by M. J. Trow
‘Battery’s dead.’
‘Well, yes, so I assumed, after all this time. What else?’
The technician looked up, his expression full of contempt. ‘I said,’ he said, moving his gum to the other side of his mouth, ‘battery’s dead.’ Angus McCall was one of those irritating people one step out of reach of the law. He worked (when it suited him) with the police, not for them.
‘Well surely,’ Hall could hardly keep his temper in check, ‘you can get another one?’
Again, the contempt. ‘Well, of course. Jess on the switchboard has a phone like this and we’ve had hers in there.’
Had? Hall was incredulous, but tempered his voice to patient. He had, after all, had years of experience. ‘Why isn’t it in there now, if I may ask?’
‘Gone home, in’t she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hall said, through gritted teeth. ‘Has she?’
‘Yeah. And she needs her phone, like, for emergencies.’
Hall looked around, desperately. ‘Is there anyone else here?’ Surely, a human being was somewhere handy.
‘All gone home, in’t they?’ the technician said. ‘I’m here for a bit because of the flexitime. I start late on a Tuesday, then I can finish stuff up when the others go home.’
‘And what are you finishing up, exactly?’ Hall hardly wanted to hear the answer, but the question had to be put. It was likely to be Level Twenty-eight on the Lara Croft Does It Again And This Time It’s Digital game.
McCall poked the phone again with the end of his pencil. ‘This,’ he said and stared at the thing again.
‘Do you know anyone at the path lab, you know, the morgue at Leighford?’ Hall asked.
‘Yeah. Everyone knows Donald. He’s a good laugh.’
‘Are you related, by any chance?’
‘To Donald? Nah! You must be joking. Why’d you ask?’
‘No reason. Just making conversation. So, you don’t know anything about the phone yet, then?’
‘Yeah. Loads. Report’s over there, in that basket.’
In his imagination, usually so grey and colourless, Henry Hall launched himself at the lacklustre idiot, throttling and squeezing until he lay dead on the floor, his pencil embedded, via his nostril, in his brain. Angus, RIP. In reality, he just said, tightly, ‘Thank you. May I take this copy?’
‘You DCI Hall?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘’S yours, then. Got your name on it, anyway.’
Hall flashed his blank lenses at the sky and muttered an almost silent imprecation. The technician heard it however, and bridled.
‘There’s no need to be like that. We’re here to help you lot, in case you didn’t know. Back room boys, that’s us. Never get no…’
But the door was swinging from Hall’s departure and he never did get to know what forensic technicians never got any of. If Hall had his way, it would be any work, ever again.
Jacquie and Maxwell were out on the town, such as it was. They didn’t do it often and, when they did do it, were not sorry it was a rarity. They had lots of excuses; pressure of work, difficulty in finding babysitters, a ‘y’ in the day, but, in truth, they just preferred a nice quiet evening in. Maxwell was kind of slow on the turns these days and found himself dozing even in the loud bits of Pulp Fiction. They were both on top of their work, the queues to babysit Nolan stretched round the block and the ‘y’ in the day excuse only worked on Ten Emm Five, whose grasp of spelling was of the most tenuous kind.
They were sitting at that moment at a table that had had a cursory wipe from a surly child in a red uniform topped by a cap at a rakish angle. If its purpose was to prevent exchange of dandruff between its wearer and the clientele, it was failing spectacularly. If its purpose was to make its wearer look a complete idiot, it was doing very well indeed. Maxwell’s idea had been to go to a rather nice pub on the edge of the town centre, perhaps the Blue d’or or the Castor and Pollux that had speciality beers on tap and those rather nice crisps, which, whilst not any more expensive per pack than the ordinary kind, made up for this by only containing six actual crisps, giving their consumer an air of elitism associated with the very best universities. Jacquie had pointed out that hoodies in gangs did not usually meet up in pubs called the Blue d’or, the Castor and Pollux or even the Laptop and Ferret and so the burger bar it was. And not a nice generic burger joint like McDonalds’ or Burger King either; no, they were greasily ensconced at the worn formica of Terry’s Burgers, subtitled, to the disquiet of the rare American tourist, You’ll Love Our Buns. It was the sort of place where you had to choose carefully for flavour between the food and its cardboard packaging.
‘Do you have a description of these lovely lads we are watching for?’ Maxwell asked the light of his life.
‘Boys in hoods.’
‘Tall boys in hoods? Short, fat, thin, black, white? Red hoods, brown, grey, purple, sky blue pink? Lincoln green?’
‘Any and all of the above,’ sighed Jacquie. ‘Although I’m not sure they are a merry bunch who hang around Sherwood Forest. I’m sorry, Max, but when people see a sea of hoods, they avoid eye contact and move swiftly away in the opposite direction. The behaviour of these lads is often a self-fulfilling prophecy; you think they are going to shout and jeer, so you take avoiding action. They see you do that and, guess what, they shout and jeer.’
‘That’s very social-worker of you,’ Maxwell observed.
‘Just trying to see all sides,’ Jacquie said. ‘A bit like that kid you tell me about, you know, the one with the divergent squint.’
Maxwell snorted and sent his Extra-Thick-Chocochocochoco Milkshake spraying all over the place. Jacquie wiped her front with a napkin and wished she had come with Nolan; he wasn’t so messy.
While they frittered away a minute or two more, tearing their Terry’s Special Everything On It Burger into small pieces so it couldn’t be served to the next punter, who, after all, might not be in for several days, Jacquie kept her wits about her and her eyes everywhere. Suddenly, she kicked Maxwell under the table.
‘I think that may be them,’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Don’t turn round.’
Maxwell swivelled in his seat. ‘Where?’
‘For God’s sake, Max,’ she hissed. ‘I said don’t turn round.’
‘That’s all very well, heart,’ he said, reasonably. ‘But there isn’t much point in your saying that it may be them if I can’t get a bit of a butchers. And I only have eyes in the back of my head at school.’
‘I thought you were good at this sleuthing lark,’ she said.
‘I’ve had a bit of luck, yes,’ he said, modestly. Then, ‘And a good few beatings up as well. Plus the attempt or two on my life, I suppose. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people would say I’m pretty rubbish at it.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Jacquie said, ‘despite your strange behaviour and the totally appalling food in here, they seem to be coming in.’
The door flung back on its hinges and the cold night air carried with it what seemed to be a horde of teenagers, all shapes, all sizes, all hooded. They sprawled around at as many tables as they could occupy to cause the maximum disruption and ordered the smallest amount of food that would allow them to stay. The dandruffed youth disappeared quickly behind the counter and had a whispered dialogue with someone out of sight. Whoever it was wisely stayed backstage.
‘Do you know any of them, Max?’ she asked, in a hoarse stage whisper.
‘Can I look now, then?’ he asked, a little petulantly. She thought again of how much less trouble Nolan would have been on this junket.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
He raised his head and looked sideways at the lost boys. They were aged between about twelve and sixteen, well within the remit of Leighford High, but he didn’t specifically recognise any of them. There wasn’t even a family resemblance to any of his kids that might give him a clue. No reptilian tongue, no third eyelid. Not even a webbed foot
. He turned back to Jacquie and shook his head. ‘I don’t know any of them,’ he told her. ‘Not even a maybe.’
She gathered her coat and bag and made to leave. ‘Well, on to the next dive,’ she said and made for the door, while he struggled with the twists of his scarf.
‘Hello,’ said one of the lads, sticking out a leg. ‘Out for a nice burger wiv your dad?’
‘Let me by, please,’ Jacquie said in a neutral tone.
‘Are you dissing my homie?’ asked another spotty lout, whose nearest contact with a New York street gang had to be a million light years.
‘No. I just want to go,’ said Jacquie, avoiding eye contact and doing everything a normal member of the public might do. Her natural instinct was to deck the little shit and have done.
‘Well, what if I says you can’t?’ said the first boy, stepping into her path. He was thin as a reed, but tall and anyway, they outnumbered Jacquie and Maxwell by six to one. To the Head of Sixth Form, of course, this was par. He was usually outnumbered thirty to one in a classroom and yet he was, somehow, always the last man standing.
‘I don’t want to make this something it’s not,’ said Jacquie, sidestepping.
Then, everything happened really fast. The boy lunged at her and tried to pin her arms. Maxwell grabbed him by the hood and lifted him off his feet, yanking him backwards and throwing him across a table, scattering cartons and other hoodies in all directions. In a scream of sirens and a flash of rotating blue lights, uniform arrived like the Seventh cavalry. And a quiet voice in Maxwell’s ear said, ‘Hello, Mr Maxwell. I never expected to see you in this kind of place.’
Everything was really quiet. Jacquie had gone off with the ringleaders of the gang and the arresting officer, having silenced their jeering with a single sweep of her warrant card. The pair’s covert sleuthing was over until either they found that the police had their man or they had to begin again. Maxwell sat back at their table, wiped properly by the boy sitting opposite. The blinds were down and a closed sign hung at the door. Maxwell and the boy each had a cup of real coffee, staff reserve, in front of them. The dandruffy youth swept ineptly in a corner. He’d never seen a bloke as old as Maxwell move so fast in his life.
‘So, Nicholas,’ Maxwell said, leaning back in his seat as far as the rigid, fixed steel legs would allow. ‘You love to cook, hmm?’
The lad had emerged from the innermost recesses of the kitchen when the balloon had gone up. He looked nearly as much of a plonker as Mr Dandruff in his red uniform, but Maxwell knew better.
The lad looked down and blushed. ‘I do like cooking, yes. But I also want to have a bit of money behind me when I go up to uni, Mr Maxwell. All those fancy restaurants in London, they’ll take you on, but you have to pay for the privilege. And it’s not as if it’s what I want to do. Well,’ he pulled a rueful face, ‘it’s what I want to do, but it’s not what I’m going to do.’
‘Parents?’ Maxwell asked, with the lift of a sympathetic eyebrow. He’d had some of his own once and he knew they were the real problems in schools, not the kids.
‘’Fraid so,’ Nick replied. ‘I know they mean well, but they say you can be a research chemist who cooks for pleasure, but you can’t be a chef who does a bit of biochemical research on the side.’
‘There’s no arguing with their logic,’ Maxwell conceded. ‘But I wonder whether Delia Smith ever wishes she could split an atom from time to time.’
‘Exactly, Mr Maxwell,’ the lad beamed. ‘I wish you were my dad. When you taught me at school, it was brilliant. You made it all seem so interesting. I loved History, you know. Working out how one thing leads to another, just like the butterfly flapping its wings causing…’
‘…the invention of the world-infamous Terry’s Special Everything On It Burger,’ laughed Maxwell. The boy may have loved his History, but he was going to be a research chemist nonetheless. Nick smiled too, genuinely now, and Maxwell could see how he would go through the girls at uni like a hot knife through butter. ‘Seriously though, Nick,’ he said. ‘Don’t be railroaded. You’ll work for forty-three years of your life – make it something you at least don’t dislike.’
‘I’ve got to give it a go, Mr Maxwell,’ the boy said quietly. ‘I can’t disappoint them.’
‘I’ll give you credit for that,’ Maxwell said. ‘But please think it over before you end up tied to a lab bench. Once the bills and things start multiplying, it gets harder and harder to change direction.’
‘You sound as if that happened to you.’ The boy sounded incredulous and Maxwell was once again aware that, no matter how popular a teacher might be, he was never fully human to a student.
‘Not really,’ Maxwell smiled again. ‘Circumstances are funny things, Nicholas. Yes, I wanted to be Stephen Spielberg before they invented Stephen Spielberg; to make historical epics that would make Lord of the Rings look like Noddy Goes to the Toilet, but, like you, I had parents who had other ideas. Anyway, I didn’t sit down to depress you – I wanted to say thanks for calling the police. Lightning reflexes on your part. I wasn’t sure I could throw six of them around the room.’
‘Well, they were out of hand, Mr Maxwell. I didn’t want your…your…’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell helped him out, smiling. ‘I have that trouble too. I hate the whole ‘partner’ thing myself. A partner is somebody you’re in business with. Girlfriend seems a little silly at my age. The mother of my child seems a touch formal. And she’s not my wife.’
‘Oh.’ Nick was taken aback. The old devil! It was the old generation-gap thing. Nobody over thirty could possibly have a live-in-lover.
‘Thanks, anyway. You didn’t want my Significant Other to be hurt. I appreciate that.’ A tinny tune rang out from among the boy’s clothing. To Maxwell’s amazement, he recognised it. ‘I didn’t have you down for a Diana Ross fan,’ he said, as the lad foraged in amongst his chef’s whites and scarlets, bought for twenty-stone Terry and looking a little voluminous on eleven-stone Nicholas.
‘What?’ he said to Maxwell, then to the phone, ‘Yeah? No. I’ve closed up. Bit of trouble. Yeah, the usual. I’m with Mr Maxwell at the moment. Yeah, OK. Later.’ He stowed the phone away and smiled at Maxwell. ‘Lobber sends his,’ he said. ‘He’ll be round in a bit, to pick me up now we’ve shut for the night.’
‘You’ve closed? Just because of a few spotty hoodies? What will your boss say?’
‘He’s on holiday, that’s why I’m in charge.’
‘So the old guy in the kitchen with you wasn’t Terry?’ Maxwell had noticed the man hovering as the police effectively emptied the place of customers.
‘Him!’ Nicholas laughed. ‘No, that’s Alf. He’s my sous-chef! No, Terry won’t mind – he only needs to sell about twenty burgers to cover the staff.’
‘How many have you sold?’
‘What did you have?’
‘A couple of Everything-on-its.’
‘Two of those, then.’ He spread his arms. ‘We are not an eaterie where gourmets gather. It’s the chucking out trade we rely on and there’s a late shift for that, comes on in about an hour and a half. They’ll open up.’
‘Do you have much trouble like we’ve just had?’
‘Not as a rule. Certainly not when Terry’s here. He’s built like a brick shithouse and just wades in. That lot though – I didn’t recognise them. They must be from out of town.’
‘That’s what I thought. Not Leighford High. I’ve seen a few groups around lately. I even broke up a bit of a mugging the other day. As I’m sure you are already aware, I do tend to look at faces, sort out trouble-makers, give them a bit of a hard time the next day.’
Nick had just seen how hard and Maxwell hadn’t even waited for the next day. He pressed his hands on the table and pushed himself back, the chair squeaking on the greasy floor. ‘Oh, yes, Mr Maxwell,’ he laughed. ‘We all knew that. It’s in the unofficial Guide To Surviving Leighford High.’
‘As it should be,’ Maxwell grinned, wondering where he could bu
y a copy. He got up. ‘I’ll leave you to finish up. Its way past my bedtime.’ He went to stand by the door. The Dandruff Kid shot the bolts for him, careful to keep at arm’s length, and he sauntered off up the road. The night was still now, apart from the odd car whose tyres hissed across the standing water of half a day of rain. The truth was, he didn’t really want to meet the unlovely Lobber, Nick’s oppo. He had always been a menace at school and just because he was now in the world at large, he wasn’t much better. Maxwell just hoped he didn’t sell anything expensive, like houses or cars, in his High Street employment. He personally wouldn’t buy a stamp from him; it was bound to have been booby trapped in some hilarious way that only Lobber found amusing. He had no idea why the two of them were friends, except that presumably opposites attract. He was just glad they were soon going their separate ways.
As he rounded the corner, he saw a furtive figure slip into a doorway. Most men would have gone home to their cosy firesides, thanked the babysitter profusely, slipped her an extra fiver and hunkered down with a large SoCo to await the arrival of the Mem, all hot and handcuffed from a hard evening at the nick. But this was Mad Max and something about the profile made him follow the shadow and as he made the same turn, he realised he was following Gregory Adair up a narrow alley. Maxwell and the NQT were not alone; there was another figure sidling along between them, past the skips and piles of rubbish and, suddenly, Maxwell didn’t really want to know. He had spent the evening in the most sordid setting; nothing new for him, as it happened, but he had had enough. Perhaps he wasn’t as Mad as all that and suddenly wanted to be back in his nice warm house, paying off a nice babysitter and doing a little modelling in his attic until his nice warm…he didn’t even know what to call her in the privacy of his head. He would really have to work on this one. Anyway, he was going home. That’s it, as Billy Crystal was wont to say, when not throwing Momma from the train, and that’s all.
