Maxwell's Crossing

by M. J. Trow

  Gold grinned. He waited for the multi-choice papers to be given out like back home, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Maxwell placed two fingers in his mouth and his whistle almost shattered the glasses of a ginger child now in Group Three.

  ‘Let me take you back,’ the Head of Sixth Form said. ‘It is 1785. Who is the king, George?’

  All eyes turned to the luckless lad in Group Four. He didn’t know.

  ‘Tell him, everybody,’ Maxwell commanded.

  ‘George!’ most of them chorused. He overlooked the solitary voice which said ‘Victoria’.

  ‘George the what?’ Maxwell was a stickler for accuracy.

  ‘The Third,’ two or three voices said. The others were too fly to embarrass themselves as the ‘Victoria’ girl had done.

  ‘Correct,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘You four groups are businessmen – and women, of course, Cassandra – and you are what they used to call ‘joint stock companies’. Your job,’ he lapsed into Mission Impossible in spite of himself, ‘is to set yourself up in business. You’ve got to decide what you want to make, how you want to make it. Remember …’ he held up his fingers for the slower learners, ‘you’ll need to sort out where the money’s coming from, where you’ll make whatever it is you’re making, how you’ll transport the stuff and where you’ll sell it. Now, we talked about all this last lesson, but that was a while ago, so you’ll find some reminders on the sheets on the desks. I want one of you to be a scribe, to write ideas down, and one of you to be the spokesperson, because later on, Mr Gold and I will want to hear your ideas.’

  The groups fell to with a will. Henry Barnard wanted to be scribe and spokesperson for his group and Gold spent several minutes trying to sort that one out. Nobody in Group Two wanted to be the scribe so Anna Dove was going to have to speak off the top of her head. No change there, then.

  ‘Yes, wigs are good,’ Maxwell told Group Four, peering over a shoulder at their jottings. ‘What’ll you make them out of?’

  ‘Um … hair?’ Jonathan Armstrong had a City & Guilds in Obvious.

  ‘Certainly,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Yeuch!’ Cassandra was never comfortable outside her own century.

  ‘But that will cost and you may not have enough money. Think about what else you could use.’ And he passed on. He was just reminding Jack Twelvetrees in Group One that ‘Terms and Conditions Apply’ appeared nowhere in eighteenth-century-speak when the balloon went up.

  ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’

  The silence was deafening. No one used language like that in Mad Max’s classroom, least of all other teachers. Hector Gold was almost purple in the face. ‘Cell phones in 1785?’ he screeched. ‘You have got to be shitting me!’

  ‘Keep it real, Alan,’ Maxwell advised the offending child. ‘The best you can do communication-wise in 1785 is a letter – or perhaps a loudhailer for short distances. Er … Mr Gold. A word?’

  He shepherded Gold into the doorway and glanced back to find all four groups buzzing. He was fully aware that they were not galvanised by eighteenth-century joint stock ventures, but were busy analysing what had just happened.

  ‘What just happened?’ Maxwell asked. It wasn’t his favourite film, but then he had no idea that Hector Gold had Tourette’s either.

  ‘Sorry, Max,’ Gold grinned sheepishly. ‘It’s all a bit of a strain, I guess.’

  ‘Eight Eff Three?’ Maxwell checked. This was bad news. Gold would be facing Ten Aitch Six later.

  ‘No, it’s not the kids,’ Gold told him. ‘It’s me. Well, us. Oh, hell. Look, I’ll just get along to the staffroom.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Maxwell told him. ‘You’ll go back in there, with me, and we’ll carry on. Just act normally.’

  ‘Er … there won’t be letters or anything, will there? To the Principal, I mean.’

  ‘Legs Diamond wouldn’t know a principle if it got up and bit him,’ Maxwell assured him. ‘If it should arise, I’ll just plead communication problems. As I always say,’ and he patted the man’s arm, ‘America is a foreign country where they just happen to speak English. Some of the time.’

  * * *

  Angus sat disconsolately at his desk and looked at the motley collection of detritus that had just arrived from Leighford by motorcycle courier. The main roads had stayed open throughout the snow. It was just the side-jobbies that remained treacherous. Angus wanted sometimes to just take the idiots from SOCO and knock their heads together. Angus wanted hairs, he wanted swabs, he wanted the esoteric and the arcane. What he appeared to have was a selection of office rubbish that had missed the bin. There was a chocolate wrapper, heavily bloodstained; a half-page of newspaper which could only be the Leighford Advertiser, judging by the typographical errors and the content, stained with something which was presumably a by-product of disembowelling; some photographs on a memory stick of various bloody footprints and one very smudged thumbprint (also sent as a lifted-off print in a bag); a pair of girl’s shoes, size 5, and a paper clip.

  Where was the single flake of cigarette ash, from a cigarette handmade to order by a bespoke tobacconist in Guatemala? Where was the wisp of fabric, caught on a protruding nail, that came from a couturier gown made for a crowned head? A paper clip! A chocolate wrapper! Who did they think he was? Some kind of miracle worker? At least there was no cuddly toy.

  But of course, Angus was some kind of miracle worker. He squared what could only be called his shoulders, although they were not much wider than his head, buttoned up his white coat and set to work. The lifted bloody thumbprint was obviously in the dead man’s blood, but where there was a thumb there was sweat, in Angus’s experience, and so the swab went off for DNA testing down the corridor. Angus was in two minds about DNA; finding little bits of people’s dandruff and spittle might look easy on the telly, but in fact there were so many bits of so many people in any room it was still looking for a needle in a haystack, except they could now put a label on the needle. Finding out who the needle belonged to was still a job for the cops. Angus just gave them the information, they had to work with it.

  Right. Next were the shoes. Quite handy, these. He could lift some DNA so he could exclude the secretary from his results. Few quick swabs, done and done. The newspaper was so fouled with intestinal contents that it was almost unreadable. He put it aside, gently smoothed out, to dry out a bit more and then he might be able to establish exactly what issue it came from and also what it might have on it. It was certainly cut, not torn from the main page, so was almost certainly a valid clue.

  So, what did that leave him? He stood looking down at the paper clip and the chocolate bar wrapper. He remembered he was hungry. Starving, in fact; he shrugged off his white coat and meandered into the corridor and stood looking aimlessly at the machine full of snacks of all kinds, crisps, flavoured maize curly things and a whole load of chocolate, both with and without nuts and various other inclusions. Angus’s mind was a strange place to be and even Angus wasn’t sure he liked it there. It was a mixture of very sensible and logical and very weird indeed. He preferred weird, but he had to admit that sensible and logical was the way he was born and the way he would end up one day, looking at his wife and one point nine children. Angus liked to keep abreast of current statistics and being accurate was the nearest he came to religion, if you didn’t count that summer he was a Druid.

  So, a thought came surfing along the shallows of Angus’s mind and sent him, snackless, back to his bench. He smoothed out the chocolate wrapper and swabbed off the blood, carefully numbering and storing each swab as he saturated it. Soon, he could read the name on the wrapper and he was right; there was nothing like it in the machine out in the corridor. He quickly went online and found that in fact there was nothing like it in any shop near Leighford or anywhere else in England either.

  This was exciting. It gave him an excuse to ring Jacquie Carpenter – Angus had no truck with the Maxwell bit of her name or life – to tell her his exciting news. As he waited for her to ans
wer the phone, he fiddled with the paper clip, as everyone does at their desk, except that he was fiddling with it through an evidence bag. Just a common or garden central stores-issue paper clip, just like a million others in his drawer. Honestly, what were those SOCOs like?

  ‘DI Carpenter Maxwell.’

  ‘Hello.’ Angus fought against his usual tongue-tied state when talking to Jacquie. ‘It’s Angus. From Chichester.’

  ‘Hello, Angus. Have you got news for us already? That was quick. I haven’t been back in the office long. Aren’t you a marvel? What is it?’

  She thought he was a marvel! How much better could a day get? ‘It’s the chocolate wrapper that SOCO picked up at the scene.’

  ‘You’re one up on me there, Angus. I didn’t even know there was a chocolate wrapper.’

  ‘It was found … hold on, let me check …’ Angus turned over the evidence bag that had held the wrapper. ‘Down the side of the deceased’s office chair.’

  ‘He was quite a big chap, Angus. Probably ate chocolate while he worked.’

  Angus was a little crestfallen, but ploughed ahead anyway. ‘It was a bit unusual, so I thought I would let you know about it.’

  ‘Good idea. Thank you.’ Jacquie could hear a crest falling at a thousand paces, even down the phone.

  ‘It’s a Wonka Exceptionals Scrumdiddlyumptious chocolate bar wrapper.’

  Jacquie paused before she spoke next. That Angus was a bit of a pothead was common knowledge and had he been less amazing at his job his collar would have been well and truly felt years before. But surely even he knew that Willie Wonka wasn’t real. Before she could frame the sentence, he was talking again.

  ‘I do know that Willie Wonka isn’t real, before you ask me. But I have looked up this particular bar and you can’t get it here.’

  ‘In Leighford?’

  ‘No. In England. It’s an American bar. If …’ and again he checked his evidence bag, ‘Jacob Shears has not been there on holiday recently, it may well be a clue.’

  Jacquie was silent on the other end of the phone. She could hardly believe her ears. Had Jeff O’Malley managed to sneak off another one before they took him down to the station? And if so, why?

  ‘DI Carpenter? Jacquie? Are you still there?’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry, Angus. Train of thought. Thank you very much. Are there likely to be prints?’

  ‘Doubtful. It was very screwed up and also was very bloodstained. I’ve taken swabs, but—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Jacquie said. ‘We have to have DNA on the file to be of any help. Never mind. I know you’ll do your best. Was there anything else?’

  ‘Just the usual.’ Angus was feeling a happy glow that came to him when he had pleased DI Jacquie Carpenter Forget The Maxwell. ‘Fingerprint – well, thumb, but you know what I mean. The shoes from the secretary. A paper clip – just like all the ones we all have in our drawers. I’ll have to be a bit careful when I’m testing that; don’t want it getting mixed up, but I don’t know of any cases of a fingerprint being lifted from anything that small. DNA, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, keep looking, Angus. Thank you.’

  The phone went down with what Angus considered indecent haste, but his angel was probably busy, so he would forgive her. Humming tunelessly to himself, he went off in search of his chocolate. He had once had an iPod, but had put it down somewhere and lost it. Now he just hummed. The sound quality was better and Angus was always on random shuffle.

  Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell sat at her desk, the phone receiver still in her hand, her finger pressed down on the button. She needed more information before she jumped to conclusions, but if she waited, Jeff O’Malley’s time helping them with their enquiries would be up and he would be back on the streets. She needed to sort so much out before that happened, not least of which would be getting a watch on Mrs Troubridge’s house and logging her number with the nick for rapid response should she need help. She didn’t think that Jeff O’Malley liked his possessions wandering off and staying with defenceless old ladies without his express permission. He was likely to get them back by any means at his disposal. She needed to find out what Hector planned to do longer term and also there was the question of Camille. Was she just waiting back at Manda Moss’s ruined house, to see who finally returned? Or had she not even noticed everyone had gone? Camille was a blank to Jacquie for the simple reason that she was a blank. Anything beyond nails pretty much left her cold, which left an awful lot of the world unplumbed by her on any level.

  But first, and it had to be now, Jacquie must ring the mortuary and find out the time of death. If it was after nine last night, they were in trouble. Please, please, please let it be before nine, she intoned to herself as she hit Astley’s speed dial number.

  ‘Leighford Mortuary.’

  ‘Donald?’

  ‘Yes. It’s Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’ It was Donald’s attempt at insouciance and almost passed muster. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Well, Donald, thank you. Look, I’ve just been speaking to Angus and he has made me wonder about something.’

  ‘Angus is always coming up with funny ideas,’ said Donald, jealousy making his left eyebrow twitch. ‘What would you like to know?’ There was a very slight emphasis on the word ‘know’ to suggest know, rather than to surmise. It was subtle, but Jacquie spotted it.

  ‘Well, Donald, you know what these forensic chaps are like. I just want to know time of death, really. Then we can put this clue in or out of court, as it were, should it come to that.’

  ‘Well, I hope it does come to that, DI Carpenter,’ Donald said, severely. ‘This was definitely not suicide, you know. Most people don’t go for disembowelling these days. Especially not when they then put the liver in a filing cabinet and shut the drawer.’

  ‘No, no I do see that, Donald. It was a figure of speech. Umm … do we have time of death?’

  ‘Dr Astley is just getting started, DI Carpenter,’ Donald said, formally. ‘But the rectal temperature is taken early in proceedings. I don’t know whether he has measured the degree of rigor yet. I’ll ask.’

  The phone was put down and Jacquie could hear Donald’s ponderous footsteps retreat, then the creak and slap of a mortuary door. She heard a distant boom, like the guns in Flanders sounded on the coast of Kent in 1914, or so Maxwell had told her. After a moment, the sounds were reversed and he was back.

  ‘Dr Astley says you seem to be in a bit of a hurry, DI Carpenter,’ Donald said, because stirring up trouble was his favourite hobby, after eating, and this seemed a good opportunity. ‘He says to tell you that the deceased was killed not a moment before ten o’clock last night and not a second after one this morning.’

  ‘That’s the very earliest, is it?’ she asked, with a slightly plaintive note.

  Donald hated to disappoint her but the truth was the truth after all. ‘Sorry. He is absolutely adamant. When did you want him to have died?’

  ‘Not at all would obviously be favourite,’ Jacquie was massaging her temples with her free hand, ‘but assuming that his time had come, I wish that time had been about five hours earlier. Never mind, Donald. Thank you.’ And again, the phone went down on a disappointed man. Donald had prepared various witty rejoinders which would now never be said. He sighed and rejoined his boss; he had organs to weigh, even if they had spent some hours filed under ‘Pending’.

  Peter Maxwell sat in his office that cold snowy lunchtime, hunched over a warming but not very nutritious cup of instant soup, and thought about his morning. Away across the fields, out of sight of the staffroom and the Head’s office, most of the lads of Year Ten were snowballing the Year Seven boys to death. It hadn’t done Napoleon any harm when he was at the military academy, so Maxwell let it pass. That he had seen an unexpected side to Hector Gold was in no doubt. The only question that needed to be addressed was whether this was indeed a product of the stress he was under, or whether the Hector Gold they had been seeing was just a veneer over the re
al and rather scary one beneath. He tended to think that it was the former; no one could have kept up a front that laconic if they were in fact a seething mass of anger and fury. Jeff O’Malley was the furious one in the family, Hector was just along for a rather bumpy ride. The psychopath and the cipher, you might almost say. Maxwell gave a little chuckle to himself; why was there never anyone around when you thought of a brilliant thing like that? He looked into his mug and swirled the contents around. What was a Mulliga, he wondered, and was it tawny in the wild or only when domesticated for the soup trade? There was a tap on the door.

  ‘Yes?’ Maxwell carolled. He usually left the door open but the corridor was so arctic that to do so would be to invite pneumonia at the least. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me,’ said his wife, popping her head round the door. ‘May I come in? It’s really cold out here.’

  ‘Sweetness!’ Maxwell leapt up, slopping his sludge over the edge of the mug. ‘What brings you here?’

  She dropped into a chair and sighed. ‘I don’t know, really. I certainly shouldn’t be here, not with what I’ve got.’

  He sat down opposite and looked grave. ‘Two and six?’ The old jokes were indeed the best, but he didn’t think that was really why she was here.

  ‘Max,’ she said, on another sigh. ‘I have a problem and I should be sharing it with Henry, or at the last resort Pete Spottiswood, but it is so … complicated, I thought that the only person who would understand all my whifflings would be you.’

  ‘Absolutely right, of course,’ he agreed. ‘Didn’t the bit about whifflings come between honour and keep you? I know I was thinking it, even if I didn’t say it out loud at the time.’

  ‘I hardly know where to begin,’ she said. ‘Any chance of … what is that, anyway?’ She leant forward to peer into his mug.

  ‘It claims to be mulligatawny and I suppose it isn’t too bad. You have to watch out for the undissolved lumps, though, or it blows your head off. Want one? There are some sachets over by the kettle.’