by M. J. Trow
‘Yes … er … DS Chapell.’
‘Well, there’s something fishy about this Robinson, guv.’
‘Oh?’ Hall seemed bored by the whole topic. ‘What?’
‘Well, it’s like a bloke with no fingerprints or no shadow. This one’s got no past.’ There were murmurs around the room.
‘Explain.’ Hall was at his curtest with two potential murders on his plate.
‘He joined the staff at Grimond’s in January, right? Three months ago.’
‘So?’
‘So where was he before that?’
Hall blinked. ‘Don’t you know? Haven’t you checked with Sheffield?’
‘Oh, yes, guv,’ Chapell nodded. ‘According to the Headteacher, he came from Haileybury.’
‘Then, I don’t see your problem, sergeant,’ Hall shrugged.
‘Well, it’s just that Haileybury haven’t heard of him.’
Silence.
‘Yet here,’ and Chapell held up a piece of fax paper, enjoying doing his Hercule Poirot bit, ‘is the reference from that very school, duly signed by their Head.’
‘Where’s this going, Chapell?’ Hall wanted to know.
‘Well, I rang Haileybury first thing this morning, guv. Just as back-up, you know. Confirmation. I explained the situation and the Head was kind enough to fax me through a sample of his signature. This,’ he waved the reference under Hall’s nose, ‘is a forgery and a bad one at that. The last Robinson they had taught Physics and Chemistry. His name wasn’t Tim and he retired, according to the records, in 1948.’
There were whoops and whistles around the room from impressed colleagues.
Hall’s hand was in the air to shut them up. ‘This is not a three-ring circus,’ he snapped, ‘and since when do officers applaud a problem? Can you explain this, Chapell?’ I
‘No, guv,’ the DS confessed. ‘That’s why I’ve drawn a bit of a blank.’
‘Well, when you’ve found a solution,’ Hall said quietly, standing now and looking his man squarely in the eye, ‘when you’ve rubbed out the blank you’ve drawn, that’s when we’ll have a little in the way of congratulation. Until then,’ he raked them all with his blank lenses, ‘I believe there’s work to be done. Jacquie.’
‘Maxwell.’ It was a name that had crossed Henry Hall’s lips more than once before.
‘Sir?’ Jacquie, sitting beside him in the Volvo, was mentally miles away, kissing a dead man in her darkest dreams.
‘Maxwell,’ he repeated. ‘What’s he up to?’
‘He’s observing, sir,’ she told him. ‘Watching how they do things at Grimond’s. Bit like you here, I suppose.’
‘Nothing like me here,’ Hall growled. Jacqui Carpenter had known Henry Hall, girl and woman, for six years. Most of what she’d learned she’d learned from him and whereas the bland bastard didn’t exactly convince as the master, it was at his knee that the learning had been done. She couldn’t remember a time when the guv’nor had been as tight-lipped and grouchy as this.
‘Are you sleeping with him?’ Hall asked.
She stared at him, then looked away, her neck mottling with fury, her eyes flashing fire. ‘I consider that an inappropriate question, sir,’ she said.
‘Do you? What if I say it’s perfectly appropriate?’ He rattled up through the gears as the hedges flashed by.
She looked at him levelly. ‘I still wouldn’t answer it,’ she said.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. ‘All right,’ Hall tried a new tack. ‘We’ll let that go. What does he know?’
‘About what?’
‘Jacquie!’ Hall shouted so that the DS jumped in her seat-belt. ‘We are a long way from home, you and I, longer than you know. We need all the friends we can get.’
‘Even Mad Max?’ she asked and waited. A year ago, six months even, she wouldn’t have dared ask a question like that. Now, it was different. She was sure of herself because she was so sure of the man she loved.
Hall’s lips twitched. It was as close to a smile as she’d be likely to get this side of rigor mortis. ‘Even Mad Max,’ he nodded.
They snarled round the roundabout that led off the road below Butser Hill and on through sleepy Petersfield, past the Bear Museum and the Doll’s Hospital and the green-sheened spelter of the Dutch William statue. Then they were growling down Spain Street and out towards the country again, the railings of Churchers flashing in the morning sun; Churchers who had faced Grimond’s on many a bloody rugby field and hallowed cricket turf.
Tim Robinson’s semi was very ordinary indeed, one of countless ’60s erections that had seen seriously better days. Hall ignored the curtains twitching to the right and the old boy tinkering with a lawn mower noisily to his left, two potential witnesses that Jacquie would have talked to, had she not been with the guv’nor; two potential witnesses that Peter Maxwell would have talked to had he been there; two potential witnesses that Henry Hall walked past.
His key clicked in the Yale and they were inside. Jacquie Carpenter had stood in dead men’s houses before. They were all the same. Cold. As dead as their owners. There was an indefinable sadness about them. She’d known it first as a girl when her grandfather had died and she’d gone with her mother to sort his things out. She remembered the old man’s pipe still lying by his bed, his hat and coat in the hall, his book half read and the crossword unfinished.
It was like that here. She hadn’t known Tim Robinson. The first time she’d seen him he was lying face down in a brackish lake, cold as the grave and heavy with water. Their first introduction was the kiss she’d given him, a kiss which he’d returned with one of death. Then she’d done her best to break his ribs, to pound breath in the breathless, life into death. The remnants of cottage pie lay abandoned on an unwashed plate on the kitchen table and there was a bottle of cheap wine half-drunk on the top of the fridge.
‘What are we looking for, sir?’ she asked Hall although she knew the answer already.
‘Anything.’ He didn’t disappoint her. ‘Anything that will tell us how the man who lived here ended up dead in a lake.’
There was a pile of exercise books on the large coffee table. Hall was thudding upstairs, turning out drawers and rummaging in cupboards. It took Jacquie a while to work it out; what was odd about this little semi that was a dead man’s last home. There were no photos. No wife. No kids. No family at all. Not even the ubiquitous Night Out With The Lads. She checked the sideboard, the drinks cabinet, the space under the stairs. Tim Robinson had drunk Stella in fairly copious quantities and had a secret stash of Malibu. No ciggies, although Jacquie, who had long since given them up, would kill for one about now. The dead man’s wallet lay on the table. Credit cards. An old theatre ticket stub.
‘No AA,’ she found herself saying aloud. ‘No phone card.’ But there was his blood group. O Neg. Just like hers.
‘Guv?’
Hall was already back on ground level. ‘There’s nothing here, Jacquie. We’re wasting our time. Whatever we’re looking for is back there, at Grimond’s.’
‘But, guv …’
‘Jacquie,’ he interrupted her. ‘We’re going to have to work double shifts from now on. Saturday and Sunday. Can you handle that?’
‘Sure,’ she nodded, trying to read that inscrutable face. ‘But what about the local boys? Don’t we need … ?’
‘No, Jacquie,’ he cut in again. ‘We don’t need them. We just need us. Where will I find Peter Maxwell?’
Chief Superintendent David Mason was used to press conferences, those media circuses where cameras flashed and intelligent journalists like Duncan Kennedy asked questions that were just shade too much to the point. He fielded them with his usual tangential skill, schooled as he was in days of Thatcher and Major. Nobody’d invented the phrase ‘spin policeman’, but David Mason was one. Dr George Sheffield was less secure. Parents were his usual audience, governors and Old Boy supportive, friendly, united in the cause of education-with-snobbery. And when he addressed them, he wasn�
�t talking about murder.
Mason metaphorically held up his hand, shoulders and lapels glittering silver. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to thank you for coming along this afternoon. Dr Sheffield is, as you know, headmaster of Grimond’s School and he is as anxious as I to assure you all that there is cause for alarm at the present time.’
A barrage of microphones probed forward and a forest of hands filled the air.
Mason selected his questioners carefully.
‘Tom Simpson, Guardian,’ the first one was on his feet. ‘Dr Sheffield, how many pupils have left the school in the last few days?’
‘Er … none,’ the Head shifted uneasily, suddenly hating the spotlight.
‘But surely,’ Simpson persisted amid the hubbub, ‘with two murders in five days …’
‘As I said a moment ago,’ Mason cut in with that fixed smile of his, born of long hours in front of the cameras, ‘we are keeping an open mind on the death of Mr Pardoe.’
‘Oh, come on, Chief Super,’ the local hack, John Bennett, challenged him. ‘I mean, what are the odds?’
‘News of the World, Chief Super,’ another cut in. ‘We might get away with that on April 1; not at any other time.’
‘Superintendent Mason,’ another hand was straining forward. ‘Daily Mail. Surely you have a suspect? Is it sex? Drugs? Our readers have a right to know.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Sheffield was shouting. ‘These things are personal, private. You have no right to …’
Mason cut in again. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. What we would both ask you, Dr Sheffield and I, is that you give the boys and girls the privacy to which they have a right. My officers are on the job and believe me, they will get results. Dr Sheffield’s job is infinitely more difficult. He has to keep a sense of calm and order and to do his best to keep morale high during an intensely difficult time in the life of any school.’
‘Who’s leading the enquiry, Mr Mason?’ the Guardian wanted to know.
‘Er … I cannot comment …’
‘Come off it, Chief Super,’ Bennett was there again. ‘We at the Chronicle know the local boys. Is it Joe Nelson or Mark West?’
‘Neither,’ Mason snapped, getting to his feet and snatching up his cap and gloves. ‘Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen,’ and he shepherded Sheffield away amid a cacophony of questions.
‘God, that was awful!’ Sheffield groaned striding out of the room, still dazed by the light and the whole experience.
‘Worse than that,’ Mason grunted, closing the double doors behind him.
‘Worse?’ Sheffield turned to his man in the corridor outside. ‘In what way?’
‘Never mind. How many kids have you lost?’
‘As of this morning, thirty-one. My Chair of Governors is on the point of closing us down.’
‘No,’ Mason frowned. ‘Nobody leaves Grimond’s. Not now. Not yet.’
‘How exactly do you propose to stop them, Chief Superintendent? Throw an armed cordon around the Grimond walls and pick off stragglers with your SWAT snipers? I’m not sure that would do much for community relations initiatives.’
The Headmaster spun on his heel and stormed off to the waiting car. ‘We need more men,’ Sheffield shouted. ‘One Inspector and a sergeant will hardly suffice.’
Mason reached the vehicle. ‘I thought you’d appreciate the low-key approach,’ he said, checking that no-one was within earshot.
‘Low-key?’ Sheffield snarled, stabbing Superintendent with a rigid finger. ‘Two of my staff are dead, Mr Mason. Tomorrow all this be all over the front pages. Grimond’s will be on television tonight. It’s a little late, don’t you think, for low-key?’ And he bundled himself into Mervyn Larson’s car.
‘How many?’ he asked his deputy, hauling the seat-belt into place.
‘Eight since lunch-time,’ Larson told him. ‘The MacMister brothers, the Turtle girl. I’ve taken Miss Horsefield off the switchboard. She’s been in tears all afternoon, poor soul.’
‘Just drive, Mervyn,’ Sheffield growled, sinking down in the seat to avoid the camera flashes popping beyond the windscreen.
David Mason reached into his limousine to grab the radio. ‘Get me DCI West,’ he barked. ‘And move your arse.’ He could feel his tooth bothering him again.
If there was one thing Detective Chief Inspector West liked, it was being proved right. He got the call from the Chief Super a little after four-thirty and by five was driving through the horizontal rain for Selborne and Henry Hall’s Incident Room, ready to be brought up to speed. Mason, of course, was going to pay for this, West smiled, rolling his chewing gum around his tongue. Only time would tell how much. What had the stupid bastard been thinking of? He was the man on the ground, the insider. Foreign imports were okay, but they couldn’t handle murder cases, not on their own. What was Mason on?
‘It was just … odd, Max,’ Jacquie was only playing with her tagliatelle; she wasn’t eating it.
‘How, odd?’ The candlelight shone on Maxwell’s wine glass. The pair faced each other in the dining room at Barcourt Lodge. A particularly raucous Rotary dinner was happening in the annexe through the double doors, streamers flying, glasses clinking and cherry-nosed old farts making spectacles of themselves.
‘Well, usually a search like that would take two hours, perhaps more and that’s with a full team. Hall went through the place like a bloody tornado. I reckon we were there less than twenty minutes.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Questions,’ Jacquie pushed her plate away.
‘Ah,’ Maxwell waggled his fork at her. ‘Now, what did your Mummy say about eating your greens?’
Jacquie twisted her lips. ‘You haven’t met my mummy yet, have you, Max?’
The Head of Sixth Form grabbed a spoon and held it in the air in the form of a cross with his fork, eyes wide with terror.
‘Well, then, shut it,’ Jacquie advised, doing fairly bad John Thaw in The Sweeney, ‘or I’ll arrange it.’
‘“Questions” you said,’ Maxwell knew the moment to change a subject.
‘That’s right,’ Jacquie held her wine glass in both hands. ‘No answers.’
‘For instance?’ He sipped his wine.
‘There wasn’t a single photograph in the house, at least not on the ground floor. I didn’t see upstairs.’
‘So he’s not a photo person,’ Maxwell shrugged.
‘One of the DSs, a bloke named Chapell, has been assigned background. He can’t find any. Seems Robinson forged his references. The odd thing is that having been to his house, we’re none the wiser now. Hall just didn’t seem interested.’
‘Perhaps he thought somebody else should have combed the joint,’ Maxwell suggested.
Jacquie shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t pique. He chose it, apparently. Specifically told the team that he and I would handle that end of things.’
‘I see.’
‘He didn’t talk to neighbours, check phone messages. Nothing. You don’t think he’s losing it, do you?’
‘Henry?’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Not a bit of it. How old is he?’
‘The big five-o next month.’
‘A mere stripling,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Probably hasn’t lost all his milk teeth yet.’
‘There’s something else.’
‘Oh?’
‘The forensics report said that Tim Robinson was a teetotaller.’
‘And?’
‘I saw lager and spirits in his drinks cabinet. Half-drunk bottle of wine in the kitchen.’
Maxwell flared his nostrils. ‘From which you deduce, Watson?’
Jacquie closed to him. ‘From which I deduce there’s something bloody peculiar about this case, Max. And I mean bloody peculiar. By the way, Hall hasn’t spoken to you yet, has he?’
‘No, should he have?’
Jacquie shrugged. ‘He implied he was going to.’
‘Is he here now?’ Maxwell asked. ‘In the hotel, I mean?’
Jacquie shook h
er head. ‘Out. Said he’d be back later.’
He looked into her steady, grey eyes, burning into his with the intensity he loved. He reached out and held her fingers around the glass. ‘You haven’t by any chance got a key to Mr Robinson’s abode?’ he asked.
She suddenly dangled one in front of him. ‘I thought you’d never suggest it,’ she said.
It was a little after ten that Henry Hall drove into the car park at Selborne. The rain had eased, but it was still spraying onto his windscreen from passing traffic and the street lights threw diamond wetness onto the tarmac. The skeleton night shift were there, ready to burn the midnight oil, coffee steaming in cardboard cups and tired eyes straining at VDUs.
He was halfway across the outer offices when he realised. His inner office was occupied. More, it was occupied by DCI Mark West, sitting in his swivel, jacket sprawled over its back, shirt sleeves rolled, eyes squinting against his cigarette smoke, crumpled coffee cup at his elbow.
‘Ah, Henry,’ West looked up. ‘Welcome aboard.’
Hall looked at the trio of officers with West. DS Chapell he knew, and Sandy Berman. He’d never seen the third man, a thick-set copper with a shaved head who might have been a bouncer in a previous existence.
‘Could I have a word, Mark?’ Hall said.
‘Not just at the moment,’ West lolled back, smiling. ‘I’m conducting a double murder enquiry, and have quite a bit of time to make up. Any problems with that, perhaps you could talk to Chief Superintendent Mason, could you?’ He pressed the intercom button. ‘Lynda, bring us a cup of coffee through, could you, love? DCI Hall will see himself out.’
‘Can’t you stay a bit longer?’ Janet lay in the shadows in the corner of her little hideaway.
‘You know I can’t,’ Cassandra swayed upright, silhouetted against the curtains.
‘Yes,’ Janet said, fighting back the tears. ‘I know.’ She watched the lithe girl clip on her front-fastening bra and pull the lacy panties up her bare thighs, smoothing the thong around her bum.
‘Look,’ Cassandra faced her, hands on hips. ‘We’re going to have to be careful from now on,’ she said. ‘With all this … whatever … going on. There are eyes everywhere.’ And she pulled her tracksuit bottoms on.
