Maxwell's Point

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Great, thanks.’ She sipped her coffee, and as if reading his mind, added, ‘Social Sciences, Exeter.’

  ‘Any exams or anything?’

  Her face contorted. ‘Oh, yes. They were OK, though.’

  Peter Maxwell had spent the best part of seven years persuading Louise Bedford not to say ‘OK’. After all, it was American. And hadn’t that very same Peter Maxwell made it perfectly clear that we had fought a war with the Colonies so that we’d never have to hear – or use – that kind of language again? Was it all for nothing? What kind of education were they getting at university these days?

  ‘I hate to mention the subject,’ he said, ‘but John…’

  ‘Yes,’ her face lit up at the mention of his name. ‘We’re still together and he’s lovely.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Maxwell was genuinely pleased. He still remembered his first year of teaching, when Mr Gladstone was Prime Minister and Boy Scouts still helped old ladies across roads – whether they wanted to go or not – he’d raised just the same question with a couple who had been an item for years. ‘Going to the same place, are you?’ the callow youth had asked. The lad had shaken his head and the girl had run out of the room crying. He hadn’t risked it since, but sensed he was on safer ground with John and Louise.

  ‘I understand the pair of you had a rather unpleasant experience last night.’

  Louise’s face fell. The eyes, shining with happiness, glanced down to her coffee cup. ‘Who told you?’ she asked.

  ‘A little bird.’ He licked the chocolate sauce off his spoon.

  Her eyes were on him again. ‘We…we found a body,’ she said softly. She’d never been able to lie to Mad Max. Not when she hadn’t done her homework in Year Ten; not when she and John had been found canoodling in the Textiles Stock Cupboard.

  ‘Louise,’ Maxwell reached out and brushed her hand. ‘Look, you and I go back a long while, yes?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I owe you this much,’ he said. ‘I didn’t just happen to be here this afternoon.’

  A flicker passed across her face. She suddenly didn’t understand. There was something about her Mr Maxwell now. An intensity she hadn’t seen before. And it scared her, just a little.

  ‘My narks in Year 13 told me you worked here. I wanted a chat.’

  ‘About the body?’

  He nodded.

  Louise looked alarmed, her eyes flicking left and right. When she was an adolescent with a crush on ‘sir’, she’d have given anything to have him hold her hand as he was now. Now, she wished he’d go away. Leave her alone.

  ‘The Gardens,’ Maxwell said. ‘Do you go there often? You and John?’

  ‘We used to,’ she said. ‘It’s sort of…our place. Do you know what I mean?’

  Maxwell did.

  ‘Do you know who the man was?’ he asked. ‘The dead man?’

  A family came in at that moment, all whining children and buckets and spades.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she told him. ‘I’ve got to serve people.’

  ‘“To serve them all my days”,’ Maxwell quoted. ‘Louise, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to frighten you. And I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. But two men have died in Leighford in the last week.’

  ‘I’ve talked to the police,’ she said, half out of her seat.

  ‘I know,’ he nodded. ‘But sometimes the police aren’t the people who listen best. Sometimes, they don’t hear things. Do you understand?’

  Louise was on her feet now, ‘No, Mr Maxwell,’ she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t understand. And I don’t know anything. Now, please, I must get back to work.’

  And she’d gone, crashing through the swing doors into the kitchen. And Peter Maxwell knew by the heaving of her shoulders that he’d made the girl cry.

  ‘To whom am I talking?’

  ‘Aaron Felton, Deputy Head.’

  ‘Aaron, you old bastard. Peter Maxwell.’

  ‘Max. How’s it hanging?’

  Maxwell resisted the old Jim Carrey joke from Liar! Liar! and offered an alternative. ‘Fine, thanks.’ Yes, all right – it needed work. ‘I’ve been hearing odd things about your Rodrigo Mendoza.’

  Time for Aaron Felton to resist jokes and he did it manfully. ‘Oh?’

  ‘I understand he’s gone missing.’

  ‘Missing? Who told you that?’

  ‘A little bird.’

  ‘Well…come to think of it,’ Hampton’s Deputy said, ‘he did go walkabout for a couple of days. Went down, appropriately enough, with Montezuma’s Revenge. Apparently, he was talking on the big white telephone for several hours at a time.’

  ‘Canteen food?’ Maxwell guessed.

  ‘What else? That’s the great thing about Healthy Schools. We haven’t all got to suffer Jamie Bloody Oliver. Do you know Rodrigo, then?’

  ‘We’ve met,’ Maxwell said. ‘In the line of duty.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s on site at the moment. Let’s see…’ There was a rustling of paper as the man tried to relocate his desk top. ‘No, you’ve missed him. He’s gone with a trip to Chessington – a special thank you to Year Nine for their Recycling efforts. Was it always like this, Max? When you were a teacher?’

  ‘You cheeky bugger,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘No, it was stand up straight and put your hands down your trousers in my day. Recycling was going home from school. I don’t envy you young people with another thirty-odd years to go in the business.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Felton groaned weakly and hung up.

  Maxwell was already striding purposefully towards the Modern Languages Block.

  A pall of smoke hung over Henry Hall’s Incident Room. At the moment he was merely using the Nick, but many more enquiries and he’d either have to have an extension built or move out, commandeering schools and libraries and cinemas and youth clubs as he had in the past.

  This was Day Eight of the Taylor murder and Day Three of the Henderson case. There was that rise in tension, that indefinable something that teetered on panic. For now, everybody was calm, in check, going about their business. But the smoking had increased, spilling over into areas strictly beyond the agreed limits of the Incident Room. The black coffee drinking almost doubled. There was less patience with computers – you could tell that by the noise of rattle on the keys; fingers stabbing harder and the greater incidence of sucked-in breath and the immortal words ‘For shit’s sake!’ And people were getting snappier with each other; never a good sign. One murder gave you headaches. Two doubled the chance of finding the killer, if the killer was singular; but it also doubled the stress. The Press were already breathing down the guv’nor’s neck. The beady eye of the Chief Constable was fully on the Incident Room at Leighford Nick.

  ‘Links, people,’ Henry Hall was lolling against his desk, the coastal map on the PowerPoint behind him.

  ‘Distance.’ Sheila Kindling must be bucking for promotion, biro behind her ear.

  ‘Go on.’

  The DC smoothed down her skirt before she waddled to the front. In her first week as a detective, she’d got the damn thing caught up in her knickers, with the inevitable result. No wolf whistles this time; no ‘get ’em off, darling,’ so she assumed all was well. She just remembered to whip the biro off her head.

  ‘If we go by road from Dead Man’s Point to the Gardens, that’s the best part of two miles. But by the coastal path, much shorter. That’s how it was done.’

  ‘Why?’ George Bronson wasn’t convinced.

  ‘How busy is the path?’ Hall still wanted to know. ‘Anybody followed up on this?’

  Benny Palister had. ‘The National Parks Authority did a survey in the area two years ago. The average age of a coastal path walker is fifty-three. There were six accidents in 2004 and three examples of litigation costing the taxpayer…’

  ‘Benny,’ Hall cut in softly, rather like the Policeman’s Excuse Me. ‘Is this going anywhere?’

  ‘Sorry, guv. It’s all they’ve got.’

  ‘Righ
t,’ Hall sighed. ‘So we’re back to common sense. Timings. Jacquie?’

  ‘We’ve nothing conclusive on Taylor, guv,’ she said. ‘We can only assume he was buried after dark since broad daylight would be a little risky.’

  ‘And Henderson?’

  ‘He must have been dumped in the bushes at dusk.’ Geoff Hare was stabbing out his fag. ‘Same reason.’

  ‘Why not night?’ Jacquie checked him.

  ‘That’s the big one, people,’ Hall nodded. ‘And we’re going round in circles on this.’

  ‘Perhaps our boy’s got a death wish. Wants to be caught.’

  It wouldn’t be the first time. Jacquie knew it. Hall knew it. Benny Palister knew it now, although he didn’t before. Shrewd lad was Benny; he watched his elders and betters and he learnt. Peter Maxwell would have been proud of him.

  ‘He could give himself up,’ Hare shrugged. ‘Save us all a bloody job.’

  ‘Ah, but then there’d be no fun,’ Bronson grinned. ‘No sense of challenge. And think of the overtime you’d be losing.’

  Sniggers all round. Geoff Hare was the Scrooge of Leighford Nick. The sort of bloke who checks the collection plate in church for signs of stolen goods, then passes it on.

  ‘Links,’ Hall was nothing if not persistent.

  ‘Bing-go!’ Sheila Kindling had gone back to her seat now, her attempt to trace the trajectory of the killer having been somewhat sidelined. Now her arm was in the air, like a kid desperate for a pee. Bronson and Hare were unimpressed. Women on the Force, sure, but why couldn’t they all be like Jacquie Carpenter? But all eyes were on the girl, so presumably she was happy enough, pen behind her ear again. ‘Gerald Henderson did a building job last year – in Brighton.’

  ‘And?’ Hall was waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  ‘His client was one James Doolan.’

  ‘Jimmy the Snail,’ somebody muttered. Somebody else whistled. Everybody was secretly impressed. Sheila tried not to preen too much.

  ‘Well done,’ Hall said. ‘Did you talk to Mrs Henderson about this…George?’

  ‘Didn’t know about it then, guv,’ the DI had to admit, a little shamefaced. ‘We can go back.’

  ‘Jacquie, you do it. Can you get there this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, guv.’ She didn’t even look at her watch. This was the first breakthrough they’d had and everybody knew it.

  ‘Good. What’s the lab got for us, Geoff?’

  Hare was well into his next ciggie, but he waited for the smoke to clear from his eyes first. ‘The lab says Taylor was killed in a vehicle, guv.’

  One or two people in the room hadn’t got the goss on that yet, so the murmurs rippled like the sunlight shafts between the venetian blind slats.

  ‘And he was naked?’ Hall checked.

  ‘Astley thinks he was naked at the time of death, yes.’

  ‘Naked in a car.’ Hall was underlining it for everybody.

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ George Bronson crowed. He’d been to a Language College. ‘Assuming femmes were Taylor’s thing.’

  ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing,’ Hall said. ‘What’s the lab got on the car?’

  ‘His own, guv. Merc. Clapped out,’ Hare told him. ‘Either that or the fibres came from another vehicle of the same age and make.’

  ‘What are the odds?’ somebody muttered.

  ‘All right.’ Hall was piecing it together. ‘So let’s assume Wide Boy was enjoying a little R and R in the back of his car…’

  ‘Front, guv,’ Jacquie said.

  ‘Don’t tell me there’s a difference between the fibres of back and front car seats.’ Hare couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I’m not telling you anything of the sort, Geoffrey.’ Jacquie could bridle for England when the mood took her. ‘Astley now thinks Taylor was strangled from behind, not from the side. And with quite a bit of leverage involved. So unless our man was sitting with the nodding dog on the shelf, Wide Boy was sitting in the front.’

  Whistles and a ripple of applause. Collapse of stout sergeant.

  ‘Anything similar on Henderson?’ Hall brought the moment to a halt.

  ‘Definitely killed in his clothes, guv,’ Hare said. ‘The blood pattern is very distinct. Shirt, trousers. And he was standing up.’

  ‘Attack from the front?’ Hall’s mind was focusing, but it was George Bronson who got there first.

  ‘We’re talking about two different killers, surely.’

  ‘Go on, George.’

  ‘Taylor is killed, naked, in his car, from behind, using a ligature – some instrument inserted in the loop of his crucifix until life was extinct. Henderson, fully clothed, standing up, so presumably not in a car, by six stabs of a knife. Different MO, different scenario, different direction. Hey presto, two killers.’

  ‘Yet,’ Hall reminded them, ‘two middle-aged men, bodies found a stone’s throw apart. And they knew each other. Jacquie, get your wheels out as The Sweeney taught us to say. In the meantime, people, keep probing. I want the last known movements of both men on my system by chucking out time. Clear?’

  It was.

  ‘No, it wasn’t just that,’ Maxwell was sprawled on his settee, getting a Southern Comfort down his neck. ‘No, Louise Bedford was definitely rattled.’

  ‘Can you wonder at it?’ Jacquie asked him, sipping her more modest red wine. ‘Crusty old fart of a teacher she hasn’t seen for the best part of a year comes the heavy and starts asking about dead bodies. I’d run a mile.’

  ‘Thanks, heart of darkness,’ he grunted. ‘And less of the old, if you don’t mind. I can still give Mr Burns a run for his money. Doh!’ and he slapped his head in a perfect Homer Simpson.

  ‘You were out of line, Max,’ she shook her head. ‘What did you hope to learn?’

  ‘There you have me,’ Maxwell confessed, watching the lamplight glow in the clear amber of the glass. ‘You and I, angel face, belong to that exclusive and slightly shell-shocked club called The People Who’ve Stumbled On Bodies. You in your line of work. And me? Well, just lucky, I guess. Louise has joined that club now. There’s no doubt about it – you’re never the same again.’

  ‘But she’d already had a grilling, Max,’ Jacquie told him. ‘Me, the first uniform at the scene, Henry Hall. She’d had a bellyful on the night in question. She didn’t need you adding to it all.’

  Maxwell looked up at her. ‘Do I sense a little bit of needle here, Woman Policeman? What is this? All girls together?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that, Max.’ She finished her drink. ‘It’s that old problem of yours, not being able to keep your nose out.’

  It was her turn to look at him. She put the glass down and coiled herself on the arm of the settee, cradling his neck. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I know it’s difficult. You and Louise go back a long way. Hell, you and I go back about the same time – though hopefully in a rather different capacity.’ She raised an eyebrow at him and they both laughed.

  ‘Body language,’ Maxwell hugged her with his non-glass-holding hand. ‘That’s what it’s all about. All right, you’re right of course, I shouldn’t have gone snooping. But having done it, I somehow opened a can of worms. No doubt she was shaken by the whole thing and no doubt, she didn’t want to relive it. But there was something more. I can’t explain it.’

  ‘Max,’ Jacquie was firm. ‘Promise me you’ll stay away from the kid. It’s none of your business and you’ll only get yourself into trouble. It’s been touch and go so far, but one day Henry Hall is going to reach that distant end of his tether and you won’t know what day it is. I just don’t want that to happen, sweetheart. Not to you. ’Cos,’ she kissed him on the forehead, ‘if it happens to you, it happens to me too.’

  ‘Well, there it is, Count. The official kiss off from my good lady partner. Tears and fears from a former student who used to be Little Miss Cheerful. Two men on a dead man’s point. Yo ho ho and a barrel of laughs.’

  Maxwell caught the narrowed yellow eyes in the gloom o
f his Inner Sanctum at the top of the stairs. That and the single sweep of the tail, like a car’s rear wiper on intermittent. ‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘Not exactly a moment of high comedy, is it? And I have done a better Robert Newton in my time.’

  He hung the pillbox on its familiar peg, squeezing his tired eyes. It had been a long academic year and Mr Retirement was staring him in the face.

  ‘Do you know the Point at all, Count? Bit far for your nightly range, isn’t it? Great field mice out that way, though, I shouldn’t wonder. No, it’s no good.’ He switched off his modeller’s lamp. ‘I’ll just have to research it myself. Oh shit!’ and he saw extra stars as he caught his temple a nasty one on the way out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In the beginning, God created librarians. It was on the third day, between plants bearing seeds of their kind and trees bearing fruits, all the vegetable kingdom in one place. It gave them all a rather superior air, as if they were the Chosen People. Time was when they’d behaved like Kipling’s Silent People, pursing their lips behind upright fingers if somebody so much as sniffed. Maxwell could accept all that – it was, after all, part of the Old England of regular, multiple postal deliveries, little blue sachets of salt in crisps and aircraft going bang when they hurtled through the sound barrier. What Maxwell could not accept, however, was the supine dumbing down, the meek acceptance that nobody read books any more. So now, the Chosen People allowed videos and DVDs on the shelves and the Dewey Decimal Sytem began with Arnie Schwarzenegger. Not that Maxwell objected to films – they were his lifelong interest, but you shouldn’t be able to borrow them from a book depository. He might as well go to his local undertaker’s to watch one, or perhaps his beautiful launderette. Come to think of it, it wasn’t that beautiful the last time he’d looked.

  Edna Roxbury saw it differently. She looked not unlike Elsa Lanchester in the Bride of Dracula, with a retroussée nose and wild, grey-streaked hair. She definitely saw herself as one of the Elect, that band of custodians of culture that had the key to the secret garden. And she noticed Peter Maxwell sneaking in, appropriately enough, past the gardening section.