Maxwell's Chain

by M. J. Trow

  ‘What sort of link?’

  ‘That’s the problem. I don’t know. I think if we start with really recent, such as in the last…what do you think, three months? Murders, of course, but assaults too. Anything with a youngish victim for starters.’

  Asked for an opinion, he was rather stuck, so settled for a simple, ‘That should do it.’

  ‘And South Coast based. Let’s not go into London, that would be too wide.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So, Alan, let’s get this clear. November, December, January. South Coast, certainly no further north than Reading. No further west than… let’s say Bournemouth. Don’t bother with Kent – excuse the pun – I think that’s too far. Don’t worry about category for now. So, any age, either sex. And, Alan?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Unsolveds only, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously. Er, why only unsolved?’

  She sighed. This might take longer with two, when the two included Alan Kavanagh. ‘Because, Alan, if the crime has been solved, then that person cannot have committed our crimes, hmm?’

  ‘He can if the person they got didn’t do it. No crimes committed in the last three months have come to trial yet. So, they might have the wrong man. Or woman.’

  Jacquie was stunned. She did a quick reappraisal of Alan Kavanagh. ‘True. Well spotted, Alan. All right, solved and unsolved.’ She bent to her screen as her computer ground into life. Blimey! What a dark horse. Then, her preconceptions were replaced, intact.

  ‘How are we going to do this, Jacquie?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How are we going to look these things up?’

  ‘Using HOLMES, Alan. How else?’

  ‘But, don’t we need DCI Hall’s say so before we log on to HOLMES?’

  ‘Yes. As a rule. But we’re doing a bit of personal work here, Alan. That’s what it’s all about – thinking outside the box.’

  He put his hands in his lap, like a sulky child. ‘I’m not comfortable with this, then, Jacquie,’ he almost whined.

  She used her best Nolan-controlling voice. ‘Alan. For goodness’ sake. We are helping in this case. We will save valuable hours. We may even,’ she lowered her voice so he had to lean closer, ‘save a life.’

  His eyes were like saucers. Jacquie was encouraged. She was obviously getting better at this. She had never managed to make it work on Nolan before. ‘Whose?’

  ‘Whose what?’

  ‘Whose life?’

  ‘Well, if we knew that, Alan, we wouldn’t be doing this, would we? We could just put a police guard on them and then they would be all right. It’s because we don’t know who the next victim is that we are looking for clues in past cases.’ She looked across him as he sat in front of his computer and saw total confusion. She sighed. ‘Just log on, Alan, would you, and look for murders in the parameters I just set.’ She thought through her last sentence. ‘Look for murders where I told you, for those months.’ Her screen was active and she finally logged on. ‘Let’s go.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Come on, Alan. Don’t be shy. DCI Hall will be chuffed and it will be one in the eye for the others when you come out with the info.’

  ‘You’d let me tell him?’ Kavanagh was ecstatic. She must fancy him after all!

  Jacquie saw a window from which she could leap to escape the undoubted fire of Henry Hall’s anger. ‘Why not,’ she said, with faux magnanimity. ‘I can see that sergeant’s job for you, after all. After this you could name your price.’

  ‘Cool!’ Kavanagh bent to his task and soon his fingers were blurs. But, sadly, his printer remained silent, as did Jacquie’s. Nothing seemed to fit and their initial enthusiasm began to dim. The room was filled with the tap of keys and the odd exclamation of delight, followed by the groan of disappointment. Whose idea was this, anyway?

  Jacquie broke the silence. Without pausing in her tapping, she said, ‘By the way, Alan, how did it go?’

  He did pause. Multi-tasking was not his forté. ‘How did what go?’

  ‘Finding Gregory Adair. You know, the chap from Leighford High? The one we think may have been involved with Dierdre Lessing?’

  Blank incomprehension.

  ‘Alan? Do you work here? Are you from here? As in Earth?’ She realised the extent of his confusion and made her question plainer. ‘Alan. Did you do as I believe DCI Hall asked and try to find Gregory Adair?’

  His reply was virtually inaudible, but she could read lips well enough.

  ‘You forgot? Alan, I don’t believe it. He only asked you to do one thing. How could you forget?’

  He was distraught. ‘I came out of the interview room and…and DS Davies asked me to go and get a file. It took ages and, well, when I came back to the room, he’d gone and then…well, I forgot.’ He looked close to tears. He’d never be a DCI now. From where he was, even human being seemed to be in the dizzying heights above.

  ‘OK, Alan, let’s think this through. It might be all right. DCI Hall and my…Peter Maxwell had a bit more of a chat after he sent you to find Gregory Adair. They may be on another tack, so try not to worry. But I think, in the morning, it might be an idea if you try and find him.’

  ‘But tomorrow’s Saturday,’ he whined.

  ‘Indeed it is, Alan. It is the day when DCs who can’t find their arse with both hands catch up on the messes they created Monday to Friday. Meanwhile, get looking. There must be something that matches what we want.’ And to show him how, she bent her head to her screen again and let her fingers do the walking.

  Maxwell Junior had woken up. The chocolate on his cheeks was traced with the lines of angry tears. He was confused. One minute he was at some kind of mad running about place, with chocolate falling from the sky and the kid with one eyebrow who darkened everybody’s life, like the scythesman at his elbow. The next, he was hot and grumpy in a dark room. No people. No light. No chocolate and, worst of all, no mother! What was happening to his world? Why was he sticky? Where was everybody? Even the kid with one eyebrow seemed to have vanished. There was one quick way to answer all his questions and that was to yell. So he yelled.

  Downstairs, deep in thought, Maxwell Senior nearly died of shock. The room had been so quiet, with just the slight static hum of the baby monitor and the pilchardy snoring of Metternich to break the silence. The sudden scream was so disorienting it took Maxwell a microsecond to remember that it came from his ex-sleeping son. He was up the stairs in double quick time, Metternich on his heels, although what the cat thought he could do being minus opposable thumbs, Maxwell was at a loss to guess. Perhaps the old black and white bugger intended to sink his fangs into Nolan’s scruff and see how it went.

  ‘Sshhh, Nole. It’s all all right, old son. Daddy’s here. Look at you, all chocolaty.’ Maxwell looked down into the cot. ‘Just like your bedsheets.’ He held him further away. ‘Oh, and your jamas. And daddy’s shirt. How lovely. Mummy made a bit of a duff decision there, I think. Let’s get you changed and washed and see how you feel then, shall we? Count, pass me a clean pair of jamas, would you? You can’t? Oh, well, come and tickle Nole with your whiskers. You’re good at that. Look, Noley, Metternich.’

  The cat obligingly jumped up onto the edge of the changing mat and played ‘Catch Metternich’s Whiskers Without Getting Maimed’ – Nolan’s favourite game and one which he always won, thanks to the unexpected good humour of the most feared quadruped in Leighford. When you got to Metternich’s age, you didn’t get mad, you got mellow.

  Maxwell, grateful for the help, changed, wiped, re-pyjamaed and soothed the little boy, but, after all the attention, he was awake and wanting more. More Daddy. More chocolate. More of something, which he sensed wasn’t forthcoming. His lip trembled as Maxwell laid him back in his cot.

  ‘Hmmm. What do you want, my little one?’ Memory came to help him. ‘A new toy? Would you like something new, Nolan? Bad lad, but still, we all have our off days, eh?’ He picked him up and put him over his shoulder, as he had since the boy was one minute old. ‘Let’s g
o and see what we can find, shall we?’

  ‘T’nick. Dada.’

  ‘You’ve arrived,’ Maxwell said to the cat, over his free shoulder. ‘You are higher in the pecking order than me. Clever boy,’ he said to his son. ‘I’ll assume that in fact you were after starting a conversation about the late, great Chancellor of Austria, rather than calling the cat. Come on, let’s see where Daddy put the toy.’

  Nolan had woken up totally now and was leaning over Maxwell’s shoulder, grabbing air in the direction of the cat who, in his own quiet way, was chuffed to death that his Boy knew his name. A vole would go free tonight, in honour of this momentous day. It would be called Nolan’s Day and it would be remembered for ever.

  Going into the sitting room, Maxwell cast around in search of the lurid bag that Rebecca had handed him earlier. A small corner was sticking up from under a sofa cushion. One day, Maxwell promised himself, I will go through this furniture and become a multi-millionaire in small change. Meanwhile, he rummaged one-handed in the bag and finally brought out a small soft toy in the shape of a giraffe.

  ‘Look, Nole. A giraffe. What shall we call it?’

  ‘’Raffe.’

  ‘That seems fair enough. Though George would have been funnier. George Raffe. Get it? Surly film actor of yesteryear. Did that thing with a coin between his fingers. Oh, never mind. Shall we take the giraffe to bed? He looks tired.’

  Nolan looked at the giraffe and then at his father. Was the old duffer daft or what? It was a stuffed giraffe and not very convincing at that. How could the thing look tired with its eyes stitched open? Hadn’t his dad seen A Clockwork Orange? He stole a glance at Metternich, who winked one eye, imperceptibly. Nolan got the message and yawned extravagantly, as did the cat.

  ‘Yes. That’s it. You and the giraffe are tired. Up to bed we go.’ Maxwell hoisted the boy aloft again and took him upstairs. To Nolan’s astonishment, he was, in fact, shattered. It had been a hard day, what with socialising and such. He was asleep almost before his head hit his still chocolaty pillow.

  Maxwell crept from the room and back downstairs. He was sorry now that he had sent Jacquie out into the night. Not only was it cold out there, but he needed to crystallise his thoughts. Still, he had Metternich. He wasn’t great on ideas, but he was logical enough and a great listener. As sounding boards go, he made a good mouser. Maxwell threw himself down on the sofa and leapt up again almost as quickly. He had sat on the bag that had once contained Nolan’s giraffe and now just contained his door plaque.

  He sat down again, more carefully, and examined the piece of wood. It was rather well made, rectangular and, inevitably, painted blue. The child’s name was in the middle in a rather fanciful script, which the teacher in Maxwell thought rather unhelpful to the boy, should he be searching for his own room and relying on the label. However, in the scheme of things, it was probably a little more landing-enhancing than a straight lower case n-o-l-a-n. Around the edge, there was a repeating pattern that seemed random at first. Then, as his eyes focused on it better, it resolved itself into Nolan’s name, in the same letters, but joined together so that it ran together, on and on, until it joined up with itself to make an unbroken frieze. It then further developed as he looked harder, so that he could see that it still read, with a little imagination, the name upside down as well. How clever. Although his Light Brigade were to a man works of art, Maxwell wasn’t artistic in the accepted sense. But, rather like Pope Thing XVI, he knew what he liked. And he liked this. He knew what it was called, as well. He had dipped into the da Vinci Code DVD at school; it was useful on so many levels in cover lessons. SRS, pondering the meaning of Christianity; History, learning fascinating facts about da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope; Maths, er…you had to be able to learn something from Maths. You could even use it, he had discovered, to put whole classes to sleep. This thing was called a… what was it, now, a chain ambigram? You couldn’t do it with all names, just ones with a repeating letter or close to a repeat. Nolan wasn’t perfect, but the ‘o’ could look like an ‘a’ if you added a little tail. Some names were impossible. Peter, for instance, unless your p’s were very unusual; Jacquie; Henry. He started going through all the names he could think of as an idea began to form in his mind. Alan, as in Kavanagh. Possible, in fact really good, as the ‘a’s could intertwine. This also worked for Lara. Darren would need work. Maxwell pulled a piece of paper towards him. Yes, that would work, with the ‘n’ given an extra curl and the ‘e’ upside down looking like a Times New Roman ‘a’. He scribbled faster. Dierdre was a gift. He hardly had to fuss with that at all. He rubbed his hand through his hair. What else? Oh God, what else? Emma. That worked. Greg. He reached for the phone and jabbed the speed dial for Jacquie’s mobile.

  ‘Hello?’ Jacquie sounded far away.

  ‘It’s me. I know who’s next.’

  ‘What?’ Jacquie stopped scrolling and flapped a hand at Kavanagh to stop tapping his keys. She wanted to be sure she heard this. ‘Who?’

  ‘Emma Lunt. Or Greg Adair. Or Alan Kavanagh.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jacquie couldn’t help but look up at the unknowing colleague trying to look helpful across the room. ‘So, anyone involved with the case, in other words.’

  ‘No. Just them at the moment. I’m working out the ambigrams.’

  ‘Pardon, Max. The ambiwhats?’

  ‘Ambigrams. They can be used as a sort of code, but I think here they have been used almost as a… well, a sort of divining rod, to choose who goes next. Look, Jacquie, just come home. Perhaps you could warn Alan Kavanagh if you have his number.’

  ‘Oh, I do have his number. But wait.’ She raised her head and looked at Kavanagh. ‘Alan. You may be the next victim.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alan says “what?”,’ she said into the phone.

  ‘He’s there?’

  ‘Yes. He’s helping me look for previous. He’s actually being quite useful.’ It was hard to tell who was the most amazed to hear that, but only Kavanagh blushed.

  ‘Well, bring him home with you, then. At least we’ll know where one of the potential victims is if he is in our spare room.’

  ‘Max, first Bill Lunt, now Alan Kavanagh. Thirty-eight is turning into a protection unit Safe House as we speak. Are you serious?’

  ‘Deadly. Both of you, come home now. I know who might be next and I also know who did it. Well, I know who it might be. I’ve got to tie it down a bit more first. I certainly know the general area where we ought to look.’

  ‘Max, I…’

  ‘Just get home, Jacquie. The Count and I will have it all sorted by the time you get here.’ And he rang off.

  Jacquie sat opposite Alan Kavanagh silently digesting what she had just been told. Which was, she had to admit, rather little and rather garbled. Even so, she came to a decision and stood up, reaching behind her for her coat, thrown over the back of her chair. She’d heard Maxwell’s rendition of Charlton Heston’s Major Dundee often enough to know when the man meant business – “I have but three orders of march – when I say come, you come; when I say go, you go. And when I say run, you follow me and run like hell.”

  ‘Come on, Alan. Log off, there’s a good constable, and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Back to mine. When Max says I am sitting opposite a possible future murder victim, I don’t leave that person sitting like a duck.’

  ‘Me?’ In a strange way, Kavanagh was quite elated. Someone cared enough to want to kill him. If only he had known how many minds that thought had been through, he would perhaps have been less pleased. It had begun with his childminder all those years ago. He tapped a few keys and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

  They clattered down the back stairs and out into the cold night. Frost ringed the windscreens of their cars and the waning moon shone through a halo.

  ‘Shall I follow you?’ Kavanagh asked, through chattering teeth.

  ‘Keep close,’ Jacquie said. She was keen to help Ka
vanagh avoid being murdered, but his choice of sandwich, on the most recent occasion clearly cheese and onion, made sharing an impossible option. ‘It gets complicated after the Flyover.’ The Ka purred out of the car park, watched by Ken Wertham, the desk sergeant in his glass boothed eyrie inside the front door. Kavanagh’s Peugeot was in hot pursuit.

  ‘Lucky bastard,’ he muttered under his breath. Ken Wertham could jump to conclusions for England. Then he chuckled. Nice to see that bloody smartarse Maxwell getting one in the eye. Wait till the lads heard this!

  Chapter Nineteen

  While he waited for Jacquie to get back, Maxwell did what any amateur detective would do, with a few minutes spare at their disposal. He got sheets of paper and headed each one with the name of victims, both actual and potential. He then threw them away as being far too anal, much too similar to writing frames for the less able and Bernard Ryan.

  He picked up the phone and then sat there with it in his hand, uncertain of who to ring. He knew that Henry Hall would have been in touch with Leighford High. And anyway, despite all his years there, he had never been copied in to any of the really important phone numbers. Legs Diamond was so dogged by prank callers that he was so ex-directory he didn’t even know his own number any more. The others, Year Heads and their Assistants, were ex-men. In fact, in a supreme irony, the only SLT member’s number Maxwell knew had been Dierdre Lessing’s, and he knew she wouldn’t be there. He decided to ring Sylvia Matthews and dialled her number, which he had known off by heart since Adam was in the militia.

  ‘Hello. You’ve reached the number of…’

  Bugger and poo. But wait! He could progress along the ‘find-the-victim’ path by a rather circuitous route. He dialled Paul Moss’s number and waited through what seemed a hundred rings. Finally, he answered.

  ‘Moss.’

  No matter how often Maxwell heard him say that, he always wanted to snap another member of the vegetable kingdom back at him. ‘Lichen. Dandelion’. He restrained himself and simply said, ‘Paul? It’s Max.’