by M. J. Trow
‘It’s ringing.’ He could hear the tinny sound easing out round the bones in her head. ‘No reply, though.’
‘Leave a message.’
‘Oh…sssh.’ With no hand free, she flapped Nolan at him. ‘Hello? Mr Lunt, this is Jacquie Carpenter. Um…I was just wondering if you had gone home because…well, Max and I were wondering if you were coming back. You’d be very welcome. Ummm. Well, give us a ring when you get in. See you later. Bye.’ She put the phone down and turned to face Maxwell, who was sitting with arms folded, histrionically drumming his fingers on his bicep, tapping a foot in time. ‘What? Well, he is welcome. It’s just not…well, not very sensible. I’d still like to know he’s OK, though.’
‘Of course, woman policeman. I can see your dilemma. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Now, would you like a shrivelled up piece of Freezer Bottom Special with vegetables glued to the plate or would you like me to phone for a Chinese?’
Jacquie leant back in her chair. ‘Chinese,’ she said, while the words were still leaving his mouth. ‘Delivered.’
‘Is there any other kind?’ he asked her. He moved towards the phone.
‘Heavy on the chilli beef,’ she reminded him. ‘And prawn crackers. And chips.’
‘I’ll just order the whole menu, shall I? I trust you won’t be telling me you’re eating for two.’
She sighed. She had promised herself she would tell Maxwell nothing about this case. He would be kept totally in the dark. He would get not one single detail from her. She sighed again. ‘It’s been a prawn cracker and chips kind of day, Max. It started when Henry Hall went to sleep in the car…’
Maxwell replaced the phone and, in a surprisingly limber movement for one of his advanced years, curled up at her feet.
‘Say on, Scheherazade. I’m all ears.’
She cuffed him round the nearest one. ‘Chinese first. Then story.’
Grumbling, he got to his feet.
‘And make that extra pancakes with the duck.’
‘Duck?’
‘Yes. Half a one should do it. That’s why I want extra pancakes.’
‘You drive a hard bargain, light of a thousand camels.’
‘But I’m worth it,’ she replied, with a more than passable stab at the Garnier advert. ‘But if I die of starvation, you might never know.’
He dialled for all he was worth. He timetabled it in his head. Phone. Order. Get Nolan into bed; the child already had an unhealthy appetite for sweet and sour. The Yellow Peril was getting closer. Eat. Get the goods. And then twelve hours tomorrow, marking GCSE coursework. Typical! Even the Lord had a day off, but not Peter Maxwell. What a lovely way to round off a weekend. Even Monday looked good from here. Hang on, though. Lesson Three; Ten Eff Four. Cancel that.
‘Hello? Mong Wing? Get an extra pencil sharpened – I think you might need it…’
Mad Max marked thirty-seven pieces of coursework that Sunday. By lunchtime, he’d lost the will to live.
The dawn that Monday was a particularly splendid effort. It was pink and pearly grey, with a mist wisping off the sea inland, making a promise of a beautiful early spring day to come. In the silence of the park that measured the length of the Esplanade, just one road’s width from the sea, a listener might almost fancy that they could hear the creak of an unfurling daffodil, the whisper of a crocus opening to the morning light. That same listener, walking from the entrance of the park at the west end into the dawn light to the east would then have sensed, no fancy needed, a faint noise, coming from one of the benches along the path that meandered through the wakening lawn. It was a whimper, very faint and growing fainter. It sounded like someone saying, whispering with their last breath, ‘Help me. Oh, help me. Please.’ And that horrified listener, should there be one to hand, would discover that it didn’t just sound like someone dying. It really was someone dying, there on a park bench, in Leighford Esplanade Park.
Peter Maxwell was in the middle of explaining to Nine Eff Gee the niceties of the War of Jenkins’ Ear. He found a nice rant on the shortcomings of the Foreign Office of today vis-à-vis that of Walpole was as good a way as any of starting the week. It didn’t help poor, bemused old Nine Eff Gee that the Foreign Office wasn’t called the Foreign Office then, but the Department of the North, or it might have been South; no, Samantha, there wasn’t a Department of the East or West, but there were, of course, wicked witches from there. No, Melanie, that was a joke – do keep up!
There was a timorous knock on the door and when it opened, there stood Thingee One from Reception, looking strangely ill at ease without the desk she usually hid behind.
‘Mr Maxwell?’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘You’re wanted in Reception.’
‘Speak up, Thingee, old chap,’ said Maxwell, full of the joys of incipient spring, the scent of the chase and of Saturday’s soy sauce still, metaphorically, in his nostrils. After all, Captain Jenkins had lost an ear and what with the acoustics in Aitch One…‘Who wants me in Reception?’
Thingee crept closer and mouthed a word.
‘No, sorry. Can’t you go back down and ring me up. I can hear you when you use the phone.’
She crawled a tiny pace nearer and whispered as nearly in his ear as she could manage, ‘It’s the police.’
‘Is it?’ he stepped back in amazement. Nine Eff Gee were agog. ‘Why does Mr Plod want to see me, I wonder?’
‘It’s not a Mr Plod,’ Thingee said, bemused (no child of the Blyton generation she). ‘It’s a Detective Sergeant Carpenter.’
‘No, no, Thingee,’ Maxwell chortled. ‘That’s not the police. That’s just Woman Policeman Carpenter. You know, little Nolan’s mum?’
Thingee smiled. They all knew Nolan. Nine Eff Gee smiled too – at least, the girls did. The lads didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Nolan had been breaking hearts at Leighford High School from a few weeks old. Whenever his dad or his mum wheeled him in, there was always an adoring bevy of wannabee mums crowding round. They’d moved on from dollies years ago and their body clocks were winding up for the real thing. ‘I know Mrs Maxwell…I mean, Sergeant Carpenter, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘But she said to particularly say this was the police. Not just Mrs…I mean, Sergeant Carpenter.’
Maxwell looked serious, then turned to the class. ‘If any of you so much as twitches a finger,’ he said, ‘I will continue this lesson later using a real ear. Savvy?’ The last word (which Maxwell always had) was pure Johnny Depp by way of Jack Sparrow and since Nine Eff Gee couldn’t tell Captain Jenkins from Captain Sparrow, that was good enough.
They savvied. No finger twitched until the bell went and they all left the lesson with a collective sigh of relief. The thing about Mad Max, you knew where you were. If he said he was going to cut someone’s ear off, the only question would be; whose?
Down in Reception, Jacquie waited by the desk, making small talk with Thingee Two, Thingee One’s afternoon replacement. It was odd to see them both together; perhaps it presaged death or something, the way seeing your own doppelgänger was said to do. And, in a way, it did. She turned as Maxwell came into the glass booth built into a side of the Hall.
‘Hello, Sergeant?’ he said, managing to impose a question mark at the end of the greeting.
‘Sir,’ she said. She was accompanied by a rookie constable Maxwell didn’t know and the niceties must be maintained. ‘We are here in connection with a suspicious death.’
‘Well, yes,’ he said, perplexed. ‘I found the body last week, if you recall.’
‘Not that suspicious death,’ she said. ‘Another suspicious death. Is there somewhere we can go? Your office?’
He led them through the labyrinth that was Leighford High, that Sixties shell that bore the brunt of generations of schoolchildren creeping unwillingly to school. Their faces weren’t beaming anymore and nobody knew what a satchel was, still less carried one. Their black shoes left scuffs on the lower reaches of the walls and curious grey blobs decorated the carpets – thirty year old chewing gum for the arch
aeologists of the future to ponder.
They crossed the Quad in silence under the bare arms of the trees and took the stairs to the Mezzanine floor where Maxwell reigned as Head of Sixth Form. You couldn’t hear the pandemonium from the Languages Department on this side of the building and Maxwell ushered the police people into his office, his Inner Sanctum.
The rookie stood just staring at the film posters around the wall. Jacquie plonked herself down on the ghastly, itchy, flimsy L-shaped seating as Maxwell hit the kettle switch.
‘A body was discovered this morning at seven o’clock by a jogger in the Esplanade Park,’ Jacquie continued, as if the trek through the school had not intervened.
Maxwell looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s probably just me, but I don’t know why a body in Esplanade Park should be anything to do with me. If I can say this without distressing your colleague here, who I am sure is of a sensitive nature, you do know exactly where I was from around 5.30 last night until 8 o’clock this morning. So, in short, I’m not the guy. You’ll have a coffee before you go?’ He turned on his heel.
Jacquie grabbed his jacket hem and pulled him back. ‘Max,’ she said, dropping the veneer of professionalism. ‘I’ve come here because I recognised him.’
‘So, why come here?’ He was rather miffed. When he wanted to be involved in a murder, it took Kung Po Chicken to get the details out of her. Here was one he knew nothing about and he was dragged out of a lesson to be told about it. Women, eh? He threw an exasperated glance at the rookie, but realised at once the lad had no idea what a woman was, so no help there.
She drew nearer. ‘I recognised him because he’s one of yours.’ Maxwell looked stricken. ‘Not a current Yours, I don’t mean. He’s an Old Highena.’
‘My God. Who?’
‘That’s the problem. I only know he came here. I can’t remember when exactly or who he is. He’s one of those who comes up to you in the street and tells you he always liked History and you was his favourite teacher up at the school, honest.’
‘Does he belong to the group who then touch me for the price of a pint?’
‘He might have done. He was found on a park bench.’
‘Well,’ Maxwell sat down heavily in the chair, the coffee offer forgotten and the kettle switching itself off. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Max, you know I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way, but I need you to come down and identify him for us.’
‘I’ll get my coat.’ It wasn’t that he was morbidly curious. He had been connected with sudden death often enough to know that what was, to the uninvolved outsider, just a salacious or exciting news item, to the people involved always brought grief and distress, anger and regret. If this body was that of a Leighford Highena, however long ago, it meant that parents were probably still living in the area, mates might be waiting even now for him outside a pub, workmates would be looking at an empty desk, wondering whether to phone home and find out where he might be. It wasn’t just a dead body. It was a dead life.
‘I’m sorry, Max. But the DCI thinks you can really help us on this one.’
Maxwell suppressed a snort. Henry Hall had blown hot and cold on this very theme for years. It was as if he blew on the dandelion clock of crime. ‘He helps me, he helps me not.’ Now, he’d sent a woman to do a man’s job; worse, the cunning old bastard had sent Jacquie Carpenter.
She touched his lapel by way of goodbye. ‘We can find our own way,’ she told him and she and her rookie companion went back to the car.
Maxwell weighed his options. Leighford Highenas had died before, some of them violently. Some behind the wheel of a car, some in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there was something personal about it always. Maxwell had gone to their funerals, on wet hillsides, wearing a pink bowtie once because pink had been the girl’s favourite colour. He had made small talk with relatives and friends, offered commiserations, growled his way through the hymns. ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’ indeed. Time after time, and just too often, all things bright and beautiful were snuffed out, destroyed. He hauled on his coat, threw the Jesus scarf around his neck, dumped the shapeless tweed hat on his shapeless hair and made for the light.
‘Thingee, my dear,’ he said when he reached Reception, gesturing for her to come closer. ‘I fear I have been picked up by the fuzz. If you could cover this afternoon for me I would be grateful. For some reason best known to the timetablers I am down for Travel and Tourism today. I have been showing them holiday-themed DVDs, I am not ashamed to admit. Let’s see, we’ve done Carry on Camping. We gave up on Lost in Translation, since it clearly was. Summer Holiday was last week…who’s free to do this cover?’ He smiled brightly at Thingee One.
She ran her finger down a list, printed on bright orange paper. ‘Umm, let’s see, Mr Maxwell.’ She looked at him and winked conspiratorially. ‘Would you like it to be Ms Lessing?’
‘Oh, Thingee. Most fragrant of women.’ Thingee blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘That would be splendid. I would love it to be Ms Lessing. In that case, write this down.’ He cleared his throat and dictated. ‘Eleven Zed Queue. First lesson, show as much as you can of Last Tango in Paris. I gather that the Religious Studies department have a well-thumbed copy. Second lesson, questions to the teacher in charge of the cover.’ He smiled. ‘That should do it.’
Maxwell turned on his heel and made for the door, ducking his head and turning his face away as he whisked past Dierdre Lessing’s office window. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her half rise out of her seat, one finger in the air, but he was in the police car and away before she could make it to the door. He’d come back for his bike later.
Jacquie rang the bell in the reception area of Jim Astley’s morgue. Donald answered and was delighted to see her and said so. Maxwell, he was not so pleased to see, but, uncharacteristically, managed to keep that piece of information to himself.
‘Hello, Donald,’ Jacquie said, with a bright smile. ‘We’re here to possibly identify the body brought in this morning.’
Donald, putty in her hands, opened the door on a buzzer and waved her through. He was blissfully unaware that Jacquie had just split an infinitive. Maxwell was aware, but let it go. Now was not the time.
‘We’ll do the paperwork in a minute,’ Jacquie said, reading Donald’s mind. ‘If Mr Maxwell doesn’t know the deceased, it would be just as easy not to have his name on the forms. What do you think?’
Donald nodded. Much, much easier. Donald and the Work Ethic were only casual acquaintances. And if it could be managed that Jim Astley didn’t know he’d been here, that would be better still. Maxwell was impressed. He knew she was good – she had, after all, managed to get that old grouch Metternich on side in a matter of days, in his experience a unique skill. But he thought that Donald was probably almost as hard a nut to crack as the black and white behemoth.
He showed them into a corridor, dimly lit with strategically placed seats for the collapsing bereaved. He disappeared through a door and a curtain slowly drew aside. It reminded Maxwell macabrely of a cremation in reverse and he wondered how this could soothe a shattered relative.
Beyond the window, a body was laid out, decorously draped in white. The pale face was turned slightly towards the viewer, eyes closed and hair roughly combed into what may have been its usual place. The mouth was slightly open and not even Donald’s nifty placement of a wad of surgical blue paper roll could disguise the lividity on one cheek and the line of the chin. Even so, and even allowing for the stubble and general unwashed appearance, it was clearly Darren Blackwell, erstwhile Leighford non-High-flyer, last taught by Maxwell when he, Darren, was a fresh-faced fourteen-year-old, chirpily deciding to opt for Geography instead of History. He opted for Science in the Sixth Form. He opted for a Modern Apprenticeship instead of university. He then decided to opt for drinking and any pills he could buy under the pier. Cop out after cop out. And now here he was, laid out. Be sure your sins will find you out. Maxwell gripped t
he edge of the windowsill and nodded to Jacquie.
‘Darren Blackwell,’ he said. ‘Age…umm, let me work it out. He’ll be…twenty-two, possibly twenty-three. His youngest brother is in Year Ten at the moment. His middle brother has just done A levels and is away at…Hull.’
‘How do you do it, Max?’ Jacquie asked. ‘Do you remember everyone you teach?’
‘’Fraid so,’ Maxwell said, with a lopsided grin. ‘It’s not pretty, but someone has to do it.’
‘So, his family are obviously still in town.’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell said. ‘I can’t remember the address exactly, but I know it’s near the seafront. They keep a chippie, or a kebab shop or something similar. They’ll know at school.’
She gave him a one-armed hug. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you back there.’
He returned the squeeze. ‘Dear me, no,’ he said, to her surprise. ‘Dierdre is covering my lesson for me and I wouldn’t interrupt it for the world. I imagine it is one she’ll remember for quite a while.’
Chapter Six
Darren Blackwell’s parents did keep a chip shop – The Plaice To Be – in the High Street in Leighford. They were sitting now in the small living room of the flat above; tastefully furnished, with a flat screen television the size of a blackboard and as much electronic gadgetry as could be packed into one entertainment module, cunningly crafted from mock pine. Henry Hall sat on the chair; Mr and Mrs Blackwell huddled together on the settee. The appalling carpet swirled in reds and greens between them.
‘You say Darren didn’t live here with you?’ he asked either of the pair.
‘No,’ Mr Blackwell answered. ‘Not because we didn’t want him here, mind. All our boys will have a home here, always. But he’d been away to live and, well…do you have a family, Detective Chief Inspector?’
Hall nodded. He did have a family, not that he had seen enough of them as they grew up. They were good boys, never a moment’s trouble, and he never ceased to give thanks for that. Other people’s boys gave him more trouble than his own ever had.