Maxwell's Inspection

by M. J. Trow

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Iron Man smiled.

  ‘We’ve got all night,’ Maxwell hoped.

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ the drummer corrected him. Maxwell noticed that his piercings were gone, those obvious metal dangly bits that drew people’s attention to him. And his voice was not slurred and his sniff had gone. And he was a killer, just doing his job, as lethal and as focused as Metternich the cat. He’d be out on the night air now, scenting his prey on the wind, facing his luckless rodent as Iron Man faced Maxwell. ‘It just happened,’ he said darkly. ‘I killed my first man when I was eighteen. That was in Bristol – a gang thing. He took the piss out of my drumming at a gig. So I kebabed him with my drum stick down an alley. By the time I was twenty, it was a nice little earner. ‘Course, the sticks was a bit of a giveaway, but a skewer…’ He held it up to the light. ‘Untraceable.’

  ‘You were working for Pamela Whiting,’ Maxwell said, hoping that while he was still actually talking the drummer wouldn’t strike.

  ‘That’s right,’ Iron said. ‘Had a bit of husband trouble. She told me where he’d be – which school, which hotel.’

  ‘That was a hell of a risk,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Killing him at Leighford High like that. I take my hat off to you,’ and his hand came up.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The skewer glinted wickedly against Maxwell’s throat. He felt the razor point nick the skin again and knew that he was bleeding.

  ‘You … got the layout of the place, of course, from Duggsy and Wal. What more natural than three old mates, nattering away nights after a gig, eh? Few bevvies, few joints, few reminiscences of where the fire alarms were and the security cameras, and how they’d no doubt dodged past them all in their day. They’re great lads, Duggsy and Wal, but they’re not the brightest jewels in the crown, are they? You must have been a bit disconcerted though when your target turned up at the Vine?’

  ‘A bit,’ Iron conceded. ‘That’s why I followed him outside, thinking to hit him there, in the pub car park. Instead I find that tart Sally Meninger screaming at the photographer. So I stuck with Plan A.’

  ‘Plan A.’ Maxwell’s eyes were swivelling frantically. The pair were totally alone. No passing car, no courting couples, nothing between him and a sudden, violent death. ‘You borrowed a boiler man’s suit.’

  ‘Had one already,’ Iron told him.

  ‘And … what? A baseball cap to hide the ponytail? Whipped out the old piercings so they wouldn’t flash on any CCTV camera that might still accidentally catch you? That took some nerve, Iron.’

  ‘That’s what it’s all about,’ the drummer said. ‘The risk, the thrill, if you like. It’s what they call job fulfilment, ain’t it? I couldn’t do it just for the money. Whiting was about to get out of the room, you know, for the fire drill. I told him he didn’t have to. Pretended I was the school’s odd job man and I was on to it. Then I stuck him.’

  ‘Neat. So, tell me, Iron … this is rather a personal question, I know, but what do you charge for something like this? A murder, I mean.’

  ‘Got someone you want doing, Mr Maxwell?’ Iron chuckled. ‘Bit late now, maybe. But no, it’s not a personal question – as long, of course, as you keep it our little secret. I’d hate the Chancellor of the Exchequer to find out. Five large, Alan Whiting cost.’

  ‘You killed a man for five hundred pounds?’ Maxwell was incredulous.

  ‘Five thousand,’ the drummer corrected him. ‘I don’t come cheap.’

  ‘How can you put a price on somebody’s life like that?’ Maxwell was in the twilight zone.

  ‘That first bloke in the alley I killed for nothing,’ Iron reminded him.

  ‘A bit like Paula Freeling and Craig Edwards,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Like I say,’ Iron Man clicked his teeth. ‘I been a bit sloppy. The one thing you learn in this game, Mr Maxwell, is split-second timing. It’s a bit like drumming really. In, out, hit, move. And never, ever look back. That’s what I did. I turned instinctively to see who’d just opened the door. It was that Freeling woman. I didn’t have time to do anything about it just then, so I had to bide my time. Christ knows what she’d tell the police.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Paula Freeling was too traumatized to remember anything. Ironic, wasn’t it? You were in the clear.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Iron shrugged. ‘Ironic. I had to go to her hotel. The Filth were guarding the place and following them everywhere. Still, there’s a back way into everywhere, ain’t there? That stupid bastard on the front desk didn’t notice as I clocked the old girl’s room number.’

  ‘Why didn’t you kill her there?’ Maxwell asked. ‘You took a hell of a risk getting her out.’

  ‘I didn’t want her screaming the place down and I needed to know what she’d seen, what she’d told Johnny Law. I took her to my garage.’

  ‘And that’s where you killed her.’

  ‘Kept her in my bass drum case, Mr Maxwell. You’ve been sitting on it in the van for the last couple of days.’

  ‘But she couldn’t stay there,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘The Filth were searching garages, lock-ups, that sort of thing. It would have looked a bit suspicious if I’d refused them a shufty, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Hence the waterworks?’

  ‘I know a bloke who works for them,’ the drummer said. ‘He told me they was filling in holes, ready to move on. Seemed the ideal choice. Guess he was wrong.’

  ‘Why Edwards?’ Maxwell could feel the pressure of the skewer-point growing on his epiglottis. ‘Why the photographer?’

  ‘When he turned up for the gig at the Old Mill, I … well, I don’t mind confessing it to you, Mr Maxwell – I was a bit rattled. I’d seen him in the Vine, in the car park. Had he seen me, prowling around the cars, carrying the pig-sticker here? And I didn’t know what you knew either, how far you’d got. Bastard took a photo of us playing, didn’t he? I wasn’t having that. Couldn’t take the chance. I wanted the film.’

  ‘But you couldn’t get it that night?’

  ‘No, the wanker had gone by eleven and we was booked till twelve. Can’t let ‘em down, can you, the kids? How do you do School’s Out acoustic? You’ve just got to have drums, know what I mean?’

  Maxwell did.

  ‘So I went a-calling bright and early next morning. Took every bit of film he had. Burnt the lot.’

  ‘And killed him.’

  ‘Yeah, that was unfortunate, but I sensed he wasn’t going to be reasonable, so, wallop, really. And that was nearly my last loose end, so to speak.’

  ‘Until me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Iron Man chuckled. ‘Oh, I’ve always stayed one step ahead of the Filth, Mr Maxwell. Sure, they’ve got forensic and all that bollocks coming out of their ears, but deep down, they’re Mr Plod, ain’t they? Terminally stupid. But you … well, you’re clever, Mr M. I got to hand it to you. And you’re stubborn. Like a dog with a fucking bone. You’d have sussed me eventually. That’s why the Hippos had to follow you everywhere. Take you around half the fucking country. I had to know what was going down; how close you were.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice of you, Iron,’ Maxwell said. His heart was pounding, his throat tight. The old flight or fight adrenalin was whirling through his bloodstream. Except that he was too slow for flight and as for fight …well, he’d seen Iron Man in action.

  A roar shattered the night and a flash of white light illuminated the scene. Maxwell batted aside the skewer, feeling it lacerate his throat and struggled with the drummer on the ground. From nowhere, Harley Davidsons were hurtling over the ridge of the hill, snarling through the gorse bushes in a spray of soil and gravel.

  ‘Yawning Fucking Hippos!’ one of the Bikers yelled, skidding his machine to a halt and hurling himself onto the nearest body. ‘I’ve been waiting for this.’

  Maxwell rolled clear to find himself facing Death, the slob whose eyes he’d poked back in the Vine when he’d met Iron Man for the second time. ‘You!’ the slob hissed, but Maxwell was faster this tim
e. He brought his boot up smartly in between the Biker’s legs and the thud brought tears to the man’s eyes. Then he caught his hair and pulled savagely, so that Death squealed before stumbling backwards through the gorse.

  To his left, Iron Man was kicking and gouging his way clear of three or four of them, his skewer gone, his fists crunching into leather and metal.

  ‘Kill the fucker!’ came a screamed order and a circle of bikes snarled to a standstill, their headlights lighting the weird arena in which Iron Man and Maxwell stood alone. It was like Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas in Laurence Olivier’s fatal circle at the end of Spartacus. One by one, the engines were switched off. Death and the Bikers damaged by Iron Man were spitting out teeth, re-arranging their hair, adjusting their leathers. Spanners came out of tool boxes, chains and knives as the circle drew tighter. Instinctively, Maxwell and Iron Man moved back to back, the only sound now the grating of their breath.

  ‘Any ideas, Iron?’ the Head of Sixth Form hissed.

  ‘You could always tell them there’s a reward on my head,’ the drummer told him. ‘As long as we’re both unmarked, of course. Or all bets are off.’

  Then, they both heard it. A sound that to Peter Maxwell was the most welcome in the world. And Iron Man? Well, he had mixed feelings about it. It was the wail of a police siren and the flashing blue lights crested the hill, as the white squad cars screeched to rock at crazy angles in the gorse.

  ‘Fuck. It’s the Filth,’ and the Bikers revved up, twisting their cow-horn handlebars and kicking away into the night. Not all of them made it as Henry Hall’s boys in blue launched into them with assorted rugby-tackles and arm-locks and some interesting moves very definitely not in the police handbook.

  It was DI Bathurst who snapped the cuffs on Iron Man’s wrist.

  ‘You’ll find the skewer somewhere over there,’ Maxwell said, only now realizing that the front of his shirt was soaked with blood. ‘With a bit of luck, it’ll be the one that killed Craig Edwards.’

  ‘You’re nicked,’ the DI said to the drummer, summoning two uniforms to his side.

  ‘Sorry about all this, Mr Maxwell,’ Iron Man said. ‘But you know, I’m sort of glad it’s turned out like this.’ He winked at the Head of Sixth Form. ‘’Till next time, eh?’

  ‘Oh, there won’t be a next time,’ Bathurst assured him.

  ‘Won’t there?’ Iron Man asked him. ‘Trial is … what… eighteen months’ time at Winchester Crown Court? Know it well.’ He winked again at Maxwell. ‘There’s lots of back ways out of there.’ And he was gone, his head ducked down into the black interior of a squad car that purred away into the night.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Maxwell?’ Bathurst was checking that order was being restored to the scene. Three or four Bikers were being rounded up into cars, muttering and grumbling, ready to follow a killer to the station. ‘We got a station call about the Bikers’ antics. Didn’t realize you were in the thick of it.’

  ‘It’s nothing that several stitches won’t cure.’ Maxwell’s fingers were sticky with his blood.

  ‘Look, I’m grateful to you for the info on Mrs Whiting, but this … You took a hell of a risk. He could have killed you.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure it was him,’ he croaked, the exhaustion of the last half hour taking its toll and the shock beginning to kick in. ‘And I didn’t expect him to find me so quickly. Man’s like a bloody will o’ the wisp.’

  And Peter Maxwell never fully understood why Philip Bathurst seemed to wobble up there on that gorse-strewn hillside overlooking the sea and why he became so very small and blurred and so very far away …

  Chapter Seventeen

  He passed the battlefield again the next morning, like Napoleon’s grumblers, marching back over the frozen wastes of Borodino. There was no ice, of course and no bodies to speak of. Just crushed and trampled gorse bushes, churned up grass and a lot of tyre tracks. A police pickup truck was about to tow away the Yawning Hippos’ van and two rather sorry-looking rock stars sat disconsolately by the kerb.

  ‘’Morning, lads,’ Maxwell eased the brakes on Surrey and straddled the crossbar.

  ‘Have you heard about Iron, Mr M?’ a bewildered Duggsy asked.

  ‘Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Iron, a hitman.’ Wal was shaking his head. ‘Sort of shakes your faith in human nature, don’t it?’

  ‘It does, William,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘Defies belief,’ Duggsy agreed. ‘The real bitch of it, though, is that we’re booked to play the Leighford Festival week after next.’

  ‘Well, that’s gone, ain’t it?’ Wal muttered. ‘Without a drummer.’

  ‘What about a different drummer?’ Maxwell asked.

  Duggsy looked up at him. ‘Do you know anybody, Mr M? somebody at Leighford maybe?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Peter Maxwell.’

  ‘Fucking A,’ Wal murmured.

  ‘I don’t want to be personal, Mr M,’ Duggsy cut in, ‘but … you?’

  The Great Man leaned forward over the handlebars of Surrey. ‘At Cambridge I was known as the Buddy Rich of Jesus College.’ He fluttered his hands in the air like a true professional. ‘Anyway, one way or another, I owe you guys.’

  ‘OK,’ Duggsy nodded slowly. ‘We’ll give you a try. No promises, mind.’

  ‘Maxwell appears to be wearing a white cravat.’ Dierdre Lessing was sorting her papers prior to her day spent sorting papers. She hadn’t been known to teach for years.

  Bernard Ryan, the Sir Mordred to her Morgan le Fay peered out of the window from her office. ‘At least he’s here. I don’t see anybody’s head on a plate.’

  ‘That man could hyperbole for England.’ Dierdre always was rather hazy on her nouns and verbs. ‘More importantly, Bernard, there’s talk in the staffroom that James is back too. You’d think he’d see us first, wouldn’t you? There goes your promotion down the Swannee.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m sorry,’ Ryan said, folding his arms as he watched Maxwell park his bike. ‘Dead men’s shoes,’ he shook his head. ‘Don’t like ‘em, Dierdre.’ He could go back to being Deputy Head again – everybody’s punch-bag. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Peter Maxwell walked into the dining room where the Breakfast Club were just finishing up. Gary Spenser and Tony Weatherall were there as usual, wondering what colour Miss Greenhow’s knickers were today. Was it them, or was the old bugger hobbling a bit? Still, he cycled in every day and had to be a million, so it wasn’t surprising, was it?

  ‘Pale blue,’ he leant over the lads.

  They looked askance.

  And he tapped the side of his nose, before throwing a wave to Sally Greenhow.

  ‘Hello, Mr Maxwell.’

  He half-turned, staring in astonishment. There, beaming at him under her silly white cap, with toast crumbs all over her fingers, stood Sharon. Silent Sharon. Sharon who had never, until now, had the nerve to talk to the man she’d adored from afar for years.

  ‘Hello, Sharon,’ he said. ‘How are you today?’

  And she grinned, bright crimson and dashed into the kitchen to get on with the next phase of her life. Maxwell let it go. He had just witnessed a miracle.

  ‘I’ve resigned, Max.’ Another miracle at Leighford High sat behind his desk, twiddling his fingers, a white enveloped letter on the empty desk in front of him.

  ‘Is that strictly wise, Headmaster?’ the Head of Sixth Form asked.

  ‘Max,’ Diamond got to his feet. ‘I confessed the day before yesterday to a murder. Well, actually to three. Could I be taken seriously ever again if I stayed on here?’

  ‘Nothing has changed, Headmaster,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you confess?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Oh,’ Diamond was pacing his office, ‘I don’t know. You see, I thought Sally had done it. Killed Whiting and the others. I was … being stupid, I suppose.’

  ‘
Does she mean that much to you?’

  Diamond looked at his man, ‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘No, she doesn’t. It was a ludicrous gesture. I was just trying to help her out of a jam, that’s all. I wasn’t thinking rationally.’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘We’ve all been there.’

  ‘I think the police intend to prosecute me for wasting their time. Hence the resignation. I’m a laughing stock, Max.’

  ‘Surely not, Headmaster,’ Maxwell frowned. ‘Although it sure beats life imprisonment, doesn’t it? Is that your resignation?’ He pointed to the envelope.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  Maxwell took it and tore it up in one fluid movement. ‘I expect in these days of computers, that you’ve got this on a disk or a floppy drive or whatever, but if you want my advice, you’ll forget all about it.’

  ‘Max,’ Diamond stood there blinking. ‘What’s happened? Have the police …’

  ‘I promised Bernard I’d bring him a murderer’s head on a plate,’ he told him. ‘Well, that was a little politically incorrect of me, wasn’t it? They just don’t make hacksaws like they used to. But if you care to read tomorrow’s Dailies, I think you’ll be satisfied with the outcome.’

  ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you?’ Diamond said. ‘You’ve solved it.’

  ‘With a little help from my friends,’ Maxwell smiled.

  Diamond reached out suddenly and grasped Maxwell’s hand in both of his. The Head of Sixth Form froze. He didn’t know the man was capable of emotions like this. ‘Thank you, Max,’ he said. ‘For my job, for my life. Thank you.’

  ‘All in a day’s work, Headmaster,’ and Maxwell pulled gently away.

  ‘By the way,’ Diamond said. ‘The neck. Did that have anything to do with …?’

  ‘Oh, this?’ Maxwell touched the bandages gingerly. ‘No, no. Cut myself shaving.’

  ‘Coffee, Max?’