by M. J. Trow
‘Motion to suppress…’
‘See yadowna Vic…’
‘At the High Court…’
‘There goes Jensen Button…’
‘. . . to spend more time with his family.’
Finally, Jacquie had had enough. She reached over and knocked the remote from his hand, leaving them on a rerun of Countryfile. She switched the television off at the wall and turned to face him.
‘Are we going to sit like this all night?’
Maxwell glanced at the clock. ‘For another hour or so, I imagine,’ he said calmly, and foraged for a book stashed down the side of the chair for just this eventuality.
‘I know you want to talk about Bernard Bloody Ryan!’ she said, flinging herself back down on the sofa, narrowly missing the cat. ‘Sorry, Count.’ The apology was automatic. Without it, one could easily lose an arm.
‘I would quite like to,’ Maxwell said, with infuriating calm. ‘But I don’t expect you can, so I’ll just read my book. Look, why don’t you go and have a nice hot bath? Some of your nice aromatherapy stuff in it? I’ll light you some candles, if you like. Wine? Glass of wine? Cadbury’s Flake?’
She looked over at him and could have screamed. The casual observer would have seen a concerned husband, trying to help his wife over the stresses of her job. He had cooked dinner. He had played their child into docile exhaustion. He had read the bedtime story – naturally, The Once and Future King which probably no other father in the land would have had to hand on the day Camelot was rebuilt in a cardboard box in the garage. He was perfect. But behind that face, the eyes of a basilisk looked out and she suddenly felt an affinity with the thousands of voles who had come to an untimely end in the back gardens of Columbine.
‘Has anyone ever told you how alike you and the Count are?’ she asked, trying to keep it light.
‘Oh, yes. I’ve often been told I look like a large black and white cat,’ he smiled.
‘It’s something about the eyes,’ she said.
‘Mm hm,’ he said, his eyes already back on the book.
She gave him a few minutes to re-engage and then gave in. ‘Bernard’s in the clear.’
‘I think I knew that,’ he said, looking up.
‘Yes, but he really is. We’ve checked the alibi and it all makes sense. His boyfriend even has receipts. He scanned them and emailed them over.’
‘And you’re accepting that?’
‘The guy’s got too much to lose. He could easily have denied it. He seems genuinely fond of Bernard.’
‘Nice for Bernard.’
‘Max…’
‘Yes?’ He folded the book around one finger and looked at her. ‘What?’
‘Henry had a word today. The usual word. You know the score. I can’t talk to you about this case.’
‘Of course not. It isn’t fair of me to expect it.’
She bounced on the sofa in frustration. ‘But you do expect it!’
He stuffed the book down the side of his chair. He had been reading it upside down anyway. It was the only way to make sense of Isaiah Berlin.‘You know it won’t go any further. And it helps to talk, you know it does.’
‘I’ve got Jason… and Henry.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘I won’t be able to give you any details.’
‘Naturally not.’ He wriggled down into his chair so as to give her his full attention.
She blew down her nose like a racehorse. ‘Max, please don’t accidentally on purpose tell Bernard any of this, will you?’
‘Not a word, heart. He will hate me again as soon as he is reinstated. Do you know anything about that, by the way?’
‘That’s nothing to do with us. It’s Legs’ call, I would imagine. Or Legs and the governors.’
‘Right. Legs will go the way of least resistance, whichever that turns out to be. But you were saying.’
‘Without going into every detail…’
A few nerve endings in Maxwell’s brain all simultaneously signalled ‘Damn’.
‘I had an interview with the parents of the first girl today.’
‘That would be Josie Blakemore, Bernard’s tutee.’
‘Correct. They came in and, well, let’s just say that things in the Blakemore home were not quite as they at first appeared.’
‘Homes are never quite as they first appear,’ Maxwell pointed out. ‘Many people, for instance, think that we are a perfectly normal family.’
‘Many?’
‘Some. A few.’
‘It turns out that Mrs Blakemore was having an affair with a rather dodgy character who also has a link to our second girl.’
‘Mollie Adamson.’
‘Again, correct. I had to have a word with her half-sister…’
‘Mrs Blakemore’s half-sister?’ He was just checking.
‘No, Mollie’s. Anyway, it turned out that Mrs Blakemore’s bit of rough, as her husband pleasantly called him at one point, was once married to her mother.’
‘Too many pronouns. Whose mother?’
‘Caroline Morton, Mollie’s half-sister.’
Maxwell took a deep breath. He was no watcher of soaps, but assumed this was the kind of level of complication that millions of viewers coped with every day. How hard could it be? ‘So, to get this right, and for the last time, Josie’s mother is having an affair with the ex-stepfather of the half-sister of Mollie. Yes?’
Jacquie looked at the ceiling and ran through it, using her fingers to keep track. Finally, she said, ‘Yes.’
‘That’s quite tenuous, you know.’
‘It is quite, but Caroline Morton said that the stepfather…’
‘Has he got a name?’
‘Yes. The stepfather,’ she looked under her eyebrows at Maxwell who knew better than to push it, ‘sometimes visited the house where Mollie was living. Perhaps I should have said, Mollie’s own mother was dead and she was living with her half-sister.’
‘Not so tenuous, then.’
‘No. Details that Josie’s father passed on show that Mi… the stepfather may have a predilection for young girls.’
‘Ah.’
‘Anyway, it may be nothing, but we’re checking it out. Nothing to Bernard now, though. Do you hear?’
‘My lips are sealed, dear one,’ Maxwell said, zipping them ostentatiously, like the Red Team always do on Bargain Hunt (or so he’d been told). ‘He won’t hear anything from me.’
‘Well, I hope not.’ Jacquie smiled at Maxwell. ‘I do feel better, you’re right. I don’t know how you do it, you know, day in, day out.’
‘What, specifically?’ Maxwell could think of a thousand things he did on a daily basis that most people wouldn’t touch with a long pole. In the days before Political Correctness he would put his arm around crying girls and boys, pour cold water over writhing couples at the Sixth Form Prom, pile into the school minibus, Helen Maitland at the wheel, with lads off their faces on drink and see them safely home. He would shout, he would whisper, he would stare – all in a day’s work at the Chalk Face as was. Secretly, he was glad he had never taught infants – your own infant’s sick and poo was all in a day’s work; but somebody else’s? Euww!
‘Dealing with kids,’ Jacquie was thinking along similar lines, but at a distance. ‘Meeting the parents, seeing the mess they’re making.’
‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. It’s not often that Philip Larkin and I can be said to be at one, but with that I totally agree. All we can do is try to make the sow’s ear back into a silk purse.’
‘That’s what I mean. You can see what these kids could have been, before their parents got their hands on them.’ She looked across at him. ‘What were your parents like?’
Maxwell put his hands behind his head. ‘I don’t know. I was just a kid.’
‘You must have memories of them.’
‘My mother was always cooking. And when she wasn’t she was washing. Ironing. Telling me to wear a vest. I had almost
left home before Sandie started kicking up; I know my mother agonised about that, but she was just being a girl. I think I brought myself up, by and large.’
‘And your dad?’
‘Father. Not Dad. He was always at work. He would come home, sit down, eat his tea – it was always called tea, whatever time he eventually got to eat it – and then either read the paper or go out. He hardly spoke to me as I recall. Not sulking. Just had nothing to say.’
‘They were clever, though?’
‘I suspect that my father was a deeply stupid man who had managed to convince the powers that be that he could do his job. My mother was very bright but decided early on to take the path of least resistance.’ He lapsed into silence for a moment. Then, ‘You?’
‘My mother… well, you know what she’s like. Dad was a bit like yours, a deep voice above my head and then, suddenly, with nothing in between, someone to ignore.’ She stroked the cat absentmindedly. ‘Max…?’
‘You are an excellent mother. I hope I am an all right father. Metternich is the perfect pet. So was the goldfish, of blessed memory.’ He smiled across at her. ‘No one will hurt Nolan. He will never have this conversation with his significant other. He will say, when asked by a passing psychologist examining him for his post as President of the World, “Problems with my parents? No, I love my parents and they love me.” And he’ll be right.’ Her bottom lip began to tremble, and he held out his arms. ‘Hot bath?’ A nod. ‘Wine?’ Two nods. ‘Coming right up.’ And he put her gently back on the sofa and went off to light the candles.
CHAPTER NINE
As usual, he met them in the Library. As usual, they faced a brave new world together.
‘This,’ he threw his arms wide, ‘is the library. For the past five years you have all known it as a place where they keep computers and quirky little angular bits of furniture that are ideal resting places for your recently departed wads of chewing gum. Now, in your time here, during those five years, you may have noticed rectangular things lining the shelves. They are called books and they will be an indispensable aid to your next two years. A and AS levels will be impossible without them. And the member of my Sixth Form who so much as whispers the word Wickedpedia will be on the Eastern Front by morning.’
Maxwell had fought his way through All-Hell Day countless times before. This was the day that he and Helen Maitland, the Fridge, admitted hopefuls to Year 12. This was the day they signed on for another two years at what was once the Chalk Face and what was now the Whiteboard Jungle. The historian in Peter Maxwell couldn’t help thinking back to his own time. When he was sixteen, Maxwell, P. joined Lower Classical and Modern VI X (no one knew what the X stood for, but it must have been a factor) and one of his shoulders was already slightly higher than the other. This was not out of deference to his hero the late King Richard III but because he had been hauling around a heavy satchel full of books since he was eight. Today, he could have got his old school on charges of child abuse. Then again, the historian in Peter Maxwell knew that when Edward the Black Prince was sixteen, he was commanding the wing of an army at a little punch-up called Crecy. God, how the Old Order had changed.
‘Here,’ he was still addressing the troops who all looked a little uncomfortable now that they didn’t have to wear uniform any more, ‘are the entry forms. Fill ’em in, dears. Name, d.o.b., inside leg and above all, GCSE results – Mrs Maitland and I don’t have time today to look them up. You’ll notice four columns – A,B,C,D – and a list of subjects under each one. On no account can you choose two from the same column because they are timetabled at the same time and not even I can be in two places at once. Fill ’em in and do your best with the long words. If you can’t manage that, perhaps you shouldn’t be here in the first place and you can just trust to luck like that great role model Mr Cowell.’
He half bowed as they swarmed forward to collect the paperwork. ‘No pen, Doris?’ he hissed to a lanky ginger-haired lad to his left. ‘That doesn’t bode well.’ Maxwell and Maitland, collectively known as the M & Ms, marched along the corridor and up the mezzanine to their respective offices, adjacent as they were.
‘Was I a little too elitist, do you think?’ he asked her.
‘Mr Gove would be proud of you,’ she smiled. ‘Who’s turn is it for coffee?’
Maxwell liked Helen Maitland. There were four women who held Leighford High School together. One was Sylvia Matthews, who had nursed with Nightingale, she of the soft shoulder and morning-after pills. Numbers Two and Three were the Thingees, who womanned the switchboards mornings and afternoons and took all the flak that should have gone Legs Diamond’s way. And the fourth was the large, blonde woman who stood alongside Maxwell now. Nothing ever ruffled Helen Maitland. Maxwell had never seen her cry or even blush. She did both of those things of course but never in the presence of Mad Max.
‘Coffee?’ he frowned. ‘That’ll be me. Still like it hot and black, Hel, baby?’
Helen Maitland did remember Shaft, but she wasn’t giving Peter Maxwell the satisfaction. They disappeared into their respective offices to await the hordes demanding their right to continue in full-time education. Maxwell looked around his office, the one he hadn’t seen for seven months and more. Mrs B. had done him proud here. The old coffee stains had gone, the spider plant was still alive and the film posters that were so much part of his life still adorned the walls. He had treated himself to a new set on a day out in Hollywood, but for now he was happy to lock eyes with dear old Boris Karloff in The Body Snatcher; to take seriously Robert Ryan’s warning to Beware My Lovely and to watch the sun sink into the sands of the Normandy beaches at the end of Daryl F. Zanuck’s The Longest Day.
Then… ‘Mrs Maitland!’ Maxwell’s roar had been known to shatter glass and his assistant came running.
‘Max,’ she said, seeing him standing there, pointing wordlessly at the wall. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’
‘Would you like to tell me what that is?’ he managed, through gritted teeth.
Helen Maitland laughed. ‘It’s a poster, Max,’ she said. ‘Mel Gibson in The Patriot. Apparently, it’s all about the War of American Independence. It’s a present from Hector Gold; he said you’d love it.’
‘Oh, I do, I do,’ Maxwell nodded with a rictus grin on his face, ‘but not as much as Hector will when I post it back to him with instructions to the postman to stick it up Mr Gold’s… back again, Doris?’
The lanky lad stood in Maxwell’s doorway.
‘Sorry, Mr Maxwell, have you got a pen?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ Maxwell said. ‘Oh, I see. You want to borrow one. Here. Don’t say I never give you anything.’
The Head of Sixth Form threw a biro at the lad who caught it expertly. ‘That’s the First Eleven for you, my lad,’ he smiled. ‘Assuming we still had a cricket team, of course. Eleanor.’
A surly, spotty girl stood at Doris’s elbow, form in hand.
‘Radiant as ever. Who do you want? Me or Mrs Maitland?’
‘Mrs Maitland,’ the girl surlied.
‘Naturally. Well, enjoy, Mrs Maitland. I’ll get the coffee underway.’
And so it went on for the rest of the morning. The early ones were the easiest (apart from Eleanor) – the A* and the As, whose greatest shame was a B in Social and Religious Studies. All Hell Day it may have been, but there was a certain satisfaction for Maxwell in passing the buck. He was not going to take the rap for enrolling a student onto Further Maths when he/she only had a D at GCSE – better go and see Mr Leadbetter, the Head of Maths; it was his call.
‘I’m having second thoughts about French,’ David Walker was saying, tapping the relevant place on the form.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Maxwell nodded. There was a sharp knock on the door and a slightly frazzled Bernard Ryan popped his head around it. If Maxwell had worn glasses he would have looked over their rims at the visitor. ‘I have to say you are a little on the elderly side for Year 12, sir,’ he said.
David Walker laughed, but Bernard R
yan didn’t. ‘Can I have a word, Mr Maxwell?’ the reinstated Deputy said.
‘Of course, Mr Ryan,’ Maxwell said graciously. ‘David, pop next door and chat to Mrs Maitland, will you? If you’re not happy about a subject at this early stage, we don’t want to shoehorn you into it for the sake of it. What were you thinking of doing instead?’
‘History,’ the lad said.
‘There you are, you see,’ Maxwell said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Go and get that done. What a wise choice! Off you bugger now, there’s a good lad.’
He ushered the Deputy Head in and closed the door behind them. He felt the kettle – it was still warm enough to dissolve the odd granule. ‘Coffee, Bernard?’ he asked.
The Deputy shook his head. ‘I can’t stay,’ he said. ‘James has decided to keep Jane Taylor on to shadow me for a while and I have to bring her up to speed.’ He caught the look in Maxwell’s eye. ‘I can’t blame him, Max. He can’t be sure…’
‘Can’t be sure that you won’t be found to have nothing to do with a murder of a young girl again? Surely, it goes without saying. I don’t know what he’s thinking, Bernard. What kind of message does it send?’ Maxwell found himself in the unusual position of being on Bernard Ryan’s side.
‘His hands are tied,’ Ryan said, sitting down. ‘Do you know, I think I will have that coffee. Jane Taylor can wait.’
‘Well said,’ Maxwell nodded, and to show solidarity actually switched on the kettle to re-boil. ‘This calls for some proper coffee. Hector left me his stash.’ Only Bernard Ryan would find no double entendre there.
‘He was a good teacher, Max,’ Ryan said. ‘He’ll be missed.’
‘I was glad to leave the historians in good hands. And our house has never been so tidy.’ The kettle rumbled to the boil and Maxwell poured the water into the cafetiere. The elephant circled the room, trumpeting softly under its breath.