by M. J. Trow
‘How do you know all this?’
Maxwell coughed discreetly. ‘Just asked a few questions, used my eyes, Heart of Midlothian,’ he said. ‘It did people good to chat while we were sorting out the walking wounded from the … well, the others. Mel had laughed about her cocktails, because Diamond had made a big thing about the PE department being greedy, but apparently she said there was no one like a Business Studies teacher when it came to getting a deal.’ He looked more sombre than the story seemed to warrant.
‘Is it Mel who died?’ she asked him, hand on his arm.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She died really quickly. She collapsed so fast that no one really had a moment to get to her. Diamond and the rest were throwing up and sort of drooling and behaving oddly before they went down, but she just fell over and died. Sylv realised straight away it was poison – it was all too quick just to be a bad prawn.’
Davies had moved to the door and was taking names as people were either wheeled or walked away. Now only Jacquie, Maxwell and Sylvia were left and he joined them. Jacquie introduced him to the nurse and he brightened.
‘A professional. Brilliant. Can I ask you to give me a statement straight away, Mrs Matthews, while the memory is clear?’
‘Wait, Bob,’ Jacquie said. ‘I think it would be best if you interview Mr Maxwell and I will interview Sylvia. Just to keep it a bit more professional, do you get my drift? But before that, we need samples. Are SOCO on their way?’
‘I’ve called it in,’ Davies said, ‘and they’re on their way.’ He looked at Maxwell. ‘All we have to do is swab Mr Maxwell, and I think that would more or less do it.’
Maxwell looked down at himself ruefully. ‘I do feel a bit … grubby,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I find something else to wear, have a shower perhaps?’
‘Well …’ Davies had no mind to help Maxwell feel more comfortable.
‘What if the poison can seep in, through his pores,’ Sylvia put in her four-pennyworth. ‘After all, we don’t know what it is and you don’t want that on your conscience, surely, Mr Davies.’
‘Could it?’ he asked her, as the nearest thing to an expert he had handy.
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? And I must say, I could do with a change of clothing myself. It’s easy for me, I have my home clothes in my office.’ She turned to Maxwell. ‘What are you going to wear, Max?’
‘I’ll see if the PE Department can kit me out in a little Lycra number, or failing that, there’s always the Drama Club costume collection. I’ll find something. I’ve always fancied that glitzy concoction they made for Herod in Superstar a few years back.’ He raised an eyebrow at Davies. ‘May I?’
Davies sighed. ‘Knock yourself out,’ he said, hopefully. ‘I’ll find us a couple of offices,’ he said to Jacquie. ‘I’ll see you when you’ve finished scrubbing Mr Maxwell’s back,’ and he turned on his heel and left, keeping his dignity by a whisker as he nearly slipped in a pool of something indescribable.
‘Bitter,’ mused Sylvia.
‘Wanker,’ replied Jacquie, and Sylvia bowed to her better judgement and went off to change.
Chapter Six
Jacquie caught up with Davies outside Diamond’s office. The school was strangely quiet, now that all the sirens had gone. The kids were being taken inside, class by class, to be signed out and sent home. There wasn’t time to send a letter with them and anyway, what could it have said? The governors were the lucky ones. They had been poised to attend the interviews in the afternoon and now they were being contacted to take the brunt of the media piranha-tank frenzy as the news broke generally. By the time all the kids were home and the garbled half-truths had been semi-digested by shocked parents, the story would involve at least three armed gunmen, a pride of man-eating lions and a Viking funeral pyre afloat on the swimming pool, so the phone calls would be fun at least. Both Thingees, morning and afternoon Receptionists, braced themselves.
‘Bob,’ Jacquie said quietly. ‘Do you have some sort of problem with Max?’
‘No,’ he said truculently. ‘No more than anyone else.’
‘Only, you seem to be a little bit rude, all things considered. He and Sylvia kept things ticking over in there, while they waited for help to arrive. Who knows, they may have saved lives.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Davies said. ‘Course they did. Man on white horse, everyone step aside. Mighty Mouse is here to save the day. Oh, yeah.’
Jacquie took a step back. ‘I don’t often threaten this, Bob, and I’ve never actually done it. But when we get back to the station, I will be putting in a complaint to Henry about your attitude today. Here we are, riding a breaking wave that could still drown us if a kid starts feeling icky, and you are letting personal prejudices hamper the investigation. Meanwhile, I’ll interview Sylvia Matthews in the Head’s office. I will also ring the nick and get a squad car to come and collect Mr Maxwell. Henry can interview him there.’
‘I’m doing that interview,’ Davies shouted. ‘Don’t try and sideline me, Jacquie. I get enough of that at the nick, Jacquie this, Jacquie that.’ He stood at bay, red in the face and ready for action.
‘That’s enough.’ Jacquie grabbed a startled Paul Moss by the arm as he tried to sneak past without listening. ‘Mr Moss, I want you as a witness to this conversation.’
‘Oh, umm, Jacquie, I don’t think so …’ he stammered. ‘Police business, I expect, isn’t it?’
‘It was,’ Jacquie said. ‘But now it’s personal. I am relieving Detective Sergeant Davies from his duties at this crime scene, the reason being that his attitude is not conducive to the professional coverage of the site. If he refuses to leave of his own free will, I would like you to go and phone this number,’ she passed him a card, ‘and speak directly to DCI Henry Hall.’
They stood there, a triptych of tension. Jacquie still had hold of the card which was also in Paul Moss’s grasp. Davies stood with feet apart, knees locked, aggression in every pore, staring at them both. Then, the tension broke.
‘Fuck you,’ Davies spat. ‘You’ll be sorry, Jacquie,’ and he stormed out, knocking a Year Seven to the ground in the doorway.
Picking the child up and dusting her down perfunctorily, Paul Moss said mildly, ‘Nice chap. Are you all right, Annie?’ It was the kid’s second day at her new school. Teachers chucking up and falling over. Policemen knocking her about. Could it get any more exciting? Junior school was never like this.
‘The best,’ muttered Jacquie as Annie ran for the Great Outdoors. ‘Sorry you had to see that, Mr Moss.’ Like all teachers’ WAGs, she automatically reverted to formality when a student was around. ‘May we talk in private?’
‘Of course. I suppose we could use Diamond’s office,’ Paul said. ‘He won’t be there at the moment, that’s for sure,’ and he headed that way.
‘Perfect. I’m interviewing Sylvia in there shortly. But with that little contretemps, things need to change and I don’t have time to make it happen. Could I ask you to help?’
‘Of course.’ He opened the door to the Headteacher’s office. Inside, it had an unreal feel. Not only was the school on the other side of the door almost silent, the last few students having finally gone home or shoplifting, whichever was the more tempting, but the room itself seemed to be holding its breath. The chair was pushed back from the desk and a pen lay on a pad, abandoned as the time for lunch had come round. Diamond’s coat hung on the back of the door, his car keys were tumbled on the desk. Jacquie and Paul felt like voyeurs, looking in on the private life of a man who was in no position to complain. In fact, the police person inside Jacquie was shouting it may even be a potential crime scene, if he died. She shook herself free of that thought. No point in meeting trouble halfway; she knew that if trouble wanted to meet you, it would wait in a doorway and jump out at you when you were least expecting it. She walked purposefully behind the desk and moved the pen and pad aside. She pulled up the chair and sat down.
‘Right, Paul. Oh, have a seat.’
He was lookin
g round. He turned to her with a shudder. ‘This feels peculiar,’ he said. He normally sat in that chair once a year, when having to explain his decidedly average GCSE results to the Headteacher. In fact, he was due there next week.
‘Murder makes everything peculiar,’ she replied and watched his face drain of colour.
‘Murder? I think we all assumed … oh, I don’t know. A bad prawn?’
‘I think it would have to be a very bad prawn, don’t you, Paul? A prawn with a sub-machine gun, for example. A member of staff is dead already and many others have been whisked off to the General, sirens going.’
He looked ashen and finally subsided into a chair. Then, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to ring Henry Hall, as I asked. As soon as you’ve done that, I’d like you to find Max and warn him he will be going to the nick for his interview, nothing serious but DS Davies is no longer available.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘For now. Who knows, by tonight it might be me on gardening leave. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Then, unless you have urgent teacherly things to do, I’d be grateful if you could sit down and try to jot down your recollections of where everyone was in the few minutes before the first person collapsed, and any impressions you got. We’ll be asking everyone to do this, but Max always says that historians make the best witnesses.’
‘So …?’
‘So, you’re a historian, Paul, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. But not like Max.’
‘I know that, Paul. Just do your best.’ She hadn’t meant to be condescending; it just came out that way. A bit like Jack Shaffer’s words in Maxwell’s favourite Western –‘Tell him no man should be ashamed of being beaten by Shane.’ It was just how it was. And Paul Moss knew it, too. He stood up to leave and the door behind him flew open and caught him a nasty one on the back. ‘Ow.’
Thingee Two stood in the doorway, her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Moss. I was looking for Mr Maxwell. Is he in here?’ She looked around, aimlessly, as if he was perhaps on a shelf, or under the desk.
‘No,’ Jacquie said. ‘He’s getting changed. Can we help you?’
Thingee was in a cleft stick. She knew that Jacquie was Maxwell’s Other Half, as the Ladies of the Office had it, but never knew what to call her. She settled for nothing and spoke to Paul Moss instead. ‘Oh, Mr Moss, it’s just that we’ve had County Hall on the phone. It’s about, well, you know, all the stuff that happened at lunch.’
‘Yes,’ Paul said. ‘I thought they’d be involved sooner or later. What did they want? They don’t think it’s Mr Maxwell’s fault, surely?’
‘Oh, no,’ said the girl. ‘Not at all. They’ve looked through their records and found that Mr Maxwell is the senior teacher not … umm, ill.’
Paul Moss thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose he is. So what?’
‘Well,’ said Thingee, looking round with big eyes. ‘That means that he’s the Headteacher.’ She wasn’t ready for the reaction her words got, as Paul and Jacquie collapsed in helpless laughter. She backed out of the door and raced back to her office, where telephones rang off their hooks and people were a bit more normal.
Chapter Seven
‘I’m what?’ Maxwell, scrubbed and smelling sweetly of Timotei and Dove, stood looking rather dumbfounded. He had never really thought of himself as Headmaster material and it was true that, wearing lilac tracksuit bottoms in size Absolutely Tiny and an orange tracksuit top in size Simply Enormous, he didn’t look like it either.
Jacquie wiped her eyes and coughed to regain her composure. ‘The Headmaster. Acting, of course.’
‘Of course. I can act being a Headmaster, no problem. Damn sight better than Legs, anyway. I think my style will be something like John Gielgud in Forty Years On. Puzzled, but well meaning. With just a threat of Robert Newton as Dr Arnold.’ A strange light came into his eye. ‘I wonder whether I will have full powers?’
Paul looked askance at Jacquie.
‘You’re embarrassing Paul, Max,’ she chided him, still smiling.
‘No, no, not those powers. I mean full Headmasterly powers. Hiring. Firing. Expulsion. Ordering things.’
Paul Moss shrugged. ‘I should think you’ll have at least day-to-day powers; ordering, obviously.’ He looked at his department member and smiled. ‘Firing, only when necessary, I should hope. Remember who your friends are.’
Jacquie gave a final chuckle. ‘Well, dearest,’ she said, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Well done on your sudden elevation. May I use your office to interview Sylvia, Acting Headmaster?’
‘Why don’t you do it in here …? Oh, I see. Ha, yes, of course you may. I’ll get off to the nick then. Can you give me a lift, Paul?’
‘There’s a car coming for you,’ the Head of History said. ‘I rang earlier.’
‘A car?’ Maxwell grinned. ‘I like the sound of that. Will it be a stretch limo, do you think? Or a Roller.’ The distant sound of a dying siren came filtering through from the drive at the front of the school.
‘Sounds like a squad car,’ Jacquie said. ‘And from the sound of the siren, I suspect that Davies has put the boot in with his cronies already. Never mind. Off you go and interview Henry.’
‘Isn’t he interviewing me?’
‘To begin with, I expect,’ she said wryly. ‘I’ll see you later. I promised Helen we’d pop by.’
‘All right, snookums, see you later. And, Jacquie, I’ll see you at home.’ The bonhomie was lost on Paul Moss. He flung open the door and was almost punched in the face by a police driver, hand raised to knock on the door. ‘Don’t worry, officer, I’ll come quietly.’ And out he went.
‘That’ll be the day,’ Paul and Jacquie said in unison.
‘I heard that,’ came his plaintive cry as the door swung shut and peace came briefly to the Acting Headteacher’s Office.
Jacquie smiled at Paul Moss. ‘If you should happen to bump into Sylvia, could you get her to come in here?’ she asked. ‘If it’s not for a minute or two, that would be good. I still have residual tremors from seeing Max’s jacket across the feet of a dead body.’
He patted her shoulder and left.
The squad car driver had indeed been briefed, if inaccurately, by Davies. He bundled Maxwell unceremoniously into the back seat, doing that thing policemen do with people’s heads to avoid allegations of brutality later, and set off at a blistering pace for the nick. As instructed, he took the most twisting route the RAC could devise and Maxwell was black and blue, as well as orange and lilac, by the time they reached Leighford Police Station, where Henry Hall waited in his eyrie.
Maxwell was bustled through reception and into Interview Room One, a setting with which he was very familiar, having spent a good few hours in it, over the years. He waited patiently, drumming his fingers on the scarred table top, testimony for future archaeologists to a strange, probably totemic habit which involved making small random burns on the Formica, but which had clearly fallen into disuse for some reason, lost to time, in the mid Noughties. He was mulling over this scenario when the door opened and an apologetic head poked itself round the door.
‘Mr Hall apologises, Mr Maxwell, for the misunderstanding, but would you like to come with me up to his office?’ The police person looked about six and had curls and big blue eyes like Shirley Temple, but Maxwell had learnt from his own beautiful and ingenuous Jacquie that appearances could be so very deceptive. He merely doffed his missing hat, gathered up the folds of his Simply Enormous top and followed her meekly. If she found his dress at all eccentric, like a well-trained police person she gave no sign.
As they turned a corner in the top landing, they were met by a scarlet-faced Bob Davies, who shouldered them aside and slammed out down the emergency stairs, relabelled by some wag ‘Smokers This Way’.
‘Excuse us,’ Maxwell called after him. He really didn’t care what Bob Davies thought of him, but he objected to his treatment of a female c
olleague. Political Correctness was not one of Maxwell’s hobbies, but once a public schoolboy, always a public schoolboy, and rudeness was never left unremarked or, if possible, unpunished.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said his guide. ‘Davies is an ignorant pig and we just ignore it. He’s a bit of a dinosaur. Watches too much Life on Mars.’
Brontosaurus Maxwell decided she meant one of the meat eaters and let it go. Leaning round him she pushed open Hall’s door. ‘Mr Maxwell, sir,’ she said and ushered him in.
Hall stood up and waved Maxwell to a chair. Maxwell was unused to such relative civility even from the ever-urbane Henry Hall and the surprise must have shown on his face.
‘Thank you for the invitation,’ Hall began.
‘The …? Oh, the invitation! You’re welcome of course, Henry. And the family, of course. We’ve decided on the more the merrier since Jacquie’s mother seems intent on inviting everyone we’ve ever queued behind in Sainsbury’s. Oh,’ he added hurriedly, ‘not that you fall into that category, of course. You’ve interrogated me under caution too many times for that to apply. Which brings me,’ he said, half standing and trying to make the tracksuit bottoms conform a little more to his needs by hauling at the crotch, ‘which brings me – do excuse me, by the way, Henry, there wasn’t much on offer in the Lost Property Cupboard – to our business in hand. Do you have any news of the people at the hospital?’
As always, Maxwell had caught Henry Hall on the back foot. The eyes gave nothing away behind the dead lenses of his specs. ‘Ermm, we have had a bulletin, yes.’ If Maxwell hadn’t known Henry Hall so well, he would have suspected an attempt at a John Major impression, but no, that was just his usual voice. ‘There is no change at the moment, and they are trying to find out the poison so that they can administer an antidote, should there be one.’ He looked down at a piece of paper on his desk. ‘Let me see, yes, Mr Diamond is still unconscious, but has stabilised and is not on any form of support.’ Maxwell knew that Mr Diamond always needed support, but now was not the time to be flippant. ‘Mr Ryan is rather more serious and is in ICU being helped with his breathing. Who else …? Yes, a Mrs Bevell is also on ICU but the effects of the poison have been superseded by a pneumothorax, whatever that might be.’
