by M. J. Trow
Jacquie’s head popped round the door. ‘Are you free to see us, guv?’ she asked.
‘Come in, come in,’ he waved a hand to encourage her further. As a rule, he would run a mile from asking Maxwell anything, but this case didn’t seem to hang together by his reckoning. And yet, the chances of random poisonings being unrelated just seemed to be off the scale of probability. ‘Have a seat. Coffee?’
‘Is it old?’ asked Maxwell, suspiciously.
Hall peered into his mug. ‘Judging by the oily sheen, I should say … very.’
‘I’ll have some, then,’ the Great Man said. ‘It’s become my new diet. I will accept old food, as in, known to the donor for some while, only.’
‘That will be a little self-limiting, as time goes by, surely,’ Jacquie piped up.
‘Distant food, then, that will be the next level,’ Maxwell said, placidly. ‘Followed by, and heaven forfend, foreign food.’
‘I never had you down for a picky eater,’ Hall said. ‘I’m sure I remember Jacquie mentioning Chinese takeaways.’
‘Indeed,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Chinese, Indian, Thai, Korean, Mexican. Even, on one memorable occasion, Mongolian. That one gave a whole new meaning to the term “yak!” I can tell you. But the thing about all these takeaways is they were taken away from venues within about two miles from my home. No, when I say foreign food, I mean, food from not round here. Not local, you might say.’ His League of Gentlemen expression, though fleeting, made Henry Hall jump perceptibly. He found himself staring into Maxwell’s nostrils, wondering if he’d ever leave.
‘Guv, Max is serious. I think we ought to get ready for panic.’
Hall pushed himself away from his desk and got up to look out of his window. The view took in a corner of the High Street. He turned back to them and gestured. ‘The crowds down there don’t look like an angry mob. They are just doing their shopping in the usual way. Picking over the oranges on the market stall, but looking for juicy ones, not needle marks.’
‘That’s today,’ Maxwell said. ‘But wait until the news of the poisoned Eccles cakes gets out and it will be like a ghost town, I promise you.’ He had a year or two on Henry Hall; Maxwell remembered Panic in the Streets. Hell, he remembered the run on the banks in 1797.
Hall sat back down and pulled his chair up to his desk. He took up a pen and turned to a clean page on his pad. ‘Let’s assume you are right then; not about the panic, I don’t buy that, but about a random poisoner. How are we going to deal with him or her and why has it started now?’
‘Why not now?’ Maxwell came right back at him. ‘I don’t think we’re talking full moon or anything. I think the Leighford High poisonings began it and for some reason it has continued.’
‘What are your views on Mr Bevell?’
Maxwell shuddered. ‘Nasty gent. The sort you boys used to be allowed to give a good smacking in the good old days. But not our man.’
Hall sighed. ‘I agree. We’ve had to let him go. He’s at the hospital now, I believe, guarding his wife and making notes. Apparently, he is allergic to the flowers belonging to Miss Mackenzie in the next bed and is planning a lawsuit for emotional distress. Interflora could soon be a thing of the past.’
‘How heart-warming,’ Jacquie said. ‘I didn’t see him for many minutes, but he seems a real diamond geezer.’
‘Salt of the earth,’ agreed Maxwell. ‘But, talking of geezers, how are the rest of the staff? I suppose I should visit them, in my Acting capacity.’
‘What?’ Jacquie chuckled. ‘Like the Prince of Wales does when there’s been a train crash?’
‘Similar. More like comforts for the troops, but I get your drift,’ Maxwell replied.
Hall turned back a page in his notepad. ‘Not much change, really. Mr Ryan is still in a bad way. They say they may be looking at permanent liver damage in his case, although it’s early to be sure. James Diamond is back on the main ward, but still on drips and things. Miss Mackenzie and Mrs Bevell are on the main ward, side by side, as I said. Miss Smollett, having done quite well, is giving cause for concern, but in her case they think it may be a hospital bug, C. difficile or something suitably horrific. Helen …’ he looked down his list, ‘Maitland is sitting up as best she can on traction and giving the nurses a pretty hard time, from what I can gather. Apparently, one of them offered her a Zimmer frame to take home with her.’
Maxwell and Jacquie both pursed their lips and shook their heads. ‘Not a good idea,’ said Jacquie.
‘I gather not.’ Hall’s face had not changed. ‘Is that everyone?’
Maxwell counted on his fingers. ‘Yes. Mrs Bevell must have the constitution of an ox, if she’s back on the ward. She had another dose, didn’t she, on Thursday night?’
‘Yes, she did. But it didn’t contain much and, of course, she was still on the antidote, so it really hardly touched the sides. As soon as she was well enough, we had her moved. It was easier to keep an eye on her on the main ward.’
‘How did Mr Bevell take to that?’
‘Well, I think he has cut a few noughts off his compensation claim, but he does, amazingly, seem glad she is getting better.’
‘So,’ Maxwell said. ‘Let’s recap. It isn’t Bevell.’
There was a long pause, filled with the faint sound of the shoppers and traffic in the street below.
‘Yes?’ Jacquie prompted.
‘That’s it,’ Maxwell said. ‘Apart from you, me and Henry here, it could be absolutely anyone.’
Henry Hall sat so still he looked frozen, his lenses reflecting the ceiling looked opaque with condensation or frost. Then, one finger on his right hand started to drum lightly on the top of his desk. As if the movement had galvanised him into action, he suddenly leant forward. He grimaced, like the shine on the barrel of a gun. ‘Well, both of you. Thank you for coming in. Jacquie, if I could see you first thing on Monday, that would be good. Mr Maxwell,’ he stuck out his hand, ‘thanks.’
Maxwell didn’t move. ‘Just because I don’t actually know in detail who it is, it doesn’t mean I don’t have some ideas.’
Hall sat back down. ‘Oh?’
‘Well, it’s quite easy to get to quite a short list or, to be more accurate, a list of lists, all of them short.’
Hall pulled his pad back into the centre of the table. He hated working with Maxwell. He was Adrian Monk, Jessica Fletcher and Jane Marple all rolled into one. Except that he wasn’t reading from a script and he was madder than any of them. ‘Go on.’
Maxwell cleared his throat and pushed back his chair. ‘May I walk about? It’s how I think best.’
That would be the Monk in him coming out. Hall had to stop watching daytime television. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Firstly, we need to know if there is anyone with a grudge against Leighford High, specifically. On that list, we need to put any staff who have left under a cloud, any pupils who have done likewise or who, perhaps, hold us responsible for bad results, bad university choices, all that kind of thing.’
‘Are we listing these people?’ Henry asked, nearly as aware as Maxwell that he was talking telephone book proportions.
‘No, we’re listing the lists, Henry. Please try and keep up.’
Jacquie winced; the men in her life at each other’s throats she could live without.
‘Then, we need to juggle that list in two directions – narrow it to people who might have grudges, personal or professional, against anyone senior at Leighford High, and expand it to cover any of the interviewees. That would include exes, would-be exes, neighbours from hell, pupils again, but more focused. You might have people who are owed money, or who owe money. Blackmail victims, though that is a bit Agatha Christie. All right so far?’ Hall and Jacquie nodded. ‘Good.’
Maxwell was circling the room. ‘Before we spread our wings over the poisoned shopkeepers, we check down the categories and give them a tick for likely and a cross for unlikely, when looked at across the board. So, we have the grudges against the school in ge
neral. Now, obviously, they could run into hundreds, but we would soon sort out the likely psychopaths from the unlikely perfectly pleasant members of society. I could probably do that off the top of my head in very few minutes, but I don’t think I need to, because of the poisoning of Mrs Bevell in Leighford General.’
‘I see,’ Hall was getting the hang of this. ‘Someone with a grudge against the school would have targeted Diamond or Ryan, not Mrs Bevell.’
‘Correct. Unless they wanted to make the school look bad, rather than personally injure someone from there.’
‘True, but unlikely. What was the code for that, again?’
‘It should be a cross,’ said Jacquie, ‘but I think it should be a cross in brackets.’
‘Fair point,’ said Maxwell. ‘So that brings us to the second category so far, which is a personal grudge. Now, this is more difficult, because obviously, we don’t know who they are, as we don’t know all the personal ins and outs of the people involved. Your people will no doubt be on this already, Henry. But what I would say here is that the list of people intended to be victims may be larger, or even completely different, from the people hurt or killed. A prawn cocktail is not a weapon known for its deadly aim. For this one, Henry, I think you will have to send out a whole load of coppers door to door and be ready for lies.’
Hall made a cryptic note in the margin. Grannies and eggs.
‘The next category goes off on one slightly. The murderer, who, by the way, may not have intended to be a murderer at all, may have just been firing a warning shot. It may have been the opening ceremony for his little spree.’
Hall looked up. ‘That sounds quite likely,’ he remarked.
‘And if it is,’ Jacquie said, ‘Sylvia and I should put our heads together for a description of the person who stole those glasses. It’s the only concrete thing we have. If Mr and Mrs Barlow and the victims at the school show any names or places, clubs or things like that, in common, then we more or less have our murderer on a plate. If not …’
Hall raised an eyebrow.
‘If not, then I’m sorry, Henry, we’re back to intuition and luck.’
‘But, if you think the thing was targeted like that, why do you also expect a panic and more poisoning?’
‘That’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Maxwell came back to his seat and sat down, lacing his fingers over his midriff and looking between the two police people. ‘I think he’s got to like it.’
On Hall’s desk, the phone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ he said and picked it up. ‘Hall. Yes, they’re here. Which one?’ He held out the phone to Jacquie. ‘Your mother?’
Jacquie looked quizzically at Maxwell and took the receiver from her boss. ‘Mum?’ The men saw her face darken and she seemed to stop breathing. ‘Where are you? Have you phoned the paramedics? Well, we’ll go straight there, then.’ She handed the phone back to Henry Hall and took a deep breath. ‘That was Mum,’ she said, rather redundantly. ‘She was taking Nolan for a walk on the Dam when she met some other walkers. They got chatting and … one of them must have given Nolan something, because suddenly, he was being sick. They’re on the way to A&E.’ She reached for her bag and fumbled in it for her keys.
Maxwell and Henry were both on their feet. Maxwell put his arms round her and held her tight. Henry was more practical.
‘I’ll drive you,’ he said. ‘You’re in no state,’ and he shepherded them in front of him to the stairs. Sometimes, thought Maxwell in a small, calm side road in his head, you could really tell why Henry is where he is. Then the mad traffic of panic took over and he let himself be taken where he needed to be: with his little boy.
Henry Hall was just the sort of driver they needed at that moment. Economical with mad screaming gear changes and gestures at idiots who shouldn’t be on the road, very generous with taking the lights at amber and cutting up dithering shoppers. The siren was tucked away in his glove compartment, but he decided to keep that in abeyance; he didn’t want to freak out the couple sitting white-faced in his back seat any more than he had to. He was a father, but he didn’t have to be to understand how they were feeling. The pool of sick despair in the pits of their stomachs which drowned any little bits of hope that they might be able to conjure up; wanting to get to the hospital in a second, whilst not wanting to get there at all. This was Schrödinger’s cat made real. While they weren’t there with the boy he was possibly all right. When they got there, they would know the news and, if it was bad, it would be real. If they had had the time to catch his eye in the rear-view mirror they would have seen the real Henry Hall for the very first time, with feelings showing behind those eyes.
Soon, either too soon or not soon enough depending on the point of view, they were slowing and stopping under the canopy of the A&E at Leighford General. Jacquie and Maxwell, showing a turn of speed that Hall could not have expected, were out of the car and in through the double doors before he even had the handbrake on. Other mortals would then have gone off to park. Henry Hall just left the car where it was, flashing his badge at the rapidly approaching jobsworth porter, stopping him in his tracks. Just one of the little perks of office he secretly enjoyed.
He found Maxwell and Jacquie talking earnestly to a woman in the waiting area. Even here, the indefinable smell of a Third World hospital hit his nostrils. Any day now they’d empty the vending machines of anything vaguely tasty and bad for you, and the picture of abject misery would be complete. The woman was wringing her hands and Hall didn’t need to be told who she was. He was seeing into the future of Jacquie’s face if, in the intervening years, someone took his sergeant’s face and gave it a hard squeeze. Add a jaundiced view of life, mix in a little venom and misery and you ended up with Jacquie’s mother.
‘Guv, Henry, this is my mother,’ Jacquie was saying. The niceties, he thought, wryly, even at a time like this. Ever the professional. He caught Maxwell’s eye and took the woman by the elbow.
‘Mrs Carpenter,’ he said. ‘Let’s just sit over here for a moment and let Max and Jacquie see how Nolan is. You’ve had a shock. Have you got a cup of tea?’
The woman shook her head miserably.
‘Would you like one?’
She made a gesture as if to push him away. ‘No! I’ve got a flask. I’m not to have anything outside. I’m not to let Nolan …’ and she subsided in floods of tears.
He patted her shoulder, in a patently foreign gesture. ‘There, there,’ he said, as if surprised at himself. ‘Let’s get you a drink of water.’
She looked up and was about to speak.
‘From the tap. I’ll let it run for a while. Don’t worry.’ He went off to get it and she slumped over, her hands between her knees in total despair.
A nurse in pale blue came scurrying out from behind a pair of double doors beyond the waiting room.
‘Mr and Mrs Carpenter?’ she asked.
‘More or less,’ Maxwell said.
‘Would you like to come this way? Nolan wants his mummy.’ She caught the look on Maxwell’s face. ‘Oh, and his daddy, of course,’ she smiled. She held out an arm and ushered them through. ‘Come on. This way.’
They were taken into a curtained-off cubicle, where their little one sat on what looked like an acre of trolley, a waffle-woven blanket over his chubby knees. His curls were clinging damply to his forehead and his eyes were wide in a white face. He held out his arms to parents in general and they flew into them, kneeling on the chairs helpfully placed on either side. When they let him go enough for him to speak, he said, ‘Mummy. Dadda. Nolan has be sick.’ He pulled a sad face.
Jacquie brushed the hair back from his forehead and kissed it gently. ‘You are such a brave boy,’ she said, wetting him with her tears. ‘Do you feel better now?’
He beckoned her closer and whispered in her ear, ‘Want to poo.’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ she said and gave him a hug. She turned to the nurse. ‘He needs the loo,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’
The nurse smiled at her and shrugged her shou
lders regretfully. ‘Well, it’s right here, I’m afraid. Because we have been told he may have been given something, we will have to save … samples … until we know what it was. Sorry. He has refused to use a bedpan, claiming, and quite rightly, to be a big boy now. But I’m sure you can explain.’
Maxwell had been standing mutely by the side of the trolley. He didn’t dare speak because he knew his voice would let him down. He had been in another world, the tunnel where past and present meet, since the phone call. Even now that he could see and feel his little boy, clearly hardly the worse for his adventure, he was still feeling as if he had been through the mill. But now, his teaching skills were called for and he bent down to his son.
‘Now, my little bloke,’ he said, ‘I know you don’t want to poo in here, because you are a bit big for that. But, you know how it is, NHS cutbacks and whatnot, this hospital doesn’t have any toilets!’ He clicked his tongue and raised his eyebrow. ‘Now, what do you think about that?’
‘Hum!’ Nolan said, and clicked his tongue in reply. ‘Is it the guv’ment, Dadda?’
‘Too right, old mate,’ said Maxwell. ‘So, could you stretch a point and use the potty thing, just this once?’
The little boy gave a theatrical sigh. ‘O-kaaay,’ he said and looked up at the nurse. ‘But you go. I want my Mummy.’
‘Fair enough,’ the woman said, utterly unaware that Charles II used to go, loudly and lavishly, in front of a dozen or so courtiers, and went out through the curtain, followed by Maxwell. She turned to him. ‘What a lovely child,’ she said. ‘Very bright.’
‘Just as well, or we would have thrown him back,’ Maxwell said with just a touch of his usual self. He saw her expression. ‘Just joking,’ he added, hurriedly. ‘We would have been quite happy with anything; we’re just extra pleased with what we have.’
She nodded and hurried off to get the baby bedpan, feeling grateful that she hadn’t made any gaffes along the lines of calling him Granddad.