by M. J. Trow
Nadine Tyler’s eyes flickered for a moment. ‘You’ve lost me,’ she said.
‘Well, this.’ Maxwell handed the plastic wallet back to her. ‘It’s better than a play, isn’t it?’
DCI Tyler leaned back, tucking the incriminating evidence into her handbag. She glanced at Hall. ‘On the way over here,’ she said, ‘Mr Hall and I had a little discussion. Well, a difference of opinion, actually, along the lines of could he turn his back while I shoved lighted matches under your fingernails.’
‘Tsk, tsk, Policewoman,’ Maxwell scolded. ‘Such repressed aggression.’
‘You’re lucky it is repressed, son,’ she said, although Maxwell could have given her ten years. ‘It is customary in these matters for the local CID to make the arrest. That Mr Hall has flatly refused to do.’
‘Good for him.’ Maxwell beamed, and winked at Hall. ‘You’ll go far, Chief Inspector.’
‘There’s only so far I can go.’ Hall pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Have you any explanation for that letter?’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘None. I’ve never seen it before.’
‘Do you have a word-processor round here?’ Nadine Tyler asked.
‘Helen Maitland, my number two, has one,’ Maxwell said. ‘In the office next door.’
‘Mind if we take a look?’
‘No.’ Maxwell got up. ‘After you, Chief Inspectors.’
Nadine Tyler went ahead; Hall hung back. Maxwell was like the jam in a detective sandwich.
Helen Maitland’s office was the reverse of Maxwell’s, minus the film memorabilia. In place of the posters and the Oscar that stood on his desk with the legend ‘Mad Max’ beneath it, fluffy bunnies held pencil-holders and two cute kids with no front teeth beamed up at people from a silvered frame on the desk.
‘Would you mind typing for me?’ Nadine Tyler turned to Maxwell.
‘I think they’ve got an old Olivetti in Business Studies,’ Maxwell said. ‘As a reminder of the good old days. Shall we?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘A typewriter, dear lady. That I can manage. Put the paper in the top, tap the keys, ping the thing, sheer poetry. But this … how do you switch it on?’
‘It’s on,’ Hall told him.
‘Is it?’ Maxwell was impressed. ‘Well I never.’
‘Mr Maxwell.’ Nadine Tyler was seething. ‘Are you obstructing us in the course of our enquiries?’
‘Au contraire, madam.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘I have, it seems, my name to clear. Unfortunately, I haven’t the first idea how to begin.’
‘Bollocks!’ DCI Tyler snorted. ‘You’ve got eleven-year-olds in this school who can operate one of these.’
‘Indeed we have,’ Maxwell acknowledged. ‘My God, you don’t think it’s one of them, do you?’
‘Maxwell,’ Nadine Tyler’s patience had just snapped, ‘I’d like you to get your hat and coat. We’re going to your house.’
‘Ah, well, that is a little tricky, Chief Inspector. You see, Year Thirteen are expecting Lenin’s War Communism after break. Then there’s the Year Ten Holocaust test.’
‘I am just about to forget protocol,’ Nadine Tyler stood nose to nose with Maxwell, ‘and, in spite of Mr Hall’s presence, bust your arse. Now, are you going to co-operate?’
Maxwell looked into the woman’s dark, flashing eyes. ‘Hat and coat, I think you said?’ He went back into his own office and picked up the phone. ‘Thingee? Be a love and find Tom Hastings, will you? Ask him to cover my lessons for …’ He looked at the DCI’s glaring features. ‘… the rest of the day. Something’s come up.’
For a moment, Metternich toyed with some sort of show of strength. The woman would be a doddle. He’d lull her first with the usual slow curl around her ankles, tail erect, spraying happiness in all directions, then, wham! Eight steel-shod claws with twelve pounds of torn behind them and her tights would be a memory. That always caused retreat; nay, rout. But the bloke, now; that was different. He was built like an outside lavatory. Unless, of course, he was allergic and would collapse, a sneezing wreck … Then Metternich sniffed again. No, he knew this one. He’d been here before. Ah well, discretion it was. And he vanished through the cat-flap.
‘That’s funny, Mr Maxwell.’ Nadine Tyler had paused in the doorway to Maxwell’s study. ‘All the way over from the school, you’ve been telling us how computer illiterate you are. And yet … looks like Microsoft have stuffed you right up.’ She tapped the laptop and its printer with a manicured nail.
‘What?’ Maxwell glanced at Muir’s laptop and printer on his study desk. ‘Oh, no, that’s not mine …’
Nadine Tyler whirled to face him, glaring briefly at Hall before delivering the time-honoured words, ‘Peter Maxwell, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of George Quentin. You do not have to say anything, but you may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ She spun on her heel. ‘Sorry, Henry,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t wait all day.’
She flew into his arms and they stayed there, locked in a tightness neither of them wanted to break.
‘There’ll be sniggers.’ Maxwell held her at arms’ length. ‘Your oppos.’
‘Fuck them!’ Jacquie shouted. ‘Max, what happened?’
They sat down on the hard bench of his holding cell, the one in the bowels of the old Leighford nick, holding hands.
‘I fell foul of the law,’ Maxwell said. ‘DCI Tyler’s got a bit of a thing about me, I think. Wanted my body. Settled for my freedom.’ He toyed with giving Jacquie his Mel Gibson by way of Braveheart, but hadn’t the energy for it. Anyway, it would have reverberated around his nine-by-five and brought the coppers running. ‘One of her people found a letter at Halliards. It was written to Quent and apparently came from me.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Jacquie was wringing his hands along with hers.
‘Neither do I.’ Maxwell moved a stray strand of hair from her face, kissing her cheek softly. ‘It wasn’t my signature, but the thing was typed on a computer and they found Stenhouse’s computer at Columbine. That was enough for our Nadine. She was like a rat up a drainpipe.’
‘Stenhouse’s computer?’
‘He turned up on my doorstep Friday night like an orphan of the storm. Said Janet had kicked him out, having tried to get him arrested for murder. Needless to say, he brought his computer with him, him being a journalist an’ all. And dear old Nadine put two and two together and came up with three point nine.’
Jacquie was thinking. ‘The trouble is, Max, there’s no way of telling them apart; computers, I mean. It all depends on the printer. The old dot matrix ones were quirky, but new ones – no chance. You can’t prove this letter wasn’t written on Stenhouse’s machine.’
‘Well, thanks for the heartening vote of confidence,’ Maxwell mumbled.
‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it. When did Stenhouse arrive, exactly?’
‘Er … nine-thirty, ten. Why?’
‘And when was the letter found?’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘Pass. I shall just have to go to jail.’
‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ Jacquie scolded. ‘There’s no evidence against you at all.’
‘Just playing mental Monopoly,’ Maxwell explained.
‘Have they talked to Stenhouse?’
‘He wasn’t there when the balloon went up. He takes invigorating strolls along the shingle to clear his brain every so often. They may have talked to him by now. Would that help?’
‘Circumstantially, yes,’ she told him. ‘Stenhouse tells them the machine is his and that it wasn’t in your possession until ten o’clock last Friday. If they found the letter before that, you’re in the clear.’
‘No, I’m not.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘As you pointed out, heart of my heart, there’s no way of telling one from the other. Many’s the black-and-white B-feature in which chummie was caught by the clue of a dodgy typewriter
key. But I could have typed that letter anywhere, any time – like the old Martini telly ad, funnily enough. The fact that I can’t operate the bloody thing has passed them by, of course. They think I’m lying.’
‘But the signature, Max,’ Jacquie reasoned. ‘They’ll compare yours with what’s on the letter.’
‘I disguised my handwriting, I was in a hurry – they’ll have thought that one through.’
‘So, you’ve given up?’ She sat back from him for the first time. ‘Are you Mad Max? Are you the bloke who tilts at windmills? Fights dragons?’ She stood up, shouting at him. ‘Are you the bloke I fell in love with, though it was against every rational bloody thing to do?’ She looked at him, swallowing hard, blinking back the tears. ‘Oh, Max. If only I’d slept with you that night.’
‘At the Graveney?’ He smiled. ‘They’d only say you were my accomplice,’ he told her. ‘That we snuck out to Halliards at the witching hour to meet and beat poor old Quent. No, I’d rather face this one alone, thanks, darling.’
‘Bollocks!’ Jacquie snorted. She threw her arms around him, burying her burning face in his shoulder. For a moment, she wanted to cry, to let it all out, to feel him kiss away her tears. But she had a job to do. She pulled back, sniffed, held his cheeks in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth.
‘I’ve got to see the guv’nor,’ she said. ‘Then Stenhouse. I’ve got a feeling DCI Tyler has rather overstepped the mark on this one.’
‘Attagirl!’ Maxwell smiled as the heavy door closed behind her.
‘I know.’ Hall’s hands were in the air already, placating, calming, preparing to ride the whirlwind.
‘With respect, sir,’ Jacquie was more in control than she’d thought she’d be, ‘what the fuck is going on?’
‘Procedure, Jacquie,’ he assured her.
She slid back a chair and leaned across his desk, staring into his face. ‘You know and I know that Peter Maxwell’s never killed anybody. Yes, he’s a cantankerous old bastard, stubborn and set in his ways. But he’s no more a killer than I am. Let him go … sir.’
Hall looked at his DC. Anybody else, any other time, and he’d have shown her the door, taken her warrant card, come the heavy. But not with Jacquie. And not now. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘DCI Tyler …’
‘… is a first-rate bitch with a lot of hang-ups.’
‘Jacquie …’
‘Hang-ups.’ Jacquie was nodding, staring into the middle distance. ‘That’s what Maxwell said. That’s what this case is all about. The question is – whose?’
‘We’ll sort it out, Jacquie,’ Hall promised. ‘I can only hold Maxwell thirty-six hours, you know that. It’s been …’ He checked his watch. ‘… nine already.’
‘You’ve got nothing on him,’ Jacquie said.
‘Circumstantial,’ Hall corrected her. ‘It’s sometimes enough.’
Jacquie wanted to hit him. Reach out across that bloody desk he used like a shield, slap him around the head, knock those blind, blank, cold glasses off and crush them and him under her heel. She wanted to do it because she knew that Hall was right. In Maxwell’s good old days, which he talked about at the drop of a rope, circumstantial was enough to hang a man. It had hanged George Quentin already.
Instead, Jacquie Carpenter relented. She turned on the heel she imagined was grinding the guv’nor’s glasses and left the office. She was halfway down the dimly lit corridor when her mobile hummed in her pocket.
‘Jacquie Carpenter.’
‘Jacquie? Oh, thank God. This is Cissie, Cissie Alphedge. I’ve had a call.’ The voice was strained, on the edge of hysteria. ‘They’ve got Richard. He’s alive. But they want money.’
‘How much?’
‘Half a million!’
Jacquie sucked in her breath. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow night. They want Max to do it. But I can’t reach him. He’s not answering his phone.’
‘No,’ said Jacquie, looking down the steps that led to the cells, ‘Max can’t come to the phone just now.’
‘What? Jacquie, what’s going on? Somebody’s got Richard. They say …’ For a moment, the line appeared to go dead.
‘Cissie?’ Jacquie turned corners in a desperate attempt to regain the signal. ‘Cissie, you’re breaking up.’
‘They say they’ll … Unless Max brings the money, they’ll … kill him. Oh, Jacquie, what can we do?’
Jacquie Carpenter put the phone to her chest for a moment, sure that Cissie could hear her heart beating. Then it was up to her face again. ‘Don’t worry, Cissie,’ she said. ‘This creep’s playing a new ball-game now. He’s moved the goalposts. But it’s a game we know. It’s a game we can win.’
17
‘I’m still trying to work out,’ Maxwell said, watching the trees flash by as the darkness gathered, ‘whether you’ve got something on Henry Hall or whether you just blew the side of the jail off.’
He was angling Jacquie’s wing mirror so that he could see at least part of the darkening features of DS Rackham in the back seat. If truth were told, Rackham didn’t care for the position he found himself in, either as back-seat driver in a two-door car or as gooseberry to Bonnie and Clyde.
‘You know the deal, Max,’ Jacquie told him. ‘That’s why Graham is with us.’
‘How did Cissie sound?’ he asked her.
‘Distraught,’ she said. ‘Who wouldn’t be?’
The deal was that Henry Hall had let Maxwell go. He was what the Victorians called a ticket-of-leave man, on parole. The electronic tag they’d otherwise have strapped to his ankle came in the more human shape of Graham Rackham. Not, as Hall had told Jacquie, that he didn’t trust her; it was just that, in kidnap situations, a lone officer was never enough. When they got to the Alphedges’, Jacquie would be able to call in the whole local team, with phone taps, wires, electronic surveillance, helicopters and dogs; the full monty of dealing with a psychotic bastard.
‘No.’ Cissie was adamant in the lamps’ glow, shaking her head like a resolute terrier. ‘None of that. He was very specific.’
Jacquie looked across at Maxwell. He took the woman in his arms and sat her down on the settee. He motioned to Rackham, who in turn looked at Jacquie. Her gesture convinced him – for now. Making the tea it was, and he sloped off in search of the kitchen.
‘Tell me again.’ Maxwell sat with his arm round her. ‘Tell me exactly what he said.’
Cissie sighed. She knew it, of course. Knew it all off by heart. That voice. So cold, so chilling. It had etched itself on her soul. ‘He said if I wanted to see Richard again, I was to get half a million pounds. The person to bring it was Peter Maxwell. He said he’d call back.’
‘What time was the call, Cissie?’ Jacquie asked.
‘Er …’ She looked at the grandfather clock in the corner, with its shiny brass face and its smiling sun. ‘This would have been after six, perhaps half past.’
Jacquie had already checked the phone. It was a digital sort that recorded the calls. The one at 6.23 merely said ‘number withheld’. No surprises there.
Jacquie tried again. ‘I need to call people in to monitor his calls, Cissie.’
‘No!’ the woman shrieked. ‘I told you, no. Richard’s life is at stake. I will not jeopardize that. I won’t.’
Maxwell squeezed her to him more tightly, looking up at Jacquie and shaking his head. This would have to be done the old way. ‘Can you manage the sort of amount he’s asking for?’ he asked.
Cissie looked at him, sniffing back the tears. At last, someone was listening. ‘I think … Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can. Trusts and so on. But that will take weeks, won’t it? Days at best.’
‘You’ll have to tell them, Cissie.’ Jacquie sat down opposite her. ‘Which bank are you with?’
‘Lloyds TSB. My branch is in the High Street.’
‘How do we play that, Jacquie?’ Maxwell asked.
She looked at her watch. ‘Tomorrow morning, at nine-thirty, Cissie and I will go to the bank and see
the manager. I’ll get whatever authorization they need.’
‘What if he rings?’ Cissie asked. ‘The bastard who’s got Richard?’
‘He has to give you time to get the money, Cissie,’ Jacquie explained as gently as she could. ‘He didn’t contact you until after the close of business today. Anyway, Max’ll be here.’
‘And it’s me he wants,’ Maxwell told the shaking woman. ‘I’ll have to talk to him sooner or later.’
DS Rackham was just coming back with a tray of teacups when the phone rang, shattering the tension that filled the house. Maxwell felt Cissie jump. Jacquie was on her feet, motioning for Rackham to keep still. The sergeant froze like a rabbit in the headlights. And it was Jacquie who picked up the phone before motioning Cissie over. The women stood cheek by cheek, like partners in an insane fandango, listening at the earpiece. Jacquie nodded and Cissie spoke. ‘Yes?’
‘Is he there yet?’ a disembodied voice said.
‘Where’s Richard?’ Cissie asked.
‘Maxwell.’ The voice ignored her, sounding rather peeved to have to repeat itself. ‘Is he there?’
Again, Jacquie nodded.
‘Yes,’ said Cissie, trying to keep her voice strong. ‘Yes, he is.’
‘Put him on.’
Maxwell was motioned across. Rackham had put his tray down and was timing the call with his electronic watch. ‘Peter Maxwell,’ Maxwell said.
There was a pause. ‘Is that Maxwell?’ the voice asked.
‘Yes,’ Maxwell said. ‘Where’s Richard?’
Jacquie’s cheek was pressed against his now as they played this one together, literally by ear.
‘Safe,’ the voice snapped back. ‘For now. Have you got the money?’
‘No,’ said Maxwell at Jacquie’s silent prompting. ‘No, the banks are closed. You must give us until tomorrow.’ ‘Don’t waste my time, you shit!’ the voice snarled.
‘Look …’ Maxwell didn’t find it easy, being conciliatory with a maniac who’d grabbed an old friend and probably killed two more. ‘You’ve got to be reasonable about this. Mrs Alphedge can get the money, but it will take time.’
