Maxwell’s House

by M. J. Trow

  It was a little before midnight on the Monday that the lacklustre bastard was sitting in the incident room in his shirtsleeves, the table lamp reflecting harshly in his glasses, reading Astley’s interim report. Using some technique Hall could not pronounce, Astley had worked out the dead woman’s height to have been five foot eight. Age was more difficult because of the advanced state of the body’s decomposition. Could be anything from twenty to forty-five, possibly even fifty. Her hair had been dark and the bad news was that she had exceptionally good teeth. Only one filling of the upper third bicuspid, and that was an old one. Groves’s team would have to knock on a lot of dentists’ doors to pin-point that one.

  His best guess was that she’d gone into the sea towards the end of July. And the appalling wounds to her pelvis that had carried off her legs were not the cause of her death. They were clearly post-mortem injuries, however horrific, and Astley clung to the probability that a ship’s propeller had done the deed. She had not drowned either. There were tell-tale diatoms, those little creepy things that live in water, as Astley had condescendingly written for Hall’s layman’s benefit in the margin of the print-out. But they were confined to the air passages. There were none in the bloodstream and none in what was left of the internal organs. The deceased had been placed in a black plastic bin liner and dumped into the sea. Whatever had been used to truss the bag up, rope or wire, had long ago become separated from the corpse.

  ‘Black bin liner,’ Hall murmured to himself. Well, that narrowed it down to however many million citizens bought these things from however many supermarkets there were in the south of England.

  The cause of death, Jim Astley believed, was a blow or blows to the back of the head. Those injuries, which had caused a collapse of the cranium and radial fissures from it, were certainly ante-mortem and would have caused immediate unconsciousness, followed rapidly by coma. Death would have ensued within minutes.

  What am I doing this for? Hall wondered to himself. He didn’t owe Tom Groves anything and whoever this woman was she’d been battered to death and her body thrown into the sea. There was obviously no link with Jenny Hyde or Tim Grey. He read to the bottom paragraph. The face was unrecognizable – but he knew that – and even the fingerprints were lost because the skin of the hands had peeled off like rubber gloves. Only the sea knew her secrets now.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Jacquie?’ Hall looked at her over his glasses. ‘Come in.’

  ‘I know it’s late, sir,’ she apologized.

  ‘Is it?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well another day tomorrow. You look like you could do with a smoke,’ and he ferreted in his pocket and threw her a packet of ten.

  ‘Sir.’ She sat down opposite him.

  ‘Hmm?’ He was consigning Astley’s report to the tray that said ‘Out’. He’d have it passed to Tom Groves in the morning.

  ‘Why do you carry ciggies when you don’t smoke?’

  ‘Just in case,’ he said, ‘in case I get the urge. I gave up four years, eight months, three weeks ago. But in this job, you never know when you’re going to have to start again. Besides, what would you do without me?’

  It was a rare moment in Jacquie Carpenter’s life. She saw the Chief Inspector smile. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Time is money, so they tell me. What’s up, Jacquie?’

  ‘Can I talk to you about Peter Maxwell, sir?’ Her face was lost momentarily behind a cloud of smoke.

  ‘Everybody seems to be talking about Peter Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Everybody except Peter Maxwell.’

  ‘I’ve just had the medical report on Janice Dodds.’

  ‘Just?’ Hall frowned.

  ‘I stole it, sir.’

  ‘Jacquie?’ Hall didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

  ‘It was in the vehicle of one of my superior officers, sir.’

  ‘And you broke into this vehicle?’

  ‘Not exactly. It was open. But I broke into the briefcase inside it.’

  Hall leaned forward, hands clasped on the desk. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Let’s just say I had my suspicions,’ she said, swallowing hard. Her eyes were large and steady in the lamp’s glow. But the mottling on her neck said it all. DC Jacquie Carpenter was walking a razor’s edge and she knew it.

  ‘What does the report say?’ Hall asked.

  The girl swallowed hard. ‘That Janice Dodds was not raped, sir,’ she said. ‘There was no evidence of recent intercourse, nor rough penetration. No bruising on the genital area or thighs.’

  ‘I’ve read DS Gilbert’s report,’ Hall told her. ‘It talks about extensive bruising to the face.’

  ‘Three teeth missing,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘That’s what the medical report says too. It also says something else.’

  ‘Oh? What?’

  ‘Janice Dodds was attacked not by one man, but by two. There were distinct fingerprints on her wrists where one of them had held her down. The ones on her throat were different.’

  ‘Are you telling me Maxwell had an accomplice?’

  ‘No, sir.’ She felt her nerve going. As though she’d explode.

  ‘What then?’ Hall wanted her to spell it out. Needed her to.

  ‘I …’ and the gaze faltered and her hands trembled on the unsmoked cigarette.

  ‘Whose car was it, Jacquie? Whose briefcase?’

  And her answer was barely audible. ‘DI Johnson’s, sir,’ she said, it was DI Johnson.’

  If there was a bigger estate than the Barlichway, it was the one below the railway, to the south of Leighvale. It wasn’t the sort of place to be out and about in, not in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, not if you were a senior copper and a DWPC.

  ‘Do you know what fuckin’ time it is?’ The sound of Janice Dodds, woken from her beauty sleep. Only she wasn’t very beautiful just at the moment. There was a livid bruise around her left eye and a jagged purple line around her throat. She wrapped her housecoat tightly around her.

  ‘May we come in?’ Hall asked.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  He showed her his warrant card. ‘DCI Hall, West Sussex CID. I believe you’ve already met DC Carpenter.’ And he pushed past the girl into the narrow hallway. A dilapidated buggy almost took off his kneecap, but he kept going. It was less than salubrious, the Dodds’ home. A tiny four-roomed flat on the fourth floor of an anonymous tenement block, terraced with other tiny four-roomed flats just like it. It made Del Boy Trotter’s studio mock-up on the telly look positively palatial.

  ‘Who is it, Janice?’ a scrawny, middle-aged woman in curlers asked.

  ‘It’s the fuzz, mum. You go back to bed. I can ’andle ’em.’

  ‘Like you handled them before?’ Hall turned to her.

  She frowned up at him. ‘Waddyou mean?’ she pouted.

  ‘Look,’ Janice’s mum had not gone back to bed, ‘my Janice has been through enough, thanks to you bleeders. What do you want now?’

  ‘The truth, … er … Mrs Dodds, is it?’

  ‘It might be.’ She squinted at him.

  ‘You see, we didn’t get that last time.’

  ‘You ain’t got no right…’ Janice’s mum protested.

  ‘I’m afraid we have every right,’ Hall told her. ‘Now if you intend to stay, I must ask you to be quiet.’

  ‘What about a nice cup of tea?’ Jacquie Carpenter suggested.

  ‘Janice …?’

  ‘It’s all right, mum. Go on. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘May we sit down?’ Hall asked as the woman clattered and clashed in the tiny kitchen.

  ‘I can’t stop ya, can I?’ Janice flounced, her housecoat falling open to reveal her powerful thighs.

  ‘You spoke to Detective Sergeant Gilbert and DC Carpenter here the day before yesterday in connection with an assault,’ Hall said.

  ‘That’s right. Has he coughed? That Maxwell? What’ll he get? A smack on the wrist, I bet.’

  ‘Let’s just see if I’ve got it right,’ Hall
said. ‘Maxwell took you back to his house.’

  ‘Nah,’ Janice corrected him. ‘I took him.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’d been in a fight. With Keith Miller.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He’s a shit, that bloke,’ Janice’s mum told the company from the kitchen.

  ‘Put a cork in it, mum,’ Janie told her. ‘I’m telling this story.’

  Hall looked at Jacquie. ‘So you got Maxwell home. That was a kind thing to do.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he was all right. At first, I mean.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’ Hall asked.

  ‘We ain’t got no sugar,’ Janice’s mum shouted through.

  Hall jerked his head to Jacquie Carpenter who joined the woman in the kitchen. ‘Can I help, Mrs Dodds?’ she asked.

  ‘What did you talk about?’ Hall asked the girl again.

  ‘Oh, I dunno. This and that.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, it was mostly about Kay – Keith Miller. Maxwell thought he had somefink to do with that girl what was murdered. That Jenny Hyde.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘I dunno. Oh, he liked ’em young, but I don’t know ’e ever knocked ’em off. He might of done. I told Maxwell. I didn’t know.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Well,’ Janice’s eyes flickered from left to right, ‘It must of been all that talk about girls ’n’ that. Or ’e’d got the ’ots for me all along …’

  ‘I’ve told you about wearing them short skirts, ain’t I, Janice?’

  Janice’s mum had escaped Jacquie Carpenter’s help in the kitchen and was back in the living-room, four mugs of tea in her hands.

  ‘Oh, come on, mum. You used to wear ’em an’ all. I remember your weddin’.’

  ‘What happened at Maxwell’s?’ Hall asked her.

  ‘I told ’er,’ Janice nodded at Jacquie, ‘’an’ that ovver copper.’

  ‘And now I’d like you to tell me,’ Hall said.

  ‘’E raped me,’ she said flatly, as if he’d asked her the time.

  ‘How?’

  Janice looked at him open-mouthed. ‘You what?’

  ‘I asked you how he raped you.’ Hall showed no emotion whatsoever.

  ‘Well …’e …’ Janice looked at her mother, who was still staring at Hall. ‘E ’eld me down an’ put it in.’

  ‘Held you down, how?’ Hall asked.

  ‘By me shoulders,’ Janice blurted, her colour up, her eyes flashing.

  Janice’s mum slurped her tea loudly. ‘Bastard,’ she growled.

  ‘Not by the wrists?’ Hall asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Janice saw what Hall could see and slid the cuffs of her housecoat over her bruised arms. ‘Later, yeah.’

  ‘And while he was doing that,’ Hall said, ‘holding you by the wrist and shoulders, what was the other copper doing?’

  ‘Oh, he was squeezin’ me froat an’ …’ and Janice Dodds froze in mid-sentence.

  ‘And hitting you across the face.’ Hall finished it for her. ‘You see, Miss Dodds, the medical report on you doesn’t tally with an attack by one man. And it doesn’t tally with a sexual assault at all. What kind of cab did you take to Maxwell’s?’

  ‘Er … I dunno … a black one.’

  ‘A hackney carriage?’ Hall pressed her. ‘A London taxi?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘With plastic seats?’

  “Ow the fuck should I know?’ Janice snapped. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘You see, your coat, the one you were wearing when you came in to report the incident, it had fibres all over it. Fibres which we believe came from a car with grey seat covers. One of my colleagues drives a car like that.’

  ‘Wass ’e talkin’ abaht, Janice?’ her mum wanted to know.

  ‘Nothin’.’ Janice was on her feet. ‘Why didn’t yer go to bed like I asked yer?’

  ‘I want to know,’ her mum said. ‘You told me that teacher ’ad done it to yer. Who are you sayin’ done it now?’

  ‘No one, Mrs Dodds,’ Hall told her, ‘no one raped her, at least; did they, Janice?’

  ‘Well, what of it?’ Janice bellowed. There was a cry from the room next door. ‘Oh, fuck. You’ve started ’er off now; my Trace.’

  ‘So what really happened, Miss Dodds?’ Hall stood in the girl’s way, blocking her exit with his tall, grey-suited body.

  For a moment the girl stood there, swaying, all five feet two of her, her fists clenched, her head sunk into her neck, like a gladiator in the ring. Then she melted. Her lip trembled, her eyes flickered, her hands relaxed. ‘They said they’d kill me,’ she mumbled, ‘if I didn’t say Maxwell done it. They ’eld me down in the back of their car an’ one of ’em ’it me. Kept on ’itting me. I was to tell the coppers,’ she said, ‘that it was Maxwell. That ’e raped me.’

  And she sat down heavily on the sofa, Jacquie Carpenter beside her, patting her as she sobbed into her hands.

  ‘Who were they?’ Hall didn’t need to ask.

  ‘They was filth,’ Janice wheezed as the sobbing racked her. ‘I seen one of ’em at the nick. Big bloke wiv black hair.’

  ‘DC Halsey,’ Hall nodded. ‘And the other one?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the girl sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘The black-’aired one called ’im guv.’

  ‘DI Johnson,’ Hall said softly. He should have felt elated. But he didn’t. He just felt sick.

  ‘Why?’ Janice looked up at him with tears and mascara trickling down her face through the bruising. ‘Why did they want me to say that? I felt ever so bad about it. That Mr Maxwell. ’E’s a nice old boy, ’e is. But I was scared. They said they’d ’urt my baby, my Trace.’

  The crying from the other room had stopped now.

  ‘Bastards,’ muttered Janice’s mum.

  18

  Peter Maxwell had never been so glad to see Geoffrey Smith in his life. The bald old bugger sat in his car at the back of the Leighford cop shop. Except it wasn’t his car. It was Hilda’s.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Maxim.’ Smith helped his old oppo in, with much heaving and shoving. ‘2CVs weren’t built for elderly cripples like you. What the hell happened?’

  ‘Broken ribs.’ Maxwell winced and flapped his right hand uselessly until Geoffrey Smith passed him the seat belt.

  ‘Don’t tell me the law did that?’ For all he’d seen Magnum Force, Geoffrey Smith’s idea of the police was still essentially Jack Warner.

  ‘No.’ Maxwell let his head fall against the seat rest. ‘Keith Miller did.’

  ‘Keith Miller?’ Smith was astonished. ‘Hang on. I’ll come round.’

  He disappeared behind the vehicle and nipped into the driver’s seat. ‘I’m taking you home, Max,’ he said.

  If possible, Geoffrey Smith was a worse driver of his wife’s 2CV than he was of his own Honda. You could argue that, in so confined a space, Maxwell didn’t have so far to slide. Conversely of course it meant that his swollen side same into contact with hard objects like the door handle all the more frequently. Smith couldn’t help noticing that Maxwell’s eyes were shut tight throughout the whole journey, though whether through exhaustion, pain or just plain terror, he couldn’t tell.

  Metternich the cat peered down at the pair as they staggered together up to Maxwell’s lounge. Then he turned his bum, raised his tail in the air and was gone.

  ‘Great to see you too, Count,’ Maxwell said and lowered himself, gingerly, to the sofa.

  ‘Southern Comfort, Maxie?’ Smith was already at the drinks cupboard.

  ‘Comfort in all directions would be nice,’ Maxwell said, ‘but we’ll start in the south, yes. And a small one for yourself.’

  ‘Hilda told me about your call.’ Smith poured for them both. ‘What the hell happened – as I believe I’ve asked you before?’

  Maxwell sighed. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said, ‘I went to Little Willie’s last night.’

  ‘The night-club? Good God, Max, I should�
�ve thought an inflatable woman would have been preferable.’

  ‘As things turned out, you’re probably right.’ His old oppo grimaced. ‘I was looking for Maz.’

  ‘Max looking for Maz. Go on. I’ll buy it.’

  ‘It turns out that every bugger and his dog knows who Maz is. Sally Greenhow’s heard of him; the law have talked to him; Janice thinks he’s a shit.’

  ‘Maxim,’ Smith peered into his friend’s tired old eyes, ‘how many fingers am I holding up?’

  Maxwell drove his left pupil in hard against his nose. ‘Two, as always,’ he said.

  ‘Thank God.’ Smith leaned back. ‘I thought for a minute you were talking absolute gibberish there. Not a bad Ben Turpin, by the way. Who’s Janice?’

  ‘Janice Dodds. Do you remember her? Always smoking out beyond the hedge at school? Blonde. Solid piece. Built like the Pontypool second row.’

  ‘Lord, yes. Cadged a fag off old Farson on Mufti Day.’

  ‘It was his last year.’

  ‘Yes.’ Smith remembered. ‘Gaga as a Peer of the Realm. What of her, mon vieux?’

  ‘I met her in Little Willie’s. Guess who she was with?’

  ‘’Er … Woody Allen.’

  ‘Keith Miller.’

  ‘Aha. So I was close.’ Smith wagged a triumphant finger.

  ‘He’s K.,’ Maxwell said soberly through the glow of the Southern Comfort.

  ‘What?’

  ‘K. You know. In Jenny Hyde’s diary. “K. told me he loved me.” He is K.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Let’s just say he was prepared to break my ribs rather than admit it.’

  ‘So you went to the police?’

  ‘No. I went in search of Maz.’

  ‘And did you find him?’