by M. J. Trow
The NUT man pulled out a sizeable sheaf of paper from his briefcase and separated out smaller batches, placing them in front of each man in the room. ‘I apologise that I have not had time to get this documentation to you all before,’ he said, ‘but the hearing was convened rather hastily and of course, County Hall doesn’t work weekends, does it?’ He smiled broadly.
‘What is this, Mr Wentworth?’ the CEO was formality itself. ‘Can you give us the gist?’
‘Certainly.’ Wentworth could patronise for England, or at least West Sussex. Made Maxwell glad he was on his side. ‘What you have before you, gentlemen, are four documents. The first is written by Child A who did indeed consent to meet my client at the area of common land known as The Dam at Leighford on Saturday last. As you see, she makes no comment on any impropriety whatsoever. Indeed, she thanks Mr Maxwell for protecting her from what I believe she refers to as ‘an old pervert’ by whom she felt threatened. The second is written by Child B who was also at the place, time and date in question and her testimony matches that of Child A in every particular. The third and fourth documents are from the parents of Children A and B confirming as far as they are able the gist of events in their children’s testimony. Neither child was in a distressed state when they came home from The Dam nor subsequently, and they express their total support of my client who they believe – I think they actually use the word “know” – to be of upright and utterly reliable character.’
‘Collusion, Mr Wentworth.’ The note-taker looked up for the first time.
‘Would you care to repeat that, Mr Timmins? I assume you are familiar with the laws of slander in this fair land of ours?’
‘How do we know we can trust the hearsay evidence of those parents?’ the County’s brief asked. ‘That is, after all, all it is – hearsay.’
‘As opposed to the complainant’s letter,’ Morrow chimed in, ‘which is prima faciae.’
‘May I ask,’ Maxwell interrupted, ‘who my accuser is?’
Papers were ruffled, glances exchanged. ‘I believe you have the name in front of you,’ the CEO answered.
‘I can read,’ Maxwell reminded him. ‘Would I be right in assuming that this gentleman describes himself as an ornithologist?’ he asked. ‘A watcher?’
Murmurs from the dais.
‘Have any of you actually talked to this man?’ Maxwell asked.
‘I have,’ Timmins told him. ‘He stands by every word of what he saw.’
‘Of course he does,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘Max…’ Wentworth whispered, but the Head of Sixth Form was on a roll and he waved him aside.
‘Tell me, then,’ he said. ‘Does this…watcher…have a scrawny beard? Glasses? Thinning, lank silver hair? Eight, nine stone, perhaps five foot seven?’
Timmins was frowning. ‘That’s essentially correct.’
It was Maxwell’s turn to confer with his aide, leaving the dais rattled, perplexed.
Wentworth straightened, triumphantly. ‘It is clear from Mr Timmins’ acceptance of my client’s description of this man, that the complainant, the writer of this letter is precisely the – and I quote – the “old pervert” alluded to in the letters of Child A and Child B.’
‘He can’t just throw mud back like that,’ Inkester bellowed.
‘Headmaster,’ Maxwell cut in. ‘I may still refer to you as that, I suppose?’
‘Yes, Max,’ Diamond said. If he felt uncomfortable when he suspended Maxwell in the first place, he was positively cringing now. Mostly because he knew what was coming.
‘Could I ask you to read out for us, please, the name at the bottom of the complainant’s letter?’
‘Oh, really!’ Inkester threw his hands in the air.
‘Max…’
‘You’d better humour him, James,’ the CEO said. ‘I’ve no idea where this is going.’
‘To Hell in a handcart,’ Maxwell said. ‘Headmaster?’
Diamond looked at them all, then cleared his throat. ‘Yours sincerely, Oliver Lessing,’ he said.
Maxwell slid his chair back slowly so that it grated on the floor. ‘Would you like a few minutes to confer, Headmaster?’ he said. ‘Mr Wentworth and I will wait outside. I believe you have something to discuss.’ And he led the NUT man out.
‘Max,’ Wentworth said when the door had closed. ‘What are you doing here? I’m with Morrow, I don’t know where this is going either. Look, there’s no case to answer. If the kids and their parents don’t bring charges, there’s no alternative but to reinstate you. I don’t…’
The door clicked open and a rather peeved County solicitor stood there. He had ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ written all over him. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Could you come this way?’
The look on Legs Diamond’s face was one that would stay with Peter Maxwell for ever.
‘I’m so pleased this has been resolved, Max,’ he’d said, while shaking the man’s hand.
‘Resolved, Headmaster?’ Maxwell was not in the forgiving vein today. ‘Hardly.’
Martin Inkester was all beams and light, muttering gushingly about misunderstandings, knew there was nothing in it, glad to have you still on board, fine teacher, inestimable contribution blah, blah, blah. The CEO, who always needed time to prepare a U-turn speech, merely nodded and said ‘Excellent’ a few times. Only Timmins, the County Doberman, said nothing. He was too busy collecting up his papers and making yet another wax model of Bob Wentworth to drive pins into later; clearly these two went way back.
The NUT gun-for-hire held out his hand. ‘We must do this again, sometime, Mr Maxwell.’
Maxwell shook it. ‘I’m sure you can understand when I say I sincerely hope not,’ he said.
As he walked back through Chichester, the day was even more glorious. The louts had wandered away from the Cross, probably to enrol in the Open University, the Peruvians had gone for lunch, a quick condor and chips at the local eatery. Even the bells of the cathedral were pealing out Maxwell’s victory. He toyed with trying to find a phone that hadn’t been vandalised, and succeeded, outside the station. He checked his watch. Twelve-thirty. Jacquie would be either on her lunch break now in the bowels of the nick, tucking into a pastrami on rye, or she’d be glued to her computer screen, elbow deep in dead men. Either way, he’d have to get past that miserable bastard Den Morissey on the switchboard and that was one victory Maxwell knew he wasn’t going to be able to celebrate. He just hoped that when the time came and he appeared, cycle clips in hand, before the pearly gates, it wasn’t on Den Morissey’s watch, or he’d never get in.
He caught the twelve-forty-three to Leighford, watching the Sussex countryside flash by, gilded by the sun, the horse chestnuts throwing deep lunchtime shadows on the fields. He was a free man again. And yet…and yet.
Surrey was still waiting patiently in the station car park as the Master arrived. At moments like these, Maxwell swore he saw the front wheel turn, the handlebars come up and a low whinny of recognition escape from the derailleurs. And he hadn’t touched a drop all day. What was it with this bloody combination lock? In the end, brute strength rather than the patient, skilled teasing of a cracksman won the day and he was in the saddle, pedalling north-west.
Traffic was a nightmare that Monday, the Flyover sluggish from the moment Maxwell got on it. Then he was taking the shortcut down Latimer Road and around the Asda, heading for home. He’d grab a bite to eat there, twist Norman Westbury’s baby seat back into shape somehow and collect Nolan from Pam’s. Then, they’d go together to see Mummy and Den Morissey could go to…
‘What the Hell?’ Maxwell was easing the brakes and they weren’t working as he soared down the incline past the new shopping centre. They still weren’t working as the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill turned to red. What was he doing? Twenty, twenty-two miles an hour, hurtling downwards with the wind and gravity behind him? ‘Look out!’ he had time to shout before Surrey bucked violently to the left. His front wheel hit a bollard and the High Street t
urned upside down in his vision. He heard the shattering of glass and a scream. He hoped, as a dullness swept over him, that that hadn’t come from him.
‘Rhododendron bushes.’ Henry Hall was lolling back in his swivel chair. ‘Jacquie – tell me about rhododendron bushes.’
The DS looked at her DCI. Had it come to this? They were sitting in Hall’s office, away from the Incident Room where they’d spent all morning. They both needed a break.
‘Guv?’
‘You’ve been to the Hendersons,’ he said. ‘Their garden’s full of them. And that’s where they found Gerald Henderson – under a rhododendron bush at the Botanical Gardens. Do you believe in coincidences?’
‘No,’ she told him. ‘Not to that extent.’
‘Neither do I,’ he said, his fingers together near his lips. ‘Not to that extent, as you say. There’s a sort of…symmetry about this, Jacquie, that I can’t quite…Let’s look at the MO again.’
Jacquie had lost count of the times she and the team and she and Henry and she and Maxwell had looked at the MO. But the DCI was right to keep worrying it, teasing it. They were all missing something.
‘The big one, guv,’ she said, ‘is: are we looking at one killer or two, or even three here?’
‘We’re back to coincidences again,’ Hall said. ‘Let’s go with copycat for the moment. What are the options?’
‘Not feasible,’ she’d decided.
‘Why?’
She let him have it. ‘What are copycat killings all about? Some saddo who craves the limelight like you and I crave oxygen. He reads about the murder of Wide Boy Taylor and thinks “I want some of that, I want the limelight, the attention.” So he finds Gerald Henderson and does him in. Then what?’
‘Then, so that we think he’s our boy for the Taylor killing too – enhancing the demented bastard’s ego – he drags Henderson to the Gardens. It’s as close as he can get, for whatever reasons, to the Point.’
‘And, not content with that,’ Jacquie went on, ‘he latches onto Benji Lemon and shoves him over the edge, again near the Point, just to make the point, so to speak.’
Hall looked at her. ‘Got more holes than a sieve, hasn’t it?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Where’s the contact?’
‘Exactly,’ he took up Jacquie’s idea. ‘Where’s the confessional letter, the taunting tape, the offer to assist us with our enquiries? Copycats don’t lie low, smugly congratulating themselves on a job well done. They want to be out there, front and centre.’
‘And we’ve heard nothing.’
‘Nothing,’ Hall agreed. ‘Except…’
‘Except?’
‘Oh, it’s probably nothing,’ Hall shrugged. ‘You start to get a bit paranoid about now in a murder, don’t you? Start looking at the furniture funny.’
‘You’ve got somebody in mind?’
‘I don’t know why I remember him but there was a lad at the Press Conference – I may have to call another of those soon, by the way. He looked so…out of place. Not Press, I’m sure of that. He seemed to be staring straight at me. Well, there you go – as I said, paranoia.’
‘Out of place,’ Jacquie murmured. ‘A whale on a beach that shouldn’t be there.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing, guv,’ she said.
There was a knock on the door and it burst open before Hall could give the usual ‘Come’.
An ashen-faced Benny Palister stood there. ‘Sorry, guv,’ he said. ‘Jacquie. There’s been an accident. It’s Maxwell.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She sat alone in the darkened room, listening to the sounds of the ward around her. Machines bleeped and pinged in electronic regularity. In the corridor outside, nurses and auxiliaries came and went in the plethora of colours they wore these days, chatting away in the snatches of conversation, lending her, for seconds at a time, a glimpse of their lives.
Jacquie Carpenter had been here before. She’d sat at bedsides without number, talking to victims, trying to make sense of their ramblings, attempting to piece together some coherence that the police could take to court. And she’d been here, too, when that dreadful beeping had stopped and the flat line on the screen had told its own story – there’d be no rambling, no evidence, because there was no life. And only Dr Astley’s medical mumbo-jumbo to carry the flag of truth. Police person or not, she’d been manhandled out of the room while screens were erected, machinery wheeled in, staff dashing this way and that in what looked like chaos but was actually a well-ordered and well-rehearsed routine.
‘Clear!’ and the dull thump as they applied electrodes to the torso on the bed and the body jumped as the volts shot through it. But still the whine of the machine and the flat, dead line.
Jacquie wasn’t actually alone. She was holding the hand of the man she loved. Peter Maxwell lay in the bed in the separate room they’d set up for him. There were tubes into his nose and mouth and his head and face were bandaged. As calmly as she could, Jacquie had taken in the news from Benny Palister. A cyclist appeared to have lost control at the traffic lights in the town centre. Brake failure almost certainly. He’d gone over the handlebars in an attempt to avoid shoppers on the pavement and hit a plate-glass window – Boots, ironically enough.
Jacquie shook her head as she squeezed his hand. ‘You public schoolboy,’ she murmured. ‘There are times when it’s not women and children first, you know.’
He wasn’t listening. He couldn’t hear. There was no movement in his whole body. He was in a coma, the doctors said, and there was no knowing when, or if, he’d ever come out of it. Some people lasted for years, kept alive by machines. Others came round, but their lives were never the same. Paralysis. Paraplegia. Life at waist height in a wheelchair and people who meant well asking if he took sugar.
She felt the tears starting again. Henry Hall had gone with her to Leighford General and stayed with her while Maxwell was stabilised. Apart from the unknown damage to his head, he’d got off lightly. Cuts and bruises, a pair of shiners and a broken nose. They had reset his dislocated shoulder. That would hurt like buggery for a long time, but all would be well, if… The scans looked good. But you could never tell as early as this. The DCI had had to get back to work. He had three murders on his hands. He sent Sheila Kindling to sort out Nolan with Pam and the woman had come hot-footing round to the hospital where her daughter and Jacquie’s son had been born, full of concern and full of love.
While people had been there, Jacquie had been fine. The old professionalism had kicked in and she could be a policewoman first, a wife second. But now, at the witching hour, it was different. Hospital staff went about their business. The kind auxiliary with the dreadlocks looked in once or twice. She took Maxwell’s temperature and talked to him as if he was a vegetable. No doubt she meant well. Jacquie found herself smiling in spite of it all at the thought of what Maxwell’s response would be when he woke up…if he woke up. And the tears started again.
‘It’s pissing down out there now,’ Tim Wallace shook his cape all over the floor as if to prove it.
‘Yeah, well,’ Geoff Hare took the opportunity to rub his eyes after what seemed like days of staring at his VDU screen. ‘We’ve had a pretty good summer, all things considered.’
‘How’s it hanging, sarge?’ Wallace asked him. ‘The Point murders, I mean?’
Tim Wallace was one of the ever-growing band of foot soldiers on this one, the knockers on doors and ringers of doorbells. The kind of bloke the Daily Mail wants to see more of – a uniformed copper out on the streets, making us all feel safe.
‘Don’t bloody ask, mate,’ Hare yawned. ‘What time is it?’
It was worse than Wallace feared. There was a clock not three yards to the detective’s left and no doubt the time was on the bloke’s computer screen too. No wonder CID weren’t getting anywhere.
‘Half twelve, sarge,’ he told him. ‘Missing your beauty sleep?’
‘You’d better believe it,’ Hare yawned.
&n
bsp; It was infectious, as these things are, and Wallace followed suit. ‘I know you blokes are busy, but Den Morissey thought I ought to have a word – with CID, I mean.’
‘Oh, did he?’ Hare reached for his coffee. Stone cold. He looked across to the window with the rain trickling the length of the pane. ‘Well, there’s a bloke with not enough to do. What about?’
‘What do you make of this?’ The PC held up a length of metal tubing, or, to be exact, two lengths; the centre seemed to have snapped. ‘Shall I give it to forensic, or what?’
‘I’d be able to answer that better if I knew what the bloody hell it was,’ Hare said.
‘That accident down the town this afternoon. Cyclist went through a plate glass window. Feeblest case of ram-raiding I ever saw.’
Hare wasn’t laughing. ‘You know who that was, don’t you? Peter Maxwell, Jacquie Carpenter’s other half.’
‘Never!’ Wallace grunted. ‘Well, that makes even more sense now.’
‘What does?’ Hare was tired, but he wasn’t that tired. The man was talking in circles.
‘Well, isn’t he the bloke who keeps helping us with our enquiries?’ Wallace asked. ‘Whether we want him to or not?’
‘Something like that,’ Hare said.
‘Well, that’s it, then. He’s obviously been pissing somebody off big time, ’cos these are his brake cables. Or they were. Look at that.’ Hare did. ‘Filed through. They’ve been going for days. Only a matter of time before they snapped completely.’
‘Not your natural wear and tear then?’ Bikes weren’t really Hare’s thing.
‘Wear and tear my arse,’ Wallace grunted. ‘That’s deliberate sabotage. All I want to know is which one of you blokes did it!’
Jacquie watched the dawn come up over the Leighford Gasworks. It had rained about midnight; she’d heard the drops bouncing on the window pane. After so long in the hot dry summer, it seemed like another little miracle, like the one they’d experienced a few nights ago. But, then as now, day brought the sun again and the promise of another scorcher.