by M. J. Trow
‘Side door would be my bet,’ Prentiss said. Everybody knew the DC’s experience. He wouldn’t be wide of the mark.
‘Side door,’ Hall was checking the plan again, ‘would take them out to the car park.’
‘It’s self-closing,’ Prentiss said. ‘There’d be nothing to show anyone had slipped out. Fingerprinting the bar would be pointless. Too many users. Anyway, he almost certainly wore gloves.’
‘He has a vehicle waiting.’ Hall was talking them through it.
‘He’s taking a hell of a risk, isn’t he?’ Baldock asked, following the kidnapper’s flight path on Hall’s diagram.
‘Back to the Hendon lecture notes, Geoff,’ Hall said. ‘Risk-taking is one of the prime characteristics of a psychopath. This man’s cool as a cucumber. He kills in broad daylight in the centre of a busy school. He’s not going to be fazed by a little night shift in a hotel.’
‘Especially one with no CCTV,’ Prentiss reminded everybody.
‘How did he know?’ Jacquie asked. All eyes focused on her.
‘Jacquie?’ Bathurst wasn’t following.
‘How did he know where the Ofsted people were?’
There was a silence.
Hall nodded. ‘That, Detective Sergeant Carpenter, is the most intelligent question I’ve heard this morning.’
Baldock’s face said it all. He made a mental note, not that he must do better, but that Henry Hall was clearly screwing Jacquie Carpenter. Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven. And somehow, he couldn’t get round that one without a bizarre image of himself sitting on Henry Hall’s knee. He shook it from his mind.
‘We’ll get back to that,’ Hall said. ‘So, the perp is in a vehicle, car, van, we don’t know. Where does he take her?’
‘His risk’s less now,’ Bathurst was thinking aloud. ‘His problem was getting her out of the hotel. Up to reaching her room, he could have come out with some plausible excuse for being there. But once he was with her, what … holding her at skewer point … that was his dangerous time. Now, he’s in the car, he’s relatively home and dry.’
‘Self-locking doors.’ Baldock was back in the discussion again, worrying it, teasing it, always pointing the spotlight on himself. ‘She can’t get out.’
‘She’s a frail, not very physical little woman,’ Prentiss said. ‘Not likely to wrestle with this bloke in the car.’
‘Plus,’ Jacquie reminded them all of the woman’s viewpoint, ‘she’s very, very scared.’
‘He takes her where?’ Hall moved the briefing on.
‘To a lock-up,’ Bathurst was going through the possibilities. ‘Garage, workshop. Forensic say there are traces of sump oil on the dead woman’s clothes. And microscopic pieces of metal. Astley’s coming to the same conclusion.’
‘Lathe filings?’ Hall suggested.
‘Forensic aren’t sure. It’s an alloy, but that doesn’t really help.’
‘We know she was trussed up, both before and after death,’ Hall said. ‘Why keep her?’
‘Sir?’ Baldock was out of his depth by now.
Hall was striding around the room, trying to get a handle on it all. ‘We’re assuming the killer thought he’d been seen dispatching Whiting.’ He was looking at his team one by one. ‘So he has to silence Paula Freeling. He could do it in the Cunliffe. He doesn’t. Why? He takes her elsewhere. Why? He keeps her alive for … what does Astley reckon … eight to nine hours, depending on what time he snatched her from the hotel. Why?’
‘He’s busy,’ Jacquie said suddenly.
Shit, thought Baldock, ready for the DCI to pat his blue-eyed girl on the bum again.
‘Doing what?’ was all Hall said.
‘Day job,’ Jacquie threw back at him. ‘Important meeting. Somewhere he has to be.’
‘So he hasn’t got the time to kill her straight away?’
‘He does it later,’ Jacquie shrugged. ‘When he has a minute.’ She hadn’t meant it to sound so casual, but she’d been around murderers long enough to know that to some of them, that was exactly what it was. Life was nothing more than a commodity, to be bought or sold as the market went or the wind blew – the analogies, in the end, didn’t matter.
‘When he’d got a minute,’ Hall echoed. ‘Right. So he uses the same MO as on Whiting.’ A pause. ‘Comments, people.’
‘His calling card,’ Prentiss suggested.
‘Signature,’ Bathurst was more precise, or better clued up on the jargon, at least.
‘Why a skewer?’ Hall was asking them as he’d asked himself a thousand times already.
‘Cheap,’ Prentiss suggested.
‘Easily obtainable,’ somebody else threw in.
‘Who’s linking with other forces on that?’ the DCI wanted to know.
‘That’d be me, guv,’ Baldock was where he wanted to be again, centre stage, but his answer left a little to be desired. ‘Nothing so far. And nothing in West Sussex CID since records began.’
‘All right.’ Hall was moving them all on still further. ‘He moves her from the garage, workshop, whatever it is. And he dumps her. Phil?’
Bathurst crossed to the second flip chart. ‘Southern Water’s site off the Sea Front, Lysander Road,’ he pointed to it with his biro. ‘They’re carrying out some sewage removal programme or whatever down there, so there’s lots of handy holes to dump a body.’
‘Bit public, isn’t it?’ Prentiss asked. ‘Or is Chummy having a larf?’
‘Our man’s a risk-taker, remember?’ Hall said.
‘The site’s been there for nearly two months now,’ Bathurst reported, ‘so everybody knows about it. Southern Water had some vandalism there a few weeks back. They replaced wire, strengthened boundary fences. Uniform got nowhere with that.’
Chuckles around the room. In that on-going feud between uniform and plainclothes which had been de rigeur ever since they set up the Detective Department at Scotland Yard when dear old Sir Robert Peel was still alive, every cheap shot was a cause for mirth.
‘But at least it made the water board tighten up security.’
‘Night patrol?’ Hall asked. ‘Dogs?’
‘No.’ Bathurst shrugged. ‘Just a few padlocks and razor wire. Seems to have done the trick, though.’
‘It stopped ten-year-olds with spray cans, yes, but not our man with his dead body. No camera surveillance, I suppose?’
‘Sorry, guv,’ Bathurst smiled. Both men knew they were living in an age of hi-tech which was only as good as the tight-fisted bastard prepared to foot the bill for it.
‘So how did he get in, carrying an eight stone woman wrapped in a mysterious way?’ Hall wanted to know.
‘Through the front gate, would be my guess,’ the DI ventured. ‘This would have been Friday night, or more likely the wee small hours of Saturday morning. A July Friday doesn’t start to quieten down until about half one, two. The perp would have to wait until it was quiet.’
‘This gate …’ Prentiss was confused.
‘Steel, Pat,’ Bathurst knew the way his DC’s mind worked. ‘He couldn’t shin over it with Ms … sorry, Miss … Freeling over his shoulder, so it’s my guess he cut through the wire mesh and retied it on his way out.’
There were murmurs and a whistle.
‘I said he was cool, didn’t I?’ Hall reminded everybody. ‘He’d thought this through, come prepared. No Southern Water operative reported a break-in on the Saturday morning, no gaping gate, so he must have refixed the wire.’
‘How come he dumped there, though, sir?’ Baldock was man enough to admit when he was stumped.
‘This bore-hole, Phil.’ Hall pointed to it.
‘They were closing it down,’ the DI said. ‘It was half-filled with sand when the perp put her in there.’
‘So he hoped she wouldn’t be noticed?’ Prentiss asked.
‘That’d be my guess,’ Hall said. ‘The hole would be filled in before anyone noticed. And Miss Freeling would be just another missing person.’
‘Has to be an ins
ide job,’ Baldock was confident in his assessment. ‘Has to be one of the water board. He’d know about the bore-hole – and that way, he wouldn’t even have to dig a grave.’
‘That makes sense,’ Hall nodded as the boy-wonder preened himself. ‘Except for two things.’ Baldock looked crestfallen. ‘Why shit on your own doorstep? Why hide a body in your own workplace – wouldn’t that draw a certain amount of attention? Can you be absolutely sure you’ll get to it and fill in the hole before anyone else does. What if his timing’s off and something goes wrong? And second, whoever killed Miss Freeling killed Alan Whiting. Is that an inside job too? If you can find me a teacher who moonlights for the water board, Geoffrey, I’d say you’ve got your man.’
There were guffaws all round; clearly nobody knew how little teachers earned. Eventually, Baldock saw the funny side and chuckled along with them. Maybe he wasn’t quite ready for the DCI’s job just yet.
‘Dig deeper, people,’ Hall ordered, unaware of his feeble pun. ‘We’re a week into this one and I’ve a feeling we’ve only scratched the surface. Jacquie, a word.’
One of the many skills that teachers have is the ability to pad silently through still halls on sweltering days, wandering up and down like the restless spirits they are, nosing into other people’s work and becoming suicidal with boredom. It’s called Invigilation and that, along with the marking and the children, was the bane of Peter Maxwell’s life.
The sun had got his hat on again by eleven and its rays were streaming in through the gym windows, the room still vaguely whiffy with old rope and PE mats and other people’s jock-straps. Over a hundred hopefuls sat in their uncomfortable plastic chairs in the neat rows laid out by Betty Martin and his lads. Most of them were cheerfully wrestling with the complexities of GCSE Double Science. One or two were doodling, when Maxwell’s back was turned, on the desk, telling the world what everyone knew already about the Exams officer. Jay Phillips was fast asleep. He’d written his name on the front and then Lethe had overtaken him. Maxwell shook his head – Winston Churchill had got into Harrow for doing as little as that. Surely, this would qualify young Jay for the AS Physics course.
As he reached the front for the umpteenth time, the useless fan blasting the hair of one lucky student only, he saw the rows of mobile phones the Exam Board rubric had insisted were handed in and switched off before the exam started. For a moment, he toyed with dropping them all into a bucket of water. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement in the wired glass of the gym door. It was Thingee from the office, waving at him.
He tiptoed in his suede brothel creepers over the plastic covering that protected the gym’s floors and tucked his head round the door.
‘It’s Mrs Whiting,’ Thingee hissed, clearly in a flap. ‘The Ofsted Inspector’s wife … um … widow. She’s here and wants to talk to you.’
Maxwell glanced back at Jeff Armstrong, the oppo who was invigilating with him. He held five fingers in the air and pointed out of the door. Armstrong nodded. The old duffer was always being called away from things for one spurious reason or another. Wonder what it was this time? Probably his bladder. No one had yet invented a Teacher’s Friend.
‘I just had to see it,’ Pamela Whiting said as they walked. ‘The room where Alan died.’
‘I still don’t think this is a good idea, Pamela,’ he said softly and he walked with her up the stairs to the mezzanine floor.
The pair were now standing on the History corridor outside Aitch One. She automatically tried the handle.
‘It’s been locked ever since … it happened,’ Maxwell told her.
‘Have you a key, Max?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Then …’
‘No, Pamela,’ and he led her away to his office, down the corridor that Boiler Man must have walked on his way to do a job.
She took in the film posters, the yellowed plant in the corner, the piles of papers and the bookcase full of bumf.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I read in the papers about Paula Freeling.’
‘Number Two,’ Maxwell nodded, closing his door. He hoped Jeff Armstrong wouldn’t mind. He was going to be rather longer than five minutes.
‘Look, I’m sorry about this,’ she said. ‘It was a stupid, spur of the moment thing. I’ve disrupted your day.’
‘Got me out of invigilation,’ he smiled. ‘I owe you a huge debt of gratitude and probably a large slice of my over-inflated salary. Any news?’
‘From the police, you mean? No. Look, do you mind if I smoke?’
‘The school has a no-smoking policy,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure there are exceptions.’ He slid open a drawer and handed her an ashtray, the one he kept for particularly neurotic sixth-formers having a bad hair day. He watched as she drew heavily on her cigarette.
‘I suppose their enquiries will have shifted to the Freeling woman now,’ she said.
‘Probably,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But the two are clearly linked. Tell me about Alan.’
She looked at him. ‘What’s to tell?’ she asked. ‘You think you know somebody …’
‘But you don’t?’
She shook her head. ‘I think … I think Alan may have been having an affair, Max.’
‘Ah. Cherchez la femme.’ Maxwell watched the woman closely. ‘Do we know who?’
Pamela shook her head. ‘No. Oh, it’s no big deal, I suppose. It happens, does it not, in countless families up and down the land. You fall in love, you fall out of it. You get busier – Alan had his blessed Ofsted, I have a business. I can’t say we saw much of each other in the last weeks, but … even so, you notice. Phone calls late at night, on his mobile. Extra meetings which hadn’t been scheduled, that sort of thing.’
‘You’ve no suspicions?’ Maxwell pressed her.
Her face wreathed briefly in a circle of smoke. ‘Sally Meninger,’ she said.
‘Ah.’ Maxwell raised an eyebrow.
Suddenly, Pamela was sitting upright, staring at him. ‘You know something, don’t you?’
‘Pamela, I …’
‘For God’s sake, Max. Somebody has killed my husband. Don’t I have a right to some answers? If not from the police, then at least from you.’
‘Fair enough,’ the Head of Sixth Form sighed. ‘They were … shall we say, rather chummy.’
‘How chummy?’
‘Having sex chummy.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Look. Pamela, I don’t think I’ve any right …’
‘How do you know?’ The woman was on a mission now.
Maxwell shook his head. ‘Your husband’s only been dead a week,’ he told her. ‘It’s not my place to do this.’
‘I have to know, Max,’ she pleaded with him, leaning forward, her eyes full of tears. ‘For my sanity’s sake.’
So he told her. The bar at the Vine, the loos at the Vine. What he didn’t tell her was the existence of Joe Public, whose e-fit lay on his desk nearby. Because he had no idea who Joe Public was or how he meshed into the whole peculiar box of tricks. Nor did he tell her of Sally Meninger’s nocturnal visit carrying wads of cash. Those two titbits he needed to keep to himself for the moment. When he’d finished, he waited for a reaction. It came soon enough. She collapsed, sobbing, into his arms as he quickly took the ciggie from her and held her close. He breathed in the scent of her hair and found himself patting her quivering shoulder. She was a girl again, looking for peace, looking for someone to take away the pain.
The door opened and a startled sixth former stood there, having come to check on the last minute details of the Grad Ball. Maxwell just shook his head over Pamela’s shoulder and the sixth former beat a hasty retreat, hurtling to the Common Room to tell the world what she had just witnessed. It was all part of the enigma that was Mad Max.
David Simmonds sat back in the Cunliffe’s sun pavilion, a glass in his hand and a chip on his shoulder.
‘This really is the limit,’ he sna
pped. ‘I told it all to the other officer.’
‘It’s just routine, sir,’ Jacquie Carpenter assured him, notebook poised on her knee. ‘You’d be amazed how things come back after a few days.’
Simmonds snorted. He knew the police had a job to do. And truth to tell, he was just a threat rattled by all this. He hadn’t joined Ofsted to become the target of some maniac. ‘What did I think of Alan Whiting?’ he repeated her question. ‘Well, he was effective enough, I suppose. Appeared to be doing his job. Of course, he had a bit of a roving eye.’
‘Oh?’ Jacquie had already proved herself right. Simmonds hadn’t mentioned this in his earlier interview.
‘Oh, nothing in it, I’m sure, but he was very … shall we say… attentive to Sally Meninger. Even swarmed around Paula Freeling.’
‘Even?’ Jacquie wanted to make sure she understood.
‘Oh, come on, sergeant. Let’s not let death guild any lilies here. Miss Freeling was a frowsty old besom teetering on the edge of extinction. She had all the sexual allure of a crocodile handbag. To see Whiting chatting her up, you’d swear she was Sharon Stone or somebody.’
‘So it was just his way, then?’
‘Yes. He was no respecter of persons, if truth be told, and age was no barrier either. Waitresses here at the Cunliffe, even that ghastly harridan Dierdre Lessing at Leighford High.’ Jacquie couldn’t help a smirk – Peter Maxwell would be loving this. ‘She of course was preening herself like a pissed schoolgirl at a party. How he had the brass neck I don’t know. No oil painting, was he?’
‘Good in the sack, maybe?’ Jacquie ventured, a little unprofessionally.
‘Maybe,’ Simmonds nodded. ‘Look, you’re not taking this seriously, I hope.’
‘What, sir?’
‘This twenty-four hour protection nonsense. Can there really be a maniac out there killing Ofsted inspectors? It’s preposterous.’ Perhaps if he heard himself say it, it would all just go away.
‘Two out of six ain’t bad,’ Jacquie reminded him.
‘What’s the motive?’ Simmonds took a hefty swig from his gin and tonic.
‘That depends,’ Jacquie said.