by M. J. Trow
‘Indeed.’ The DCI turned to him. ‘But there’s nothing really about this weekend that is as it seems, is there, Mr Maxwell?’
4
‘Am I interrupting?’ Anthony Bingham’s head peered round Maxwell’s door. The coat and scarf of the day had gone and the judge wore a jumper and cravat.
‘Not at all,’ said the Head of Sixth Form. ‘I wondered who’d be first.’
‘First?’ Bingham was in the room, the door still ajar. ‘Are you playing some sort of game, Max?’
‘It’s all a game, Ant … Look, I’m sorry, but inappropriate as it is, I feel I’ve still got to call you Cret. Can you live with that?’
‘In comparison with what many a felon who has come up before me calls me, I’m sure I’ve got off lightly.’ He closed the door. ‘Any threat of you breaking open your minibar?’
Maxwell smiled and dragged himself off the bed. ‘Looks like Scotch or Scotch,’ he said, rummaging among the miniature bottles in the wallside cabinet.
‘Fine.’ Bingham threw himself down on Maxwell’s settee. ‘You’ve talked to the filth, of course?’
‘The …?’
‘Police, Max. It’s underworld jargon.’
‘Yes.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘I have heard the term. I’m just a little surprised to hear you use it, Cret.’
‘Never forget, Maxie, my boy.’ Bingham took the proffered glass. ‘Today’s judge is yesterday’s lawyer. When I took defence cases I despised the boys in blue because they planted evidence in people’s pockets. When I became a prosecutor, I despised them because they didn’t. Either way, a dead loss. Who did you have?’
‘A woman,’ Maxwell told him. ‘A DCI Tyler.’
‘Ah, yes, Nadine. Hard-nosed bitch, I’d say. Here’s to the return of capital punishment,’ and he drained his glass. ‘I dare say Ash will be in her knickers by nightfall. Didn’t see you at dinner.’
‘No. Jacquie and I ate out. Had lunch out, too, as a matter of fact.’
‘Right. Rather a little cracker, that piece of yours.’ The judge’s eyes swivelled in all directions. ‘I don’t see any smalls, those little tokens of domestic bliss.’
‘Jacquie has her own room.’
‘Oh, really?’ Bingham raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t remember you being such a prude, Max. Remember Cranton, ’62?’ and he chuckled. ‘Don’t tell me Mrs Maxwell thinks you’re on some sort of teaching conference?’
‘There is no Mrs Maxwell, Cret.’ He smiled. There had been, of course; not that Cret knew. She lay under the flowers now with her little Jenny, two girls with the bluest eyes in the world. He could still smell their warm, soft skin cradled in his arms on countless picnics, still hear their tinkling laughter down the years. He couldn’t hear the scream of tyres or the rip of metal as their car bounced on tarmac and their lives ebbed away. A bend too tight. A road too wet. A police car too single minded in the chase. Those were the noises of the night. And he heard them then.
‘So, what did they ask?’ Bingham prompted.
‘About you, and Stenhouse and Ash and the. Preacher. All of you. And me, of course.’
‘Did you have your solicitor present?’
‘Of course not.’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘I haven’t got a bloody solicitor. No doubt you’d have advised me to.’
‘No doubt I would, but I didn’t get the chance. What time did this Gorgon interview you?’
‘Er … let’s see. About four, I think. Why?’
‘Divide and conquer.’ Bingham nodded. ‘It’s the oldest trick in the book. What did she say? “Casual chat”? “Just a few queries”? “We’ll take formal statements later”?’
‘Something like that.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Look, Cret, do you want to tell me what this is all about?’
‘Sure.’ Bingham shrugged. ‘It’s not a secret. At school, what happened? After we’d found the body, I mean?’
‘Er … I called Jacquie.’
‘Then?’
‘She arrived, gave the scene the once-over and called the local law.’
‘Right. She had to, of course. No choice there. Then what?’
‘Said local law turned up. All Hell was let loose.’
‘We were shepherded away,’ Bingham recounted. ‘Spotty youth with terminal keenness took our details and then what?’
‘We were told we’d be interviewed at four.’
‘Wrong personal pronoun, Maxie,’ Bingham corrected him. ‘You were told that. I was told now, please. Consequently, I spent a very long two and a half hours in Leamington nick.’
‘Two and a half hours?’ Maxwell sat back on his bed again. ‘Cret, do you know something the rest of us don’t?’
‘I am a High Court judge, Maxie. I know a lot the rest of you don’t. I got DI Thomas, by the way, a misogynist who could misog for England. It’s just his bad luck he’s got a woman boss. Takes it out on suspects.’
‘Is that what you are?’ Maxwell asked.
‘It’s what we all are, Max,’ Bingham said. ‘Didn’t Wonder-woman tell you that?’
‘I believe she hinted.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So you had the tape recorder, the whole works. And no solicitor.’
Bingham sighed. ‘When you’re a High Court judge, Maxie, you don’t need one. You’d have had a tape recorder too.’
‘No,’ Maxwell said. ‘I told you, it was just a casual chat.’
‘You’d have had a tape recorder,’ Bingham replied. ‘There was a sergeant, yes, taking notes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Take many, did he?’
‘Well, no, actually, now I come to think of it.’
Bingham nodded, smug and sure of himself. ‘That’s because he had a mini-cassette player in his pocket. Oh, it’s not legal, of course, but it’s there to record every word. Some talentless shite of a WPC will be on that already, analysing your inflexion, reading bollocks into your tone. Christ knows what they’ll make of the Preacher.’
‘Have they seen him yet?’
‘Wensley? Yep.’ Bingham nodded. ‘Half two. Now there is a weirdo.’
‘He’s a friend of ours, Cret,’ Maxwell reminded him.
‘Is he, Max?’ the judge asked, suddenly sitting forward. ‘Are any of us friends any more? We haven’t seen each other in thirty years. And did we really know each other back then? Stenhouse with his permanent sniff; remember that? We used to work him over on a regular basis. Ash was always sniffing too, wasn’t he? Around the girls from Cranton or the younger dinner ladies. We didn’t give it a second thought. What is he now, some reptilian old pervert? Alphie – couldn’t act the skin off a rice pudding, could he? Remember he came to us late, from Uppingham or somewhere. George, dear old George … Victor Lubloodydorum. Remember how we hated him, all of us?’
‘Did we?’ Maxwell frowned.
‘Of course we did – the Preacher most of all. What’s this bloody Internet sect he’s into?’
‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell said. ‘It’s funny all this. We’ve got so much to catch up on, this weekend, but with Quent dead, well, it’s as though we can’t. It’s the only topic of conversation, like a giant rock we can’t see through and can’t get round. What do the others say?’
Bingham stood up, finding a surface for his empty glass. ‘I haven’t seen the others, Max,’ he said. ‘I came to you first.’
‘Over dinner?’
Bingham shrugged. ‘Over dinner we made small talk with the ladies and whinged about Blair’s government. Nobody mentioned Quent, Max; nobody at all.’
And he opened Maxwell’s door. For a moment, he stood framed against the dim light of the corridor beyond. Then he turned. ‘I’d lock this, Max,’ he said slowly. ‘You know as well as I do, it was one of us.’
It was a little after twelve when someone knocked softly on Maxwell’s door. ‘It’s not locked,’ he called.
‘Mine is.’ Andrew Muir was in his dressing gown and slippers, a towel around his neck. ‘Janet insists on it. Have you got a minute, Max?’
‘Always,’ Maxwell said. ‘If you want to raid my bar, it’s Scotch or Scotch.’
‘That’ll do me,’ the journalist said. ‘Tangle o’ the Isles. In fact, I’d settle for boot polish about now. God, what a day!’ and he threw himself down on the settee. ‘That daughter of yours in bed?’
‘Stenhouse.’ Maxwell poured for them both. ‘I feel I have to tell you she’s not my daughter.’
‘Not? Oh, Christ.’ Muir slapped his forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Max. Getting a bit long in the tooth for that sort of thing myself. You old dog, eh? Still, I should watch her around Ash. You know what he’s like.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Maxwell sat on the edge of the bed.
There was a silence; something neither of them had ever known at Halliards. ‘Did Bingham come to see you earlier?’
Maxwell nodded. ‘He did. Advised me to lock my door.’
‘Me too,’ Muir said. ‘I wouldn’t have, of course, but for Janet.’
‘You said,’ Maxwell reminded him. ‘Janet is a bit windy about this?’
‘Well, you know what women are.’ Muir leaned back, cradling his glass. ‘Still, it’s a bit of a facer.’
‘What did the police ask you?’ Maxwell wanted to know.
‘Everything, really. I had that surly bastard, Thomas. You?’
‘Nadine Tyler.’
‘Ah, yes. Ash had her.’
‘In the biblical sense?’ Maxwell asked.
Muir laughed. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised. Thomas seemed very interested in you.’
‘Really?’ Maxwell sipped his Scotch. ‘How very flattering.’
‘Max, I don’t know how to put this, but I got the impression you were in the frame.’
‘Indeed?’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Should I make a bolt for the door, do you think, or slash my wrists?’
‘Be serious, Max.’ Muir started to pace. It wasn’t a good sign. ‘He kept asking things like did you and Quent get on at Halliards. Were you jealous of him as Victor Ludorum and Captain of Games and so on.’
‘I seem to remember winning a place to … where was it now? … Cambridge. While he scraped in to LSE. No offence to the pinko liberal egalitarians at UCAS, of course.’
‘I told him all that, Max,’ Muir explained. ‘I’m not sure he bought it. Jesus, Max, I just feel so guilty.’
‘You do?’
‘Well, this whole thing is my fault, isn’t it? I mean, the weekend, the reunion – it was my idea. I just thought we couldn’t let Halliards go under the bulldozer without one last get-together. What a bloody auld lang syne this has turned out to be.’
Maxwell was alongside him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. ‘Look, Stenhouse, you weren’t to know, all right? There’s some maniac out there who had it in for Quent. He happened to choose this weekend, that’s all. It isn’t down to you.’
Muir looked at him through eyes unconvinced, afraid.
‘There isn’t a maniac out there, Max,’ he said quietly, ‘and you know it. The maniac’s in here.’
The electronic green figures on the bedroom clock flickered to one-thirty. Maxwell wasn’t in bed, he was sitting in the chair, the television screen going frantic in front of him with the sound turned off. How appropriate, he thought; everybody trying to kill everybody else in The Osterman Weekend. He wasn’t concentrating, wasn’t focusing. His mind had wandered back to that last summer, the one at Halliards, with his blazer floating on the sparkling surface of the pool and a crowd of young men in cricket whites lounging on the edge of their lives. The mood was shattered by a thud at the door. Maxwell sat up.
Was that a knock? Had he been asleep, dreaming? Ready for any eventuality, like a schoolboy in a shipwreck, he pulled the kettle from its socket. Water in the face first, then the flex around the neck of the maniac beyond his door. But it wasn’t a maniac; it was Richard Alphedge and his good lady wife.
‘Jesus, Alphie, the time,’ Maxwell said.
‘Expecting company?’ the actor asked, nodding at the kettle in Maxwell’s hand.
‘Of course.’ Maxwell beamed. ‘Cuppa?’
Alphedge shook his head.
‘Mr Maxwell, I’m sorry about this.’ Cissie led the way in. She was attractive still, was Mrs Alphedge, with short cropped silver hair and a smile to die for.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Maxwell told her, ‘and I think you’d better call me Max.’
The guests found the settee. ‘Max, what are we going to do?’ Alphedge asked.
‘We can’t sleep, Max.’ Cissie sat holding her husband’s hand. ‘We had to talk to someone.’
‘I couldn’t either.’ Maxwell switched off the television set with a casual flick of the remote. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Out of this place,’ Alphedge grunted. ‘God, it’s a nightmare. Cret thinks it’s one of us.’
‘I know he does.’
‘What does he know?’ Alphedge was trying to reassure himself, really.
‘He is a High Court judge, Alphie,’ Maxwell reminded him.
‘I know, he keeps telling me that. What did the law ask you?’
‘Same as they asked all of us, apparently. They’re fishing.’
‘It’s outrageous,’ Alphedge fumed, his face purple and the veins in his neck standing out. ‘I’ll be straight on to my bloody solicitor in the morning.’
‘They’re just doing their job, dear.’ Cissie patted his hand. ‘It’s just routine.’
‘There’s nothing routine about a man hanged with his own bell rope, you stupid bitch.’ Cissie’s face said it all. Alphedge threw up his hands, his fuse too short to cope with apologies right now. He swept on. ‘The trouble is, it was my bell rope. I was Bell Prefect. Me. Me and Old Harry, the bell. What sick sort of bastard wants to spoil that? God, Max.’ He was staring hard at his old friend. ‘What can we do?’
‘What do you mean, “we”, white man?’ Maxwell paraphrased the old joke.
‘All right, then, you. Your Jacquie.’
Maxwell held up his hand. ‘Let me stop you right there, Alphie, m’boy. First, she’s not my Jacquie, not in that sense. And second, well, she’s already been warned off pretty smartly by DI Thomas.’
‘Bloke’s a perfect bastard,’ Alphedge grunted.
‘Have they talked to you, Cissie?’ Maxwell asked.
‘We have that pleasure to come,’ the actress told him. ‘I expect it will be a far cry from dear old John Thaw.’
‘No doubt. Alphie, had you met Quent again – since school, I mean?’
‘Matter of fact, I had. I was in an Alan Ayckbourn at the Lyceum, ooh, about ten years back. He popped backstage. Usual thing, you know, bowled over by the show and so on. Had his wife with him.’
‘Wife?’ Maxwell frowned.
‘Is that so odd?’ Alphedge asked. ‘I’ve got mine with me.’
‘No, of course not. It’s just that nobody mentioned a wife, not the police, not anybody.’
‘Why should they?’ Alphedge asked. ‘You wouldn’t expect her to be twirling up there with him, would you? God, Max, you don’t think she did it?’
‘I really don’t know, Alphie,’ Maxwell said. He’d been around men at breaking point before. He’d seen it. In the corridors that led to the chalkface, the subterranean caverns crawling with kids, he’d seen the pale faces, the shaking hands, heard the hysterical laughter. He’d counted the paces across the staffroom floor and noted the twitching of the eyes.
‘It’s all right, Alphie.’ Maxwell reached out and gripped Alphedge’s arm. ‘Everything will be all right,’ and he nodded to Cissie to get the man back to bed.
She smiled and helped her husband up, twirling him round. Alphedge was still muttering, ‘Got to do something, Max. Must do something,’ as Cissie helped him through the door. In the corridor, she turned and kissed Maxwell on the cheek, mouthing ‘thank you’ in the silence of the early hours.
He watched them go, then checked his watch. He needed a drink and the bar didn’t close until two. He grabbed his key and made for the stai
rs.
‘It’s a quarter to three,’ David Asheton crooned, watching the hanging tankards through the distortion of his glass. ‘Well, ten to two, anyway … Max, thank Christ. I hate drinking alone.’
‘I thought I’d have to.’ Maxwell perched on the high stool next to him.
‘Not while there’s a bar open. Mine host!’ Asheton thumped the counter. ‘My old friend will have a … what?’
‘Southern Comfort, barman, please, and have a little one yourself.’
The barman had rather less humanity than the bloke who kept Ray Milland company in The Lost Weekend, and he was a million years younger. He’d lost the will to live by half past twelve and the dark circles under his eyes said it all. ‘No, thank you, sir,’ was the sum of his repartee.
‘Ash?’
‘Hair of the dog.’ Asheton waggled the empty glass at the man. ‘But it’s my round, Maxie.’
‘You’re pissed,’ Maxwell said, fumbling in his pocket for his wallet.
‘As a fart,’ Asheton conceded. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve left that lovely little thing Jacquie alone in a great big bed?’
‘I fear I have,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Veronica?’
‘The time of the month.’ Asheton sighed. ‘Ah,’ and he accepted the brandy gratefully. ‘Max, your health,’ and they clashed glasses. ‘And here’s to the bastard who killed dear old Quent. May he rot in Hell.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ Maxwell did. ‘I gather you had DCI Tyler.’
Asheton sniggered and winked at his old oppo. ‘She was gagging for it by the time the interview ended,’ he confided to Maxwell, the barman and any other lizard still lounging at that hour of the morning.
‘What did she ask you?’
‘Oh, inconsequential stuff, mostly,’ Asheton said. ‘They’re going through the motions, Max. They know who did it.’
‘They do?’ Maxwell was all ears.
‘Of course. The Preacher.’
‘The Preacher?’
‘Is there a fucking echo in here?’ Asheton slurred. ‘Of course it’s the Preacher. “Behold, a dark horse. And his name that sat on him was Death.” Oh, come on, Maxie.’ Asheton reached across and shook the man’s knee. ‘You remember Wensley, what a social misfit he was, what a bloody pariah. None of us could work out what he was doing at Halliards, remember? He just didn’t fit in. Christ knows how he got to be one of the Seven.’
