by M. J. Trow
Metternich sort of suspected it, but he’d been out foraging while Maxwell, Jacquie and Nolan had tea and, to be honest, he was as mystified by the adults’ zicker zickering as the little pink kid was. Then, of course, it was the Sunday evening hunt and whatever the Labour Party said, there were just some traditions it was impossible to destroy, so that had gone ahead as planned. So…third victim? Say on.
‘One Benjamin Lemon,’ Maxwell was pouring himself an unseemly large Southern Comfort. ‘Known to his friends as Benji and the world of online auctioneering as zest1967. What was I doing in that year, I hear you ask?’ He caught the cat’s smouldering eye. ‘Better you don’t ask. Friend Lemon was in to kinky sex, Count. Well, you and I are men of the world, so I can talk to you. I’ll be in a home before Nolan and I can have this sort of conversation. Bondage they used to call it down Egypt way a long long time ago. Shackles, manacles, training helmets. Apparently, young Benji was into all that, but his ex-wife wasn’t, and, much more to the point, Count, who else wasn’t, hmm? Who else did the late Lemon offend by posing a position too far? Because you see,’ he took a swig of the amber nectar, ‘whoever it was probably pushed the noxious bastard off a cliff. I wonder how he liked them apples.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Monday. A day like any other. Maxwell, along with another seventy-plus staff and not a few kids, was counting down the days. A week to go before the hols were here and they’d all throw their satchels and blazers and caps into the Leigh and go skinny-dipping. Oh, but that was then, the dear, dead days of pooh sticks and candyfloss. The kids knew perfectly well that these days teachers just climbed into cupboards and waited there until September.
But this wasn’t a day like any other. It was the day that Peter Maxwell’s world fell in. And it fell in further because this was not the first time. A tribunal awaited him in the Head’s office shortly after Lesson Three. Maxwell knew tribunals like this; he’d faced them historically all his life. Oliver Cromwell, all warts and piety, asking a little boy on a stool when he’d last seen his father. Sweaty, drunken revolutionaries in striped trousers and cockades spitting at the aristos who had lorded it over them for centuries. Some Commissar in an outsize peaked cap presiding over one of dear old Uncle Joe’s show trials. And, once before, he’d faced it for real…
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Max.’ James Diamond had been here before too. Same bloke, same potential reason, but this time, there was a crucial, yawning difference. ‘A complaint has been made against you by a member of the public.’
When this happens to teachers, a thousand images flash through their brains. The Mail on Sunday and the News of the World are full of such stories every week – a dedicated man’s/woman’s life wrecked by a malicious child who cannot be named for legal reasons; or ‘Filthy Pervert Touched My Princess’; you’d think the Mail could write more sophisticated headlines by now. So what was this one? Tall Chloe being asked to surrender her mobile phone? Jack ‘Sam Peckinpah’ Loach being restrained from hurling a bantamweight friend through the window? Ranjit Singh being told that the Nana Sahib who massacred white women and children in the house at Cawnpore wasn’t a very nice man? No doubt, the Headmaster would explain, at which point Maxwell would defend himself with the Clarence Darrowesque style for which he was famous and wipe the self-satisfied smirk off Bernard Ryan’s face for ever.
‘Oh?’ It was as good a response as any other.
‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Max,’ Diamond was clearly having difficulty with this. ‘You have been seen behaving in an inappropriate manner with two students in Year 11.’
‘I have?’ Maxwell was incredulous. All right, he came clean in his own mind, he had put a headlock on Jack Loach, but he probably saved a child’s life as a result. But when he’d looked last, Jack Loach was one Year 11 student, not two. Unless of course, the schizophrenia was getting worse…
‘Mr Maxwell.’ The Chair of Governors was less of a shit than his predecessor, but pomposity was his middle name. He was a large man, was Martin Inkester, with thick glasses and a blotchy forehead in the nearly midday heat. James Diamond had switched off the fan in his office and, for obvious reasons, his windows were closed. No point in letting half Year Eight know the state of play. ‘Mr Maxwell, do you understand the severity of the charges?’
‘If you could be a little more precise as to the nature of the charges, Mr Inkester, I may be able to assess their severity.’
Inkester shuffled the papers in front of him. ‘I note that you were suspended some years ago.’
‘I was,’ Maxwell said. ‘On trumped-up charges that should never have seen the light of day. If I may make the comment, Headmaster, you were a little premature then and you are, no doubt, equally premature now.’ He glowered at Diamond. ‘I was going to say do you learn nothing from history? But of course you don’t; you’re a biologist.’
‘However trumped up those charges may have been,’ Inkester’s line remained firm, ‘these seem of a different nature.’ He held up a letter. ‘With your permission, Head.’
Diamond nodded. Maxwell hadn’t seen the man look this drained in months, not since the last Ofsted, in fact; although the unexpected arrival of the Auditor out of the blue pulled him up with something of a jolt.
‘“I was walking on the patch of Common known as The Dam yesterday,”’ Inkester quoted the letter, ‘“when I noticed a middle-aged man in conversation with two girls. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but these days you read such stories so I thought I should investigate. As I got closer, I realised that he had his hand up both girls’ skirts and had exposed himself. When I attempted to protect the girls by remonstrating with him, he told me not to interfere, claiming they were his daughters and he could do what he liked with them. I happen to know who this man is as I have seen his face in photographs in the local paper. I believe him to be a Mr Maxwell, a teacher at your school. The girls were enormously grateful to me and took the opportunity of my intervention to get away. I am sorry to have to burden you with such a sordid revelation, but felt that you, as a person of responsibility in the local community, should take the necessary action against this sad and possibly highly dangerous man. Yours sincerely…” Is that precise enough for you, Mr Maxwell?’
‘No,’ the Head of Sixth Form answered. ‘I’d like the name, please.’ He leaned forward to Inkester. ‘You see, I tend to doubt the man’s sincerity.’
‘Max,’ Diamond intervened, ‘Where were you on Saturday?’
‘At home,’ Maxwell said. ‘And here…and at The Dam.’
Diamond and Inkester exchanged looks.
‘What were you doing here, Mr Maxwell?’ the Chair of Governors asked.
‘Watching the auditions for the forthcoming production.’
‘Why?’ Bernard Ryan spoke for the first time.
‘Why not, Bernard?’ Maxwell smiled sweetly. ‘I take an interest in all that goes on at Leighford. If you’d looked closely, you’d have seen me cheering on the soccer team last season; in April, God help me, I even went with Year Seven to Chessington World of Adventures. I don’t think I saw you on any of those occasions.’
‘Was there any other reason, Max?’ Diamond asked.
A rock. And a hard place. That was where Maxwell was now. That was where he’d been all his working life. ‘I wanted to talk to Stephanie Courtney,’ he said.
Another exchange of glances.
‘Why, Max?’ Diamond was at his most obsequious. He was turning, with astonishing speed, into Uriah Heep.
Maxwell straightened in his chair. If he was going to die like Edith Cavell, he could sit upright like her too. ‘I can’t tell you that, Headmaster.’
‘Why not?’ Ryan went straight for the jugular.
Maxwell’s look was one of utter contempt. ‘I’d be betraying a confidence,’ he said levelly.
‘You went with this girl…this Stephanie Courtney…to The Dam.’ Inkester wanted to establish a few facts. After all, it wasn’t looking too good for
Maxwell at the moment.
‘No.’
‘No?’ The tribunal were confused, heads turning in all directions. ‘But you said…’
‘I said I was at The Dam,’ Maxwell corrected the Chair of Governors – not for the first time in the career of either of them. ‘I didn’t say Stephanie was.’
‘You deny it then?’ Inkester shook the incriminating letter at Maxwell.
‘Absolutely,’ he said.
‘You were not there with the girl?’
‘I was there with the girl.’
‘For God’s sake, Max,’ Diamond exploded. ‘Stop playing your bloody silly games. We’re not just looking at the end of your career here, we’re looking at a custodial sentence. And I’m sure you know better than I do what happens to child molesters in prison.’
‘And where swallows go in the winter; yes, Headmaster, I do.’
‘So, please,’ Diamond begged. ‘Tell us what happened.’
‘I don’t think I should say anything more until I see my solicitor.’
‘Do you have a solicitor?’ Inkester asked. ‘Do you need one?’
‘Two very different questions, Chair,’ Maxwell said. ‘Let me answer them with the same answer. Do bears shit in the woods?’
Peter Maxwell saw himself out, not just of James Diamond’s office, but of Leighford High School. He only had one more lesson to teach, so Thingee who does the cover was told to sort it out for him. He was on full pay until this wretched business could be resolved. But he was warned it might take days or weeks or even months depending on whether the parents of the girls in question chose to press charges.
‘Look after Tarantula for me,’ he asked Helen Maitland, spraying his bedraggled spider plant one last time.
‘Max…’ The woman looked numbed.
‘Not now, Helen,’ he sighed. ‘And don’t worry. I’ll be back.’ It was a perfect Arnie Schwarzenegger.
He toyed, as he walked along the corridor towards the bike sheds, with calling in on Sylvia Matthews at the school’s MRSA centre, but he thought better of it. It was Sylvia who had borne the brunt of things the last time he’d handed in his gun and shield; she didn’t need that again.
‘Bad luck, Max,’ he heard as he reached the front steps. He didn’t need to turn because he knew the acid tone, even before he heard the hissing of the snakes coiling in her hair. He, who’d just handed in his shield to Legs Diamond. Then, an odd thought occurred to him.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘How did the concerned member of the public who wrote that charming letter know that Stephanie Courtney was in Year 11?’
Dierdre Lessing stood tall and angular at the top of the steps, like Boudicca without a cause, like some ghastly remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. ‘Odd how these things happen, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It’s been a real pleasure working with you.’
‘Max, are you all right?’ Jacquie’s voice came and went on her mobile. ‘I’m coming home.’
‘No, no.’ Maxwell was in his lounge, his feet up, his cycle clips, bow tie and porkpie hat lying across the carpet as though washed up by a tsunami. ‘No, darling, I’m fine, really. Bit of a sense of freedom, actually. I can get things done.’
‘What things?’ Jacquie Carpenter hadn’t really known Peter Maxwell the last time he’d been in this situation. But she’d known a teacher in Worthing who’d been accused of grossly inappropriate behaviour. And he’d hanged himself shortly before his hearing was due. Not of course, that Peter Maxwell would even consider anything like that… But even so.
‘Oh, this and that,’ he told her. ‘That bloody lawnmower for a start. And, hey, how about a lick of paint in the kitchen?’
‘Wild orchid,’ she reminded him. At least with her man up a ladder, she’d know where he was.
‘Machiavelli Mauve,’ he insisted.
‘There’s no such colour,’ he heard her say, on the edge of her mobile range as she was now.
‘That’s what I’ll do, then,’ he chuckled. ‘I’ll invent it. Make a fortune. I’ve had enough of teaching, anyway. Ninety-five years – it’s enough for anybody.’
‘Max,’ Jacquie said, serious now after the brittle laughter. ‘You could collect Nolan from Pam’s.’
Silence.
Then, ‘Yes. Yes, I could.’
A new murder throws up new hope. At first, it’s ‘God, not another one’, and cries of ineptitude on the part of the police; what are people paying their taxes for? Then it’s the more sobering prospects – and this gives new ammunition, a fresh start; and every time chummy carries out another one, it increases the chances of his being caught.
‘Benji Lemon.’ Henry Hall was in his shirtsleeves this sticky end of Monday, not in his usual position of out front, his whole team before him, but sitting with them, watching intently as the now familiar faces flashed onto the screen from the PowerPoint. ‘Links to the other two victims?’
‘None known, guv,’ Geoff Hare said. ‘We’ve established that Henderson did a building job for Taylor, but that doesn’t tell us why Taylor was found in Leighford.’
‘Did either Henderson or Taylor buy anything from Lemon?’ Hall asked. ‘On eBay?’
‘We’re still looking into that, guv,’ Benji Palister told everybody. ‘He’s been trading since the thing began so there’s a lot of clients to get through. Nothing so far, though.’
‘Right,’ Hall got up and found his coffee. ‘Lights, Tom.’
The flashing neon positively hurt after the darkness of the PowerPoint. Jacquie Carpenter felt like an old yak. Her blouse was clinging to her like rubber and she didn’t want to know where her tights top had risen to, inextricably linked with her other bits and pieces as it was. The fans had long ago failed to move the warm air anywhere and Hall was secretly regretting permitting smoking – each fag-end seemed to exude a few thousand joules.
‘What do we know about Benji Lemon, apart from his auction habit, I mean?’
‘Kinky sex, guv,’ Geoff Hare volunteered.
‘Is that an offer, Geoffrey?’ George Bronson sniggered. ‘Shall we leave you boys alone together?’ There was tired laughter all round.
‘Relationships?’ Hall ignored it.
‘None that we know of,’ Jacquie came in. ‘Sheila and I talked to his ex. Nice woman, glad to be rid of him.’
‘Could the neighbours shed any light?’ Hall wanted to know.
‘Didn’t seem to be anyone long term,’ Bronson checked his notes. ‘But Ingleneuk is a big place, set back from the road and mostly surrounded by a high wall. It’s not likely anyone would be seen if Lemon didn’t want them to be.’
‘No complaints?’ Hall asked. ‘From outraged girlfriends? Hookers? Anybody expecting a night of torrid romance that turned into something else?’
‘Nothing reported, guv,’ someone called from the inner recesses among the VDUs at the back of the room.
‘So he’s either behaving himself or he’s found someone like-minded or he’s not getting any,’ Hall mused. ‘Dead end.’
‘What about the lizard, guv?’ Jacquie asked. ‘The one the boys found at the Point? Any link with Lemon?’
‘In case any of you missed this on the bulletin board or at briefings,’ Hall thought it best to fill everybody in. ‘A lizard pendant was found by two lads near the body of David Taylor. The lab have confirmed that it did not belong to the dead man – or at least, did not form part of his own jewellery collection. Of course, there’s nothing definite to tell us it was linked to the crime at all. It could have been dropped by anyone at about the same time. Not, in itself, helpful.’
‘But Benji Lemon traded in goods like that,’ Jacquie persisted.
‘Not precisely,’ the ever smart-arsed George Bronson corrected her. ‘If you check out zest1967’s list of items, they’re exclusively British. The lizard was foreign. German silver, to be precise.’
‘So, what are we saying, Inspector?’ Jacquie asked. ‘That Benji Lemon only sold British gear so that made him some sort of targe
t?’
‘He could have been a member of the bloody KKK as far as I’m concerned, darling,’ Bronson snapped back. ‘It doesn’t get us any nearer his killer, does it?’
‘All right, all right.’ Time for Henry Hall to wade in. When his own Number Two started locking horns with his sergeants, it was time to call it a day. ‘Thank you, boys and girl. Let’s wind it up for now. George, you on the graveyard shift?’
‘’Fraid so, guv,’ Bronson shrugged. He had a wife and kids somewhere.
‘All right, then. Tomorrow, I want you and Hare to revisit this gangland thing. Get back to Brighton.’
‘You want us to pick up Jimmy the Snail again?’
‘No, he’ll only have an army of legals with him. Go one down. Find out when he was in Brighton, what Wide Boy Taylor did for laughs. We’re all missing one thing about our three wise men; they were all relatively loaded, but nothing was taken from them as far as we know, as a motive for murder. Let’s find out how they spent it, shall we?’
Little Nolan was fast asleep in his buggy that evening as his mum and dad wandered along the sands.
‘And what, now that you’re King and Prime Minister all rolled into one, Nolan Maxwell, what is your earliest memory?’ Jacquie was playing a chat-show host of the future. ‘Well,’ her voice deepened to become her son in the years ahead. ‘My fondest memory is my parents wheeling me round murder sites,’ she growled. ‘Made me the man I am today.’
Maxwell looked over the buggy’s handlebars. ‘He’s sparkers,’ he said. ‘Anyway, whose idea was this?’
And they both chorused ‘Yours’ as a tired, happy family clumped past them, bound for the hotel and supper. It was cool down here on the beach after the searing heat of the day and the shadows were beginning to lengthen over Dead Man’s Point.
‘OK,’ Jacquie said. ‘You’ve had a butchers from up top. Now, you’ve seen it from below. Any ideas, Sherlock?’
‘Excuse me.’ He stopped the buggy as it ran into wet sand for the first time. ‘But you’ve already done this.’