by M. J. Trow
Maxwell shrugged. ‘We were sorry for him, I suppose.’
‘You were,’ Asheton grunted. ‘Personally, I couldn’t abide the bastard. What possessed Stenhouse to invite him? It’s all bollocks.’
‘Formal statements tomorrow, apparently.’ Maxwell drained his glass.
‘Not before midday, I hope,’ Asheton said. ‘I don’t do the Sunday morning thing. Besides, it’ll all be over by then. The Preacher will have cracked.’
‘Will he, Ash?’ Maxwell slapped the man’s shoulder, and winked at him. ‘I wonder. You get your beauty sleep now,’ and he was gone.
There was no reply at the Preacher’s door. Maxwell knocked once, twice, waited in the silence of the Sunday morning. Nothing. The man slept the sleep of the just. Or was it the dead? For a moment a shiver darkened Peter Maxwell’s soul, a step on his grave. He looked right. Nothing. Left. Nothing again. There was a desolation about hotels in the watching hours. The building was full of people, but the people were silent, missing. Even Asheton had stumbled off up the stairs, footsteps padding erratically along the carpets; and the barman had washed his last glass and had slid down the metal grille with a crash.
Only the soft lights burned. The old building groaned, stirring in its own sleep, lost in its own memories, melting with the years in the still of an autumn night. He knocked on another door and a face he knew, a face he loved, appeared on the other side of it.
‘It’s late,’ he said.
‘That’s my line.’ She laughed and pulled him inside, wrapping her arms around him and holding him close.
‘It’s cold,’ he told her, ‘out there.’
She took him to the bed and knelt on it. ‘It’s warm in here,’ she said. He kissed her soft, wet mouth and breathed in the tent of her hair which covered his face. ‘I’m afraid, Jacquie,’ he whispered.
She frowned, holding him at arm’s length. ‘No, you’re not,’ she said. ‘You’re Mad Max. A thousand children go in awe of you every day and a thousand children love you. They’d walk through fire for you, Max.’
He laughed. ‘What am I, some bloody Pied Piper?’
‘You call the tune,’ she said.
‘Have you been reading my lines again?’ he asked her, arching an eyebrow.
‘Why have you come, Max?’ she asked, holding his face in both hands.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he told her.
She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Why have you come?’ she asked again. And her eyes wandered to the pillow to her right.
Maxwell’s did too. ‘You haven’t been asleep,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got my nightie on.’
Maxwell couldn’t miss that. Her breasts jutted under the silk and her hips swelled as she moved to the carpet, looking up at him. ‘There’s no dent in the pillow,’ he said.
She laughed and clapped. ‘We’ll make a detective of you yet.’
‘And....’ He got off the bed. ‘This is the real clincher. No teeth in the jar.’
She squealed and threw the pillow at him. ‘You bastard!’
‘I came to talk, Jacquie.’ He was serious again. The wit, the wag, the raconteur, the teller of tall tales was a little boy lost on a sea of blood.
She knew his moods, felt his pain. ‘It hurts, doesn’t it?’ She nodded.
‘Like Hell,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know why.’
‘Yes, you do, Max.’ She held both his hands. ‘Because it wasn’t just George Quentin hanging there, was it? It was your childhood, your school. For a lot of us, schooldays are the worst of our lives. We hate them; can’t wait to leave. But for you, for every old Halliardian, I expect, it was a way of life. That life’s been snuffed out. That’s what hurts. Come on, I’ll make us both a cup of cocoa and we’ll talk about tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘is one day nearer to catching the bastard who’s killed your childhood.’
He stood where the pavilion had stood all those years ago. Far away, beyond the hedge and the broad sweep of the playing fields, Halliards looked grim and black against the lightening pearl of the sky. Dawn streaked flat and purple to the east. He knew the police tape still fluttered in the grounds, could see the fitful moon gilding the helmet plate of the copper patrolling the grounds. He strained to hear the man’s boots crunching on the gravel. He’d done it; what he’d set out to do. And in the end, it had been so easy, so laughably bloody easy.
He walked away into the morning.
5
‘George Quentin,’ the man in the green mask said. ‘Male Caucasian, approximately fifty. Well nourished. Good muscle tone.’ He swung away in his swivel chair and slid the length of the mortuary table. ‘But I expect you already know most of that, Inspector.’
Ben Thomas did. He hated Sunday mornings. He hated them most of all when he was sitting in a morgue that was colder than a penguin’s arsehole with a dead man for company. ‘Cut to the chase, Rajiv. Shouldn’t you be in church?’
Rajiv raised an eyebrow and hooked his mask under his chin. Ben Thomas was a racist bastard. There was no doubt about that. But, unlovely as he was, he had a way of getting away with it, a way he’d learned as an insider with Warwickshire CID. You loved him or you hated him. Come to think of it, Rajiv Nagapon hated him.
‘Hanging, then.’ Thomas lounged against the cold white of the wall tiles.
‘Not exactly.’ Nagapon turned to his computer and hammered the keys with his stubby fingers. ‘Let’s deal with the superficial injuries first. He has a compound fracture of the skull. Somebody struck him three, possibly four times on the back of the head. There are radial cracks from the point of impact on the parietal region … want to take a look?’
Thomas didn’t. He would die rather than admit he was uncomfortable around corpses. He had his back to the dead man and that was how he wanted it to stay. ‘Weapon?’ he asked.
‘A club. Or at least something heavy and wooden. There were fibres matted in the hair. I am having them tested as we speak.’
‘That would be on the landing.’ Thomas was remembering the murder site, the flight of stone steps at Halliards and the blankness of the oriel window that looked down on to the place where Quentin’s blood was found. ‘We think he was facing away from the window, standing on the landing overlooking the hall below. He’d have been looking at the statue of the school’s founder, in the niche opposite the front doors.’
‘That would work.’ Nagapon nodded, swivelling his chair along the counter to check something. ‘Here.’ He fitted an X- ray into place and flicked on the white light. ‘Parietal view of Quentin’s skull. See the point of impact?’
Thomas did.
‘And the radial cracks?’
Again, yes.
‘He pitched forward, hitting his mouth on something …’
‘The balustrade.’ Thomas was fitting it all into place. He remembered the brass railings worn smooth by countless school-boy hands.
‘He loosened two teeth and, of course, there is much bleeding from the lips and gums.’
‘Then he went down?’
‘On his right side. There is some minor bruising to the shoulder as it hit the floor.’
‘Stone,’ Thomas murmured, ‘unyielding.’ He had knelt on those flags, worn and slightly uneven. Even now he remembered the cold.
‘And here.’ Nagapon flicked up a second X-ray. ‘A crush fracture of the right orbit. He was lying on his front, with his face turned to the left when the last one, perhaps two, blows were delivered. As you see, the point of impact has slipped sideways.’
‘We found blood on the stairs,’ Thomas told him. ‘SOCO counted sixteen drops.’
‘From the murder weapon.’ Nagapon nodded, glancing across to the white, dead soles of George Quentin, waxy in the glare of the neon lights. ‘He took it away with him.’
‘You think it’s a he?’
Nagapon shrugged. ‘I have no way of knowing that,’ he said. ‘It depends on
the weapon used, the frenzy of the attack.’
‘What happened then?’ Thomas asked. ‘The hanging.’
‘This is where strength would have come in, from the scene-of-crime report I have read.’
Thomas nodded. ‘He would have had to have been lifted nearly three feet on to the balustrade with the rope around the neck. Gravity would have done the rest.’
‘But not very well.’ Nagapon got out of his chair for the first time and crossed to the corpse. He lifted the finger of the left hand. ‘The nails have changed colour,’ he said, and he let the hand fall. ‘The tongue protrudes from the teeth, the lips and ears are blue. There is a light froth of blood around the nostrils. The right hand,’ he reached across George Quentin’s lifeless form with the Y-shaped incision yet to be sewn up, ‘is still clenched in spasm. The man was still alive when his killer put the rope around his neck. He may even perhaps have been conscious.’
‘Jesus,’ Thomas whispered, shaking his head. ‘Can you give me a time of death?’
‘When was he found?’ Nagapon asked.
‘Mid-morning, yesterday.’
‘SOCO says the murder site was cold.’
‘An empty school,’ Thomas confirmed. ‘About as warm as this place.’
Nagapon didn’t smile. He didn’t share the gallows humour of his calling or of the police. He was a professional. And death was nothing to smile about. ‘He’s almost free from rigor now,’ he said, tilting the shattered head with the sawn-off cranium and feeling the jaw muscles soft under his gloved fingers. ‘My guess, and that is all it is at present, is that he died about two a.m.’
‘The early hours of Saturday.’ Thomas was tracing it back. ‘Right.’
‘There’s little more I can tell you, Inspector.’ Nagapon pinged off his gloves. ‘You have the rope that hanged him. The knot was to the left?’
Thomas nodded. He still felt cold at the memory of the man dangling there in the half-light, his hands like talons, his eyes bulging under the dark matted blood of the hair. Memories like that never go away. You bury them for your family, your mates, if you’ve got any who aren’t coppers, but the night terrors bring them back, screaming through dreams without end.
‘Thirty minutes?’ Thomas frowned, working it all out, assessing the time it would have taken to strike, haul the man into position and perhaps wait until he died. ‘So, if that’s the case, the attack could have happened at – what? – one-forty, possibly a little earlier.’
Nagapon glanced at the clock, taking a little leaf from the good inspector’s book of black humour. ‘If you will excuse me, Mr Thomas, I think I hear the muezzin calling me to prayer. Which way is Mecca?’
‘Now we are six,’ Maxwell murmured, looking around the room. Stenhouse Muir’s original plan for this Sunday was lunch at the Graveney, followed by a quick round on the hotel’s golf course. As it was, the old gang were sitting in a police waiting-room, waiting for the police.
Asheton was the first to respond, sitting opposite Maxwell, frowning. ‘Is this what this is?’ he asked. ‘Some bloody replay of Ten Little Niggers?’
‘Indians, please.’ Muir wagged a finger at him.
‘Native Americans, if we’re going down that road.’ Alphedge smirked. ‘PC is as PC does.’
‘Where did they take the ladies?’ Bingham asked.
‘Some WPC whisked them upstairs,’ Alphedge told him.
‘Divide and conquer.’ Bingham nodded. ‘They’ll get Thomas. We’ll get Tyler.’
‘Sexy policeperson, repulsive policeperson?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Something like that,’ Bingham said.
The clock on the wall said ten to twelve. A pale sun was streaming in through the slats of the blinds, the trees of the carpark silhouetted like ghosts on the blankness of the wall, shifting in the morning breeze.
‘What do you know about this, Stenhouse?’ Asheton asked.
The mock Scotsman looked at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, this whole thing,’ Asheton said. ‘This reunion nonsense. It was your bloody idea.’
‘So, what are you saying?’ Muir was leaning forward in his chair, facing his man down. ‘That Quentin’s death is my fault?’ He knew Asheton was only putting into words what he’d said to himself a thousand times in the last twenty-four hours.
‘You had the key,’ Asheton said. ‘Who else could it have been?’
‘Look, come on, boys.’ Alphedge was on his feet, ever the mediator, the go-between.
Then they were all shouting at once, except the Preacher, who sat beneath the clock, his face motionless, his eyes closed. He looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.
The door flew open and a burly copper stood there in a blue jumper with sergeant’s chevrons glittering silver on his shoulder. ‘Mr Maxwell?’
‘Yes.’ Maxwell was glad of the moment. The six were falling apart. It was The Usual Suspects and only one of them knew who Keyser Söze was.
‘The DCI would like a word. Can I get the rest of you gentlemen a cup of tea?’
Maxwell grabbed a baguette to keep body and soul together. He sat in the lounge of the Graveney, sunk in the leatherette of a massive armchair. He was on his second Southern Comfort when the man he wanted to talk to strode through the lobby.
‘Preacher?’
John Wensley turned and half smiled. ‘Hello, Max,’ he said.
Maxwell crossed to him. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked.
‘I’ll have an iced tea,’ Wensley said.
Maxwell raised an enquiring eyebrow to the girl at the bar. This was likely to tax her NVQ training to the limits, but she bustled away to do her very best. Maxwell wasn’t to know that she came of stiff-upper-hp stock and her great-granny had worked in the NAAFI when they bombed Coventry.
‘I haven’t really had a chance for a chat.’ Maxwell ushered his man to the little circle of chairs. ‘How the hell are you?’ As he said it, his focus inevitably settled on the man’s dog-collar, but he was in for a penny by this time and a tactical withdrawal would only make matters worse. ‘What did the police ask you?’
‘What did they ask you?’ John Wensley had been a careful boy. Now he was a careful man.
‘My whereabouts on what they predictably call the night in question.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘The truth.’
‘Which was?’
Maxwell leaned back in the snug of his chair, crossing his legs. ‘I was in my room, number forty-six, on the first floor.’
‘Asleep?’
‘No.’ Maxwell was prepared to play along for the moment, but it would be the Preacher’s turn next. ‘I read until about one, one-fifteen. Some tosh, before you ask, on the death of Christopher Marlowe.’
‘Interesting man.’ Wensley nodded. ‘An atheist.’
‘It’s at times like these I thank God I’m one.’ Maxwell beamed. The joke died in the ether.
Wensley’s tea arrived and he called the girl back. ‘What’s this?’ he asked her, holding up the sweet in the saucer.
‘That’s your free chocolate augmentation,’ she said.
‘I don’t want it,’ he told her. ‘Take it away.’
She looked embarrassed, but Maxwell saved the day. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he said, and snatched it expertly from Wensley’s fingers. ‘Thank you, my dear. Delicious.’
‘So you’re a teacher, Max?’ Wensley stirred the cubes with the long, elegant spoon.
‘For my sins,’ Maxwell said. ‘But don’t change the subject, Preacher. What did the police ask you?’
‘It sounds very similar,’ Wensley said, leaning back and crossing his legs too. ‘They wanted to know my movements on Friday night, particularly the early hours of Saturday morning.’
‘What about your movements last night?’ Maxwell asked him, slowly rolling the cut glass between his fingers.
‘Last night?’ Wensley frowned.
‘I came a-calling,’ Maxwell told him. ‘It was lat
e. About half twelve. You were probably asleep.’
‘No,’ said Wensley. ‘I wasn’t there. What did you want?’
‘To make some sense of all this, John.’ Maxwell couldn’t remember when he’d used the man’s name before. It didn’t sound right.
Wensley nodded. ‘That’s what we’d all like to do,’ he said. ‘But it won’t happen without God’s grace.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Maxwell had known this moment would come. ‘Tell me about this church of yours.’
‘My church?’ Wensley looked at him. ‘It’s not mine, Max, it’s for all of us. Anyone who wants to come in. The door’s always open.’
‘Where were you last night?’ Maxwell was suddenly aware of how cold the lobby was and how still. The hubbub from the dining room had stopped, as though every punter in there had paused, Yorkshire-laden fork inches from their mouths, to hear the Preacher’s answer.
‘Wandering, Max,’ Wensley said as he sipped his tea. ‘It’s what I do.’
Goodbyes had been difficult. Muir and Asheton weren’t speaking. Their respective women had followed suit, Janet Muir all too keen to loathe Veronica on account of the woman’s age and looks alone. Both Alphie and his wife had hugged Maxwell, in the way that luvvies do, and this bonhomie had extended to Jacquie, who was still wiping off Cissie’s lipstick as she drove for the Graveney’s gates.
The Preacher hadn’t been there as the others settled their bills in reception. Maxwell imagined he was wandering again. They’d all promised Maxwell they’d see him again, all swapped addresses and phone numbers. When it came to e-mails, Maxwell gave up. His old oppos appeared to have embraced the twenty-first century. He was almost as aghast at this as at the death of George Quentin. The stone-faced Bingham implied that when they met again it might be across a court of law; there were testing times ahead. Maxwell suddenly had a mental picture of how fatuous the man must look in his wig.
