Maxwell's Return

by M. J. Trow

  ‘So… we can ring this chap, can we?’

  ‘You can. I promised Bernard you would deal with it yourself.’

  ‘You can’t go around making that kind of promise, Max. You know that.’ She spoke gruffly, but he knew he had been forgiven. The ride home became less white knuckle and eventually she gave his leg a little pat and all was well.

  Suddenly, the world was taken over by Last Week-itis. Not last week of the world, as such, but last week of the school holidays; which, for some, amounted to the same thing. Nolan’s feet seemed to have grown beyond all reason in the last month and so the search was on for a new pair of shoes that would please Mrs Whatmough’s Footwear Stasi and also Nolan’s almost ludicrously well-developed sense of his own street-cred. Jacquie had calculated that there might be one such pair in the entire town and after an exhausting two days, Maxwell could vouch that this was indeed true. He had ended up in an unseemly scuffle in an unbelievably expensive shoe-shop but finally, the search was over. The uniform had been checked for size and found wanting on almost every level so that was another two days of his life that Maxwell would never get back again. And so, Friday dawned. Having been in LaLaLand had been disorienting for a while, but now, with All Hell Day on the horizon, Maxwell felt he had never been away. Nolan, kitting out thereof, had taken so much of the week he was only just starting to take on board the fact that he might or might not meet Bernard Ryan on Monday as they both strode the corridors of power – actual power in Maxwell’s case, assumed in Ryan’s. He thought it was time to grill the Mem again, just so that he was up to speed. Just as soon as she got back from work, assuming she did during the thinking hours; work had taken her over again as softly, surely and completely as an avalanche of custard flowing down over their life. He gave himself a shake – he was doing too much cooking these days. It was making him use edible metaphors, always a bad sign.

  He wondered whether a call to the Nick might start the ball rolling, but, with his hand on the phone he changed his mind. Better not interrupt her; forewarned would be forearmed and he certainly didn’t need that disadvantage. He hadn’t even asked whether Bernard’s alibi had checked out – oops, been corroborated – and if she had noticed the time they spent these days watching satellite news channels, she had said nothing. But he would renew the campaign over the weekend and by Monday morning would, if everything went to plan, know all she did and a little more. He just managed to prevent himself from rubbing his hands together and emitting an evil chuckle and went into the kitchen. He suddenly fancied some custard.

  Jacquie was not thinking about custard although she wouldn’t have said no to something sweet and sticky just to raise her spirits. A sludge coffee and a limp ginger nut just weren’t quite doing it for her. She had been at her desk finishing off the paperwork on finally removing Bernard Ryan from the suspect list of one when Henry Hall stuck his head around her door.

  ‘Hello?’

  She looked up and welcomed him in with a smile.

  ‘Jacquie, can I ask a big favour?’ he said.

  ‘As always, it depends on the favour,’ she said. ‘I am always suspicious when the words “big” and “favour” crop up together.’

  He walked across and sat opposite her, sprawling in the chair a little more casually than was his wont. ‘I wouldn’t ask you this as a rule, but I am starting to feel a bit as though I am going down for the third time,’ he said. ‘Just keeping everything ticking over is taking me all day. Sometimes I ask myself what I’m still working for. When you were away, I applied for a sabbatical, you know.’

  Jacquie stopped breathing and didn’t look up. She needed Henry to keep it professional. There had been a close call while she had been in Los Angeles when one of the Assistant DAs had found it hard to believe that she and Maxwell were very happy together and it had sharpened her antennae.

  ‘It wasn’t the same without you,’ he went on. He made the noise that in Henry Hall passed for a chuckle. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘This isn’t what it sounds like. It’s just that after all these years, it’s hard to come to terms with other people, people who don’t know how many sugars I take, when the kids’ birthdays are. God, Jacquie, you even know when my wedding anniversary is!’

  She gave a little, one-shouldered deprecatory shrug.

  ‘Anyway, the sabbatical was turned down. Because you were away, ironically enough. But I could do with a break.’

  Jacquie’s Renée Zellweger needed work, but she did it anyway. ‘You had me at hello.’

  Henry Hall took them both by surprise and smiled. ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ They both took the Fats Waller impersonation as read.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘This favour.’

  ‘Josie Blakemore’s family are in the main interview suite.’

  ‘And?’ Just because she intended to help him didn’t mean she should make it easy.

  ‘And it would be a huge favour if you went and spoke to them. Jason isn’t really a people person… no, that’s not fair. He isn’t a grieving parent person. They were interviewed at the time, of course, but with Ryan’s alibi checking out… well, it was time for another chat. And they deserved an update.’

  ‘They don’t know me, though, guv,’ Jacquie pointed out. ‘Might they think they’re being fobbed off?’

  ‘On to a DI? Why should they? I just think a fresh eye on this might be helpful as well as the fact that since then there has been one more murder. You interviewed the family then, so you might be able to make a few more links. Give it a try, anyway. Please?’

  Jacquie put down her pen and stood up. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘It might put a few things to bed from the Molly Adamson case. There was something about the sister that I can’t quite put my finger on.’ She came out from behind the desk and Henry Hall stood up to leave with her. ‘And as for missing me, guv…’

  ‘Yes?’ They were standing very close together. In a TV cop show, he would have kissed her roughly.

  ‘The feeling was entirely mutual. And that, you may be surprised to learn, goes for Max as well.’

  Henry Hall looked at her with his blank glasses and then turned and opened the door. ‘After you,’ he said and ushered her out. There was simply no answer to that.

  After the rather abrasive experience with Molly Adamson’s sister, Jacquie was ready for anything. She had met some very strange people when she was working with the police in California, where money seemed to immediately bring out the worst in people. These parents had sent their daughter to an exclusive private girls’ school, so she was expecting groomed, she was expecting coiffed, she was expecting to be told they were personal friends of the Chief Constable. In almost every way, she was wrong. The father was well turned out in suit and immaculate white shirt. The mother was a mess. Her clothes were expensive but she seemed to have dressed in the dark and there were dribbles of something – was it gravy? – down her cashmere sweater. Her eyes were hollow and haunted. She had been a tiny little thing to start with, but now she looked as though she might blow away like thistledown. The father stood up as soon as Jacquie came in; she waved him back into his seat and settled herself opposite him, the file on her knee. She liked the informality of this interview room, with its option of low sofas as opposed to hard, chipped formica table and chairs screwed down to the floor. At last, Leighford Police had accepted that not everyone with something to tell was a homicidal maniac.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Blakemore,’ she began, ‘I am Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell. I was not on duty when your daughter died but…’

  ‘Murdered.’ The woman had scarcely opened her lips to say the word.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Jacquie smiled slightly at her.

  ‘Murdered.’ This time it was louder and held a tinge of hysteria. ‘My daughter didn’t die. She was murdered. Horribly murdered and then… desecrated.’ Mrs Blakemore brought out a handkerchief and scrubbed at her nose. ‘Tell her,’ she moaned to her husband. ‘Tell her.’

  Brian Blakemo
re took a deep, shuddering breath. Jacquie could see how it was at their house. His wife had lost her daughter. He was not allowed to be upset. He couldn’t cry. But he had lost more than a daughter. He had lost a wife as well. She gave the marriage another six months, tops. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, many times. ‘My wife and I feel that perhaps…’ he looked down at the woman and there was not much love left in the look. ‘My wife and I,’ he began again, ‘feel that the police perhaps haven’t been taking things very seriously. Because of… well, because of how it looked. The clothes. The…’ He ran out of words but his wife found more.

  ‘Because she was dressed up like a tart. A common tart,’ she spat. ‘And because of the sex.’ She shouted the word as though it took every ounce of strength to get it past her lips. ‘My Josie didn’t dress like that. She didn’t have sex with people. She was a child. She… she never dreamed of that kind of thing until she went to that school.’

  ‘St Olave’s?’ Jacquie checked.

  ‘Yes. There. We sent her because we wanted to give her the best. The best education. And look what happened.’

  ‘Do you think that someone at the school had something to do with this?’ Jacquie asked quickly. Mollie Adamson had gone to St Olave’s, albeit briefly.

  ‘No.’ Brian Blakemore cut in quickly. ‘The school has nothing to do with it, I’m sure. It’s just that some of the girls there are quite… sophisticated for their age. Cynthia thinks that it might have been their influence, but you can’t go around saying that kind of thing.’ At his shoulder, his wife snorted. ‘Well, you can’t,’ he said to her. Then, to Jacquie, ‘We’ve had solicitors’ letters. From a couple of the girls’ parents. I’m afraid that Cynthia has been… rather outspoken.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter in here,’ Jacquie was quick to reassure him. ‘Anything you tell me here won’t go any further unless we think that it will help our investigation. And then we won’t say where our intelligence came from.’

  Blakemore looked dubious.

  ‘I can guarantee it, Mr Blakemore,’ she said, crossing her fingers to counteract the white lie.

  Cynthia Blakemore sat forward on the sofa and began to speak, quietly and calmly at first, but her voice kept rising to a hysterical scream and her husband stopped her with a hand on her shoulder until she calmed again. ‘Josie went to St Olave’s for nearly a year before she was murdered.’ That word again, but Jacquie let it go because it seemed to bring a perverse comfort. ‘She had gone to the local school before that, but she was just sinking in the numbers, she wasn’t the kind of girl to push herself forward, she was very shy. Then she started talking of bullying and we knew we had to do something. So we got her into St Olave’s.’

  ‘Did you have friends with daughters there?’ Jacquie asked, getting ready to make notes in a pad inside the file.

  Cynthia Blakemore looked at her husband. ‘I suppose… who was it we used to know?’ In the end, she shook her head. ‘No, not really. We just went by the reputation.’

  Jacquie nodded her head and the woman carried on.

  ‘She flourished from the start. Small classes. Teachers who were not just chasing stupid initiatives, government guidelines, all that nonsense. She got some good teaching from good teachers. After-school clubs, everything we used to take for granted at our own school. We didn’t ask for more. Then at Christmas, she went to some parties; well, you can’t keep your children in a bubble, can you?’

  Jacquie wanted to say you could have a darned good try, but forebore.

  ‘She stayed out too late a couple of times, but we soon clamped down on that and she soon stopped all that. She was our little Josie again.’

  ‘So she had… shall we say, pushed the envelope?’ Jacquie asked.

  ‘Do you have children, DI Carpenter-Maxwell?’ Brian Blakemore asked, waspishly.

  ‘Yes,’ Jacquie said. ‘Yes, one boy.’

  ‘Then consider yourself lucky,’ the man said. ‘The boys make the trouble, they don’t get into it. You mark my words.’

  ‘Well, mine is a little young as yet,’ Jacquie said, placatingly. ‘Are you saying there was a boy on the scene? Only, I don’t seem to remember seeing that in the file.’ She flicked the pages as though the fact would spring to the top.

  ‘No,’ Blakemore said. Then, specifically to his wife, ‘No, Cynthia. There was no boy. Just thoughts of boys. She was fourteen,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘What girl doesn’t think of boys at that age?’

  Jacquie cast her mind back and almost blushed.

  ‘Around about April,’ the mother took up the tale, ‘she started to get quite secretive. There was nothing much to hide, of course. She went to a few classes after school, but we always collected her from those, one or the other of us did, and so we knew she wasn’t going anywhere else and lying about it.’

  Jacquie felt more sorry for the child now than she had before. It sounded as though her life was like a prison with everyone snooping and spying, suspecting her before, during and after the fact.

  ‘She was always quite sporty and she liked dance. She did theatre club on a Saturday. She sang in the church choir on a Sunday and of course there was practice on a Friday night. She had her tutoring sessions as well – well, you know about those.’

  ‘With Mr Ryan?’ Jacquie checked.

  ‘Bernard, yes,’ Brian Blakemore said. ‘We know him socially. Friends of friends, you know the kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jacquie said and left them to carry on. Cynthia Blakemore had narrowed her eyes at her husband. Jacquie had seen it written down before but had never actually seen it done. ‘Is there something, Mrs Blakemore?’

  ‘Bernard Ryan,’ she said. ‘He had no alibi, I understand.’

  ‘I don’t know why you might understand that, Mrs Blakemore,’ Jacquie said, perhaps a little more frostily that she intended. ‘Mr Ryan’s alibi has been thoroughly checked and we know he could not have hurt Josie.’

  The woman looked at Jacquie like a basilisk. ‘And now there’s been another one,’ she said.

  ‘We are looking at a similar death, yes,’ Jacquie said blandly. With a pair of blank glasses, she and Henry Hall could pass for twins in some lights.

  For a moment, the room rang with the silence, then Cynthia Blakemore took up her monologue again. ‘As April went on, she went very quiet. She started to lock the bathroom door as well and she wasn’t so… cuddly. She wouldn’t kiss us goodbye in the morning, or goodnight at bedtime. She was very…’ she seemed to be searching for the word, ‘reserved. That’s it. She got very reserved.’

  ‘Mr Ryan suggested that perhaps she was having problems with someone in the family circle. Or a family friend, perhaps.’ Jacquie put the fact out there to see who took it up and ran with it. Inevitably, it was Josie’s mother.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she shouted. ‘Who would it be? We don’t have a large extended family, there’s only us and her grandmothers left. No uncles. No cousins. Just us. And now…’ her voice raised itself to a howl, ‘and now there isn’t even Josie!’ She scrubbed at her nose again. ‘So, Ryan is talking nonsense. He just said it to be spiteful.’

  Jacquie could see why they had had solicitors’ letters. ‘What about the parents of her friends?’ she asked, carefully. ‘Perhaps she would have referred to them as family friends to Mr Ryan.’

  ‘You’ve got their names in there,’ Brian Blakemore pointed at the file. ‘I assume you’ve checked them out?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jacquie said. ‘Everyone has been carefully checked. I was wondering if perhaps you might have thought of anyone else.’

  ‘No.’ The woman’s mouth snapped shut like a turtle’s. It was definitely not a good look.

  Brian Blakemore edged a little way away from his wife on the sofa. Peter Maxwell would have rubbed his hands with delight had he been there. The body language was superb and Jacquie noted it on her pad. Then, in a voice that sounded unlike his own, he said, ‘There is a name that isn’t in your file.’

  Jacquie
raised an eyebrow and looked expectant but he said no more. ‘May I ask whose?’ he said.

  ‘Ask her,’ he said, with a toss of the head at his wife.

  ‘How do I know whose name is missing?’ she said but there was an odd note to her speech. ‘Everyone is missing, if you look at it like that.’

  ‘True,’ her husband agreed. ‘But more precisely, the name of your fancy man is missing. The one that Josie knew about and told me about just before she died.’

  The room went so still that for a moment Jacquie thought she had gone deaf. Then, it exploded with sound.

  ‘My fancy man?’ the woman screamed. ‘How dare you? My daughter is dead and you accuse me of having a fancy man?’

  Here it comes, Jacquie thought. The straw that was going to break this marriage’s back had just started to float down through the air. In a moment, you would hear the first crack. Brian Blakemore was quiet, almost too quiet. This was a man who had been carrying a load for a while and had chosen here, chosen now to put it down. Jacquie heard her husband’s voice in her head, quoting Kipling as he did from time to time. ‘They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and – the Lord, He lays it on Martha’s Sons!’ She had never felt more like a Martha’s son than she did at that moment.

  ‘Detective Inspector,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that I don’t think my wife hurt our daughter. If she had known that Josie had told me about her bit of rough, she would have brazened it out. Just like she always has done in the past. That’s not what I’m saying.’ He didn’t look at his wife at all, who had turned in her seat so her back was to him and was screwing her handkerchief round and round. ‘No, I mean that this man might well know something about Josie’s death. No, Cynthia is right, let’s keep calling it murder.’ He swallowed hard and went on. ‘Usually Cynthia’s little peccadilloes have been with her friend’s husbands. That’s why we have such a very small social circle. Even the friend who introduced us to Bernard Ryan has gone, driven away by Cynthia’s constant need for validation, if that is what I can call her screwing every man who so much as looks at her.’