by M. J. Trow
‘She put up a helluva struggle,’ he nodded, as if to confirm his findings of the day before.
‘He’d be heavily bloodstained?’
‘No,’ Astley reached for his coffee cup over the shattered remnants of the murder weapon, ‘because he washed it all off in the bathroom. Then he washed the bathroom. Clothes too.’
‘You mean the cocky bastard used her washing machine?’ Hall asked.
‘Why not? She was in no position to object.’
‘Even so, that’s odd.’
‘What is?’
Hall looked at the good doctor, sipping elegantly from the canteen crockery. ‘Ever killed anybody, Jim?’ he asked.
Astley chuckled. ‘Are we talking on or off the operating table?’ he asked.
‘All right.’ Hall never chuckled. It might crease his face. ‘Let me put it another way. Ever stoved in the head of a divorced middle-aged teacher with an ammonite?’
‘Don’t tell me I’m a suspect!’ Astley stared wide-eyed. ‘What’s your point, Henry?’
‘Where’s the panic?’ Hall was asking himself the question. ‘The fear? This is my eighth murder case, Jim, and in every single one of them, I’ve seen it somewhere. Whether it’s premeditated, planned to the nth degree or the frantic fury of a split second, it hits them like a wall. Every murderer I’ve talked to, read about, it’s always the same. You want to get away, run. You don’t want to look at the mess you’ve made, the butcher’s yard.’
‘What about Ed Gein?’ Astley asked, serious now. ‘Didn’t he wrap himself up in the skins of his victims? Became them, so to speak?’
‘Is that what we’ve got here, Jim?’ Hall still talking to himself. ‘The South Coast’s own Ed Gein? Jesus, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘What about the Parsons boy?’ Astley returned his cup to the saucer. ‘The bag?’
‘You saw it,’ Hall reminded him, ‘in the middle of the floor like a flashing neon sign. Tastefully filled with the clothes of the late Alice Goode.’
‘Too pat,’ Astley commented.
‘You’d have made a reasonable detective,’ Hall mumbled, ‘given time.’
‘So, what are you saying?’ Astley leaned back in his swivel. ‘The bag’s too obvious. It isn’t the Parsons boy.’
‘Time of death you estimate at …’ Hall leaned to his man, talking it through, worrying it, probing for a solution. Perhaps if he kicked the idea round for long enough …’
‘Twelve, twelve thirty, not later than one.’
‘The middle of the day,’ Hall underlined it.
‘Why wasn’t she at school?’ Astley asked.
‘She was. She had a phone call,’ Hall told him. ‘A man’s voice. There was a serious problem and she had to come home at once.’
‘What problem?’
Hall shook his head, ‘The school receptionist didn’t know. It just sounded urgent. She fetched Mrs Hagger at once. And Mrs Hagger said she had to go. Her Headteacher covered her class and she was off.
‘What time was this?’
‘Half-eleven. It would have taken her twenty minutes, perhaps a little more, to reach her flat.’
‘And chummie was waiting for her?’
‘Nobody saw a damn thing. There was a sighting at the corner of Arundel Street half an hour earlier. But it’s vague. Probably a window cleaner. At least he had a ladder and a bucket.’
‘She let him in.’
Hall nodded. ‘Like people let in the Boston Strangler. There was no sign of a break-in. The outside door was kept locked and can be operated only from the inside or with a key. Likewise, Jean Hagger’s own flat door.’
‘So she knew him?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Hall said. ‘Perhaps whatever his message was overrode that.’
‘In what way?’
Hall shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What if it had something to do with Alice? That would bring her running, wouldn’t it? We know they were close.’
‘So, once he’s inside, he turns nasty.’
‘She fought for her life, certainly. You thought four blows?’
‘Possibly a fifth,’ Astley acknowledged. ‘The third killed her. But with a weapon like that,’ he handled it again, the iron-hard ridges still dark with blood and matted hair, ‘you can’t be sure. In fact, Mrs Hagger had an unusually thick skull. The first blow would have done for most people.’
‘How damaged is our man?’ Hall asked.
‘Difficult to say,’ was the best Astley could do. ‘There was no sign of debris under the fingernails, but the knuckles of her right hand were grazed.’
‘She thumped him?’
‘Possibly, but we don’t know what she made contact with. It could have been the wall, the furniture, even the ammonite.’
Hall mused a little space, checking the photographs again. ‘Nothing sexual here?’ He wanted reassurance.
‘Nothing obvious,’ Astley confirmed it, ‘no signs of rape. No bruising. No semen traces.’
‘But not premeditated.’ Hall was talking to himself again.
‘You think not?’
‘You don’t go along for a murder and hope there’s a convenient blunt instrument lying about. With different luck he might have had to have used a rolled-up newspaper, if that was all that came to hand.’
‘What if …? No.’
Hall collected up his photographs. ‘You’re an inscrutable sod, Dr Astley,’ he said. ‘Give me no ifs. What are you thinking?’
‘Well, what if he did bring his own weapon? Knife, iron pipe, bazooka, in the bag he left behind? What if he saw the ammonite and saw his chance to reduce the risk of detection? If he used his own DIY gadget, he’d either have to lose it or sterilize it so that people like Forensic can’t come along and find the odd telltale hair, the sliver of skin. By using something of hers, something that belonged in the flat anyway, he’s shifting the probables, isn’t he? Saving his arse.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Hall nodded, feeling worse now that Astley had confirmed what he already knew. “There’s little doubt our killer has done that. Not a print, or smudge. He’s a calculating bastard, cool as a mountain stream.’
‘And the Parsons boy?’
‘The Parsons boy,’ Hall dragged himself up from Astley’s other chair, ‘is alive and well and knows more than he’s telling. And somebody’s shielding him.’
‘Did he do this? Smash the skull of Jean Hagger and rape and strangle Alice Goode?’
Hall turned in the doorway, ‘We’ll be in touch, Jim,’ he said.
It was one of those curious lulls that soldiers say descend on battle-fields, when footweary grumblers lie in water-filled foxholes and light a lucifer before the flak starts again. Teachers call them free periods. There are never enough of them, they are always at the wrong time of day and, depending on the sickness record of your colleagues, you often lose them anyway to cover somebody else’s classes.
Peter Maxwell was lucky that day. He hadn’t lost his free so he was taking a rare moment to flick through The Times Educational Supplement in the staffroom. He was too old to get another job and besides, as usual, somebody had pinched the classified section. It was then that Anthea Edwards walked in.
‘All hail!’ Maxwell shuffled his paper at her.
‘Sorry, Max,’ she said. Whenever she saw Maxwell in the staff-room, it was like Boodles or the Garrick. She hated to disturb the old man in his club.
‘Sit ye doon,’ he was still in North British mode, ‘an’ stint not. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.’
She did as she was told. Mad Max scared Anthea Edwards. Come to think of it, nearly everybody scared Anthea Edwards. And the trip to MOMI hadn’t helped. Deirdre Lessing had offered to arrange counselling. Almost daily the Head of Special Needs clutched the girl to her ample bosom and they talked knitting, and Delia Smith.
‘About the trip.’ Maxwell folded his paper and put it down.
‘Yes?’ It had been over four weeks now since she’d gone, but every
night she sat on that phantom coach and wandered those dark and magic slide shows.
‘Where exactly did you see Ronnie last?’ he asked her. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Is it important?’ She sorted her marking on the coffee table in front of her.
‘It might be,’ he told her.
‘Well, I think …’ and she screwed her face with the effort of remembering, shutting her eyes tight, ‘… I think it was at the Barry Norman interview bit, but I couldn’t swear to it, Max. Why?’
‘I know where he is.’ Max muttered it out of the corner of his mouth.
She turned to face him, her eyes bright. ‘You mean, he’s alive?’
‘Look,’ the door had crashed back and Roger Garrett, the First Deputy, stood there. ‘I’ve got a bit of a flap on,’ he said. ‘Angela Lord’s gone home.’
‘Well, fan my flies,’ said Maxwell. ‘And only the second time this week, today being Tuesday.’
‘Have a heart, Max …’ Garrett said.
‘We are rather busy, Roger.’ Maxwell stared his man down. ‘You’re free, I notice.’
A strange look came over Roger Garrett’s face. It passed as a smile but Maxwell knew a sneer when he saw one. Ah, well, I’m time-tabling,’ he explained.
‘Oh, goody.’ Maxwell clapped his hands together. ‘Forward planning. I’m impressed.’
‘It’s only for half an hour,’ Garrett wheedled. ‘10A4.’
‘Now how did I guess that?’ Maxwell smiled, wide-eyed. ‘Funny how it’s never 10A1, isn’t it? Still,’ he got up, sighing, ‘it could be worse. I could be a supply teacher.’ He looked down at Anthea, still open-mouthed on the chair next to him, ‘Flies, dear,’ he said and winked at her. ‘Where away, oh, disturber of my dreams?’ It took Garrett a while to realize that Maxwell was talking to him and he passed him the nasty little yellow lesson cover-slip that was Leighford High’s equivalent of the Black Spot.
At the staffroom door, Maxwell stopped, tapping the side of his nose as Garrett scuttled off in search of a computer, ‘Mum’s the word now, Anthea. OK? I thought you’d feel better if you knew’
She did. It was like a huge weight off her soul. She closed her eyes and found herself crying.
Peter Maxwell didn’t usually go to the pictures with strange men. Not anyone quite as strange as Alec Crossman, the 1930s public schoolboy who’d got caught in a time warp and was in a ’90s comprehensive by mistake. Alec had been insistent and it did kill two birds as far as Maxwell was concerned. The coach driver, Dave Freeman, had rung him a few days ago with the gypsy’s warning about the new cinema club behind the bus station. In the helter-skelter days since then, he’d all but forgotten about it. Freeman was trying to be helpful, no doubt. The man felt guilty because Alice Goode and Ronnie had disappeared on his trip too. Not that anyone could hold anything against Hamilton’s or their drivers, any more than anyone could hold anything against the Museum of the Moving Image. That was just how it was.
The green door was thrown back that Wednesday evening and a steady trickle of the faithful went through it. Young Alec met Maxwell outside – young Alec dropped off by his dad, Jonathan, who was actually the Crossman family member and sometime club projectionist, old Maxwell parking his bike next to the riderless supermarket trolleys that the day’s shoppers had abandoned, much as the French army did their horses in the dripping Belgian orchards after Waterloo.
Alec had a girl with him, a nonentity in a thin summer frock. She was introduced to Maxwell as Arabella which told him immediately that she went to the Grange Private School down the road. All she said all evening was ‘Hello’ with that upper-class twang that cuts like a knife through the water of the working class and that was guaranteed to turn Maxwell into an instant Marxist.
Ian McKellan hauled off his balaclava, having put a single bullet through the forehead of the Prince of Wales. HRH’s HQ didn’t look very much like the bloody meadow at Tewkesbury, but if you couldn’t take liberties with the Bard, with whom could you take liberties? Maxwell enjoyed himself. The theatre was very intimate to the point of incestuousness. Room for what? Fifty bums, top whack? Only half the seats were taken, of course, in the manner of the great British cinema of these days. No ice cream, no popcorn, not even much by way of Pearl and Dean. As Sir Ian fell dying through the flames of his own destruction on the screen, Maxwell excused himself from his protégé and his piece and made his way to the exit. On the landing he ducked to his left through a black-painted door and found himself in a corridor, dark and narrow. He looked for the telltale flicker of the projector on the wall, listened for the whirr and click of what was probably a secondhand job lot. All he got was a solid, balding man who didn’t take kindly to strangers wandering through his club.
‘Can I help?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell said, ‘I was hoping to find someone to talk to about the club.’
‘Really?’ The balding man placed a proprietorial arm across the corridor, ‘Why?’
‘I’m something of a film buff myself,’ Maxwell told him, ‘I’d like to join, Mr … er …’
‘I’m sorry, membership by invitation only’ The balding man was firm.
‘Oh, but I’ve just seen tonight’s show,’ Maxwell explained.
‘That’s fine. Wednesdays are open to the public’
‘Ah, I see,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Well, how do I go about attending on the other nights of the week? I can’t usually do Wednesdays.’
‘I told you …’
‘Alec Crossman recommended you,’ Maxwell intervened. A seventeen-year-old wasn’t much of a name to drop in the scheme of things, but it opened the oddest of doors.
‘Young Alec?’ The balding man smiled. ‘Jonathan’s boy?’
‘That’s right,’ Maxwell bluffed, not knowing the elder Crossman from Adam.
‘Well, that’s different, Mr … er … I didn’t catch your name.’
That was because Maxwell hadn’t yet thrown it in. ‘Maxwell’ – he extended a hand – ‘Peter Maxwell.’
‘Mr Maxwell,’ the balding man gripped him fiercely with both hands as though he’d just found the lost tribe of Israel. ‘I’m Douglas McSween. My friends call me Dee.’
‘Do you know,’ Maxwell was at his most affable, ‘I had no idea you were here.’
‘Ah, we’re new’ McSween took him by the arm and led him into a backroom stuffed full of metal film cases. ‘Only been here a couple of months. Now, Peter, there are various formalities.’
‘Of course, Douglas,’ Maxwell smiled broadly.
‘That’s Dee, remember. Have a seat.’
‘Thank you. That’s Max.’ Maxwell filled in a form, giving all but his inside leg measurement. When he’d finished, McSween popped out, taking the paperwork with him. Maxwell checked the corridor. Empty. He rummaged through the cans on the shelving around the room. Now Peter Maxwell had been a film fan all his life. He was a Saturday matinee kid, along with Methusaleh, and if Peter Maxwell didn’t know the title of a film, that was because no one had made it yet. But to his growing discomfort, he didn’t know any of these. Many of them were in Dutch, some appeared to be in Urdu. There was no Thirty Nine Steps, no Maltese Falcon, not even a decent editing of Citizen Kane. But before he could delve further, McSween was back.
‘Sorry about that,’ he beamed. ‘Now, this shouldn’t take too long. Three or four days at most. Oh …’
McSween’s bland face had darkened, and his eyes flickered up to
Maxwell’s, then down to the form again. ‘Is there a problem?’ Maxwell asked.
‘I see you’re a teacher.’ McSween had not read the small print.
‘Don’t tell me that’s a bar to my eligibility?’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Teacher blackballed! What a headline!’
McSween looked increasingly uncomfortable by the moment. ‘I’m sure you understand, Max, that we do not deal in headlines here.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Maxwell frowned, nodding solemnly.
‘It’s just that,
well,’ – it was McSween’s turn to chuckle – ‘you’re a lucky sod in some ways, aren’t you?’ and he elbowed him in the elbow.
‘Well, there are the holidays, I suppose,’ Maxwell acknowledged; ‘the apples my pupils bring me every day, the joy of marking! Yes, come to think of it, you’re right.’
For a split second, confusion crossed Douglas McSween’s face, then he guffawed, nudging his man in the ribs this time, and said, ‘I expect you’re looking forward to the new Jeremy Irons, eh? I’ll see you out.’
‘Rather!’ winked Maxwell in return. ‘And thanks!’
‘How are you on films, Ronnie?’ Maxwell plonked an omelette down on the table in front of the boy.
‘I like Quentin Tarantino,’ the lad confessed.
‘Yes,’ Maxwell sighed, sliding his own chair back, ‘I’m more of a Quentin Durward man myself. What about Jeremy Irons?’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Well,’ Maxwell reached for the salt as they both tucked in, ‘that’s the end of that little conversation.’
‘Look, Mr Maxwell …’ Ronnie was fidgeting with his fork.
‘Not enough tarragon there for you, Ron?’
‘What? Oh, no, that’s fine. You’re a great cook, Mr Maxwell, for a bloke, I mean. No, it’s just … well …’
‘Spit it out, Ronnie,’ the Head of Sixth Form insisted, suddenly hoping the boy wouldn’t take him seriously.
‘Well, look, I’ve got to go. I mean, you could get into a lot of trouble with me here. It was on the local news again at lunchtime. Local youth sought in murder enquiry. They think somebody’s shielding me, Mr Maxwell, and somebody is – you.’
Maxwell sighed and slid his plate away. ‘You’re right,’ he nodded, ‘not enough tarragon. If you leave here, Ronnie, will you go to the police?’
‘No way.’ Ronnie shook his head. ‘No way.’
‘Home, then?’
‘No.’ Ronnie was pale, on his feet suddenly, staring hard at Maxwell. ‘I told you, I’m never going back there. Never!’