by M. J. Trow
Silently, a dark figure detached itself from the shadow of the nearest pillar, and walked round widdershins to meet her.
‘Hello’ was the last word she heard. The last sound was the grunt as the air left her lungs as she was pushed over the edge of the roof. The last sound she made was a sickening thud as her head hit the pavement below. Her blood ran for another minute or so, freezing into the slush on the ground. One last breath smoked on the air and she was still.
Chapter Seven
Jacquie Maxwell snuggled under the covers until just one curl was showing on the pillow and tried to make the morning go away. The Christmas Day shooting was still rumbling along, making no headway, or so it seemed. The forensics had been held up by the repeated falls of snow and so it had been two steps forward, three steps back. The SOCO team had identified at least nine sets of footprints in the fall that lay on the night in question. One was the dead man’s. Another the shallow depressions of his wife’s slippers. Then the snow had started again and the detail had gone to the devil.
The Leighford Advertiser had a field day. After the usual endless round of panto reviews and speculation on what the new year would bring vis-à-vis the projected wind farm, a mindless shooting was a breath of fresh, if bitter air. The nationals had got wind of it too. ‘Drive-by shooting in seaside town.’ Nottingham had come to Leighford. Yet none of it made sense. The bullet case came from a large-calibre weapon, a .44, the sort of thing you’d expect in Chicago or LA, but never in Leighford. Had the world, after all, gone mad?
Apart from all of that, the usual festive domestics had hit a new high this year, with families who could usually stomp off separately to the pub being snowbound together with too much booze and far too much turkey. Heads were bound to roll and it had only been sheer good luck that that had not literally happened. The shelters were full of bruised and battered wives and husbands, where I’m Going Home To Mother and I’m Taking the Goldfish was not an option, but slowly, surely, Leighford was returning to what its denizens called ‘normal’.
From the kitchen, she could hear the muffled shrieks and laughter that meant that Maxwell and Nolan were making breakfast. From the weight on her left foot, she knew that there was not any meat on offer, as Metternich had decamped to his second favourite place on a Sunday morning. This must mean pancakes, so her intervention was not required and she could enjoy another ten minutes, probably more. Easing her foot from under the cat, she curled up in a ball and closed her eyes. She could still hear the phone, sadly, but when it began to ring, she decided to ignore it. It was Sunday. She had worked ten days straight and even more if you discounted the single afternoon she had had off the week before last. She heard Maxwell pick up in the kitchen and the questioning burble as he found out who it was on the other end. She waited, fists clenched, for the happy burble which would mean it was a friend or family member. Although she tried to make it sound different, there was no mistaking the sudden clear words.
‘Oh, hello, Henry. She’s still in bed. Is it urgent?’
Jacquie lay quietly and counted the seconds of silence. Ten for a call to check that paperwork was up to speed for Monday. Fifteen would be a request for a meeting to sort out some lingering staffing issues, particularly Bob Thorogood. Twenty was—
Twenty-three seconds after the silence began, the bedroom door opened apologetically and Maxwell was suddenly in the room.
‘Soz, Mrs Maxwell,’ he said, quietly. ‘Henry’s on the phone. It sounds a bit urgent.’
She didn’t speak, just held her hand out from under the duvet at the side of the bed. She felt the phone being gently placed in it, then heard the door softly close. It was only the combination in the kitchen of Nolan, a frying pan, pancake batter and syrup that had forced Maxwell to be on the other side of it.
Still in her warm nest, she pressed the phone to her ear. ‘Guv?’
‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘You sound as if you have your head in a bag.’
‘I’m under the covers, to tell you the truth. I was planning on making a bit of a morning of it. But that obviously isn’t going to happen.’ She struggled upright and spoke again. ‘That better?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You sound better upright. I didn’t want to do this to you on a Sunday, especially after the couple of weeks we’ve had, but we’ve got a bit of a nasty one.’
Now she was all attention. ‘Where?’
‘Town centre. Woman found this morning, on the pavement. Seems to have jumped from the roof of the multi-storey car park.’
‘Suicide?’ Jacquie frowned. It wasn’t like Henry Hall to call her on a Sunday anyway, not if he could help it. And for a suicide?
‘Well … possibly. It certainly looked like that at first. Can you come straight here? There are elements of this I need a bit of brain for, and what I’ve got here isn’t really cutting the mustard.’
‘Bob?’
‘Hmm.’ Henry Hall was inscrutable as well as professional.
‘He is trying hard, isn’t he? I’ll be over ASAP. Can I have some breakfast first?’
‘As long as it’s not too many courses. She isn’t going anywhere, but there are things I want you to see before we move anything. Just to make sure I’m not seeing things. We’re on the High Street side. Halfway along. Pray for no more snow.’
Jacquie didn’t have her guv’nor down for the praying kind, but she knew the place well. In her mind she saw the chemist’s on the corner and the pet shop with the electric fish that Nolan had to have a look at every time they passed. Just an ordinary street in an ordinary town. Now it was a crime scene. And soon it would be a shrine with plastic flowers and bedraggled teddy bears. She thanked him and pressed the red key to ring off. Only Henry Hall would think it necessary to tell her precisely where the police investigation would be taking place, as if there might be three other white tents along the pavement that day. She slid out of bed and dressed in the clothes she only seemed to have taken off a couple of hours before. Maxwell reappeared in the bedroom door as though by magic.
‘Breakfast is served, modom,’ he said, in his best Jeeves. ‘Or do you want that to go?’
‘No, I can eat it here,’ she said, dragging a brush through her hair. ‘I’ll be down in a mo, I just need to quickly wash my face and brush my teeth and I’m done.’
‘So much for the leisurely day,’ Maxwell said, sadly, not feeling it right that morning to upbraid her for her split infinitive.
‘I know,’ she said, going through into the en suite and talking over the hum of the toothbrush and through a mouthful of foam. ‘Iz a ugger.’
‘Indeed it is,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘A ugger.’
Down in the kitchen, he doled out a stack of pancakes and drooled on the maple syrup. He sliced a banana over the whole thing and set it down in Jacquie’s usual place. Nolan was halfway through his and the maple syrup was already slicking his ear lobes. This was what came of letting the child eat a pancake like a slice of watermelon, but it was Sunday after all.
Jacquie came in and slid into her seat, cutting through the stack as she did so. ‘I’m so sorry, guys,’ she said. ‘It’s a pig on my day off, but …’
‘We understand, Mums,’ Nolan said indistinctly.
‘We’ll have a nice day together, but we will miss you too.’
‘What a nice child you are,’ she remarked.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And you are a nice …’ he was stuck for a description, ‘detective inspector.’
Maxwell stifled a laugh. ‘What about me?’ he said. ‘Am I a nice anything?’
Nolan looked at him for a long minute. ‘You’re nice too, Dads,’ was what he settled for and another diplomat was born.
Henry Hall was not usually a man who dressed for the weather. Summer and winter, he turned up for work immaculate in a suit and crisp white shirt. They were still there on this freezing January day but his wife, a mother hen temporarily chickless, had wrapped him in a thick coat bought in the hopes that one day they would go on
the long-awaited cruise to the Arctic and had topped it off with a scarf that reached up from collar to lens. The gloves he had managed to lose in the car on the way over but the scarf seemed to have become an integral part of his face and resistance was useless. He left it where it was, pulling it down each time he needed to speak. Not for Henry Hall the Maxwellian type of neckwear, the Jesus College scarf worn with bravado and just a hint of snobbery. Hall also had hiking boots on, which were proving far more treacherous on the glassy surface of the pavement than any shoe would have been, and he stayed near to the railings which skirted the margins of the car park, to have something to hold on to. He had resisted the white suit and was staying well back.
Jacquie joined him there, at the back of the crowd, dressed in a sensible ensemble, it seemed to him, of padded jacket, rubber boots and a rather natty hat with a tassel. Nolan had insisted on the hat, but otherwise her clothing had been her own idea.
‘Guv?’ She peered between the bent backs of the forensics team to see what was going on. ‘Jumper?’
Hall was wearing one of those too, as part of his many layers, but knew this was not what she meant. ‘Yes. At least, that’s what it looks like.’
His voice was rather muffled and Jacquie gave him a quizzical glance. ‘Can I help you with that scarf?’ she asked.
‘Would you? Margaret is afraid I’ll catch cold.’ Jacquie reached behind him and undid the intricate knot, memorising which Girl Guide extravaganza it was, so that she could put it back again at the end of the day. Hall flexed his neck, colder but far more comfortable. ‘That’s better. Right. It looks like she was a jumper from down here, but it is up there that I am interested in. Shall we?’ He ushered her through the pedestrian door, into the mixed smells of urine, cold metal and weed that made up that popular air-freshener fragrance, L’eau de Garage Parking.
Jacquie pushed the call button of the lift.
‘Not working,’ Hall remarked, as he pushed open the door to the stairs with his shoulder. ‘Let the door swing to; they haven’t dusted here yet.’
Without speaking again, their lungs straining on the biting cold air, they made their way to the top. Just inside the door, a uniformed constable, snug in his cape, kept watch.
‘I hope it’s all right, DCI Hall,’ he said, ‘if I stand inside. It’s bitter out there.’
‘Can you see everything from in here?’ Hall asked the man.
‘Yes, sir. The car is over there.’
‘Stay in here, then. We don’t want you to die of hypothermia and this might be a bit of a long job. Have they dusted up here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. This way, then, DI Carpenter Maxwell.’ Hall was always punctilious about formality in the company of uniform. ‘It’s that car, over there.’
Jacquie listened. It was easier than looking; the snow had started up again and evil little frozen grains hit her in the face and lodged in her tassel. ‘Is the engine running?’
‘That’s right.’
She walked over to the car, treading in the footprints of the SOCO team who had preceded her. She walked around the vehicle, looking carefully. ‘That’s peculiar,’ she said, at last. ‘She’d cleared the windscreen. In fact, she’d cleared all the windows.’
‘Yes. And she’d turned the engine on to warm the car while she did it. It’s been here all night. There’s no new frost on it and the exhaust has even melted some of the snow on this abandoned job next door.’
‘It wasn’t suicide, then, guv, surely?’
‘No, it wasn’t. But not just for these reasons.’
‘There’s more?’ Jacquie had opened the door and was looking around the interior of the car.
‘Pick up the bag and look inside. It’s OK, it’s all been checked by SOCO.’
Jacquie reached inside and grabbed the handle of the bag which was in the passenger footwell. She opened the clasp and looked in. ‘Good God, guv,’ she said, on an intake of frosty breath. ‘How much is in here?’
‘One thousand pounds,’ Hall told her, his voice flat and expressionless.
‘Is there a note?’ She already knew there wouldn’t be a note, but it had to be asked.
‘No, not that we can find. Someone from uniform is round at the house going door to door while SOCO do the inside, but there’s nothing yet. There’s an ex somewhere – I gather that he is on his way to the station to talk to us. We’ll get back there now you’ve seen this. I just wanted you to see what was what.’
‘That’s good of you, guv.’ She paused. ‘Do I gather you are in the minority here?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid so. I’ll be logging it as suspicious, no matter what the forensics boys say. They are having to put warm bags round the body to unfreeze it from the pavement. They’ll be a while. Jim Astley’s still on his way. Let’s go and talk to the husband. I’m parked round the corner. You?’
‘I’m behind you,’ Jacquie said. ‘I’ll just quickly ring Max and tell him not to hang on for lunch and then I’ll be along.’
‘To tell him not to hang on for lunch.’ Hall managed to get a world of meaning into that simple remark.
‘Yes,’ Jacquie said. ‘Precisely that. We have a brave new world at 38 Columbine this year, where I don’t tell him about any of my cases.’
‘Not even Matthew Hendricks?’ Hall raised an eyebrow.
‘He told me about that,’ she protested but didn’t add that technically that didn’t count because it was last year. ‘We haven’t discussed it since.’
Hall was sceptical, but he knew Maxwell as a man who could bide his time. If an iguana on a rock knew something that Maxwell wanted to know, Hall knew who he would have his money on as to who blinked first. But that could wait. ‘Make your call, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at the station.’
Jacquie went to the far corner of the car park to maximise the signal and pressed ‘1’, the speed dial for home.
‘Carpenter Maxwell residence.’
‘How very formal,’ Jacquie said.
‘Hello, sweetness. How’re things?’
‘Cold.’
‘Are you wearing a vest?’ Maxwell asked, with a tut in his voice.
‘Many vests. It’s still cold. I’ll be home later this afternoon, I think, but don’t wait for lunch. The forensics is going to be important on this one, and we’re going to have to be patient on that because the body is totally frozen.’
‘Frozen? What, as in stored in a freezer?’
‘No, as in … Wait a minute. Remember my resolution?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, so do I. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Make sure Nolan does his homework.’
There was a puzzled silence from the other end of the phone. Jacquie could almost hear the cartoon question marks growing and popping over her husband’s head.
‘Sorry. You know. Just …’ Sometimes she just hated her job and missed her boy more than she could say. At all other times she knew she would be a basket case if all she did was stay at home and dust. It just happened that today, she was in the missing mood.
‘Don’t worry, petal. When you get home he will be done and dusted and ready to play. See you later. And … Jacquie?’
He didn’t often use her name and her heart skipped a beat. ‘Yes?’
‘Be careful driving. It’s a bit slippy today.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ she said. ‘I’m always careful. And then I’m a bit more careful, for you.’
She heard him chuckle. ‘Thanks. See you later. Bye.’ And the phone went down. She put her mobile back in her pocket and took a last look over the parapet, at the hunched white-clad bodies beavering away below, then walked very carefully across the half-frozen ruts of the car park, through the icy snow-carrying wind, back to the relative comfort of the staircase.
As Detective Inspector Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell drove away, she was watched out of sight by one of the SOCO team, one so large that he had his own personal stash of specially ordered coveralls i
n the back of his car. Donald, Jim Astley’s gargantuan amanuensis, had carried a torch for Jacquie since way back when he only weighed a mere seventeen stone. He had pined quite badly for a while when she first married Maxwell and colleagues worried that he might never get back to his five-McDonalds-a-day norm, but after that one afternoon of being off his fodder, everything was back to normal. He sighed and turned back to the job in hand, cross with himself for missing an opportunity to exchange some witty banter. Angus, whom everyone secretly thought of as the real forensics guy, was trapped in Chichester by the weather so they had fallen back, metaphorically, on Donald. Falling back on Donald would have been relatively comfortable, but some of the sticklers in the team wished that he didn’t shed crumbs all the time. It was going to screw up a case one of these days.
Pete Spottiswood, back from nursing his mother-in-law, followed the line of Donald’s gaze and smirked, loudly. Spottiswood was one of the few people who could smirk audibly and Donald hated him with a passion. The big man knelt in the melting bloody slush and wished him to hell. As for Sandra Bolton, she might just as well have not come. She had been heaving her guts out at the end of the road almost since she had got there. Donald had never been sick in his life. He had the constitution of an ox, and other things in common with the animal, like size and, some would say, thought processes. But he had occasional flashes of near-brilliance and for those the team liked having him on board. Angus might be better trained, but the THC was beginning to take a bit of a hold, and since that time he absent-mindedly ate a cake that was about to be entered as evidence in a domestic because he had the munchies, they had been glad to have Donald around.