by M. J. Trow
The two girls were ahead of him as he reached the High Street, laughing and chattering as they went. One of them stopped to look in a shop window, pointing out something to her friend, their young faces lit by the tawdry display. Maxwell dodged sideways, behind the bus stop near the Town Hall. They were making for Winchelsea Street and that could only mean one of two destinations – the Baptist Church or Dante’s Nightclub. Tough call.
Peter Maxwell remembered when Dante’s had been the Seamen’s Mission, but perhaps there were just too many bad jokes about that and they closed it down. Or perhaps there weren’t any seamen any more, with or without a mission. Or perhaps mission statements had all been hi-jacked by comprehensive schools. The permutations were endless.
The girls had been swallowed up by the blaring music and the flashing lights before he could get there. Shit! Even so, he had to talk to them. He was Mad Max, for God’s sake and the bouncers on the door had room temperature IQs at best. He ripped off his bow tie, stashed his tweed cap into his pocket and sauntered up the steps with the dwindling panache still at his disposal.
‘ID, granddad,’ one of the guardians of immorality stopped him with a hand on his chest. The lad was chewing gum with a monotonous vigour and the neon lights were bouncing off his shaven head. Looking at them both, like gargoyles on the neo-Gothic door, it seemed for all the world as if George and Julian had pupped.
Maxwell flashed a tenner which disappeared immediately into the lad’s inside pocket. The doors of Dante’s opened and Maxwell stumbled into the Abyss.
‘Dirty ol’ bastard,’ the gum chewer muttered to his mate.
‘You know who that was, dontchya?’ his mate asked.
The gum chewer shook his head.
‘Only Mad Max from up at the school!’
‘Never!’ the gum chewer was nineteen. He must be getting old.
‘Dirty ol’ bastard,’ they chorused.
The dirty old bastard found himself clinging onto a rail that went downwards. He couldn’t see the steps under his feet for the fug and the dry ice and the writhing couples draped over each other and the banisters. The music wasn’t music at all – it was a wall of sound, crushing him, driving him back. The bass thumped in his chest and his head and the whole room seemed to swirl in a riot of smoke and colour and strange, indefinable smells.
It was Undead Night, according to the posters stuck badly on the building’s frontage. But in fact, had Maxwell been a regular, he wouldn’t have noticed much difference. Weird people with dyed black hair slid past him, like latter day Alice Coopers, hinged metal on their fingers and lips, with ears like sieves. One or two of them writhed past him, quietly impressed that such an old geezer should have gone to the lengths of making up. He hadn’t quite got it right. It was Beaten Up Night last week; perhaps he’d got his dates wrong. But no one who recognized him could believe that. This was Mad Max. He never got his dates wrong.
‘Wanna dance, Mr Maxwell?’ a tall Goth sidled up to him, chains dangling from the most unlikely places. She jutted her nipple-rings at him in some sort of ritualistic, nymphet challenge.
‘Thank you, Maxine,’ he shouted, somewhere vaguely near where he thought her ear might have been. ‘I’m more your Military Two Step man. Did you have those at school, by the way?’ he was pointing at her breasts.
‘Tits, yes. Rings, no,’ she screamed back.
That was quite promising. Maxwell was sorry she hadn’t applied for the sixth form; it now looked like the girl could quip for England. ‘I’m looking for two 15-year-olds,’ he roared, hoping the music wouldn’t suddenly stop in the middle of that sentence.
‘Taking a bit of a chance, aren’t you?’ Maxine shouted. ‘You being a teacher an’ all.’
‘No, no,’ he found he could almost smile now. ‘It’s nothing like that. Tell me, Maxine,’ instinctively his arms came up in a reasonable pastiche of the Mashed Potato circa 1965; trouble was he couldn’t get either end of the rhythm on this one, ‘are you a regular here?’ He thought the question a little less crap that ‘do you come here often?’
Maxine’s chin was bobbing about on his hairline. ‘Sorta,’ she yelled.
‘Do you remember Mr Fry from Leighford High?’
‘Wanker in Business Studies? Yeah.’
‘Have you,’ he ducked backwards as her chains threatened to garrotte him. ‘Have you ever seen him here?’
‘Nah.’ Her head thrashed violently from side to side as she closed and lashed out with a leg that would look good on Jonah Lomu. ‘He’s married, ain’t he?’
‘Not any more,’ Maxwell told her.
‘No, that’s right.’ Maxine was bending over now, her long black hair a mask over her face. She looked like Cousin It from the Addams Family. ‘Wife topped herself, didn’t she? He’s knocking off that stuck-up copper, ain’t he? What a wanker!’
‘Is he?’ Maxwell had lost all sense of rhythm now and just stood there.
‘Gotta get with the beat, Mr M.,’ she shrieked.
But Mr M. had seen his targets as well as the light and he bowed before Maxine before taking her hand in his and kissing it tenderly. ‘You’ve made an old man very happy, Maxine,’ he said. ‘I’ll be sure to book you later for the Teacher’s Excuse Me,’ and he was gone into the swaying, lurching crowd as the lights flashed green and yellow and the dry ice swirled.
‘Ladies,’ Maxwell sat himself down on the polished oak bench, thrusting out his hip so that the girls skittered sideways, to be wedged against an Inbred with the bulk of a JCB on one side and Mad Max on the other. ‘Michaela,’ he found himself able to wink at her. ‘Always a pleasure. And, of course, and at last, Annette Choker.’ His smile froze as he stared the girl down. ‘How the hell have you been?’ he asked. ‘Not to mention where.’
‘Fuck off!’ Michaela screamed at him above the music. ‘I’ll tell. I’ll say you were hitting on us.’
‘What a very silly American phrase that is!’ Maxwell shouted back. ‘And I’m not sure that down here anyone is going to take a blind bit of notice. Now, I want some answers from you two. The only question is – do I get them here or down at the police station?’
‘We ain’t done nothing!’ Annette told him. She was a pretty girl, taller and more statuesque than Michaela, but her eyes were black with makeup and she smelt of cheap perfume.
‘Oh, yes, you have,’ Maxwell growled. ‘You’ve lost a man his job and his mind and you’re probably at least partially responsible for killing his wife. I’d say it was detention time all round, wouldn’t you?’
Mad Max put his career on the line for the umpteenth time. He grabbed Annette Choker’s wrist and dragged her upright, pulling her behind him as he made for the stairs. Shrieking hysterically, Michaela followed him, trying ineffectually to pull her friend away. Mad Max had gone mad.
‘Go for it, Mr M.,’ Maxine waved at him, still gyrating mindlessly in the centre of the floor. The lights flashed red and blue on their shoulders and their hair, and Maxwell pulled them both up the steps and on to the door.
’Ere, ’ere,’ the gum-chewer stopped him on the threshold, holding the Great Man by the lapels. ‘Was’all this?’
‘What this is, Terence – nice to see you again, by the way – is your old History teacher removing two under-age girls from the permissive and unhealthy influence of what your employers laughingly call a night club. Now you and I – and your employers – know that on the grounds of underage drinking, under-age sex and the dealing of dodgy substances, I could close you all down in half an hour. So, is that the road we go down? Or do I just walk away for a quiet little chat with the girlies here?’
The gum-chewer hesitated, blinking first at Maxwell, then his oppo, then the girls. ‘Oh, well, put it that way, Mr Maxwell – you have a nice night.’ And he let the man’s lapels drop.
‘You too, Terence,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Give my love to your mum.’ He glanced across at the oppo. ‘Lewis,’ he nodded. ‘Got the old trouble sorted out now?’ Maxwell jerked his head
in the direction of the lad’s genitals. It never failed.
The Head of Sixth Form had just reached the bottom of Dante’s steps when a car pulled up and a head appeared out of a window. ‘Can I give you a lift?’ it said.
‘Well, yes, Count,’ Maxwell said. ‘There were a lot of tears and there was a lot of screaming. And that was just Dave Garstang. I don’t believe he just happened to be passing, do you?’ The Great Man had slipped off his shoes and his socks and lay sprawled on his settee as Tuesday night ebbed away and Wednesday morning hovered on the Leighford horizon. ‘No,’ he sighed, sipping his Southern Comfort, ‘I think our DC Garstang was either casing Dante’s or he was following me – both perfectly legitimate pastimes, of course, if you’re a copper. But you’re quite right, he may well have saved my bacon.’ His eyes swivelled sideways to look at the cat. The bastard hadn’t moved. Maxwell had mentioned the ‘b’ word and the bastard hadn’t moved. Normally he’d have been up on his haunches, doing his meerkat impersonation and purring loudly as the smell of sizzling rashers hit his nostrils. Maxwell thought it safe to continue. ‘I can imagine the Advertiser headlines, lovingly assembled by my number one fan Reg James. Oh, he’d hate himself for doing it, but he’d do it all the same. “Pervy Teacher in Night Club Nymphet Rap” – “Three in a Bed at Leighford High”. Young Garstang saved me from a fate worse than death, not to mention the reputations of two luscious lovelies of Year Ten. Viz and to wit, Miss Annette Choker and Miss Michaela Reynolds. Yes, one of them has been AWOL for a couple of weeks and yes, the father of the other one rearranged my face recently – your point being?’
Metternich rolled sideways, in that sudden and pointless way that cats do, and lay on the carpet as though dead.
‘It’s actually quite bizarre, Count, and more complicated than I realized. And the hell of it is, I was wrong. There; I’ve admitted it. Not my finest hour, I concede. The great Mad Max!’ He toyed for a moment with hurling the crystal at the wall, but such flamboyant gestures were, in the end, pointless and quite expensive, really. ‘Let me take you through it,’ he said, resting his glass on his chest and closing his eyes. ‘When Sylvia Matthews came to see me – yes, you do remember Sylv. She’s the school nurse, for God’s sake – stick with the plot. When she showed me John Fry’s note, I made a wrong deduction, Count. Yes, me. Max Almighty. I assumed – as did Sylv, I’ll grant you but remember, it’s never a lady’s fault – I assumed that Fry was knocking off young Annette of Ten Eff Ell. Oh, you wouldn’t understand, Count, in your physical condition – you, poor bugger, don’t get these urges. But some do, you see. The note talked about…’ and he switched on his total recall, ‘…it said “See you tomorrow night, usual place.” No, no, quite,’ Maxwell nodded, though the cat hadn’t moved. ‘Fair’s fair. So far, so innocuous. But then, you see, the damning line. “There’ll be enough room, we can all have some fun. No knickers.” Well, exactly. I had the two and two and I made them make four. In fact, of course, they should have made five.’
He glanced again at the cat. If the beast had been purring, he’d certainly stopped now. Maxwell was beginning to sound a little like Jonathan Creek. ‘What threw me, of course, and confirmed me in my own stupidity, was John Fry denying it like that. When I went to see him, if you remember, he denied the writing on the note was his. That was because his wife, poor old Eleanor, was there. If only he’d run after me or taken me aside the next day and explained…well, we’re talking horses and stable doors, I know.’
Maxwell reached down to the bottle of Southern Comfort on the carpet. He freshened his glass. ‘Dave Garstang and I settled the girls down between us. I was Nasty Policeman; he was Nice. Gave them both a soothing ciggie, which I thought was going a bit far. I was all for crushing their knuckles in a Corby trouser-press. You see, what we’re talking about here, Count, is one very small coincidence and it led me, not to mention half the county’s police force, on a wild goose chase of epic proportions. John Fry wasn’t having a thing with Annette Choker; he was having a thing with Alison McCormick. That’s right – little dumpy copper out of Leighford nick. Annette came into the picture by earning herself a few bob. Turns out that Alison’s got a baby – whether it’s actually John Fry’s or not, I don’t know. But Annette was her babysitter. No one at the nick seems to know about this – Garstang was certainly flabbergasted when Annette broke the news tonight. So…poor Eleanor Fry may have killed herself for all the wrong reasons. If she thought hubbie was playing away with a schoolgirl, she was wrong. But he was playing away, and perhaps that, in itself, was too much for her, I don’t know.’ He sighed, resuming the position on the settee again, ‘I didn’t know the woman. My guess – and it’s really time I stopped doing that, isn’t it? – is that the Frys’ marriage had been on the rocks for some time. He was going under too – stress of the situation, hard time at work, the complication of Alison – whatever. It sent him over the edge and he wandered away. I wonder if we’ll ever know where he went and why.’
Metternich rolled upright, twitched an ear and played dead on the other side.
‘Annette on the other hand did an altogether more prosaic flit. She told Garstang and me she met this boy on the Front – Giuseppe. He’s from Walthamstow, by the way, before you ask. They eloped together – my word, not hers – and shacked up in a bedsit somewhere in Grotland. No doubt it was love’s young dream for a couple of days, away from tarty mum, moody sister, niffy-nappy sibling and yapping dog. But, as I’m sure you’re aware, Count, you can take the girl out of the Barlichway Estate, but you can’t take the Barlichway…yes, well; complete the missing words. She dumped Giuseppe – although, of course, he begged her to stay – and she seems to have been sleeping ever rougher until she came home last night. Good of her mother to let us all know, wasn’t it? The woman gave her daughter a belt in the gob – I’m quoting here, by the way – and grounded her. Which is why I’ll bet she wasn’t in school yesterday and why she was in an over-eighteen nightclub earlier tonight.’
Maxwell took a sip of the amber nectar. ‘Good bloke, Dave Garstang. He took the girls to the station, handed them over to a Woman Policeman and sent a couple of uniforms around to the Choker and Reynolds establishments. I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall in either place really. So, there you have it. A mystery, certainly, but not the one I imagined.’
He sat up suddenly. ‘The thing of it is, Count,’ he said, ‘is threefold. I was wrong – and that mistake, I am acutely aware, may have contributed to a woman taking her own life. We still have absolutely no idea where Alison McCormick is…’ He looked the standoffish animal in the smouldering, green eyes, ‘And worse,’ he heard the break in his own voice, ‘I don’t know what’s happened to my Jacquie.’
By now, he realized, he didn’t need her any longer. He’d spent time with her, asking questions, going over and over the same points. She clearly knew nothing. And she was wasting his food, his water, even his air. It was time for her to go. He checked his watch in the half light on the spiral stairs. Half-past one. It might as well be now. He’d go to work on the other one tomorrow, when it was daylight. The other one was cleverer, more experienced. She’d been the real danger all along – why hadn’t he seen that? He took the spade from the corner, unhooked the iron door and slid it back. He saw her eyes widen above the tape stretched taut across her mouth, saw the tears glisten wet on the cheeks. Then he swung the spade sideways, thudding dully against her skull. He kicked her legs out of the way and locked the door again. He didn’t have time for disposal now. This one was complicated. And there were things he needed. Firewood. Matches. A little petrol.
Year Thirteen were sitting their European History exam that morning as Peter Maxwell pedalled like a thing possessed over the flyover, making for the dig. Last night was like a dream, yet he knew he hadn’t slept. He saw Jacquie Carpenter’s face wherever he looked – in the clocktower as he cycled past it, bobbing with the dinghies in the marina, swaying with the hanging baskets along the Front. She was crying
, silently as in an old black and white. And his heart, as always, went out to her. But his heart would not be enough.
He’d been on his way to the Quinton when he’d caught sight of Michaela and Annette. And by the time he’d extricated them from Dante’s and he and Garstang had got the truth out of them, it was too late to go anywhere. But now, he was on the road, burning up the miles and the rubber, putting things to rights. Surrey sprayed gravel as he swung into the elegant curved drive of Messrs Cahill and Lieberman, Property Developers. He threw the bike to the ground and dashed up the front steps, two at a time, and Anthony Cahill’s secretary was in the act of asking who he was, when Peter Maxwell kicked open the door marked Managing Director and stood there, a piece of paper in his hand.
Cahill was sitting behind his desk, mouth open, hand poised over the intercom. Maxwell slammed the door behind him as a terrified secretary began dialling frantically for Security.
‘Mr Maxwell,’ Cahill slimed. ‘You seem a little hot and bothered.’
The Head of Sixth Form threw the paper down in front of his man.
‘What’s this?’
‘You tell me,’ he said.
Cahill clasped his hands quietly. He’d dealt with madmen before. You just had to stay calm. ‘It’s a drawing,’ he said.
‘And not a very good one.’
‘Like Herr Hitler,’ Maxwell growled, ‘I wasn’t quite good enough to get into the Vienna Academy of Fine Art. Of what is it a drawing?’ Maxwell was standing in front of him now.
‘Er…there you have me.’
