Maxwell's Chain

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Then you’ll know what I mean, I expect. He came home for a bit, didn’t he, love?’ He turned to his wife for support. She nodded over her sodden hankie, balled up in a fist so tight it looked as though it might never open again.

  ‘But, the other boys were younger then. Alex was only twelve and this flat’s not that big. He and Kevin had to double back up when Darren came home; it made for arguments. He found himself somewhere, didn’t he, Mother? With some mates.’

  ‘Some mates, yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Whereabouts?’ Hall asked gently.

  ‘We don’t really know,’ Blackwell continued. ‘He left his address as this one. Well, it saved him having to change it, you know, with the bank and that. So, he’d come back for his post and that.’

  ‘Did you never visit him?’ Hall wanted to know.

  ‘I wanted to,’ his mother said. ‘Make it a bit homey, you know. I bought him little bits, cushions and things like that. But he said it wasn’t very easy to have visitors. You know, because of his flatmates. They all had to share and it wasn’t easy.’ She looked at Hall. ‘Well, that’s what he said, wasn’t it?’ she appealed to her husband, who nodded.

  They looked so bereft, so lost, their chicks now two, not three. Ordinary people, both overweight, martyrs to sampling the chips they cooked. The fact that Darren had been a bit of a cuckoo didn’t help them in their loss. He had died only a few hundred yards from where they sat now. Hall knew he would do anything to stop them finding out that the ‘flat’ was a series of cardboard boxes and old carpets fashioned into a hideaway in the woods out of town beyond the Dam. That in that hideaway they had found some cushions, dirty and damp; a table lamp, useless in that powerless place, its bubblewrap still in place, each small bubble crushed to flatness by Darren, in the interminable hours between his crawling into his shell and the light of dawn. Most poignant of all, a curled photograph of his parents, with their three boys, standing in a row outside the shop. No, Hall would not let them know about that.

  ‘Did he ever say he was having trouble with anyone?’ Hall asked. ‘Did he owe money, that kind of thing?’

  Darren’s mother sat up sharply, hen defending chick, a tigress standing over her dead cub. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said sharply. ‘And anyway,’ her eyes filled up again and her lip quivered, the fight leaking out of her, ‘who kills someone because they owe them money? They’ll never get it then, will they? It makes no sense.’ She burrowed her face into her husband’s shoulder. No, it made no sense. None of it made any sense.

  Mr Blackwell looked over his wife’s bowed head at Henry Hall. ‘How did he die?’ he asked.

  Hall breathed a sigh of relief. The interview was back on the usual track. That was normally the first question asked and at last it was here.

  ‘We are investigating at the moment, Mr Blackwell,’ he said, a touch formally. ‘At first sight it looks as though he may have been…’ He hesitated. Stabbed with a narrow blade, Astley would be dictating any time now, leaning over the body before he went to work with his electric saw and took off the dead boy’s cranium and carved the obligatory ‘Y’ into his chest. ‘Why?’ indeed. Hall had known the cause of death from just viewing the body; the shredded clothing, the congealed blood. Surely not exposure as well, although, Heaven knew, the nights were still cold. He settled for the bland, as only he could. ‘He may have been murdered, I’m sorry to say. I don’t know any details yet.’ Cowardly, but kind. Somehow, these two parents, bereft and grieving, had touched the father that lurked deep inside Henry Hall. ‘As soon as we know, we’ll let you know,’ he promised.

  ‘I suppose you’ll want us to come and identify him?’ Mrs Blackwell said, sniffing.

  ‘Er, no, there’s no need for that,’ Hall said. ‘Mr Maxwell from Leighford High has already done that.’

  They looked at each other, puzzled. ‘You said a jogger found him,’ Mr Blackwell said. ‘Mr Maxwell doesn’t jog, surely?’

  Hall blinked as the picture trotted across his mind’s eye. ‘No, but his partner is one of my sergeants. She recognised Darren and thought that Mr Maxwell could help. As it turned out, she was right.’

  Mrs Blackwell smiled bleakly, for the first time. ‘Mr Maxwell’s wonderful,’ she shared with Hall, ‘don’t you think? All my boys like him. Mr Maxwell said this, Mr Maxwell said that.’ She waited brightly for a reply.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hall grated out. ‘He certainly is. Wonderful. Yes.’ The things he had to do in this job, he thought, sometimes defied belief. He rose to go. ‘We’ll ring or come round as soon as we know anything more. I’m sorry for your loss.’ The cliché perhaps helped someone, Hall thought, but not him and, looking at the pair in front of him, not the bereaved either. But somehow, it had to be said. ‘Do you have anyone who could come and be with you, perhaps? Family? A friend?

  Darren’s mother nodded. ‘My friend is coming over. We’ve known each other since we were at infant school. Our boys are the same age…’ She dissolved into sobs. Now, only some of their boys were the same age. One of hers was dead and her life would never be the same. He had been living rough, he hadn’t always been what she wanted him to be, but he had been alive. Now he was the blank look in people’s eyes, he was the reason for people crossing the street, changing the subject. If she was heartbroken now, thought Hall, she would look back on this as bearable in the months and years to come.

  He shook their hands and said, ‘Good. I’m glad. We’ll be in touch.’ He clattered down the stairs and got in his car. He thumped both hands on the wheel and let out a long-held breath. Things were getting bad. Henry Hall was catching humanity. What he was not catching was a killer.

  Peter Maxwell was sitting in his modelling chair at the top of 38, Columbine. This was his War Office. Nolan had been up there, always secure in somebody’s arms. Jacquie occasionally went up and blew dust off things. But only Maxwell and Metternich had the run of the place.

  On the desk in front of him, a white, plastic 54-millimetre soldier lay on his back beside a white, plastic, 54-millimetre horse. In the fullness of time, suitably accoutred and painted, he would take his place in Captain White’s squadron of the 17th Lancers, now forming up to Maxwell’s left to ride into legend. Maxwell had been collecting these figures, courtesy of Messrs Historex, modellers extraordinaire, for years. They drained his bank balance, they took up his time when he should have been marking books or dandling his baby or talking to Jacquie. But hey, they also kept him sane. And they gave him a challenge. Six hundred and seventy-eight men had ridden behind Lord Cardigan on that fateful October day back in 1854 – Maxwell was still at school then – and the figure under Maxwell’s modelling lens today was number four hundred and twenty-six.

  Actually, as he had had to repeat to Metternich several times now, this one was Corporal Thomas Morley, who had been promoted to sergeant shortly after the Charge and served as a cavalry officer for the Union in the American Civil War – well, somebody had to show the Americans how to ride properly. Morley was a bit of an old grouch himself, not unlike Metternich, in fact, and spent the rest of his life whingeing because no one would give him the VC.

  Maxwell was feeling faintly guilty about his decision not to return to Leighford High earlier, but his brush with murder had, this time, left him feeling a bit shaken. He had found an abandoned corpse only days ago, he had mislaid a suspect, and that was only his recent History. He had had more brushes with death and destruction than any Head of Sixth Form should ever have to bear. But something about Darren Blackwell’s unkempt body had made the father in him rise up and want to howl. That boy, like his, had once sat and gurgled up at his proud parents. That boy, like his, had slept on his father’s chest, dribbling quietly as he did so. Then, that boy had gone wrong somewhere, had taken a turning that had led him to death on a park bench. Maxwell had needed some time out. He would be back at the chalk-face tomorrow, casting pearls before swine, but now he would watch them more carefully, looking for that moment when a wrong word might
send them spinning into oblivion. Or at least, he thought ruefully, he would if only he had the time; teaching any one of the classes he had the next day needed more arms than Kali, more eyes than Argus. Then he remembered that plague was in the city; some anonymous bug was scything classes and staff down. A few less arms then, a few less eyes. But he needed a break, so here he was with the Light Brigade. And then, suddenly, he needed another break, so he put Corporal Morley down, still whingeing, and went downstairs to watch a nice episode of Diagnosis Murder. Ah, the bliss of daytime television. That would be followed by the rambunctious return of Nolan from his childminder and a cuddle from Jacquie. He’d be all right.

  He was just dropping off to sleep – Dick Van Dyke always had that effect in the end and anyway it was the Chartered Accountant who did it – when the doorbell rang. He wandered muttering down the stairs to the door, trying to look pale and ague-ridden in case it was one of the Senior Leadership Team from Leighford High checking up on him and flung it open.

  ‘Mr Maxwell? Thank God you’re here. There’s been another one. The police are after me.’ Bill Lunt’s machine-gun delivery had not abated while he was on the run. Not a bad imitation of Peter Lorre out of M.

  ‘Bill,’ Maxwell stood aside and extended a welcoming arm. ‘Come in. We’ve been worried about you. Where have you been?’

  ‘I needed to have a think.’ Lunt was climbing the stairs like a nonagenarian, pressing on each thigh in turn to make the gradient. ‘I’ve been sleeping in my car.’

  ‘Just for the one night, though, Bill,’ said Maxwell, not meaning to minimise his pain, but anxious for the facts to be kept straight while that was still possible.

  Bill Lunt turned pained eyes to Maxwell. ‘It was cold, though,’ he said plaintively. ‘And dark, in the woods, where I was parked. There were wild animals.’

  Maxwell’s eyebrows asked the obvious question. The woods were indeed lovely, dark and deep. But, wild animals?

  ‘Well, foxes at least. And badgers have a nasty bite if you get too close.’

  ‘And did you?’ They were in the sitting room by now and Lunt had collapsed on the sofa, narrowly missing Metternich, who was stretched out behind a couple of cushions. The animal hissed, merely reaffirming Lunt’s terror of nature, red in tooth and claw. Maxwell walked towards the kitchen. He’d been sitting on Metternich for years and had the scars to prove it. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Get too close to a badger.’

  ‘Well, of course not.’ Bill Lunt felt that his role as victim was not being taken very seriously. He was a man on the run. He should be looked after. He felt tears prick his eyelids. No one loved him. He sniffed. ‘They’ve got quite a nasty bite, you know.’

  Maxwell sighed and went into the kitchen. He put the kettle on and picked up the phone.

  ‘One one eight, one one eight, how may I help you?’ asked a voice.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell whispered into the receiver. ‘Lunt Photographic, Leighford, please.’

  The voice registered distaste. ‘Can you spell that, sir?’ it said, with a smell under its nose; obviously the result of those silly moustaches they all wore.

  ‘Ell you enn tea, Lunt, Pea aitch…’

  ‘Oh, Lunt Photographic.’ The voice collected itself. ‘Yes, I have that here. Would you like me to put you through?’

  ‘If you would,’ Maxwell said and started gathering the tea things one-handed as he waited for a reply. Like most men, he’d never managed to do that thing with the phone tucked into his neck. But then, like most men, he couldn’t multi-task either and dropped the thing before retrieving it deftly.

  After a few rings the phone was snatched up. ‘Helpyew?’ slurred the answerer. The voice seemed faintly familiar, but Maxwell couldn’t place it.

  ‘Er…is Mrs Lunt there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘May I speak to her please?’

  ‘Yeah. Emma?’ The second word nearly exploded Maxwell’s ear drums. Why did people never move the phone from their mouth when they shouted across a busy shop? ‘Emma? ’Sferyew.’ The phone landed with a crash on what he assumed was a counter.

  Despite the fact that the voice appeared to be speaking Polish, Maxwell was still certain he recognised it. He waited, listening at second hand to the busy to and fro that was Lunt Photographic.

  ‘Hello?’ Emma’s altogether more cultured tones came through the earpiece.

  ‘Oh, Emma,’ whispered Maxwell. ‘I think I have something of yours here. It’s Peter Maxwell, by the way.’ He had suddenly realised he sounded rather dodgy, like those old perverts who claim to be fifteen in chat rooms or have an unrivalled collection of saddles from little girls’ bicycles.

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’ she said. ‘What can you possibly have of mine?’ She was no fool, thought Maxwell. She’s on to me.

  ‘Ha ha,’ he tried a light laugh. ‘Well, it’s your husband, in fact. He seems to be on the run.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she spat. ‘Of course he’s not on the run. What’s he got to be on the run for?’

  ‘Well, he seems to think he’s a suspect in a couple of murders, for a start.’

  ‘A couple of murders?’

  ‘Yes, well, there’s been another, but, that’s not the point, really.’

  ‘Not the point. A murder, not the point?’ This was déjà vu for Emma Lunt, née Watson. She could still remember all those times that Maxwell had returned A level essays to her, telling her, in the kindest possible way, that it needed beefing up or toning down or that her antithesis was not the point, really.

  ‘No. Emma, my dear, we all know Bill didn’t do anything. But he says you have gone back to your mother’s and also he seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that he is public enemy number one. Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ the word came out on a sigh. ‘That’s why I went to mother’s. Not because I think he murdered anyone. It wasn’t because I thought he would murder me in my bed; it was his impersonation of Richard Kimble that was wearing me down.’

  Maxwell beamed. That’s my girl, he thought. Still a film buff, like so many of his ex-Own. They might forget the causes of the Crimean War, but they’d never forget a film. All right, so Emma’s version of Richard Kimble was Harrison Ford, whereas everyone of Maxwell’s generation knew it was really David Jansen, but you couldn’t have everything. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Can you come and get him, there’s a good girl? The Mem is a bit aerated at having him here and he slept in the car last night, apparently. He’s a bit tearful and sorry for himself. He seems to have become unhealthily obsessed with badgers.’

  ‘Badgers?’ Her voice rose to a squeak.

  ‘Well, precisely. We all know what that can lead to, don’t we? Can you get here in, say, half an hour? Thirty-eight, Columbine. Lovely. Bye, then.’ He rang off before she could argue. The kettle had gone off the boil and so he addressed himself to the Maxwell Tea Ceremony again, all white face paint and excruciatingly small shoes.

  When he went back into the sitting room a strange tableau met his gaze. Stretched out on the sofa was Bill Lunt, dead to the world. Looming over him and about to poke him with the business end of a mop was Mrs B. After all, she cleaned up at the school in the afternoon. For a moment, his world turned upside down.

  ‘Mrs B?’ Maxwell said. He thought she came to do for him in the morning.

  Mrs B spun round with a shriek that could curdle milk, hands grasped to her chest, fag-end flying who knew where. Bill Lunt flinched in his sleep, then subsided again. ‘Oh my gawd, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, the scream ending in a cough. ‘Oh, my gawd, what are you doing there? I nearly died. There’s a bloke on your settee. Did you know there’s been another one. ’Oo is ’e? Ain’t it terrible?’

  Maxwell was used to the Thompson sub-machine gun that was Mrs B and he coped with it admirably. ‘I live here. Did you? Yes, there is. Yes, indeed. Mr Lunt, or Darren Blackwell, depending on whether you mean the bloke on my sette
e or the other one. Yes, it is. Don’t you usually come in the morning?’ It was a gentle reminder that most people asked one question at a time.

  Still patting her chest, exhaling like there had never been a Clean Air Act, Mrs B nodded. Another fag-end, unlit but half-smoked at some previous, more accommodating venue, had materialised from somewhere in her pinny and was stuck firmly to her lower lip. ‘Yeah, Mr Maxwell, I do as a rule. But I got stuck at another job, din’t I? That’s how I know there’s been another one. I clean up at one of the shops in town and that lad what they found was the son of them as keep that chippie.’

  ‘And so that made you late because…?’ Maxwell drew out his question, hoping that might start Mrs B’s thought processes into something approaching coherence.

  ‘Well, because…’ Caught between a rock and a hard place, Mrs B could hardly admit that she had stood open mouthed in the doorway of the greengrocer’s, mop in hand, and watched as the police had arrived, knocked at the door and been admitted to the flat above the chip shop. How she had waited until that miserable bloke, that copper with the blank glasses, had come out and driv’ away, but not until he had hit the steering wheel, nasty temper that showed. How she had nabbed that woman, that one whose kid was up at the school, when she arrived and that was how she knew who it was what was dead and also why she was really late at Mr M’s.

  He let her off the hook. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs B,’ he said, softly. ‘I think we’ll just let Mr Lunt sleep, if it’s all the same to you. Just do a bit extra next week, if you like.’

  Mrs B drew herself up as far as she was able. ‘I don’t like to skimp, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, her voice tight with offence. ‘I like to do a good job.’

  Struggling to keep the amazement out of his voice (he knew for a fact that there was a sixteen-year-old spiders’ web in the corner of his office), Maxwell said, ‘No, really, Mrs B, I’m sure we’ll manage. Nolan is getting a dab hand at mopping and, as you know, Metternich always does the drying up at the end of the evening, mostly by rolling on the plates. You just run along now, or you’ll be late for up at the school.’