by M. J. Trow
‘That lady loses her dog a lot, doesn’t she?’ Nolan remarked. ‘She should buy it a lead.’
‘Or teach it to say its phone number,’ Maxwell added.
‘Dogs can’t talk, Dads.’
Maxwell looked wildly from side to side. ‘They can’t?’ he said, eyes wide. ‘Since when?’
Jacquie leaned back. This could go on until bedtime. Or at least, with any luck it could.
Maxwell appeared much later in the sitting room, damp but otherwise unscathed. Jacquie was sitting with a drink already poured, watching something mindless on TV which as far as the Head of Sixth Form could tell was based around people having all their worldly goods repossessed by shaven headed men.
‘Good programme?’ he asked, blandly.
‘Yes, though I don’t think “good” is quite the word. Appalling, possibly. But strangely addictive. Tiddler asleep?’
‘Unconscious.’
‘You have to hand it to Mrs W, she does know how to exhaust a child.’
‘So… what’s up?’ He picked up his drink and swirled the melting ice cubes around ruminatively.
‘Bad day,’ she said. ‘Sorry I was miserable at tea time. I was still detoxing.’
‘And now?’
‘I can’t…’ she looked up and found that he was looking at her from under his eyebrows, chin on chest. ‘Stop it, now. I can’t.’
‘April Summers is having a termination.’
‘How in Heaven’s name do you know that?’ she said.
‘Her mother told me.’
‘Well, all right. We can talk about that then, if you like. But that’s all.’
Maxwell was confused. He had rather thought that it was April who was causing the silence. ‘What else has happened?’
‘Just the day. You know. Not been back long, that sort of thing.’
‘There’s been another.’ A guess was as good as a wink to Maxwell.
‘Max! Who tells you these things?’
‘In this case, dear heart, you did. I had no idea there had been another. I just thought I would try it out. But now I know, why not tell me about it?’
She sighed and sipped her drink, looking over the rim of her glass at him. ‘This is just getting nowhere,’ she said. ‘All we get is another victim, then another… he’s changing his MO as well, which is worrying.’
‘Is he?’ Maxwell asked. ‘We don’t know what he did to or with Josie Blakemore or Mollie Adamson before he killed them. We don’t even know for sure if the man who abducted April Summers is the same one.’
‘I won’t squabble with the “we”,’ Jacquie said, ‘or we’ll be here all night. It’s true we don’t know, but we will soon. The latest victim isn’t dead, but she is seriously hurt as well as being in shock. But although she can’t speak to us yet, he was interrupted, so we have DNA and a rough description from the couple who scared him off. When we have the DNA from April, we will have a little more to go on.’
‘Who was this girl?’
‘Her name is Kirsty Hilliard,’ Jacquie said. ‘She was out with friends last night and he seems to have cut her out from the pack. One minute she was there, the next minute she was gone. Her friends didn’t do anything about it because, to quote one of them, she had been a grumpy cow all night and they were glad to be shot of her.’
‘Nice. What a lovely evening she must have been having.’
‘Whenever I talk to girls, I am more happy than ever to have a boy,’ she agreed. ‘She had broken up with her boyfriend – her friends called him her partner – and she was out drowning her sorrows.’
‘Oh,’ Maxwell’s relief was palpable. ‘She’s older, then.’
‘You’d think so,’ Jacquie said, swirling her drink. ‘But no. She’s fifteen, just. Apparently, it isn’t very cool to say boyfriend these days.’
‘It isn’t very cool to say cool either, by all accounts, but I get the gist. So, another girl who is sexually active, then.’
‘I gather so.’
‘So, how does he do it? Does he chat them up? Surely it can’t be as crass as simple exposure? “Ever seen one of these”?’
‘I think girls want a little more than a randomly proffered penis, dear,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Things have changed since you were a lad.’
‘Ah, the good old days,’ he said, grinning back at her. That had been what the bike sheds had been made for; as well as parking bikes, of course. Once her sense of humour started to peer through the blackness, he knew she would soon be able to see the wood for the trees.
‘So… he finds the vulnerable ones, the girls who their friends won’t miss, ones they might even be glad to see the back of. Not ugly, though, are they, these girls he chooses?’
‘Not at all. Quite the opposite, I’d say.’
‘So, why do they just go off with him?’
‘We’re not sure they do. We think there is a degree of old-fashioned wooing in his methodology – it’s a standard serial-killer phase, after all. The girls who were murdered were wearing clothes their families didn’t recognise, clothes we have to assume he bought or at least chose. The clothes Josie was wearing were cheap and tacky, market-stall glitz. Mollie Adamson’s were pricier, a better fit for one thing and also better labels. April tells of a bed strewn with rose petals in a hotel. That might not mean much, because how could a kid of her age know a good hotel from a hole in the ground. A couple of supermarket roses and some cheap plonk and it would seem like heaven to her.’
‘Cynic.’ He made a note to self not to buy supermarket flowers next time a bunch was in order.
‘Perhaps. Anyway, this girl, Kirsty, didn’t seem to even warrant that. According to her friends, she was only gone around half an hour – not that they noticed the very moment she disappeared. But around about that. When they were interrupted, they had already had sex, at least twice, according to the doctors, and he had his hands around his neck.’
‘Not wooing, even by good old days standards,’ Maxwell said.
‘No. But also, quite good going, bearing in mind they were about ten minutes walk away from where her friends first missed her. She shows no signs of force – except around her neck, of course – no marks where he dragged her along, pushed her down, that kind of thing. There was no rape; she was as keen as he was.’
‘So… apart from her age and the strangling, he did nothing wrong.’
She sat up sharply. ‘I beg your pardon!’
‘That’s right though, isn’t it? As far as we know he is a perfectly pleasant bloke to look at, who asks girls to go with him into the bushes, to a hotel, to a shop or market and they go along. What happens then seems to differ, but he doesn’t have to use force. He uses force by choice. But what makes him do it? Two girls died, one had a taste of what he might do, but he didn’t take it further and one girl almost died within half an hour of meeting him. There must be a trigger. Something that makes him snap.’
‘I see what you mean… I think. You mean, he could be out there doing this on a daily basis, but only gets caught out sometimes, because something goes wrong.’ Jacquie sometimes thought that Maxwell had a time twin working at Quantico.
‘Precisely. He could be a perfectly respectable bloke, who goes out looking for girls. He could be a speed-dater, an online dater, he could have a wife and 2.4 kids for all we know. But one thing we do know, and I’m sure you have all worked it out for yourselves down at the Nick, is that he chooses the vulnerable, the lost and the needy and then makes them think he can fulfil their dreams. He obviously has a good eye for character and a lot of charm.’
She looked at him through slitted eyes. ‘Not unlike your good self,’ she said.
He smiled at her. It was good of her to look through the eyes of love. ‘Perhaps in my day, Mrs Rose-Tinted Spectacles, but there was only a very narrow window of opportunity.’
‘Which was?’ She was always interested in filling in the gaps in his life, much of which had happened before she was born.
‘Which was
that heady year when I had learned a bit about life in general and kids in particular, and hadn’t started losing my looks.’ He lifted his chin and gave her a flash of his best side.
She dutifully mimed a paparazzi moment and he turned back to her, serious again.
‘I don’t want to teach my granny to suck eggs,’ he went on, ‘but that is the kind of person you need to be looking for. Someone who has reached his peak of perfection and has let it get out of hand.’
‘We’re all over the place at the moment. We’ve had a builder, a teacher and a solicitor in the frame so far, albeit briefly. The teacher and the solicitor have cast-iron alibis, the builder is far too old, though creepy and with a definite link to a victim. I personally would like to give him and his light o’ love a kicking, but that’s just me.’ DI Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell had no compunction in resorting to Old Time Copper Mode when the occasion demanded it. It made her husband proud.
‘Solicitor?’
‘Caroline Morton’s husband, aka her soon-to-be-ex husband. His alibi is the best we’ve come across for ages; one for the memoir, I think. He was at Leighford Nick, called in as next on-call, when his wife clocked a policeman in pursuance of his duty, when she had come in to shop said husband for the murder of her sister.’
‘Don’t you just love it when that happens?’ Maxwell asked, rhetorically.
‘Indeed. I’ve never met Jack Morton myself but by all accounts he seems a very nice bloke, shackled to a jealous harpy. But he isn’t a murderer. And, bless his heart, no Adonis either. Not someone to charm the birds from the trees, at any rate.’
‘Our man may be more than a pretty face.’
‘True. But April specifically said he was handsome.’ Even as she said it, Jacquie knew that this was a huge generalisation. If everyone found the same people attractive, the human race would grind to a halt. ‘And not just handsome, but quite stacked.’
‘Stacked?’ Maxwell raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘Fit, then. But on the other hand, fit also means handsome… I should check that. She definitely told me he was fit. I assumed, and I shouldn’t have.’ She reached for her phone and tapped in a memo, muttering.
Maxwell waited until the phone was stowed away again, then said, ‘Last night’s victim. Where did it happen?’
‘Just off the Esplanade. In that park thing, you know where I mean.’
Maxwell did. It had been the favourite trysting place for LeighfordHighenas, Old and Current, since time immoral and this rang a warning bell. ‘It seems a bit rash, to take her there, doesn’t it? Also, from what you’ve told me, he doesn’t usually hunt in Leighford. He lives here, after all.’
‘Hunt?’
‘Well, it is a hunt for him, isn’t it? Hunting, capturing. Power. I watch the telly. I know how these serial killers work.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Just call me Patrick Jane.’
Jacquie looked at him fondly. His eyes were either side of his nose and that was where his similarity to Simon Baker ended. ‘No, darling,’ she said gently. ‘You’re mental, please try and remember. He’s the Mentalist.’ With that cleared up to her satisfaction, she did give it serious thought, though. This was a hunt, a stalking, a capture. The elements were there, but the finesse had gone. Was he, as Maxwell thought, in a window of physical perfection that he could see nearing its end? While she was still thinking, the phone rang. Maxwell picked it up.
‘Hello?’
Jacquie looked at him quizzically, but he held up a hand, listening.
‘Are you sure it’s me she wants?’
There was a murmur at the other end of the line.
‘I’ll go over there now… it’s a bit late for rousting Mrs Troubridge out to babysit; I’ll get a cab.’
He started to unfold himself from his chair, feeling around for his discarded shoes.
‘Sylv, could you? That would be marvellous. Twenty minutes? I’ll walk up to the corner. See you then.’
Jacquie kicked his left shoe across to him from and said, ‘Sylv?’
‘Thingee has asked to speak to me.’
‘Sarah or Charlotte?’ Jacquie knew the code. ‘Is she all right?’
‘Charlotte. She’s in Leighford General. She went in for a termination but… well, there seems to have been a problem. They’re keeping her in overnight. She wants to talk to me.’
‘Why?’ Jacquie knew that her husband’s shoulder was a very sought-after item, but she also knew that he was hardly a by-word where obstetricians gathered. ‘Why does she want to talk to you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Sylv was a bit cagey. I’ll give you a ring from the hospital.’
‘Do you have your mobile?’
He patted his pockets, looking around vaguely.
‘Do you even know where your mobile is?’
He set his mouth in a rueful line and shook his head.
‘Happily, I do. It’s plugged in in the kitchen. Here,’ she unwound herself from the chair, ‘Let me get it for you.’
He slipped on his shoes and ran a cursory hand through his hair. It was still quite warm out, but he got his jacket from the peg on the landing; the jacket was like a badge and he assumed it was in his role as Universal Dad that Thingee wanted to see him. Jacquie came out of the kitchen with his phone and put it in his inside pocket, patting it for good measure.
‘Off you go, then, Superman,’ she said, kissing him on the end of his nose. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Nightie-night, Wonder Woman,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know if I’ll be late.’
She hung over the banisters and waved as he went out through the front door. Mighty Mouse. Superman. Green Lantern. Mad Max. Whatever you called him, he was there to save the day. It was only as the door closed behind him that she realised that he had told her nothing about his unusual day – hopefully, it could wait.
Sylvia Matthews arrived as Maxwell got to the main road and he squeezed himself in to her tiny car.
‘Thanks for coming, Max,’ she said. ‘I tried to persuade Charlotte to wait until tomorrow, but the ward staff can’t do a thing with her. They’ve had to put her in a side room. She’s inconsolable.’
‘What’s happened, for heaven’s sake?’
‘They’re not sure. She was due for the procedure today but there was some kind of crisis in the operating theatre and they had to bump half the list. In normal circumstances they would send everyone home, of course, and carry on as listed tomorrow, bring them back another time. But of course, as you can imagine, time is of the essence here, so they kept them in, pending an early start tomorrow. Then, after visiting hours, they found her… well, you’ll see for yourself.’
‘Who visited?’
‘No one knows. The staff don’t make any kind of list, you know. Those days are passed, if they were ever here. All they know is that when everyone had gone, a girl from the next bed rang her bell and they found Charlotte close to collapse.’
‘Changed her mind?’
‘That’s what they thought at first. Idiot!’ Sylvia suddenly yelled at a cyclist and by the time Maxwell’s heart had left his mouth, she was speaking again. ‘They asked her that. She just shook her head. Then, she asked for you. That’s it.’
‘We’ve hardly spoken since I left for America,’ Maxwell said. ‘I just wished her well, that’s all.’
‘Well, that may be it,’ Sylvia said, swinging into the car park at Leighford General. ‘Perhaps she’s tired of the rest of us and our platitudes.’
‘My platitudes are the same as anyone else’s,’ Maxwell pointed out. ‘Look…’ he waved a hand vaguely to the left. ‘There’s one!’
‘Platitude?’
‘Parking space!’
Sylvia turned into the space, cutting up an old lady in a car too big for her. ‘No way she’d have got in there,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Well spotted, Max. For a non-driver, you are a great parker.’
‘I am a driver,’ he said. ‘I just don’t actually do it. I have a license and scarily en
ough could quite legally drive Jacquie’s car any time. I’m on the insurance. No one ever asks when you drove last, just when you passed your test.’
Sylvia looked twitchy. ‘You’re not planning to do it, though, Max, are you?’ she asked.
‘God, no. I’m just saying.’
The school nurse blew her cheeks out with relief. ‘That’s all right, then. Okay, it’s round here, to the left.’ She ferreted for the change for the parking machine, muttering as she always did about NHS scams and dived into a rabbit warren of buildings, leading him round corners and across forgotten quads until they reached an automatic door which opened jerkily to let them in. After washing their hands at the next set of doors, they made their way down a dimly lit corridor into the ward and were about to turn into a curtained side-room when a bantam dressed as a nurse barred their way.
‘What, may I ask,’ she said, in her best and most piercing hiss, ‘do you think you’re doing?’
Sylvia stepped forward. ‘This is Mr Maxwell. Charlotte Wilson is asking for him.’
The nurse looked him up and down and found nothing good there. Dirty old bugger, messing around with a girl less than half his age. It was a wonder his wife put up with it. ‘She may have been,’ she said. ‘But she isn’t now.’
Maxwell bit back a retort. It wasn’t blowing a gale, nor yet snowing or hailing, but even so, he had been dragged out of his comfy home and from the company of his comfy wife on what seemed to be a wild goose chase. ‘Madam,’ he said and remembered just in time he wasn’t wearing a hat so didn’t make a fool of himself with an aborted doff. ‘I was asked to come along here this evening and have done so at considerable inconvenience. If Miss Wilson is no longer asking for me, that’s irrelevant, surely. If I pop in and see her for a minute, she won’t be asking for me again when it is even more of a nuisance to everyone.’
The bantam ruffled her metaphorical feathers and looked smug. ‘She may still be asking for you, for all I know. But she isn’t doing it here. She’s discharged herself. And we couldn’t stop her; she hasn’t had a procedure of any kind, so as far as it goes she is a member of the public. Pregnancy isn’t an illness.’
