by M. J. Trow
He swept up the rise to the main road, swore colourfully, making a lone pedestrian blench, turned round and went back for his phone.
He swept up the rise to the main road and turned off in the direction of Leighford High School. It felt odd to be doing the journey at this, the wrong end of the day. He often stayed late himself, but he seldom went back once he had made his escape. The traffic was different at this time; too early for what passed for a rush hour in Leighford, too late for the school runs which clogged roads with a swarm of four-wheel drives – all, it seemed to Maxwell, driven by very tiny, very inadequately trained women.
Soon, he was standing outside the school doors, waiting for Bernard Ryan to answer the phone. Maxwell did the small jig that is the lot of mobile-phone users waiting for a reply. He muttered the usual mantra, ‘come on, come on, come on’ to himself and finally the magic worked.
‘Leighford High School.’
‘Bernard. It’s me. I’m outside.’
‘Who is this please?’ Ryan said, annoyingly.
‘For heaven’s sake, Bernard. It’s me, Maxwell. Can you let me in?’
‘It’s been longer than twenty minutes,’ the Deputy pointed out.
‘Possibly,’ Maxwell conceded. ‘But not by much. And it’s still me. Can you let me in, please?’
‘I suppose so. How long are you going to be?’ Maxwell could see Ryan through the glass doors into Reception, holding the phone as if it might bite and looking straight at him.
‘Look, Bernard, can we have this conversation inside? I could be halfway to where I want to be by now.’ Maxwell only just stopped himself from pulling a face at Ryan through the half-glazed door.
‘All right,’ Ryan said. ‘I’ll let you in.’ And he put the phone down and started his pedantically slow progress to the front doors, unlocking, locking, unlocking, locking, like an astronaut returning to the mother ship after making repairs out in space.
‘Come on, come on!’ His careful timetable would only work if no one messed him about and Bernard Ryan was definitely messing him about. Finally, the Deputy Head docked with the main doors and, infinitely slowly, shot all the bolts and unhooked all the chains, before tapping in a code on the electronic pad next to the lock.
Maxwell was amazed to find that the doors didn’t swing inwards with a shrieking howl like those of Castle Dracula. Instead, they just caught on the carpet halfway through their arc and fetched Maxwell a nasty one on the shoulder, just as they normally did.
‘Ouch, Bernard,’ Maxwell remarked. ‘Thank you for letting me in. Are you here doing anything particular?’
‘There’s always something to do,’ Ryan said. ‘But as it happens I am trying to find a replacement temporarily for Tom Medlicott.’
‘Have you thought of Barton Joseph? I know he works in a different authority as a rule, but the kids from the trip know him, which might be a help, and he is a really good chap.’ Maxwell crossed his fingers, trying to forget the pickpocketing incident.
Ryan’s eyes lit up. ‘Do you have any contact details for this man?’ he asked.
‘They’re in the file I gave to you when we got back. It might even make it easier for you to pay him, if he works here for a while.’
‘Pay him?’ Ryan was always nervous when paying out was involved.
‘Yes. For the work he did on the trip.’
‘Ah. Does this cause a problem, though?’ Ryan asked. ‘Is he a suspect at all?’
‘Suspect?’ Maxwell feigned surprise. ‘In what?’
Ryan looked at Maxwell closely. Could it be that the great murder hunter had hung up his magnifying glass? The Deputy Head decided to put it to one side. A supply teacher is a supply teacher, when all was said and done.
‘Anyhoo, Bernard,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Time’s a-wasting. Is there a possibility that I might get to the library without the keys to the kingdom?’
‘Oh, the library,’ Bernard said. ‘I was expecting you to be going up to your department.’
‘No, the library is what I want,’ Maxwell said, holding on to his temper by the slenderest thread.
‘That’s quite a good thing, actually,’ Ryan said, with a trace of disappointment in his voice. ‘Because you wouldn’t have been able to get to the Sixth Form Corridor. It’s been alarmed.’
It was entirely to Maxwell’s credit that he let that wonderful chance go by. It was to Ryan’s credit that he didn’t let his disappointment show. He had spent the last half an hour crafting some wonderful ripostes, which must now remain unsaid.
‘Library?’ Maxwell said. ‘Do I need keys?’
Bernard Ryan was far from sensitive, but what synapses he had fired now. ‘Just go in,’ he said. ‘No keys. No alarms.’
‘Excellent. Nice to know there is no barrier to education in this great country of ours. You won’t lock me in, will you?’ Maxwell made it sound like a jokey remark, but in fact he meant it. He knew his Bernard of old.
‘Of course not,’ Ryan was aghast. ‘You might tinker with my keypads.’
‘Highly unlikely, Bernard, but you may keep on hoping if you like,’ said Maxwell, patting his shoulder and half-running, half-walking down the corridor. His timetable was now very, very close to breaking down. If his suspicion could be easily confirmed in the library, it might yet work.
He pushed open the doors and, as might be expected, they opened without a sound. Maxwell flicked a light switch and nothing happened. Ah-ha, a timer. Bernard Ryan was as cunning as a fox, it had to be said. But Maxwell wasn’t beaten. Once, what seemed like long ago, he had been forced by Jacquie to get to know all his phone had to offer. And so he knew, that by pressing buttons, more or less at random, he could make it into a not-terribly-bright torch. The combination of that and the daylight coming through the high and grubby windows would probably suffice.
He peered at the corner given over to the Medlicott photos. He scanned some, looked closely at others and finally, with a cry of triumph, removed two from the display. Feeling rather like a grave robber, he slid them into his pocket along with Mrs Troubridge’s postcard and slipped out of the library, along the corridor and out of the double doors, with a merry cry of farewell to Bernard Ryan.
It was only as he was straddling Surrey and riding off down the drive that the sound of sirens wailing from the school building reminded him that he should probably have done something esoteric and secret with one trouser leg rolled up before he left the building. Or at the very least tapped a number into a keypad. He skidded to a halt at the bottom of the drive and turned back, just to check that it was unlawful egress that had caused the brouhaha and not twenty-foot flames.
Bernard Ryan was standing at the top of the low flight of steps up which generations of reluctant children had traipsed, day after day, year after year. He looked as though he was shouting something which Maxwell, whose lip-reading skills at a distance were a trifle rusty, couldn’t make out. And the sirens drowned out Ryan’s voice entirely. He was shaking his fists in the air, though, which gave Maxwell quite a strong clue. The Head of Sixth Form had to admit to himself he thought people only did that in the old Beano and Dandy comics, not in real life. For self-preservation, he hopped on Surrey and was pedalling furiously in the direction of the General before Ryan could chase him down the drive. His journey was made all the more colourful by the sight of so many police cars, ambulances and fire engines all racing in the opposite direction.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jacquie’s day was not much better than Maxwell’s, but she had to put up with rather less hysteria. The case, if case it were, was not going anywhere fast. It was not like Henry Hall to flog dead horses, but he was having extreme difficulty in pulling everything together and seemed doomed to spend the day in meetings, arguing his point of view. Most of the people pulled in on Saturday had now gone off to other duties, leaving Jacquie, Fran Brannon and Phil Smart working on the board, adding data as it became available. There was little more by the fag end of the afternoon than there had bee
n on the first morning of the case and they all sat in the front row of the seats in the briefing room, legs out, chins sunk on chests, gloomily staring at what little they had.
They had been there so long that the conversation had turned general. ‘Apart from the obvious,’ Phil Smart said to Jacquie, ‘did you have a good time?’
‘I did, actually,’ Jacquie said. ‘Nolan loved every minute. You wouldn’t think he lived by the seaside to see him gallop along the beach every night before bed. And he loved the little zoo we went to and the theme park. He wants a baby sloth as a pet, now. We were lucky, they’d only let it out into the enclosure that day.’
‘At least a sloth wouldn’t be able to run away very fast,’ Phil said. ‘My nipper has lost I can’t tell you how many guinea pigs that way.’
‘Tortoises, that’s the answer,’ Fran said. ‘I’ve got one. It’s as good as gold.’
They all half-sat, half-lay across their chairs, mulling over the relative virtues of sloths versus guinea pigs versus tortoises. It was a tough one to call.
‘It was quite busy, though,’ Jacquie said, making Phil, who had started to nod off, jump. ‘You can see all the people in the background, look, in the photos.’ She waved an arm to the pictures of Tom and Izzy Medlicott.
‘That big one,’ Fran said. ‘You particularly can’t miss her.’
‘Oh,’ Jacquie said. ‘She’s not a tourist. That’s Pansy.’ Phil Smart interrupted with a snort. ‘She’s with us. She runs the office at Leighford High School.’
‘Oh, right,’ Fran said and let her chin sink onto her chest again. Suddenly, she stood up. ‘Are we allowed to go home?’ she asked Jacquie.
‘Christ, Fran. This isn’t infant school. What are you rostered for?’
‘I’m not rostered at all. This is flexi.’
‘Flexi? What, paying back or accruing?’ Phil Smart said. He was the king of flexitime and gave in time sheets so labyrinthine that sometimes even he didn’t know what they meant.
‘Accruing,’ the girl said. ‘I’ve got seventy-three hours outstanding.’
Jacquie and Phil Smart both woke up fully at that. ‘You can’t accrue that much,’ Jacquie told her. ‘You’re only supposed to have a day or so at most. Clear off home now, before it gets worse. Go on. Shoo.’
‘You’re sure?’ the WPC said, edging over to the door.
Jacquie just flapped a hand at her. ‘Off. Go.’ As the door flapped to behind the girl, Jacquie turned to Phil Smart. ‘How are you for flexi?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know till I fill in the sheet,’ he grinned. ‘OK though, I expect.’
She nodded towards the door, eyebrows raised.
‘I’ll race you,’ he said, and was gone, through the door and down the backstairs, like a guinea pig up a pipe.
Like the good housewife she would have liked to have the time to be, Jacquie went through the room, picking up abandoned coffee mugs and turning off lights. She went out the front way, signing out and walking to the car, savouring the September afternoon. She couldn’t decide whether to collect Nolan early and put up with the wails as he and Plocker were separated, after only a whole day together, sitting at the same desk, playing with the same football, tumbling with the same tots, or to go home and have a few minutes with her feet up, chatting to her husband. About the case. Or, rather, about not being able to talk any more about the case, because it was complicated enough, with other forces and Henry’s problems with the powers that were.
She decided on Plan C – she would nip in and have a word with Mrs Troubridge.
Maxwell poked his head around the door of the ward, warily looking out for the nurse of the previous day, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he was welcomed aboard by an Old Leighford Highena, who he remembered as a rather nervous boy, scared of the sight of blood, his own or anyone else’s. They stood chatting in low tones at the bottom of Mrs Troubridge’s bed and Maxwell could feel the shade of James Robertson Justice as Sir Lancelot Spratt start to settle like a cold mantle over his shoulders. They were just getting into their stride, when a peevish voice came from the business end of the bed.
‘It’s rude to whisper,’ it said. ‘I would have thought that you, Mr Maxwell, would have been better brought up. I can’t vouch for you.’ This was directed at the charge nurse, who shot her a glance in which the venom was barely concealed.
‘Mrs Troubridge is so much better, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Quite her old self, I would imagine.’
‘Mr Maxwell is allowed to judge if I am my own self,’ Mrs Troubridge snapped, ‘having been my neighbour for a great number of years. You on the other hand, I have never met before you attempted to wash bits of my person to which only Mr Troubridge was allowed to be privy.’
Maxwell turned to the nurse. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘She is certainly much better.’
Mrs Troubridge patted the bed invitingly. ‘Come nearer, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘I really don’t have the strength to shout.’
He pulled up a chair and went to sit close to her. ‘You did quite well then, Mrs Troubridge, if I might say so.’ He knew that Neil would never take it out on her, but his policy of being nice to nurses had never let him down thus far and he thought Mrs Troubridge would do well to follow his example.
The old woman’s voice dropped to only just above a whisper. ‘It takes it out of me, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, ‘but I don’t like to lower my standards. I won’t be mauled.’
‘Quite right, Mrs Troubridge,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’ve got a nice surprise for you, here.’ He pulled the postcard out of his pocket with a flourish. ‘It’s from Miss Troubridge.’
‘Araminta?’ Mrs Troubridge repeated. ‘A postcard? It’s been ages. The last time I heard she was in … oh, I can’t remember. Marseilles, I think. She was always rather,’ she dropped her voice even lower, ‘louche as a girl. I hope she has been behaving herself.’
The concept of Miss Troubridge sashaying along the esplanade at Marseilles not behaving herself made Maxwell feel quite queasy. However, this may explain the writing, he thought.
‘Can you pass me my spectacles, Mr Maxwell?’ Mrs Troubridge asked. ‘They are in that drawer. Not that one, Mr Maxwell. That contains … personal items. The one on the right. That’s the one.’ Maxwell handed over her specs. He had known she wore them, but she was never seen in public with them on, as she was far too vain. She perched them on the end of her nose and held out the postcard at arm’s length. ‘Rhodes!’ she said. ‘The nerve of the woman. She knows that that was the favourite holiday destination of Mr Troubridge and myself.’ She dropped the card. ‘She is just trying to twist the knife, Mr Maxwell. She knows I am stuck in this bed and so she gads,’ she fixed Maxwell with a glare, ‘yes, gads to my favourite place. Cruel. Very cruel.’ She looked down and brushed the card aside, revealing a photograph that had got stuck under a corner of the inadequately licked stamp.
Maxwell reached for it, but she was already examining it. ‘Oh, this was a kind thought, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘A photograph of Nolan! He is really enjoying that ice cream, isn’t he? Goodness, that is a very large lady he is standing near, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell said. ‘That was one of our helpers, Pansy. A very good-hearted soul.’ He didn’t see why he should ruin her rose-coloured view of his holiday.
‘Does she suffer from migraines, poor thing?’ Mrs Troubridge asked.
‘Why? … oh, the dark glasses. Yes, she does, rather.’ It was true, Maxwell thought; Pansy definitely looked rather strained.
‘And Jacquie! She looks as though she is enjoying herself as well. Who is that pretty woman she is standing next to? Now she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself. She looks very ill at ease, Mr Maxwell. Perhaps she doesn’t like children.’ Mrs Troubridge was examining the picture minutely. Suddenly she dropped it on the bed. Quietly, she said to Maxwell, ‘I wonder if you could call a nurse; a proper one, not that man. I won’t be mauled.’ Her eyes were suddenly wild and Maxwell jumped up and bec
koned to a nurse at the far end of the room, who came scurrying over.
‘Has she gone again?’ she asked Maxwell, as though it wasn’t obvious. Mrs Troubridge was plucking at the covers and crying out in a high voice, ‘Mr Maxwell, Mr Maxwell. Don’t let her hurt me.’
The nurse glared at him. ‘We had her nice and calm. What have you said to her?’
‘Nothing,’ Maxwell said. ‘She was looking at this photo, that’s all.’
The nurse gave it a cursory look, followed by a shrug. ‘We really never know what might set her off,’ she said. ‘I’ll give her something to calm her down.’ Seeing Maxwell’s stricken look, she reassured him. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘She had a trifle for dessert at lunchtime and she was off as soon as she saw it.’
Maxwell had a sudden Road to Damascus moment, but he had to be sure. ‘Trifle,’ he said. ‘Was it decorated?’
‘I expect so,’ the nurse said. ‘They’re not exactly Heston Blumenwhatsit in the kitchen, but they usually do a dash of hundreds and thousands …’
‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand,’ trilled Mrs Troubridge on a rising scale. ‘The wardrobe at the top of the stairs. Don’t …’
Maxwell slipped silently away, his mind whirling. He needed to be at home with Metternich, or failing that, Jacquie. He needed to talk this case over, because it was a case and everything was related, if only he could work out how. So perhaps Metternich would be a better bet than Jacquie, if the embargo on discussion had been re-imposed, as he suspected might be the case.
Deep in contemplation he turned a corner and walked into something solid and yet bouncy, which smelt instantly familiar. As he bounced off it, it said, ‘Max? What are you doing here?’
