by M. J. Trow
Jacquie hastened to interrupt. ‘Mr Bevell? May I offer my—’
‘No. You may not. If he accepts condolences or apologies, it may impact on any payout in the future. That’s according to Miss Grabbit from the no win, no fee solicitors, Ambulance and Chaser,’ cut in Maxwell. ‘Did you say you wanted to take Mr Bevell down to the station, dear one? Let me get him his coat.’
Jacquie was quite silenced by this sudden desire of Maxwell’s to get the man off his property. She thought quickly. ‘I’ll have to call a car,’ she said. ‘Unless, of course, Mr Bevell is in his own vehicle?’
‘I came by train,’ he said. ‘My guaranteed seat was, of course, not available, but rest assured they will be hearing from my solicitors. A man in my situation …’
‘Yes, yes indeed,’ agreed Maxwell, appearing behind the man with a coat. ‘Very difficult for you. Policeperson Carpenter will call a squad car to take you in comfort to the police station. Don’t worry, they do that thing where they pat your head to make sure you don’t bump it accidentally on the roof. I will just take you out to our specially designed visitors’ waiting room, which has passed all tests, both Health and Safety, it also has a current fire certificate and no less than three fire extinguishers. You’ll be quite safe there,’ and he ushered the man out, beaming broadly, much as Legs Diamond used to do.
Jacquie stood waiting, looking down at her shoes as she rocked gently from heel to toe. She smiled gently to herself and hummed a little tune. When Maxwell came back in she gave him a silent hug of comfort. ‘A difficult gentleman,’ she said, her voice deliberately without inflection.
Maxwell threw himself into the chair behind Diamond’s desk. ‘I can honestly say,’ he said, ‘that I have never met a man who made me want to kill him quite so much. Or so soon. Or so horribly. Slowly. Painfully. Enjoy him at the station, won’t you?’
‘Ooh!’ Jacquie reached for the phone. ‘I must call that car,’ and she quickly did so.
‘I assumed you would take him in yourself,’ Maxwell remarked.
‘What? And get sued for having a loose sweet wrapper in the car? He might get too hot. Or too cold. How can you live like that?’
‘Very comfortably, I would imagine. The reason we couldn’t reach him was that he was having a short break at a hotel. He was rather disappointed that he had to stay in an independent, but the Bevells are banned by all the chains, because they keep suing them. And, before you ask, he hasn’t got a mobile phone because there isn’t a provider who will deal with them. No car insurer will insure them either, and the trains are becoming a bit tricky. But it’s a living.’
‘You mean … that’s how they make their money? By suing people?’
‘Apparently. Although, it often doesn’t come to that, because lots of companies just pay out to save the bother. They had to get a cat, because one of the deals was free cat food for life and they didn’t want to waste it. The man’s a menace.’
‘Do you think that he might have done the poisoning?’
Maxwell looked thoughtful, then regretful. ‘No matter how much I would like to say yes, I don’t think that he’d go that far. And not being local, there would be the logistics. No, he’s a nasty piece of work, but he didn’t do this.’
‘What about the attempt on his wife last night?’
‘Hmm, possibly. But still, I think, no.’ He suddenly banged the desk and sat up straight. ‘Damn it, Jacquie, this sue-everybody culture makes me angry. When I was young, you accepted that the aftermath would inevitably follow the math. It didn’t have to be anyone’s fault.’
She leant over and kissed his empurpling brow. ‘Calm down, darling. You’ll go off pop.’
He subsided, but ungraciously. ‘Well,’ he muttered. He looked like Nolan, with his lip stuck truculently out and she suddenly didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to stay tucked up in the office with him, while nasty things happened and other people picked up the pieces. But she knew it wasn’t possible.
She turned to the door, saying, ‘I’ve got to go, Max. I’ll wait with the horrible sod while the car comes, then I’ll be off. See you tonight, but I’m not sure what time. Well done with the Coco Pops, by the way.’
‘What Coco Pops?’
‘At a guess, the friends of the one peeking out from behind your lapel. He always manages to hide one at the last moment, the little rascal. I interviewed a suspected burglar once with one in my eyebrow. It’s good for breaking the ice.’ She blew him a kiss and was gone.
Maxwell extricated the lurking cereal and balanced it on the end of his finger. ‘I wondered where you had gone,’ he said to it, before popping it into his mouth. He had decided to stick to food brought from home for the moment. He picked up the phone and buzzed for Thingee One.
‘Yes, Mr Maxwell?’
‘Thingee, old thing. Has woman policeman Carpenter taken Mr Bevell off the premises?’
‘Just going, Mr Maxwell.’
‘Excellent. I shall count to ten so they are well and truly gone and then I will be out of the office for a few minutes, while I check on Mr Moss.’
‘Yes, Mr Maxwell. I’ll hold your calls.’
‘Hold my calls? How many are you expecting?’
There was a pause. ‘Well, there have been thirty-seven so far today, Mr Maxwell. You are the Headteacher, after all.’
‘Thirty-seven? I haven’t taken that many, surely?’
‘No, Mr Maxwell. I have dealt with them, mostly. But I just have to, you know, say “I’ll hold your calls”. Otherwise you won’t know that I’m, well, that I’m …’
‘I know. Holding my calls. Thank you, Thingee, you’re a diamond; no offence.’
‘No, Mr Maxwell,’ and he could hear the smile in her voice, ‘none taken.’ And she rang off. She shook her head indulgently. Mad old bugger, but it beat being condescended to by Diamond. He didn’t use her name either, but that was because he couldn’t remember it. Maxwell could remember, he just preferred Thingee and that was all right with her.
Chapter Ten
Jacquie’s Ka and the squad car arrived at Leighford nick almost neck and neck. Mr Bevell clambered out from the back seat, already jotting down a few crimes against humanity to which he had been exposed in the short drive from the school.
She deliberately avoided making eye contact with him and scurried up the steps and used the back stairs to Henry Hall’s office. She knocked gently.
‘Yes?’ Henry Hall in full curmudgeon mode replied from inside.
She stuck her head round the door and said, ‘Mr Bevell, guv. He’s downstairs.’
‘He can wait,’ Hall said. ‘Fill me in on what’s been going on. It seems to me that this poisoner of ours is all over town. At the hospital, and now again at Leighford High.’
‘Well, guv, it might not be in that order.’ Jacquie found a chair.
‘By which you mean …?’
‘The tablet that Mrs Bevell was given was certainly administered by an unknown assailant in the early hours. The sausage roll was certainly eaten this morning at the school, but may have been tampered with at any juncture. It had been in storage at the warehouse for months, possibly years.’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Hall snapped. Oddly for a man of his generation, he had a thing about sell-by dates and food tampering and it was all beginning to get to him. ‘Sausage rolls aren’t stored for years.’
‘These are. They are pasteurised and vacuum-packed to last for virtually ever on a shelf. Once they are opened, they have a normal shelf life, but before that they could be older than the child who buys them.’
‘They sound disgusting.’
‘I would imagine they are. Paul Moss certainly thinks so. He took one bite and was immediately sick. He has had diarrhoea since then as well. I have the pack of rolls with me and I’ll get them to the lab as soon as I can.’
‘Did anyone else eat one?’
‘I gather that the little girl who gave Mr Moss his treat had eaten about half of the contents, guv.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘As ninepence. I know kids have cast-iron stomachs, but I think she would have shown some symptoms, at the very least a bit of a gippy tummy.’
‘How could just one elderly sausage roll be poisoned in a pack, the rest of which being apparently all right?’
‘I don’t know, guv. The lab will tell us, I’m sure.’
Hall looked at his sergeant, less convinced than she was. ‘Do you have any of the one he had?’
‘No, guv, sorry. He managed to make it to the loo to be sick and … er … flushed. Same with the …’ she looked at her boss. ‘Well, you know. So we don’t have anything. Unless there is another dodgy one still in the bag.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Hall, sipping his tea. ‘So,’ he steepled his fingers and flashed his blank lenses at her, ‘what about Mr Bevell?’
‘Oh, guv,’ she said, eyes rolling ceilingward. ‘How long have you got? He’s suing everyone and everything in sight. He is making notes as we speak, no doubt, and is planning a class action against the entire county. I always thought those ads about Deeply Unpleasant Lawyers For You were designed to fill airspace. Mr Bevell was at a hotel overnight, the Excelsior in Reading, so he has no alibi as such. He could have left the place at any time. He travelled the remaining distance by train, so again, nothing he can rely on in court. He is almost the most unpleasant person I have ever met, and yet no, I don’t think he tried to kill his wife.’
She filled him in on the details of the Bevells’ nice little earner. ‘What is it you do, Mr Bevell?’ ‘I’m a professional shit.’ ‘Nice one.’ Hall looked thoughtful.
‘Do you think he might have just intended to make her ill?’ he asked, hopefully.
‘I suppose that’s possible. But it’s a risk and also, without a car or local knowledge, almost impossible, I’d say. The lads are still checking the taxi rank but nothing so far. Physically, he fits quite well with whoever it was stole the glasses yesterday, but again, I don’t think he could have been in the area and then back at the hotel with no car.’
‘Are we sure he doesn’t have a car?’
‘Apparently they can’t get insurance.’
Hall leant back in his chair and blinked rapidly. ‘Jacquie, are you saying that this man can’t be a murderer because he can’t challenge Churchill?’ Hall didn’t try the take-off of the advert’s jowly dog; he left such things to those who could, like Peter Maxwell. ‘If someone has murder in mind, I don’t suppose a bit of driving without insurance would bother him much.’
‘Guv, as a rule, I would agree. But you’ve got to meet him to understand. The man is a total one-off. Obsessive, but not in a good way.’ She looked at him quickly to see if he had recognised the small dig at his pedantic ways. Her luck was in; he had either not noticed it or had decided not to care. She decided to make her escape while the going was good and got to her feet. ‘Anyway, these sausage rolls aren’t getting any fresher. I’ll get them down to the lab boys, shall I?’
‘You don’t have to take them yourself. Put them in the internal mail.’
‘I want them to get there some day soon. I’ll take them. It’s no trouble. It’s only Chichester.’
‘As long as you’re sure. Don’t you want to interview Mr Bevell?’
Her merry laughter as she left his office rang in his ears, and he had to take that as a clue. ‘I’ll call that a no, then, shall I?’ he muttered, picking up the phone. ‘Hello? Desk? Is Mr Bevell in an interview room yet?’
The phone squawked at him indignantly.
‘I see. Well, I’m not sure you can be sued as an individual if you are doing your designated job.’
The squawking got louder.
‘As long as you just want to give him a smacking, Bill, but don’t actually do it, I’m sure it will be fine. I will be down in ten minutes.’
Squawk.
‘All right. I’ll try and make it five.’
Henry Hall sat back in his chair and tried to calm his rebellious stomach. He’d never been bothered this way before, but unbidden pictures rose in his mind of sausage rolls older than his children, lurking in greening piles in a warehouse, ready to swamp the town. Of langoustines, Marie Rose sauce dripping pinkly from their twitching feelers, lurching down Leighford High Street, calling in shrill, deep-sea voices for revenge. He shook himself, took one more sustaining sip of his cooling tea and went down to meet Mr Bevell, possible murderer, serial suer and all-round unpleasant person. Another day, another dollar.
Maxwell crept into his office and peered over the back of the corner unit to see how his Head of Department was doing. Paul Moss lay in a sweaty heap and he wasn’t the sweetest smelling thing Maxwell had had in his office, although he was far from being the worst. But he was asleep and, as Maxwell’s granny had always been fond of pointing out, sleep was a great healer. Although nowhere near as great as penicillin, Maxwell’s rather more prosaic granddad had always rejoined. And that great knitter, William Shakespeare, had said that it was also a dab hand when it came to ravelling sleeves of care. And Anne Hathaway, or whichever bloke Shakespeare was sleeping with at the time, would probably have tutted in disgust; what, after all, did he know?
The Head of Sixth Form-cum-Acting Headmaster crept back into the corridor and closed the door behind him with infinite softness. He was just leaning on the wall finishing a warning note requesting silence when a noise exploded in his head. Mrs B, cleaner and all-round nosey person, was abroad with mop and bucket.
‘Ooh, Mr Maxwell, I hear you been elevatored. ’Bout time, if you ask my opinion. ’Ow’s Mr Moss, poor little bleeder? He don’t deserve that. I very nearly didn’t come in this morning, all that poisoning, you don’t know what’s in the air, do you? It could still be floating about. I’m surprised these kids are here. If I was their mother I’d keep ’em at home, where I knew what they was eating, wouldn’t you, Mr Maxwell?’
‘Ooh, Mrs B, I hardly know where to start. Let’s see, now.’ Maxwell had an uncanny ability to answer Mrs B in the order of her questions, statements or general whiffle. His mind was largely elsewhere today, but he thought he might give it a shot. ‘Yes, I have. It is and I don’t. He’s asleep, hence,’ and he fished out a piece of fluffy Blu-tack from his pocket and affixed his note, ‘this note saying just that. Umm, where was I? Yes. Didn’t you? Indeed you don’t. It could, but I doubt it. Are you? Best thing, and I would, should I find myself the mother of approximately one thousand kids.’ He beamed. Another full house, nothing left out. And the list had been longer and more tortuous than usual. ‘Anyway, Mrs B, if you could refrain from hoovering while Mr Moss is having a rest, I would be grateful. I’ll be downstairs in Mr Diamond’s office if you want me.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘Quiet, now. He’s asleep. Sshh.’
‘I ain’t senile, Mr Maxwell. I ain’t got short-term memory loss. I know he’s asleep,’ she said, her feelings clearly hurt.
Maxwell was contrite. ‘I’m sorry, of course you do. What was I thinking?’ And he went off down the corridor, feeling a little ashamed of himself. Of course the woman knew how to behave. She wasn’t an idiot. Two blameless girls from Year Thirteen came towards him, speaking quietly, heads together, no doubt locked into a deep discussion on Bismarck’s motives in the Congress of Berlin. Their little bepumped feet made nary a sound on the corridor floor. He knew what would happen and turned to prevent it, but he was too late.
‘Oy!’ came the eldritch screech. ‘Be quiet. Mr Moss is trying to sleep.’
Maxwell sensed rather than heard the small desperate whimper from the Head of History, curled up in his office. He hesitated for a moment, then did the Acting-Headmasterly thing. He went down to his Other Office and rang Sylvia Matthews’ number. Delegation; that was the name of the game and it sorted out men from boys.
Jacquie drove to Chichester and hardly noticed how she got there. This case was a bugger and for once she couldn’t seem to see the wood for the trees. It would be foolish to say that Maxwell’s involvem
ent had shaken her; Maxwell was always involved sooner or later, usually sooner. But this case had infiltrated his life in a way that she thought could soon get out of control. When you couldn’t trust your food, what could you trust? Maxwell could have told her all this was commonplace in the Good Old Days. Unscrupulous retailers mixed chalk with flour, painted fish to make them look fresher, sold slabs of crawling meat. For such things were vindaloo and tandoori invented. But that was then and this was now. A doctored prawn cocktail was relatively unthreatening; all you need do is avoid prepared food. But a random sausage roll in a package bought in a school canteen? An innocent if not terribly appetising piece of snack food had turned out to be an instrument of, if not death, then at least grievous bodily harm. What next? Milk? Eggs? Bread? Water, even? She remembered the case of the Tesco blackmailer, who had terrorised a town by tampering with food. But his reign had been short-lived and he had tipped his hand. He wanted money, pure and simple. But this case was different and she couldn’t get a handle on it. There’d been no demands, no proud boasting by some deranged member of the Save the Unborn Gay Whale Lobby. Nothing.
She drove into the car park of the forensic lab tucked discreetly away behind the Pallant and parked. She grabbed her evidence bag of sausage rolls from the back seat. She shouldered the door open and decided to climb the stairs rather than take the lift. This gave her more time to repeat the mantra that everyone who trod that way repeated over and over. ‘Please don’t let it be Angus. Please don’t let it be Angus. Please don’t let it be Angus.’
But, as was almost always the case, it was Angus. Angus was a master of the flexitime and could bend it, not just like Beckham, but like Doctor Who himself. Today, he was his own locum and therefore getting double time as himself because it was bank-holiday lieu time and also time and a half as his own replacement. A nice little earner, as he was wont to remark, acknowledging all the time his undying gratitude to Einstein and his continuum.
