Maxwell's Chain

by M. J. Trow

  The babysitter was long gone, the modelling drying nicely now that blue-jacketed Corporal Morley could sit his horse, the glass of warming SoCo drained and the cocoa mixed and ready to zap when Jacquie finally got home. Processing a load of unhelpful yobs was not her idea of a good evening out, but she was sure that Henry Hall would be satisfied. Quotas. Lists. Results. A little heavy community policing. Now they could all be lined up for David Cameron to hug. They couldn’t all have alibis for the Night in Question and it was now only a matter of time before the two cases were wrapped up and Leighford could slumber again for a while. It would be something like that, the stupid, sad bastards egging each other on, looking for trouble and finding it. Yes, Leighford could slumber at least until the season began and holiday-makers arrived, with their fights on the promenade, fatal divings from the pier, light-hearted stabbings under it, drug deals in the Little Tots’ Playground. She threw her keys on the table and collapsed on the sofa.

  ‘Well, that was a short bit of sleuthing,’ she said, as she eased off her shoes without untying them, to Maxwell’s irritation. She caught his expression. ‘What?’

  ‘Do you never untie your laces?’

  She looked down. ‘No, not really. I untie them when I put them back on, you Old Peculiar. Just as I don’t undo my pyjama buttons or my blouse. Waddya going to do about it? Anyway, as I said, that was quick. We finally got them all processed and I reckon we’ve got our man. Men. Boys. Whatever they count as, their ages are pretty varied. That was a pretty slick back flip by the way, down at Terry’s. Bearing in mind the Leighford rumour machine, by morning you’ll have sliced him in half with the roller blades attached to your knee caps.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘They should see me when I really get Mad. So,’ Maxwell steepled his fingers. Now that really irritated her, along with people who say ‘In the final analysis’ and ‘At this moment in time’. ‘You think you’ve got the perp, do you?’

  ‘Haven’t we?’ Jacquie raised her eyebrows. When Peter Maxwell used a phrase like ‘perp’ he was probably sniffing something.

  ‘Hmm, can’t be sure. Haven’t asked the cat yet – he’s usually pretty sound. But I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Go on then, Sherlock,’ she said. ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘You’ll have to bear with me,’ he said, stirring his cocoa with a biro, ‘because I don’t have a single scrap of evidence here, but it’s just a train of thought. Sort of thing old AJP Taylor used to come out with. You say their ages are pretty varied. Between what?’

  ‘Between fourteen and…um, seventeen, I think. You’d have to ask the desk sergeant.’

  ‘Right. Are they local?’

  ‘As Henry Hall suspected and you confirmed, they are from out of town. One from Tottingleigh, the rest from Littlehampton. And I don’t reckon they’re the ones you had an earlier run in with the other night, the night you and Bill did your Resurrection Men bit. You said one of them knew you.’

  ‘Called me a wanker,’ Maxwell remembered.

  ‘Must have known you pretty well, then’ Jacquie smiled.

  ‘So this lot tonight got here, how? In cars?’

  ‘Oddly enough, we don’t have a joy riding pack here, though I thought we might. They came on the bus, bizarrely enough. A couple even had Rover Tickets.’

  ‘How frugal,’ he smiled. ‘So, why did they make their way to lovely Leighford?’

  ‘They’ve all got ASBOs or restraining orders of some kind, stopping them from creating any kind of havoc where they live. A couple of them are tagged. They’re a lovely bunch.’

  ‘Tagged and bus-passed,’ Maxwell tutted, shaking his head. ‘Says it all about our schizoid society. Still, I expect their mothers love them.’ But even as he said it, he doubted it.

  ‘I expect they do, except the one put in hospital by her little boy last August. That was the one who squared up to me. The one you threw across Terry’s. I understand his mother’s sending you a medal.’

  ‘Issues with women in authority,’ Maxwell said gravely. ‘I expect he was once spoken to harshly by a cinema usherette. So, they came on the bus. From where?’

  ‘The Littlehampton Cruiser Service, apparently.’

  ‘Do we know their bus timetable?’

  ‘Um…not as such.’

  ‘Which means not at all, I assume.’

  ‘Well, I expect they know it down at the nick. I don’t know it off by heart, sitting here wrapped round some cocoa – which is excellent, by the way – no, sorry. I last knowingly caught a bus in 1992.’

  ‘Ah, you motorists, you’re all the same. Encyclopaedic as my knowledge is, I don’t know bus timetables either, but I can soon find out.’ He got up and went along the landing to the study, little used as they both preferred to work within smiling distance of each other. She could hear distant clicking as she switched on the telly, rummaging through the channels. Cold Case. New Tricks. Taggart (again) Plus One. Why was it always shop? He was soon back. ‘I Googled Leighford buses and, amazingly, got their timetables.’

  ‘Why amazingly?’

  ‘Well, I usually get an offer to buy Leighford on eBay, or sell me three new and used Leighfords from Amazon. And then, of course, Luscious Lesley from Leighford has a camcorder and is dying to chat to me. But I’m getting the hang of the thing, I think. Anyway, it’s on the screen.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have printed it out?’

  Maxwell looked horrified. ‘Print it out? Of course not. My skills begin and end with Googling. Apart from Google Earth. That makes no sense at all. I have people to print things for me, up at the school.’

  Jacquie sighed and put down her cocoa. She pointed at it. ‘That had better not have a skin on it when I get back,’ she said. ‘And before you ask, there’s nothing on. A Matter of Life and Death. The Magnificent Seven. Citizen Kane. And Metropolis. Same old tut every night.’ She came back in moments, without a printout and picked up the mug. She poked the surface of the drink tentatively. ‘Hmm, you’re very lucky,’ she said, sitting back down, ‘It’s touch and go.’

  ‘Well?’ He hadn’t fallen for her lure. Besides, he knew every word of the Metropolis screenplay.

  ‘You’re right. They could have done the first one, but not the second. Assuming they travelled by bus, of course. We have sightings that the bench was empty till well after midnight. Their last bus goes at 10.12.’ Despite the seriousness of the moment, she couldn’t help a little giggle. ‘For goodness’ sake, a gang that travels by bus. They’re a bit pathetic, aren’t they?’

  ‘They wear thin hooded sweatshirts in the middle of winter. They talk like New York street gangs although most of them have never been further west than Bournemouth. They have ASBOs because they have wee’d in the street. Of course they travel by bus. But they haven’t murdered anyone. I’m afraid I am going to add – yet.’ Maxwell sipped his drink. ‘Back to the sleuthing, is it?’

  Jacquie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so, actually. I think the whole “sighting” thing is a bit of a red herring. They stand out, don’t they? If someone asked you who you had seen at a particular time of night, in a particular place, then you wouldn’t mention the quiet bloke with a carrier bag, the two women walking fast because the night is cold, the little granny-type with her shitszu. You mention the gang of hoodies.’

  ‘True. Very true.’ They both stared into their mugs and let their minds wander. Dr Crippen could have been the man with the carrier bag, just before he cut off his wife’s head; what did he do that with, by the way? The two women walking fast were the Lapin sisters, on their way to gouging out the eyeballs of the women they worked for. And as for the little granny with her shitszu…Then Maxwell added, ‘What does Henry think?’

  ‘We didn’t get him in. He’s really been working all hours and the gossip is he was ready to strangle the late-night guy in the lab this evening when he messed him about over this phone thing.’

  ‘Ah, Angus,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So there was a phone, then?
I wondered. Is it any help?’

  ‘How do you know Angus?’ Jacquie asked. ‘He works in Chichester.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But he lives in Tottingleigh and once attended a series of WEA lectures I ran on the Role of the Nutter in History. He fitted right in. The phone?’

  ‘Hmmm, not much use,’ Jacquie shook her head. ‘We’re assuming it belongs to Lara Kent. If so, we will be able to trace calls made, calls received, texts, that sort of thing. But these pay-as-you-go phones, you know, they’re ten a penny. You don’t have to tell the truth when you register them. In fact, most of them you don’t have to fill anything in at all. You just top them up with the card that comes with them. If you do it with cash, that’s it. Untraceable.’

  ‘Why would she want an untraceable phone?’

  ‘No, no, not her. Her murderer.’

  Maxwell sat up sharply. ‘Are you suggesting that she knew her murderer? That Darren knew his murderer?’ He looked at her in the lamplight. ‘This is probably stupid, but I thought these killings were random.’

  ‘Why did you assume that?’

  ‘Well, she was from out of town, living…what, in a squat or something? He was local, living much rougher than squatting. She was trying to make a go of things, Big Issue, that kind of thing. He just seemed to have given up. Even street people have a hierarchy, a pecking order, don’t they? I just don’t imagine they would move in the same circles.’

  She laughed. ‘Max, for someone who is around kids all day, sometimes you have no clue. There are no circles. They go out when they have a bit of money. They go out and cadge when they haven’t. They go where their favourite bands are. They go inside for the warmth. If they are at the bottom of the heap, they’ll go inside for the off chance of a half-eaten pie. I’m not saying they were friends, but I bet they would have recognised each other.’

  ‘Polly Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, Mary Kelly,’ Maxwell murmured. ‘All victims of Jack the Ripper. Did they know each other? I wonder…’

  They were silent for a moment, imagining the cold, lonely world of both of the murder victims, random or planned, it made no difference. Once, they were beloved children, hugged, fed, kept warm. Someone had hopes for them, looked forward to seeing them grow up. Then, in what was just a heartbeat in the scheme of things, they were mysteries sent for solving on a pathologist’s slab.

  As one, they got up and went into Nolan’s room, where their little son lay sleeping. Together, silently, they wished on the stars circling his bedroom ceiling and leant their heads together. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t tell their wishes; they both knew they were just the same.

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday was the usual thing; middle of the week sort of time, so all the flakeys from both staff and pupil cohorts had gone down with a touch of the usual. But that was over and above the Plague of the Spanish Lady, Bird Flu, e-coli or whatever else was decimating the south coast that winter. Maxwell’s cover requests were, as usual, completely insane. Wednesday was supposed to contain two lessons of what teachers laughingly call protected time, so obviously, he had been asked to cover a dance lesson and a childbirth module for Health and Social Sciences. One of those he was a dab hand at; but who wants to learn the foxtrot these days? And he could be struck off for trying the Lambada (although in his day, the word had meant ‘scooter’). He palmed off the dance class onto the Teaching Assistant – totally illegal, but since she had a degree in drama and dance, it seemed the natural choice. As Maxwell would have said, had he been known for his puns, she had De Knees for it. The mystery was why Denise was a teaching assistant in the History Department; another cracking appointment by Legs Diamond and his Flying Monkeys of the SLT. The childbirth class he gave to Juliette Simmonds of the English Department, a woman so extremely pregnant that she could become a hands on example at any moment – Minnie Ha Ha, Breaking Waters.

  Metaphorically dusting his hands together to celebrate a job well done, he ensconced himself in his office with cries of ‘I owe you one’ and picked up his phone. He jabbed the speed dial and waited, humming a tune he couldn’t quite get out of his head. If only he had been concentrating in the Sixties, he might be able to put a name to it. The Cambridge History Tripos was all well and good, but the real world had passed him by. He was forty-six before he realised the Doors were anything more than part of the furniture. With this particular tune he could get as far as ‘De dum de di di di di de de de dum,’ but after that it was a dead loss.

  ‘Yes?’ someone had picked up at the other end. ‘History office.’

  ‘Oh, Paul. Max. Are you free at all today?’

  ‘No, I’ve been given lots of cover. Would you believe two in one day?’

  ‘Tsk, tsk. Well, everyone’s off with a touch of that thing that’s going around. Skivers’ disease, that’s the one.’

  ‘Was it anything important, Max? Only, I’ve got reports to check. Oh, not yours, of course. Immaculate as ever.’

  ‘Oh, still? Never mind, Paul. I just wanted a word about…’ Maxwell’s door opened and Gregory Adair walked in and sat down opposite the Head of Sixth Form, ‘…setting Year Nine.’

  ‘In February? Are you bonkers, Max?’ Time was when Paul Moss would never have dared ask the Great Man such a question. Even now, he felt his heart stop the second he’d said it.

  ‘Well, yes, of course,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Hence the name. Bye now.’ He looked up at the NQT, sitting stiffly in the chair. ‘Can I help you, Gregory? Only, this is my protected time, you see, and…’

  ‘Look, Maxwell,’ the man snarled. ‘Stop following me, right. I’m fed up with it. I saw you last night.’

  Maxwell looked at him levelly. ‘Before you make an idiot of yourself and also force me to report you to your mentor, I feel I must point out that that is exactly what I did do. Stop, I mean. I was just going to say hello, like you do when you meet a colleague out and about, but you disappeared up that passageway quicker than a rat up a drainpipe and I let you go.’

  ‘Lost me, you mean,’ snapped the NQT.

  Maxwell leant forward and in a voice that generations of children had learnt to dread, said, ‘Listen to me, sonny, and listen well, because I will say this only once.’ The chilling thing was that there was no sign of Allo! Allo!, no funny voice at all. ‘I don’t care what you are doing in your spare time, but I suspect that it is both sordid and underhand. For all I know it may actually be illegal. You are this far,’ he held up his thumb and forefinger pressed together, ‘from failing your NQT year. What say we speed everything up and make that happen now?’ The fingers clicked and Adair flinched backwards. ‘However,’ and Maxwell leant back, clasping his hands behind his head, ‘you do seem to know a hawk from a handsaw, as our English colleagues would once have had it when they knew enough to quote from anybody, and so I think we’ll give you another chance. But I suggest that you stop skulking in passageways after dark and especially that, if you see Ms Lessing of an evening, you smile politely at her and make sure you are not doing anything untoward.’

  ‘Ms Lessing?’ Gregory Adair was confused. Sweat stood out on his brow and upper lip.

  ‘Oh, yes. Her spies are everywhere, and so is she. Don’t annoy her, Gregory. Don’t annoy me. Walk wide of us both. Don’t annoy anyone and you might just make it. Right,’ he shuffled some papers on his desk. ‘Off you bugger now, I have work to do.’

  The NQT could hardly get out quickly enough and actually collided in the doorway with Paul Moss.

  ‘Oops!’ A born raconteur was Paul Moss. ‘What are you on about, Max?’ the Head of History asked as he closed the door.

  Maxwell nodded his head towards the departing colleague. ‘I wanted a word about the great pedagogue there and he came in,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, right.’ The light dawned. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you’d gone a bit nuts.’

  ‘And as I concurred, I probably have. But I really think we need to keep an eye on him, Paul. I saw him in town last night,
behaving very oddly. He was meeting with someone and I couldn’t see who.’

  ‘That’s not a crime, Max,’ Paul reminded him gently. Perhaps in Maxwell’s day, NQT’s weren’t allowed company. In Maxwell’s day of course, such people were called probationers and those eccentric Wright brothers were mucking about on Kitty Hawk beach.

  ‘No, I grant you that. But he is over-reacting to everything anyone says and if a kid did that, you’d suspect them immediately. And rightly so.’

  ‘I’ll put it in his record. We’ll talk again in a week or so.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ said Maxwell, although neither of them really believed that. He waved his hand as Moss left his office. Now then, priorities. First, coffee; not the awful stuff that Adair had provided, the sweepings of some supermarket floor, but some of the good stuff from home. Then, a bit of brainstorming with Nursie. When it came to life’s failures, Sylvia Matthews was an expert. They all came to her, at some stage. Either they thought they were pregnant and wanted out. Or they thought they might be gay. Or, in one case that had kept the staff room agog for weeks, they had thought they were gay, but were now pretty sure they weren’t. Everybody was waiting for the first gay pregnancy, such was the speed of genetic engineering these days. Sylv would know the ones who were having trouble at home, had left home or hung out with those who had. Maxwell needed to know whether they should be looking out for anyone. It had come pretty close to home with Darren Blackwell and he didn’t want it any nearer to his doorstep than that.

  Jacquie had paperwork again. Surprise, surprise. As Henry Hall had said, when you bring in a job lot of hooded ASBOs, you must expect the odd bit of paper to come your way. She was perfectly sure that they had not murdered Lara Kent or Darren Blackwell. But they had clearly done something, and if she could pin it on them, then perhaps their ASBO radius could be increased to include Leighford. And Brighton. Then it would be London, Colchester, Belgium and all points east.