by M. J. Trow
Hall slumped. ‘Let’s face it, Jacquie. We could name sections of society from now until kingdom come and we’d never get it. Come on, let’s do the morning meeting. Perhaps some of them won’t have hangovers and will be thinking straight.’
‘Oh, yes, guv,’ Jacquie said. ‘How did you enjoy last night? Are you convinced now that Bob Thorogood has actually gone?’
Hall looked mildly crestfallen. ‘I have a horrible feeling that I’ve done him a favour. He seemed right at home amongst all those little Hitlers and I understand his office is a picture, spider plants and everything. I’m quite jealous.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Jacquie said, giving him a little push towards the door. ‘But it’s nice if he’s happy. He wasn’t a bad copper, just a lazy one.’
‘Right now, I’d rather have a lazy one than a renegade one with a .44 Magnum in his pocket. But let’s join the others. Perhaps there’ll be news some little old lady has caught him by knocking him out with her handbag.’
Jacquie leant down and peered at the sky.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked her.
‘Looking for pigs,’ she said. ‘This is their flight path, you know.’
Hall couldn’t resist a look out of the window. The world of Maxwell was a strange one, but it was nice to visit, once in a while.
The main indigenous species of the world of Maxwell was busy that Wednesday lunchtime. He had left Helen Maitland to deal with all of the problems a Sixth Form was heir to and was pedalling off down the school drive, a damp cold wind in his face. He was going to visit somewhere he had hoped he would never have to go, the municipal sports centre and swimming pool, to meet Tim Moreton and hopefully find a murderer. A sports instructor sounded just the ticket for a spot of light disembowelling with no struggle, not to mention hurling a fully grown woman off a car park roof and squeezing the trigger of a .44 Magnum and hitting his target first time. Maxwell was hoping that the visit would not involve undressing. He hadn’t brought any games kit, as he still tended to call anything you wore to exercise in, and he hadn’t got a note from his mother. Never mind; he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
The sports centre was not too far from Leighford High and looked like a gulag. Apart from wide low windows along one side which gave swimmers a bleak view out at the ring road, it was grey concrete blocks under a flat roof. Anything more calculated to depress and least likely to make a person want to fling themselves about in a flurry of exercise was difficult to imagine. A handwritten sign, laminated but, because of the many drawing-pin holes, no longer waterproof, told him in weeping letters that Reception was away to the right. This led him right round the building, past various grey doors going nowhere and some wheelie bins overflowing with old Christmas decorations, to a door about six feet to the left of the notice.
Pushing the door open, he was assailed by a wall of warm chlorine-and feet-scented air. He tried to breathe through his mouth as schoolday horrors revisited him. He was worried even more now that he didn’t have his kit. And none of his name tags were sewn in.
‘Can I help you?’
Well, she seemed friendly enough. ‘Is Mr Moreton in?’
She looked at a board to her right. It was divided into squares and in one of them Maxwell could see a scrawled ‘TM’ and a tick.
‘Yes. He’s in the building but he’ll be at lunch at the moment. Can I ask why you want to see him?’
Maxwell thought quickly. Although the Mrs Whatmough subterfuge had not been a million per cent successful with Mark Chambers, he decided to try it again. He explained and the woman looked suitably doleful.
‘He told us about that. Terrible. He said she was such a nice woman as well.’
‘I understand she was. I didn’t know her, but my son did.’
‘Boyfriend?’ she asked, grimacing understandingly.
‘Reception class,’ he told her. ‘Could you call Mr Moreton, I wonder?’
‘You can go through,’ she said. ‘He’s in the canteen. It’s open to the public. It’s just through there.’ She pointed to a double glass door in the opposite corner of the lobby.
After his experience of finding his way into the building, Maxwell was moderately surprised to find himself immediately in a large room smelling vaguely of tuna sandwiches, overlaid still with the smell of chlorine and old gym shoes. He had thought that Tim Moreton would be easy to spot but he had not taken into account that at the sports centre pretty much everyone would be there for the purposes of pec enlargement and glute firming – Maxwell sometimes watched the QVC shopping channel for amusement in the middle of the night if he was experiencing one of his rare dark midnights of the soul, so knew the jargon – and so the room was full of big men and frighteningly firm women eating mounds of green stuff, laced with seeds and various nutritional additives. He assumed the tuna sandwiches were consumed by the staff serving behind the counter.
There was nothing else for it. ‘Mr Moreton?’ he called. A big man in the corner looked up.
‘Yes?’
He was big in a way that Jeff O’Malley had once been big, hard and firm without a wasted inch. The receding hairline and expression of general discontent took something away from the impression of discreet strength, but even so, he was a very powerful-looking bloke, and easily capable of any of the murders so far committed.
Maxwell crossed over to him. ‘May I join you for a minute?’ he asked.
Moreton assessed him briefly. Not a potential customer for any of his services, whether council-sanctioned or not. ‘I’m nearly done with my break,’ he said, to cover himself should the guy be a Jehovah’s Witness of unusual persistence.
‘This won’t take a minute,’ Maxwell assured him, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘I’m just here to get your address for Mrs Whatmough, Sarah Gregson’s Headmistress, you know. She’s arranging a small tribute to Sarah—’
‘Let me stop you there,’ Moreton said. ‘I happen to know that Sarah’s husband is arranging all that. Perhaps you ought to let this Mrs Whatmough know she will be doubling up. That could be embarrassing for her. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?’
Was that the kind of remark a blackmailer would make? Was there a hidden agenda or was this a perfectly nice man who didn’t want to see someone embarrassed? Maxwell found it hard to tell. ‘My word, she doesn’t know that, obviously. I’ll certainly tell her. I expect she would like to thank you herself. Where did you say you lived?’
‘I didn’t. I don’t need thanks, just glad to be able to help.’ Moreton was starting to think that he had been right in the first place. This man was a Jehovah’s Witness, with a brief to collect names and addresses. Had he read something about that, once, or was that the Seventh Day Adventists? He often got them mixed up and had once enraged a hapless door-knocker by accusing him of polygamy when all he was doing was delivering the Watchtower. He mopped up the last of his no-fat no-taste dressing with a piece of gluten-free bread and drank the last of his power drink in one mouthful. ‘I must be getting back. Very nice to have met you, Mr …’ Some hidden synapse reminded him that if you met someone who seemed like a stalker it was a good idea to try and identify them, although the name was likely to be false; stalkers were tricky and in his heyday Tim Moreton had had a few. Mainly deranged menopausal women who had taken his attentions for genuine love, but nevertheless, he was an expert by most people’s standards.
‘Maxwell,’ Maxwell told him. At this stage, he had no reason to lie.
‘Well, Mr Maxwell,’ Moreton said with heavy-handed sarcasm, ‘Thank you for coming. Give my thanks to Mrs … Whatmough, was it?’
Maxwell nodded.
‘Mrs Whatmough. But I really do recommend she gets in touch with Sarah’s husband. Reverend Mattley, All Souls. He’ll give her all the details.’ He stood up, stowing his plate and glass neatly on his tray. ‘Nice to have met you, goodbye,’ and he was off, with a springing, power-filled step, to the door.
Maxwell sat there for a moment,
undecided. He was a judge of people, of all ages. No one could survive for five minutes, let alone for five centuries as he had, in the teaching profession without being a good judge of people. And Maxwell was pretty sure that he had just spoken to a rather nice, if limited, totally honest man. Damn! He wasn’t sure how he was going to get the details of the others – the funeral director, the landscape gardener and the rest – out of his reluctant wife. He would have to think of another way.
Another way didn’t present itself. All evening there seemed to be something else to do. There was Nolan to get to bed, which for the first time was proving to be a struggle. The events of Troubridge Tuesday had had a profound effect and he tried every trick in the book, and some he appeared to have invented himself, to prevent bedtime arriving. Hector Gold took turns at reading to the child, taking glasses of water and then supervising the subsequent trips to the loo. The only thing that stood a chance of working was the ancient ploy of going to bed with him, something they hadn’t had to do for years. Eventually, he was tucked up in the middle of the parental bed, looking very small and vulnerable, his curly hair damp from the bath.
‘It’s no good, Max,’ Jacquie said, as they were finally sitting down in front of the fire. ‘I can’t keep this pace up. Work is mental and it seems to have come home with me. Nolan doesn’t see enough of me, and then there’s this latest—’
‘Don’t be daft, woman. Whisht and bejabers, as our various Celtic cousins would no doubt advise. If we are being precise, then it was me who brought this lot home with me. Hector and all that. In fact,’ Maxwell continued on his search for six degrees of separation, ‘it is all Paul Moss’s fault. Or, let’s say, his kids, who wanted to live in the land of the foot-long hot dog. I would go further – it is the fault of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who made us all think that the Special Relationship was really special.’ He looked up to see if she was smiling yet. Almost there. ‘Then there are the colonists in Boston all sitting round that bar and shouting “Cheers!” … Need I go on?’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’d make a rubbish housewife. It’s just that these murders … they are so grubby, somehow. They demean the victims and make them seem as guilty as the killer, somehow. I don’t like it. Then there’s this weather. Will it ever stop being cold?’
‘It’s been a long old winter, that’s for sure. But, how do you mean, the victims are guilty?’ He saw a revelation poke its nose out of its hole. Time to tease it out with a promise of a nice piece of tempting cheese.
She had closed her eyes but now she opened them. The man sitting opposite her was as mad as a cake, but perhaps the wisest fool in Christendom. He had taken a girl and made her into the woman she was today, not afraid to let her education show, not afraid to cry when she was sad and laugh like a drain when she wasn’t; in fact, she often ended up laughing anyway. She would tell him just one thing. That couldn’t hurt and knowing him he was halfway there already.
‘We think we have a vigilante on the loose. Not O’Malley, someone else. That means that from a very small selection of possibles, we have the whole damn county to choose from.’
Maxwell tried to look amazed.
‘You knew already, didn’t you?’ she said, deflated.
‘Not knew, no. But if Matthew Hendricks is the first murder, then you have to consider it. I mean, whatever the cause of his behaviour, he was hardly Mr Goodbar, was he? I’m not sure of the other two, but is there such a thing as an innocent solicitor?’
OK, perhaps not just one thing. In for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Sarah Gregson was battling with the fact that she had considered helping her mother to kill herself. She didn’t, but it was her demon, her husband told Henry, and so she told everyone she met, practically. It was pretty much common knowledge among anyone she had ever known socially. She was doing talking therapy to anyone who would listen. Henry also thinks that the solicitor was not the target. He thinks the man who lived below, and also above, his office was the victim. He is a sex offender with a long history, now reformed, but who knows? So, there you are. You know what we know.’
Maxwell was stunned. Usually he had to tweak the knowledge out in fits and starts. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said, simply. ‘I know now why this case is getting to you. The list of potential victims is … endless.’
‘The murderer is a blackmailer as well, we think now. If he finds out something he can make money from, he does. If he thinks the person needs a … lesson … he gives it to them. Simple as that.’
Maxwell sat in silence. This was bigger than he thought. Bigger than Jeff O’Malley, at any rate.
There was a tap on the sitting room door and Hector Gold stuck his head round it. ‘I’ve just checked that Jessica and Alana are back from their AA meeting OK,’ he said and smiled. ‘I think Alana is going to find Jessica a rather strict jailer, but it will all be fine in the end. Be prepared for leaflets is my advice. Anyway, I’d like to clear my head a bit, so I’m going for a walk. Don’t wait up, I’ve got Jessica’s spare key. Goodnight.’ And with that he was gone.
‘He’s no trouble,’ Maxwell remarked after they heard the front door slam. ‘It’s rather like having a hamster.’
‘I even wonder if he can possibly be that nice,’ Jacquie said. ‘My confidence as a people-watcher has taken a bit of a knock, after my mistake with the sex offender; I thought he was a thoroughly nice man. Pete Spottiswood knew, and I didn’t. Pete Spottiswood wouldn’t usually recognise a baddie if he was wearing a badge saying “I Did It”.’
Maxwell slipped out of his chair and knelt beside his wife. He leant over and gave her a kiss. ‘Look, go and have a bath. A nice, long, soaky one. It won’t fix anything, but you’ll feel better for it.’ He shuffled back to let her get up. ‘Go on. Off you go.’
She smiled at him. ‘Do you know, I think I will. I’ll go to bed, then. Have an early night.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Earlyish.’
‘I’ll be up later. I’ll probably watch a bit of telly and then call it a day myself. See you later.’ He settled himself down with the remote. What he was looking for was something quite mindless, to wash over him and clear his head. So why was it, with about four million channels to watch, there was nothing on but QI?
Chapter Twenty
Starry starry night. Robbie McKittrick yawned and tackled the next Sudoku. He was getting rather good at them and understood now why his sister had bought him the Monster Book of the same for Christmas. He saw the people carrier cruising along Columbine, headlights dipped, registration plate grey with the filthy spray from the treated roads and was alert at once.
McKittrick noted the time as the vehicle slowed to a halt down the road. Ten thirty-eight. A dark figure got out and he saw the lights flash as the electronic lock clicked. A big man, dressed for winter. He saw him half turn, wave and call something to somebody on McKittrick’s side of the road before entering the garden gate of Number 28. Another false alarm and he got back to the Sudoku. This one was a bitch.
Peter Maxwell was thinking of calling it a night. Nolan was sound asleep in the middle of their bed and would have to be relocated before he and Jacquie hit the hay. It wasn’t that they had strong views of children sharing a bed with parents, but the child was like a windmill to sleep with and it wouldn’t be comfortable for anyone if he stayed. Jacquie was dozing in the scented steam of a well-deserved bath, trying to soak away the cares of the case gnawing away at her. He had just watched for the thousandth time at least the final shootout in Shane, when gloved grinning Jack Palance goes down in the blaze of Alan Ladd’s .44 and gun smoke drifts along the bar.
‘Maybe one day the bastard won’t beat him to the draw.’ Maxwell spun away from the screen to face a .44 of his own. It wasn’t a Peacemaker and it wasn’t smouldering Alan Ladd in his buckskins standing there. It was a Magnum and the gunfighter was Jeff O’Malley.
The American put a finger to his lips. ‘Where’s my sonofabitch son-in-law?’ he asked. Maxwell genuinely had no idea. Hector h
ad gone out over an hour ago and hadn’t come back yet.
‘How did you get in here?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Back door, Max, just like a regular neighbour poppin’ round to borrow a cup of sugar.’
‘I don’t appreciate having that pointed at me in my own house,’ Maxwell told him.
‘I don’t appreciate being hunted by your goddamn police force for something I haven’t done.’
Maxwell’s brain was whirling. Feet from him, on the floor above, the dearest people in the world were wrapped up in their own little cosiness. This was 38 Columbine, a newish, average town house on the edge of a little seaside town that had managed to miss every exciting event in history. That was then. Now, it was a potential crime scene filled by a psychopath the size of an outside toilet and the man was holding in his hand the most powerful handgun in the world.
Maxwell knew his Dirty Harry. The thing held six bullets in the chamber, and close as he was to O’Malley, he didn’t have a hope in hell of reaching him before the American pulled the trigger. A novice might miss because the gun had a kick like a mule, but O’Malley handled a .44 like Maxwell used to handle chalk. He was deadly at any range in the classroom, but ‘deadly’ was only a word and a figurative one at that. His only hope was to keep the lunatic talking until he could distract him. Jacquie wouldn’t be down; she was turning in for the night once she was out of the bath. Nolan getting involved in the crossfire didn’t bear thinking about. And where was that black and white tough guy when you needed him? Maxwell realised anew that when the going got tough, the tough got voling.
‘Is that what you killed Jimmy Hendricks with?’ he asked, edging slowly to the window.
‘Me?’ O’Malley growled in outrage. ‘You stupid Limey sonofabitch. I was a beat cop for more than fifteen years. I know a vigilante killing when I see one.’
