by M. J. Trow
‘How the Hell have you been?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Mr Maxwell, I don’t know you very well, but I do know you well enough to know that you don’t give a flying fuck about my health. So let’s get to business, shall we? What do you want?’
Maxwell smiled. ‘Perspicacious as ever, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Tom Sparrow.’
‘Who?’
‘Thomas George Sparrow. Found drowned in Willow Bay in June 1977. You examined the body.’
‘So I did,’ Astley remembered. ‘One of my first cases at Leighford. What about it?’
‘What was the cause of death, do you recall?’
‘Christ, Maxwell, that was over twenty years ago. You’d have to check the coroner’s records.’
‘I did,’ Maxwell told him. ‘“Open verdict”. That’s legal-speak for “We haven’t a bloody clue”, isn’t it?’
‘More or less,’ Astley nodded. ‘There was water in his lungs, I seem to remember.’
‘Meaning?’
‘He drowned.’
There was a sudden roar of laughter from the rowdies at the bar. ‘Come on, Jim,’ one of them called. ‘It’s your shout!’
‘Right. Hang on,’ Astley waved at them. ‘Why the interest, Maxwell? I know you. You’re like a bloody terrier when you get your teeth into things – things I might add in which your teeth have no business being.’
Maxwell let the appalling sentence construction go. ‘Do you know if the late Tom Sparrow was related in any way to Giles Sparrow? It’s not a very common name.’
‘As you say,’ Astley nodded. ‘And I really have no idea. You’d have to ask the Sparrows of Glove Farm. But I personally wouldn’t do that, Mr Maxwell.’
‘Really, Dr Astley. Why not?’
‘Because it’s none of your business, I repeat. As it is, I shall be reporting this conversation to Detective Chief Inspector Hall.’ And he stood up to join his cronies at the bar.
‘Shall you, Dr Astley? How unbelievably petty of you.’ And Maxwell downed his drink and left.
9
‘Jacquie? Is that you?’ The lights burned late that night I at 38, Columbine and the noises of the night sounded eerie and distorted through Maxwell’s open window. Metternich the cat lay in the shrubbery and watched his master in the lounge, that silly white thing glued to his ear again. And his lip curled at the silhouette that had made him a eunuch.
‘Jacquie?’
‘Hello, Max.’ The voice was subdued. Distant.
‘Can we talk?’ Maxwell asked. ‘I’ve been trying you all evening. I thought it was a case of answerphone shall speak unto answerphone. Except of course I haven’t got an answerphone.’
‘Max …’
‘Stapleton and Wood – the re-enactors who left after Needham’s death. I need their addresses.’
‘I can’t do it, Max,’ the distant voice said. ‘Not this time.’
‘Is someone there?’ Maxwell frowned, whirling from side to side of his lounge carpet. ‘Is somebody with you?’
‘Max, listen to me. DI Watkiss has had a word – upstairs. Hall himself. My career’s on the line now, Max; I mean it. I just can’t help any more. Not now. Not ever.’
And the line went dead.
‘Hello?’ Maxwell shook the receiver, willing the wires to reconnect. ‘Hello? Jacquie?’ Nothing. Just the flat-line hum. ‘Oh, bother!’ and he let the receiver fall onto the settee. Outside in the light of the street lamp, a boy and girl were walking past, wrapped in each other, laughing as youth will, carefree and in love. Maxwell poured himself a Southern Comfort. His lover. His wife.
‘Here’s looking at you, kids,’ he gave them his best Bogart under his breath. Then a thought came to him. ‘As one door closes,’ he mused to himself, ‘another opens.’ And he rummaged through his back copies of the Mail on Sunday, strewn in a less than edifying corner of his lounge. Simon Heffer in full cry, the holiday of a lifetime somewhere unpronounceable, somebody else’s thoughts on the probability of alien life beyond the galaxy. There – the two-page spread on Hannah Morpeth. And there it was, below the picture of the laughing girl photographed with Jeremy Irons, the name of the man he wanted.
Buster Rothwell, Hannah Morpeth’s minder, took some finding. A call next morning to Eight Counties had tracked down Angela Badham and after some initial caginess, she’d given Maxwell Rothwell’s number. After that, it was up to the Head of Sixth Form. A bit of judicious lesson-swapping with Anthea Edwards and Paul Moss of the History Department and a quick – ‘I think that’s two I owe you, Paul’ – Maxwell was on the 12.45 out of Leighford and rattling north, where the brave curve of the railway ran below the Gothic splendour of Arundel castle.
He stoically bore the abysmal coffee that the funny little man in the buffet car sold him and he manfully fought the grease that threatened to trickle down onto his shirt from the all day BLT at which his taste buds were recoiling. But when a flash entrepreneurial type sitting next to him hauled a mobile from his inside pocket, Maxwell’s composure cracked.
‘Tell me,’ he tapped the type on the shoulder, ‘did you pay someone to ring you on the train just to impress little old me? Well, I have to tell you, you’ve failed. Ah, Guildford – gateway to even more suburbia.’ And he placed what was left of his BLT in the entrepreneur’s free hand.
Now, Maxwell remembered the ’80s Minder series on the telly very well and the fact that Arfur had become a household word across the nation. But anyone less like Dennis Waterman’s happy-go-lucky Terry McGann he had yet to meet. Buster Rothwell was a squat pug of a man – the sort dear old Geoffrey Chaucer used to call a ‘thicke narre’ – with a collar-straining neck that flowed like rock into his shoulders. His hair stood up on end like a newly hatched duckling, but cute was the last epithet that came to mind. At first, he didn’t offer Maxwell a seat. All he offered him was a bunch of fives and it took all the Head of Sixth Form’s charm to worm his way past the front door.
Buster Rothwell’s flat had little to recommend it, except perhaps the rather impressive range of hardware displayed on the pine cladding.
‘That’s a rather fine Martini Henry.’ Maxwell pointed to the rifle at the top.
‘I presume you didn’t come to admire my etchings,’ Rothwell said. He was pure Essex by way of the Lea Valley.
‘I came to enquire about Hannah Morpeth.’ Maxwell turned to face him.
Rothwell gnawed his lip for a moment, judging his man, weighing the situation. ‘Now, why did I know that?’ he asked.
‘Mr Rothwell, it’s obvious to you that I have no right to ask you anything, but I’d like to know all the same.’
‘That’s right,’ Rothwell nodded. ‘I could throw you out any time. It’d be my right.’
‘It would,’ nodded Maxwell. ‘But somehow I don’t think you will.’
‘Oh, really? Why’s that, then?’
Maxwell crossed to the lowest gun on the rack. ‘A Brown Bess,’ he purred. ‘What a beauty – quite a rarity too.’
Rothwell was at his elbow. With a deft movement, he took the musket by the barrel and slid it across his chest, presenting arms. ‘Want to sniff it?’ he asked. ‘That’s what they do in all the best Westerns, isn’t it? And then come out with “This gun’s been fired recently”. Well, it has.’ He slid the musket back into position on the wall, ‘Not that you’d know that because I look after my guns. I shot a rabbit with it the other day.’
‘In Guildford?’ Maxwell raised a doubting eyebrow. Perhaps in Guildford they had them hopping alive around Sainsbury’s meat counter.
‘Near Guildford,’ Rothwell said.
‘Who do you think killed Hannah, Mr Rothwell?’ the Head of Sixth Form asked.
The minder turned away and fell heavily into an armchair. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? Why do you wanna know?’
Maxwell risked sitting opposite him, gingerly among the Pumping Iron mags strewn on the sofa. ‘A little thing called justice,’ he said.
‘You what?’ Rothwell sneered.
‘One of my sixth form is in police custody charged with the murder of Miles Needham.’
‘Well, then,’ Rothwell shrugged. ‘You didn’t do a very good job there, did you, eh?’
‘I think you’re missing the point,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Whoever killed Needham also killed Hannah.’
‘Well, it doesn’t take a fucking genius to work that one out, does it?’ Rothwell rolled an eternal piece of chewing gum around his mouth.
‘No,’ Maxwell smiled again. ‘I’m slumming at the moment. Humour me.’
There were many words Buster Rothwell did not know the meaning of – humour was one of them. But he was in an expansive mood that day. ‘What do you want to know – exactly?’ he asked.
‘Tell me about Hannah Morpeth. How well did you know her?’
‘I didn’t,’ Rothwell shrugged. ‘I work for an agency. Just doing a job. After the army, it’s all I could think to do. I’d only been with her a week.’
‘And what impression did you get?’
‘Of Hannah? Stuck-up bitch. Public school. Acting School. Looked down her nose at people like me. I remember thinking when I was introduced to her; I thought “I could rearrange your face, darling’”. That would be it.’ Rothwell was gazing into the middle distance at the memory of it. ‘End of a glitterin’ career. It’d be easy.’
‘You didn’t like her?’
Rothwell focused on Maxwell again. ‘You catch on quick, don’tya? Look, Maxwell, I was nothing to her. Just shit on her shoes, that’s all. She was an arrogant piece of arse. Didn’t know just how much she needed me, did she, till it was too late?’
‘Tell me about the day she died.’
Rothwell leaned back, sighing. ‘First coppers, then you. I must be a fuckin’ idiot.’
‘What time did you come on duty?’
‘Lunch time. That’s when she got up.’
‘You were staying at the Grand?’
‘Yeah. Some grotty little hole near the generators. Sounds like the engine room of the Titanic at night.’
‘What was the day’s itinerary?’
‘You what?’
Maxwell felt at home. This was like talking to 9Z. ‘Schedule,’ he tried again, ‘What happened during the day?’
‘I drove her down to the beach.’
‘Willow Bay?’
‘That’s right. I waited outside her caravan while she got into make-up and costume, then she did some filming.’
‘Did anything unusual happen?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Anything odd?’
‘No,’ Rothwell shook his head and curled his lip. ‘She had a phone call mid-afternoon. That seemed to shake her a bit.’
‘Really?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘Who was it from?’
‘Christ knows. It was to her mobile. You can’t trace calls like that.’
‘In what way was she shaken?’
‘Dunno,’ Rothwell grimaced, trying to remember it. ‘She was a bit pale, I do know that. I heard her say “Well, she’s got to be told”.’
‘Did that make any sense?’
‘Not a lot,’ Rothwell shrugged, ‘You’ve got to realize a woman like High and Mighty Morpeth gets a lot of calls, from all sorts of people. She was having a tough time of it, as it happens.’
‘She was?’
Rothwell hesitated for a moment. Then he leaned forward, all shoulders and attitude. ‘Why should I tell you, Maxwell? What’s in it for me?’
Maxwell leaned forward too, all hair and tenacity. ‘How about a good night’s sleep?’ he asked. ‘I’d guess probably the first since she died.’
Rothwell’s face fell. ‘You bastard!’ he growled under his breath and leaned back. He gnawed his lip again, sensing the moment, weighing his options. ‘All right,’ he muttered, letting his head sink back for a moment onto the chair’s head rest. ‘I still don’t know why the fuck I’m doing this. Look, I ain’t told the coppers, all right? And I don’t want them to know.’
‘I’m not exactly in bed with Mr Plod myself,’ Maxwell assured him.
‘Right,’ Rothwell nodded. ‘Well, what the fuck? Hannah had a stalker.’
‘Did she now?’ Maxwell sat upright. ‘How do you know?’
‘She told me. Oh, not at first. The first couple of days it was Miss Hoity-Toity, like I was a bad bloody smell.’
‘And then?’
‘It was the Wednesday,’ Rothwell remembered. ‘Just before breakfast. She had a letter – delivered to her at the Grand.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘Yeah. I thought it was a bloody joke. It was like one of them B Movies – you know. Death threats cut out of newspapers. I said to her “Is this a wind-up or what?”’
‘And it wasn’t?’
‘No.’ Rothwell was shaking his head. ‘No, she cracked a little that day, Miss Frozen Arse. Got all tearful and asked me to help her.’
‘What could you do?’
‘Nothing. That was just it. I’m a minder – a bodyguard, if you like. I’m not a fuckin’ detective. I told her to go to the filth with it.’
‘And she didn’t?’
‘Said she couldn’t,’ Rothwell said.
‘Did she say how long all this had been going on?’ Maxwell asked.
‘A few weeks,’ the minder told him.
‘Do you remember what the letter said?’
‘Better.’ Rothwell got up suddenly and crossed the room. From a drawer under a computer desk he pulled out a piece of paper with black letters badly cut out and pasted onto it with cheap glue. ‘Have a look for yourself.’
‘Mr Rothwell,’ Maxwell said. ‘Should you be in possession of this?’
‘No,’ the minder said sulkily, as if he’d been caught scrumping apples, ‘but then I shouldn’t have ignored that phone call on the beach either the day she died, nor knocked off without checking on her one last time at the Grand. Then there was the bloke in the foyer.’
Maxwell looked up sharply from the letter. ‘What bloke in the foyer?’
‘Anorak. The filth asked me about him.’
‘They did?’
‘They’ve got him on the hotel’s security tapes – video cameras over the front door.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Dunno. He did look sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Curly hair. Gormless looking. I bumped into him going off duty. Course, there’s nothing to connect him to Hannah. It’s just the filth chasing their own tails. Couldn’t catch a fuckin’ cold, that lot.’
‘Do you mind if I keep this, Mr Rothwell?’ Maxwell asked.
‘No,’ the minder shrugged. ‘I still think it was somebody’s idea of a joke. That’s why I didn’t tell the law. Do you think it was real, then? A stalker, I mean?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘Let’s say it narrows the options a little,’ he said.
‘Yes, of course I lied to him, Count.’ Peter Maxwell was staring into his own reflection in the amber glass. ‘It doesn’t narrow the options at all. Well, here it is – see for yourself.’
If Maxwell wanted to play silly buggers with his cat’s IQ, Metternich was certainly in no mood. He didn’t even look up as his lord and master shoved a piece of paper in front of him. What would be the point?
‘Quite,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘You’re right, of course. Not worth looking at, is it? A plain piece of eighty gram, bog-standard office stationery, just a millibit of a rainforest. However,’ he angled the threatening letter to the lamplight in his midnight lounge, ‘we shouldn’t be too dismissive. If I gave this to DCI Hall – yes, I know I should – he’d have his lab boys test the glue. Pritt, I shouldn’t wonder – bog-standard again. And of course he’d look for prints – and find mine. Which is precisely, cat o’ my heart, why I’m not giving it to him. Now, the letters are something else. See these upper case ones, here, Count? Independent or I’m a Geography teacher. These … difficult. Could be Telegraph, Grauniad. It’s difficult. Can we infer then, that our anonymous threatener i
s a broadsheet reader? Or are they a tabloid reader being ultra clever?’
He shook his head, then freshened his Southern Comfort. ‘You see, that’s the trouble with sleuthing, isn’t it? So many variables; so little time. All right,’ he kicked off his brothel creepers and padded across the hearth rug, ‘Psycho-babble time. The note says “Darling Hannah, you won’t be so pretty when I’ve finished with you. Your career’s over, bitch. Enjoy life while you can. This is not a rehearsal.” Not a rehearsal? Cliché, but it echoes her calling well enough. “Darling Hannah”? Does chummie know her? Wishes he knew her? Does he drool over her pictures? Has he asked for her underwear and a signed brassiere?’ Maxwell raised a disapproving eyebrow at the sleeping cat. ‘You don’t want to be so cynical,’ he said. ‘The poor girl is dead, after all. “You won’t be so pretty” … what’s this, then? Fist? Knuckle-duster? Acid? The paper said she was stabbed. There was no mention of mutilation. But perhaps killing her was enough. Jacquie, Jacquie,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘where are you now I need you? Still,’ he threw the letter onto the coffee table, ‘The stalker got one thing right. Hannah Morpeth’s career is over, all right.’
‘Mrs McGregor?’ Maxwell was balancing on one leg in his office, trying to close the door with the other.
‘Yes?’ a disembodied voice answered at the other end of the phone.
‘Peter Maxwell here, from Leighford High.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Er … is that Helen’s granny? Mrs Hetherington, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah. We haven’t seen Helen at school for four days. Is she unwell?’
‘Yes,’ the voice came back after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Something glandular, the doctor says.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Maxwell moved the exam papers to find his chair. ‘Is she up to any work? I’ll send some home.’
‘That’d be a comfort,’ the voice said. ‘Thank you,’ and the line went dead.
Maxwell looked up at the unimpressed face of Becky Evans, Helen McGregor’s long-suffering form tutor. ‘Granny,’ he said, ‘Helen lives with Granny at the moment. Old girl sounds as incisive as a tapioca pudding. I expect Mum’s gone busting down to Waikiki again to relive her youth – they get that way, single mums, when they stare thirty-six in the face.’
