Maxwell's Crossing

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Can’t wait,’ he said and joined her in the doorway. ‘See you later, Mrs B,’ and he shut the door behind him.

  Mrs B, baulked of her prey, flicked her duster at a film poster showing Michael Caine facing down a Zulu warrior. She loved Michael Caine. A lot of her courting had taken place in the cinema and she was a bit of a film buff as a result. She looked with misty eyes at the poster of Yul Brynner lurching through Westworld. He was lovely as well and she only had to hear the theme music of The Magnificent Seven to remember the first time she met the first Mr B, in the queue to see the film when it came out. She gave Yul a reminiscent wipe and rejoined Charles for a bit of a trundle down the landing.

  * * *

  The pub where Bob Thorogood had chosen to hold his farewell party was not what Maxwell was expecting. Somehow, the gastropub with its faux Italian (or should that be fingere Italian, he wondered, dredging his memory banks) was more suited to young things having a glass of chilled cheap Chardonnay than a load of coppers nursing pints. And yet here they were, not exactly crowding into Gino’s early on Tuesday evening. The owners – neither of them called Gino – had been happy to give hefty discounts in this usually very quiet couple of hours in the midweek doldrum of the worst month of the year. Jacquie and Maxwell shrugged their coats over the back of two chairs tucked out of the way behind a polystyrene quarter-size copy of Michelangelo’s David, with pockmarks in his bum where bored drinkers had picked at it, and settled down to be politely convivial.

  Bob Thorogood was already at the bar, with a few of his diehard oppos from Leighford Nick. He glared as Jacquie and Maxwell came in and said something derogatory to the men standing next to him. None laughed; Jacquie was a little disappointed by that. Obviously her promotion had made more differences than she had thought. She sent Maxwell to the bar for drinks and to buy one for Thorogood. He had never been known to refuse a freebie.

  ‘Hello, Bob,’ he said pleasantly, when they were standing side by side waiting for the barista to notice they were alive. ‘Congratulations on the new job. What can I get you?’

  Thorogood was between a rock and a hard place. He hated this bloke, older than him, without his charm and obvious charisma, and yet able to pull the best-looking woman in the station. Thorogood had once had a small success with a desperate civilian admin assistant in the stores cupboard which had convinced him of his attraction to women, and all the snubs before and since had not been enough to make him see that it had been a strictly one-off occurrence, brought on by overexposure to fumes from the photocopier. Now, here the old git was, offering him a drink. His hindbrain took over, the lizard we all carry within us.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll have a pint.’ He paused, just for effect. ‘With a whisky chaser, if that’s OK with you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Maxwell said affably and nodded to the girl behind the bar who bent to her task. ‘Can you also make that one orange juice and … I think I will join this gentleman in a whisky. But no pint with mine, thank you.’ He turned to Thorogood again. ‘So, change of direction, Bob. Have you started in the new office yet?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ the other man growled. ‘I was filling a vacancy so DCI Hall kindly let me go.’ He picked up his pint and raised it slightly in Maxwell’s direction. Drinker’s courtesy. ‘Thanks. Yes …’ He leant one elbow on the bar, his prepared story tumbling out, as it would throughout the evening, becoming less coherent with time. Maxwell was lucky to be getting it in more or less mint condition. ‘… Yes, Henry didn’t want to lose me, of course, but there was, as I say, this vacancy, and they were pretty desperate. So I agreed to start straight away.’

  ‘I should think Henry was very grateful,’ Maxwell said, with no emphasis.

  ‘Yes.’ There was no emphasis in Thorogood’s reply, either.

  ‘You got this do arranged quickly,’ Maxwell remarked, sipping his whisky.

  ‘This is my local,’ he said. ‘And it doesn’t do to linger. If you have your do too late everyone has forgotten who you are.’

  ‘Very true. So,’ Maxwell turned to survey the room, ‘who’s here? Are they all colleagues?’

  Thorogood looked round the room. There were about fifteen people, divided into small knots of three, with the odd one standing alone looking awkward and nursing a glass. ‘Except those two totties in the corner, yes,’ he said. ‘You probably know the ones from Leighford Nick by sight. That chap over there,’ he gestured with his glass, by now only a quarter full, ‘is one of the wardens from my New Department. Seems a nice chap, very ambitious. Should go far. I’ve got a supervision interview with him tomorrow, see how he’s getting on.’

  The man didn’t look ambitious. He was rather weaselly to look at, with an unresolved spot on one temple. His glasses were mended with a piece of grubby Elastoplast but his coat, which he had opened but not removed, was an expensive one, all pockets and flaps with a designer lining. Perhaps it was a Christmas present. Probably from his mum, Maxwell decided.

  ‘He doesn’t look ambitious,’ he remarked.

  ‘You’re right,’ Thorogood agreed, putting his empty glass down, emphatically. Maxwell nodded to the barista, who provided a refill. ‘Thanks,’ continued the Traffic Supremo. ‘No, you’re right. He looks very ordinary, but he was in my office yesterday afternoon while I was still dusting off the spider plant. Had a lot to tell me about my predecessor. Very useful.’ He tapped the side of his nose, meaningfully. It was probably the last time he would succeed in doing so that evening.

  Maxwell realised he still had Jacquie’s orange juice in his hand, warming up nicely. ‘I must go,’ he said to Thorogood. ‘Better take the old ball and chain her drink, I suppose.’

  The Party Boy watched him go. What a nice bloke, he thought to himself, through a haze of beer and whisky. We’ve all been wrong about him. His ex-oppos flowed back to surround him as Maxwell walked away but didn’t stand as close as they had before. Thorogood had started to take on the smell of a dead man walking and that was a smell that could stink up your own career before you knew it.

  In the next half an hour Gino’s started to fill up and Bob Thorogood was a gratified host. Most people from Leighford Nick were there to make sure he was really gone; most people from Traffic, based at County Hall three doors down from the bar, were there to toady up to the new boss. Bosses didn’t last long in Traffic. It was considered, by those who knew the term, to be a kind of Chiltern Hundreds of the division. The place they sent you while they thought about what they were really going to do with you, that wouldn’t involve tribunals and huge payouts.

  Maxwell and Jacquie sat in their David-shielded seat and Maxwell picked a few more polystyrene granules out of the statue’s bum, just to show he had been there. When Henry Hall arrived in a blast of cold air, he scanned the room and joined them, bringing drinks with him. They watched him greet Bob Thorogood and buy him a drink and then he nodded to others in the room as he made his way to their table.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you here, Henry,’ Maxwell said. ‘Not that I’m not delighted, of course.’

  ‘Just need to see that the bugger has really gone,’ Hall said, sipping his Virgin Mary, heavy on the Lea & Perrins. ‘I can’t believe it went so smoothly. Enid … what was her name, Jacquie? Not Blyton, surely?’

  ‘Burton,’ Jacquie supplied.

  ‘Yes. Enid Burton was finally written off as retired on health grounds last week. She’d been off for nearly a year with stress, so not a moment too soon. We couldn’t recruit while she was in post but as soon as we could – well, there was Bob and it seemed ideal.’ His glasses flashed in the mock candlelight and Maxwell swore he saw a smile sleet past. ‘Well, cheers.’

  ‘Henry?’ Jacquie asked. ‘Why does that weaselly bloke keep staring at you like that? It looks as though he’s coming over. Do you know him?’

  Hall screwed round in his chair. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘That’s Mark Chambers.’ He looked at Maxwell and decided to continue anyway. ‘You know, one of the card players. I interviewed him
yesterday. Have you read his statement?’

  ‘Glanced,’ Jacquie said. ‘Flicked, you know how it is.’

  ‘Nothing in there of note,’ Henry quickly concluded. ‘He’s a bit of a police groupie, that’s all.’ The man was now alongside.

  ‘Hello, DCI Hall.’ He looked expectantly at the Maxwells. ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jacquie pleasantly. ‘I am Detective Inspector Carpenter Maxwell and this is my husband, Max. How are you?’

  The man pulled out a chair and leant towards her. ‘How do you mean, how am I?’ he said, earnestly.

  She was taken aback. She almost expected him to get out a notebook and jot down her reply. ‘Well, nothing, really. I just thought you might be feeling a little shocked. After Sarah Gregson’s death; she was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Not a friend, really, no,’ Mark Chambers said, pushing his glasses up his nose, right on cue. ‘An acquaintance, I should say.’ He smiled ingratiatingly at Hall.

  The others looked at him. He had met this woman, admittedly in the company of others, twice a week for months. Only that previous Saturday she had given him four hundred and fifty pounds, which she had won from him fair and square. She was now dead. And he was calling her an acquaintance. Jacquie and Maxwell, who knew Hall, could tell he was seething. But Chambers was not to know; as usual, there were no outward signs.

  ‘It’s a shame, of course,’ he said, compounding his clichéd appearance with a hearty sniff, ‘but she was rather an unhappy woman, I always thought. Flawed. Like Sandra Bolton …’ He looked around the room. ‘Is she here? Or is she suspended? I understand she—’ Before he could carry on, Hall stood up, striking David a nasty denting blow with his elbow.

  ‘I must just go and speak to Bob before I go,’ the DCI said, brusquely. ‘Margaret will be waiting with my supper. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jacquie. Goodnight, Max. Love to Nolan.’ And he was gone, elbowing through the now reasonably sized crowd.

  Maxwell looked at Chambers with narrowed eyes. The man was not physically attractive, it was true, and he had the conversational style of a runaway rhinoceros. Perhaps some people were just born to be traffic wardens and their parents and teachers didn’t bother to instil the social graces, knowing it would not be worthwhile. To fill the lengthening silence, he asked, ‘Have you lived in Leighford long, Mr Chambers?’

  ‘I don’t actually live in Leighford,’ Chambers said.

  ‘Oh.’ Jacquie was surprised. Most people who worked in Leighford lived there. It seemed pointless not to; it was a pleasant enough town, if a little touristy in the season. The shops were OK, the facilities normal for a south-coast seaside town of its size. And she thought she remembered O’Malley saying that one of the men lived above a taxi firm. She was sure it was Chambers. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘I may have given the wrong impression,’ Chambers said, with a gap-toothed smile. ‘I mean that I do live in Leighford, but I have a house out in one of the villages.’ He saw their expressions and smiled more widely. ‘A “doer-upper”, I think they call it stateside. I don’t live in it all the time. And of course, in this weather I haven’t been able to get out there so much. It has no central heating at present, in this weather it is a bit of a no-go area.’ He sipped his drink. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Out on the edge,’ Maxwell said quickly. There was something about this man that made him not want to give his address. There was something of the stalker about him. He hadn’t realised that traffic wardens were paid so well. Perhaps he was in the wrong job. ‘Two houses, Mark,’ he said. ‘You are lucky. We’ve just got the one.’

  Chambers laughed. ‘Not two houses, as such,’ he said. ‘I live in a flat in Leighford, and the house is one my mother left me. She died last year, God rest her soul. We were very close. Even with my extra jobs I’m not sure I could manage two houses. Dear me, no.’

  ‘You live over a taxi firm, as I remember, don’t you?’ Jacquie said.

  Chambers looked puzzled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘A greengrocer’s. Very quiet. Not too smelly either, unless the onions go off over a weekend. I was over a butcher’s, once. That wasn’t so nice. What made you think I lived over a taxi firm? That would be quite noisy, I should think.’

  Jacquie shook her head and sipped her drink. ‘I don’t know who mentioned it,’ she said.

  The silence lengthened again.

  ‘And then, there’s the gambling,’ Maxwell threw in.

  ‘Are you a policeman?’ Chambers asked, frostily.

  ‘No. Not really,’ Maxwell hedged.

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Only by marriage. I’m a teacher. At Leighford High.’

  ‘How do you know so much, then?’ Chambers said, rather snappily. ‘Shouldn’t all this be confidential?’ He looked at Jacquie as he spoke.

  ‘I know Rosemary Whatmough,’ he said, for reasons he couldn’t fathom.

  ‘Is Rosemary Whatmough a policeman?’ Chambers was really on his guard now and on his dignity. Jacquie could smell trouble on the wind.

  ‘She’s a teacher too,’ she said. ‘She was Sarah Gregson’s employer and she is our son’s Headmistress. You know how people gossip.’ She tried to lighten the mood and seemed to succeed.

  Chambers relaxed and treated them to another smile. ‘Ah, gossip. Yes, my mother never liked to gossip. But we did like a nice game of cards. Whist drives, that kind of thing. I could never get the hang of bridge, but Mother was a demon.’

  ‘Racing demon.’ Maxwell made a card game joke and it gave them all an opportunity to laugh nervously. ‘But, seriously, the gambling. It must have taken a chunk out of your wages, I suppose.’

  Chambers stopped laughing. ‘It did, yes, but I never gambled with more than I could lose. And I didn’t lose every time, not like the others. They were very unwise. They should have stopped coming if they couldn’t afford to lose. That’s what I told them, but they thought they could win it back. Gamblers always do. I’m not a gambler, you see. I just like to play cards.’

  The silence descended again and Jacquie got up. ‘I must just go and have a word with Bob, if you don’t mind,’ she said to Maxwell, but it was Chambers who answered.

  ‘No, off you go. I’ll stay and chat to Max.’

  Maxwell gave a rictus smile to Jacquie, who went off towards the bar.

  ‘What a lovely woman,’ Chambers said. ‘You’re a lucky man. I have never married. Never found the right girl. Ha ha.’

  The right women could be very fleet of foot, it was true. Maxwell took refuge in his glass while he thought of something to say. ‘So, you know Jeff O’Malley?’ he asked. ‘I know his son-in-law. We work together.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I know him,’ Chambers said. ‘I just met him a few weeks ago at the game and I can’t say we hit it off. He seemed rather a bully. He came back to my flat once, for a drink. A policeman, I gather, back home.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Maxwell agreed.

  ‘He told me all about his family. His daughter sounds a wonderful woman. Apparently, she has been in films. Living in LA I suppose you would get that kind of opportunity. I’ve never had any ambition in that direction. We were never a family to put ourselves forward like that, although I gather my grandfather used to do a humorous monologue sometimes at Christmas. That would be before I was born, of course.’

  There was something very soporific about the man’s voice and Maxwell could suddenly see with awful clarity how easy it must be to be hypnotised. Perhaps Chambers lulled unguarded motorists into a stupor before he slapped a ticket on their windscreens. He could sense the room receding and Chambers’ eyes seemed to glow behind his glasses. He shook himself awake and found that they had moved on from granddad amusing the family to how the present scion of the otherwise defunct Chambers family had had a few disappointments in his career, but was having an important interview with his new boss in the morning, of which he had high expectations.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do splendidly,’ Maxwell said. ‘
And of course, if you get a promotion, you can give up your extra sources of income and concentrate more on your doer-upper.’

  Chambers was again on his dignity. ‘Who told you about my extra sources of income?’ he snapped.

  ‘Um … you did, I’m sure,’ Maxwell said. He had only been making polite conversation. ‘You said you had extra jobs.’

  Chambers laughed unconvincingly. ‘So I did,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I get a little defensive. For some reason, people don’t like traffic wardens.’

  ‘How silly,’ Maxwell said, clicking his teeth. ‘Just doing your job, after all. What are your extra jobs, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Traffic warden,’ Chambers said, as if clarifying everything.

  ‘No, your extra jobs.’

  ‘Traffic warden,’ he said again, as though explaining to a child. ‘At weekends, I am a traffic warden, in private car parks. Cinemas. Out-of-town stores. That kind of thing.’

  Maxwell was stuck for once for an answer. All of the stock ones – ‘that must make a change’, ‘pleasant to be in the open air’, ‘that must be very interesting’, ‘at least there’s no heavy lifting’ – didn’t seem to do the trick somehow.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll give them up, though,’ the man said, glasses gleaming with enthusiasm. ‘I enjoy it. People should obey the rules and then they wouldn’t get a ticket. All I’m doing is putting it right.’

  Maxwell nodded and smiled. A vigilante traffic warden. Every town should have one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jacquie had been giving him covert glances for the last few minutes and had finally decided to take pity. She squeezed through the crowd and bent over to speak to Mark Chambers. ‘I’m going to have to tear Max away, I’m afraid. Babysitter problems, you know how it is.’ As she said that, she realised how stupid that sounded. Of course he didn’t know how it was. But he nodded anyway and leant back, as if giving Maxwell permission to leave.