Maxwell’s Curse

by M. J. Trow

  She was worrying, tapping the steering wheel to the mindless bubblegum music, watching the doors across the school car park for the first surge at the end of another long day. It came soon enough, but before it did, she saw Jeremy, her youngest, marching smartly along the path by the Science labs, his back pack trailing, his anorak undone. Alongside him, a grey-haired teacher with a college scarf flapping in the wind. For a moment, her heart missed a beat. They didn’t seem to be in idle conversation, master and pupil. She was not a classical woman or she might have been reminded of Aristotle and Alexander, wandering the plains of ancient Greece in search of education.

  Suddenly Aristotle was at her passenger door, tapping on the glass, as Jeremy bundled himself into the back.

  ‘Mum …’he began, but Aristotle was faster as Helen Hall lowered her electric windows. ‘Mrs Hall, I’m Peter Maxwell. I’d like to talk to your husband.’

  Helen Hall’s husband sat in the conservatory. His slippered feet were up on a pouffé, his bum ensconced on the cushions that hideous conservatory furniture makes de rigeur. His eyes were closed, his glasses on top of the novel that lay unread on the table beside him.

  ‘Henry.’ He opened his eyes at the sound of his wife’s voice. They opened still wider when he saw Maxwell.

  ‘God,’ he muttered.

  ‘Now, that’s someone we could use about now,’ Maxwell said. ‘And if he doesn’t exist, we shall have to invent him. How are you, Henry?’

  ‘Mr Maxwell … I don’t understand.’

  ‘Your wife tells me you aren’t well,’ Maxwell took the police papers off another chair and sat down, plonking his tweed hat on a rubber plant and draping his scarf around its branches.

  ‘Just a touch of flu,’ Hall said. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’

  ‘There’s a lot of murder about, too.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell, I really don’t think …’

  ‘You’re out of a job, Mr Hall,’ Maxwell reverted to formalities, realizing that cosiness wasn’t getting him anywhere. ‘On the scrapheap at … what … forty? What a waste.’

  Hall was sitting up now, putting his glasses back on, trying to be professional, trying not to fall apart. ‘Perhaps you could tell me why you’re here,’ he said.

  ‘DCI Knight,’ Maxwell replied. ‘Any good?’

  Hall was taken aback. ‘Mr Maxwell, you can’t seriously expect me …’

  ‘Is he any good?’ Maxwell shouted.

  In the kitchen, Helen Hall caught the look on Jeremy’s face. She bit her lip and clashed about with the dishwasher, glancing whenever she thought Jeremy wasn’t looking to the conservatory.

  ‘No,’ Hall shouted back. ‘He’s average to useless.’

  Maxwell smiled. At last, some honesty from this man. It was a breakthrough. ‘You know,’ the Head of Sixth Form stretched out. ‘I’ve got used to our sparring over the last couple of years. It wouldn’t be the same with somebody else. How about if we get your job back?’

  Hall laughed in spite of himself. ‘That’s not quite how it works,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because you’ve played by the rules,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Well, in these days of FACE and PC and the McPherson report, you have to, don’t you? But me? Well, I’ve got an altogether freer hand.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell …’ Hall was shaking his head. ‘You don’t have any jurisdiction.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ Maxwell told him. ‘In the good old days, it was called the Hue and Cry. Now it’s called citizen’s arrest. It’s the same thing.’

  ‘Too risky.’ Hall was still shaking his head.

  ‘Yes, it’s risky,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘In the good old days, chummy might reach a church and plead sanctuary – though I can’t exactly see the man we’re after doing that, can you?’

  ‘I’m talking about suing for wrongful arrest. I’m talking about you getting hurt. Whatever you think you’ve got, Mr Maxwell, you can’t go it alone.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t intend to. I intend to get by with a little help from my friends. And I intend to start with you. Now, do you think your good lady could be persuaded to put the kettle on and make us a nice cup of tea?’

  DCI Geoff Knight had spent his first two days on the case closeted away with the officers who had worked the ground. The flu had devastated Hall’s unit and the draftees from elsewhere to the Incident Room had to learn the ropes anew, rather as Knight was learning them now. He had photographs, depositions, witness statements, SOCO reports, forensic analyses cluttering his filing cabinets and coming out of his ears. He couldn’t see his desk.

  The phone was ringing non-stop. Demands from the press and Joe Public alike. What happened on the Barlichway? Why was nothing being done? Where was the paedophile ring responsible? And in the middle of it all, Zarina Leibowitz and Crispin Foulkes were issuing press releases, answering questions. Much to Maxwell’s amusement that night, the American bitch was quoting him, with no acknowledgement or apology to Arthur Miller – ‘The devil’s loose on the Barlichway.’

  And Knight knew the score. As long as it turned on his own men, the ugliness, it was containable. Riot shields, brick bats, petrol bombs, a few bloody noses and torched cars. Bad, but containable. Even, in a sad sort of way, predictable. But if it turned out on itself, looking for individual targets; if once the mob, fanned by hysteria, decided to turn vigilante, then no one was safe. DCI Knight knew the score and in the instant he knew it, he knew, too, that he was out of his depth.

  It was the Meridian Newsdesk that got hold of it first, but it was networked at once and the solemn-toned Michael Buerk told a waiting world at nine o’clock that a baby had been abducted from Leighford, only a stone’s throw from the scene of rioting last Friday night.

  ‘Mrs Alexandra Stone,’ Buerk read from the autocue, ‘and her baby Samantha, went missing last Wednesday or Thursday from their home in Leighford. Mrs Stone’s mother, Mrs Veronica Saunders, is worried there is some connection with the Satanic abuse allegedly going on in the notorious Barlichway estate. John Pienaar reports.’

  Mrs Stone’s mother duly appeared on the screen, like a latter-day Mary Whitehouse. ‘What concerns me most is that the police are doing nothing about this. My granddaughter is only weeks old and someone has abducted her.’

  John Pienaar faced the camera from a corner Maxwell knew well. ‘Behind me is the Barlichway estate, the scene last Friday of the worst violence Leighford has ever known. Little Samantha Stone and her mother Alexandra were last seen in the garden of their house two miles west of here twelve days ago. Alexandra’s husband is a serving police officer with Leighford CID and has refused to give us an interview. A police spokesman says that everything is being done to find Mrs Stone and there is no cause for alarm. Given the allegations of Satanic abuse made by American expert Dr Zarina Leibowitz yesterday, that will not calm the fears of the local community who are said to be expecting more rioting. This is John Pienaar, for the BBC News, Leighford, West Sussex.’

  The Ka skirted the rise and disappeared briefly in the dip by the park. Then it swung left and purred to a halt close to the waiting cluster of paparazzi cars and vans.

  As one, the waiting newsmen scented the arrival and swept, like a shock of sharks along the pavement, jabbering and chattering, poking their microphones and soundbooms at the couple who stood before them.

  ‘Who are you?’ was the general consensus question.

  ‘I am Tom Cruise,’ Peter Maxwell lied with great aplomb, sweeping off his hat as though to accentuate the point. ‘And this is Nicole Kidman.’ His accent was impeccable. ‘We’re here to offer Mr Stone the rights for his story. I shall of course be playing the detective sergeant and Nicole here, will be my wife. We haven’t signed the kid yet, but there’s probably a very young Barrymore around somewhere. Y’all come back now, y’hear?’ And he and Jacquie were gone down the dark path alongside the house.

  The paparazzi broke up, looking at each other.

  ‘Well, it did sound like him,’ one of them said.

&n
bsp; Martin Stone wasn’t in the mood for visitors. It had been a helluva day, closeted with Knight at Tottingleigh. And now this.

  ‘My fucking mother-in-law shooting her fucking mouth off to the fucking media!’ He threw a glass at the fireplace. Maxwell was a little surprised at the old Cossack tradition, but let it pass. The sentiment surprised him rather less. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  Jacquie wished she knew. All she did know was that Peter Maxwell had rung her out of the blue hard on the heels of the Nine O’Clock News. In fact, John Prescott was just explaining his latest transport fiasco when the phone rang.

  ‘Stone,’ was all Maxwell had said. ‘If you want to see your DCI back on the job,’ he’d lapsed into his underworld croak, ‘come round to my place. No cops. No funny business. Or the DCI gets it. Savvy?’

  Jacquie was all in too. She wasn’t in the mood for Maxwell’s humour tonight. But she’d caught the news as well. It had hit her like a bombshell and she was still reeling from the blast when his call came through. Too numb to understand and too tired to fight it, she’d got the car out and driven over to Columbine. And here they were.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ said Maxwell, hands on hips facing Martin Stone, ‘there was an ambitious young copper. He was new on the patch and he wanted to impress. He was good at his job, but there was a problem, you see,’ Maxwell looked around for a chair, found one and filled it. ‘This young copper – let’s call him Stone, shall we? He was a Satanist, one of those perverted sickoes who worships the devil and sacrifices people.’

  Stone and Jacquie looked at each other.

  ‘And of course,’ Maxwell was in full flight, ‘it was perfect for him, wasn’t it? A man on the inside. All he had to do was to cover his tracks. He knew all about forensics anyway, so there was no fingerprint problem. As a copper, he had a statutory right of entry to people’s houses, so even nasty old besoms like Liz Pride let him in. And if he’d missed anything when committing the crime, well, that didn’t matter; all he had to do was go round removing the evidence.’

  ‘What the fuck,’ Stone faced him, ‘are you talking about?’

  ‘Tell him, Jacquie.’ Maxwell waved a hand nonchalantly in the air.

  ‘I …’ But Jacquie was as gobsmacked as Stone.

  ‘You found Andrew Darblay, the pair of you, didn’t you? He was very good, Jacquie, wasn’t he? His description of what happened, his blow by blow account. And why was he so good? Because he was there. He did it.’

  The police officers just stared at each other, open-mouthed.

  ‘I’ve read the reports,’ Maxwell said.

  Stone looked at Jacquie, who shook her head violently.

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘I haven’t got to put up with this,’ Stone snapped. ‘Least of all now.’ He grabbed Maxwell by the lapels and hauled him upright. ‘Get the fuck out of my house!’

  Maxwell forced the man’s wrists away and stood nose to nose with him. ‘Stone,’ he growled. ‘The way I see it, you’ve got one chance to get out of the mess you’re in and that’s to listen to me.’

  Jacquie watched them, the man she loved and the man she worked with, head to head, toe to toe. Stone’s jaw was flexing and he was blinking, angry, bewildered, confused. Maxwell was immobile. He’d been facing down dangerous young men for years. It was in his blood. She saw Stone’s concentration break, his shoulders relax. He spun away from Maxwell and threw himself heavily into a chair.

  Maxwell sat down again, slowly. ‘Let’s get to cases,’ he said. ‘You killed Liz Pride on December 21 – some ritual significance of the Winter Solstice. For some reason you didn’t want her body found then, so you stashed the old duck in your freezer,’ he half turned to the kitchen, ‘through there, I would guess and waited ’til the next half-baked Wicca date – for auld lang syne, you might say. You dumped her on my doorstep – thanks for that, by the way – and then made sure it was you who was first on the scene. Stop me, if I’m losing the plot, by the way.’

  ‘You’re talking bollocks, Maxwell,’ Stone said, trying to keep his temper.

  ‘But then you loused up big time at Myrtle Cottage.’

  Jacquie sat down, mesmerized by the story that Maxwell was unfolding.

  ‘You missed the calendar – the one with all the key dates, the one that threw one helluva spotlight on what you were up to. What was the matter? Liz Pride going to kiss and tell, was she?’

  ‘This is unbelievable.’ Stone was shaking his head.

  ‘Then, of course, you overplayed your hand, didn’t you? Desecrating Wetherton church. Darblay caught you. So there was no time for all that eye of newt and toe of frog bollocks you’d used on Liz Pride. You just smacked the poor old rector a few times and walked away with the proverbial blunt instrument in your pocket. What could be simpler? Then you went back to the church with Jacquie on some pretext, so what would be more natural than your fingerprints and boot prints being all over the place? Perfect.’

  ‘Crap,’ Stone muttered. ‘Utter bloody crap.’

  ‘You had more time with Albert Walters, didn’t you? Time to poison the old bugger and time to put him on display like some demented tailor’s dummy in a shop window. What was he? Another whistle blower? You realized though that he and Liz Pride had been at school together – and in the interests of leaving no stone (no pun intended) unturned, you went to check the records at Wetherton School. Alison Thorn sussed you, didn’t she? That’s why she had to be silenced – all of course, in time-honoured ritual manner; naked, with her legs open, like a sexual sacrifice on the altar of your own psychosis.’

  ‘If this wasn’t so bloody disgusting, it’d be laughable,’ Stone commented. Jacquie just sat staring, open-mouthed.

  ‘It’s my bet you weren’t ready for Janet Ruger, though. She was a crafty old bird, knowledgeable and streetwise. She was on to you, wasn’t she? And here, of course, you made the biggest mistake of all – you left your sacrificial knife in the woman’s throat. What a giveaway.’

  Stone was staring straight ahead, not looking at Maxwell, not saying anything now.

  ‘You’ve got two little girls, Stone,’ the Head of Sixth Form said. The DS turned to him slowly, the look on his face sending a shiver down Jacquie’s spine. ‘And, ironically, it was a little girl who put me onto you. One of Alison Thorn’s little girls – talking about a nasty policeman killing babies. Is that what you’ve done, Stone?’ The silence was audible. ‘Have you killed your own baby?’

  Jacquie wasn’t ready for what followed. Martin Stone threw himself across the space between himself and Maxwell, the Head of Sixth Form and his chair crashing backwards. The sergeant’s hands were around Maxwell’s throat and he was squeezing with his thumbs. In desperation. Maxwell brought both feet up and smashed his ankles against Stone’s ears. The copper jack-knifed in pain and fell away, rolling backwards as Jacquie jumped between them, a spray can in her hand.

  ‘Martin!’ she screamed at him. Stone took one look at the mace and subsided, his head throbbing, his blood thumping. He knelt on his rug, glowering at Maxwell, who rolled from behind the upturned chair, freeing his jaw from the lock it was in.

  ‘All right,’ the Head of Sixth Form rasped, his throat bruised and closing down. ‘Now, you tell us, Martin; you tell us where they are.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stone mumbled. ‘As God is my witness, I don’t know. Alex gets terrible post-natal depression. She was the same with Janey. She went off for days the week after she was born. She came back again, of course, but I was scared shitless. And she made me promise, made me swear, not to tell anyone about it. Not even her mother.’

  Maxwell crouched down in front of him, nodding. ‘You loused up at Myrtle Cottage,’ he said, ‘because you didn’t do your job. When you checked for chemists that had had strychnine stolen, you missed one, in Littlehampton. When Trisha, the barmaid at the Falcon in Wetherton told you about devil worship, you didn’t seem interested. For a while I thought it was because you were guilty as Hell. Then I realized
it was just because your mind was elsewhere, wasn’t it? First the baby was late, delaying the inevitable. Then came the inevitable. Your family vanished.’

  Stone nodded. ‘That’s why I told Jock Haswell to ignore Alex’s mother. I didn’t think it would get tangled up in all this other mess.’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell said. ‘I don’t suppose you did.’ And he stood up. ‘Mr Stone,’ Maxwell looked down at the man, the upset chair, the rucked mat. ‘Promise me that when your wife does return, you’ll get her the help she needs.’

  Stone nodded. And Jacquie and Maxwell saw themselves out.

  They sat in the Ka. She looked at him. Then she reached out and stroked his cheek. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  He returned her gaze and smiled. ‘I’m fine, Jacquie,’ he said. She took in the face, with the gash over the forehead, the bruising around the jaw.

  ‘It was probably that scarf of yours that saved you. Max, what possessed you to do that? To accuse Martin of all those terrible things? I know him. He couldn’t possibly do anything like that. Kill his own kid?’

  ‘Henry Hall wasn’t so sure,’ Maxwell told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I spent the latter part of the afternoon with your boss today, Jacquie. He let his hair down a little, for Hall, I mean.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’ She was wide-eyed.

  ‘The reason he sent me to Myrtle Cottage in the first place.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘There was someone on his team he couldn’t trust. He’d felt it intuitively. An insider, somebody who knew the score. That’s why he wasn’t getting anywhere, wasn’t making progress.’