by M. J. Trow
‘Betty Getti it is. What a brilliant child you are.’
Nolan beamed. His Dads was not quite like the other dads, but he was glad he was his. Plocker’s dad only came home at weekends and then was always playing golf. In the recent snow, he had played golf with orange balls, so they showed up. What kind of Dads was that?
‘Can I watch some telly, Dads?’ Nothing like striking while the iron was hot.
‘Done your homework?’ Maxwell could hardly believe he was saying that to a child this age, but Mrs Whatmough ran a tight ship.
‘No. It’s reading. I’ve got to read a page to you and then you have to say I’ve done it.’
‘Come and read to me now, then. While I start the Betty Getti.’
‘Dads,’ Nolan whined. ‘Can’t I do it at bedtime?’
Maxwell had a feeling that by Nolan’s bedtime the house might be full of very worked-up people. Although it was tempting to give himself an excuse to get away, it wouldn’t be fair. Jacquie had had a bad enough day already, without being lumbered with unknown quantities of Golds and O’Malleys.
‘I’ll hear him read.’ Hector Gold had appeared in his usual flannel-footed way at Maxwell’s elbow. ‘What’s he on? War and Peace, perhaps?’
‘Don’t joke,’ Maxwell said. ‘That’s next term, I gather. He’s reading Magnus Powermouse at the moment, limbering up for some Tolstoy. You’ll have to excuse him if he does all the voices; we’ve been reading it to him since he was tiny and he knows it off by heart.’
‘Then why does he have to read it to you?’ Hector Gold was not a stupid man, but he wasn’t a parent either.
‘Because we have to sign to say he’s read it.’
‘I know, but—’
‘And so if we sign when he hasn’t read it, that would be lying. And Carpenter Maxwells don’t lie, you see.’ Maxwell winked at him. The boy was still in earshot.
Gold looked suitably abashed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been an O’Malley by marriage a bit too long.’
‘I understand,’ Maxwell said. ‘Perhaps the O’Malleys could try being Golds by marriage for a change.’ This reminded him and he said, ‘I’m sorry, Hec. How did the call to Camille go?’
‘Depends on your point of view.’
‘From your point of view, then.’
‘I told her that I wanted a divorce. That if she wanted, she could go back to LA whenever she liked. So, it went quite well, in that I told her what I wanted to tell her.’
‘I sense a but,’ Maxwell told him.
‘Yes, big but, so to speak, excuse the non-pun. No big butts in our family, except on Jeff. She doesn’t want a divorce. Hates my guts, but is so famous among her friends for still being married after all this time, she isn’t going to let that go. So, she isn’t going back, she isn’t going anywhere without Daddy and I can go to hell – as long as I stay married to her. No problems there. Being married to her is hell. But, don’t worry about me, Max. I’ll survive.’
Maxwell looked at the man before him, as meek and mild a man as you would meet in a day’s march. And yet this very morning he had used the ultimate forbidden word in one of his lessons and for a moment had a look of a man who in two seconds could be ten dress sizes bigger and bright green. The Incredible Hector, straight out of Marvel Comics. He would survive, because Jeff O’Malley would not try too hard to keep him married to his little princess. ‘I’m sorry, Hec. It’s all gone wrong for you and that wasn’t what this year was supposed to be about. Let’s put it behind us, shall we? Jacquie will be home shortly and Mrs Troubridge and Alana will be here soon as well. Quickly listen to Nolan’s reading and sign his sheet for me, would you? I’ll get the Getti on and we’ll be eating in no time.’
Hector Gold had quickly learnt that Peter Maxwell always talked sense, even if it sometimes didn’t sound like English. He called through to Nolan who rushed off to get his reading book to share with his new best friend. He had been working all day on a new voice for Magnus Powermouse’s father and it would be good to try it on a new audience.
Next door, Mrs Troubridge was all of a twitter. Alana was not an easy house guest, but the old lady had not expected her to be. She had got up late and, although very polite, had surreptitiously gone through all of the cupboards in the house, searching for alcohol. The thought of a house where the only booze was a half-empty bottle of Buckfast Tonic Wine was not something she had ever encountered before. A nip of the treacly stuff had given her a caffeine hit like a truckful of Starbucks and the alcohol had hardly stood a chance. She was now almost more sober than Mrs Troubridge, in that she had not been this low on blood alcohol for about three decades and wasn’t sure how she was going to cope. Mrs Troubridge managed the shaking by suggesting a game of canasta. By the time Alana had concentrated on the rules for the afternoon, without once having got close to understanding them, the first wave of the hangover had passed and sobriety was well on the menu.
They were primping now in the hall mirror. Although Mrs Troubridge often ate with the Maxwells she understood that this was an invitation rather than just joining them for a meal. She had guessed that there was going to be some emotional upheaval, some baring of bosoms – although strictly metaphorical, or she would have to leave – and a lot of repressed feeling let free. Although not a tactile woman herself, she expected some hugging, kissing and weeping. As long as she was able to observe merely, then that would be quite all right by her.
Satisfied at last with the few thin curls teased into being with a dampened finger and thumb, she looked without resentment at the reflection of her guest in the mirror. She had no right to still look so attractive, with what she had been through. She should be haggard and grey, but the Californian sun had given her a bone-deep tan and it would be quite a few years under English skies before she was pale.
‘Are you ready, dear?’ Mrs Troubridge asked. ‘We should be going.’
‘It is only next door, isn’t it?’ Alana O’Malley asked. She was a little disoriented, but she was sure she had that right.
‘Yes, dear, but we mustn’t be late. Punctuality is the politeness of princes, as my dear father used to say.’ This mantra was gall and wormwood to Maxwell, who always wanted to correct it and tell her that it was Louis XVIII who used to say that it was the politeness of kings. Although Mrs Troubridge was as old as the hills, even she couldn’t claim to be offspring of a king who died in 1824. And he was French; she would want no truck with that.
‘OK. Fine. If you’re sure.’ Alana O’Malley did not want to be impolite, but nor did she want to see Peter Maxwell, particularly. He seemed a nice man, but had a habit of looking at you as though he could see through your skin. And Alana O’Malley had spent a long time growing a nice thick skin.
Mrs Troubridge handed her a scarf. It was obviously clean, but it had a slight smell of old humbugs about it, from being in a pocket for a long time with an abandoned Everton Mint. ‘Wrap up warm, dear,’ Mrs Troubridge exhorted. ‘You mustn’t catch a chill.’
Alana’s lips parted to say ‘But’, then in the end she didn’t bother. ‘Thank you, Jessica,’ she said instead. ‘How kind you are.’
In the mirror the women looked at each other, glad to have at last found a friend.
Jacquie had actually got as far as putting her coat on and was jingling her car keys in her pocket. She was standing behind her desk doing a mental checklist of everything, because it would be too late once she got to the car; she didn’t intend coming back inside this building tonight.
‘Can I come in, ma’am?’ Sandra Bolton stuck her head around the door. ‘I can come back tomorrow if it’s too late.’
Jacquie looked at her anxious face. She didn’t look as if she had slept at all and she was at a bad age for losing sleep; not a dewy teenager, not a slightly raddled but well-preserved woman of a certain age, but a tired-looking thirty-something with more worries than enough. With a small and, she hoped, inaudible sigh Jacquie put down her handbag and undid her coat. She didn’t
take it off, though, and hoped that that would be a hefty enough hint.
‘No, Sandra. Come on in. How can I help you?’
‘DCI Hall has got them in, the others from the card game. Tim and Mark.’
‘Yes, he said he would be interviewing them. Is that a problem?’
The woman blushed, blotchily, to the roots of her hair. ‘What will he be asking them, do you think?’
‘I should imagine it will be quite standard. Alibi for the time in question, how long they had known Sarah Gregson. He might also ask them if they knew Matthew Hendricks.’
‘Matthew Hendricks? Who’s he, ma’am?’
‘He was the murder victim on Christmas Day. He was also a defendant in a child abuse case last year. We are wondering if there might be a link. Complicated stuff, Sandra. So, he will ask them that. And if they know a Mr Jacob Shears, the man whose body was discovered this morning.’ This morning? Oh, God. It felt like weeks ago.
‘I heard about that.’ Sandra Bolton’s eyes were wide. ‘His liver was in a drawer, wasn’t it?’
Ah, the running liver gag. ‘Yes. It was a very nasty murder. We aren’t sure whether anything is linked yet; the murders are all very different but they do have a link which we are keeping very quiet at the moment, Sandra. And …’ Jacquie wasn’t sure whether to just come out and say it, and in the end she did. ‘… you are a suspect, don’t forget. Has the DCI interviewed you yet?’
Pressing her lips together, Sandra nodded, a fat tear rolling down her face.
‘Well, then, that’s fine surely. Did he say he had finished with his enquiries as far as you were concerned? Are you back on duty?’
‘Tomorrow, ma’am,’ the woman whispered.
‘Well, for heaven’s sake, Sandra. Do try and stop crying.’ Jacquie was a patient woman, as behove anyone who lived with Peter Maxwell, but even she had her limits. She looked more closely at her. A thought snagged in her brain as it sleeted randomly through the atmosphere on its way to nowhere. ‘You did tell Mr Hall everything, didn’t you?’ she asked wearily.
For reply, Sandra Bolton shook her head, tears flying in all directions.
‘Sandra! Do you want to work in this job or are you trying to get yourself the sack, because you are going the right way about it. I’m going to call down for two cups of coffee. I am going to ring home and tell my family I am going to be late, yet again. I am going to try to prevent myself from giving you a slap as one of the stupidest and most annoying people I have met today. And after all of that I can assure you that you will have pulled yourself together and you will tell me everything. And that means everything. You can’t bore me. I have sat through Death in Venice and lived to tell the tale.’ She picked up the phone and punched a number. ‘Jim. Could you get me a couple of coffees please, to my office? I hate to be a nuisance … You’re a gem. Thanks.’ She put the phone down and took out her mobile. Again, she punched just one key. ‘Max. I’m held up.’
Sandra heard the answer from the other end as a short burst of rhubarb, ending with a very emphatic question mark.
‘I know. It is.’ She gave Sandra a glance which was not on her usual friendliness scale.
Some more querulous rhubarb.
‘Go ahead and eat without me if I’m not back. Put Nole to bed as well. I’ll be back as soon as I can manage. What about Camille?’
The rhubarb was positive this time.
‘Has he? Well done him. I expect Daddy will be cross. Or possibly not. Something a bit odd there.’
Rhubarb?
‘We’ve got a few more hours and then that’s it.’ There was a rap on her door. ‘Coffee’s here, hon. Must go.’ She rang off and called, ‘Come in,’ simultaneously.
A tray with three coffees edged round the door, in the hands of DCI Henry Hall. ‘Good evening, Sandra,’ he said, affably. ‘I wondered if I would find you here. No, don’t get up.’ When she continued to rise, tears flowing again, he repeated himself. ‘No, really, don’t get up.’ He put the tray down on Jacquie’s desk and took a seat in a chair to one side. ‘Please go on with whatever it was you were about to say. Unless you had finished. DI Carpenter?’
‘No,’ Jacquie said, taking her cue from his formality. ‘We hadn’t started yet, sir.’
He sat down and laced his fingers together across his stomach. ‘Well, off you go, Constable. I’m all ears.’
Sandra Bolton sat, crouching down, all big eyes and tears and snot. She shook her head.
‘Let me put it another way,’ he said, leaning forward, still stony-faced. ‘Off you go, Constable. I’m all ears.’
The constable looked at Jacquie and found nothing there. She drew a huge shuddering sigh and began. ‘Since the very first game we played with Jeff O’Malley, I couldn’t afford it. My mother had given me some Christmas money and it was to buy things, the turkey and stuff like that, so I used that and didn’t tell my boyfriend I’d had it. So he bought all the stuff and that was all right. Then, the next game, I lost everything and I was going home and Jeff O’Malley stopped me.’ She looked at Jacquie. ‘Do I have to say this?’
Hall answered for her. ‘I don’t think you will have many surprises for me,’ he said. ‘Go on.’
She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, like a child. ‘He said that he would give me half my stake money back, if I … if I would have sex with him.’
There was a silence and the room held its breath.
She continued. ‘I said … I said I didn’t have time to go anywhere, I had to get home. He said he didn’t want to go anywhere either, we could do it there.’
‘Where was “there”?’ Jacquie asked, gently.
‘It was in the multi-storey car park,’ she said. ‘In the stairwell.’ She sniffed again, but pulled herself together so that the rest came out in a rush. ‘I didn’t have any choice. I didn’t have any money and I had bills to pay. I … I let him do it, leaning up against the wall. Then …’ the rest came out in a wail, ‘then, when he’d done it, he just walked away. He left me there and walked away.’
Jacquie found herself feeling rather uncharitable as she wondered quite what the woman had been expecting. Flowers?
‘And?’ Hall barked.
‘I heard some footsteps, I’m not sure whether it was from above or below. Someone had been watching. Or possibly just listening. But he was very loud, anyone would know what we were doing. What … he was doing. I don’t know who it was.’
‘And?’ Hall knew a lot more of this story but wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
Sandra Bolton dropped her head into her hands and shook it, mumbling into her palms.
Henry Hall was not an unkind man, as Jacquie knew too well. He stood up and put his hand on the weeping woman’s shoulder. ‘Since then, up to but not including last Saturday, Jeff O’Malley has given Sandra half her stake money back after each game, in exchange for sex. Last Wednesday, he consented to taking her to his car, as it was so cold. That was the only kindness he has shown. But the worst thing is that someone did see them that first time a few weeks ago. And so they have been blackmailing her for the returned half of her stake money each time.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Sandra!’ Jacquie exploded. ‘Why didn’t you report it?’
Hall answered for her. ‘She had broken so many laws it was not really an option. Prostitution. Indecent exposure. Behaviour likely to offend public decency.’
‘Who told you?’ she whispered.
‘Mark Chambers and Tim Moreton.’
‘They knew? I can’t believe they knew. And so Sarah knew too. Oh, God.’
‘And your blackmailer.’ He looked down at her. ‘Go home, Sandra. Tell your boyfriend as much as you can bear to, but tell him something because this isn’t going to go away. Go on. Blow your nose and go home. Are you OK to drive?’
She trumpeted into a handkerchief and stood up. She nodded. ‘I’m all right. Thank you, sir, ma’am,’ and she went out, still sniffing.
Jacquie sat there, her hands o
n the desk. Finally, she just said, ‘My God. Can we get him on any of this, guv?’
‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘But what? It wasn’t rape, it isn’t blackmail. I suppose we could get him for lewd behaviour and procuring, but that puts Sandra in a much worse position than she is now. And it also means we’d have to arrest a reasonable percentage of the population, half the country’s footballers and allegedly the Italian Prime Minister.’
‘Could he not be the blackmailer?’
‘I suppose so, but he agreed with all the details just now when I paid him a visit in an interview room. He didn’t know about the blackmail and I don’t think he could pretend that well. Laurence Olivier he certainly is not.’ Hall was annoyed; he had so wanted to find out something to keep Jeff O’Malley in for longer but time was running out.
‘What about one of the others?’ Jacquie asked.
‘They told me about it straight out. Would a blackmailer do that? I’m not sure but I don’t think so.’
‘Hmm. You are probably right,’ Jacquie agreed. She was thinking of Mrs Whatmough. ‘Sarah Gregson, then?’
‘Looks like it, no matter what her husband says. I don’t know where this is going, Jacquie, to be honest. I’m just going to make sure those statements have been signed, then I’m off. You?’
‘I’m off home as well,’ she said. ‘We have an O’Malley and a Gold for dinner, along with Mrs Troubridge. Rather a mixed bag.’
‘Well, enjoy that, then,’ Hall said. ‘Will you find it difficult at all, facing Mrs O’Malley?’
‘I knew he was a shit before, guv. Knowing a bit more won’t make any difference. Something is bothering me, though.’
Henry Hall had thought so, but hadn’t liked to say. But would it be the same thing that was bothering him?
‘Do you remember what Bob Thorogood said after Hendricks’ murder? What if it was one of us?’
‘Bob! Yes.’ He waited for the rest.
‘What if it is? What if it’s Sandra and she wasn’t being blackmailed at all. What if she’s our murderer?’
Hall extended an arm to the door. ‘You saw the state she was in. Do you really think it could be her?’
