Maxwell’s Movie

by M. J. Trow

  ‘They have,’ she nodded. ‘A DC Carpenter saw me yesterday morning – shortly after she saw you, I understand.’

  ‘And is that what you told her, Deirdre?’ he asked. ‘That you don’t deal in innuendo.’

  ‘Certainly not!’ It wasn’t difficult for Peter Maxwell to insult the Senior Mistress. He did it almost every day of his working life. ‘I merely told her what I knew’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Not a great deal. There were rumours – are rumours – that Alice was hanging around with a rather undesirable crowd. Down at the Seahorse.’

  ‘The Seahorse?’

  ‘Do you know it?’ Nothing about Peter Maxwell would have surprised Deirdre Lessing. He probably had a collection of little girls’ bicycle saddles at home.

  ‘Of it, yes,’ Maxwell told her, ‘it ranks with Big Ben’s as the place-teachers-wouldn’t-be-seen-dead-in,’ and instantly regretted his choice of words. ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘She shares a flat, with a primary school teacher in Graylands Lane. Number Thirty-one.’

  Maxwell was on his feet, bicycle clips straining for the off.

  ‘Max,’ Deirdre stood up with him, ‘it’s none of my business, of course, but I wouldn’t get involved, if I were you.’

  ‘No, Deirdre.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I know you wouldn’t. Thanks for the coffee.’

  4

  ‘In the store today, shoppers, we have British beef down by fourteen pence a pound and there is a special offer on artichokes.’

  Dorothy Parsons wouldn’t have been surprised. Who knew what an artichoke was, never mind ate them? But Dorothy Parsons wasn’t listening. She’d manned the till at Tesco’s now since her Ronnie was in junior school. She was just part of the furniture. But that wasn’t why she wasn’t listening to the announcements over the tannoy. It was because she was listening out for her Ronnie’s voice. Every time she looked up at her next customer, dumping down the six packs or wrestling with the carrier bags, she thought it might be him – ‘Hello, Mum.’

  But it never was ‘Hello, Mum.’ It was always, ‘Got any carriers? Where’s your boxes? You put them Smarties back, Shane, or I’ll bleeding kill ya!’

  Dorothy Parsons rang up the totals and slid the credit cards through the reader. Life at Tesco’s had to go on. And it was still early days, that nice police lady had told her. Still early days yet.

  The Victorians had come to Leighford, as they had come to all the resorts of the south coast, as their fathers in turn had come to Brighthelmstone in the wake of mad King George and his son, the indescribable Prince Regent. They’d built their villas for their month in the sun and the chance to see the Queen, God bless her, sailing on the steam packet across to the distant Isle of Wight. Now, the Victorians had gone and their great houses were subdivided into flats, with the telltale six bells on the front door.

  Sad, Maxwell thought, as he always did when he saw such vandalism. He parked White Surrey against the wall and pushed the grubby bell of Flat 4, No. 31, Graylands Lane.

  ‘Yes?’ a distorted female voice answered.

  ‘Mrs Hagger?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Peter Maxwell. I’m a colleague of Alice’s.’ There was a pause. Maxwell looked up to the blank windows where Flat 4 might be – he couldn’t tell from that angle.

  ‘She isn’t here,’ the voice said.

  ‘I know,’ Maxwell talked to the cobwebbed slats of the intercom. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  Another pause. ‘You’d better come in.’

  There was a whirr and a click. Maxwell pushed the heavy front door with the pebbled glass window. The hall was anonymous, with a set of pigeon holes to his right and the door of Flat 1 to his left. An arrow told him that Flats 3-6 were upstairs. He felt a little like Martin Balsam as he heard his feet creak on the risers, his hands slide up the smooth banister. He glanced back. No fruit cellar at least. But who knew about Jean Hagger, Alice Goode’s flatmate? Who was to say she wasn’t tall and flat-chested with silver hair and a breadknife? He’d better be on his guard, just in case.

  If anything, Jean Haggar was worse than mad old Anthony Perkins. She was a typical junior school teacher, complete with fag and neurosis. It’s a bit like the big wing and little wing of the RAF in World War Two – Bomber Command and Fighter Command. Their job was the same – to trounce the Hun – but they loathed each other and had no mutual respect. So it was with senior and junior school teachers. Jean Hagger regarded the likes of Peter Maxwell as privileged, over-paid and pompous. He in turn regarded her sort as under-qualified botty-wipers and nappy-changers.

  ‘Mrs Hagger,’ he smiled and doffed his cap, extending a hand.

  She put the fag in her mouth and took his hand in that awkward way that women do, with weak wrists and stiff fingers.

  ‘You’d better have a seat,’ she said, moving a fairly awful piece of knitting.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry to arrive unannounced.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ She flicked her thick hair away from her face, ‘Er… ciggie?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he smiled.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, really. Look, I’ll come straight to the point. I’m looking for Alice.’

  ‘You are?’ Jean Haggar sat down on the chair opposite.

  ‘Maxwell, PI,’ he threw her, casually, as though without trying, his best Tom Selleck.

  ‘Private Investigator?’ she giggled nervously. ‘I thought you said you were Alice’s colleague.’

  ‘I am,’ he laughed. ‘And no, in my case, “PI” means politically incorrect. I’m Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I remember now. You were in the paper the other week, weren’t you?’

  ‘Er … Young Enterprise, yes. Bit of a con, really. I just posed with the team – the kids did the work. I wouldn’t know a business if it fell on me, still less how to study it.’

  ‘Alice has talked about you,’ Jean nodded.

  ‘Doesn’t see me as a knight errant, then?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I got the impression a minute ago that you find it a little odd that I’m looking for Alice.’

  ‘Er … no,’ Jean flustered, ‘it’s just that … well, I thought … the police?’

  ‘Have they been here?’

  She blew smoke down her nose, ‘Have they fuck!’

  ‘Ah.’ Maxwell smiled. It was nice to know our children were in such genteel hands. But then, with five-year-olds wielding knives these days, it was probably the woman’s only salvation. ‘What about Alice’s parents?’

  ‘Her dad’s dead. She hasn’t spoken to her mother since she was a student.’

  ‘Does the mother know? About her disappearance, I mean?’

  Jean Hagger blew smoke to the ceiling. ‘Don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Not from me, she doesn’t. I’ve no idea where the woman lives.’

  ‘So nobody’s been through her things, then?’

  ‘Things?’ Jean frowned.

  ‘Yes,’ explained Maxwell, ‘you know, her room …’

  ‘Look,’ the junior school teacher laughed that uneasy laugh that people do when they feel uncomfortable, ‘I’m not going to let you rummage through my flatmate’s underwear. Are you some sort of pervert?’ For the first time, Jean felt genuine alarm. Peter Maxwell was just the age when weirdnesses start. Cosmopolitan had told her so. He was also a thick-set bugger. The phone, in the entrance lobby, suddenly seemed a long way away.

  ‘I just want to know what’s happened to her,’ Maxwell said. ‘Where she’s gone.’

  ‘Well,’ Jean blinked defiantly, determined that the smoke wouldn’t defeat her, ‘that’s Alice’s business, isn’t it?’

  Maxwell’s smile vanished. ‘I’m not sure it is, Mrs Hagger,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What’s the first thing that goes through your mind when a girl goes missing?’ he asked her. ‘You hear it on the news all the time. On
Crimewatch, on those sad little posters outside police stations. What do you think?’

  ‘That she’s been abducted … or …’

  ‘Or …’ nodded Maxwell. ‘I can’t believe the police haven’t been here.’

  ‘A student went missing too, didn’t he?’ Jean asked.

  ‘Ronnie Parsons in my sixth form, yes.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’ Her face was bitter, hard.

  ‘Am I?’ Maxwell smiled.

  ‘Look,’ her cigarette had gone out. Irritated, she relit it with a plastic lighter. ‘It happens, doesn’t it? It doesn’t always make the Sun or the Daily Sport.’

  ‘“Sexy Siren Seduces Schoolboy”?’ Maxwell said. ‘Yes, I suppose it does. Was she the type, your Alice?’

  Peter Maxwell had never seen a woman change so fast. It wasn’t just her face, the vicious stubbing out of her cigarette, her body was like a toasting fork, rigid, hard, standing over him.

  ‘I think you’d better go.’ She sounded like Mercedes McCambridge dubbing for little Linda Blair in The Exorcist – all dark, all demon.

  ‘Er … I was hoping for a look at her room,’ he ventured.

  ‘Well, hope on, you fucking creep. Alice wouldn’t want an old pervert like you handling her personal things. Go on, get out! Or do I have to call the police?’

  Maxwell stood up, towering over her. ‘No,’ he said softly, ‘no, I don’t think you’ll have to do that.’

  And he didn’t hear Jean Hagger collapse into hysterical sobs as he saddled White Surrey in the street below.

  He pedalled past Leighford High late that night, the tower block square and dark against the pinkish purple of the April sky. Through the trees he saw the low silhouette of the Technology Block and Smokers’ Corner beyond it. Then he put his head down and cycled like a thing possessed along Wellington Street, across the park, following the signs to ‘Town Centre’ and ‘The Sea’.

  The police station at Leighford, by contrast with the school, was lit like a Christmas tree. He pushed the recalcitrant door, where posters reminded him that there was a thief about. Even here, he tutted to himself. Who could you trust nowadays, uh?

  A silver-haired sergeant appeared before he could ring the bell. He had the years, but not the heart of George Dixon and there was a sneer in his voice which dear old Jack Warner wouldn’t have contemplated.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I was wondering if Detective Constable Carpenter is on duty.’ The sergeant looked Maxwell up and down as though he was something caught on the sergeant’s shoe.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Personal,’ chirped Maxwell.

  ‘Then I suggest you come back in the morning.’ The desk man was helpfulness itself.

  ‘It’s about the missing teacher,’ Maxwell said, ‘Alice Goode.’

  He expected the third degree, if not the Spanish Inquisition, but instead the sergeant picked up a phone and muttered a few words into it, ‘Jacquie? Yes. Tom. There’s a … may I have your name, sir?’

  ‘Maxwell.’

  ‘A Mr Maxwell to see you. Says it’s about Alice Goode. Right. Right you are.’ And he put the phone down.

  ‘DC Carpenter won’t be a moment, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ Maxwell took a seat. No sooner had his bum touched the vinyl, however, than a door swung wide and Jacquie Carpenter stood there. She looked tired. Worse, she looked worn out.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she said.

  The Head of Sixth Form clambered to his feet. He’d gone to a good school. ‘I hope I haven’t called at a bad time.’

  ‘I should have gone off duty nearly three hours ago,’ she told him, checking her watch, ‘But apart from that … Thanks, Tom.’ She took Maxwell up the flight of cheerless concrete steps that led to the CID offices on the first floor. He knew this building well. He’d helped the police with their enquiries three years ago when Jenny Hyde had been found murdered. She was one of his sixth form. Leighford High had never been the same since. They walked past VDUs and office doors without glass. Then she swung out a chair at her end of the corridor and sat her visitor down.

  ‘I’d offer you some coffee,’ she said, ‘but the machine’s switched off. What is it you want, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘To know where Alice Goode is,’ he told her.

  She sighed. ‘If it weren’t confidential, I’d bring up on the screen the hundreds of people currently missing in this county alone. Multiply that throughout the forty-three police forces of England and Wales and you’ve got a pretty big problem.’

  ‘So we shouldn’t bother?’

  She looked at the floor, trying to control what she felt inside. ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she said, ‘it’s been a long day. And believe it or not, there are only so many hours in it. Now, at the moment I’m doing all I can to concentrate on Ronnie Parsons. We’re all of us short of resources and manpower and time. We have to prioritize. Ronnie Parsons is my priority.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Maxwell winked.

  She flashed fire at him. ‘Are you saying he shouldn’t be?’

  ‘I’m saying he shouldn’t be alone, no.’

  ‘So you think wherever they are, they’re together?’ He didn’t like the enthusiasm in DC Carpenter’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Precisely!’ Her voice was louder than she’d intended. Why did she let this man get to her? ‘Precisely,’ calmer now. ‘You think that because we’ve got links with other forces, computers, Interpol, Christ knows what, we know any more than you do? Ronnie Parsons, Alice Goode, they’re just two needles in a bloody haystack, Mr Maxwell. And if those needles don’t want to be found, well, frankly, there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

  Maxwell looked at the girl of the mixed metaphors. Her hair, a chestnut gold in the late lamps of the office, was still scraped back into the single thick plait. Her lipstick had all but gone – much of it, Maxwell noticed, was on the rim of a canteen coffee cup on her desk. Why did canteens the world over use that pale green stuff? But it was her eyes that gave away her exhaustion. Her eyes and the confession she’d just made, that the police didn’t have the first bloody clue.

  ‘I can understand that you’re concerned,’ she said, ‘we all are, but please,’ and she tried to save what face she could, to retain some vestige of professionalism, ‘leave it to the experts.’ She was on professional ground here at the nick, aware that the plywood and plaster walls had ears.

  ‘Do you think they’ve eloped?’ he asked her, ignoring the plea to keep his nose out. ‘Gone north to Gretna Green?’

  She shrugged. ‘Bit old-fashioned that, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed, ‘but romantic’

  ‘You think they were having an affair, then?’

  ‘It happens.’ He remembered Jean Hagger’s sudden hysteria that morning. ‘Have you searched her flat?’

  ‘Mr Maxwell, Ms Goode has been missing now for four days. She is an adult, and as far as we are aware, in full possession of her faculties. Despite what you may read in the papers, it is a free country. At the moment, we’re more concerned for Ronnie Parsons. For the time being, Alice Goode will have to fend for herself. You’ve got people to cover her, haven’t you? At the school, I mean?’

  Maxwell turned pale and held his fingers in front of him in the shape of a cross. ‘Supply teachers,’ he said. Alien beings from another planet.’ He was growling in his best William Conrad, ‘They’re here. At a school near you.’

  She ignored him. Levity wasn’t on her list of priorities tonight. ‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘you can cope. Now, unless you have some more information on Ronnie …’

  He stood up, knowing a lost battle when he saw one. ‘No,’ he said, and turned to go, ‘but I’ll have a little bet with you, Woman Policeman Carpenter. I’ll lay you … oh, a fiver … that Ronnie Parsons comes home any day now, bringing his tail behind him. But Alice … well, I’m very much afraid Alice doesn’t live here any more.’ He held up his hand.
‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said.

  Hamilton’s Coaches weren’t open on Sundays. Their drivers, by the end of April, were scattered to the corners of the country, driving little old ladies and gentlemen around southern country lanes, leafy already in the early spring. But Maxwell had struck lucky. He knew where they parked the coaches, on the old brewery site, and not only was there a vehicle parked there, in its distinctive red and white, but a driver had his head buried in the engine.

  ‘Morning.’ Maxwell tilted White Surrey’s front wheel so that the machine stayed upright, with him straddling the crossbar, both feet on the ground.

  ‘Hello.’ The driver peered at him from under the bonnet.

  ‘I’m looking for Dave,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Well, now,’ the driver wiped his grimy hands with a cloth, ‘is that Dave Warwick or Dave Freeman?’

  ‘Ah.’ Maxwell grinned. Jut his luck to have a choice. ‘Fell at the first there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, who are you?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Peter Maxwell.’ The Head of Sixth Form extended a hand. The driver wiped his on his grubby overalls and shook it. ‘I’m from Leighford High.’

  ‘Christ, mate,’ the driver tutted, ‘you have my condolences. Have a look at this.’ He climbed into the coach, Maxwell parking White Surrey and clambering aboard too. The tenth seat back was punctured with the telltale brown-edged holes made by cigarettes. ‘One of your little bastards did that,’ the driver told him.

  ‘What, on the London trip?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘That’s right; MOMI. I’ve been on to your Headmaster about it. Gave me the usual soft soap. He’d leave no stone unturned. Couldn’t believe it was one of his kids. Usual crap.’

  ‘You took the trip then?’ Maxwell couldn’t believe his luck,

  ‘Yeah. Oh, I’m the second Dave, by the way: Dave Freeman.’

  ‘Excellent. I rang your boss on Friday.’

  ‘Yeah. Why?’

  ‘Well, you know we’ve lost one of the staff and a sixth former?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Freeman sat down on the nearest seat, across the aisle from Maxwell who did likewise, ‘that was very peculiar.’