by M. J. Trow
‘So was Thomas Wolsey, but it didn’t stop him having at least seven children.’
‘Wasn’t that rather a long time ago?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘To me,’ Maxwell chuckled, ‘it was yesterday. No, I’m serious.’
‘Well, no, of course not.’ So was she. ‘I’d have noticed.’
He flicked his fingers and ordered more coffee.
‘You know something, Peter Maxwell, you are an imperious bastard.’ She shook her head, smiling.
‘I know,’ he beamed. ‘You wouldn’t have me any other way.’
‘I’d like to,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Have you. Any way you like.’
‘Rachel …’ He was blinking at her, whether with the sun or the suddenness of her suggestion, he wasn’t sure.
‘Well,’ she said, her gaze falling, ‘perhaps not a good idea
‘No.’ He reached out for her hand. ‘No, it’s … it’s the best idea I’ve heard for a long time. It’s just that … well, I am a little rusty.’
She smirked at him, like a schoolgirl again. ‘A little WD40 should take care of that,’ she said. Then she rapped his knuckles with her spoon. ‘But that comes later, you disgusting old man. You’ve already lured me away from this morning’s session. I really must be at this afternoon’s. I’m working with Dr Moreton.’
‘Who?’
‘Head of Science at the John Bunyan.’
‘Oh, the Luton lot.’
‘Quite. He’s rather dishy, don’t you think?’
Maxwell could barely picture him. ‘Not my type,’ he shrugged. ‘Am I paying?’
‘You certainly are, Sir Galahad,’ and she watched him rummage for his change. ‘By the way, what on earth prompted you to ask if Jordan Gracewell had made a pass at me?’
‘Hmm?’ He looked up at her from examining the fluff from his pockets. ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just that he thinks you killed Liz Striker.’
By the time Maxwell and Rachel drove back into the sweeping drive at the Carnforth Centre, the paparazzi were there in force. Whenever he saw a clutch of them together, they reminded him inexorably of the rats in Browning – grave old plodders, gay young friskers – following a story for their lives. They swarmed around Rachel King’s car as though she were the latest arrival at a Car Boot.
‘Are you staying here?’ one of them asked her.
‘Did you know the dead woman?’
‘Why haven’t the police let you all go?’
Rachel had never been subjected to this before, but Maxwell had. He leaned across as far as his seat belt would allow and smiled his gappy engaging grin. ‘You’re quite right to be excited about GNVQ,’ he said. ‘We at the chalk face think it’s a pretty exciting time too. Can’t wait to put it into practice, via our team critique.’
‘And you are …?’ One of the spottier ones pointed a biro at him.
‘Incredibly pissed off by the appalling standards of journalism in this great country of ours.’
‘Oh, ha,’ the spotty youth sneered. ‘I’d like your name.’
‘I’m sure you would,’ Maxwell beamed, ‘and my IQ and word-power, I shouldn’t wonder, not to mention my taste in bow-ties.’ He saw the lad’s bemused face and took pity on him. ‘All right,’ he said, straight-faced, ‘John Patten, rather tenuously Secretary of State for Education. Drive on, chauffeuse.’
And Rachel put her foot down.
‘Bastards!’ John McBride shook his head, staring out from the lowered blinds of the Trevelyan Suite. ‘When the guv’nor gets back, there’ll be hell to pay. If I find the shit who leaked all this to the press …’
‘You can’t keep a murder under wraps, sir,’ WPC O’Halloran told him. She thought it was something the Inspector ought to have known already.
He looked at her. She was right, of course. Repulsively Christian. Done a lot of work with deprived kids on council estates, that sort of thing, but right, nevertheless. ‘Who’s waiting?’ he asked.
‘Michael George Wynn, St Bede’s School’
‘Right. Bring us two teas, Mavis, in …’ he checked his watch, ‘five minutes.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Michael George Wynn sat in the incident room annexe, the sunlight slanting in through the slats to gild his pepper and salt beard. He’d been chatting about this and that with DS Dunn. They’d found common ground in the same golf handicap, so that whiled away the time that McBride kept them both waiting. The Inspector always did this. Any one of the Carnforth guests was a suspect. And waiting rattled them. Even the innocent ones.
‘Right.’ McBride entered with a brusqueness that even made Dunn jump. ‘Mr Wynn, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’ He nodded at the Sergeant, who flicked on the machinery. ‘Interview commenced eleven thirty-eight, Mr Michael Wynn, in the presence of DS Dunn and myself, DI McBride.’
DI McBride sat down opposite the Deputy Principal of St Bede’s. ‘You knew the dead woman?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I did,’ Wynn nodded.
‘For how long?’
‘Ooh, let’s see. Nine, no … ten years.’
‘In what capacity?’
‘She was a colleague at the school where I teach.’
‘That’s St Bede’s School, Bournemouth?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you know about her?’
‘Liz? Well, it’s difficult to know where to start. She was a warm, genuine person. Do anything for anyone type. She’s a great loss. I mean, any human being is, but Liz in particular. As far as St Bede’s goes, literally irreplaceable.’
‘Not the sort of woman to have made enemies, then?’ McBride asked.
‘Lord, no. Oh, except among the kids, maybe.’
‘The kids?’
‘Inspector, you must understand – as a policeman you’re dealing with warped psychology every day. I don’t know how many thousands of children would have passed through Liz’s hands in her career. But the odds are, she’ll have crossed some of them. You know how it is. As a teacher, you’re responsible for discipline. So you catch some kid misbehaving and you castigate him or her. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that’s the end of the matter. But that hundredth time … well, that’s the oddball.’
‘The psychopath?’ Dunn asked.
Wynn smiled. ‘It sounds a little ludicrous stated as baldly as that, doesn’t it? But essentially, yes, you’re right. So you find your tyres slashed the next morning or your office vandalized or a rather colourful thumbnail sketch sprayed on the back wall of the Sports Hall. It’s usually harmless.’
‘But in this case it wasn’t,’ McBride reminded him. ‘Are you seriously telling us that a child did this? Battered his teacher to death?’
There was a knock at the door and Mavis O’Halloran stood there with a tray of teacups. Dunn waved her in.
‘A child, no,’ Wynn went on, ‘but children have this infuriating habit of growing up, Inspector. The boy becomes a man. The girl a woman. I’ve even known one case where the boy becomes a woman, but we’ll let that pass, shall we?’
‘That’s an interesting idea, Mr Wynn,’ McBride narrowed his eyes against the steam of his tea, ‘the possibility that someone on this course is a former pupil of Mrs Striker’s. But she’d know them, surely?’
‘Perhaps she did,’ Wynn shrugged, stirring his tea slowly. ‘We’d only been here a couple of hours. Perhaps she hadn’t had a chance to mention it to anybody.’
‘Yes, Mavis?’ McBride snapped. The woman was standing there with an empty tray as though waiting for a tip.
‘Er … the warrants have just come through, sir. I thought, in the absence of the DCI, you’d want to know.’
‘Yes,’ McBride said quickly. ‘Thank you. That will be all.’
Wynn found himself smiling as the girl left.
‘Something strike you as amusing, Mr Wynn?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Interesting rather than amusing,’ Wynn said, ‘the way in which professions work. I’m no
t sure I could get away with such blatant sexism in my line. At St Bede’s, I usually end up making the tea.’
McBride’s face darkened. He didn’t like Michael Wynn. He didn’t like Michael Wynn any more than he liked Peter Maxwell. They were both the sort who ought to report to the station every week for a damned good smacking. He flicked the intercom switch in front of him. ‘Mavis,’ he said, ‘would I be horribly sexist if I asked you to bring in another sugar lump … dear?’
And Michael Wynn chortled anew.
The pool was empty except for Sally Greenhow. Her backstroke needed work, but it was competent and she trailed through the blue water under the dim lights. Her body looked blue and irregular with the refraction at the water’s surface and she came up for air before she touched the side.
Something made her turn. She couldn’t say what. It may have been a coat falling in the cloakroom, something like that. But it echoed and re-echoed as small sounds do in an empty, vaulted chamber like a swimming pool. Unlike Peter Maxwell, she wasn’t a film buff, but she’d seen one film on telly when she was a child that had frightened her badly and it rushed back to her now. It was a black and white B feature and she couldn’t remember who was in it, but the heroine was being driven insane by the baddies and her father’s body kept popping up at various points around the spooky old family home. It was the scene in the garden pool that terrified her most. The old boy just sitting there, his long hair streaming out with the weeds in the current, his dead, sightless eyes staring ahead. She shuddered to wipe the picture from her mind and climbed out quickly.
For a moment, she stood dripping by the poolside. The feeling that someone was watching her grew stronger. She looked left. She looked right. No one. The only light came from the pool and from the changing area. She felt her heart thump and saw her breasts heaving under the flimsy bikini top. She walked quickly back to where she’d left her clothes, splashing through the footbath as she went, swinging her head to spray the surplus water from her hair.
She was just reaching for her towel when she heard it again.
‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was stronger than she hoped. ‘Who is it?’
‘Sally?’
Sally Greenhow relaxed, her shoulders hunching as her heart descended from her mouth. ‘Max, you utter bastard!’ she hissed.
A bow-tie and braces came round the corner with Peter Maxwell inside them.
‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he asked her, his voice booming with the echo.
‘Skiing,’ she said, rubbing the towel through her hair. ‘That and shitting myself. Do you always spy on girls in swimming pools?’
‘Every chance I can get,’ he beamed. ‘Sally? You’re really frightened.’
‘Oh, piss off, Max,’ she snapped.
‘Later. At the moment, I need to know how it went with the Luton lot this morning.’
‘It’s …’ Sally looked at her wet wrist. ‘Oh, bugger …’
‘Nearly half-past ten,’ Maxwell helped her out. ‘I’m in rather a hurry, I’ve been summoned to the presence.’
‘The presence?’
‘McBride sent a rather homely policewoman to ask me to accompany her to the incident room. I said I was busy and would be along shortly.’
‘Well, it’s too complicated to tell you in a couple of minutes, Max. Trot off to see the constabulary while I change and … oh, God.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘My knickers have gone.’
‘What?’
‘My knickers. Max, you aren’t playing silly buggers, are you?’
Maxwell looked shocked. ‘I can honestly say, hand on heart, I have never touched a lady’s knickers without obtaining her express permission first.’
‘But they’re gone.’ Sally frowned. ‘I left them here.’ She riffled through the clothes. ‘Everything else is here. Except the knickers.’
‘Well, well.’
‘Things are far from well, Maxie.’ Sally was biting her lower lip, fumbling for her specs. ‘Can we go? Can we go tomorrow? I don’t like it here.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t very sensible’, Maxwell was as serious as the girl now, ‘to swim alone. At this time of night. Did anybody know you’d be here?’
‘No … oh, wait. I may have mentioned it to Valerie Marks.’
‘Ah, the Dyke of Richard de Clare
‘Now, that’s unkind, Max,’ Sally scolded him. ‘She’s just rather … butch, that’s all. Anyway, even lesbians don’t go around pinching underwear.’
‘Ah,’ Maxwell passed Sally her watch, ‘what a little innocent.’
‘Will you please bugger off so I can get at least partially dressed?’
‘Oh, right …’ and he padded off. ‘Will you be all right? Getting to your room, I mean?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, but she didn’t convince herself.
‘See you when I can, then,’ he called. ‘You’ll be awake?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she promised, ‘but make your intentions clear, because I’ll have a shotgun under my pillow.’
‘That’s my girl!’ He winked at her.
And she watched his shadow move huge and silent across the wall and around the corner.
Inspector McBride interrupted Head of Sixth Form Maxwell on his way to the Trevelyan Suite. McBride was tired after four days cooped up in the same four walls. He needed air. He needed space. So he took Maxwell out on to the roof garden that gave off the bar. There was no one out here and McBride relaxed enough to allow Maxwell to buy him a drink.
‘Boddingtons, I think you said.’ Maxwell put the golden glass down on the white enamel table. ‘Lovely night for May, Inspector.’
It was. A full complement of stars studded the heavens, yet, curiously, nothing was right with the world.
‘I did.’ McBride took a sip. ‘I also said a half, but what the hell. Your very good health, Mr Maxwell.’
‘And yours, Mr McBride.’ The Head of Sixth Form raised his Southern Comfort. ‘They’re out of peanuts, I’m afraid.’
‘They’re bad for you,’ McBride assured him.
‘So,’ Maxwell perched on the rail that ran the length of the building, ‘how’s it all going, then?’
‘I hoped you might tell me,’ McBride said.
‘Come again?’
The Inspector got up and leaned with both arms on the rail. At the edge of the floodlit grounds, the nightwatch of the newsmen stood smoking. ‘Love ’em or hate ’em,’ he said, ‘they’re always there. Like sharks in the bloody water.’
Maxwell nodded. Well, well, the rozzer was a lyricist too. ‘Tell me,’ he leaned to his man, ‘are you still on duty?’
‘No,’ McBride said. ‘I should have gone home three hours ago.’
‘I hope you have an understanding wife,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘Cath? Oh, yes.’ McBride smiled too. ‘It’s in policemen’s wedding vows. Didn’t you know? Their wives promise to love, honour, obey and not mind about the hours.’
Maxwell laughed.
‘The rumour is, Mr Maxwell,’ McBride had become all confidential, ‘that you are something of an amateur detective.’
‘Me?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘Whoever gave you that idea?’
‘Oh, a snippet here and there.’ McBride was non-committal. He wasn’t about to tell Maxwell he’d got Gary Leonard to break into his room. ‘Which puts us in a rather awkward position.’
‘When you say “us”,’ Maxwell checked, ‘who do you mean exactly?’
‘You and I,’ McBride told him.
Maxwell decided to overlook the lapse of grammar. ‘How so?’ he asked.
‘Well, to be frank, you could be useful.’
‘What, listening at keyholes, you mean?’
‘Nothing that unsubtle, Mr Maxwell. I wouldn’t insult your intelligence. But people might say things to you they wouldn’t say to us, if you get my drift.’
‘All right,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So long as I’m content to play – excuse the rather unpleas
ant phraseology – coppers’ nark, you gain. What’s the down side?’
‘The down side is that your metaphorical listening at keyholes could queer everybody’s pitch, so to speak.’
Metaphorical? Maxwell looked at John McBride in a slightly new light. Perhaps you didn’t get to be a Detective Inspector before you were thirty for nothing after all. ‘So your message to me tonight is …?’
McBride finished his drink. ‘Lay off.’ The voice was harsh, the eyes cold. ‘Whatever you think you know, forget it. This isn’t a Miss Marple, Mr Maxwell. This is real. Leave it to the professionals.’ He put his glass down loudly on the metal table. ‘Am I getting through?’
‘Yarc, yarc,’ said Maxwell.
‘You what?’ McBride frowned at him.
‘West Point slang, apparently. Brown-nosers among the cadets who sit at the front in lectures, agreeing with the lecturer – YARC – “You’re absolutely right, commander!” Good-night, Mr McBride.’
8
Maxwell padded down Sally Greenhow’s corridor at a little after midnight. As he turned into it, he’d seen the lighted cigarettes of the paparazzi dogwatch darting like fireflies in the trees that ringed Carnforth’s entrance way. A police car dithered at the gates then swung left before any of the newshounds were awake enough to give chase. Inspector McBride going home at last.
Maxwell knocked three times and whispered low. ‘You and I’, he muttered, ‘were sent by Joe.’
‘What?’ a bewildered voice called from inside.
‘It’s me, Sally,’ Maxwell hissed. ‘Old Grey Eyes is back.’
She opened the door a crack then hauled him inside. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ she demanded.
‘Ssh.’ Maxwell held a finger to lips. ‘The neighbours.’
‘Sod the neighbours.’ Sally was in a pink housecoat and had a towel wrapped around her head. ‘I’d just about given you up.’
‘Not for dead, I hope. Sorry.’ He flopped into her armchair, flicking aside the curtains to check the grounds again. ‘Inspector McBride was chatty.’
‘Really?’ She rummaged in her bag. ‘I’d got him pegged as a surly bastard. You don’t deserve this,’ and she brandished a bottle at him.
