by M. J. Trow
‘Had you planned not to?’ she said, archly.
Sylvia watched the match with a wry smile. ‘I think that makes it deuce,’ she said. ‘Do you need any help with Nole?’
‘Results day might be a help,’ Maxwell said, ‘but aren’t you normally there to wipe noses?’
‘Noses, tears, the whole lot, yes,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk – I think Guy will be free, or perhaps Mrs Troubridge – how is she, by the way? I kept meaning to look in, but Hector seemed to be on it.’
‘She’s blooming. A little disappointed to see the Count back, I fear, but of course over the moon to get the Boy back. She was asleep in here this morning; I nearly had a heart attack.’
‘I forgot to ask about Metternich – how did he get on in LA?’
‘Racoons were a challenge at first, but he soon got the hang of them. Skunks, he came to an arrangement with. I’m not sure whether there are still mountain lions around, but if so, there are probably fewer now. He had a whale of a time. Has an American accent, of course, but we’re hoping it will pass.’
Sylvia looked confused. ‘Are we still talking about Metternich? Or has Nolan got an American accent.’
‘Of course,’ Maxwell looked quizzical. ‘They both have.’
Jacquie began to relax. The conversation had taken a rather more domestic turn and Bernard Ryan’s lack of alibi, which she should never have allowed to slip out anyway, seemed to have been forgotten.
‘Have you got loads of pictures?’ Sylvia asked.
‘I’m making an online album,’ Jacquie said. ‘We managed to get out and about quite a bit.’
‘So, what’s this about Bernard having no alibi, then?’ Maxwell asked, with his sunniest smile.
Later that evening, with Nolan away on a sleepover and Metternich sprawled over all three cushions of the sofa, his front legs stretched over his head and his back legs turned to the side in a Yoga position of his own devising, Maxwell returned to the question he had been dropping into the conversation all afternoon and through a takeaway dinner. Jacquie turned to face him, chin cupped in her hand, elbow resting on the arm of the chair. Her hair was a cloud of chestnut and the low light from the table lamp on the table between them made her eyes glow. She looked across at Maxwell, one of the two loves of her life – Metternich stirred in his sleep and half opened a steely eye – make that three loves of her life and she knew that she would give in soon. But the rules of the game stated quite clearly in para 4 subsection iiia that there had to be at least one more attempt. Her months with the LA DA (inevitably christened by Maxwell La-di-da) had not been wasted. She could now slow any investigation for weeks, by invoking laws and precedents without number; and that was before she reached for her motion to suppress. She blinked slowly twice and spoke.
‘I’m sorry,’ she drawled, just a hint of California in her voice. ‘What was that?’
He narrowed his eyes at her and she was yet again reminded of his similarity to Metternich. ‘I said, so Bernard Ryan has no alibi, then?’
‘Does he not?’ She feigned innocence. ‘I did not know that!’
‘Jacquie!’ he shouted, making Metternich jump in his sleep. ‘Sorry, Count,’ he said, ‘but really. A man has to jump through hoops here just to get some basic information. You said that he had no alibi. I said …’
She flapped a hand at him and fell back against the cushions of her chair. ‘Yes, yes, all right. I give in. Bernard Ryan has no alibi.’ She picked up a magazine from her lap and started to read, skimming the pages with unseeing eyes until she heard him take in another breath, prior to asking again. With a smile, she turned back to him. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t know. It’s not as if he is really a suspect. If Diamond has any sense, he will have him reinstated by the time term starts.’
‘But… he told Sylvia he was out on a long-standing arrangement or some such thing. That’s an alibi, isn’t it?’
‘It’s an excuse,’ she corrected him. ‘A ruse. A story. A reason. Any number of things. But unless we can get corroborating evidence from anyone who saw him at this so-called long standing arrangement, there is one thing it isn’t.’ She watched him, waiting for a response. ‘What isn’t it?’ she prompted.
‘An alibi.’ He was frowning. ‘But…’
‘No buts. He hasn’t got an alibi. I haven’t seen the case notes, but I imagine that he probably just wanted to get away from a potentially dodgy situation with a fourteen year old girl. The worst he is is a heartless bastard, but surely you knew that already.’
Maxwell took a deep breath and then let it out again without speaking. Then he tried again. ‘He is a heartless bastard, yes, of course he is,’ he agreed. ‘But only with staff. He would sell us all down the river without a moment’s thought. He lives by rule books and lists and government guidelines. He has never met a health and safety initiative he doesn’t like. I would imagine that he sleeps with Mr Gove’s latest edict under his pillow every night. But… but…’
‘But?’
‘But this was a child. She needed him and he went out and left her. That doesn’t sound like the Bernard Ryan I know. He should have called someone, social services, God forbid or at least Legs. He knew he had done wrong, or why would he have gone to Sylv the next morning? I just don’t think he would have abandoned a child. That’s all.’
Jacquie gave him a long, hard look. She had lived with this man for years now and loved him for longer than that. She knew that he would never leave a child in distress alone and she knew that most people wouldn’t. There were teachers who were in it for the money, but heaven knew why; there were surely easier ways of earning a crust. There were teachers who didn’t have the brains God gave sheep when it came to doing the right thing. Maxwell’s heart was on his sleeve and she loved him for it. Bernard Ryan’s heart was made of stone, but his head was not and so she reluctantly had to agree with her husband. If Bernard Ryan couldn’t come up with an alibi, there was something wrong somewhere. She raised an eyebrow at him and reached for the phone. After a moment’s pause, he nodded and she dialled.
After only one or two rings, Henry Hall was on the line.
‘Jacquie. You really don’t need to come in until Monday, you know,’ he said, raising a finger at the sergeant hovering in the doorway.
He listened in his usual silent way, absorbing every word, not interrupting with even a grunt.
‘Well, Maxwell should know, I agree, but…’
The phone muttered in his ear.
‘But doesn’t this make it worse for Ryan? If he is behaving out of character?’
The sergeant shuffled his feet and Hall raised a finger again.
‘I do see what you mean. I think. But he isn’t really a suspect, Jacquie. I can see that a concrete alibi might make it easier for him to get back to work, but as far as we are concerned, it makes no difference. I’ll make a note, though.’ He coughed discreetly. ‘And… we will be seeing you, Monday?’
The phone muttered again.
‘Good. We’ve just had someone call in – a body on the beach. Nothing much, I don’t think. They’re not even sure it’s a body. It will turn out to be a tangle of clothes or something, caught up in that landslip at Willow Bay.’
This time the phone asked a question.
‘I think you were away. There was a storm and some trees came down the cliff. No one hurt but there was a bit of a kerfuffle for a while. You know what it’s like. Missing people, are they buried under the rubble? The usual.’
He glanced up as a civilian receptionist appeared in his doorway and spoke in a low voice to the sergeant, whose head came up in surprise. He gestured to Hall, who spoke rather more urgently.
‘It looks like something has come up, Jacquie,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you on Monday. ’Bye,’ and he rang off, keeping the phone in his hand, as if at the ready. He looked at the sergeant, who was looking portentous. ‘What?’
‘It’s not just clothes, guv,’ the man said. ‘It’s a body. It’s another one.’
Maxwe
ll raised an eyebrow at his wife. ‘That sounded a little like the bum’s rush,’ he remarked, his voice as inflection-free as he could make it.
‘No,’ she said, putting the receiver down slowly. ‘It… well, they seem to have found a body on the beach. No biggie.’
‘No biggie?’ Maxwell queried. ‘I know we are by the sea here, heart, but even so, bodies on the beach… surely not an everyday occurrence. You’re not in California now, you know.’
‘There were less than three hundred homicides…’ she caught the eyebrow again as it whizzed upwards, ‘murders in LA last year, as a matter of fact,’ she said. ‘They have the lowest h-murder rate for a city of that size in the world.’
Maxwell didn’t move. He merely sat looking the picture of rapt attention. Then he slumped. ‘You didn’t say it,’ he whined.
‘What?’
‘So there.’
‘So there, what?’
‘No, I expected you to say “so there”. They have the latest h-murder – I’m assuming that is just murder you mean there, rather than the much rarer h-murder,’ and he ducked as the magazine whooshed past his head, ‘murder rate for a city of that size in the world, so there! But you didn’t.’
‘Well, they have.’
‘Dear heart, of course they have. And I bet when the figures come out for this year, the rate will have gone down further still. But if my own ridiculously full brain can come up with a figure, then I would reply that the whole of England and Wales had less than twice that. So, that’s why I must repeat that a body on the beach is certainly not ‘no biggie’.’
She shrugged a shoulder and reached for the magazine. It wasn’t there, having slid harmlessly down behind Maxwell’s chair when she flung it.
‘So, would you like me to fish your magazine out, or would you like your jacket?’
She looked at him and then gave a sigh. ‘Jacket,’ she murmured, then reached up her arms to him. ‘I do love you, Peter Maxwell.’
‘And I love you, Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell. Just as well, eh?’ Planting a kiss on her nose, he went upstairs to fish her jacket out of the wardrobe. He knew she would never make it until Monday. But never mind; this would give him the moral high ground and would grease the wheels when it came to wheedling details out of her. Even after all this time, she still wasn’t up to all his little games and long may that situation flourish. He wiped the smile off his face and went back down to where she stood in the lounge, already twirling the car keys.
‘Don’t wait up,’ she said as she made for the stairs.
‘I’m not even sure what the time is,’ he said. ‘I may go up and do some modelling. Or I might also suddenly fall over fast asleep. Expect me where you find me.’ He blew a kiss and watched her safely down the stairs. There wasn’t much he could do to keep her safe at work but he did what he could. The door slammed and he waited to hear the car engine start before going back into the sitting room. The phone was ringing.
‘War Office.’
‘And don’t think that just fetching my jacket and letting me go in to work gives you the moral high ground,’ his wife’s voice sounded softly in his ear. ‘I’m wise to your tricks, Peter Maxwell.’
‘Ha. Ha.’ He put the phone down and spoke to the room in general. ‘And yet you still fall for them, dear heart,’ he said. ‘Luckily for me.’ And he twirled on his toes and made for the attic and TSM Linkon.
DI Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell let the car coast to a halt at the kerb where only twenty four hours before the hire-car had dropped them after their eleven hour journey. It seemed almost unbelievable that Los Angeles was only a few days ago; already, it felt like another life time. And here she was, back in harness and a dead girl on the beach. No, correction; another dead girl on the beach, albeit under different circumstances. The new sergeant, Jason Briggs, had been already suited and booted to go off and arrest Bernard Ryan but in the end he had been countermanded by Henry Hall. Hall didn’t believe in coincidence, gut reactions, coppers’ noses or anything else of that nature. Nor did he believe that Yakult was good for him, but he dutifully drank the horrible stuff every day, just to please his wife. So, had Briggs had any decent reason for pulling Ryan in, he would have let him do it, in that same spirit. But apart from the no smoke without fire reason – another aphorism for which Henry Hall had no time – Briggs had nothing, so Bernard Ryan could spend another night in blissful ignorance of the axe that was undoubtedly about to fall.
Jacquie suppressed a little smile as she eased the car door quietly to. It had been very gratifying, the genuinely happy faces she had met when she walked in to Leighford Nick. No one was happier than Henry Hall but she had to judge by the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth and the double flicker on the flat lenses of his glasses as he dipped his head before she knew just how much he had missed her. A lot.
‘Jacquie,’ he had said as he pulled out a chair. ‘I’m not sure you know Jason.’
‘Ermm, no.’ She could have added, ‘only by repute.’ The emails from her colleagues had not painted a very attractive picture. Crawler. Brown-noser. Smartarse. But time would tell. ‘Hello, Jason,’ she said as he extended a hand.
‘Ma’am.’ He had touched her fingers briefly, but that was that. She couldn’t blame him. He would have been filling her shoes while she was away and it was never easy to step back down again. And it still felt odd to be called ‘Ma’am’.
‘Thanks for coming in, Jacquie,’ Hall had said, and clearly meant it. ‘We’re down to the wire as far as personnel go. So many out sick you would hardly credit. God knows what it’ll be like when the flu season kicks in. Still, you’re back now so let’s get on.’
Jacquie knew that that would be the last she would ever hear about her absence. And now, here she was, creeping up her own stairs, checking instinctively for innards. Metternich had settled back into the routine of Columbine without a hitch. Presumably, cats didn’t have any truck with jetlag. When you spend twenty out of every twenty four hours asleep and the other four disembowelling things, jetlag is for other people. The great beast met her at the top of the stairs with a querulous miaow.
‘All right, all right,’ she whispered. ‘Did you have your sachet last night?’
The animal looked at her wistfully. It had been rumoured in their neighbourhood in LA that Antonio Banderas had been seen in the yard taking lessons in cute looks from Metternich. The miaow this time was just a mime, as he clearly had not the strength to make a noise.
Jacquie looked at him and pursed her lips then went into the kitchen. ‘I think you’re lying,’ she whispered severely. ‘How do I know? Because your tail flicked to the left and down – always a sign whatever they say on Lie To Me. But just this once you can have the benefit of the doubt.’ She pulled out a sachet of his favourite food and emptied it into his bowl. He nudged her with his substantial backend and dived right in. She kicked off her shoes and trod softly on the bottom stair, listening, then remembered that Nole was at Plocker’s for the night. She could just pick up the soft breathing of her husband from their bedroom, the soft breathing that other people might call snoring, but she was too well brought up. She undressed in Nolan’s room and then slid open the door to her own bedroom and slipped in alongside Maxwell, who murmured in his sleep and budged over to give her more room.
‘A’ri’?’ he asked.
‘Yes, fine,’ she muttered, turning her back so he could fit around her like a spoon.
‘Henry a’ri’?’
‘Mm-hm.’ She was dropping off already. Heaven knew what time it was, on this continent or any other. She waited for another few seconds for the other question, but it never came. She closed her eyes and offered up a silent prayer to the god of jetlag. She would at least be spared the third degree until the morning.
‘So,’ the curtains flew back with a rattle and DI Carpenter-Maxwell screwed up her eyes against the August sunshine. ‘A body on the beach, eh? Have they arrested Bernard yet?’ She looked up to see Maxwell loomin
g over her with a tray and a smell of coffee and toast filled the room. She struggled upright.
‘I thought we agreed…’
‘Of course we did. But you know how it is,’ he smiled at her and pushed a small errant lock of hair behind her ear. ‘I can’t help asking.’ He paused and looked at her. Antonio Banderas had not been in the yard in vain. ‘You can’t help telling me what I need to know.’ His Svengali impression was among the best in the world.
She took a slurp of coffee. ‘Not much to tell,’ she said. She looked at the tray. ‘No strawberry jam?’
‘Soz, heart,’ Maxwell said. ‘Just grape jelly. It will be a while before we completely exorcise the American within. There’s peanut butter, look.’
‘Okay.’ Jacquie was famished, having missed many meals, she wasn’t sure which ones.
‘So, not much to tell,’ he prompted.
‘Not as yet. There was a body on the beach, caught up in the driftwood and whathaveyou at Willow Bay. There had been a significant cliff fall back in the spring but that was by the way. The body had been there around two or three weeks, the forensics guys thought. Hard to tell because the tide only reaches there when it is really high and they have got to work it out. There are no charts for that kind of situation.’ She took a huge bite of toast, jelly and peanut butter and sighed. ‘I do miss the food, you know, already.’
Maxwell smiled. Had their forebears fought the War of Independence in vain? ‘The fridge is full of it, as are all the cupboards. Sylv’s back bacon is fighting a rearguard action, I’m afraid.’
‘We can cook fusion style,’ Jacquie said.
‘So, this body…’
‘You’re relentless, you know that?’
Maxwell decided to consider it a compliment.
‘They have an ID already, because this girl had been posted as missing three weeks ago in Brighton. The time of death seems to fit with her having died straight away, but we’ll have confirmation soon, I hope.’
Maxwell sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at her. ‘Are you well?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
