Maxwell's Point

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Does he live with you?’ Jacquie asked. She was a mother too.

  ‘On and off,’ Annie shrugged. ‘As far as probation’s concerned, this is his domicile. In practice, fuck knows. I ain’t seen him for a couple of weeks. For all I know, somebody’s strangled him too.’

  ‘Never!’ Bill Tomlinson couldn’t believe it. ‘Wide Boy Taylor? Would you Adam and Eve it? Long overdue, mind. How long have you got here? Only the file’s thicker than President Bush.’

  The three of them were in the bowels of the police establishment in Winchester Road. Daylight had never penetrated this far below ground and rows and rows of constabulary shelving snaked away into the darkness. It was more or less an exact replica of Records at Leighford. Bill Tomlinson had been on Records now for three years, ever since his hip had gone in that warehouse collapse. No more chasing young tearaways for him. Instead, a leisurely limp down felony lane, reminiscing over the baddies of yesteryear, filing the young tearaways away for posterity. He didn’t know it, but Peter Maxwell had a similar set of files at Leighford High. And the malfeasance of each and every one of them was burned into his brain.

  ‘It’s all there,’ Tomlinson slid a large cardboard box across the desk. ‘One day I’ll get this lot on the system. Until then, welcome to the paperful office.’

  Jacquie let Benny get the hernia by hauling out the sheaves of paper. ‘Not Harold Shipman by another name, is he?’ the lad felt constrained to ask.

  ‘By the way,’ Tomlinson was already hobbling back into the pool of light. ‘If you take my advice, you’ll start with Jimmy the Snail.’

  The visitors looked blank.

  ‘James Doolan. Originally Irish riff-raff whose great-great-great-grandaddy built the London-Brighton railway, circa 1840 something. Jimmy himself specialises in GBH, lightly peppered with a bit of armed robbery.’

  ‘You think he’s our man?’ Jacquie asked.

  ‘Let’s put it this way,’ Tomlinson said. ‘Jimmy and Wide Boy were never exactly close. But there was a major falling out about a year ago. Jimmy said Wide Boy had crowded him on his particular turf, whisked away a couple of his likely lads for a job in Pompey. Apparently, it was all Jimmy’s idea and Wide Boy took the credit – and the cash, of course. ’Course, it’s all innuendo. We’ve got nothing concrete on either of them for that particular job. Even so, I’d start there.’

  He looked at the slightly built, freckled faced kid and the girl. ‘And I’d take some back-up.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Peter Maxwell didn’t take back-up anywhere. All he had was his wits, his guts, his heart on his sleeve and a long line in put-downs that would usually faze even the hardest low-life. And that Monday morning, as the temperature rose to an unbearable high, he was away with the lowest life possible – the Modern Languages Department at Leighford High.

  In the status-hungry Nineties, when that great educator Mr Blair had decided that specialism was the name of the game, Leighford High had applied for Language College Status. It hadn’t got it, partially because its language results were lower than whale shit and partially because the forms were filled in by Bernard Ryan, the Deputy Head, who had a Lower Second degree in Mediocrity from the University of Crapshire. So, to a man, the Modern Languages Department felt betrayed, let down and disappointed, and they were already curmudgeonly enough before all that.

  ‘Bonjour, bonjiorno, gutentag, how-the-hell-are-yuh?’ Peter Maxwell was wasted on the History floor. A class of Year Tens, already wilting in the heat, looked up from their computer screens, only barely understanding a quarter of what the Head of Sixth Form had just said. ‘Mr McConnell about?’

  The German assistant in front of him looked as vague as his kids. Resisting the urge to scream ‘Schnell! Schnell! Raus! Raus!’ and ‘Achtung! Jude!’ at him, Maxwell just said, ‘This way? Thank you so much, mein Herr.’

  Julian McConnell was a Scouser. Obviously realising one day that he had one of the least pleasant accents in the British isles, he’d taken to foreign languages – in his case, French – to improve his diction. It hadn’t worked and whole generations of old Leighford Highenas had merrily holidayed their way around Europe sounding like the Beatles-Meet-Thierry Henri.

  ‘Bitch of a day, Julianus,’ Maxwell commented. Posters around the walls of McConnell’s office assured Maxwell the Algarve was the place to be and that Tuscany was the cradle of civilization. It all seemed very unlikely now that summer was here in Leighford and the sun burned on the white-hot sand of Willow Bay and the gulls drooped in the heat. Come January, Maxwell might feel differently.

  ‘We’re honoured, Max,’ McConnell said with no hint of sincerity at all. ‘Come for some culture?’

  ‘Always,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Actually, I was looking for Carolina.’

  The Head of Modern Languages consulted a large timetable display on the wall next to him. ‘MFL Four,’ he said. ‘She’s in with Janet but I expect she can be spared. Want to know a Spanish swear-word?’

  ‘I was hoping to teach her some,’ Maxwell said, leaning over to McConnell and whispering. ‘Bit convent, isn’t she?’

  ‘Makes a rare treat these days. I confiscated a packet of condoms from a girl in Year Nine the other day.’

  Maxwell wagged a finger at him. ‘It’ll be your fault when the kid gets pregnant now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ McConnell scowled. ‘I know.’

  Janet Ferguson was a nice woman, but she had the classroom control of an axolotl. Had Headteacher James Diamond had any sense, however, he’d have hired Maxwell out to other departments to instil terror where it was needed. Hayley Whatserface froze when he swept into the room; Tom Toogood put down the chair he’d planned to hurl at Shaun Riley; Brendon Philips opened his book for the first time that lesson.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Ferguson,’ Maxwell beamed once the class had simmered down. ‘May I borrow Señorina Vasquez, por favor?’

  There was a low hoot from several of Ten Eff Three, impressed by their History teacher’s grasp of foreign. He winked at them. ‘And you thought I was just a pretty face, didn’t you, Tom?’

  Tom nodded. Two years of Mad Max had taught him that was the best policy. Señorina Vasquez was a mild, retiring person, lurking in the corner. She was pretty in an Andalusian sort of way, with shining black hair and dark eyes. Her nose let her down, but then, wasn’t that always the way? She could have been a model apart from that, but her disappointing nose had led her inexorably into teaching. You didn’t need a nose to teach, not any more.

  Today, however, she was singularly grateful to Señor Maxwell. Ten Eff Three first thing on a Monday morning was not her idea of a good time. She was secretly afraid of Señor Maxwell, because he was so clever and knew things about the history of her country that she didn’t. She recognised, however, that he was a perfect gentleman, even though he knew his hidalgos from his caballeros. Outside in the relative peace of the corridor, he accosted her.

  ‘Carolina, heart of al-Andalus, have you seen Juanita?’

  ‘Juanita?’ the girl repeated.

  ‘Juanita Reyes,’ Maxwell explained as though to someone in Year Eight. ‘My au pair.’

  Carolina was shaking her head. ‘No, Mr Maxwell. I have not seen her for…perhaps a week. We had a barbecue on the beach. Saturday before last. I have not seen her since then.’

  Maxwell looked perplexed. ‘This is getting odder by the day,’ he said. ‘My partner and I haven’t seen her either; nor has her landlady – you know, she lodges next door to us?’

  Carolina did. ‘I don’t know, Mr Maxwell. Have you asked Rodrigo?’

  ‘Rodrigo?’

  ‘He is…my opposition number at the Hampton High School.’

  ‘Opposition…?’ Realisation dawned. ‘Oh, opposite number. He’s an assistant?’

  ‘Si…er…yes. He and Juanita have been going out. Together.’

  ‘Have they? Well, many thanks, Carolina,’ he smiled. ‘You have a good day. Buenos dias. Muchas gracias.’

  ‘
De nada,’ she grinned and plunged reluctantly back into the mini-maelstrom that was Janet Ferguson’s Spanish lesson, hoping to hide in the corner again and that no one would notice.

  Littlehampton. The town that spawned a hundred Music Hall jokes. Little Nolan was still at Pam’s and Jacquie got time off for good behaviour. That was the thing about murder enquiries. It could run you ragged for twenty-four hours solid, then there was a curious lull and a waiting game when nothing seemed to happen. If Peter Maxwell was ever involved in a murder enquiry, he would have called it a Phoney War, but then, Peter Maxwell was never involved in a murder enquiry, was he?

  So it was the waiting time. And during it, Jacquie was as intrigued as her man by the disappearance of Juanita Reyes.

  ‘So, when is someone who has done a runner a missing person?’ Maxwell asked Jacquie as they buggered Bognor and drove east. It was still a glorious afternoon, the sun gilding the heavy greenery of summer as they skirted William Blake’s pretty little village of Felpham with its winding streets and flint-faced cottages and its tigers burning brightly in its forests – but only, of course, at night-time.

  ‘When somebody reports them missing,’ was Jacquie’s obvious answer. ‘And since you haven’t, as her employer, and as Mrs Troubridge hasn’t, as her landlady, that leaves us people in blue a little in limbo, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, no doubt she got the hump over something,’ Maxwell was rationalising as he wound down the window and let the wind frolic in his wanton curls. He was trying to think if he’d ever said anything disparaging in her presence about Pablo Picasso or El Cid.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jacquie nodded, overtaking on the A259 and raising a solitary finger to a vehicle too far out on the inside lane. ‘But I always found her quite a happy little soul.’

  ‘Seemed content with her lot in life, certainly,’ Maxwell nodded.

  Jacquie checked the Ka’s clock. ‘Are we going to make this, Max? It’s nearly half three.’

  ‘My dear girl, not every school in this great country of ours has a fatuous half-continental day. It’s like imperial measures the further East you go in Sussex. They might have named a resort not too far away after Reichsmarschall Goering, but the buggers didn’t actually land here, you know. No, it’s nine until four of the clock in Littlehampton and Juanita’s young hombre should still be at the chalkface for at least an hour after that, if he has any integrity at all. Tell me about Wide Boy Taylor.’

  Jacquie screwed up her face as far as her sunglasses permitted. ‘Shan’t,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you!’ He kicked the dashboard with hush-puppied feet. ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

  ‘I was waiting all last night for you to ask me,’ she told him. ‘You were unusually reticent, I thought.’ She looked arch over her glasses.

  ‘Hmm,’ he mused, rummaging in the glove compartment for an Everton mint. ‘I haven’t been well. Humbug?’

  She declined, taking the little road that led to Climping Sands. The great British public strolled there, as they did daily along Leighford Seafront, on their way to and from the beach. Lager louts were just emerging ready for a night on the tiles, stripped to the waist and chav-hatted against the fierceness of the sun. Young mums strolled with toddlers smothered in ice cream or grizzling because it was still too hot. One or two of the more adventurous elder-folk of Littlehampton had thrown caution to the winds by abandoning their ties and were staggering out like the mad dogs they were under Panamas of varying degrees of decomposition.

  ‘We’re waiting…’ Maxwell persisted.

  Jacquie tutted. ‘If I had a quid,’ she muttered.

  ‘Now, Woman Policeman,’ he scolded. ‘You know that when it comes to the sharp end of logic, some of your colleagues are a little…shall we say, blunt? If Henry Hall were here now…’

  ‘If Henry Hall were here now,’ she finished the sentence for him, ‘we certainly wouldn’t be having this conversation. And anyway, he’d be sitting in a baby seat.’

  They drove in silence for a while as the sails of the yachts slid past them in the stiffening breeze from the west and Littlehampton’s Museum threatened to bore everybody rigid with the town’s history. They were showing No! No! Nanette again at Rustington Theatre, so that was bound to be a sell-out.

  ‘I’ll have to draw my own conclusions, then,’ Maxwell was threatening.

  Jacquie knew when she was beaten. The father of her child, the mad old buffer, wouldn’t shut up unless she caved in. ‘Let’s just say we’re making our enquiries among the criminal fraternity.’

  ‘Ah, sort of su casa, mi casa.’ It was a perfect Marlon Brando, even without the cotton wool. ‘The family that slays together sort of thing.’

  ‘Just small time villains smacking each other,’ Jacquie told him. ‘The thing of it is, why Leighford and why Dead Man’s Point?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Well…is it up here?’

  ‘Sorry, darling.’ He tried to find the relevant page in the Gazetteer. First left. Up to the traffic lights, then I think it’s a right. I haven’t been here for ages.’

  Jacquie complied. ‘David Taylor was a Londoner by birth – it’s all there in his extensive rap sheet in Winchester Road records. But he’d lived in Brighton since he was a boy. Got in with the local low life, bit of drugs, bit of robbery. Never afraid to deliver a smacking where he felt one was due. No known link with Leighford.’

  ‘You don’t shit on your own doorstep,’ Maxwell managed around the slurp on the Everton mint.

  ‘That’s true,’ Jacquie said. ‘But think of the logistics, Max. OK, so you want a corpse as far away from the killing grounds as you can, to divert suspicion. But then, you’ve got to get it across nearly fifty miles of open country.’

  ‘Ever heard of car boots, dear heart?’ Maxwell cocked an accusatory eyebrow at her. ‘Ever since Maria Bonetti, they’ve done a good line in stuffing bodies into trunks in Brighton.’

  ‘All right,’ Jacquie conceded. ‘Boots, body bags. We know he died indoors, so this was no moonlight hit at a romantic spot. One way rides, underworld style, usually end by roadsides or in a handy ditch somewhere. Whoever topped Taylor would have had to reclothe him – remember he was naked when he was killed – wrap him up in polythene, trundle him into a car boot – the man weighed the best part of sixteen stone by the way – drive to Dead Man’s Point, dig a man-sized hole and drive back, presumably under cover of darkness.’

  ‘Right,’ Maxwell was thinking it through with her. ‘So does chummy know the Point? Or does he just happen upon it?’

  ‘It’s off the beaten track,’ Jacquie reminded him. ‘The A259 is…what…a couple of miles away. Turn left at Star Rock and head along Ringer’s Hill.’

  ‘Even so,’ Maxwell reasoned. ‘He may have been cruising the area and thought the Point looked promising.’

  ‘Sandy soil,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘Easy to dig.’

  ‘But infuriating.’ Maxwell winced as the mint shattered between his molars. ‘You and I were never seaside babies, but I do remember beach moments as a kid. As soon as you dug a hole, the sand just fell in if it was dry. If it was wet, it filled with water. Played merry Hamlet with many of my more earnest attempts at Motte and Bailey, I can tell you.’

  Jacquie saw the sign to Hampton School ahead and flicked the indicator. ‘So what do you conclude, Sherlock?’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to get much water-logging fifty feet above sea level,’ he pointed out. ‘But you will get sand-fall.’

  ‘So…either…’ Jacquie was trying to guess which way Maxwell’s mind was going.

  ‘So either chummy wasn’t very good at this and just wanted shot of the body – in which case, as you say, just drop him in a ditch. Or…’

  The Ka purred onto Hampton’s tarmac, edging its way past the usual motley collection of staff vehicles. ‘Or?’ she was looking for a space.

  ‘Or the Point has some significance for the dead man or his killer that we don’t yet understand.’r />
  ‘I’m sorry, miss. You can’t park there.’ A voice through the window broke Maxwell’s thought process.

  Jacquie flashed her warrant card to the jobsworth who stood scowling back at her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Maxwell reached across her. ‘Are you the car park attendant?’

  ‘Sort of,’ the scowler grunted. ‘And crossing patrol attendant.’

  ‘I should have thought Hampton School would have better spent its money on a few books,’ he said and Jacquie flicked her window closed.

  The car park attendant wandered away, muttering. He had a position of responsibility, he did. Who did they think they were? Coppers! Come to think of it, he was doing their job for them. He didn’t have to do this, you know. He had a City and Guilds in pneumatic welding.

  ‘If you hadn’t been quite so offensive, Max,’ Jacquie scolded, ‘he might have told us where the Modern Languages Department was.’

  ‘Me?’ he swallowed the Everton mint in disbelief. ‘It was you flashing at him like that that scared him off. Anyway,’ he eased himself out of the passenger seat, grateful to be stretching his legs at last. ‘Trust me, lady, I’m a teacher. Seen one bog-standard comprehensive, seen them all. This way.’

  They strode across the building’s frontage. Maxwell was right. Seen one, seen ’em all. Hampton was clearly built by the same architect who built Leighford, a sort of idiot savant but without the savant. It was two tower blocks, probably not the sort of thing J R R Tolkein had in mind when he was writing, all glass that sweltered in the July sun. Open a window and the wind whips open the venetian blinds, those useless gadgets for which the Venetians should be ashamed of themselves. Close them, and a class of thirty can suffocate in three minutes.