Maxwell's Chain

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Not a few days ago, you people had me in the frame for a murder,’ he said. ‘Now you want some information? You know, we’ve had one of your blokes round here already, breaking into our property, watching…us. We will certainly lodge a complaint.’

  ‘Bill, what’s the matter?’ Emma appeared at the man’s elbow. ‘Mr Maxwell? What’s going on?’

  ‘Mrs Lunt,’ Jacquie tried the woman to woman approach. ‘I need a phone number, urgently. That of one of your employees, Richard Underdown. Do you have it here?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ she said. ‘Waste of space, that lad. Bill, don’t sit there on your high horse all night. Make these good folks a cup of tea. It’s freezing on this doorstep.’

  There was no reply from Richard Underdown’s home phone. It was Saturday morning now, black and raw. Landline one, Jacquie Carpenter nil. All right, then. Richard Underdown was out on the town, at a party, stalking God knew who. She tried again and let the mobile ring.

  It was a female voice who finally answered, just before the phone clicked over to voicemail. The voice was breathless, scared. ‘It’s Helen Marshall. Lewes. Red Astra.’ There was a thud and the phone went dead.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  This time, Jacquie did ring Henry Hall. She also rang Lewes nick and let the whole machinery of Sussex Law grind into action. It would be interesting, for those pundits who watched these things, to see how East and West Sussex would work this one. Those at the cutting edge didn’t have time. Jacquie, Maxwell and half the CID on the south coast had a murderer to catch.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Maxwell flipped open Jacquie’s phone for the umpteenth time in as many minutes. ‘Jacquie Carpenter.’

  ‘God, Jacquie, bollocks dropped at last?’ a sexist DS Davies was chirpy at the other end, bearing in mind it was nearly one in the morning.

  ‘Is there a point to this?’ Maxwell growled, watching the road hurtle beneath his feet in the car headlights.

  ‘Is that Maxwell?’ Davies asked. ‘Put DS Carpenter on.’

  ‘You know better than I do, Sergeant Davies, that it is an indictable offence for a driver to use a mobile phone while his or her vehicle is still in motion. Were I to pass you across, that would constitute either a) abetting a felony or b) using the lure of entrapment. Either way, it wouldn’t look very good on what I fancy must be your pretty tarnished reputation. Just tell me, Davies or I’ll have to start reminding you who pays your bloody wages, mate.’

  The last part of that sentence was uncanny in that it sounded like an echo of Davies himself. There was a silence and then, ‘Could you tell DS Carpenter that the red Astra licensed to Richard Underdown has the registration Romeo 457 Whisky Sierra Foxtrot. We’re closing in. Keep in touch.’

  ‘Love you too,’ said Maxwell, snapping the cover shut. ‘DS Davies sends you his,’ he said, ‘and says what an honour it is to work with professionals.’

  ‘Great.’ Jacquie was concentrating on the road, her speed way over the limit. ‘What did he really say?’

  ‘They’ve got Lobber’s number – but then, I think we all have. If my knowledge of arcane policiana serves, it’s R457 WSF.’

  ‘Where would he take her, Max?’ Jacquie asked. ‘And why Lewes?’

  ‘Ambigram,’ Maxwell said. ‘It’s poetic, really. Almost too poetic. Perhaps Lobber wants to make this one extra special. An ambigram victim in an ambigram place. Yet why…?’

  ‘Do you know Lewes, Max?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t give you a grid reference,’ he admitted. ‘I leave that to my sad colleagues in the Geography department. The name comes from the Saxon word Hlew meaning a hill – and it is, in fact, hilly. Called a spade a spade, did the Saxons…’

  ‘Max,’ she growled. ‘I’m not sure we’ve got time for the History lesson.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, gesturing to the lights twinkling far ahead, ‘that’s Brighton over there; we’ve got a while yet. And there’s always time for a History lesson. I was going to fill you in on the battle of Lewes in 1264 when Simon de Montfort kicked Henry III’s arse on his way to setting up the first parliament. Tom Paine lived there for a while before he got up himself and started shouting about people’s rights. The worst-ever recorded British avalanche occurred in the town in 1836, effectively burying Boulder Row – that’s South Street today, by the way…’

  ‘Max!’ Jacquie wasn’t growling now, she was screaming.

  ‘Left,’ he told her.

  ‘I know, I know,’ the indicator was already flashing. ‘I was just wondering how in hell we’re going to track down Underdown in a town the size of Lewes.’

  ‘Point taken,’ he said, ‘but we’re only looking for Lobber’s car.’

  ‘You reckon? He must have heard Helen Marshall give us the tip down the phone. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to stay with it, surely.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Jacquie,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘That’s precisely what he’d do.’

  Henry Hall was at Leighford nick as another grey February dawn broke. There was a time when, a colleague down, he’d have jumped into the nearest patrol car and hit the road. Now, he had people for that. Lewes Uniform and Lewes CID knew the town better than he did. Anyway, he had sent DS Davies and three squad cars as back-up and, since the call had come from her in the first place, he knew Jacquie was on her way. True, he had his reservations about Davies, but the man was good on the action stuff. There was an All Points out on Richard Underdown and a shaken and very disturbed set of parents were standing in their living room wondering where and how their upbringing had gone so tragically wrong. Across town, an equally disturbed Legs Diamond was helping police with their inquiries by letting them in to Leighford High School to comb the school files on the young man they were anxious to interview.

  The light was creeping over the headland as Jacquie’s car purred to a halt. Seconds before, Maxwell had grabbed her arm and pointed. It was a red Astra all right, its bodywork spotted with mud, parked at a crazy angle by the trees. Mist wreathed the hollows and Maxwell realised they were on the edge of a golf course, apparently in the middle of nowhere, the still-sleeping town a world away below them.

  It was cold up here, on this lonely hillside. Maxwell opened his door.

  ‘I suppose there’s no chance of you staying here,’ Jacquie said.

  Her man just smiled and unbuckled his belt. He crouched by the half-open door. ‘What do you see,’ he asked her, ‘in the car?’ What with his age and the unaccustomed grey of the morning, he valued a second opinion.

  ‘One figure,’ she said softly, ‘in the driving seat. Is it him?’

  Maxwell strained his eyes. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘could be Lord Lucan, for all I know.’

  ‘Max,’ she said, ‘I’m calling for back-up.’

  He nodded.

  She spoke quietly into the mobile, linking with the uniformed branch she knew would already be combing the streets and prowling the suburbs.

  ‘But I’m not sure we can wait,’ he said. And was gone, scurrying out across the dew-heavy grass, rustling as he went, scarf flapping in the wind.

  ‘Jesus!’ she hissed and ended the call, running after him as the wet grass soaked her shoes and jeans-bottoms. Everything went through her head as she made that dash. Helen Marshall was lying in the back seat, her throat cut, her skull smashed. Or she was not there at all, but dangling at the end of a rope somewhere they hadn’t looked yet. And what about Lobber? Had he blown his brains out in the front seat? Or was he sitting there with a knife to the woman’s throat, nutty as a fruit-cake, ready for some climactic confrontation with the police?

  Jacquie had the years on Maxwell and they reached the car together, he flinging open the driver’s door, Jacquie going for the back. Helen Marshall was indeed lying there, bound and gagged with gaffer tape. But there was no blood around her throat or in her tangled hair and there was no sign of a rope. As for Lobber, he was sitting there, staring out of the windscreen at the lightening grey of the distant sea, a mobile phone
in his hand. He felt the hands on his anorak, but failed to react except to turn his head to his assailant.

  ‘Hello, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘I’m glad it’s you. I’m not sure what to do now.’

  And Jacquie and Maxwell heard the wailing whine of the police sirens getting closer. Neither of them knew whether Lobber heard it or not.

  It was nearly lunchtime at Leighford General, as it was everywhere else in the town. This time, Peter Maxwell knew exactly where he was going and he timed it to perfection. He smiled at the Jamaican nurse and ostentatiously washed his hands in the goo. Then he positioned himself at the entrance to the ward and waited.

  The bell sounded for the end of the visiting hour and the scattered remnants who hadn’t already done a runner long before began to drift past.

  ‘Hello, Nick.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell.’ The boy stopped in his tracks.

  ‘He’s looking better, I see,’ and he waved to Greg Adair at the far end of the ward. The man was sitting up, smiling. He still looked grey and waxy, but the mask and tubes had gone and he was a human being again. A line from an old Great War poem crept into Maxwell’s mind – ‘And some Slight Wound sat smiling on his bed.’

  ‘The fever broke last night,’ Nick said, waving at the man too. ‘They say he’ll be fine in a day or two. He’ll be coming out. Oops, no pun intended.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to check how he is.’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell wandered with the boy along the corridor and down the stairs. ‘That’s not exactly why I’m here. I’ve just come from Lobber.’

  The boy stopped in mid-flight. ‘Lobber? Where is he?’

  ‘About now, he’s in Leighford nick, helping DCI Hall with his inquiries. Interview Room One would be my guess.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Nick sighed. ‘And thank you, Mr Maxwell.’

  Many people believed that was largely the same thing, but Maxwell let it go. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Why?’ The pair were moving again, down to the ground floor and towards the main entrance.

  ‘Well, you went to the police. Something I should’ve done, of course. They’ll want to talk to me, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Nick,’ Maxwell said. ‘They’ll want to ask you about ambigrams.’

  ‘About what?’

  Maxwell stopped and turned to the boy. ‘Have you got a minute, Nick?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’ The boy was smiling but his eyes told a different story.

  ‘Tell me about Leopold and Loeb.’

  Nick laughed, caught as he was in a corner of the hospital’s vestibule. ‘Mr Maxwell, we’ve had this conversation. You know more about it than I do.’

  ‘Oh, now, Nick,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘No false modesty, please. You and Lobber researched it, remember. To me, it’s only ever been one case, one tiny example of Man’s inhumanity to Man along the Dead Man’s Walk of crime. But to you guys… well…’

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to tell you,’ Nick shrugged.

  ‘Well, for instance, who was who?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Leopold and Loeb. Which of you was which?’

  ‘I don’t…’ Nick was frowning.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Maxwell said. ‘They were both arrogant sons of bitches, as the Chicago press of the time all but called them. But the smartarse, the brains behind it, was Nathan Leopold. Linguist, ornithologist, homosexual and disciple of Nietzsche. He saw himself as a Superman, but so arrogant was he that he passed that accolade to Loeb, making him, Leopold, a super Superman, I suppose. Poor Richard Loeb, not so bright, not so arrogant. Just a teeny bit out of his depth. A bit like Lobber this morning. Manipulated all the way. Lobber’s the puppet; you’re pulling the strings.’

  Nick looked nonplussed. ‘No, Mr Maxwell; I told you…’

  ‘Oh, I know what you told me, Nick,’ the Head of Sixth Form said, both of them oblivious now to passers by. ‘And most of it was a pack of lies. Yes, you and Lobber became obsessed with the Leopold and Loeb case. Yes, you both planned it to the letter. But then Lobber got cold feet, didn’t he? Once in the kitchen, he couldn’t actually stand the heat, after all. Not mixing too many metaphors for you, there, am I, Superman? Confusing my clichés? You see, I’ve got to take my hat off to you,’ and he did, doffing it low. ‘You’re actually cleverer than Nathan Leopold, because he made his murder selection by random choice. The only criterion was that the target had to be a rich man’s son, because part of the ploy was ransom. Neither of them needed the money, but it added to the torment of the Franks family and was good for a laugh. And what finer pranksters could there be but you and Lobber, the eternal jokers? So, you’d read Dan Brown – Lobber hadn’t, I asked him – and you hit upon the idea of ambigrams for your victims; the letters of their first names forming a chain. As well as that, to make the chain more tightly linked, they had some connection with each other. Lara had met Darren in a club and they had exchanged numbers; Darren spoke to Dierdre Lessing in the street – an Old Highena saying hello to his old teacher. Helen Marshall was investigating Dierdre’s death…where would you have gone from there, I wonder?’

  ‘This is rubbish,’ Nick said. ‘Look, I have to go now…’

  But Maxwell slammed the boy back against the glass behind him. ‘But Lobber let you down, didn’t he? Lost his nerve at the last moment. He didn’t ring you to tell you about each kill. You rang him. You’d met your darling Greg by this time, so what use was Lobber? Except, Lobber had betrayed you. And nobody betrays Superman. So you forced him to carry out one killing himself – an ambigram name killed in an ambigram place. Helen in Lewes. Too clever by half. You’d seen her on the telly, hadn’t you? The press conference. Here was this bossy cow, a mere woman, coming across as if she’d got the whole thing sewn up. Well, you’d show her, wouldn’t you? Or rather Lobber would. We don’t know yet how he managed to grab her – that’s not one she’ll live down in a hurry. But we do know he didn’t know what to do with her. I found him sitting in his car in Lewes. The right victim, the right place. But the wrong killer. Should’ve done that one yourself, Nicky boy, just like all the others.’

  ‘You’re fucking mad!’ Nick broke way from the iron grip on his shoulder, striding for the door.

  ‘Tell me one last thing,’ Maxwell shouted to him, ‘about the original case. What caught Leopold and Loeb in the end?’

  Campbell stopped, hesitating. This mad old bastard had nothing on him. It would be his word against Lobber’s. And that would be no contest. ‘Glasses,’ Nick said. ‘Leopold dropped his glasses near Bobby Franks’ body.’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘So much for Superman,’ he muttered, closing to the boy. ‘With you, it was timing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nick blinked.

  ‘When I talked to Lobber earlier this morning,’ he said, ‘he didn’t have any answers. None at all. He couldn’t remember where Lara Kent was killed or when. He was vague about Darren Blackwell, too and as for Dierdre Lessing, he only remembered her from school. But you, Nicholas, knew it all. You knew that Dierdre’s body was dumped on a disused railway line at Arundel because that’s where you left it.’

  ‘Lobber’s lying, Mr Maxwell,’ Nick wheedled. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  Maxwell’s shoulders relaxed. It was the end of a long day. ‘All right, Nick,’ he said softly. ‘One very last question. When did Leopold and Loeb kill little Bobby Franks?’

  ‘Er…21 May 1924,’ the boy said.

  ‘Spot on,’ Maxwell said. ‘That’s sixty-one years before a genuinely clever bloke discovered a little thing called DNA. The Chicago cops didn’t have that advantage back in the twenties. Henry Hall has. Yours will be all over the teeth of Lara Kent’s dog from that nip the poor bugger gave you trying to defend his mistress. That’d be enough to hang you in the good old days. We’re not going to find Lobber’s DNA anywhere near any of these victims, are we?’

  Nick Campbell spun on his heel. ‘You’re as barking as her dog, Maxwell,’ he called. ‘Y
ou don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I took my hat off to you earlier, Nick,’ Maxwell called, ‘That was a pre-arranged signal. If you’ll look to your left.’

  Across the grass ahead of him Jacquie Carpenter stood, wondering which way he would run.

  ‘And to your right.’

  The uniformed constables were approaching from the rise to the lily pond. Still others were trickling over from the car park. In the event, it was Maxwell who reached the boy first, because he’d stopped and stood stock still on the hospital forecourt. His old Head of Sixth Form looked into his eyes. ‘Why, Nick, why?’ he asked. ‘There’ll be no Clarence Darrow to save you now. Great advocates are a thing of the past. He saved those boys from the electric chair, but you know as well as I do that Nathan Leopold was fifty-three when he got out. What a waste.’

  ‘Why, Mr Maxwell,’ Nick repeated. ‘You asked me why.’ He stood up tall as they clicked the cuffs on his wrists. ‘Because I could, that’s why.’

  Maxwell and Jacquie stood on the first landing of their sleeping house. The Troubridge sisters napping on the sofa were making small whiffling noises in their sleep, almost indistinguishable from those they made when awake. Nolan’s post prandial mutterings, eerily amplified down the baby alarm, were as yet lacking in his usual urgency. With luck and a following wind, he would sleep for a few more minutes yet. Metternich, having availed himself to the maximum of the Troubridges’ generosity in the pilchard and lap stakes, was stretched full length on the chair and was noisier than the other three put together, snoring down his battle-scarred nose in a rhythmic rattle and hum.

  Maxwell turned Jacquie towards him and enfolded her in his arms. She leant in to his warmth and snaked her arms around him, inside his coat. She could have happily stayed there for ever. So what if there would be a mountain of paperwork? So what if the press would be all over the nick, Columbine and Leighford High for weeks? Here, for the moment, time could stand still.

  After a while, Maxwell stirred and pulled away slightly, looking down into her tired, but still frank and open eyes. He cleared his throat, very quietly, so as not to waken the sleepers. ‘Jacquie,’ he said, seriously. ‘I’ve been giving a problem a lot of thought lately and I’ve got to ask you…’