Maxwell’s Flame

by M. J. Trow

  ‘It’s a section of scaffolding,’ McBride said. ‘Conventional stuff, but I had the lads combing the site yesterday. It didn’t come from here.’

  ‘So he brought it with him. The lab is sure about the weapon, of course?’

  McBride nodded. ‘Eight of Mrs King’s hairs found clinging to the tape. And two of Mrs Striker’s. All genetically matched.’

  ‘The labs are excelling themselves,’ Malcolm nodded. ‘I didn’t think old Collins had it in him. Can’t have much on at the moment.’

  ‘Mr Malcolm, I’d like to get back to my interrogation of the prime suspect as soon as possible.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Dr Moreton. Where is he now?’

  ‘At the station.’

  ‘Has he had his phone call?’

  ‘He has. Solicitor was supposed to be on his way.’

  ‘Right.’ Malcolm slid back his chair. ‘We’ll need to move out by tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, I know it’s inconvenient,’ Malcolm waved his hand, ‘but on my way in this morning, I had my ear bent by Mr Leonard, who in turn is being badgered by his managing director who had already put in a timely call upstairs. See it from the Carnforth Centre’s point of view. One death is bad for business. Two might put them out of business.’

  ‘Or it might increase it,’ McBride was cynical enough to observe.

  ‘It might, John, it might.’ Malcolm nodded at the door. ‘But that would be openly pandering to the sanguinary tastes of Joe Public, wouldn’t it? It’s a brave conference centre manager who’ll do that. Now, we’ve got our marching orders. We’ll set up back at the nick. Anyway, there’s not much more we can learn here. The birds have flown.’

  ‘We’ve got our man, Mr Malcolm,’ McBride said.

  ‘Have we, John?’ Malcolm asked, allowing the Inspector to open the door for him. ‘I wonder. I tell you what, you try and convince me of that on the way, will you?’

  Sally and Maxwell had timed it badly. Lunch hour at Leighford High was a euphemism for hell. Upwards of seven hundred delinquents, all of them at varying stages of adolescence which involved zits, hormones, anti-establishment attitudes and fantasies about Michelle Pfeiffer – the boys were worse – milled in the three classrooms that did double duty as a dining-hall.

  Peter Maxwell hadn’t had a school lunch in nearly twenty years. It was to that sole fact that he attributed his longevity. Merely padding through the dropped chips in the corridor was enough –secondary eating – and it was here he found Paul Moss, the Head of History, on duty.

  ‘Max! You’re back!’

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’ The Head of Sixth Form tried looking over his shoulder. With colleagues like his, he was fairly adept at that.

  ‘I thought you were off all week. Year 13 historians will be ecstatic’

  ‘Calm them down, Paul. I’m just passing through.’

  ‘Ah, forgot your pen?’

  ‘Something like that. Seen Legs?’

  ‘It’s lunchtime, Max,’ Moss chided him. ‘He’ll be hiding in his office.’

  ‘Of course.’ Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘It’s been so long.’

  ‘Oi!’ Moss bellowed at a weasel-eyed boy who had just dropped an empty Coke can at his feet.

  ‘What?’

  Now Paul Moss was fast. He was thirty-something, genial, good-natured, one of the new school, but his heart was in the right place. But Peter Maxwell was one of the old school and he was faster. His right hand snaked out and caught the litter lout by his ear.

  ‘Ow!’ he wailed. ‘Get your hands off me!’

  ‘Mr Moss, are my hands on this boy?’

  ‘No, Mr Maxwell,’ Moss beamed. ‘Merely your thumb and index finger.’

  ‘As I surmised. McDevitt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The kid tried to shake himself free, but the pain was too much.

  ‘Do you know the film, The Dirty Dozen, McDevitt? Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas and Co, where a bunch of misfits like yourself are trained for a suicidal wartime mission?’

  ‘Yeah.’ McDevitt frowned, not quite sure where all this was leading.

  ‘You remember that scene, McDevitt, where Lee Marvin – that’s me, by the way – takes aside malignant dwarf John Cassavetes – that’s you – and says, “March, you little bastard, or I’ll kick your head in”?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, this is an action replay, McDevitt. Pick up that can, you little bastard, or I’ll kick your head in.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ McDevitt asked.

  ‘Er … yes,’ Maxwell beamed, ‘I believe I am.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ and McDevitt bent to pick up the can, grateful the ear was still attached to his head.

  ‘Have a nice day, Mr Moss,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Maxwell. You too.’

  Along the corridor, McDevitt was hailed by two cronies who’d witnessed his come-uppance. ‘Fuckin’ hell, Den, that was a close one.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the other, ‘that’s Mad Max. He killed a kid last year. Just for looking at him.’

  ‘Fuckin’ hell.’

  ‘Yeah?’ McDevitt tried to swagger, which was difficult with a throbbing ear. ‘Well, he don’t scare me.’ And he dropped his Mars Bar wrapper carefully in the next litter bin.

  Maxwell never actively sought the company of Deirdre Lessing. She was the Morgana Le Fay to his Arthur, the fly in his ointment. And she was the last person he wanted to see ensconced in Legs Diamond’s office that Wednesday lunchtime.

  ‘Max,’ the Headmaster said, ‘you’re back.’

  Maxwell only did the back joke with them he reckoned. And Jim Diamond wasn’t one of them, so he just said, ‘Yes,’ and left it at that.

  ‘Aren’t you a trifle early, Max?’ Deirdre asked. As Senior Mistress, Deirdre had the broadest shoulders in the school and no one seemed to have told her that power dressing like that had gone singularly out of fashion. She also had legs which would put a gladiator to shame. Probably, under that mantle of pure bitch, there lurked a remarkable body. But Peter Maxwell would never find out.

  ‘Ah, Deirdre, you trifle with me at your peril,’ he beamed. ‘Might I have a word, Headmaster? Alone?’

  Diamond glanced hopefully at Deirdre, who for once played the white woman and got up. ‘Ah, well,’ she smiled acidly at Maxwell, ‘the sixth form needs me for something again.’

  Punch-bag practice, Maxwell assumed, but he was too much of a gentleman to say so. When she’d gone, in a vapour trail of Dune, Maxwell took a seat.

  ‘I thought I caught a glimpse of Sally Greenhow a few minutes ago,’ Diamond said, ‘but I thought I was seeing things. What’s happened, Max? GNVQ course not going well?’

  ‘Sort of, Headmaster,’ the Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘We’ve had an incident. Well, two, actually. Two course members have been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered? Oh, my God, the Carnforth Centre.’

  ‘I wondered whether you’d heard.’

  ‘Well, I don’t take a daily, but I did catch it on South Today a couple of days ago. Do you know, I didn’t connect the two. How stupid of me.’

  The grey suit, the gold-rimmed specs, the attempt to juggle all the balls that were Education Now. No wonder Jim Diamond was losing his grip.

  ‘How awful. What happened? Two women, I think, the telly said.’

  ‘Liz Striker and Rachel King,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Battered to death by persons unknown.’

  ‘Good God. Have there been any developments? I mean, I haven’t heard for a day or so.’

  ‘A man, I think you’ll find, is helping police with their enquiries.’

  ‘Who? Er … I mean, you can’t tell me, of course, I understand that.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Maxwell said. ‘His name is Dr Andrew Moreton – no relation – and he didn’t do it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Maxwell crossed his legs as far as his male anatomy would allow. ‘Call it female intuition,’ he said.


  ‘Good God. Um … Sally. How’s she taking it?’

  ‘Like a man,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But I’m afraid I shall need compassionate leave for a day or two.’

  ‘Compassionate …? Really? Oh.’ Diamond took off his glasses and twirled them around for a while. ‘Oh, really? Well, that’s not like you, Max.’

  ‘You do have supply cover for me until Friday afternoon?’

  ‘Well, yes, we do, but –’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’ Maxwell was on his feet. ‘I just called in to apprise you of the situation. I’d hate to muck up Roger’s supply arrangements. See you Monday, Headmaster.’

  ‘Max …’

  But Max had gone.

  In the corridor, Jim Diamond bumped into Sally Greenhow, nipping back to the Learning Support Centre with a pizza and chips. ‘Sally,’ he hailed her, ‘I’ve just seen Max. He’s talking about taking the rest of the week off. Compassionate leave. That’s not like him. Is he all right?’

  ‘What did he tell you?’ the tall kid asked her headmaster.

  ‘Only that two people had been murdered. Of course, I knew that from the news coverage anyhow.’

  ‘One of them Max knew personally,’ Sally said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Rachel King was an old flame. Now, I don’t really think the corridor is the place to discuss this, Headmaster. I do have a number of things to do.’

  ‘Oh, quite, Sally, quite,’ and Jim Diamond did what he did best in life. He beat a hasty retreat.

  The interview room at Ashford nick was altogether more austere than the improvised one at the Carnforth Centre. More purpose-built. More permanent. The walls were painted brick, the solitary light bulb harsher than Carnforth’s spots and strips. In the centre, in time-honoured tradition, was a table, with three chairs. Only the recording apparatus placed it squarely at the back end of the twentieth century. Otherwise, Haigh, the acid bath murderer, would have felt at home here. So might Dr Harvey Hawley Crippen.

  But a different doctor sat in the limelight now. A Doctor of Biology, confused, lost, out of his depth. Behind him, in the murky half-shadows, his brief stood, looking for a fourth chair. He found one and pulled it alongside Moreton’s as the investigating officers came in.

  ‘I am Superintendent Malcolm,’ the taller of the two announced. ‘Dr Moreton, I believe you already know Inspector McBride.’

  ‘Anthony Walters,’ the solicitor introduced himself. ‘I represent Dr Moreton.’

  No one shook hands. The solicitor hadn’t left his new-found seat. ‘I’ve read your statement, Dr Moreton,’ Malcolm said. ‘What will happen now is that I will ask you some questions. You have been cautioned already and that caution still stands. Your solicitor will have explained to you your rights. John?’

  McBride switched on a tape. ‘Interview three with Dr Andrew Moreton, conducted by Superintendent Malcolm with Inspector McBride in attendance. Mr Anthony Walters representing Dr Moreton. Interview commenced at sixteen thirty, Wednesday 11th May.’

  ‘Dr Moreton,’ Malcolm looked his man in the face, ‘how do you account for the fact that an iron pipe was found in your room at the Carnforth Centre?’

  Moreton flashed a glance at his solicitor. Walters didn’t look up, merely jotted something down in a notepad.

  ‘I can’t,’ the Head of Science said.

  ‘You’ve no idea how it got there?’

  ‘None.’

  Malcolm leaned back a little, watching his man, giving him space. Terry Malcolm was an expert at this game. Nearly twenty years’ experience had given him the edge. He’d seen them all in his time – con-men and women, pimps, prostitutes, cat-burglars, psychopaths. And his pattern was always the same – ask them a devastating question head on and watch ’em squirm. Sit back. Give ’em time. Watch the sweat break out on their foreheads, upper lips. They never knew what to do with their hands, like amateur actors suddenly stuffed into a pair of tights and having no recourse to pockets. Watch the hands. Watch the eyes. Gauleiter Malcolm would have been perfectly at home in the SS.

  ‘My officers tell me’, Malcolm said at last, ‘that the pipe was found in a hold-all with your name on it. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes.’ Moreton didn’t have to look at Walters for that one. It was already established fact.

  ‘How many bags did you take to the conference?’ Malcolm asked.

  ‘Er … two. And a suitcase.’

  ‘How well did you know Rachel King?’

  ‘Not very,’ Moreton said. ‘I’d worked with her on and off during the course. Attended lectures with her and so on.’

  ‘You worked with her on the afternoon of her death, I believe.’

  That too was a verifiable statement and Moreton nodded.

  ‘For the tape, please.’ McBride tapped the table.

  Moreton cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s right.’

  ‘Did you find her attractive?’

  Moreton saw Walters shaking his head out of the corner of his eye. ‘I decline to answer that,’ he said.

  Malcolm smiled at McBride. ‘Did you know Mrs King beforehand? Before the course, I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And Mrs Striker?’ Malcolm leaned forward. ‘No, doctor, I’m not going to ask if you found her attractive. Did you know her previously?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you married, Dr Moreton?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A bachelor gay, eh?’

  Moreton saw Walters’ head come up and he saw the Superintendent smile.

  ‘How long have you taught at the John Bunyan School?’

  ‘Er … eight years.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘A school in Basingstoke.’

  ‘The Wyndham School?’ Malcolm said.

  ‘Yes.’ Moreton cleared his throat again. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Would you like to tell us about the trouble you had there?’

  ‘Er … just a moment, Superintendent,’ Walters intervened for the first time. ‘Does this have any bearing on the matter in hand?’

  ‘Dr Moreton has a criminal record, Mr Walters,’ Malcolm said. ‘Surely, as his solicitor you know that.’

  ‘I do, but –’

  ‘A criminal record that involved common assault. He hit a woman with a squash racquet.’

  ‘I lost my temper!’ Moreton snapped. At the touch of Walters’ hand on his arm, he checked himself. ‘I … do have rather a short fuse.’

  ‘Would you have any objection to telling us what happened?’

  ‘Superintendent Malcolm –’ The brief was getting agitated.

  ‘It is a matter of public record, Mr Walters,’ the policeman said. ‘I could tell you, but I’d like to hear Dr Moreton’s version. The written record is so cold, isn’t it? So unreasoning, somehow.’

  ‘It’s all right, Tony,’ Moreton said, ‘I’m all right. I used to play squash. Quite well, in fact. One day I was playing in a league match and found myself paired against a local gymnast. It was one of those daft mixed set-ups. Anyway, she beat me. I don’t like losing, Superintendent; and I like losing to a woman still less. Well, at the time I took it like a man and we shook hands. In the bar afterwards, however, well, I just couldn’t take the ribbing.’ He buried his face briefly in his hands. ‘It was inexcusable.’ He surfaced again, pale at the memory of it. ‘I grabbed the nearest thing to hand – my squash racquet – and lashed out. Needless to say I was sorry afterwards, but it was too late by then.’

  ‘A suspended sentence,’ Malcolm said. ‘So it all ended reasonably happily ever after.’

  ‘Happily?’ Moreton looked at him. ‘Ever after?’ He shook his head. ‘Isn’t that why I’m here now?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that why one of your boys planted the pipe in my room? Because you know about my conviction and saw a way to make an arrest? Isn’t it all about arrests these days? Productivity? Quotas?’

  Throughout, Moreton had ignored Walters’ tugging on his sleeve. Now, he snarled at
him, ‘Fuck off,’ and took his arm away.

  Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you making allegations – serious allegations – against a member of my force, Dr Moreton?’ he asked.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ Walters cut in. ‘For Christ’s sake, Andrew, try to control yourself. You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘Indeed you are, Dr Moreton,’ Malcolm nodded. ‘Why, for instance, did you tell colleagues that you were on interview on the day of Elizabeth Striker’s death?’

  ‘I was.’ Moreton’s palms felt clammy, his mouth dry. As a biologist, he knew the physiology of fear, but he couldn’t control it any more than the next man.

  Malcolm smiled at him. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Dr Moreton. We checked. You should have gone on interview, granted. But the fact is, you didn’t go, did you? Why was that?’

  Moreton’s face disappeared into his hands again. ‘I couldn’t face it,’ he said. ‘At the last moment, I suppose, I chickened out. Having a PhD in a comprehensive makes me a pretty big fish, but the pond – my God – the pond is small. I’ve been in the classroom too long. I can’t hack the real world any more. I’ve lost it. But I couldn’t lose face. I pretended to everybody that I hadn’t cared for the job when I’d been offered it. Actually, I spent the day in a pub in Lydd. The Farmers’ Arms.’

  Malcolm leaned towards the microphone. ‘I have the right to hold you on suspicion, Dr Moreton, for a further twelve hours. That is exactly what I intend to do. Interview terminated sixteen fifty one,’ and the policemen left the room.

  In the corridor outside, John McBride caught his new guv’nor’s arm. ‘Mr Malcolm?’

  ‘Well, now, I really don’t know,’ the Superintendent said, in answer to the unspoken question. ‘We’ve got a testy gentleman with a murder weapon and a record of potential GBH. If that squash racquet had been a bottle, he’d have done time already. As it was, he clearly had to leave Basingstoke – that, in itself, I should think, was a blessing in disguise. What sort of idiot appointed him at Luton, of course, is another issue. We also know he’s a liar and a braggart whose only alibi for the Liz Striker murder is a pub-load of winos who, I am prepared to wager, won’t remember him from Adam. In that sense, things look rather bad for Dr Moreton.’