by M. J. Trow
‘So?’
‘So. Lara Kent’s stepfather was a bit that way, wasn’t he? Enjoyed the attentions of the more mature lady, as he probably puts on his message board.’
Hall was stunned. Maxwell had just made an Internet connection.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Henry,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Just because I can’t do it doesn’t mean I can’t speaka da lingo. I can’t climb the Eiger either, but I’ve read accounts of men who have. If I couldn’t, most of my classes and I would have lost any common language years ago. But, do you see my point? Dierdre went out looking for toy boys. Mike Crown went out looking for older women. In a smallish world, they may well have met. And I suspect that on at least one occasion, that meeting took place in the deluxe screen in the Leighford multiplex. Hence, no plus ones for either of them. Didn’t you ever go to the pictures for nookie, Henry? I didn’t, of course; I went to see the film.’ He sat back, arms folded.
Maxwell still didn’t think Mike Crown did it. He still believed all three murders were connected, logically, not by virtue of them all having met the schizophrenic madman that Mike Crown would have to be under his urbane exterior. But it would give Hall something to chew on while he, Peter Maxwell, got on with the business of finding the real killer. He needed time, time with Metternich, time with Jacquie, time with his plastic Light Brigade, chewing over time, when he could link all the loops of mail and knit himself something a bit more cast-iron than a tune going through his head and a nagging suspicion that he had missed a glance, a nuance, a touch of a hand. It was like having an itch in the middle of his brain. He needed to get home to scratch it.
Henry Hall got up slowly. He extended his hand. ‘Thanks for coming in,’ he said blandly. ‘We’ll keep in touch.’ He switched off the tape recorder.
So, thought Maxwell. That’s what it boils down to. Get the answer and get rid of Maxwell. Never mind. ‘Don’t mention it, Henry. Glad to have been of help.’
As soon as Maxwell let the door swing closed behind him, hurrying towards the light, Henry Hall reached for the phone. ‘Get me Helen Marshall at Chichester,’ he said. ‘Put her through to my office. I’m on my way back there now.’ He stood up and looked thoughtfully at the chair just vacated by Peter Maxwell. They were old sparring partners now and for a moment he wondered whether this was just a Maxwellism to throw him off the scent. He shook his head; no, this time he must want the wheels to move smoothly. This time, it really was personal. He went off to get his phone call.
Maxwell went down the steps of Leighford nick, settling his scarf more tightly round his throat. It was now hours until half term, the most dreaded one, when snow and weather mayhem most often hit. He remembered one, many years ago. The school was just reaching that peak of hysteria that prefaced any break-up day, no matter how short the coming holiday was. The air was electric with suppressed excitement. The half term slog from Christmas up through the wet and miserable months of January and February had been long and tiring. Mock examinations, unit tests, parents’ evenings, coursework collection. Suddenly, the cry went up. ‘It’s snowing!’ Thirty Year Eights had overturned desks and chairs and run to the windows, where they pressed their little winter-snotty noses to the glass. And there, like feathers floating down, were the biggest snowflakes Maxwell had ever seen. They didn’t drive stabbing on the window like the little frozen bullets that usually came this late in the year, halfway between rain and slush. No; they came down lazily enough, but with the clear intention of muffling the whole town in a white blanket of beauty, covering everything and making it new. In that year, he had no Jacquie to go home to. Metternich wasn’t even a twinkle in some evil tom cat’s eye. Nolan was a dream not to be dreamt, for fear of it never coming true. So, he had let the kids go early and had walked out after their dancing feet, to ride home slowly on White Surrey through the thickening flakes. The whole town was clothed in white and great gouts of snow hung on every branch. Roads were almost impassable within half an hour and Leighford ground to a beautiful halt.
Fairyland turned to nightmare when he got home; it was the Night Before Shopping, and, all through the house, there was nothing to eat, not even a mouse, this being pre-Metternich. That weekend, Maxwell tried to kid himself he was empathising with the starving defenders of some beleaguered Crusader castle. Did it ever snow in Jerusalem, he wondered? Or Malta? In fact, he was eventually reduced to eating a very elderly tub of glace cherries at the back of the cupboard before the thaw set in on the Monday and he was able to get out. He had felt a bit of a wuss actually. His own schooldays were in the Midlands, which were sodden and unkind. In the Granta days, he had stood at the gates of Jesus with Cambridge winds whistling in from Siberia. But the usually warm south had knocked all that grit out of him.
This morning he could feel the chill of impending meterological disaster in the wind off the sea. So much for global warming. So, with his near starvation in mind, he was turning towards Asda when he heard his name being called in a hoarse stage whisper. He turned in the direction of the voice.
‘Max. Over here.’
‘Jacquie?’
‘I’m over here, in the smokers’ shelter.’
He made his way round the corner of the building and there stood the light of his life, wrapped against the weather and ankle deep in dog ends.
‘Max. What did you tell them?’ She kissed him briefly.
‘Just that Dierdre rather liked younger men. And that Mike Crown liked older women. The rest, Henry made up for himself.’
‘Max, that wasn’t very nice. About Dierdre, I mean.’
‘Jacquie, my love. Dierdre did like younger men. They were her hobby. Instead of, oh, I don’t know. Knitting. Embroidery. Persian cats.’
‘No, honestly? I always thought that was just you being rude.’
‘No, that was me being honest. She would probably have told you as well, if you’d have got her as drunk as I did at the Christmas Party 1989.’
‘Max!’
‘Well, she got herself drunk. I was just there when she decided to tell someone. I may have told her the punch was alcohol free, but what I meant to say was that it was alcohol and it was free. The rest is History.’
‘So Henry is off to interview Mike Crown?’
‘He didn’t say. But I expect so.’
‘So…you really have solved the case!’ She leant up and kissed his cheek. ‘Well done!’
‘Your congratulations are a little premature,’ he said, ‘but thank you for them all the same.’
‘Well, it will soon be all tied up.’
‘No, I mean, it isn’t Mike Crown.’
‘What?’ She stepped back and crushed an abandoned Zippo underfoot.
‘No, it’s a lot more sinister than that. I think there is a link between the three killings. There have been too many links in this chain and I keep catching them out of the corner of my eye, so to speak. I just feel that someone is dropping clues for me, like Hansel leaving crumbs in the forest. And so far, either I haven’t seen them all and I’ve taken a wrong turning, or the murderer is being a bit mean with his bread. But I’ll get him.’
‘Or her?’
‘No, not her. I don’t think these are women’s crimes.’
‘Sexist pig.’
‘Very possibly.’ He rearranged his scarf and squared his shoulders. ‘But meanwhile, I am going into town for provisions, against the day. Don’t like the look of that sky.’
‘Max, I did a huge shop only two days ago.’
‘Do we have milk?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Bread?’
‘Freezer’s full of the stuff.’
‘Cheese?’
‘Smoked, mousetrap, e-number squeezy and goat.’
‘Goat? Oh, Jesus! Cocoa?’
‘Are we planning a war movies weekend again? ’Cos Tesco were fresh out of Spam and Snoek.’ Maxwell was quietly impressed that his light o’ love should be familiar with the ghastly rations of the People’s War, but he’d die
rather than show it.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re planning a snowed-in weekend. Believe these old bones and this long memory and remember where you heard it first. There’ll be ice on the Front – “the foreskin of the sea” to quote R D Blackmore, who I always thought had a rather odd take on beach management. I’ll see you Chez Lui later. Are you fetching Nole?’
‘He’s being delivered. Apparently, there’s a party.’
‘A party? What a little roué you have given birth to, Detective Sergeant Carpenter.’ He turned to face her. ‘As a matter of fact, on that subject, will you…?’
The door swung open behind them. The sour-faced DS Davies stood there, Benson and Hedges already between his lips. ‘Oh, hello. Interrupting something, am I?’ he sneered.
‘By no means,’ said Maxwell, smile pasted on. ‘I’m not sure you have the intellect to be a gooseberry. I was just going.’ He kissed Jacquie goodbye and strolled off in the direction of town, raising an arm in farewell to the nick in general. A bit of light provisioning and a lot of thought; it was what a walk on a cold February morning was made for.
He walked past several supermarkets as being too crowded. Asda was crawling; Tesco crammed to the doors. Lidl never sold anything he recognised and Somerfield was so cheap they regularly organised trolley saunters. Waitrose he passed because since the change incident he was unofficially banned. Finally, he came to the shop he wanted; a nice little deli with doughnuts to die for and a rather nice line in hot chocolate, made with rather nice actual chocolate, not freeze-dried floor sweepings. Doughnuts and chocolate wouldn’t keep the wolf from the door for long, but it would make the evening go with a rather cholesterol-heavy swing and, who knows, oil the wheels of logical thought.
He pushed open the door and went in, to the spicy, slightly oily warmth of the delicatessen. The counter of chilled foods drew him as usual and his short list grew by several items. Marinated anchovies, obviously. Some nice chorizo, for one of Jacquie’s eye-popping cassoulets, just the thing to keep the cold out. A nice piece of Stilton, to be eaten in secret by him, before she got home, the only British thing he could see. Jacquie had never quite embraced the idea of a cheese allowed, no, encouraged, to go mouldy. What was the point on a sell-by date when the stuff had mould all the way through? He looked up and stepped back in amazement.
‘Nicholas! My word, what a hard-working chap you are. Is this your day job?’
‘No, Mr Maxwell. It is my job job,’ the boy smiled. ‘I left the burger bar. Too violent and too greasy, in the end. And this is proper food, isn’t it? What can I get you?’
Maxwell gave him his order. ‘Oh, and six doughnuts, jam, that is, none of that glazed nonsense. And a jar of that rather nice organic cocoa you do here. Thanks.’
The boy handed the carrier bag over the counter and took Maxwell’s card in exchange. ‘If you’d just like to enter your PIN, Mr Maxwell. Thanks.’ A distant burst of music came from his jeans back pocket. A look of annoyance came over his face and he pulled out his phone and switched it off. He looked up to see Maxwell looking at him rather oddly. ‘Not allowed at work,’ he said, by way of explanation. It was the deli equivalent of those little blue bits of tacky kids had to wear over their piercings in the more populist establishments.
‘No, I should think not,’ said Maxwell. ‘Or at all, in my opinion.’ The boy remembered Mad Max’s opinions from Leighford High. There was a rumour the old curmudgeon had a bucket of water in his office to act as a repository for phones such as Nick’s. He took his card and raised the carrier bag in salute. ‘Thanks, Nicholas. Um, tell me, do you youngsters still go to the cinema much?’
Nick laughed. ‘If it’s a good film, yes. Something that would be better on the big screen. Spiderman. Lord of the Rings. 300. Those sort of things. Otherwise, we usually wait for the DVD. Or the game.’
‘Game?’
‘You know, XBox, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, I see. But not all films are made into games, I shouldn’t think. Like, ooh, a Hugh Grant film, that kind of thing.’ He watched with interest as the boy blushed, a rising tide that washed up from the neck of his faux-Italian waiter shirt right to the roots of his hair.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he muttered. ‘Well, Mr Maxwell, I must get on,’ and he bent over the chilled cabinet and started rearranging random meats.
‘Of course, Nicholas,’ Maxwell said, making for the door. ‘Ciao.’ He thought it was a suitably delicatessen sort of signing off. Well, he thought to himself, I wonder who he was on that list on Monday night. Which of the plus ones represented Nicholas Campbell? He walked off up the street to the bus station, humming a very old Sixties song and feeling very much closer to something. He just hoped it was a solution.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday night. Traditional Catholic fish and chips at Columbine, courtesy of Jacquie on her way home from the nick. Maxwell smelt the smell of grease and carbohydrate with a little less than his usual enthusiasm; five doughnuts in six hours will do that to a man.
‘Max,’ Jacquie called from the kitchen. ‘Chips!’ She stuck her head round the door. ‘I got you a pickled onion.’
‘Wonderful.’ Maxwell tried to summon up his taste buds. ‘I got you a doughnut.’
The crinkling of greaseproof paper came from the kitchen. ‘It’s an awfully big bag, Max, for one doughnut.’
He joined her, gathering salt, vinegar, sauces, both brown and red and some glasses for the obligatory Coke. He kissed her ear. Not deliberately; he was aiming for her cheek but she turned to get the plates from the cupboard. ‘It had a friend. Some friends. I’ve been doing some thinking and somehow they just got eaten. Sorry.’
She turned and smiled at him. She patted his stomach, still amazingly flat bearing in mind his lifestyle. All right, he always taught standing up, but modelling was another matter. You can’t do a Light Dragoon shako justice standing up, he always said. Nobody listened. ‘A three doughnut problem; it must be serious.’
He pulled a rueful face. ‘Worse than you think,’ he said. ‘It was, and remains, a five doughnut problem. Marvellous, isn’t it? How we’ve come on since Conan Doyle’s day? Changing the subject, is it snowing yet?’
‘Max,’ she said, moving him aside. ‘It isn’t going to snow. It’s February.’
‘Which often has snow. And what will poor Robin do then, poor thing?’
‘As you say. But it isn’t going to snow. Global warming.’
‘Ha! A fallacy promulgated by the sellers of air conditioning. And Geography teachers who have so little to fill their lives.’
‘If you insist. However, you’ll excuse me if I get on with my chips and leave the snowshoe search until later.’
‘That seems reasonable. What else have I got, other than a pickled onion?’
‘Cod and mushy peas. I’ve got a pie. Swap?’
‘No. Cod is fine. Food for the brain. Table?’
‘Lap?’
‘Lap it is.’
They took their meals into the sitting room and sat, trays on laps, for the usual Friday ritual. Except that this evening it was not as usual. It was the last day of a half term, so Maxwell would be at home for nine days, with a mind whizzing back and forth looking for mischief. Nolan was at his party, getting high as a kite on excitement and e-numbers. Any minute now he’d start jostling his hosts for the goodie bag. Metternich was next door, the still confused recipient of Miss Troubridge’s adoration, shamefully wondering from time to time if he could, after all, get all her head in his mouth in one go.
Jacquie’s pie was too hot to allow for simultaneous speech. The joys of the microwave. Maxwell’s brain was otherwise engaged and so it was a silent meal. There was an air of expectation, of something waiting to be said and, finally, steak and kidney vanquished, Jacquie said it.
‘So, who dunnit then, Max?’
Maxwell fiddled with a recalcitrant fishbone for a moment, not the best take-off of the Queen Mother he had ever done, then looked up. ‘Dun w
hat?’
‘You know,’ she said. ‘Nolan is whooping it up somewhere else; he’s not here to overhear you talking felony. So, tell me. Who’s your money on?’
He finished up his last bit of batter and mushy peas and put down his tray with a contented sigh. He turned to her. ‘Nothing quite like fish and chips, is there?’
‘Max!’
‘All right. Well, now. It isn’t Bill Lunt.’
‘We all know that, I’d like to think. Who else isn’t it?’
‘Me.’
‘As before, I think…’
‘Quite a few of your colleagues would like it to be me. Alan Kavanagh for one. Bob Davies for another.’
‘Max? You’ve always enjoyed being in the frame before.’
He laughed. ‘Yes. It’s always about me, isn’t it? But, seriously, Jacquie. They really resent me, because they all fancy you.’
She stopped eating and looked at him. ‘Oh, come on. Where did that come from?’
‘Eyes, mainly. As you know, I invented body language. The languid smile that turns to a leer, that turns to a tongue on the floor – you know the sort of thing. But not just that – Henry Hall as well. Look, Jacquie, don’t you think we might…?’
But Jacquie was off on one. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. They’re colleagues, that’s all. I’ve never given them even the slightest reason to…’
He clapped his hands, his way of getting the attention of anything from a cat to a king, by way of Nine Pee Queue. ‘Jacquie. I wasn’t suggesting you encouraged them. I was merely pointing out that they are seriously annoyed at having their most gorgeous woman policeman shacked up with an old git like me. Moreover, an old git who is closer than they would like to rather a lot of dead bodies. The way they see it, sooner or later, I will, in fact, be the guy.’ He had to stop watching Monk. One day, he just knew there’d be an episode called Mr Monk and the Very Irritating Teacher.
Jacquie came over to him and sat on the arm of his chair. She rested her cheek on the top of his barbed wire head. She put her arms round his neck and murmured, ‘Is that true?’
