Maxwell's Inspection

by M. J. Trow

‘Alive or dead?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well,’ Astley was concentrating on the dead woman’s wrists, ‘judging by these marks, I’d say she was tied up while still alive, her hands behind her back. Then she was killed. Then she was left, still tied. There seems to be extra drag on the front of her forearms. I’d say she was standing up, tied to a pipe or something and when she died, she fell forward, but the ropes held her up.’

  ‘They were ropes?’ Hall was scribbling notes.

  ‘Oh yes. Clear weave marks. It’ll be a while before I can tell you what type.’

  ‘Cause of death?’ Hall had moved on. He’d had two bodies dumped in his lap in five days and he and the world wanted answers.

  ‘Same old, same old,’ Astley assured him. Peering again at the woman’s throat. ‘Neat as you please through the mid-line. I’d say our friend had more time on this one.’

  He followed the dark red rivulets down between Paula Freeling’s breasts. At the navel, they divided, like some sort of macabre delta and there were runs into her pubic hair and splashes on her thighs. The blouse, skirt, panties and bra that Donald had removed all bore smudges and splashes of the same.

  ‘A skewer?’ Hall checked.

  ‘Consistent bastard, isn’t he? Except that this time, presumably, there’s no weapon,’ Astley mused. He’d read the preliminary reports. ‘Want my scenario, then, Henry?’

  ‘I could do with somebody’s,’ the DCI admitted.

  ‘She’s been dead for a day, perhaps two.’ Astley could hear Hall limbering up for an interruption on his end of the phone. ‘Yes, I know. Rectal temperature shemperature. I’d say something sick about the smile on the camel and the sphinx if I weren’t a thoroughly well-brought-up medical student. Like civilization, we’re going backwards on time of death, Henry. Sometimes I feel betrayed by my own science. I’ll be lucky if I get the year right in the future. Maybe I’ll take up carbon dating.’

  Henry Hall knew that Jim Astley’s dating days were over, but now wasn’t the moment to say so.

  ‘He did the deed in some sort of garage or warehouse. I’ve found diesel oil under the poor dear’s fingernails. There’s also severe bruising – ante mortem, by the way – on the upper arm. I’d say he grabbed her, pulling her with a fair degree of force. And at some point too, her knees were folded up, like a foetus. Lividity’s obvious. Now, where all this happened of course, is anybody’s guess, but Donald’s buggered off already with her clothes, so your lab boys should be on that by now.’

  Indeed they were. Hall had checked on that personally.

  ‘She was killed in said garage or warehouse and left to bleed to death. She wouldn’t have lasted long – minutes only. And there she stayed, I’d guess, for the best part of … ooh, six, seven hours. Then she was wrapped in a plastic bag.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Plastic bag. Bits of it caught in her hair. There’s something else, only I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘Yes.’ Astley was annoyed with himself when he couldn’t cross tees and dot eyes. ‘A residue of some kind, again in the hair. It’s not sand from the bore-hole. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Sooner rather than later, Jim?’ Hall asked.

  Had it been anybody else Jim Astley would have bitten the man’s head off, miles apart or no miles apart. But he’d worked with Henry Hall now, doctor and policeman, for a long time and he recognized the desperation edging into the man’s voice.

  ‘You’ll be the first to know, Henry,’ Astley said, and, as he was about to hang up, ‘Go home, Detective Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘Tiredness kills.’

  Hall let the phone click and whirr in this hand. ‘So,’ he said to the ether, ‘does a maniac with a skewer.’

  Maxwell had said it before. And Maxwell would say it again. Why, why, why did their lordships at the Horse Guards decide on dark blue for the colour of the Light Cavalry? That had been mistake one, some vague indefinable time in the 1750s. Mistake two was that Messrs Humbrol, paint manufacturers to the gentry, excellent colour-meisters though they were, did not make a colour of the self-same hue. So obsessive oddballs like Peter Maxwell had to mix the colours themselves – just the right blend of black and blue. And once this was made up, it had to be used quickly before it went solid and unusable.

  ‘Bugger! Bugger! Bugger!’ The inevitable had happened. Maxwell had just blended his colours to perfection, to begin work on plastic Bob Portal’s jacket and overalls, when the doorbell rang. He checked the clock across the attic from his modelling chair. Half eight. The dying sun was still streaming in through his skylight as he popped the brush back into the white spirit, hung his pill box on its hook and legged it down the stairs.

  Who could this be? He knew it wasn’t Jacquie. She’d rung him that afternoon with the news of the finding of Paula Freeling’s body and the equally unwelcome information that all police leave was cancelled and the Home Office was about to cop a packet in overtime payments. Couldn’t be the Kleeneze man. He only ever called on Wednesdays. If it was the little shit from Number Thirty-Two wanting his ball back again, Maxwell would risk the law suit and shove it right up his …

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’

  An attractive brunette stood in the Great Man’s doorway. She clearly had not come for her ball and didn’t look as if she knew how to pronounce Kleeneze.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘I’m Pamela Whiting. May I talk to you?’

  Maxwell was not good around widows. A widower himself, he still remembered the empty small-talk his friends made in the days after his wife died. The futility of it all; the attempt to make the time fly, to put a decent distance between death and life; between then and now. He gave the woman a stiff drink and sat in his lounge, waiting.

  ‘I don’t know what you must think of me,’ Pamela Whiting said. ‘Just turning up on your doorstep like this.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell said, ‘if there are any words …’

  She held up her hand, fighting with all the emotions he had all those years ago. He imagined her wrestling with the same old questions – why him/her? Why us? And why, the most guilty question of all, why me? ‘I don’t want words,’ she said, ‘I want action.’

  ‘Action?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘May I ask …’

  ‘Your Head, Mr Diamond. He suggested I come and see you.’

  ‘Legs?’ Maxwell was amazed. ‘I don’t know whether to be horrified or just plain old suspicious.’

  ‘Suspicious?’ She looked quizzical.

  ‘Let’s just say, Mrs Whiting, that Diamond and I carry rather a lot of baggage between us. He and I are the British Airways of Leighford High. But why would he …’

  ‘I went to see him,’ she explained. ‘It wasn’t a good time. He had a governors’ meeting. I would assume it was a very difficult one.’

  ‘I’m sure the governors were very supportive,’ Maxwell knew a party line when he was toeing one.

  ‘I’m sure they were.’ She sat back on his settee for the first time, cradling the cut-glass in both hands. ‘But neither he nor they can help me now. I believe you can.’

  ‘Mrs Whiting …’ Maxwell wriggled in his chair.

  Again, her hand was in the air. ‘Please, Mr Maxwell. Hear me out. My husband was murdered last Tuesday, in your school. You, I understand, were first on the scene.’

  ‘Second,’ Maxwell corrected her, knowing now the fate of the first.

  ‘I also understand you have … shall we say, a reputation for this sort of thing?’

  ‘“Behold, a pale horse”,’ muttered Maxwell. ‘Mrs Whiting, I am not a policeman. I am not a private detective …’

  ‘But you solve murders,’ she ended the sentence for him.

  ‘If you mean, I can work out who dear old John Nettles is looking for in murder-infested Midsomer, well, yes, sometimes.’

  ‘No, Mr Maxwell.’ Pamela was sitting up again, staring into the man’s face. ‘No, I’m t
alking about reality. Some …’ and they both heard her voice go, ‘some bastard killed my husband. Snuffed out his life.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘That’s not good enough. Not good enough at all.’

  She sat in his lamplight, the sun gilding her face and etching her tears.

  ‘The police,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Mr Maxwell.’ Pamela shook her head, a humourless smile on her face. ‘I lost faith in them a long time ago. They’re shackled by political correctness and bureaucratic inefficiency on a monstrous scale. I just don’t trust them to get results.’

  ‘They’ve talked to you?’

  ‘Of course. A DCI Hall.’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘Henry’s a good man.’

  ‘No, Mr Maxwell. My husband was a good man, and now he’s dead.’

  There was a pause, a stillness. Outside, on the catflap’s rim, Metternich the cat sensed the moment, sniffed once and tiptoed away.

  ‘If it’s money …’ she went on.

  This was the second time in two days that an attractive woman had sat in this lounge, offering Peter Maxwell money. ‘No, it’s not that. Mrs Whiting …’

  ‘Pamela, please.’

  ‘Pamela.’ He fought for the words. ‘If I help you, there are two conditions.’

  ‘Name them.

  ‘You must accept that I cannot guarantee results – not results you’d particularly want, anyway.’

  ‘No one can,’ she said.

  ‘Second, you’re going to have to be totally honest with me about your husband. You know there’s been a second killing?’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Pamela looked as though she’d been poleaxed. ‘No, no I didn’t. Who?’

  ‘Will you be totally honest with me?’ He ignored her question.

  ‘Yes.’ She composed herself. ‘Yes, I will, Mr Maxwell.’

  ‘Then,’ he smiled and held up his glass, ‘you’d better call me Max.’

  Chapter Eight

  Henry Hall had planned to hold his press conference on the Monday. Ademure little spinster had changed all that. Leighford CID was looking at two murders now. Leighford High’s child population was dwindling by the day and with Paula Freeling found in Southern Water’s bore hole, there was a serious risk of an exodus from the town too. Leighford nick had been bombarded with calls from hoteliers, B & B proprietors, Amusement Arcade impresarios and the Council. Leighford Theatre was seriously considering cancelling Jimmy Tarbuck for the August season and the under-rehearsed dance troupe that no one had heard of. Everybody wanted the same thing – answers. And Henry Hall didn’t have any.

  ‘So, how did it go?’ Peter Maxwell had just fought his way back from the Carvery with the expertise of a bachelor who often took his Sunday lunch al fresco.

  Jacquie had passed on seconds and was sipping her half-and-half in the shade of the parasol thoughtfully supplied by the Oak. ‘Let’s just say it went.’

  ‘Fill me in on the late Ms Freeling.’ He reached for the salt.

  ‘Now, Max …’

  He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘For the last forty-five minutes, Woman Policeman, you have made every attempt to small talk for England. First, it was where to have lunch; then what to have; then, what astounding views there are over the Downs; then …’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ she smiled. ‘Point taken. It’s just that the DCI is pretty tight on this. I had strict instructions after Alan Whiting not to talk to you.’

  ‘Alan Whiting?’ Maxwell swigged his Stella. ‘That was an eternity ago. You’re right,’ he sat as far back on the trestle seat as his sense of balance would allow. ‘The view is breathtaking, isn’t it?’

  He saw her blink. ‘You’re changing the subject,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought I had to.’

  She looked out across the fields, the trees heavy in the midday heat. The Oak itself was said to have been the haunt of highwaymen once upon a time in the south. On windy nights, they said, the clatter of hoofs could be heard on the cobbles outside the tap and the rattle of a whip on the window-shutters. There again, it could have been the plumbing. True, the flagstones in the cool of the bar were worn, but you could buy them like that these days and the beams that lined the ceiling were just a tad B&Q for Peter Maxwell’s liking. All around them and the old building, holidaymakers clinked their glasses and filled their faces and laughed at the antics of their ghastly children scampering around the adventure playground, carved incongruously into a pirate ship on the hillside. Were Jacquie and Maxwell the only ones, she wondered, talking about sudden, violent death?

  ‘I can only tell you what was said at the press conference this morning.’

  ‘That’s not much of a deal,’ he wheedled, running his fingertips around the rim of his glass.

  ‘Save you … what … twenty hours wait. And the cost of tomorrow’s dailies.’ It was the best she could offer.

  ‘Ah,’ he raised his glass to her. ‘You can always find a way to a man’s heart. Time and money – although of course they’re the same thing. Go on, then.’

  ‘First – and this is the only bit you won’t find in the papers.’ She closed to him. ‘The Ofsted Team, or what’s left of them, is staying on at the Cunliffe until next weekend. They’ll be under close surveillance, so stay away, Max.’

  ‘That must disrupt their lives a tad,’ he mused. ‘Are you sure we’re talking about next weekend?’

  ‘Let’s say they weren’t over the parrot when Henry broke the news to them. His argument is that they are all potential targets and we can protect them better if they’re in one place.’

  ‘All right,’ he nodded. ‘Paula Freeling.’

  Jacquie leaned back, putting her feet up on the rail under the table and letting her sunglasses drop back onto her nose. ‘She was found yesterday morning by a contractor on the water board site in Lysander Road.’

  Maxwell knew the place. There seemed to have been a hoarding and piles of gravel there forever. ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Same as Whiting. Stab to the throat.’

  He leaned forward. ‘What do you make of that? Quite cranky, isn’t it?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘That’s out of bounds. That wasn’t in the press conference.’

  ‘Only,’ he demolished the last of the roast beef with a satisfied flourish, ‘because the boys of the Fourth Estate don’t know what to ask. All I want is your professional opinion, Jacquie, in a hypothetical sort of way.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ she snorted.

  He looked appalled. There were, after all, women and children present. ‘Tsk, tsk,’ he whispered. ‘That a Woman Policeman should even know how to pronounce that word. How about it?’ He leaned across the table and took her free hand.

  She screwed up her elfin face. ‘You’re a transparent bastard, Peter Maxwell,’ she said. ‘All right. But just this once.’ And she knew how hollow that sounded before it had left her lips. ‘We’re obviously making enquiries elsewhere, with other forces. But before Whiting, I’ve never come across it. Stabbing is usually gang-related, dark-alleyway-outside-pub stuff. It’s a spur of the moment thing.’

  ‘What,’ Maxwell chuckled, ‘the perp just happens to have a carving knife about his person when he loses his cool?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ she explained. ‘Oh, he’s carrying a knife “for protection”,’ her fingers were in the air, ‘of course – but we’re not usually talking malice aforethought here. I’ve even known it be manslaughter.’

  Maxwell shook his head. His old headmaster used to flog people for having their shoelaces undone. Ah, the good old days. ‘But this is different?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘For a start, Whiting and Freeling aren’t exactly your dark-alleyway clients, are they? Second, they’re Ofsted Inspectors working in the same team at the same school. And third, one of them at least was done in broad daylight, virtually under the noses of a thousand people.’

  ‘From which you conclude?’

  Jacquie began to answer him, th
en clammed up, removing her hand from his. ‘I don’t conclude anything,’ she said. ‘I am a mere cog in a justice machine.’

  It was his turn to say bollocks and he did. ‘Humour me, heart,’ he said.

  ‘Hitman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A professional contract.’

  ‘But that’s fiction, surely. Like nymphomaniacs…’ but Maxwell knew as he said it that it was a bad analogy. The aptly-named Danni Grewcock in Eleven Eff Four a few years back sprang to mind. What she hadn’t done with half of Year twelve in the science labs probably wasn’t possible. At least, not in science labs.

  ‘It’s rare,’ Jacquie agreed, ‘but it’s not fiction, Max. It’s all factual.’

  Images of John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson sprang to Maxwell’s cinematic mind – large, black-suited men walking into restaurants and blasting away with outsize automatics. But this was Leighford, a quiet sensible town on the quiet south coast. The Oaks up here on the Downs, a family pub which specialized in Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and West Country cider. It was a Sunday, the day for people to wash their cars and mow the lawn. Some people still went to church, for God’s sake. There wasn’t even a cure for that yet.

  ‘And if I’m right,’ she tilted her glasses up so that he could see her sparkling grey eyes, ‘that gives us a double whammy. The thing about hitmen is that they don’t do it for laffs. They work, like you and me, and somebody pays them. So, whatever the papers tell you tomorrow, Mr Maxwell, we are in fact looking not for one murderer, but two.’ ‘Jesus!’ It happened to be Geoff Baldock who said it, but it could have been anyone in Leighford nick that Sunday afternoon. He was standing behind the desk man’s sliding glass partition and he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ the woman wanted to know.

  ‘I’m afraid the DCI’s not here at the moment, madam.’ Baldock tried to keep his composure.

  ‘I am not familiar with your in-house initials, young man. You’ll have to translate.’

  ‘Er … sorry … the Detective Chief Inspector is Mr Hall. He’s not in.’