Maxwell’s Reunion

by M. J. Trow

  Hall turned to face her. ‘I’ve just come from the incident room,’ he told the pair. ‘A lot of people working and working hard. But nothing’s breaking. Nothing at all. So …’ He loosened his tie and took his glasses off to wipe them. Jacquie thought he looked tired, tetchy. ‘Graham, talk me through Anthony Bingham. Where exactly are we on that one?’

  The DS riffled through his notes. ‘SOCO turned up a lot of stuff,’ he said. ‘Tissues, condoms. Most of it you’d need to carry at arm’s length at the end of a pair of tongs. Old copy of Meccano World, so there’s obviously some real perverts out there.’

  Hall’s frozen scowl said it all. If ever Graham Rackham had thought of going into the stand-up comic business, this morning was not a good time to start.

  ‘Nothing concrete on tyre tracks. We’ve identified thirty-eight different vehicles from the mud at the bottom of the hill where the body was found. Apart from dog-walkers and courting couples, it’s used as a turning place for people who’ve overshot the A280. Even using Holmes, they reckon it’ll be three to four weeks before we get matches on even half of these.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Hall sucked air through his teeth. ‘And we’re no further forward on how Bingham got there?’

  Rackham shook his head. ‘By train paying cash is still the best guess, guv. He’d have come to Leighford from Waterloo; that’s all we can say. There’s no record of a credit card and his car is still in his garage.’

  ‘What about the chauffeur? As a judge he presumably had one?’

  ‘The Met have interviewed him,’ the DS said. ‘He’d had flu at the time of the killing and was home in bed. That’s watertight.’

  ‘But he wasn’t killed here, was he?’ Jacquie spoke up for the first time.

  ‘No.’ Hall sighed, wiping his hand on his face. ‘Not according to Dr Astley. Jim reckons Bingham’s body was dumped in the woods. There is a slight glimmer there.’ Hall put his glasses back on and rummaged through the paperwork on his desk. ‘Here we are. Fibres. Astley’s report mentions fibres on the clothing. Bingham was wearing a suit when he died. There are pale blue fibres matted into the material at the front.’

  ‘Which means …’ Jacquie was frowning, working out the angles.

  ‘Which means he was hit from behind, and fell forward. Astley also found carpet burns on his left cheek and nose.’

  Rackham joined in. ‘Head wound, guv. There must have been a lot of blood.’

  Hall nodded. ‘And brain tissue. Who do we know who’s bought a new carpet recently?’ He closed Astley’s file. ‘All right, Jacquie, what’s Mr Maxwell up to?’

  She looked at the clock. ‘I would think it’s Oliver Cromwell by now, sir – 8 C 4.’

  Hall looked at her. Rackham wanted to snigger, but he also wanted promotion, so he thought better of it.

  Jacquie cleared her throat. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I accompanied Mr Maxwell to the Lodge yesterday. We now know who hit him over the head and locked him in the basement.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hall looked at her over his glasses. ‘Who?’

  ‘Angel Kesteven.’

  Hall and Rackham looked blank.

  ‘She’s a receptionist at the Lodge,’ Jacquie explained. ‘Fully paid-up member of the Church of God’s Children. She is also barking.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Hall.

  ‘It’s a long story, sir,’ she said.

  Hall leaned back in his chair, cradling his head in his locked hands. ‘DS Rackham and I have nothing better to do, have we, Graham?’

  ‘Well, er …’

  ‘Does it get us any closer to who killed Quentin and Bingham, Jacquie?’ Hall had asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

  ‘It might,’ she said. ‘By a process of elimination.’

  ‘Then go,’ Hall said.

  ‘You know Maxwell didn’t believe his kidnapping was Wensley’s work?’

  Hall did.

  ‘At the Lodge, he asked Angel outright why she’d done it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well the conversation was sort of … interrupted.’

  ‘By what?’

  ‘Paulo Escobar.’

  ‘Escobar?’ Hall frowned, riffling through his papers. ‘Isn’t that … ?’

  ‘The lover of George Quentin. Yes.’

  ‘He was at the Lodge?’

  ‘Not another bloody Jesus freak?’ Graham enquired.

  ‘We were talking to Angel when Escobar appeared, pulled a knife.’

  ‘Jacquie.’ Hall looked at his DC. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am, sir,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t tackle him. Maxwell did.’

  ‘Did he, now?’

  ‘Did you talk to Escobar, sir?’ Jacquie asked. ‘When you were following up on George Quentin?’

  ‘No, not personally. After that nonsensical mix-up at Vandeleur Negus …’ He was looking straight at Jacquie.

  ‘Mix-up, guv?’ Rackham wasn’t one to let his boss’s discomfiture disappear so easily.

  ‘When someone impersonated me,’ Hall said slowly, patiently, looking his man in the face.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Rackham’s reply was ingenuous. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Quentin’s MD told me about Escobar, and I went to the house, but there was no one there. As I was on a tight schedule, the Met followed it up.’

  ‘Well,’ Jacquie went on, ‘we’re talking about one nasty piece of work.’

  ‘And Maxwell coped with that?’ Hall asked. He’d always taken the man for a couch potato.

  ‘Straight out of the manual, sir,’ Jacquie said. ‘Well, the judo throw over his shoulder was. I’m not sure about the boot in the balls first.’

  Rackham guffawed and clapped. ‘Nice one.’

  ‘Mr Escobar fell down the stairs, guv,’ Jacquie said. It wasn’t an unusual line to hear from a police officer. ‘When he came round, he wasn’t talking much. I arrested him for causing an affray and he’s now in the local nick. Godalming. Surrey CID are on to it.’

  Hall shook his head. ‘Another constabulary.’ He sighed.

  ‘It was bound to happen, guv,’ Rackham told him. ‘If there was going to be any activity at the Lodge, I mean.’

  ‘Before the local law arrived, though,’ Jacquie said, ‘Wensley turned up.’

  ‘Wensley?’ Rackham started.

  Hall nodded. ‘Warwickshire CID let him go. I had a call from Nadine Tyler. Something to do with illegal acquisition of evidence.’ He was looking at Jacquie.

  ‘It’s as well he arrived when he did.’ Jacquie ignored the jibe. ‘At last I think we had the truth from the Reverend Wensley.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hall shifted in his chair. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘He and Escobar go way back. To the institution in Bilbao. Escobar was just a kid when he was sent there, for knifing a teacher, funnily enough.’ Jacquie could be casual about it now; when she’d heard it first, she’d clung to Maxwell for dear life. ‘Wensley took him under his wing, looked after the lad, taught him to cope. Wensley, of course, was an old hand. An old lag, doing porridge.’

  ‘It was a hospital,’ Hall corrected her.

  ‘That’s not how Wensley and Escobar see it, sir. Oh, the Preacher still didn’t tell us everything. There are some wounds that run too deep. But he can rationalize it now, handle his own past. They had a long time to talk, Escobar and Wensley. The Preacher told him all about England and his old friends – one in particular, George Quentin. What Wensley didn’t know, or so he said, was that Quentin was queer as a wagonload of monkeys. The hospital let Escobar out six years ago – a year before Wensley – and he came over here with a work permit. Still don’t know how he got that.’

  ‘Bloody asylum-seeker.’ Rackham grunted. ‘We give away British citizenship with litres of petrol. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Escobar found Quentin,’ Jacquie went on, ‘told him about Wensley, struck up a relationship and moved in.’

  ‘And this Angel Kesteven,’ Hall said. ‘Why did she clobber Maxwell?’


  ‘To protect Wensley. To protect the Church. I read her file, too, guv …’ Jacquie waited for the bombshell. There wasn’t one. So she went on. ‘It makes Wensley look like Mr Average. She was born in Watts …’

  ‘That’s downtown LA, guv,’ Rackham cut in. ‘Black ghetto.’

  ‘Thanks for the sociology lesson.’ Hall’s face had not flickered.

  ‘Abuse,’ Jacquie went on, ‘racial, sexual, physical – you name it. She was on the streets at twelve, a hooker.’

  ‘So the Church of God’s Children specializes in misfits.’ Hall nodded.

  ‘One of their people found her off her face on heroin. Saved her life.’

  ‘And now she wants to save Wensley’s?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Godalming, next cell to Escobar.’

  Rackham grunted. ‘Bloody place will be full of ’em.’

  ‘Why was she over here in the first place?’ Hall asked.

  ‘The Church moves them around, apparently. It’s her stint in the UK, and, of course, her file follows her everywhere.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be a bit thicker now, won’t it?’ Rackham said. ‘What did she hope to achieve?’

  Jacquie shrugged. ‘Angel’s not very bright, Graham,’ she said, ‘and I suppose she’s just been scarred too much by what life has thrown at her. She listens at keyholes – just another little trait in her less-than-endearing personality. She got the idea that Maxwell was out to get Wensley, cause trouble for the Church. We might take out writs; she hit him with a crucifix.’

  ‘Apt,’ Hall said.

  ‘Heavy,’ Jacquie told him. ‘She showed us the very one. Then, of course, she had a problem. Maxwell was out like a light, lying on the gravel by the front door. Angel didn’t know what to do. She just knew she had to hide him. If she couldn’t see him, he wasn’t there. So she dragged him inside and down the cellar steps. She found a room and locked him in it.’

  ‘You arrested her?’ Hall queried.

  Jacquie nodded.

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘At the moment, GBH, guv. I wanted to talk to you first before we decide on kidnapping, attempted murder. There’s a DI Jacobs from Surrey CID waiting for a call from one of us.’

  Hall tapped the table with his Biro top. ‘What are your feelings, Jacquie?’ he asked.

  ‘Close the bloody place down,’ was Rackham’s informed comment.

  ‘Jacquie?’ Hall had been ignoring detective sergeants for years.

  She looked at him. ‘Maxwell doesn’t want to press charges,’ she said.

  Rackham threw his hands in the air. ‘Does he ever?’ he asked.

  ‘He feels – as do I – that the woman’s been through enough. Kidnapping, attempted murder – it’s all getting a bit heavy.’

  ‘I’ll talk to this Jacobs,’ Hall said. ‘In the meantime, why did Escobar pull a knife on Maxwell?’

  ‘Same thing,’ Jacquie said. ‘Angel sees the Church as her saviour; Escobar feels he owes Wensley. Anything that might harm that – Maxwell snooping, me snooping – they see as a threat. Then, of course, there’s Richard Alphedge …’

  Peter Maxwell crossed his last ‘t’ a little after half past five. ‘There, Count,’ he said. ‘That’s the last of the UCAS references for this year. Cheltenham HQ will be delighted to learn that Jason Lee Crump has an IQ off the wall, is already working for NASA at weekends, has to keep fending off calls from Sven Goran Eriksson, who’s desperate for him in the English squad, and he’s also this year’s runner-up for the Booker Prize. And if they believe that lot, they’ll believe anything!’ He slammed the file shut. ‘Thingee Two can work her wonders getting all that on her WPPC or whatever tomorrow. Now, to serious matters.’ He hauled himself over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large one. ‘Murder.’

  The cat yawned. Why didn’t the old idiot stick his tongue in a bucket of rainwater if he was thirsty? And anyway, the colour on that stuff he did drink …

  ‘So …’ Maxwell wiggled his backside down on to the settee, crossing his legs at the ankles on the pouffé like the effigy on some latter-day crusader’s tomb. ‘We now know that I was not the third on some maniac’s hit list, I just turned my back on the wrong woman, that’s all. Which means,’ and his face darkened at the thought of it, ‘that poor old Alphie might well be.’ He looked at the phone, thinking of Cissie. He’d left her with every assurance, with Jacquie’s mobile number and that of his own landline. He checked his watch. No, he wouldn’t ring her just yet.

  ‘Person or persons unknown.’ He closed his eyes, partly to focus, partly to ease the pounding in his head that Angel’s crucifix still gave him. ‘Lure George Quentin to Halliards, smash his skull and hang him. Let’s analyse that one first.’ He sipped the amber liquid, rolling it around his tongue, teasing his tonsils. ‘Ritual,’ he said, opening his eyes again, staring at the single cobweb on the ceiling that had clearly eluded the eagle gaze of Mrs B, who did for him on Wednesdays. ‘The legend of the Halliards boy who hanged himself. Poor little bastard probably failed a SAT test or just couldn’t grasp the enormous subtleties of Hider’s Lebensraum. Why am I being flippant, Count?’ Maxwell reiterated a question everybody seemed to ask him these days. He let his eyes roll sideways towards the feline bastard. ‘Because it’s the only way to get through the day. So,’ he shut his eyes again, ‘this was a killing with a message. Sic semper tyrannis. Was that it?’ He was sitting up now. ‘Come, come, Count, you remember your Latin GCSE, surely? No, you’d have taken Classical Civilisation, wouldn’t you? The non-thinking man’s classics. Endless reruns of Gladiator and Spartacus videos. Sic semper tyrannis, Count – so it always is with tyrants. John Wilkes Booth, the bit player, yelled it to the audience in Ford’s Theatre, after he’d put a derringer ball through President Lincoln’s brain. Booth was a Southerner, y’see; didn’t like Mr Lincoln, who had just trounced the South in a little war thing they had over there. So, is that why Quent died? To avenge a wrong?’

  Maxwell got off the settee and started to pace the floor. Metternich the cat couldn’t take much more of this. He’d have to start retaliating by licking his bum any minute.

  ‘So what had Quentin done?’ Maxwell was asking himself. ‘And to whom? He swiped my cigarette cards that time in the Lower Fourths, certainly, but I wouldn’t have hanged him for it. Oh, I know, Count, quite. You never said a truer word. Here I am, reasonable, rational, balanced, pinko-liberal … Well, all right, I exaggerate. But that’s the whole problem in a nutshell, isn’t it? A rational person trying to catch an irrational one. Shouldn’t that mean I’ve got the upper hand here? No.’ He flopped back on to the settee again. ‘No, it just means I’m out of my depth.’

  There was a silence. Metternich couldn’t bear it and purred, just for the hell of it. No rhyme. No reason.

  ‘All right.’ Maxwell was back in the fray again, forcing the grey matter through its paces. ‘Assuming we’re right that Quent wasn’t the random victim of a maniac – and the whole scenario precludes that, really – what about opportunity? Quent hadn’t checked in at the Graveney and gone out again; he’d never arrived. Somebody arranged to meet him at Halliards, at an appointed time, and they killed him. Now, apart from me …’ Maxwell caught Metternich’s head coming up, the feline equivalent of a raised eyebrow. ‘Oh, ha,’ his master snarled, ‘that leaves … Stenhouse and Janet. He arranged the whole thing, had a key and owns a damaged cricket bat which could be a murder weapon, although apparently the lab says not. The two of them together could have lifted Quent on to the balcony with the noose round his neck. Then there’s Ash and Veronica. According to her,’ – he got up for a Southern Comfort refill, ‘she went to Halliards that night with the Preacher and they had it away in the chapel. God, the old chaplain would’ve died. I’m not sure he realized what women were for. Sorry, that’s a rather politically incorrect comment, isn’t it? But, man to man, Count, as we are … Yet, Veronica didn’t see or hear a thing. Still
, she was busy and the chapel is a fair way from the entrance hall and the bell rope. Now, the Preacher, of course, denies all this. Yes, he was there, wandering the grounds for reasons he can’t or won’t explain, but there’s no mention of Veronica in his version. And the chapel was locked the next morning – Stenhouse told the Preacher he hadn’t got a key. So either the Preacher or Veronica had keys or Veronica is telling porkies.’

  Maxwell weighed the situation. ‘I think we have to accept, Count, distress you though it will, that our Veronica is a rather kinky lady. If she’s not doing it, she’s talking about doing it – rather like Year Ten, in fact. Then there’s Alphie and Cissie. They alibi each other, of course. Neither of them mentions going out again after they went to bed. The Graveney doesn’t have security cameras, apparently, so we can’t check that. Anyway, Alphie’s gone. Done a runner?’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘If he has, he hasn’t let Cissie in on it. Of course,’ he took another sip, ‘there is a possibility we’re overlooking in all this. Yes, well, just be patient, will you? I’m getting to it. What if Cret did it? What if Cret killed Quent? He’s a big bloke, could probably lift Quent by himself if push came to shove. And then somebody else killed him. Tit for tat. That would explain the good old blunt instrument – nothing poetic like the Halliards bell rope. Which brings us …’

  ‘… to motive, Jacquie.’ Maxwell was getting his face around a full English. ‘You know it’s very good of you to do this.’

  ‘I didn’t like the look of you yesterday,’ she said, ‘when I dropped you at school. Thought you needed some looking after.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Bad hair day?’

  ‘Bad head day.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘You’re right. This whole thing is about motive. Once we’ve got that, we’ve cracked it. Sorry, is that obvious?’

  He was shaking his head. ‘There’s nothing obvious about this one, darling,’ he said. ‘It’s been a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea what a bunch of oddballs I was at school with.’

  She shrugged. ‘They’re just people, Max. It’s the same all over.’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe. But they’re so damned unhappy. Look at Stenhouse. Dead-end job, wife who hates him. The Preacher – so strung out I don’t want to think about it. And as for Ash and Veronica … Well …’