrow had popped off an M16 in all directions, I might buy it. But a musket? Do you know how long it takes to reload? No, I’ve got to look elsewhere.’

  She smiled across at him, that distant, enigmatic smile, like a living Giaconda. ‘Well, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, ‘it looks as though it is your problem after all.’

  Peter Maxwell hated answerphones. He hated faxes too, but that was because he’d gone through a spate of technophilia early in 1996 when he’d fired off faxes from school in all directions, only to discover they hadn’t arrived at their destinations because he’d put the paper in the machine upside down. Some of the younger wags on the staff tried to rechristen him ‘Mad Fax’ or Mr Faxwell at that point, but they lost their nerve and their careers continued.

  ‘This is Jacquie Carpenter,’ he heard the disembodied voice say. ‘I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave your number after the long tone.’

  It beeped at him viciously. ‘Jacquie? Maxwell. You’re probably out stepping aerobically or whatever young police things do of an evening. Look, can we talk? I tried to chat to Hannah Morpeth today, but talk about a brick wall … I need your input, as I think the jargon ran about 1986. I’ll be here – all night unless my luck has changed radically. Bye.’

  Her long pale auburn hair lay across her face and her face was on a pillow; and the pillow on a bed; the bed in a hotel bedroom at the Grand. Hannah Morpeth had never been asked to play a corpse before and now she’d be stereotyped; she’d play that part for ever. Her blue silk negligee was thrown open, her lacy bra ripped where something sharp and steel had thudded through it, slicing the pert breast below. In that one sudden thrust, her heart had broken – more than ever it had over the death of Miles Needham. And it would never break again.

  The dead girl’s photograph flashed up onto the screen. Seconds before, Henry Hall’s Incident Room team had seen a very different Hannah, laughing with David Jason on the set of that sit-com; flirting with Sean Connery at the BAFTA awards; sparring with Kate Winslet in a photo opportunity with Leonardo diCaprio. Now her dead eyes stared back at them all, dull, robbed of life. ‘Where were you?’ she seemed to say, her head tilted to the right in the harsh, unflattering flash of the police photograph. ‘Why aren’t you bastards ever around when we need you?’

  ‘She had a minder,’ DI Dave Watkiss was on his feet, ‘Buster Rothwell. Goes wherever she does.’

  ‘Except her hotel room,’ a voice called from the smoky, blind-drawn room.

  ‘That’s right,’ Watkiss nodded. ‘He left her at about eleven. Swears she was tucked up by then.’

  ‘In fact, her bed hadn’t been slept in,’ Hall chimed in from the corner. ‘Reg.’

  Another slide clicked into focus. The girl lay on her back, with one arm trailing, her right hand nearly on the floor. Her legs were slightly parted and one breast, her left, was naked to the nosiness of the world, the savage, careless intrusion of scenes of crime. ‘Notice the bed hasn’t been disturbed. Neither had anything else in the room. No lamps overturned, no mats crumpled. Nothing.’

  ‘Whoever killed her knew her.’ Watkiss underlined it so that there should be no misunderstanding. ‘She trusted him.’

  ‘Him, sir?’ it was appropriately Jacquie Carpenter who asked the question.

  Hall got to his feet. ‘That’s what Dr Astley reckons,’ he said. ‘It would have required quite a bit of force to make that wound. But we’re not wearing blinkers here, everybody. A single thrust delivered with both hands by a woman might have the same effect. It depends on the weapon to an extent. Have you got the info the
re, Dave?’

  Watkiss riffled through his notes. ‘Astley can’t decide on the actual murder weapon yet. Knife certainly and not razor sharp, but the blade was long and straight. The point was used to nick her clothing first – causing the tearing you see there. Then – wham, bam, thank you Ma’am. One single thrust that pierced her left lung and the left ventricle of her heart. Death would have been very quick.’

  ‘The bastard missed her ribs, then?’ Somebody was wrestling with the wound dynamics.

  ‘Oh, yes. It was neat. Like a … well, almost like a contract hit, in a way.’

  There were murmurs around the room; heads nodded together, eyes swivelled, shoulders shrugged. Hall calmed it down.

  ‘Before we rush out in search of the Godfather,’ he said with his humourless delivery, ‘Let’s keep it all in some perspective. This woman knew and worked with Miles Needham.’

  ‘Different M.O.’ somebody observed. There were more murmurs.

  ‘Agreed,’ Hall nodded in the half light, ‘but the same show. Jerry.’ A burly sergeant half rose in the corner. ‘From tomorrow, you and your people are all over Eight Counties Television. Their budgets, their personnel, their brand of coffee. If somebody in that company breaks wind, I expect to be informed.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Jerry Man ton had a reputation as a corporation killer. Something to do with his training as an accountant put the frighteners on an awful lot of suits.

  ‘Paul.’ A tall, angular copper with a shaved head nodded. He looked like Alexei Sayle on stilts. ‘The Grand. I want plans of that hotel from the time the bloody thing was built.’ It was not like Henry Hall to swear, even mildly. His team knew it, sensed the air. Hall had been with the Chief Constable all morning, almost since they’d found her. But Hall didn’t need the Chief Constable to spell it out for him. Miles Needham was a celebrity among the cognoscenti, with his own luvvies. But Hannah Morpeth was a star. They’d already had to clear away the cellophaned bouquets from the pavement outside the Grand. She was a second Diana and the nation would cry all over again. ‘I want to know every stair, every passageway. No one leaves. This is right from the top. I don’t care how many feet you tread on. Reps, conference attenders, families with kids and grannies – nobody goes home. Look at their security system especially. If they’ve got cameras, I want the film and I want it by morning. Got it?’