Maxwell’s Reunion

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Tomorrow,’ the voice grated. ‘You’ve got until tomorrow.’ And the line went dead.

  ‘Damn!’ Maxwell turned away, furious with the world. ‘I really fucked that up.’

  ‘No, Max.’ It was Cissie’s turn to comfort, patting his arm, calming him down. ‘What else could you do?’

  ‘Cissie.’ Jacquie looked at Graham Rackham, who was already handing out the teas. ‘We’ve got to tap this phone. With a trace, we’ll know where he’s ringing from.’

  ‘No.’ Cissie was shaking her head again. ‘I absolutely forbid it.’

  ‘Max.’ Jacquie sat down to talk to him. ‘Did you recognize the voice? Did it sound familiar?’

  Maxwell blew his cheeks out. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Cissie, you’ve heard it … what? Twice now? Did you detect an accent there? A slight Scots, was it? Sort of Robbie Coltrane?’

  ‘I don’t know, Max.’ Cissie tried to hold her trembling cup. ‘I can’t really focus on things like that.’

  ‘Any background sounds?’ Rackham asked. ‘Clock ticking? Dog barking? Anything like that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Just the voice.’

  ‘All right.’ Jacquie took charge, despite Rackham’s rank. ‘I don’t reckon we’ll hear anything else tonight. Graham, you happy about watches?’

  The sergeant shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll take one,’ Maxwell volunteered.

  ‘You’re a civilian,’ Rackham reminded him.

  ‘I’m also going to be bagman on this little operation,’ Maxwell reminded him. ‘I am involved, Sergeant, whether you and your DCI like it or not.’

  Rackham beamed. ‘Oh, rest assured, Mr Maxwell. We don’t.’

  ‘I can’t sleep anyway,’ Cissie said. ‘I’ll take a watch.’

  ‘No, Cissie,’ Maxwell insisted. ‘We need you fresh for the morning. Got any sleeping tablets?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Jacquie?’ Maxwell put his arms around his friend’s wife again. ‘Cissie,’ he said, looking her in the face, ‘I know it’s a trite and overused phrase, but try not to worry. Alphie will be fine. Trust me, lady, I’m a Head of Sixth Form.’

  She buried her face into his neck and sobbed there quietly. He held her for a moment, then eased her gently away. Jacquie took over from there, leading her towards the hall and the stairs beyond. ‘I’ve got something here, Cissie,’ she said, ‘that’ll help you sleep. And don’t worry, I’ll be with you all night. There’s a phone by your bed, isn’t there?’

  Cissie nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there is.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine.’ Jacquie took her away, glancing at Rackham as she did so. ‘We’ll sort everything out in the morning – you’ll see.’

  When he was sure they’d gone, Rackham flicked out his mobile and started punching numbers. ‘Buzzword?’ he said, down the line. ‘DS Rackham, at the Alphedge place. I want a trace put on the line. Landline number …’ But before he could finish the sentence the phone had been snatched from his hand and Peter Maxwell dropped it heavily on the carpet, before grinding the plastic to pieces under his heel.

  ‘You stupid bastard!’ Rackham snapped.

  ‘No,’ Maxwell growled. ‘You’re the stupid bastard if you think I’m playing games with the life of an old friend.’

  ‘Playing games?’ Rackham hissed ‘I’m trying to save the bugger’s life. We are on the same side, Maxwell. When he rings again, if we’ve tapped the line, we can find out where he’s ringing from, close the net.’

  ‘Cissie made it perfectly clear,’ Maxwell said. ‘She didn’t want that kind of interference.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Rackham was making for the Alphedges’ phone. ‘If we listened to the wishes of everybody in a kidnap situation, we wouldn’t get any of ’em back.’ And he picked up the receiver.

  Maxwell was about to stop him again, when Jacquie arrived at his elbow. ‘Max.’ She stopped him in his stride, looking deep into his dark eyes, which were flashing fire. ‘Max, we’ve got to do this.’

  ‘Cissie …’

  ‘Cissie is in no position to make rational decisions,’ Jacquie told him. ‘What I’ve given her would put an elephant out. She won’t stir for the next twelve hours and that gives us time to get everything in position.’

  ‘Jacquie,’ Maxwell said, holding her shoulders with both hands. ‘We’re not trying to outwit Cissie, we’re trying to outwit the psycho who’s got Richard.’

  ‘If he has.’

  ‘What?’ Maxwell blinked.

  ‘If he hasn’t killed him already. If he ever had him and all this isn’t just a bluff.’

  Maxwell was shaking his head. ‘You’ve lost me,’ he said.

  She sat him down. Rackham waited until this particular little domestic was cleared up. ‘Max,’ she said. ‘You’re new to this game. We’re not. Did Cissie talk to Richard? The first phone call, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell said. ‘She didn’t say so.’

  ‘Right. And without that, we have no idea whether he’s alive or dead. Or whether this isn’t just some kind of con. Richard Alphedge is a celeb, you know.’

  ‘What, you mean some kind of stalker?’ Maxwell was incredulous, but Jacquie nodded. ‘Come on, Jacquie. This is me, Max. Are you seriously telling me that Quent and Cret were killed, ostensibly by the same hand, and then somebody just ups and kidnaps an old friend of theirs, just for jolly?’

  ‘For half a million quid,’ Rackham reminded him.

  Maxwell looked at them both. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Why the change of direction? Our man murders Quent with something poetic in mind, making some kind of statement. He murders Cret because Cret is on to him. Never mind what happened to me; that’s a red herring. Now, he’s kidnapped Alphie and is demanding ransom money. It doesn’t make sense. He’s working from another blueprint.’

  Jacquie nodded. ‘Precisely. And that’s exactly why we need the gear and expertise of the local force. He can keep us dangling for days, weeks on this, Max. All we need is approximately one and a half minutes of airtime with a trace and we’ve got him. We can pin him down to a room in a house.’

  ‘What they call precision bombing?’ Maxwell asked.

  Jacquie nodded.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Rackham weighed in.

  ‘Except that I don’t,’ Maxwell told them. ‘Precision bombing is as much bollocks now as it was in the Gulf War. It doesn’t work. Are you sure you’re not confusing this with friendly fire?’

  The lights twinkled out over the Surrey countryside as Jacquie snuggled against her man.

  ‘Was I wrong?’ he asked her. It was nearly four o’clock, but the wrong time of year for dawn to creep stealthily over the windowpanes of morning. It remained as black as a witch’s hat in the gardens of leafy suburbia.

  ‘Morally, no,’ she murmured, her eyes closed, her brain tired. ‘Operationally, yes. You owe Graham Rackham for a new phone, by the way.’

  ‘Let him take it out of my threshold payment.’ Maxwell stretched and yawned.

  ‘I didn’t think you were going for that.’ She frowned, her eyes still closed.

  Maxwell shrugged. ‘Well, there you go.’

  She chuckled.

  ‘What’s your best guess, Jacquie?’ he asked her. ‘Chummie, I mean.’

  ‘Do you want the textbook explanation or my own experience?’

  ‘I can give you the textbook stuff,’ Maxwell said. ‘The term kidnapping originates in 1860s Britain to denote the selling of children to illegal slave markets on West Indian plantations. Ah, the good old days. I can think of a few I would like to shackle and ship out. The sort of situation we have here first occurred as a Mediterranean form of money-making; most spectacularly when Lord Muncaster and three tourist friends were captured by Greek brigands.’

  ‘What happened?’ Jacquie asked.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ Maxwell told her.

  ‘I expect it ties in with my own experience,’ she said.
<
br />   ‘Muncaster and his mates were killed, because the ransom demands were not met.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen here, though, is it?’

  He looked down at her. ‘In the sense that Cissie’s going to pay up, no. Your experience?’

  ‘Only one,’ Jacquie said, her voice suddenly as small as the hours in which they spoke. ‘I hoped I’d never have to go through it again.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was the year before I was transferred to Leighford. A little girl was taken from outside her playschool. Ransom notes were sent, not phone calls. The experts were called in and decided they were forgeries, hoaxes. We never heard from the real kidnappers … we found her body on some waste ground two months later. She’d died on the day she was taken. There was no ransom. No point. Every parent’s waking nightmare, Max; the passing prowler, the guy in the white van. I don’t want to go through that again.’

  He held her close, scenting her hair as he kissed her and they watched the dawn creep from the east.

  The next call came at a little after midday.

  ‘It’s him.’ A quivering Cissie was holding her hand over the receiver. Along the wires, the local CID’s switchgear clicked into operation. Maxwell knew, as did Jacquie and Rackham. Only Cissie was in the dark, frozen out on a need-not-to-know basis for the sake of her nerves. Rackham was in the kitchen on Jacquie’s mobile, liaising with the monitors in the unmarked van beyond the privet that screened the house.

  ‘Have you got it?’ a voice wanted to know.

  ‘Yes,’ Cissie said. ‘As you asked.’ She was looking at it now, a plain black suitcase on the coffee table, hers and Richard’s life savings and then some. ‘Unsequenced bills – hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens.’

  ‘Right. Put Maxwell on.’

  She steadied herself, hating every moment when she was on the phone to him. Then she passed the receiver to Maxwell.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘You take the next train to Leamington. You will be in the phone box on Platform Three at five o’clock sharp. You will have the money with you. Miss that deadline, Maxwell, and Alphedge dies.’

  ‘Wait.’ Maxwell delayed the hang-up, playing for time. ‘What proof have I got that Alphedge is still alive?’ Out of the corner of his eye, Maxwell saw Cissie’s hand go to her mouth. He couldn’t help that now. He turned his back on her.

  ‘You haven’t,’ the voice told him.

  ‘Let me speak to him.’

  ‘Go fuck yerself.’

  ‘No Alphedge, no money,’ Maxwell snapped. He’d seen Payback. Maybe it was time to be Mel Gibson.

  There was a pause. For a second, he expected the sound of the receiver being slammed down. In the kitchen, Rackham was pacing backwards and forwards, his palm sticky around the phone, his heart thumping. Jacquie stood with Cissie, holding her upright, stroking her shoulder hypnotically to calm them both down.

  Maxwell heard a click and muffled words. Then clearly, ‘Max, is that you?’

  ‘Alphie?’

  Cissie cried out, but Jacquie held her back.

  ‘Max.’ The voice sounded weak, flaky. ‘Max, have you got the money?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Alphie,’ he said. ‘How the hell are you?’

  But the receiver was snatched away and chummie was back. ‘Five o’clock, Platform Three,’ he hissed. ‘And Maxwell – I’ll be watching. One whiff of a copper and your actor friend will be joining the Hall of Fame.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Jacquie?’ DS Rackham emerged from the kitchen a moment later, the mobile tucked away, looking as casual as he could.

  Maxwell took over at Cissie’s side.

  ‘How did he sound, Max?’ The tears trickled down her cheeks, her eyes overflowing.

  ‘Fine, darling,’ Maxwell lied. ‘He sounded fine.’

  In the kitchen, well away from the crying Cissie, Rackham filled Jacquie in. ‘He’s on a mobile. Warwick.’

  ‘Warwick?’

  ‘Isn’t that … ?’

  Jacquie nodded. ‘Not a million miles from Halliards. Is that where he’s got him?’

  ‘You’ve been there,’ Rackham said. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Huge,’ Jacquie told him. ‘You could hide an army in there. Fields to the rear, river near by. You could land a helicopter on the First Eleven Square. Tell them what we think. I’ve got to get Max up there.’

  ‘By train,’ he told her again.

  ‘But, Max . . ,’

  ‘No buts, Woman Policeman. Chummie said “train” and train it is. If his threat is genuine and he can see me at the platform kiosk in Leamington, he can see me get off the train too. We’re not taking any chances on this, are we?’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ she told him.

  He opened the passenger door. ‘How will I know the Warwickshire boys in blue?’ he asked.

  ‘You won’t. They’ll be passengers, porters, used-car salesmen. The point is that they’ll know you. That’s where Rackham was this morning. While I took Cissie to the bank and you manned the phone, he was arranging for a mug shot to be sent from Leighford to the Warwickshire lads.’

  ‘Could Brother be any bigger?’ Maxwell wondered, gripping the case tightly.

  ‘Max, you really should have a chain for that,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t bother me now, Ms Carpenter,’ he scolded, and reached in to kiss her. ‘Jacquie …’

  She quickly raised a finger to his lips. ‘Get going,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at the other end.’ And she rammed the Ka into gear and was gone, fighting back the tears. In her rear-view mirror, the man she loved got smaller and smaller until, suddenly, he wasn’t there at all.

  Leamington station. Four fifty-seven. A garbled voice over the intercom had told passengers it was sorry for the delay but there were track-laying problems near Banbury and the train was running approximately sixteen minutes late.

  Maxwell hit the platform running. Somewhere among the throng of people standing around, were the team Rackham had sent in; the passengers, porters and used-car salesmen who worked for the Warwickshire constabulary. He could see the phone box, a soulless glass thing which had replaced the red one he remembered as a boy, where an anonymous voice had patiently told him over and over again to push button B. Shit! A large woman was filling it, along with two pampered poodles attached to slender leads and diamante collars.

  The Head of Sixth Form wrenched open the door. ‘Madam, I’m sorry,’ he blurted. ‘I’m expecting a vital call on this line any minute.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ the startled woman snorted. ‘People don’t ring empty call-boxes.’

  ‘They do today,’ he assured her. ‘Please, madam. It won’t take long, but I must have the phone.’

  The dogs looked up at him, whining and yapping.

  ‘Go away or I shall call a policeman,’ she shrilled.

  Maxwell’s nose hovered near hers. ‘I am a public schoolboy, madam,’ he growled, ‘and ordinarily, believe me, I would not behave this way, but if you don’t put that phone down now and fuck off, I’m going to throw those two posing pooches of yours on to the line. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Help! Help! Police!’ the woman shrieked, rather stereotypically, Maxwell thought, as she dropped the receiver and fled, dragging the poodles in her wake.

  Maxwell replaced the phone. He didn’t see the toilet attendant silently whisk the scene-making woman out of harm’s way. He looked up and down the platform. The train he’d been on was pulling out, with a thud and rattle of rolling-stock, the engines building momentum as the thing gathered speed. He checked his watch. Shit. It was 5.04. Had he blown it? Had Railtrack and that stupid old besom conspired to make him miss the call? Perhaps to kill Richard Alphedge?

  He spun round in the goldfish bowl that was the call-box. If anyone left on the platform was an undercover cop, they showed no sign. Two girls in a uniform he knew came hurtling along the concrete. The hats had gone and the ghastly grey socks, but the blazers
were the same. Cranton. He thought that school had closed too, yet here they were, laughing and joking like the ghosts of his boyhood. Cranton, the private girls’ school down the road where Ash and who knew how many others had lost their virginity. Cranton – those heady summer balls the joint staffs of their two schools allowed, but always under the most careful supervision. Cranton …

  The phone shattered the moment and Maxwell snatched it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘The Jephson Gardens close in thirteen minutes. Get to the phone by the lake. Speak to anybody, Alphedge dies. One minute late, Alphedge dies. Do it.’

  ‘But …’ The line was silent.

  Maxwell bashed open the door, nearly colliding with the schoolgirls. ‘You know,’ he said, raising his hat, ‘your mothers probably made some of us very happy,’ and he was gone, out of the side gate he remembered as a kid, trotting along the pavement towards the bridges.

  He knew this routine well. It was Dirty Harry, the first of the Eastwood Callahans. He ran the storyline in his head. The loony who’s kidnapped the fourteen-year-old bounces Callahan all over town, just to check he’s not being followed. Corny on celluloid, but this was for real. And there were two important differences. Eastwood was a fit forty-year-old at the time, carrying a .44 Magnum and a flick-knife. Maxwell … well, the pounding of his heart as he dashed past All Saints said it all.

  The Leam swirled dark under the bridge as he hurtled over it, his hat gone, the heavy suitcase bouncing against his thigh. His breath came in sobbing grunts and he felt as if his lungs were going to burst. Then he was in the park, the lights twinkling among the trees as he scurried along paths without end, making for the lake.

  Bugger! Memory had gilded his lily and he’d reached a dead end. He’d remembered the path curving to the left, and now he found himself outside a gents’. In the shadows, a rather unsavoury type half turned, flashing at him in the hopeful anonymity of gathering dusk.

  ‘Perhaps later,’ Maxwell called out, doubling back the way he’d come, ‘when I get my Aids test result,’ and he scuttled past the aviary with its chattering finches and took the slope to the lake.