by M. J. Trow
Hall had stopped making notes. ‘Is that it?’ he said.
‘Umm ... yes. I thought I’d just tell you policepersons.’ Maxwell hadn’t expected back flips, but the bum’s rush seemed a little harsh.
‘Thank you,’ Hall said. ‘I just need Jacquie now, if that’s all right. Put your head round the next door along and someone will escort you to the sick bay.’
Jacquie looked at her boss, as surprised as Maxwell was but just opened the door to let him out.
‘See you at home, then,’ he said.
She nodded and closed the door behind him. Then, she turned to Hall. She wasn’t usually blunt with the man, but they went back a long, long way. ‘For God’s sake, Henry,’ she said. ‘What was that all about?’
Alice, the first aider, escorted Maxwell to the sick bay, a pleasant room on the corner of the building, unlike a school san only because there was a lock on the door and the wall into the corridor was reinforced glass above waist height. The bed was crisply made with a blue, candlewick cover and the pillows almost crackled with freshness. It was a room which had an air of disuse about it, whilst being almost aggressively clean. Alice tapped in the code and opened the door.
‘Mr Morley?’ she said, gently. ‘Are you up to a visitor?’
The man was lying in the bed, curled over on his side in the foetal position, with his face to the wall. ‘Who is it?’ he muttered.
‘It’s Mr Maxwell,’ the girl said.
‘Mr Maxwell from up at the school?’ His voice sounded just a touch brighter.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Alice, Highena of just a few years before, though never one of Maxwell’s Own, was able to confirm without checking.
‘All right, then.’ The voice was still quiet, but he rolled over and sat up, pale against the pillows.
‘Hello, Mr Morley,’ Maxwell said. ‘May I call you Thomas? Sam sends her love.’
‘Sam?’ The man’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘Sam?’
‘Well, she works up at the school,’ Maxwell said. ‘She asked me to pop in.’
‘Louise didn’t like Sam. Or my mum and dad. Or Jaime; that’s my other sister. Tom, Jim and Sam, they used to call us, when we were kids.’
‘I suppose families ...’ Maxwell left a gap, for Morley to fill.
‘Louise just didn’t like to see me with people who loved me, Mr Maxwell,’ Morley said. ‘She told me as much. She didn’t really keep much back, Louise didn’t. She’d tell Tommy how he was fat, ugly. When he needed glasses, she called him four-eyes. He was only six, Mr Maxwell. He didn’t understand.’
‘I’m going to say something a bit tasteless, Thomas,’ Maxwell said. ‘I think probably the world may be a better place without Louise.’ He looked hard at the man in the bed. ‘What do you think?’
‘My world is,’ he agreed. ‘Tommy’s world. But, and I know this is hard to fathom, there were people who loved her. Well, liked her, at least. She had friends.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘Men, of course, but women as well. And if some of the men were more obsessed than in love, well, it’s the other side of the coin, Mr Maxwell, sometimes, isn’t it?’
‘Do you know about the men, then, Thomas?’ he asked.
He shrugged. ‘They’ve asked me that. I don’t know what the question means. I can't tell anyone what I don’t know; they used to ask that at school, I remember. “Ask if there’s anything you don’t know”. How do you do that? I know about Mike, from the office. He always carried a bit of a torch and I think they went out for lunch, from time to time, still. I know the bloke from next door used to come around, do little odd jobs for her, things she didn’t think I would do properly. Umm ... there may have been some more. She used to have girls’ nights out, once or twice a week, but she never brought her friends home.’ He looked into Maxwell’s eyes and spoke in matter of fact tones. ‘She was ashamed of me, you see, Mr Maxwell. I’m not good-looking, or hunky or anything. She only married me because Tommy was on the way and she knew I’d say yes. But she didn’t want me to meet her friends.’
Maxwell forbore to follow that with, ‘So the answer’s no, then.’ He felt sorry for this man, but thought the time had come for him to stop being so apologetic and to start thinking about the future for him and his boy because, no matter who the boy’s biological father was, it was clear that he and Thomas Morley were closer than most relatives bound by blood. ‘It’s nice she had someone, I suppose,’ he said. It was the best he could do in the circumstances.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Morley said, suddenly. ‘You think I did it. But I didn’t, you know. I didn’t.’
Maxwell patted his arm. ‘You know, Thomas,’ he said, in the same tone he would use to his boy. ‘I don’t think you did.’
Maxwell took the pretty way back to the foyer, past Henry Hall’s and his wife’s offices but both doors were firmly closed. He even went so far as to raise his fist, primed to knock, but then thought better of it and went down the stairs, thinking. He pressed the button inside the double doors to the exit and cannoned straight into someone coming the other way. Both men smiled, nodded, clapped each other on the shoulder and sidled past, like all men do who collide accidentally with another. It was only when the other man had disappeared into the gloom of the interview corridor that Maxwell realised who it was. It was Geoff MacBride, sporting a scratch down his cheek of which Metternich would be proud. Either he had been with Morley longer than he thought, or Leighford Police moved at the speed of light. He couldn’t help a glance at his watch; he did still have to get Nolan, after all. But no, he wasn’t late. Speed of light it must be.
Chapter Fourteen
T
hursday night was fish and chips night Chez Maxwell and Jacquie came home, as always, with a gently steaming carrier bag, to find, as always, a bathed and beatific Nolan and a similarly bathed but slightly less beatific Maxwell waiting patiently for the goodies. For some reason, Metternich wasn’t keen on fried fish – Maxwell said it was because he was watching his waistline – so it was just the three of them. Mrs Whatmough’s school was of the oldest possible kind imaginable, so it was unsurprising that the talk was mainly of Lent; in Mrs Whatmough’s book, there was no such thing as a free chocolate egg, so privations were very much on the menu. Even Shrove Tuesday was a needless frippery in her book; sometimes she was lucky and it fell in half term, but this year she had grudgingly allowed it to happen on her watch. But every pancake had come at a price; a promise to give up something until Easter. After some discussion, Nolan had settled on pickled onions, so the meal that Thursday was a pickle free zone. The mushy peas, however, flowed like water and there would be repercussions later, if Maxwell knew his child.
When the last crumbly, greasy nubbin of batter had been chased out of the crunkles of the paper, when the last chip had been forced into the last odd corner of everyone’s laden stomachs, when the last Scrabble tile had triumphantly been placed – a rather flukey ‘xu’ from Maxwell – the evening began in earnest.
‘Tell me again, before we start talking about the inevitable,’ Jacquie said, ‘what a xu is.’
‘It is one hundredth of a dong, since you ask,’ Maxwell replied, ‘and no smut, please, we’re British.’ He was taking out the coffee cups and replacing them with glasses of their alcoholic drink of choice.
‘Of course. I always get it mixed up with zho.’
‘A yak and a small coin; I can see how easily that can happen.’ He raised his glass, as Scrabble victors will, with a smug smile on his face. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ She sipped her drink and sighed appreciatively. ‘Sorry about Henry this afternoon, Max,’ she said.
‘What was that about?’ He hadn’t planned to ask, so it was good she had started here.
‘I don’t know. He’ll tell me, I suppose, when he’s good and ready, but as for now, he’s gone all Horrible Henry on me. But I suppose the real reason that you have poured me the strongest g and t in the history of the world, is that you want to know why Geof
f MacBride was in the Nick today.’
‘Ooh, you little mind reader, you,’ he said. ‘You could give Derren Brown a run for his money any day of the week.’
‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘And also, of course, he told me he’d bumped into you on the way in.’
‘Yes, that would also help,’ he said. ‘You’ll never be a real rival to Derren if you tell me all your secrets, though. Did you haul him in?’
‘Because of Morley’s sister’s story? No. We might have done, eventually, but no. He came in of his own accord. And steaming mad, as a matter of fact.’
‘Really? Why was that? I should have thought he has had an easy ride thus far. When you compare it with Thomas Morley, that is. Both have wives who have been murdered and yet only one as far as I can tell is banged up at the Nick. Or has that changed now?’
‘No. Or perhaps I should say, yes. Morley has gone home now. Back to his mother’s actually; we weren’t happy about his being on his own and she was delighted to have her boy back. At the moment, there is nothing to really pin it down to him, except motive and of course there’s masses of that. There is also more DNA than you can shake a stick at in that house, mostly upstairs as you can imagine. It may never be sorted, this one.’
Maxwell snorted. Never be sorted? Not when he was on the case. ‘And MacBride. Explain his steamage.’
‘Well, I told you about the threatening call to Mrs MacBride.’
‘Yes.’
‘We have a bit more on that now; I’ll tell you that in a minute. But before the sound boffins came up with this new wrinkle, we thought it must be from one of the many cuckolded husbands that dear old Geoff has left in his wake. Due to the content, of course.’
‘Right. So ... I think I know where this is leading. You’ve been on to said husbands and shit has hit the fan.’
‘In a nutshell, yes. We couldn’t get to them all, of course, because even I-like-to-spread-it-around MacBride keeps some of his ladies under his hat. But we contacted a fair few. Well over a dozen, actually and of course lots of the women could supply other names. I think you may be one of a small minority of men in Leighford who won’t be receiving a call.’
‘Well, that’s nice to know,’ he smiled.
‘And so, as might be expected, shit has indeed hit the fan. One of the women rang MacBride and gave him an earful. Well, I say one of the women – actually, she is the latest to be thrown over, so was madder than many. I suppose with some, time has been a healer, they’ve told the husbands and it’s all blown over, that kind of thing. But it’s still very raw for this one; she’s only just been replaced, as you might say. So she’s really gunning for him. As is her old man, I need hardly say.’
‘But nothing from the current squeeze?’
‘Not as yet. He is either taking a breather ...’
Maxwell snorted.
‘... or this one is a bit special, and he’s keeping her more under wraps. I think we’ll be watching this space. With his wife dead, she might be moving up a notch. But it is now more complicated.’
Maxwell gave an excited wriggle. He liked complicated. ‘How so?’
‘The sound guys have extracted various sections from the answerphone and have worked out that the anonymous call came from the Ellisdon bar.’
‘Where MacBride was.’
‘Correct. But also, the same voice was in the background when he was calling.’
‘That must have been awkward, if it was Mr Number One Squeeze.’
‘Yes. That’s why we don’t think it was, because MacBride’s voice shows no very overt strain in the recording and surely, if the husband of the woman he had stashed upstairs ...’
‘Really?’ Maxwell raised his eyebrows.
‘Well ... don’t you think so? We’re looking into that as we speak, but it’s hard to work out when you can still book a hotel room anonymously, if you lie and use cash. Or a company credit card.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. That makes his alibi a bit rocky though, surely.’
‘It was always rocky. Anyway, that’s why he came in. But it was handy because I could then hit him with his visits to Louise Morley.’
‘I wish I could have been a fly on that wall,’ Maxwell said, wistfully.
‘You could have heard a pin drop. He went as white as a sheet. I thought he was going to keel over, for a minute. Two in one day would have been a bit much.’
‘You’re so hard, that’s your trouble, you scary Woman Policeman.’
‘I’m working on that,’ she grinned. ‘But, he was back with the old bluster before too long. He was indeed in the habit of going to see Louise Morley, he said. They had known each other for years. In fact, he was surprised that we hadn’t discovered that she had briefly worked for him before going to work for the bus company. Before she married Thomas Morley. Before Tommy was born.’ She sipped her drink and looked at him, while the penny slowly dropped.
‘He’s Tommy’s father?’ Maxwell was incredulous.
‘Yep. He didn’t then go on to explain whether he was therefore getting freebies or he was there to catch up on family stories of how his lad was faring. But that’s the situation as it stands now. Thomas Morley and Denise MacBride were friends without benefits, but I think he was genuinely fond of her. And Geoff MacBride has been knocking off Thomas Morley’s wife, since before the Flood. So, Mr Clever. You like complicated. This complicated enough for you? Hmm?’
Before he could answer, the phone by his elbow rang.
‘Ahoy, ahoy.’ Maxwell always got a bit nautical when he had been eating fish. ‘Oh, bugger.’ He clapped his hand to his forehead.
Jacquie gave him an old-fashioned look. Cold callers were annoying of course, but Maxwell was usually rather more civil. She could hear the phone squawking, but couldn’t tell who it was.
‘I meant to ... it just slipped my mind. And I’m sure you can imagine what it’s like right now.’
Quack.
‘And dusty, too, of course.’
Ah, Jacquie realised; Mrs B.
‘I do understand; blogging can be big business these days. Well, why not tell him to go ahead. Hang on ...’ he moved the phone further from his mouth and spoke to his wife. ‘Mrs B’s sister’s grandson has been looking into Fiona Braymarr’s Googlelessness and wants to write a blog about his findings. Problem?’
‘That’s legal, Max. Not law enforcement.’
He flapped a hand. ‘Yes, yes, I know. But ... is it unreasonable to bring that kind of thing to the attention of the cyber public in general? Is it libel, in other words?’
‘I should think as long as he raises it as a hypothetical problem, it should be fine. He mustn’t say anything that implies Mrs Braymarr has done anything wrong, for example. He should keep it to a kind of “how odd that this very hard-working head teacher is not visible on Google” and then go on to discuss how that can happen. Then, I should think he’ll be all right.’
Maxwell spoke into the phone again. ‘Did you get that?’
Quack.
‘Sorry not to have ... Much the same. See you soon, bye.’
‘Mrs B’s great nephew is a blogger?’
‘Apparently so. She dabbles herself, too, so she tells me. I haven’t looked her up yet, but her online persona is Moppet.’
Jacquie laughed. ‘Clever. She is such a dark horse; I love that woman, even if she is the worst cleaner in the world.’
‘Well, she moves the dust around, I suppose. Doesn’t do to let it linger in one place.’
‘And the Count adores her. As does Mrs Troubridge, come to that. They just sit and drink tea when she comes and does.’
‘Have you seen Mrs Troubridge lately?’ Maxwell suddenly felt guilty; he hadn’t clapped eyes on the old trout since he had scared her witless with some ill-advised first footing at New Year.
‘She’s well. I saw her the other day; she doesn’t want to chance going out until all risk of frost is past, apparently.’
‘What is she?’ he asked. ‘A dahlia tuber?�
�� He had happened upon the last few minutes of Gardeners’ World earlier in the week and considered himself a bit of an expert. And the opening lines of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe trickled into his memory – ‘In that pleasant district of merry England that is watered by the Monty Don.’
‘Afraid of falling. She is getting a little bit frail, Max. A broken hip isn’t a great idea at her age.’
‘True. As long as she’s all right. Where were we?’
‘Mrs B’s great nephew ...’
‘Yes. He is a computer expert – he actually does it for a living, rather than keeping it up his sleeve and surprising people, unlike his great aunt.’
Jacquie laughed. ‘I still think that’s amazing.’
‘But useful,’ Maxwell pointed out. ‘You have no idea how often she has saved my bacon at school. Well, anyway, he was on the case of the missing Google profile of Fiona Braymarr and became quite intrigued. The blog, as I understand it, isn’t so much about her as about how one becomes invisible on the internet.’ He held up a hand. ‘Don’t ask me! I was told, but it wasn’t English as I know it. Suffice to say, it is very unusual.’
‘I should say it is. I would think someone as high profile as her would go on for pages.’
‘Well,’ Maxwell said, thoughtfully. ‘She has no reflection, so why would she have a Google profile?’
‘Fair enough. Ask Mrs B to let me have the link – it will be interesting reading.’
Maxwell’s face went into technology mode, an expression specifically designed to look as though he knew what was going on, but clearly showed he would not be joining in the chat.
Jacquie smiled. She knew the thread had been broken. ‘Shall we chill out to something on TV? Not crime, if you can find anything else.’
After some fruitless scrolling through the channels, her husband came up empty. ‘Do you have a book on the go?’
She foraged down the sofa cushions and held it up.
