by M. J. Trow
‘Me too. That’s fine, then. Top up?’
‘Please. Max ...?’
‘Yup.’ He was already deep in yet another Kennedy conspiracy theory; and all he knew for certain was that George Butler didn’t do it. Dallas policeman and local KKK leader, yes. But a gunman on the grassy knoll? Never.
‘Do you know why Henry lost it today?’
‘He’s a funny age,’ he muttered.
‘Be sensible. It isn’t like him, not really.’
Maxwell put down his book. ‘No, it isn’t. Yes, I think I do know why he lost it.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s only a gut feeling. Think it over. Get back to me.’ And he was back in Dallas, thinking Mannlicher-Carcano.
Jacquie held the book on her lap but didn’t read a word. Her mind was going over and over the last few days and what she had learned. It couldn’t be the boffins’ discovery; nor the Morley/MacBride links; could it be ... Hetty? Had she phoned again when she was out of the room and put him out of sorts? She felt a tingling up her spine as the thought occurred to her.
‘The man crossing the road was Hetty’s husband.’
‘Oh, hello.’ He closed his book and smiled up at her. ‘Why do you think that, heart of my dreams?’
‘Because ... because he crossed over, then crossed back again. So if Hetty ...’
‘Whose real name is ...?’
‘You won’t get me that easily. So if she saw him approaching the house, it wouldn’t be from next door.’
‘Good. And?’
‘And he was wearing bright clothes. Like a golfer.’
‘Ah ha. And Thomas Morley thinks he is a really kind man, helping out around the house with jobs Louise thought Thomas was too rubbish to undertake. He told me that this afternoon.’
‘Hetty also said that Colin often is out in the evening at golf club do’s. She doesn’t like that kind of thing, so doesn’t go. I wonder if he has ever taken a partner ...’ She swung her legs off the sofa and felt for her slippers. ‘Does the golf club have a phone number, do you think?’
‘Must do. They hire themselves out for functions, don’t they? We had Whatsherface’s retirement there last year. You remember. Textiles woman. She’d been there for years, apparently, but I didn’t even know she existed. Shame on me, I know, but there it is. Stitch, stitch, stitch.’
‘I remember. I’ll give them a call.’ She reached into her bag for her phone and tapped the screen, scrolling through until she found what she was looking for. It still fazed Maxwell when she did that and then spoke into it in the normal way. He was getting better with computers. He almost had phones licked. It was when they met in the middle that his brain started to sizzle.
It took a while before she was speaking to the golf club secretary and he did sound as though he had been sampling his stock rather freely. But she kept him to the subject at hand and even managed to make him understand that the conversation must remain confidential. He did call her ‘little lady’ once or twice, but on balance she thought he had got the message.
‘Well?’ Maxwell was agog.
She took a deep breath and looked at him with a sly smile playing round her lips. Then, she took pity on him. ‘Colin Hampshire, who is, by all accounts, a bit of a sly dog, has, from time to time, appeared at golfing functions with a bit of a cracker – and I quote – on his arm. Everyone likes Hetty and she is a helluva baker – and I can vouch for that – so they all keep schtum. And anyway, what with old Col not being much of an oil-painting and as boring as all get out, they all assumed he paid the woman. There have certainly been rumours that she supplemented her fee out on the eighteenth hole with other members, if the weather was clement.’
‘Well.’ It was all Maxwell could manage at short notice. ‘And Henry obviously realised that at once. How could Colin ... sorry, what was the surname?’
‘Hampshire.’
‘How could Colin Hampshire think he would get away with it?’
‘He did, though, didn’t he?’ she pointed out, reasonably. ‘If Louise hadn’t got herself killed, there would have been no reason for this conversation or any of the others which have led us here to take place.’
‘That’s true enough. Well, old Col, eh?’ Maxwell raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you going to tell Henry you’ve worked it out? Put him out of his misery?’
‘In the morning. I’ll let him stew for a while.’
Maxwell picked up his book again and was soon miles away. Damn George Mohrenschildt! What a dark horse. Jacquie had often tried to attract his attention at times like these and failed, so she thought she would try an experiment.
‘Hetty’s name is Ethel,’ she whispered, so quietly she hardly heard it herself.
He showed no sign of having heard and just carried on turning pages, occasionally referring to the end of the book, following an endnote. She was rather disappointed. She had thought that he couldn’t resist reacting and she was sure he had heard. But nothing.
Later that night, with the lights off and the only sound that of distant traffic on the flyover, Maxwell turned his head and murmured, ‘Poor woman.’
And they lay there in the darkness, grinning.
Everything comes to he who waits and it was, finally, Friday. Maxwell bowled along on White Surrey feeling that things might be looking up. True, his school was going to hell in a handcart, but once the murders were solved, he could tick those boxes and concentrate on how to rid himself of Fiona Braymarr. He wished he could work out how; a Pied Piper approach was an attractive thought. Entice her with sweet music down to the Esplanade and, when she had reached a reasonable rate of knots in her dance, just step aside and watch her sink. But he had a horrible feeling that she would be the one rat, stout as Julius Caesar, who would make it to the other side. The fact that that would mean she would end up in France was small comfort. No – there had to be a better way. He coasted down the road to the school, touching the brakes lightly as he went. Surrey had reached the age now when applying the brakes at anything less than death-grip pressure made no difference to the speed, but the squealing noise at least gave Mavis due notice. He wouldn’t have minded, in principle, clipping one edge of her hi-vis, but suspected that it might involve a lot of explaining, so he took steps to avoid it on a daily basis. He looked up, expecting the normal sight of her standing like an ox in the furrow, lollipop aloft but there was nothing. A gaggle of Breakfast-clubbers were ambling up the entrance driveway, but of Mavis, there was no sign. He could hardly wait to get inside to check.
He tapped on the reception desk with a hastily-removed cycle clip and after a surprisingly long interval, the pale dogsbody appeared, peering as always through her hair. Fighting down the urge to grab it and pull it back into a ponytail, Maxwell addressed the girl he knew was in there somewhere. This was no time to pretend he didn’t know her name.
‘Jodie,’ he said. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘There’s only two of us left in here now, Mr Maxwell? Apparently, it’s all we need? And the cleaners? They’ve gone as well?’
Maxwell had forgotten her adherence to the moronic interrogative but let that pass this once. ‘But what about Mavis?’ It really was a question, but he also hoped it made her feel more comfortable. He had never exchanged this many words with her before.
‘The lollipop lady? Oh, no, she hasn’t been sacked – she was run over?’
Maxwell’s jaw dropped. He was not a cruel man, so meant what he said next. ‘Is she all right?’
‘Broken arm? Or leg? One of those?’
‘Where did it happen?’ He was trying hard not to use only questions, but it was an easy habit into which to drop.
‘In her drive? Her husband did it?’ There was a pause. ‘By accident.’
Even Jodie didn’t put a question on that remark – the poor man was apparently distraught.
Maxwell let the smile out now – as long as she wasn’t dead, or anything worse, it was all right to grin. Poetic justice at its best. ‘We’re collecti
ng, I suppose,’ he said, rummaging in his pocket.
‘No.’ Jodie kept her voice level, for emphasis. ‘It’s not allowed.’
‘Ah.’ He patted her hand. ‘Keep smiling, Jodie,’ he said, although how anyone would be able to tell was a mystery. ‘Thanks for the information.’ And he went up the stairs with an added bounce. The universe was giving itself a shake and things were beginning to look up.
The raised voices were audible from about halfway up the flight and he took the rest two at a time. He triangulated the sound and found to his surprise it was coming from Helen Maitland’s room. He crashed in through the door like Liberty Valance and the shouting stopped as if a switch had been flipped.
Zachary Budd had once been voted – at the Year Eleven Prom, in fact – the boy least likely to say anything. He wasn’t morose or a martyr to nerves. Neither did he had more syndromes than China. He was just very quiet. So it was all the more surprising that it was his voice that Maxwell had heard and his face that stared, grim and determined, across the desk from Helen Maitland.
‘Zach,’ Maxwell said softly, adopting the family doctor approach, ‘what seems to be the trouble?’
The boy subsided. Whatever rage had been building inside him for the past sixteen years went under wraps again at the sight and sound of Mad Max. He sat back down in the chair that Helen had offered him. ‘I’m worried about my future,’ he said.
Maxwell blinked. Surely, the boy was far too young to remember Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate; he had had the same concerns and had resolved them, at least temporarily, by getting his leg over Anne Bancroft. For the most fleeting of moments, Maxwell imagined Helen Maitland in the role, then screamed inwardly and banished such thoughts for ever. ‘Say on.’ He sat on the edge of Helen’s desk and knew from her expression that she had already heard all of this, much of it at a volume to burst eardrums.
‘I’ve got AS Levels coming up, Mr Maxwell.’
Mr Maxwell knew that.
‘We all have. Year 13 have got A2s.’
So far, so obvious.
‘But who’s going to teach us?’ Zach asked. ‘We’ve already had two teachers for French and three for Business. Mr Johnson sort of let the cat out of the bag that he wouldn’t be here next term. Continuity – haven’t you always said how important that is?’
Maxwell had. The stability of a home, the sureness of a relationship, the continuity of a school – these were the things that led to success. And of the three, the greatest was the last.
‘Are you a delegate, Zach?’ Maxwell asked. If the Sixth Form Council had sent him, he was an unlikely choice.
‘No, sir,’ the boy said. ‘But it’s all they talk about. In the Common Room, it’s all any of us talk about. Can't anything be done, sir? This Academy stuff. It’s like they’re taking the heart out of Leighford High. And that can't be right, can it?’
Maxwell smiled. He wanted to hug the boy, but he knew the implications of that. ‘Unfortunately,’ he sighed, ‘we’re all of us between a rock and a nutcase – unprofessional of me though it is to say it.’ He looked at Zach’s crestfallen face and the concern written on Helen Maitland’s. She had already said much the same thing, but in a rather more delicate way.
Suddenly, Maxwell stood up. ‘How are you on Westerns, Zach?’ he asked.
‘Okay,’ the lad shrugged. ‘My dad’s got quite a few DVDs.’
‘The Magnificent Seven?’
‘One of his all-time favourites,’ Zach smiled.
‘Right. When you get home today, fast forward to the point where horrible old Eli Wallach has kicked the seven out of the village. And James Coburn, the hardest of them all, says, “Nobody hands me my guns and says ‘Run’.” Well, Zach,’ he closed to the boy, ‘that’s pretty much what I’m saying now. Coburn goes back, doesn’t he, with the others and they kick seven kinds of shit out of the baddies. Well, you watch this space.’
The boy got up and, although it was completely out of character, shook Maxwell’s hand. He smiled at Helen Maitland and was gone.
‘Can I load your guns for you, Max?’ she chuckled.
‘You can, Helen,’ he said. ‘You can. I just hope it doesn’t dawn on young Zach too soon that James Coburn dies in the attempt.’
Jacquie and Henry Hall went back a long way. Although she was far from being the oldest member of the team at Leighford Nick, she was pretty sure that she was one of the longest serving and this gave her rights above and beyond her rank. She and Henry counted themselves as friends. They visited each other’s houses; remembered birthdays; knew, by and large, where the bodies were buried. But, even so, asking a man if he was aware that his brother-in-law was seeing the amateur prostitute next door and, worse, was parading her in public in front of people who knew his wife; that was going to be tricky. So, she armed herself with coffee and a slab of what purported to be flapjack on the canteen’s pricelist before she tapped on his door.
‘Yes.’
Oh, oh. Terse. He was always terse, of course, but Jacquie’s ear was fine-tuned as to degree. She stuck her head around the door nevertheless and proffered the cardboard tray of coffee.
‘Oh, Jacquie.’ He sounded a little more enthusiastic to see it was her, but not by much. ‘Come in. I was just about to send you an email.’
‘I’ve bought some flapjack,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to tell it from the tray, but I know it’s on there somewhere.’
‘Did you want something specific?’ he asked, popping the top off the coffee and stirring it. He hated froth but only the cappuccino was drinkable. ‘Or are you simply psychic?’
This was banter in World of Henry, so she felt more comfortable. ‘It depends,’ she said, grasping the nettle. ‘If you were about to send me an email about Colin, I’m psychic.’
He leaned back in the chair. ‘Psychic it is, then,’ he sighed. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. It knocked me for a bit of a loop, actually.’
‘I should think so,’ Jacquie said. ‘I hardly know my brother-in-law, but it would knock me for a loop, too.’
‘Then I went home and had a think about it,’ he said, ‘and to be honest, I don’t think that kind of thing is quite up old Col’s street. He’s just ... not that sort of man.’
‘Guv ... I’m afraid he is that sort of man. I made a call last night and I don’t think you’re going to like what I heard ...’
Chapter Fifteen
F
riday afternoon was a long time in coming but, as all things do in the end, it arrived. The weather had got itself in a tizzy, as it only can in March and gusts of wind from every quarter whipped around Leighford High School, rattling the bike sheds and scattering the fag ends in Smokers’ Corner. Huge gobbets of rain hit the windows. In the grounds, the few daffodils that had survived the onslaught of two thousand feet were lying flat to the ground pointing north one minute, then were taken up as though by savage hands and hurled back to the ground again, this time pointing south. And all the while, out to sea, the sun sent silver shards through the clouds to pick out the wild, white horses in the Channel. Maxwell stood looking out of the window, leaning on the sill and seemingly lost in the crazy beauty of the day.
Below him, what should have been the fourth evening meeting of staff and Fiona Braymarr was getting under way. The new regime in this respect was not going well. On Tuesday there had been a desultory attendance, mostly made up of the brown-nosers and those so far out of touch with the mood of the moment that they went without realising the potential for pariahdom. On Wednesday, it was brown-nosers only, and several of those had thought things through and had come down with unspecified urgent medical appointments. Thursday was a James Diamond day, as Fiona Braymarr was busy feeding back. And so, Friday had come around.
It was surprisingly well-attended. Heads had been put together and the consensus was that, with axes falling hither and yon, it was better to face the enemy. The science people had the biggest axe to grind, having lost their support staff. They were closely followed by the B
usiness and CDT Departments, whose computers had been amusing themselves all week by crashing, one by one. It was like watching a line of virtual dominoes topple, but less exhilarating. They had the Head Geek from Year Ten in the frame – he was known for being more attitude than aptitude but God, could that kid hack a computer! It was like poetry in motion. Maxwell had him tipped for MI6 if he ever grew up and didn’t make a fortune out of WikiGeeks first. Then came the sundry Humanities – rumour had it that She was going to amalgamate them all into one small sub-department, on the basis that they were the soft option. The Maths Department had just come along for the ride.
The room buzzed like a wasps’ nest poked by a stick. Sensitive souls could almost smell the brimstone in the air. Usually, the room was set out for meetings by the caretaking staff or, failing them, the cleaning contingent. But in the absence of both, the staff had dragged chairs out into rough rows and it gave the place a rather ad hoc air. There was no desk at the front for the SMT to hide behind, and no chairs for them either. From the back, someone pinged a rubber band and a paper pellet hit the far wall. The faculty had suddenly become the Sons of Anarchy.
The sole surviving member of the Religious Studies team looked around anxiously. She had studied Charles Mackay’s book on the madness of crowds when she was doing her Master’s and she had found another fan in Maxwell. He had said to her after the first meeting – only five days ago; it seemed impossible – ‘“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”’ She had taken it to be a warning to avoid the meetings and now she wished she had taken heed. She noticed that he was noticeable by his absence. She bent down to pick up her bag prior to sidling out, but she had left it too late. The doors swung back and Fiona Braymarr was among them, flanked by Janet Taylor, looking green around the gills as always and a very slow-moving James Diamond. It didn’t take a genius to see he was back on the tablets.
Silence didn’t fall over the meeting as it had earlier in the term. It was more that the mutterings turned inwards. From a wasps’ nest on high alert, the sound was more of a prey animal crawling as quietly as it could back to its burrow at the arrival of the predator, there to regroup and plan the killer’s downfall. Diamond looked out over his staff and saw what they had become. They were at bay, although they all still sat around as usual. They were still wearing their sober teachers’ clothes, yet it looked like camouflage. And the scents of Marc Jacobs and Issey Miyake could not mask the pheromones of distrust and anger. Through the fog of his medication, he thought he might enjoy today.
