by M. J. Trow
‘In other words, you people haven’t got a bloody clue, have you?’
‘That depends,’ she ignored him, ‘on whether any of you knew each other beforehand.’
‘Malcolm did.’
‘Malcolm?’ Another bingo. This wasn’t in the first interview notes either.
‘Malcolm Harding. He and Whiting went way back – and not always very happily, I understand.’
‘Mr Harding told you this?’ Jacquie was putting pen to paper.
Simmonds edged a little nearer. ‘Look, I hope I’m not talking out of turn. I mean, I don’t want to land a colleague in it, but I do want my life back. Cooped up here in this dead-and-alive hole is not exactly why I became an Ofsted inspector. Anyway, Malcolm’s not the type.’
‘Type?’ Jacquie frowned.
‘To murder anybody.’
‘And what is the type, Mr Simmonds?’ the DS wanted to know. ‘Because expertise like that is worth bottling.’
‘Yes, all right.’ Malcolm Harding was popping pills on the Cunliffe’s terrace. On the beach far below, summer frolickers lay roasting under the noonday sun, their truanting children scampering and shrieking at the water’s edge. Out to sea, the jet skis whined and furrowed the ocean, slicing white through the blue water. Already, three hours on, nobody could remember when it had last rained. ‘All right, I did know Alan Whiting.’
‘You didn’t mention this at your previous interview, sir.’ Pat Prentiss sat like a piece of the furniture opposite the man. Second interviews were like this. The panic had subsided, the gut reaction had gone. There had been time to think, plan, perhaps even conspire. Especially since all the Inspectors had had ample time to cook any books they might have been preparing.
‘Didn’t I?’ Harding looked balder and more pallid in the light on the terrace, his face almost matching his icecream-salesman jacket, his silver moustache drooping in the heat. ‘Slipped my mind. Alan and I were at the same school in Derbyshire, oh, years ago.’
‘You were friends?’
Harding looked at the constable. Probably as thick as he looked. That’s why he was still a constable. This shouldn’t take long. ‘Of course. Why not?’
‘You tell me, sir.’
‘Oh, very well.’ Harding was on his feet now, pacing the patio. ‘We were friends, yes, but … well, if you must know, he cheated me out of a job.’
‘How so?’
‘I won’t bore you with the details. Let’s just say he made a few phone calls, called in a few favours. Knew people in high places, did Alan. He got the Ofsted job I should have had. Imagine his chagrin when I finally turned up on his team.’
‘Miffed?’ Prentiss wanted to be sure he’d correctly understood ‘chagrin’.
‘Livid,’ Harding confirmed. ‘But what could he do?’
‘More importantly, sir, what could you do?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Well,’ Prentiss took time sipping his orange juice. ‘Here you were, with a man you clearly detested. Aman you’d reason to … what, exact a certain revenge on …’
Harding spun round to face him, blotting out the sun with his slovenly bulk. ‘Are you suggesting I got my own back on the bastard by sticking him with a skewer? That’s not only ludicrous, it’s slanderous.’
Prentiss looked up at him. He’d been here before. ‘If I’m wrong,’ he smiled, ‘I will of course withdraw the implication completely.’
‘How long have you been a detective, Mr Baldock?’ Sally Meninger had insisted on being interviewed in her room.
‘Eighteen months, madam. Now, if we could …’
‘I think you’ve got a great future. Are you sure you won’t join me?’ She waved her Scotch at him.
‘Not on duty, thank you, Ms Meninger.’
‘Oh,’ she cooed, sitting on the chair opposite his with one delectable thigh crossed over the other. ‘I think we know each other well enough to dispense with the formalities, don’t you? I’m Sally,’ and she held out her hand.
‘Um …’
‘What shall I call you?’ she asked, her eyes widening.
‘Geoffrey,’ he said, limply.
‘Geoffrey.’ She dropped her hand and sat back, allowing her skirt to ride up just a little higher. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘It’s a routine second interview… Sally. Covering your relationship with Mr Whiting.’
‘Relationship?’ Sally frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, um … You were colleagues, obviously, but how well did you know him?’
‘If you mean was I sucking him off every night after a hard day’s inspection, why not come out and say it?’ she twinkled.
Geoff Baldock wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. He’d begged the DCI for a crack at this woman and the DCI had been reluctant. Frankly, he wasn’t sure the lad was ready. Pencilled in the margin of Hall’s notes from the first interview were the words ‘Watch this one’. And that was precisely what the DC was doing. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
‘I shouldn’t tell you this, Geoffrey,’ Sally Meninger was suddenly sitting up, her face dark, her eyes uncertain. ‘And I should have told the Chief Inspector when we spoke, but …’
‘Yes?’ Baldock’s pen was ready.
‘Well, I don’t know what it is, but I feel I can trust you.’ She leaned further forward still. ‘It must be me, I don’t know.’ She looked at his left hand. ‘There’s no Mrs Baldock?’
‘Oh … er … No,’ the DC laughed.
‘Girlfriend?’
The DC shook his head, deciding at that very moment that whatever he had with Kirsty Dale was over.
‘Good.’ He felt her hand caressing his knee, felt her eyes boring into his. ‘Alan Whiting was a bastard. He was stalking me.’
‘Stalking you?’
She nodded, pulling her hand away abruptly and getting up to stiffen her drink from the bedside cabinet. ‘He specifically asked for me for the Leighford assignment. I didn’t realize that until after he was dead and I rang Head Office for some sort of clarification.’ She took a swig and shut her eyes. ‘He must have seen me at some conference or other; been introduced. I don’t remember.’ She turned to face him, pencil slim and radiating heat. ‘He was all over me on that first night, on the Sunday. I had to,’ there was a catch in her voice, ‘I had to fight him off, physically defend myself.’ Baldock was on his feet, uncertain what to do. Sally Meninger shuddered, the Scotch in her glass quivering. ‘He was an animal. His poor wife …’ and she buried her face in her hands, the half empty glass pouring its contents over the rug.
Instinctively, although he knew he shouldn’t be doing it, Geoff Baldock held her in his arms. Their lips and tongues met as she lifted her face to his and they swayed there for a moment. When they parted, Sally turned away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t be,’ and he turned her back, eager to continue where they’d left off.
‘No.’ She held her fingers to his lips. ‘I can’t. I promised James.’
‘James?’ Baldock was even further out of his depth than he knew.
‘James Diamond,’ she explained. ‘The Head at Leighford High. He and I were … lovers once.’
‘Really?’ Baldock knew he should be writing this down, but couldn’t remember where he’d put his pocket book.
‘Oh, it was a long time ago. I couldn’t believe it when I realized it was that James Diamond who was the Head. And when that bastard Whiting came on strong, well, naturally, I turned to James for help.’
‘You did?’ Reality was flooding back into Geoff Baldock’s fevered brain. ‘You told him?’
‘It was weak of me, I know. I should have coped on my own. But,’ she turned to him again, her lips closing to his. ‘It’s like you and the DCI,’ she said. ‘There are just some people you know, instinctively, you can trust; you’re one of those,’ and her tongue snaked between his lips and her fingers curled in his hair. She pulled back a little. ‘James Diamond is another.
He was furious.’
‘When was this?’
Sally was running her fingers around the boy’s face. ‘Hmm?’
‘When did you tell Diamond?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The Tuesday morning, I think. The day … oh, my God,’ and she spun away from him.
‘What?’
She half turned back. ‘Well, you don’t think … oh, no, it’s too ghastly. What have I done?’
‘Sally,’ Baldock took her firmly with both hands, planting a kiss on her forehead. ‘It’s not what you’ve done, is it? I think we both know what this case is all about.’
He kissed her hard on the lips and left. Unbelievable, he thought, as he bounded down the stairs into the foyer, a woman like Sally Meninger had the hots for him and she’d given him the case on a plate. He checked his watch. What do murdering Headteachers do, he wondered, of a Thursday afternoon?
Chapter Ten
‘Well, we had this idea, Mr Maxwell.’
The Loup Garoux wasn’t the usual haunt of the Yawning Hippos. In fact, they’d got some pretty dirty looks from the maitre dee, who really was French and not just some bloke from Walthamstow with a talent for mimicry. But Mr Maxwell had vouched for the unlikely trio, so the maitre dee had reluctantly let them in – albeit only to the garden.
‘Oh yes?’ Peter Maxwell was with the band on the elegant wooden table under the sycamore. After the heat of the day, it was glorious to be up here on the Downs with the breeze lifting from the west and the line of the blue horizon an uncertain haze between sky and sea.
‘About that bloke,’ Duggsy was, as ever, the spokesman. ‘That e-fit.’
‘Yes?’ Maxwell had got the call from Duggsy at school that afternoon and had cycled all the way up here, much to the chagrin of his back and calf muscles, because the Hippos wanted somewhere private and Wal had never had a drink with a firework in it before. It was Maxwell’s decision to use the Loup Garoux, but he thought Wal might be disappointed. But no, the bass player was as happy as Larry with his sparkler, proving how little he got out.
‘We could find him for you.’
‘How?’ Maxwell was all ears.
‘Tell him, Wal.’
Wal was still staring at the sparks flying upwards from his curiously pink glass. ‘I read a Sherlock Holmes story once,’ he said.
It came as a faint surprise to Maxwell that the boy could read at all, but he tried not to let it show.
‘He has these kids, don’e?’ Wal explained. ‘The Baker Street Irregulars.’
‘Indeed he does,’ nodded Maxwell, quietly impressed.
‘Well, we’d sort of be your Irregulars, Mr M.,’ Duggsy chipped in.
‘Why?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Well,’ Duggsy cradled his pint, vaguely ill at ease in his scruffy leathers with all the Guccis loafing around. ‘We’re all feeling prats, to be honest, Mr Maxwell. I mean, this bloke, this e-fit one, he’s involved in the murders, right?’
‘I don’t know that, Matthew,’ Maxwell said. ‘But I’d certainly like to find out.’
‘Right. Now, if he hangs around pubs and other places of ill repute, well, that’s where we hang out too. And we feel, sort of, involved. ‘Mean, if he did it, we seen him, didn’t we?’
‘But only Iron man saw him up close,’ Maxwell reminded them. ‘How do you feel about all this, Iron?’
The drummer shrugged. ‘We’ll keep an eye,’ he said. ‘No promises, though.’
‘Guys.’ Maxwell leaned back. ‘I’m flattered, of course, but there’s a problem. Sherlock Holmes used to pay his Irregulars a shilling every time they worked for him. That’s five pee to you, but more realistically, using the multiplier effect, the current rate of inflation and a following wind, that means I’d have to cough up eighty pounds to each of you whenever you were on my payroll.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re a teacher.’ Wal was still making neon circles in the twilight with his dying sparkler, trying to roast the hovering gnats. ‘You’re loaded.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Wal,’ Duggsy ordered, unaware of a certain bridling from the paying customers at the nearest table. ‘This is Mr Maxwell you’re talking to. Won’t cost you a thing, sir.’
‘That’s uncommonly decent of you, gentlemen.’ Maxwell raised his glass.
‘You’ll come and watch us in the Leighford Festival, though, eh?’
‘Duggsy,’ Maxwell gave the man a high five. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
The lights burned blue at 38 Columbine that night. After he’d made his pact with the Hippos, Maxwell had watched them pile into Iron Man’s van and had cycled back from Loup Garoux in the embers of the sun. The other customers were audibly delighted when they left and Maxwell had pressed something brown and folded into the maître dee’s hand for his understanding. The rays had flashed on his spokes as Surrey swooped along the Downs road where the grass was cropped short by the sheep and the trees lay flat and stunted in their timeless battle with the wind. He’d freewheeled into Tottingleigh as the street lights came on – ‘twas almost fairy time.
Captain Bob Portal looked nearly finished now as Maxwell carefully painted the yellow double stripes on the rider’s overalls, reflecting sadly as he always did that to anyone not of the cavalry persuasion double yellow stripes meant no parking. The Master Modeller’s tongue may have been protruding through his teeth as it usually was at moments like these, but his heart wasn’t in modelling tonight. He knew there were four Ofsted inspectors idling their time away at the Cunliffe not two miles away from him and he couldn’t get at them. They were under constant protection from Henry Hall’s boys in blue and with that particular gentleman, Maxwell was decidedly persona non grata at the moment. He checked his watch. Half past eleven. Too late for any meaningful contact now even assuming he could somehow sneak past the cordon. They’d be tucked up in their truckle beds – except for Sally Meninger who’d be tucked up in somebody else’s. He’d swung that way from Tottingleigh, taking the sharp bend by the flyover in a flurry of gravel and a whirr of gears. He’d almost purred into the Cunliffe’s drive, but he’d seen the squad car near the front door and had thought better of it. One of Leighford’s finest would still be inside, perhaps more than one, and they would be looking out for Peter Maxwell almost as much as they were looking out for Boiler Man. Hell, some of them probably hoped they were one and the same person.
He rinsed his paint brush in the white spirit and slid his swivel chair backwards. The cat flap crashed ominously three floors below – the Count on one of his visits. Maxwell had found Olly Carson earlier in the day and showed him the e-fit of Joe Public that Jacquie had made up for him. It had been like pulling teeth. It could have been him Olly had said, but there again … Boiler Man had worn a baseball cap that partially hid his face. He was … what? Thinner? Older? Difficult to say. Olly, with his particular obsession, had learned to be cagey with strangers, people in authority, friends, everybody really. Maxwell had thanked the lad, his usual patient, understanding self, when really he wanted to pin the little freak against the wall in the UFO section of the library and shout at him, in Klingon, of course.
‘So,’ he stood up in his attic and looked out of his open skylight where the night breeze was still warm and the moon lay a frosted silver on the silent ridges of the sea. The pigeon that seemed to live next door had stopped cooing now and was dozing somewhere, its head under its wing, poor thing, praying not to meet the black and white killing machine that was Metternich. ‘Paula Freeling,’ Maxwell murmured. ‘You should never have gone down to the edge of the town without consulting me.’ He caught sight of his own reflection in the arch of the window pane, eyes tired and hollow, hair a mess. ‘You’re talking to yourself again, Peter Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Time for bed.’
The Head of Sixth Form’s eyes locked on those of his Headmaster the next morning. Peter Maxwell was leaning sideways, his left leg firmly on the ground, his right still over Surrey’s crossbar and fumbling blindly for the pedal. Ja
mes Diamond was in the back seat of a police car, its siren blaring, its lights blazing as it screeched out of the school gates. It was difficult to know which of them was the more gobsmacked.
‘I don’t usually pull rank, Anthony, as you know,’ he said to an equally amazed Year Ten kid standing nearby, his backpack on the floor in his astonishment. He tossed him a padlock. ‘But park this for me, will you? I feel a crisis coming on.’
Anthony caught first the lock and then the bike as it left Maxwell’s grasp. Somehow he snatched up his own baggage and wheeled Surrey away towards the bike sheds, wondering how it was remotely possible that a thing this old could still be on the road. He thought the same about the bike. Maxwell was up the steps, weaving past knots of astonished kids and staff, all of whom had seen the Headmaster’s going. He dummied through the Reception Offices, where every lady was on their feet and peering through windows; shimmied through Reprographics, where the technicians had abandoned their photocopying to watch the action, side stepped his way down the deserted Corridor of Power and hurtled into James Diamond’s office. Those two fine Machiavellians, Bernard Ryan, the Deputy Head and Dierdre Lessing, the Senior Mistress stood there as though they’d been pole-axed, gazing wistfully at the door.
‘Well, well, Acting Headmaster,’ Maxwell saluted Ryan with the flat of his hand, army style. He’d known this man, idiot and jerk, ever since he’d arrived at Leighford with pretensions to be able to do the timetable. Now, through natural wastage and the odd nervous breakdown, he was Number Two in the school. And, as of this moment, it seemed, Number One. Dear old Patrick McGoohan would, of course, have retorted that he was not a number, he was a free man. But there was so such thing as a free man. Not even a free lunch.
‘Don’t say anything, Max,’ Ryan warned.
‘What just happened?’ the Head of Sixth Form felt he had a right to know.
‘The police arrested James,’ Dierdre said, still wide-eyed with the shock of it all. She sat down sharply, as if she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her any more, wishing, all over again, that she hadn’t given up smoking eight years ago. She was sitting in the Head’s chair.