by M. J. Trow
‘Not you,’ Gallow bellowed, in a viewpoint that oddly echoed his Headmaster’s. ‘Oh, shit!’ a he snatched at the hand brake as he saw the host of paparazzi, decidedly smaller that it had been but still loitering at the school gates, the lights their cigarettes like tall glow-worms in the darkness. ‘I can’t believe these people are still here,’ he said.
Maxwell unclicked the seat-belt. ‘My place for a nightcap?’ he smiled, wondering how hospitable a cup of hot water would seem. He really must see Parker about some top-up coffee.
‘Thanks,’ said Gallow flatly. ‘I have places be,’ and he revved away along the lane.
‘Who are you?’ a cold and dispirited newspaperman hailed Maxwell as he plodded towards them, his shoes clattering on the tarmac.
‘The Grim Reaper,’ Maxwell said, raising hooked finger and beckoning towards him. ‘Y’ have a good night, y’hear?’ and he was gone, over the wall as their trainers squeaked on the tarmac and cameras popped uselessly to the rhythm of barked expletives, capturing the brickwork on celluloid.
He sat in the car, his face lit by the fascia dials. He was talking into the cassette mike again. ‘This one’s aged about fifteen. But he’s not alone. Seems to live along William Street. Can’t make out the number. He was drinking at the pub earlier. Under-age of course. May be able to use that. Going on into Petersfield now.’ And he switched off the machine and roared away into the night.
‘What are we going to do about this Maxwell person?’ Janet Boyce was dragging on the spliff, screwing her eyes up with the effort, fighting the smoke.
‘Do?’ Cassandra was still sipping her red wine.
‘From last night. When he made that filthy suggestion.’
‘Masturbatory fantasies,’ Cassandra slurred. ‘Middle-aged men have them. Gaynor Ames told me he doesn’t have a wife. Probably gets his kicks with little girls.’
Janet frowned. She was easily confused anyway, but the contents of her roll-up were getting to her. ‘But you’re not a little girl, Cassie.’
‘No, dear,’ Cassandra sighed. ‘But it’s all one. And don’t call me Cassie.’
‘Sorry.’ The large girl twisted in the armchair. ‘Look, I was silly for storming out like that, from the pub, I mean. What with “reading” and all, I thought you and John were laughing at me.’
‘I know, dear.’ Cassandra looked at the lamplight reflected in the carmine of her glass. ‘You told me. We’ve been all through that. No, no, as far as Maxwell’s concerned, John’s got something in mind, apparently. They’ve asked the old pervert to play in the staff Fifteen match this Saturday. They’ll give him a good hiding then.’
‘Cassandra?’
‘Hmm?’ the Captain of Austen was sprawling on the bed in the upper storey of the girls’ dorm. Lights out was hours ago and all was silent except for the gentle snoring from Maggie Shaunessy’s rooms two floors below.
‘What do you think happened to Mr Pardoe?’
‘Pardoe? It’s obvious, darling. He killed himself.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Janet,’ Cassandra drained her glass. ‘Don’t you keep your ear to the ground at all? Bill Pardoe was a pederast. Makes that Maxwell bloke look like Mr Normal. He was caught with any number of boys in Tennyson.’
‘Who?’
‘Jesus!’ Cassandra took a huge swig from h bottle. ‘I don’t know. Wait a minute.’ She rolls over onto her stomach, still holding the wine and trying to focus on the fat girl slumped in armchair opposite. ‘Yes, I do. That little shit Jenkins in the Lower Fourths for instance. Pardoe used to get the little freak to strip off in front of him while he … well, I don’t need to paint you a picture, do I?’
Janet shuddered. ‘No, you don’t,’ and she inhaled deeply. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Common knowledge,’ Cassandra said. ‘All Arbiters know about it. John wanted to tell to Graham, but thought better of it. Can you imagine the stink it would have caused? In end, I suppose, Pardoe did the right thing. It’s all genetics, of course. People like that can’t help it. If they’d caught him, they’d have cut his bollocks off and put him on a sex offenders’ register for life. Personally,’ she reached across for Janet’s happy-ciggie, ‘I think he got off lightly.’
‘Mr Maxwell?’
‘Mr Parker?’
It was a little after seven-thirty and Peter Maxwell was on his way to breakfast. Dawn was still a purplish pink as it rolled the night away and the wind whipped chill around Grimond’s cloisters. The school steward looked unusually perplexed this morning.
‘Can I have a word, sir?’
Maxwell went with the man into his office. Had the steward read Maxwell’s mind last night vis-a-vis the coffee? And was he now delivering the goods? Mrs Parker, looking more ferrety than Maxwell remembered her, hovered there for a moment and at a nod from her husband, scuttled away.
‘You’ve had a phone call, sir. As you know, there’s no way of putting you through in your room in Tennyson, so I took the message.’
‘Who was it from?’
‘He wouldn’t say, sir.’
‘Wouldn’t say?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘Well, what did he say?’
‘He said … well, it’s on the answerphone. I was already on duty, but the machine recorded anyway. I was tied up with me post and sorting out the boilers. We’ve got problems again.’
It was the universal mantra of school caretakers.
‘Can I hear it?’
‘Er … yes, sure.’ And Parker pressed the button.
‘I’ve got a message for Maxwell,’ the voice crackled, far away, frightened. ‘Tell him it’s got out of hand. I never meant for any of this to happen. And tell him … tell him to get out. For his own good and for God’s sake, get out.’ Then the line went dead.
Maxwell looked at Parker. ‘Mr Parker, do you know who that is?’
The steward stared at him with an odd look in his eyes. ‘Well, I’d say it’s from a mobile phone, sir,’ he said. ‘And the reception isn’t too good, but I think it’s Mr Tubbs.’
‘Jeremy Tubbs?’ Jacquie paused in mid-toast. Maxwell had met her as he crossed the quad from Parker’s inner sanctum. She looked cold and drawn and she hadn’t eaten. He marched into the Dining Hall, smiled at George Sheffield, who scowled at him, nodded at David Gallow who did the same, winked at Tony Graham who winked back and smuggled out two breakfasts under his scarf flaps. He always knew those Jesus colours would come in handy one day.
They sat together side by side on Maxwell’s bed under the eaves, munching Mrs Oakes’ toast and slurping coffee. He handed the tape to her. ‘Listen for yourself. You and Henry have a tape recorder for interviews, don’t you? Play it and see.’
‘Answerphones are a different size, Max. But there is one in Sheffield’s outer office.’ She handled it gingerly.
‘Parker’s prints will be all over it. Mine too. Mrs Parker’s quite possibly. The call seemed quite kosher.’
‘When was it made?’
‘About six-thirty this morning. The irony was that Parker was in and out of the office, but he’d forgotten to switch the answerphone off and by the time he’d got to it, Tubbs had rung off.’
‘What were his words again?’
‘“It’s got out of hand”,’ Maxwell remembered. “‘I never meant for this, or any of this to happen.” Then he said I should get out, for my own good and for God’s sake. Quite a colourful turn of phrase for a geographer. Probably part-pinched from dear old Robert Falcon Scott, but there you are.’
‘Parker thinks this was from a mobile?’
‘Right.’ Maxwell winced at the lukewarmness of his coffee and switched on the kettle for more. He was down to single grains. ‘So there’s no way of tracing it.’
‘No.’
‘There’s something else, though, about the message, I mean.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It sounded familiar.’
‘Well, of course, it’s Jeremy Tubbs.’
&n
bsp; ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. Run it alongside that tape young Jenkins left outside my room.’
‘Young … Max?’ Jacquie shouted. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte,’ he smiled. ‘I’m not sure female voices are allowed in Tennyson.’
‘You didn’t tell me about young Jenkins,’ she growled, looking fiercely at him.
‘Sorry, darling,’ he grimaced. ‘I really meant to.’
‘Jesus! How did you find out?’
‘Just a hunch,’ and he leapt around the room like Professor Frankenstein’s assistant, arms swinging and knuckles brushing the carpet. ‘Your alter-Igor.’
She threw a pillow at him.
‘The lad admitted it, but it won’t do any good now. He feels I’ve let him down. Haven’t worked out who killed his Mr Pardoe.’
‘His Mr Pardoe?’
‘Hero worship,’ Maxwell nodded, in memory far, far, away, smiling. ‘It doesn’t happen any more, not in the state system, anyway. If a teacher appears to be a hero now, he’s a pervert, there’s a hidden agenda. The world’s gone mad, Jacquie.’
She looked up. He hardly ever called her that. Only when the world really had gone mad.
‘Anyway,’ Maxwell sighed, ‘I suspect young Jenkins has just turned thirteen. He’s slipped over that fine line that demarcates sanity and sagacity from testosterone-impulsed rebellion. Allowing for the tie and the blazer and the cut glass accent, he’ll turn into Harry Enfield’s Kevin now; mark my words. I’ve lost him.’
‘How did he get the tape?’
‘He found it. Bill Pardoe threw it out. It was the skip at the back of Tennyson.’
‘Which explains his fingerprints.’
‘And you’d have found young Jenkins’ prints there too, I dare say, had Henry Hall had the balls and the manpower to fingerprint everybody.’
‘You think Tubbs made that tape?’
Maxwell poured his second coffee. Jacqui declined. ‘I don’t know. It’s just … oh, I know the Pardoe tape is distorted. But it was done apparently on the Music Department’s machinery. Why shouldn’t Tubbs be involved? According to Gaynor Ames, he couldn’t stand the man.’
‘Gaynor … ?’
‘Ames. The wife of the Head of PE. Haven’t you talked to her?’
‘Yes, we have,’ Jacquie said, looking at her watch. ‘Which reminds me, interviews in twenty minutes. Henry will want a briefing before we start.’ She got up to go.
‘Won’t he have missed you at breakfast?’
‘I pleaded the headaches last night. I was bushed. Gaynor Ames wasn’t very forthcoming, incidentally.’
‘Ah,’ Maxwell tutted smugly. ‘I’ve told you before about the matches under the fingernails technique. Softly, softly every time. With you and Henry it’s Nice Policeman, Nasty Policeman. With me, it’s just Nice Teacher, Nice Teacher. Gets results.’
‘Bollocks!’ she snorted. ‘Where did you get to last night? I rang.’
‘Sorry.’ He wandered to the window to watch blazered youngsters in the quad below beginning to loiter on building-corners. ‘I switched the thing off. I spent a happy hour in a state-of-the-nation debate, followed by a happy hour at the pub. What do you make of David Gallow, by the way?’
‘Head of History? Bit up himself, I thought.’
‘He’s an assistant Housemaster, isn’t he?’
Jacquie was rummaging in the pile on the chair for her coat. ‘Yes, Kipling, I think. Why?’
‘So, he lives on site?’
‘Yes. As I understand it, all Housemasters and their assistants do. And the Head of PE.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Max,’ she spun him away from the window. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to share, anything else that’s slipped your mind? So far we’ve had young Jenkins, Gaynor Ames and rather a lot of nookie in the boat-house.’
‘No, no,’ he laughed. ‘It’s just that Gallow dropped me at school after the pub and then drove off, heading somewhere else.’
‘What time was this?’
‘God, way after closing, but don’t tell the law. Must have been nearly twelve.’
‘Which way did he go?’
‘Er … let’s see, past the gate … East.’
‘Towards Petersfield.’
‘Could be.’
‘Is he back?’ It was Jacquie’s turn to look down from the window. ‘What does he drive?’
‘Um, ah, now you’ve asked me.’
‘Oh, Max, you’re hopeless.’
‘No, wait a minute. That’s it. Green jobbie, next to the Range Rover.’
‘Ah yes,’ Jacquie smiled. ‘What we in the real world would call a Proton.’ She could have bitten her tongue. She, of all people, knew why Peter Maxwell didn’t drive, couldn’t tell one car from another. She knew about his wife and baby, the loved ones before he’d known her. She’d held him in the lonely watches of the night when he’d stirred, reliving it all in his mind, the roar of steel and the splinter of glass. She’d kissed the tear that trickled sometimes in the keenness of the wind.
‘There’s something else.’ She broke away, making for his door, her public face on already. ‘I talked to DCI West yesterday.’
‘I suspect you deserve a medal for that,’ he said.
‘Hall’s here working under cover.’
‘Henry told you this?’ Maxwell crossed the room to her.
‘No, West. Max, stay with the plot.’
‘What did he say?’
She sighed. ‘Either he was fishing. Or he thought I know more than I do. Or … Christ, Max, I don’t know which way is up any more.’
‘All right, all right,’ he took her cheeks in his hands and kissed her forehead tenderly, leading her back to the bed and sitting her on it. ‘Now, think, sweetheart. What exactly did West say?’
She blinked in concentration. ‘He said “I know about the drugs bust and I know who’s involved.’”
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. But, Max, it has to be something like that. I never went along with all this inter-force cooperation, swappy-swappy cobblers. There may be forty-three police forces in this country, but we all operate on similar lines, for God’s sake. What’s to be gained?’
‘What’s to be gained from my being at Grimond’s?’ Maxwell was asking himself again.
‘Don’t change the subject,’ she said. ‘It only makes any sense if Henry’s been drafted in to clean up a case.’
‘And?’
‘And that would only be necessary if there’s police involvement. Somebody on the Hampshire force is bent.’
‘Drugs?’ Maxwell was trying to piece it all together. ‘Who?’
‘Not West,’ Jacquie said. ‘He told me about it. Could be one of his team, I suppose. I’ve only met a couple of them.’
‘Drugs, Jacquie,’ Maxwell was crouching on his heels in front of her. ‘You’ve interviewed all staff now, a goodly proportion of the sixth form. Anything?’
‘Every school has a drugs problem, Max. Christ, you know that, you teach at Leighford High, for God’s sake.’
‘Thank you for that, darling,’ he sighed. ‘It’s difficult to soar with eagles when you’re working with turkeys.’
‘Yes, but it’s usually worse in the private sector, Max,’ Jacquie told him. ‘They’ve got more money. They’ve already got the designer jeans and the platinum mobiles, so what other kicks are out there?’
‘Tut, tut, Woman Policeman,’ Maxwell scolded. ‘Do I detect a teensy bit of the politics of envy there?’
‘You get my drift, Max.’
‘I do. But would you say it merits West’s use the word “bust”? Is it that major a problem?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jacquie said. ‘If that’s Hall’s aim, his questions have been pretty oblique. But on thing’s for sure; I’ve got to tackle him about it. The DCI has some explaining to do. Thanks the tape, Max. And thanks for the breakfast Now, I’ve really got to go.’
Max
well was still crouching in front of her. ‘Of course you have, darling,’ he said. ‘And I’d love to let you, but unfortunately, my knees have seized up. And that’s rather bad news bearing in mind I’m playing rugger on Saturday.’
15
Just another manic Thursday. Mark West was tetchier than usual, out of ciggies and out leads. It was briefing time at Selborne and team crowded around him, wreathed in smoke and hoping for something, anything, from the guv’nor. It was always the same ten days into murder enquiry. Everybody’d tried the obvious. The house-to-house on Tim Robinson elicited almost nothing. He’d shopped at local Asda, had his bike fixed by the local bike dealer. He probably went to the local cinema and the local library, but nobody remembered that. They tried the pubs, did Mark West’s foot-sore coppers, in an attempt to resolve the dilemma over the drink question. A teetotaller with booze in the house. Kept for friends? If so, who? Did he go drinking with them, even if he was sitting at the bar sipping sarsaparilla with a dash of cherry? In the event, nothing. The morgue photo wasn’t horrific, but it was clearly of a dead man who didn’t look his best.
‘Course, I wouldn’t have seen him with his eyes shut,’ was the banal, if predictable, response from many a landlord in Petersfield. ‘Not unless he had a real skinful. Talking of which, we’ve got special offer on Theakston’s at the moment.
The Blundells, Robinson’s neighbours, had given useful descriptions of the men who paid the late PE teacher a visit one dark night. Or at least, Mr Blundell did, his wild-haired wife muttering the script at his elbow. But useful descriptions or not, they were just three blokes, needles in haystacks.
As for the missing Mr Tubbs, another resounding blank. His Mummy and Daddy lived in Harlow, on the probable grounds that somebody had to, and could not have been more helpful.
‘Jeremy’s a good boy,’ the slightly dotty Mrs Tubbs had told DI Sandy Berman. She had a long chelonian neck and hair like a Gorgon’s. ‘We’re enormously proud of him. I’ve got his graduation photo somewhere …’ and by the time Sandy Berman left, he could have written the man’s biography. Only one note had jarred. On his way out, the silent Mr Tubbs senior, still upright, still sprightly, had shown him to his car. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ he muttered. ‘Jeremy’s a little deviant. Always has been. Had this cocker spaniel once … well, you can fill in the details, I’m sure. Whatever’s going on, he’s up to his unpleasant neck in it, believe me. And to think, I wanted him to follow me into the Paras! I ask you!’