by M. J. Trow
‘Right, Pansy. He’s gone. We’re alone. Whatever is this email about?’
‘You’ll have to come and see,’ she said, pulling on his sleeve again. It looked like the Queen Mary towing the Isle of Wight ferry.
It was easier to go than resist and Maxwell followed her into her office, passing the morning receptionist on the way.
‘Morning, Thingee,’ he cried as he was carried away on the tide.
‘Morning, Mr Maxwell,’ she carolled back, deftly handling the myriad flashing lights of the switchboard already and it wasn’t even nine o’clock.
‘I wish you would learn the names of my staff, Mr Maxwell,’ Pansy Donaldson snorted. ‘It’s very rude otherwise.’
Maxwell turned as she pressed him down into the chair in front of her monitor. ‘Mrs Donaldson,’ he said. ‘I not only know Emma’s name, but I also know the name of her hamster. I used to know the name of her goldfish, which sadly died during last half-term. I know that she doesn’t like cheese but she does like Marmite, I know that—’
‘Yes, yes.’ Pansy Donaldson was testy. She didn’t like to be upstaged. ‘Just look at this email. Look away first, though, while I enter my password.’
It amused Maxwell, sitting there, pressed to one side by Pansy’s encroaching bosom, that she should feel it necessary to hide a password from him. He had to have his own password written on the inside of his desk drawer in his office and had begged IT to remove the necessity, but it was apparently impossible. Finally, the login was accomplished and he could sit up again, bosom-free.
The email was on the screen and he read it through quickly once and then, an icy hand around his heart, again, more slowly.
‘Mrs Donaldson,’ he read. ‘I have sent this to you because I know Mr Maxwell rarely opens his emails and I didn’t want to trouble him with this at home. Max – sorry to dump this on you, but Manda and the kids, and me as well, I suppose, all want to come home. It really isn’t turning out as well as we had expected and everyone is very homesick. Manda is worrying about the house, you know how house-proud she is. The place here was a tip and we got the impression it had been tidied up a bit, so she is beside herself wondering what they are doing to our place. The kids are hating school, they are way ahead of the others and are bored to sobs. Tell Hector that I am very impressed with his classes, by the way. They are the best in the school, even if they are a little confused over the causes of the American War of Independence. If it was just the homesickness and the mess and the boredom I think we’d still stick it out. The weather is fabulous, of course, and the kids are really enjoying the beach, which is a completely different experience from the beach at home. The teaching is fine, I’m really enjoying it and mainly the kids are OK. I have a few reservations about the whole system out here, but I can’t change that, so not to worry. But it all took a bit of a nasty turn this weekend …’
Maxwell turned to Pansy. ‘Have you read this?’ he asked.
‘I caught the odd word,’ she admitted, meaning that she had avidly taken in every sentence.
‘Well, please treat it as confidential and don’t tell a soul. And that means not telling Legs Diamond or Bernard Ryan, despite the fact that they have no souls.’ He screwed his head round to look at her. ‘Seriously, Pansy. This is me talking – I am being serious and you know how serious that is.’
‘But—’
‘But me no buts, Pans,’ he said. ‘Hector has had a horrible weekend and his week is going to get worse. He doesn’t need this. He’s happy here.’ He played his trump card. ‘He really likes you, you know.’
Pansy Donaldson allowed herself a small preen. ‘He’s a very nice man, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’ She caught his eye. ‘I promise. I really do.’
‘Thank you, Pansy. You are a wonderful woman.’ Whatever the others say, he added silently in his head. ‘Shush now, while I read the rest of this.’ He turned back to the screen.
‘But it all took a bit of a nasty turn this weekend. We were in bed on Friday night and the kids were finally asleep. This house is on quite a main road – all the roads are main around here, no one walks anywhere, they all drive – and they have taken a while to get used to the noise. There was a tremendous banging at the door and voices shouting for us to come out. Max, you see it on the telly, but having it happen to you is terrifying. I went down and opened the door and there were these men, in bulletproof vests and helmets, all down the drive and running round the house. One burst in through the back door while I was at the front. They were looking for Jeff O’Malley. Something about information from some bloke. I tell you, Max, we have got to come home. The Principal is finding us a new house, but I can hardly get Manda to go in the garden, let alone to the shops, and the kids were freaked out by it as well. They say they don’t want to go to school tomorrow and who can blame them. Can you sort it at your end, and I’ll see the Principal first thing Monday? Tell Hector I’m sorry to let him down, but you can see how I’m fixed, I hope. Love to Jacquie and Nolan. Paul.’
Maxwell sat for a moment and then turned to Pansy, still at his elbow. ‘Can you forward this to my wife?’ he said. ‘I think this may well have a bearing on something she is working on.’
‘Confidentiality,’ sniffed Pansy.
‘Mrs Donaldson,’ Maxwell said. ‘My wife is a detective inspector of the West Sussex CID. I think that she knows more about confidentiality than you have had hot dinners. Her email address is secure; it goes straight to her desk and nowhere else. I’ll phone her to let her know it’s on its way, if that helps.’
‘Can she unzip?’ the woman asked, mystifyingly.
Maxwell blinked. ‘I must assume that you are talking about something computer-based,’ he said, ‘since otherwise that question makes no sense and may even be construed as offensive.’
‘Encrypted files. Can she unzip them?’
‘Again, I am at a loss. Why don’t you just forward it as it is, there’s a good manager? It’s come all the way from California without self-combusting. I’m sure it can make it across town without further harm. Or, if you like, I can print it out. Well, clearly I mean that you can print it out.’
Pansy Donaldson pointed with a trembling finger to a printed notice on the wall, exhorting staff to only print things out when necessary. The irony pleased Maxwell, but seemed to pass the woman by. This was, in fact, the third notice that Pansy had pinned there, the other two having been scrawled on by Peter Maxwell with the words ‘Big Brother is watching you. G. Orwell’.
‘I will send it, Mr Maxwell, but it must be on your head if anything goes wrong. What is Mrs Maxwell’s email address?’
‘I have it here,’ Maxwell said, proudly, and fished it out of his wallet. ‘She is jay dot carpenter at leighford police, all one word, all lower case, dot gov dot you kay.’ He watched as she wrote it down. ‘Excellent. I can leave that with you, then, can I? I’ll ring her from Mr Moss’s office. Thank you for helping me on this, Mrs Donaldson. And remember – not a soul.’
Sweeping through the outer office, he enquired about Thingee One’s hamster, which was thriving after a slight case of bumblefoot. She offered a Hobnob which he gratefully accepted and he was soon off down the corridor, in search of Hector Gold. A little bit of forewarning was on the menu, and it would need some delicacy.
Even so, there were other fish to fry. ‘If that’s a football in your grubby little mitt, Callaghan, I’m going to hang you from the school flagpole. If we had a flagpole, of course.’
Chapter Thirteen
Jeff O’Malley had finally gone to sleep at around three-thirty that morning, at almost the exact moment that his wife was waking Jacquie and Peter Maxwell. He was still asleep as the day shift started to arrive and Jacquie for one hoped that would remain the case for a while. She thought she had better bring Henry Hall up to date and went up to his office. She was about to knock on the door when it flew open and Bob Thorogood barrelled out, red in the face, with a vein throbbing threateningly at his
temple.
‘Morning, Bob,’ she said, stepping back.
‘Oh, yes, morning to you as well, Inspector,’ he spat and headed down the stairs. As he reached the half landing, he shouted, ‘Bastard,’ and was gone.
Tentatively, Jacquie went into Hall’s office, half expecting him to be lying unconscious on the floor, but no. He was sitting in his usual imperturbability behind his desk, signing a pile of letters. He looked up.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that. Just had to give Bob a bit of bad news.’
‘Redundancy?’ Jacquie asked. Bob was a bit of an idiot, a dinosaur but not in a good way, but he was harmless enough.
‘No, no. Redeployment. Traffic. Quite high up, actually. Desk job, of course. No night stuff. No on call.’ His words were fairly heavily laden, but his face betrayed nothing. ‘He seems to prefer that kind of job, so I made sure he had it.’ He clicked his pen to retract the nib. No patches of ink on his shirt for Henry Hall when a little forethought could prevent it.
Jacquie sat down. ‘Traffic, though. He’ll miss the overtime.’
‘Will he?’ Hall was dubious.
‘Well, the overtime money, then. He always seems quite strapped for cash.’
‘Indeed. Well. I’m sure he’ll soon have all those traffic wardens on full alert. His department budget will soar, I’m sure. Teach them a few tricks, I shouldn’t wonder. But that’s enough of Bob Thorogood. More than enough. Any updates for me?’
‘Yes, guv, I have to tell you—’ The ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ filled the room. ‘Sorry, guv. Do you mind if I take this? It’s Max and we had a funny start this morning …’
Hall nodded and turned back to his signing.
‘Hello. DI Carpenter Maxwell.’ This greeting was their personal code for ‘I’m in Henry’s hearing’. They didn’t need a code for when Jacquie phoned Maxwell, because he never had his phone with him.
‘Are you near a computer?’ Maxwell sounded hurried and harried, an unusual situation for him, but he was bouncing a confiscated football on one foot as he spoke, to his own amazement. Well, if David Beckham could do it, how hard could it be?
‘Are you all right? You sound—’
‘Not a good time. I’m waiting in Paul’s office for Hector and when he gets here it’s not going to be pretty. Are you near a computer?’ He lost control of the football and it ricocheted off a bookcase and disappeared behind a pile of boxes. He decided to let it go; ball skills were not for everyone and if young Callaghan came calling for it at the end of the day, Maxwell would just deny all knowledge.
‘Max, you know what it’s like here. I’m never more than a few yards from one.’
‘Well, log on or whatever it is you young people do. Pansy has forwarded an email to you. When you’ve read it, phone me back. I’m in the History Suite, tell Thingee.’
‘Max, I—’
‘He’s here. Must go. Speak in a minute.’ And the phone went down with a clunk.
Jacquie put her phone back in her pocket, looking thoughtful.
Hall looked up. ‘Problem?’
‘I don’t know. He says that Pansy Donaldson has sent me an email. Can I log on over here?’ She pointed to the computer in the corner.
‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Do you know what it’s about?’
‘No. It seems to involve Hector, but I don’t know how.’ She pressed the ‘on’ button and the computer wheezed into reluctant life. ‘Oh, why are these things so slow?’
‘Monday morning, or so I’m told when I complain. Or Tuesday, or whatever day it happens to be.’
The blue screen inviting her to log on appeared and eventually she was in her emails. ‘Here it is. Hang on … Guv, you’d better read this.’ She scrolled back up to the top and leant sideways while he leant on the back of her chair to read over her shoulder.
‘Well,’ he said, when he was done. ‘This puts a bit of a different complexion on it, I suppose. Does Paul Moss know exactly why they wanted Jeff O’Malley, do you suppose?’
‘He doesn’t say so, and he has said everything else. I was going to try and find out a bit about him anyway. This is even more reason to do it, don’t you think?’
‘At least you’ve got something to ask about directly, rather than just random suspicions.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘How far behind us are they? Six hours, is it?’
‘Eight,’ Jacquie said. ‘It’s only half one in the morning there. I’d only get the night staff if I rang now.’
‘Try all the same. You might get more out of the night staff. They usually have more time. Do you have the address?’
‘Yes, I do. Down to the zip code. Paul’s wife is a bit of a tidy freak and with that goes all sorts of control stuff. She had cards done before she went. I’ve got one in my purse. Hold on.’ She rummaged in her bag and came out with a small card. ‘Here we are. It’s in Long Beach, zip code 90999. That’s ironic, but not to them, of course. They use 911, don’t they?’
Henry Hall was not a xenophobe like Maxwell. He just pretended that the rest of the world didn’t really exist. ‘Well, find out the nearest … precinct, is it, they call them? Give them a call anyway, you might come up with something. Don’t worry about coming to the meeting today; get on with that. There’s nothing much to add since last night. We’ve tracked down the other two at the card school. One is a personal trainer with so much muscle between his ears I can’t believe he understands poker at all. The other one is a bit brighter, a bit mouthy. O’Malley was almost right about his job. He’s a traffic warden. Bit of a keen one, apparently. There is a rumour that he ticketed a pram while the mother was unloading the baby from the car. Obviously only a story, but stories like that don’t start for no reason. He was on duty yesterday, checking the machines were all working, so he’s off today. He’s coming in later. The bodybuilder is coming in in his lunch hour. He could certainly have thrown her, no problem. The other one is not so certain. He’s got some kind of back problem, or so I gather. He might not have been able to do it. We’ll see.’ He walked over to the door. ‘I’ll let you get on, then.’
‘Hold on, guv. I came in to tell you; we’ve got Alana O’Malley staying at ours. Well, not strictly at ours. She’s with Mrs Troubridge. She had to go to casualty last night, out cold, according to Hector. He brought her to us, because Camille was making it difficult at home.’
‘What a family!’ Hall really had had just about as much as he could take of the O’Malleys. ‘She’s next door, you say?’
‘Yes. Mrs Troubridge was delighted.’
‘As long as she doesn’t come back to stay at yours, that’s probably all right. What about the son-in-law?’
‘We haven’t discussed him. This email rather changes things, don’t you think?’
‘True. Anyway, let me know as soon as you know anything. I’ll be in the big conference room if you need me before I get back.’
‘Right, guv. I’ll just ring Max back to see if he has got any more information from Hector, then I’ll get right on it.’
Hall lifted a hand in agreement and was gone.
Jacquie dialled the number for Leighford High School and was put on hold. The music was a recording of the Leighford High School string quartet playing, ironically, ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’, but rather slower than she was used to, more like the flight of the dodo.
Finally, the phone was answered.
‘Leighford High School. How may I direct your call?’
‘Emma. Hello. Mrs Maxwell here.’
‘Oh, hello, Mrs Maxwell. Do you want to speak to Mr Maxwell?’
‘Yes. He’s—’
But before she could tell Thingee One where her husband was, she had been put through to his office, up on the Mezzanine, where the vultures, Maxwell told the new Year Sevens every September, picked clean the bones of those who had ‘forgotten’ their homework.
‘Hello. Helen Maitland, Sixth Form.’
Helen Maitland was known as ‘The Fridge’ on account of her
always wearing white and being eight-feet wide. On the plus side, she had been Mad Max’s Number Two now for so long they’d all forgotten when she’d started and she had a heart the size of the great outdoors.
‘Helen. Hello. It’s Jacquie Maxwell here.’
‘Jacquie. Hello. He’s not here, I’m afraid. Can I take a message?’
‘No, I need to speak to him. He’s in the History Suite. Can you transfer me?’
‘Not from here, I’m afraid. We’re on a different loop. Can I put you back to switchboard?’
‘No, look, Helen. I’ll ring off and perhaps you could then get him to ring me. Tell him I’m in Henry’s office.’
‘OK, Jacquie. Will do. Nolan well?’
‘Blooming. A chip off the old block.’
‘Well, never mind,’ Maxwell’s deputy laughed. ‘You can’t have everything. I’ll pass on the message. Bye.’
Jacquie put down the phone and waited for it to ring. Maybe Maxwell was right when he said that before phones made everything so easy, people took more care with plans before doing anything, and also that ignorance was bliss. If all this had had to be done by letter, it would have all been resolved before anyone knew there was a problem. The phone rang.
‘DI Carpenter.’
‘Was it something I said?’
‘DI Carpenter Maxwell, I beg your pardon, Mr Maxwell.’
‘All rightie, then. Thanks for ringing back, heart. What do you think of the email?’
‘I’d like to say I’m shocked, but I can’t, because I’m not. Manda is right to worry about her lovely house. When we got there last night there was quite literally cheese stuck to the wall.’
‘I can quite see why you wanted to palm Alana off onto Mrs Troubridge, then. We don’t want cheese on our wall, do we? But what about the police raid?’ He sounded like a man with the phone tucked well in and an eye on the door behind him, because that was what he was.
‘I was rather hoping that you might enlighten me, if you’ve had a chance to speak to Hector,’ she said.