Maxwell’s Curse

by M. J. Trow

‘It’s at home,’ she said, stretching back to reveal as much of her body as possible.

  ‘Let’s get it, then,’ he stood up. ‘Willoughby won’t be there, will he? The surly little zit on the door told me he was here. Clearly not.’

  ‘Why, clearly not?’ Prissy asked.

  ‘When two or three are gathered together,’ Maxwell said, ‘you can guess they won’t be Mr and Mrs Willoughby Crown. Going to join us, Sophie?’

  The blonde girl looked at Prissy, her mouth slightly open, her eyes unsure. ‘Three’s a bit of a crowd in this case, isn’t it?’ And she threw herself backwards to crash through the dappling water.

  ‘Give me five,’ said Prissy, standing up and wrapping a towel around her bare neck. ‘You know,’ she purred, stroking the curve of Maxwell’s cheek, ‘you’ll have to work for that bike, don’t you?’

  ‘What is it the good book says?’ Maxwell asked her. ‘Men must work and women must weep?’

  ‘Now don’t tell me you’ve suddenly got religion?’ she laughed.

  ‘Oh, I’ve always had religion,’ Maxwell said. ‘The question is, is it Old or New?’

  The Crown house looked different in darkness. True, the security light came on as the Shogun snarled onto the gravel, but the last time Maxwell had seen it, it was party time. All the lights had been blazing and the poppers were popping and the bucks were fizzing. It looked quite dead now with its windows dark in the ivy.

  She let them both in and threw her keys onto a table.

  ‘Not the mat?’ Maxwell asked.

  Prissy snorted her horsy laugh. ‘I think you need a drink, Maxwell. Scotch?’

  ‘Southern Comfort if you’ve got it.’

  ‘Sure,’ she shrugged, hauling off her coat and tossing it over an armchair. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  He did. He placed his hat, scarf and coat carefully in a neat pile beside hers and plonked himself down in an armchair.

  ‘Now, now,’ she growled, coming back with two large ones. ‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid to sit on the settee.’

  ‘This is comfy,’ Maxwell said, snuggling down.

  ‘Good.’ Prissy handed him his drink. ‘It’s good to see you again, Maxwell.’

  He raised his glass to her. ‘Here’s to corruption in low places.’

  She didn’t always understand Maxwell’s conversation, but Prissy Crown never let a little thing like incomprehension stand in her way. She sat opposite him on the long velvet settee, her breasts jutting out of her blouse, her legs crossed and swinging slightly. Maxwell wondered how many come-on positions the woman had. At least she hadn’t got her tongue down his throat – yet.

  ‘So where is Willoughby then?’ he asked.

  ‘Who cares?’ she asked. ‘He leads his life. I lead mine.’

  ‘I was hoping to have a word,’ Maxwell told her.

  A thought occurred to Prissy and she sat up. ‘You’re not into that, are you? A threesome, I mean? Of course, I couldn’t contemplate it with Willoughby, but Ken might oblige.’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell enthused. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she smirked. ‘Ken’s all right, actually. Oh, he’s a bit … inhibited at first, but once he’s warmed up …’

  ‘He and his wife …’ Maxwell probed.

  ‘Josie? She’s a mouse. And about as exciting in bed, apparently. No, Ken comes to me if he wants a woman.’

  ‘And you go … ?’

  ‘My, my,’ Prissy purred, ‘but aren’t you the naughty one? I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me and Sophie perhaps? It’s every man’s dream, isn’t it? A ménage with me and Sophie? Well, I’d have to ask her. She needs a bit of coaxing, does Sophie.’

  ‘You’ve got over your fear, then?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘What?’ Prissy blinked.

  ‘When we last met, you were convinced there was something going on. It involved Willoughby and Ken and Sophie. “Sinister” I think was the word you used. It’s Latin for left-handed.’

  Prissy put down her drink and swayed across the room. Before Maxwell could move, she’d ripped off her blouse and unhooked her black lacy bra. Her breasts bounced free, her nipples taut in the dim light of the lounge. ‘I’ve asked you this before, she growled, standing in front of him. ‘Are you fucking Jacquie Carpenter?’

  He clambered wearily to his feet. ‘Talking of fucking,’ he put his drink down and held her cheek with his right hand, his face dangerously close to hers. Already her eyes were closing, her mouth opening for his kiss. ‘That’s none of your fucking business, is it? Where’s my bike?’

  Prissy stood there for a moment, shaking with rage, her face a livid mask of anger. Then she snaked out with her right hand, but Maxwell was faster. He caught her wrist and held it in mid-air. ‘Tsk, tsk,’ he said. ‘You really must work on that riposte of yours. Never mind, I’ll find the bike myself.’ He walked away from her and turned back at the hall door, ‘And put some clothes on, Prissy, my love. You’ll catch your death.’

  It didn’t exactly take an MA in History to find White Surrey. Intuitively perhaps, he tried the garage first, cutting through the kitchen and there the thing was, leaning nonchalantly against a wall. His MA in History was less useful however when he tried to open the garage door. Risking a hernia by tugging at various metal projections, he finally saw the electric button and pushed it. There was a click and a drone and the gravel drive came into view. Maxwell wheeled Surrey out into the cold night, his breath wreathing ahead of him.

  It was only then that he happened to glance up at a bedroom window. Prissy was standing there, a housecoat round her nakedness, clearly screaming at someone across the room. Even through the double glazing, Maxwell could hear the raised voices. Something made him wait, pull back into the shadows, the gleaming white of Surrey’s frame hidden in the bushes. Doors were slamming through the house, lights flashing on and off. He almost broke his cover when he heard the shattering of glass, but checked himself and still he waited.

  He saw a figure dart into the garage and he ducked behind the wall, flattening himself as best he could between it and the bushes. The BMW inside snarled into life as the headlight beams lit the gravel and the tail end of Prissy’s Shogun. He noted the number as it crunched away across the drive, sending showers of pebbles in its wake. No need to chase the car, he mused. He knew who it was and he knew where he was going.

  By the time Maxwell got there, the Barlichway was like a scene from the French revolution. Ugly mobs roamed the streets, baying for blood. He kept White Surrey with him for a fast getaway. Knots of lads, not much older than the ones he taught, were prowling the darkness, chanting and singing. He heard the metallic ping of kicked cans and the shattering of glass. Not a good night to be a stranger on the Barlichway.

  He crossed Lion Square with the wind at his back, wheeling Surrey when he could into the shadows. It was here, he remembered, they’d found the body of Albert Walters, sitting upright, grinning horribly at the world he’d just left. The wailing sirens and flashing blue lights told him the law had arrived. From nowhere, mattresses and furniture were being hurled into the street, anti-establishment hands twisting and piling the debris into makeshift barricades. It was Madame Da Farge and Victor Hugo all over again. He expected the street prowlers to break into songs from Les Mis any minute.

  But no one was singing, not anything he could recognize anyway. They were roaring taunts at the line of dark blue coppers forming up beyond the square. An explosion of flame ripped through the darkness as someone torched a car. In seconds, it was a blazing wreck, columns of flame illuminating the tawdry flats overhead. Now the mob were throwing bricks, supermarket baskets, anything, at the lengthening line of plastic shields. People were lighting torches from the burning cars, whirling them around their heads like Napalm.

  Maxwell couldn’t make out faces. Many of the yobs had wrapped scarves round their mouths, others wore balaclavas. It was Derry and the Falls Road. Bloody Sunday had come to the Barlichway. There were kids in the
crowd now, hurling abuse and debris along with their elders. Tarts in tight jeans psyched up their men. But Maxwell was close enough to see .in older element in the throng, tight-lipped with hatred, their faces gaunt with anger and defiance.

  This kind of thing happened in summer, when the heat and the flies and the hose-pipe ban combined to distress an already tetchy people, depressed by long-term unemployment and endless repeats on the telly. It never happened in the bleak midwinter when the cold and the rain kept people indoors. And it had never ever happened on the Barlichway until now.

  Maxwell’s line of retreat was cut off. Unwilling to abandon his bike to the mercies of the mob, he couldn’t with safety cut across the open square to the line of riot shields. To his right the braver or more foolhardy of the mob were edging closer. It would only be a matter of time before they edged around his corner, for the shelter of the darkness. And then he’d be part of them.

  Scenting blood, television camera crews were circling the edge of the police lines, cameramen with that wonderful facility for walking backwards carrying heavy and expensive loads. A police van was braying out the same message over a tannoy, over and over again, but much of it was lost in the wind and the roaring of the crowd.

  The crowd were black beetles crawling against a sea of fire behind them where three, now four cars blazed. The riot shields answered them, flames leaping in their reflectors and on the visors of the police. Maxwell prayed that Jacquie wasn’t somewhere in that lot. Or that Nicole wasn’t one of the harpy characters among the sans-culottes to his right. He could feel the heat now from the nearest blaze licking his eyebrows and scorching his scarf. He flattened himself further into the shadows and saw with horror the line of horses splaying out in the darkness at the edge of the square.

  The historian in him remembered Peterloo. When the local police chief in Manchester nearly two centuries ago, had been unable to move the crowd, they sent in the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, who hacked about them, right and left. It was slaughter.

  ‘Not the horses!’ He broke his cover, leaping onto Surrey’s saddle and pedalling like a demon. ‘For God’s sake, you don’t need that!’

  Nobody heard him. Three shields came up to the level as he desperately swerved trying to avoid them. He felt something hard and sharp hit him full in the back and then Surrey’s front wheel locked and he slithered across the tarmac, feeling rather than hearing his trousers rip and tear and his leg along with them. There was a night stick under his chin, two powerful arms gripping him and he was hauled upright. Before he had time to gain his balance, there was an almighty roar and the mob burst forward. He barely had time to turn when the horses clattered into the centre, the shield wall breaking as the cavalry smashed through. Their timing was off however and the thin blue line wavered and shook as the Barlichway Light Infantry crashed into the shields.

  Maxwell was suddenly free of his captors. The night stick had gone, swung round in defence of its owner. His right arm was free as the man who had held it was carried struggling backwards thirty or forty feet.

  ‘Don’t take this personally,’ Maxwell said to the constable still clinging to his left arm and he brought his knee up sharply in the man’s groin.

  ‘Brilliant, mate!’ a yob shouted alongside him. ‘But next time, use this,’ and he thrust a length of lead pipe into Maxwell’s fist. The Head of Sixth Form looked at it, unsure whether to go for the next policeman or the bloke who’d just given it to him. In the event, he threw it away.

  ‘Enough of this dithering, Maxwell,’ he said to himself. ‘Time to come off the fence.’

  He dragged the horizontal bike out from under a fallen rioter and steadied the man before wheeling away into the night. He’d done the valour bit. Time now for a spot of discretion.

  ‘Where the fuck are you going?’ somebody asked him.

  ‘Getting another chain,’ Maxwell screeched to a halt. A huge man, all tattoos and attitude had straddled his handlebars, so Maxwell gave him the equivalent of a Barlichway kiss. He jabbed his fingers into the idiot’s eyes and pushed him aside, hauling the bike around and pedalling over the grassy rise to freedom.

  On the mountain-bikers’ ridge he halted, out of breath, his back in half and a throbbing in his jaw where a night stick had caught him. The battle was all but over now as the boys in blue had retaliated, their well-organized baton charge driving the black beetles back, across their own square through the blazing vehicles. Fire engines were edging forward behind the police line, ready to throw their power-hoses on flames or people alike. The tide of war had ebbed as quickly as it had swelled and the mob was limping home to lick its wounds and hide behind locked doors and deny all knowledge.

  Maxwell, too, had had enough. He eased Surrey’s gears into position and felt the wind in his face as he turned to the sea. As he pedalled past an abandoned car, all its windows smashed and its paintwork scraped, he recognized the registration number. A battered BMW. Police aware.

  There was, as he expected, no reply from Jacquie’s place. She hadn’t switched on her answerphone and the hour was late. With difficulty, Maxwell stripped off his shirt and twisted in the bathroom mirror to check his back. A stone or something like it had caught him high on the left shoulder blade and the bruise was purple and spreading. Somehow he had gashed his forehead in the clash of arms and he was still patching himself up when the phone rang. Going to answer it, he left a small trail of blood across the bedroom carpet.

  ‘War Office,’ he winced as the Savlon stung.

  ‘Max, is that you?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Crispin Foulkes, Max. I’m sorry to ring you at this hour, but we have to talk.’

  ‘All right, Crispin,’ Maxwell said. ‘I couldn’t sleep anyway.’

  ‘No, I mean, face to face, Max. Columbine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Thirty-eight,’ Maxwell told him.

  ‘A bientôt,’ and the social worker hung up.

  But it wasn’t Crispin Foulkes hanging on Maxwell’s doorbell in the wee hours. Not at first. It was a large, brassy-looking woman in a sheepskin coat and dangly earrings.

  ‘Mr Maxwell. I’m Zarina Leibowitz.’ Her handshake was firm, her accent West Coast. ‘You bump your head?’

  ‘From time to time,’ Maxwell smiled and noticed Foulkes hovering like a male sun fish by the large woman’s shoulder. ‘You didn’t tell me we were having female company, Crispin; I’d have rinsed my smalls.’

  ‘Max, Zarina is …’

  ‘An expert on multi-generational incest. Yes, I know. I was at her press conference.’

  ‘There’ll be another one tomorrow,’ the social worker said. ‘There’s been trouble on the Barlichway.’

  ‘Do tell,’ Maxwell replied, opening the door for them. ‘I’ve just come from there.’

  ‘You have?’ Foulkes looked concerned. ‘God, Max … the bump on your head …’

  ‘All part of my riotous lifestyle,’ the Head of Sixth Form clicked his tongue. ‘I’d show you my other bruises, only it might embarrass the good doctor.’

  ‘Honey,’ she turned on Maxwell’s stairs. ‘You ain’t got nothing I haven’t seen before,’ and she plodded on up to his lounge.

  ‘Just what I need after a good beating,’ Maxwell said to Foulkes. ‘A homespun shrink with a couchside manner to die for. I take it this isn’t a social call by social services?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Max,’ Crispin said solemnly, ‘it’s all gone way beyond friendly.’

  17

  ‘What were you doing on the Barlichway, Max?’ Foulkes sat in the Great Man’s lounge, sipping the Great Man’s Southern Comfort. ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘Or even if you do,’ Dr Leibowitz added. ‘I’m sorry to be so blunt, Mr Maxwell, but we’re past the niceties now.’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘Trying to make sense of what I saw,’ he said. ‘I still am.’

  ‘Let me help you,’ Foulkes put his glass down on the coffee table. ‘Someone has leaked
allegations about the late Alison Thorn.’

  ‘Allegations?’

  Foulkes looked at Zarina Leibowitz. ‘Well, it’s common knowledge now, I suppose. It’ll be all over tabloid land tomorrow.’

  ‘Not to mention your quality press,’ the psychotherapist added.

  ‘You’ve got to remember, Max, the kids at Wetherton School come from the Barlichway. They’re only five or six. And … well, various things have been going on.’

  ‘Things?’ Maxwell blinked. ‘At the school?’

  ‘Have a look at this,’ Foulkes pulled a dog-eared piece of paper from his coat pocket.

  ‘Jesus,’ Maxwell whistled through his teeth.

  ‘Not the first name that sprang to my mind,’ Zarina said.

  A devil’s face leered at Maxwell from the bright yellow A5 sheet, its tongue protruding obscenely in the direction of a little girl, spread-eagled on an altar.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re all over the Barlichway,’ Foulkes told him. ‘Somebody delivered them, door to door earlier tonight. Look at the back.’

  Maxwell did. ‘“Grey, grey, devil’s day; white, white, hide from light.” What does that mean?’

  Foulkes looked at Zarina again. ‘Doctor?’ he said.

  ‘We think it’s some sort of mantra,’ she leaned forward, cradling her left knee in her hands. ‘Exactly what, we don’t know. Grey witchcraft, white witchcraft. It’s only a guess.’

  ‘Thomas Grey, Thomas Grey,’ Maxwell remembered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘God, yes,’ Foulkes clicked his fingers. ‘Your calendar. I’d forgotten that, Max.’

  ‘Calendar?’ Zarina raised an eyebrow. ‘Somebody mind filling me in here?’

  ‘The first in our little ol’ series of murders,’ Maxwell said, freshening everybody’s glass. ‘I found a calendar in the dead woman’s house. Myrtle Cottage.’

  ‘Myrtle?’ Zarina echoed. ‘That’s quaint.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Myrtle was used in the old days to ward off evil,’ she told him. ‘The evil eye specifically.’

  ‘The calendar was marked with various dates …’