by M. J. Trow
‘I won't leave you, Alan,’ Moyra said, her voice so defeated that it was hard to recognise Fiona Braymarr any more.
‘Denise left me,’ he said, in flat tones.
‘Denise?’ Maxwell could feel the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. ‘Denise MacBride?’
‘MacBride? That was her name, when that animal had married her, yes. But that wasn’t her name, not really. Her name was ...’
‘Denise MacBride?’ Moyra was on her feet with Fiona in the ascendant. ‘You knew Denise MacBride?’
‘Of course. I thought you knew. I thought that was why you ... allowed that animal to defile you. To teach her a lesson.’
She was speechless with rage and shock and Maxwell knew it was vital to shut her up for just a few moments, so he could get as many details from the man while the going was good. ‘But she didn’t know she had had a lesson taught to her, did she, Alan? You had to tell her.’
‘That’s right. I did. I went to see her and she recognised me. She ... well, she said some things she shouldn’t have said. She called me names, names she had called me when she left me. About ...’ he dropped his voice, ‘about not doing it. She was the same as all the others. Always wanting to do things. It’s not right. Not when you love someone, is it, Moyra?’
Maxwell felt rather than saw her shake her head.
‘She took us into the garage. We got into an argument and she flew at me. It was all her fault. She flew at me.’
‘So ...’
‘So, nothing. I threw her off the balcony. I’d never killed a woman before. It was almost too easy.’ His voice had become dreamy, faraway. ‘She fell, over and over and over, then CRASH!’ Maxwell and the woman both jumped. ‘Onto the bonnet of the animal’s shiny new car and crash again as her head hit the glass.’ He looked up at his ex-wife; Maxwell saw the glaucous gleam of his eyes in the faint light. ‘It was an accident, Moyra,’ he said. ‘She flew at me.’
‘An accident,’ Maxwell said, drily. ‘And yet, you went down and cleaned her nails afterwards.’
He chuckled. ‘Yes. Into a paper bag so nothing was left behind. I can't be arrested. I have to look after Moyra.’
‘And what about Louise Morley? What did she do to you?’
‘Who’s she?’ His puzzlement seemed genuine. ‘But now, Mr Maxwell, I am bored with talking. I think I’ll just ... have I slit anyone’s throat, Moyra?’
She spoke through a sob. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘David’s.’
‘Oh. Yes. David. You really liked him, didn’t you?’
Her voice was just a whisper now. ‘Yes.’
‘I think I’ll strangle this one,’ he said, as though discussing what wine to choose with dinner. ‘Could you pass over the rest of that string?’
She got up and took up the ball of string from the table behind her and walked round the front of the chairs to where he stood, his hand out. As she passed, Maxwell saw a glint of metal in her hand, but before he could react, she had lunged, plunging the scissors deep into Alan Dunbar’s chest. He went down like a poleaxed steer and Maxwell flung himself out of the way, overturning two chairs as he did so. He heard but thankfully didn’t see Dunbar’s final moments and at last the light was switched on and Moyra, now completely Fiona Braymarr again, spoke from above his head.
‘I hope you will be a friendly witness, Max, when this comes to trial.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Maxwell said, still prone beneath his chairs. ‘You’ve done me a real service tonight.’
‘I saved your life!’ she said, affronted.
‘Yes. But I’ve also found my scarf.’
‘So,’ Maxwell said, as he came to the end of his story in the interview room at Leighford Nick, ‘I thought you would come barging in with that banger thing they use on the telly. To rescue me, you know.’
‘But why would you think that?’ Jacquie had to ask. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’
‘I told you I would be at school. Mrs B knew I was at the school.’
‘Until five, Max. I rang her when I saw the number on your mobile – why do you leave it on the mantelpiece always, by the way? A fat lot of good it would do you there. It was almost seven by the time you called to report what had happened. I admit I was beginning to worry, but it’s not as if you’re too young to be out on your own. I just assumed ... well, I don’t know what I assumed, but I didn’t think you were being held captive in your office by a mad person. It’s not reasonable to expect me to guess that, now, is it?’
Maxwell was miffed. ‘Well, you’ll know next time, perhaps,’ he said, sniffily.
‘I’ll make a note of it,’ she said, and did.
‘What’s going to happen to Fiona? Moyra, I suppose I should say.’
‘Well, she did kill a man, but for the best of reasons. She has been in hiding for years, with the help of the police. She was a witness against Dunbar when he seriously injured a man she was seeing and he was sent for treatment at a mental institution. He appeared to be cured ...’
‘What? He was clearly barking!’
‘I’m not sure that’s a diagnosis, Max,’ Jacquie said gently. He had had a hard evening, one way and another and she wasn’t going to be too strict as far as nomenclature went. ‘As far as we have found out from records we can find, he has been stalking her ever since she left him and before that, he watched her every move. He had been jilted more or less at the altar – he’s older than her, not that that’s anything to go by, of course – by a woman who we have discovered was later Denise MacBride. He was always a bit unbalanced, with very strong views about the sanctity of a woman and other rather unusual ideas, to put it mildly. MacBride’s mother-in-law was a little blunter even than you, Max. She had thought her daughter had had a lucky escape. She had stopped worrying about Dunbar and then she had seen him in the street. She told her mother, who thought she was imagining it. The poor woman is distraught, as you can imagine. But let’s get you home. Nole is with Mrs Troubridge and I had to make him promise not to use any judo holds on her.’
He got up and hobbled round the table. His ankles felt rather bent and he was sure he had a bald patch on the back of his head. ‘Argh!’ He had had a sudden thought. ‘Have you explained to Mrs B?’
‘I spoke to her while you were getting checked over for broken bones and your usual repercussions. Apparently, her great nephew or whatever he is, has been released. No charges. It was all a bit of a storm in a teacup, but he’s writing a blog about it.’
Maxwell was a little bent out of shape and temporarily shorter of hair than usual, but of all the people who had gone through that day, he was probably not in the worst shape. Colin Hampshire, to take just one example, had already ended up in A&E having cut his thumb on a half-open tin of corned beef. Jacquie couldn’t help sharing that as they walked out to the car, with Maxwell filling in the gaps with Tony Hancock impersonations.
‘And then,’ he said, ‘Patrick Cargill says to Tony Hancock, “Well, we can’t all be Rob Roys, can we?”’ He looked up and waved. ‘There’s Henry. Who’s that with him?’
‘Hetty,’ Jacquie said, puzzled. ‘I wonder why they’re here.’
‘Statement, perhaps?’
‘Hmm, perhaps.’
Hetty and Henry drew level with the Maxwells and Henry nodded grimly. ‘Max. Jacquie.’
‘Oh, hello, Mr Maxwell,’ Hetty said, brightly. ‘Henry’s told me so much about you I feel I know you already. How are you, you poor man? I understand you’ve had a bit of an evening of it, one way and another.’
‘I have,’ he smiled. What a nice woman.
‘Why are you here, Hetty?’ Jacquie asked. She had to stop the ice water that was trickling down her spine. The question needed to be asked.
‘Oh, I’m just here to give a statement,’ she said, happily. ‘Well, more of a confession, really. Henry found that silly little book in my bag. You know, the one with all the names. My Colin went every other Thursday morning, apparently. A hundred pounds a time. Two hundred pounds a
month, Mr Maxwell, on a prostitute. It’s not as though we have much money, you see. And he couldn’t even remember my birthday.’ She looked at Jacquie and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘He forgot my birthday, Jacquie. It was last Thursday. I expect that was why it slipped his mind.’ She squeezed Henry’s hand. ‘So I went round there with some cake, on the Monday. And I stabbed her.’
Jacquie and Maxwell stood still and silent, swept with the waves of sadness coming from the brother and sister in front of them.
‘It was my birthday, you see,’ she said. ‘My birthday, and I had to switch the hoover on, to drown it out. Then, I made a mistake. I switched it off too soon and I heard her. I heard her call out. “Colin!” she said. And some more I won't trouble you with.’ She dipped her head, her cheeks hot with blushes and tears. Then, she wiped her hand down her face as though to wipe away the last forty years and turned to her baby brother with a smile. ‘Come on, Henry. No lagging, now. Race you to the door, shall I?’ and she leaned on his arm and, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through the car park made their solitary way.
The Maxwells watched them go. ‘How will Henry cope with this?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Like Henry,’ Jacquie said. It was all she could hope for.
Chapter Seventeen
T
hat Monday morning, Leighford High School was buzzing. The news had been unspecific but everyone knew the score. ‘Woman, thirty seven, arrested in fatal school stabbing.’ It mattered little to them that Fiona Braymarr had in fact been thirty eight; it was enough that she was arrested and out of their hair. They had all missed the item about woman, sixty-two; what was she to them?
Legs Diamond opened the meeting at eight thirty prompt with a gleam in his eye. He was unusually upbeat and perky; no one need know it was due to early withdrawal symptoms from the Morning Pills. He had the Easter holidays coming up soon and he would have them licked by the Summer Term. Everyone wanted to take Maxwell and carry him shoulder high around the grounds, but he wasn’t there. Maxwell, Diamond explained, was taking a few days’ leave for some rest and recuperation. Well deserved. And Morning Thingee led the applause.
A watery sun lit the pedestrian precinct in Leighford that Monday morning. It was quiet, as it always was on an early Monday. No one really needed provisions; Sunday leftovers would suffice until Tuesday. Even the truants usually managed to attend school on the first morning of the week and the giros weren’t due yet. The man who owned the doughnut shop was winding down his blind, humming to himself. ‘Oh, cinnamon, where you gonna run to?’ He smiled to himself. He sang that every morning and yet it still made him smile. A life composed of fried dough and sugar; what was not to like? His attention was caught by two figures, converging very slowly towards each other across the empty precinct. One was an old lady, on one of those sticks that always puzzled him, with the three little legs at the bottom. She was making heavy weather of it and yet he had seen her not three days ago, making good progress across the square with three shopping bags and a dog on a lead. He hoped she hadn’t taken ill. He took a step towards her to ask.
The other figure was the slowest skateboarder he had ever seen. He seemed to be using the board as a scooter without a handle, pushing along just a few inches each time and wobbling dangerously when his foot was off the floor. He couldn’t make out any detail, except that he was wearing the obligatory jeans at half-mast and a baseball cap on backwards. His youngest said that Mr Maxwell, up at the school, called them IQ reducers and he reckoned he was probably about right.
The two were still on a collision course. It was akin to watching the Titanic and the iceberg and about as inevitable. Incredulous, the doughnut fryer looked on as the old lady, at the last minute and with the agility of a ninja, sidestepped and stuck her stick into the wheels of the skateboard. The boarder fell heavily, but rolled at the last minute and got the old girl around the ankle in a grip of iron.
As the doughnut guy slid to a halt alongside them, he heard the IQ reduced skateboarder growl, ‘Okay, grandma. You’re nicked.’
He didn’t know it, but he had just become one of the only two people on earth who had heard Peter Maxwell say ‘okay’ and live to tell the tale.
Other titles by BLKDOG Publishing for your consideration:
Maxwell’s Summer
By M. J. Trow
PETER MAXWELL IS LOOKING forward to a nice quiet summer, with perhaps a little light gardening if necessary – as long as the plants don’t grow over the door and trap them all inside, it won’t be necessary. But, as so often in Maxwell’s life, Mrs Troubridge happens and a day out for her and her special friend, Mrs Getty, takes Maxwell and Nolan to Haledown House and from there into a web of intrigue and death.
Maxwell’s Summer turns out to be nothing like he planned. As resident conversationalist at a stately home, with riding lessons on the side for Nolan and free dinners when she wants them for Jacquie, Mad Max Maxwell could be forgiven for expecting a pretty easy time of it – with a nice fat cheque thrown in. But murders soon cross his path – almost literally – and with his own life in danger, will he even make it to the dreaded A Level Results Day?
Maxwell’s History of the World in 366 Lessons
By M. J. Trow
PETER MAXWELL IS THE History teacher you wish you’d had. If you meet anyone (and you will) who says ‘I hate History. It’s boring,’ they weren’t taught by Mad Max.
Many of you will know him as the crime-solving sleuth (along with his police-person wife, Jacquie) in the Maxwell series by M.J. Trow (along with his non-policeperson wife, Carol, aka Maryanne Coleman – uncredited!) but what he is paid to do is teach History. And to that end has brought – and continues to bring – culture to thousands.
In his ‘blog’ (Dinosaur Maxwell doesn’t really know what that is) written in 2012, the year in which the world was supposed to end, but mysteriously didn’t, you will find all sorts of fascinating factoids about the only important subject on the school curriculum. So, if you weren’t lucky enough to be taught by Max, or you’ve forgotten all the History you ever knew, here is your chance to play catch-up. The ‘blog’ has been edited by Maxwell’s friend, the crime writer M.J. Trow, who writes almost as though he knows what the Great Man was thinking.
Goblin Market
By Maryanne Coleman
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED what happened to the faeries you used to believe in? They lived at the bottom of the garden and left rings in the grass and sparkling glamour in the air to remind you where they were. But that was then – now you might find them in places you might not think to look. They might be stacking shelves, delivering milk or weighing babies at the clinic. Open your eyes and keep your wits about you and you might see them.
But no one is looking any more and that is hard for a Faerie Queen to bear and Titania has had enough. When Titania stamps her foot, everyone in Faerieland jumps; publicity is what they need. Television, magazines. But that sort of thing is much more the remit of the bad boys of the Unseelie Court, the ones who weave a new kind of magic; the World Wide Web. Here is Puck re-learning how to fly; Leanne the agent who really is a vampire; Oberon’s Boys playing cards behind the wainscoting; Black Annis, the bag-lady from Hainault, all gathered in a Restoration comedy that is strictly twenty-first century.
Prester John: Africa’s Lost King
By Richard Denham
HE SITS ON HIS JEWELLED throne on the Horn of Africa in the maps of the sixteenth century. He can see his whole empire reflected in a mirror outside his palace. He carries three crosses into battle and each cross is guarded by one hundred thousand men. He was with St Thomas in the third century when he set up a Christian church in India. He came like a thunderbolt out of the far East eight centuries later, to rescue the crusaders clinging on to Jerusalem. And he was still there when Portuguese explorers went looking for him in the fifteenth century.
He went by different names. The priest who was also a king was Ong Khan; he was Genghis Khan; he was Le
bna Dengel. Above all, he was a Christian king who ruled a vast empire full of magical wonders: men with faces in their chests; men with huge, backward-facing feet; rivers and seas made of sand. His lands lay next to the earthly Paradise which had once been the Garden of Eden. He wrote letters to popes and princes. He promised salvation and hope to generations.
But it was noticeable that as men looked outward, exploring more of the natural world; as science replaced superstition and the age of miracles faded, Prester John was always elsewhere. He was beyond the Mountains of the Moon, at the edge of the earth, near the mouth of Hell.
Was he real? Did he ever exist? This book will take you on a journey of a lifetime, to worlds that might have been, but never were. It will take you, if you are brave enough, into the world of Prester John.
Fade
By Bethan White
THERE IS NOTHING EXTRAORDINARY about Chris Rowan. Each day he wakes to the same faces, has the same breakfast, the same commute, the same sort of homes he tries to rent out to unsuspecting tenants.
There is nothing extraordinary about Chris Rowan. That is apart from the black dog that haunts his nightmares and an unexpected encounter with a long forgotten demon from his past. A nudge that will send Chris on his own downward spiral, from which there may be no escape.
There is nothing extraordinary about Chris Rowan...
The Children’s Crusade
By M. J. Trow
IN THE SUMMER OF 1212, 30,000 children from towns and villages all over France and Germany left their homes and families and began a crusade. Their aim; to retake Jerusalem, the holiest city in the world, for God and for Christ. They carried crosses and they believed, because the Bible told them so, that they could cross the sea like Moses. The walls of Jerusalem would fall, like Jericho’s did for Joshua.
It was the age of miracles – anything was possible. Kings ignored the Children; so did popes and bishops. The handful of Church chroniclers who wrote about them were usually disparaging. They were delusional, they were inspired not by God, but the Devil. Their crusade was doomed from the start.
