Maxwell's Point

by M. J. Trow

  Hall carried on walking, careful now that the path was dark and the ground uneven. Men in fluorescent jackets carrying torches walked past him on their way up to the Point, grunting greetings in the quarter light. ‘Anything untoward about the Downers?’

  ‘Don’t think so, guv.’ Jacquie walked with him until they reached the cars. ‘She’d calmed down by the time I talked to them. Seemed a very ordinary couple. Been coming to Leighford for the best part of fifteen years now.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Hall murmured. ‘Haven’t we all? What about Conklin?’

  ‘Salt of the earth type,’ Jacquie assessed the man. ‘Underneath the vest and the tattoos, just a nice fast food retailer trying to get out.’

  ‘And nobody saw anything – anybody – suspicious in the area?’

  Jacquie knew what Hall meant. Suspects do return to their scenes of crime, not able to leave it alone. They’re not all Ted Bundy having sex with rotting corpses; but they just want to reassure themselves that all is well, that no nosy dog with extra scentsory perception hasn’t sniffed out their evil deeds. They’d have been seriously worried by this afternoon’s events.

  ‘We don’t know about the kids,’ Jacquie said. ‘We need to find them.’

  Hall looked into her grey eyes, clear, cool, professional, with just the merest hint of a stirring bitch in them. ‘Get on it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, Jacquie, go home. You’ve got a little baby waiting, haven’t you?’

  ‘So rumour has it, sir,’ she smiled.

  ‘Off you bugger, then.’ Hall sighed. He had no such excuse. ‘I’ve got a body to shift.’

  The lights burned blue along Columbine and in the kitchen of Number 38, second floor back, a tired couple sat opposite each other on the benches of the dining table, propping up their eyelids with romantic smalltalk about murder.

  ‘What did they look like?’ Maxwell asked. He was in his pyjamas by now, but he hadn’t obeyed Jacquie’s instructions and gone to bed. He’d pottered around, sticking this bit of plastic, painting that. He’d settled on a roan for Lieutenant Landriani’s horse. Unfortunately, Messrs Humbrol didn’t do a roan colour, so Maxwell had to mix it a bit. Well, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  ‘Now, Max,’ Jacquie scolded. She was still in her day clothes, minus the white galoshes she’d worn at the Scene of Crime, of course. ‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he nodded, smiling and flicking the skin off his cocoa. ‘You’re going to say, “Max, don’t get involved. We don’t know who the kids are. They’re probably not yours anyway. And even if they are, they’ll have nothing to do with the murder. I am a detective sergeant in the West Sussex CID. You are a civilian and have absolutely no right of entry into what is entirely a police matter.” Something like that?’ He arched an eyebrow.

  ‘Astonishing!’ She threw up her hands in admiration. ‘It’s as if you can read my mind.’

  ‘Now, I’m not going to remind you of the criminal history lectures I hope you attended at the Police Academy Three, Woman Policeman. Of that little psychological weirdness called folie à deux, where two otherwise respectable youngsters spark off each other and become the couple from Hell – Burke and Hare, Leopold and Loeb, Jones and Hulton, Bonnie and Clyde…’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What did they look like?’

  She hit him with a kitchen roll. ‘Max, you’re such an infuriating old bastard.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He held up his hands in supplication. ‘Let’s back track. Tell me about the dead man.’

  It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Is there any point in talking to you?’ she asked. ‘About integrity, I mean; professionalism.’

  ‘Noooooooo!’ He shook his head. ‘But two heads are better than one, Woman Policeman, and you know you won’t sleep tonight anyway.’

  She looked at him. The Old Fart she’d come to love. The father of her baby. No, she wouldn’t sleep tonight and yes, how well he knew her. Two heads were better than one, especially when one of those heads belonged to Peter Maxwell, Cambridge Historian and all round clever dick. He knew his onions, did Maxwell. They were hanging in the veg rack. He knew his murders too.

  ‘Seemed to be middle-aged.’ She didn’t like conjuring images of rotting corpses but it brought home the bacon. It solved killings from time to time as well. ‘What appeared to be dark hair, but it was a bit difficult to tell. He was wearing a black leather jacket and white shirt. Had a crucifix round his neck. May have been used as a ligature to kill him.’

  ‘Strangulation, eh? Well set-up chap?’ Maxwell was pondering the options.

  ‘Hard to say. The gases had blown the body up a bit. Looked like the Michelin Man when I saw him.’

  ‘Chummy’s pretty powerful, then?’ Maxwell was stirring his cocoa.

  ‘Could be,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘Or, if the man at the Point was drugged or pissed or just plain asleep, Mrs Troubridge could have done it.’

  Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Of course!’ he crowed. ‘Got her at last! Do you want me to make some enquiries?’

  ‘Max…’ she growled.

  ‘At school, I mean,’ he said, all innocence and ingénue. ‘About those two kids?’

  ‘No, Max, I don’t,’ she told him. ‘No enquiries at all, thank you. Of any kind. Now, let’s change the subject. How was Juanita today?’

  ‘Conspicuous by her absence,’ he told her.

  ‘What?’ Jacquie frowned.

  ‘Gone.’

  Jacquie was sitting upright. She hadn’t been in long and ever since she’d stumbled in through the door the talk had turned to murder, as it often did along Columbine. There hadn’t been time for other niceties. ‘Max, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, it was the damnedest thing. I got home about half four after toiling up the sheer side of the chalkface and there was no sign of Juanita. Her car had gone, but sonny Jim hadn’t.’

  Jacquie was incredulous. ‘Are you telling me that Nolan was here on his own?’

  ‘Now, don’t get all she-wolfie about it,’ he said, patting the air around her with both hands. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘No…’ She lowered her voice. ‘No harm done? Anything could have happened, Max. What did she say about it?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen her.’

  Jacquie stared at him in disbelief. ‘Max, why didn’t you tell me about this?’

  ‘I tried to,’ he told her. ‘Rang the nick. They said you were out. What’s his name? Got a chip on his shoulder.’

  ‘Oh, Den Morrisey.’

  ‘The same. I guessed your situation was probably more fraught than mine. All the same, it’s odd she hasn’t called round. Must be back by now.’

  Jacquie shook her head. ‘No, Max,’ she said. ‘There was no car outside when I got back. She drives a clapped out Hyundai, right?’

  Maxwell nodded, though he had to confess car makes weren’t exactly his thing.

  ‘I just assumed she was out for the night, not that she’d been out for the whole bloody day as well.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been all that long,’ he reasoned.

  ‘Why not? What state was Nolan in when you found him?’

  ‘Happy as larry,’ he shrugged. ‘Full nappy, but then the little fella can poop for England, as we know, so that didn’t tell me much. There was water in his tray and a drop of the hard stuff – oh, wait a minute; that’s Metternich.’

  Jacquie pulled a face. It wasn’t the first time her husband had mixed the two up – son and heir and cat hair. He was a funny age – her mother had warned her, but Jacquie thought she knew better. The woman who was partner, mother and detective sergeant was on her feet. ‘I’m going round there,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Maxwell held her arm. ‘Darling, it’s nearly one o’clock and Mrs Troubridge won’t hear the bell.’

  ‘We’ve got a key – remember?’ she asked him.

  ‘If you walk in on her, she’ll proba
bly have a heart attack. Let it go. There’s nothing to be done tonight.’

  For a moment, Jacquie dithered. Then she relented. It had been a long day. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But first thing tomorrow, I’m round there.’

  First thing in the morning, Jacquie was round there. Like many old people, Mrs Troubridge didn’t actually sleep well, for all Maxwell had painted a picture of her dead to the world for the statutory eight hours. When Jacquie Carpenter had originally planned to storm her portals in the wee small hours of the morning, Mrs Troubridge was actually up playing patience in her conservatory. Now, as the sun climbed to the Heavens for another relentless, hosepipe ban day, she was doing what she did best, playing merry Hamlet with the convolvulus in her flower beds. She could have sworn she’d cleared this lot only yesterday.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ she waved a green-gloved hand at her neighbour. ‘Would you like some lavender?’

  ‘Thank you, no, Mrs Troubridge. Just some answers.’

  The old girl stopped in mid-prune. ‘Oh, how wonderful. Am I a suspect? I’ve always admired what the police do and a distaff policeperson living next door now, well, it’s a real bonus, isn’t it? I tell all my friends about you, you know.’

  Jacquie smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘No, it’s not an enquiry of that sort,’ she told her. ‘I was wondering if you’d seen Juanita at all?’

  ‘You’re the second person to ask me that,’ she said, cryptically, rather foolhardily tapping her nose with her secateurs.

  ‘Oh? Who was the first?’

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Mrs Troubridge confided. ‘Just yesterday.’

  ‘Quite,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘But did she come back last night? Perhaps after you’d gone to bed?’

  ‘No, dear,’ the old neighbour confided. ‘I’m sure I would have heard her. I don’t think her bed has been slept in, though I have to confess, it’s difficult to tell. She does her own laundry and so on. I don’t interfere.’

  ‘Did she say she was going anywhere, Mrs Troubridge?’ Jacquie asked. ‘Been called away suddenly, perhaps?’

  ‘No,’ the old girl frowned. ‘No, I’m sure I’d have remembered. Oh, can I have your dear little man today? Just until Juanita turns up? I’m sure she won’t be long.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Troubridge,’ Jacquie smiled. ‘You’re so kind, but I’m going to drop Nolan at a friend’s for the day. He’ll be fine. She’s got a girl about the same age.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Mrs Troubridge trilled, tottering off in search of more plant-life to kill.

  Jacquie doubled back home and dashed up the stairs to the second lounge, which they’d turned into a study. She checked her computer one more time in case an email had arrived from the wayward au pair. Nothing. Just a dazzling hotel offer in sunny Leighford. Jacquie couldn’t wait.

  ‘I’ve got him, Max,’ she called, lifting Nolan, plus bags and baggage, out of the nursery on the next floor up. He clung to her, looking loving and confused at the same time, as kids do until they’re about fourteen.

  ‘Is Pam all right about this?’ Maxwell emerged from the bathroom, his lower face a disturbing white with shaving cream. Nolan couldn’t remember his first Christmas. Perhaps Daddy was reinforcing the existence of Santa?

  ‘She’s fine,’ Jacquie told him. ‘We got on like a house on fire in the Maternity Unit. Look, I’ve no idea how today’s going to go. Pear-shaped if I know the first day of a murder enquiry. Can you get him on the way home?’

  ‘Of course,’ Maxwell came barrelling down the stairs, whirling the baby away from his mother and throwing him in the air. Nolan laughed hysterically every time. Maxwell rubbed noses with the boy. ‘So trusting, aren’t they?’ he grinned. ‘Little does he know I’m going to do that one day and just walk away.’

  She hit him with a box of nappy liners. ‘He thinks you’re joking,’ she said. And she took the boy back. ‘Come on, little baby boy, don’t let that horrid, nasty man hurt you.’

  Maxwell kissed Nolan on the head. ‘Be good, old man,’ he told him. ‘Do everything Auntie Pam tells you – persevere with the tinned macaroni cheese and remember, whatever little Zoë does,’ he lapsed into his Edward Fox out of The Go Between, ‘it’s never a lady’s fault. Ciao, bambino.’

  Jacquie’s eyes rolled skyward. ‘Robert de Niro’s waiting,’ she muttered, ‘talking Italian. You have a good day, Peter Maxwell.’

  ‘Likewise, half my soul,’ and he kissed her too.

  And on the fifth day, God created Friday. Surely, nowhere in His Great Plan, however, was Eight Eff. They had the collective IQ of the spider plant that had somehow snuck into Maxwell’s office, the one that Mrs B grudgingly dusted once a term whether it needed it or not. But at least they hadn’t yet started to smell. That unique privilege belonged exclusively to Year 9, when hormonal changes brought on a sour odour that was probably acceptable when their ancestors still hunted the cave bear. By Year 10, they’d discovered Lynx with its ability to stop asthmatics in their tracks and a certain equilibrium of pong had settled on their lives.

  So, it had to be admitted that Cromwell’s Irish policy left Eight Eff a little bewildered, but Maxwell’s impeccable Richard Harris gave it a bit of a lift and when he threatened to introduce more role play with him as the New Model Army and Eight Eff as the hapless inhabitants of Drogheda and Wexford, they sat up and took notice.

  He’d just settled down to put the latest Self Evaluation document to good use by rolling it up as a fly swat when Nursie popped her head round his office door. She closed it quickly. ‘Morning, Max.’

  Sylvia Matthews was a good looking woman in the mid-morning light. She wasn’t bad in any light, in fact, but Maxwell really loved her for her goss. She was that indispensable digger-out of unconsidered trifles that makes the world go round in secondary schools, and quite probably everywhere else. There was a time when she had loved Peter Maxwell too, not in the sense he meant it, but for real. But he’d been blissfully unaware, married to his job, his cat, his model soldiers, his bike and had been oddly distant in a way Sylvia had never quite fathomed. Then there was Jacquie for him, and Guy for her, and the moment had gone forever. Perhaps it was just as well…

  ‘Morning, Matron Mine. Anything untoward?’

  Maxwell and Sylvia Matthews went back a long way. He knew her moods as she knew his. She’d seen it all, heard it or occasionally done it herself. There wasn’t much she didn’t know about teenage kind. But today she looked a little rattled. ‘Steph Courtney,’ Sylvia said in hushed tones, perching on the arm of Maxwell’s indescribably uncomfortable L-shaped sofa, the one he’d half-inched from a Deputy Head, long gone, during a decorating spree some years back.

  Maxwell frowned, closing his eyes. ‘Verbal Cat Score 114. Non-Verbal 109. Predicted History Grade B with a following wind. Nice kid. I used to teach her dad.’

  ‘I’m sure all that is spot on, Max,’ the School Nurse told him. ‘But she’s outside now. And she’s sort of scared.’

  He looked across at her. ‘I don’t do Year Elevens, Nursie, you know that. Head of Sixth, that’s me. You know, Years Twelve and Thirteen. In September, I’ll be delighted to talk to her.’

  ‘Don’t be picky, Max,’ Sylvia scolded. ‘She’ll be Year Twelve as you say a couple of months’ time. And anyway, she asked for you. Says she’s seen a murder.’

  The Head of Sixth Form was suddenly all ears. ‘You’d better show her in,’ he said.

  Jim Astley had excelled himself. In times gone by, he’d have been taking advantage of the glorious weather to be up at the golf course, teeing-off with the County Set whose company he craved. Today, however, he did his job instead and got his head round how a man had died. Well, if truth be told, his game was a bit off these days. He was better at the old Nip and Tuck.

  It may have been brilliant sunshine out there, with children who should have been at school splashing happily in the warm ripples of Willow Bay, and the patrons of the Leighford Bowls Club at the other end of the town and the age
spectrum, gliding across matchless turf in their off-whites, dentures rattling in the gentle breeze, but in Jim Astley’s morgue, it was business as usual. Donald, a martyr to KFC and indeed any food that was fast, sat in a corner in his slightly snug white coat and noted down, for the record, what the great man was saying.

  ‘Caucasian male,’ Astley was peering down on the handiwork created by God, parents unknown, a killer and his own Y-shaped surgery. Bits of the Caucasian male lay in chrome vessels around the room, rather like a sanitised 13 Miller’s Court, the home of the luckless Mary Kelly when Jack the Ripper had finished with her back in the Autumn of Terror, 1888. Peter Maxwell was in Nursery School at the time, so at least he had an alibi for that one. ‘Age…’ Astley checked the teeth again and measured the thigh. Never do these things just once, his old mentor had told them. Do them as often as necessary to be sure. There’ll always be some bastard brief for the defence who’s paid to rattle you. ‘Forty to forty-five. Well-nourished to the point of obesity.’

  Donald bridled a little, but Astley was unaware. Donald had long ago realised that the clinical definition of obesity was ludicrously wrong – Victoria Beckham was a borderline case if you believed the stats. ‘We’ve got some old scarring on the forearms and legs. Childhood, most probably. Tree-climbing sort of thing; nothing sinister. Most of this later scarring on the legs is post-mortem. He was dragged over rough ground before being placed in the body bag.’ Astley stopped in mid-probe. ‘Has that gone to the lab, by the way?’

  ‘This morning,’ Donald assured him. ‘Usual courier.’

  ‘Good, good. Adenoids the size of walnuts. I don’t think he’d have won any public-speaking competitions. Cause of death…’ Astley was turning the bloated, blackened head from side to side. ‘Strangulation by ligature. Viz and to wit…’

  He waited for Donald’s response, ‘Er…silver crucifix. Also sent to the lab.’