Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  ‘So she either didn’t put the lights on at all…’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Hall reasoned.

  ‘Or someone came along afterwards and switched them off.’

  ‘Not realising,’ Hall finished the thought, ‘that we’d know the time of death was at night. The old girl’s night attire would give it away, though. So what was that all about?’

  ‘Beats me, guv,’ the lad confessed.

  Hall leaned back in his chair. ‘She goes downstairs, not merely to the bathroom which is along the landing, and she trips. Falls down… what…twelve stairs?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ Finch-Friezely had counted them.

  ‘Breaking her neck at the bottom. No doubt Jim Astley will be more precise, but that’s the long and short of it.’

  ‘Are we talking Incident Room, then, guv? Full-blown inquiry?’

  Hall sighed. It looked like things were going that way. ‘Full blown, yes,’ he said. ‘But no Incident Room. If we make too much of this, we’ll have every old duck this side of Brighton screaming “Boston Strangler”. Softly, softly, I think, on this one, Giles.’

  ‘Qui bono?’ Peter Maxwell let his head loll back on the pillow that Thursday night, not a million miles away from Leighford nick.

  ‘Hmm?’ Jacquie was dozing beside him. He had watched her Jackie Collins drop towards her bump several times already.

  ‘Qui bono?’ he repeated. ‘Dear old Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest advocate in Roman history. He was the first lawyer to pose the question in a murder trial. “Who gains?” Who gains from the deaths of Gordon Goodacre and Martita Winchcombe?’

  ‘Max,’ Jacquie struggled out of her sleep. ‘Are you sure they’re linked? Come to think of it, are you sure they’re murders at all?’

  ‘Come on, Jacquie. You and I have been around this kind of thing for all the time we’ve known each other. I’ve never trusted statistics in my life. Me and old Dizzy – you know, “Lies, damned lies and statistics”.’ Jacquie knew. She’d heard Maxwell quote the late Prime Minister often enough. ‘But when two people from the same theatre troupe die within a couple of days of each other, I smell skulduggery.’

  ‘A falling ladder,’ Jacquie reminded him. ‘It can happen. I told you…’

  ‘I know.’ He turned to her. ‘You can quote me the stats. But I told you, I don’t believe in them.’

  Jacquie sighed, sticking to logic, sticking to reality. ‘As far as we know, the old girl fell downstairs.’

  He propped himself up on one elbow, staring into her sleepy face, the little freckles peppering her ski-jump nose. ‘You…er…don’t fancy a visit to Leighford nick, do you? You know, just to say “hi” and show ’em your predicament.’

  ‘And ask them the score on the death of Martita Winchcombe? No, I don’t. This isn’t just an interest of yours, is it, Max? It’s a bloody obsession.’

  ‘Well, I just thought…’

  But Jacquie was already singing loudly, her pillow over her head.

  ‘There’s a Mrs Elliot to see you, guv.’ Dave Walters was the desk man that morning, a grumpy old git with dyspepsia and a martyr, on and off, to sciatica too. Who says you can’t have the lot? An Indian summer had settled on the south coast and the sun dazzled on the cars parked beyond the grimy glass. Leighford nick was one of the few still open in Tony Blair’s England and Sergeant Dave Walters one of that vanishing breed of men, a boy in blue. It wouldn’t be too long before Sir David Attenborough was discovering the shy woodland creature in some woodland somewhere and doing a survival special on them. He could even call it Blue Planet Two.

  ‘Right.’ Walters unpressed the intercom. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Hall is on his way down, madam. If you’d take a seat.’

  She did. Around the walls of the waiting room, posters warned of rabies and wondered whether anyone had seen a particularly unprepossessing adolescent, last known in Southampton. It occurred to Fiona Elliot this was someone she’d rather not see, especially after dark. Still others asked, rather belatedly, whether you’d locked your car because there were thieves about. Of course there were; this was a police station. Dave Walters hadn’t left his Ginsters more than three feet from his elbow in ten years.

  ‘Mrs Elliot?’ A tall man in a three-piece suit put his head around the door. ‘I’m DCI Hall. This is DC Blaisedell.’ He pointed to the short, dark-haired woman beside him. ‘Won’t you come through?’

  Fiona Elliot had never been in a police station before. It was cold, clinical, for all the sun sparkled outside. Spider plants reflected the woman’s touch and the woman walking with her now seemed pleasant enough. She was…late twenties, perhaps early thirties and her clothes looked too big for her. The DCI held the door open for them both. Then they were sitting in Interview Room Two. Fiona had seen this sort of place before, on the telly. There was always a two-way mirror along one wall, with either Trevor Eve or David Jason standing behind it. Come to think of it, Trevor Eve was always shouting at his oppos in ludicrously dark corners and David Jason was filling his face in the nick canteen. This place was nothing like that. The light was bright and artificial, the room without windows and every wall was painted an acidic green. The only gadget in the room appeared to be a tape recorder and that wasn’t switched on.

  ‘First,’ Hall started the ball rolling, ‘can we say how very sorry we are about your aunt. And to thank you for coming in so promptly.’ When the moment called for it, Henry Hall could lie for England.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Fiona Elliot was a bulky woman, utterly unlike the frail, bird-like corpse lying on one of Jim Astley’s slabs in a cold corner of Leighford morgue. She was attractive in a matter-of-fact sort of way, with a steady gaze that was quite compelling. ‘I’d like to see my aunt.’

  ‘Of course,’ Hall nodded. ‘DC Blaisedell will arrange that. In the meantime, if I could just ask you some questions.’

  She nodded.

  ‘We are making the assumption that your aunt lived alone?’

  ‘That’s right. She had for years.’

  ‘And had she always lived in Leighford?’

  ‘She was born in that house, Chief Inspector. Rather fitting, in a way, that she died in it.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘My aunt had a hatred of hospitals,’ Fiona told them. ‘She once told me she’d put an end to herself rather than go into one.’ She looked at them both, the skinny, pretty girl and the bland, expressionless DCI. ‘Is that what happened?’ she asked, unable to read the body language. ‘Suicide?’

  Jane Blaisedell looked at Hall. He was the guv’nor, in the hot seat. Questions like that she left to the top brass.

  ‘Mrs Elliot,’ Hall leaned forward across his desk. ‘We think your aunt may have been the victim of foul play.’

  She blinked. This wasn’t happening. This was for other people. Crimewatch, news items, the Discovery Channel. ‘Do you mean murder?’ she asked.

  Hall nodded.

  ‘My God.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Jane Blaisedell braced herself to react. For all she was only twenty-six, she’d been here before, too many times already. Some victims’ relatives fainted away like a lily at bedtime. Others, in insane denial, refused to accept it; the police were lying; it was all some ghastly mistake, a macabre joke. Was Beadle about? Others cried uncontrollably, sobbing as their bodies shook and reality dawned. Somebody’s mother. Somebody’s son. Still others were like Fiona Elliot.

  ‘What are you doing about it?’ she wanted to know. She was calm, matter of fact, precise. But her voice was ice in the cool of that Interview Room.

  ‘Making our inquiries,’ Hall assured her. ‘That’s why I need to ask you some questions.’

  But Fiona Elliot was on her feet. ‘Later, there are things that will need to be done,’ she said. ‘Now, I want to see my aunt.’

  Hall nodded at his DC. ‘Very well,’ he said, standing too. ‘I daresay it’ll wait.’

  After all, he told himself as the women left, Martita Winc
hcombe wasn’t going anywhere.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jane Blaisedell had never intended becoming a copper. Her dad had been one, with the Met, but he’d been invalided out after a particularly insane night at Broadwater Farm, when mobs roamed the streets and petrol bombs exploded into the night. Jane had seen what that had cost the man – the nights when he paced the bedroom all night; the days he spent slumped in a chair. It wasn’t the surface wounds – they’d heal. It was the deep ones, the ones that scarred his soul.

  It had just happened, that was all – both because of her dad and in spite of him – and so here she was, the tough little girl from the banks of the Thames who had crossed the tracks; crossed them because that was the only place to be.

  ‘Fag?’ She passed a ciggie to the scrawny, snub-nosed lad in front of her.

  ‘Nah, I don’t,’ he said.

  ‘Liar,’ she laughed. ‘Your fingers are browner than Hitler’s jacket. You just don’t want to take anything that might resemble a freebie from a copper. Am I right or am I right?’

  ‘You’re not from round here, are you?’ he asked her.

  ‘The East.’ She lit up and blew smoke skywards. ‘Deptford. Know it?’

  ‘Nah,’ he shook his head. ‘I don’t know south of the river.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Paddington.’

  ‘Thought I recognised it,’ she smiled. ‘The lilt. Bed, they call you, don’t they?’

  ‘Some do,’ he shrugged. ‘Friends.’

  ‘Well, then.’ The WPC leaned back, cradling her knee with both hands, the ciggie curling smoke on the lip of the ashtray alongside her. ‘I’d better make it Anthony, hadn’t I? I’m not going to bullshit you with all that think-of-me-as-your-big-sister crap. We’re coming at life from different sides, you and me. Fair enough?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Anthony agreed.

  ‘Tell me about the Winchcombe house.’

  ‘Where?’

  She looked at him. His look said it all. The cherub nose and brown thatch, the bright, dark eyes darting everywhere. Jane had seen dozens of Anthony Wettas, perhaps hundreds of them. Contempt for authority was written all over them, they had a natural aptitude for it. And no amount of family rehab was going to change them. All that was different was the playground – the game was the same.

  He looked at her. She was pretty enough – for a copper, of course. Most of the filth he’d come across – and that was quite a long list by now – had been big blokes, with shoulders like high-rise buildings. The women had been dogs. This one was a bit different. A bit street-wise, offering him a fag an’ all.

  ‘Don’t waste my time, Anthony. An old lady is dead.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ the lad assured her quickly.

  ‘Yeah,’ she nodded, leaning forward and folding her arms. ‘And that’s not a very convincing Bart Simpson, is it?’

  His eyes flickered as his surroundings hit and a thought occurred to him. ‘Ain’t you supposed to have a tape running? And where’s my brief? My social worker?’ Anthony Wetta knew the score; he’d been around.

  ‘Same place your hope is, Anthony,’ she told him. ‘Gone. Tell me about the old lady.’

  They were sitting together in a part of Leighford nick that was due for demolition and it was raining. The giant drops bounced off the leaking skylights and dripped into a plastic bowl crookedly placed in the corner. A brighter boy than Anthony would have realised there was something odd about this – no second copper, no support. There again, no rubber hoses, either. His dad had told him, on the few occasions he’d seen his dad, that all coppers used these. They worked on yer feet first, where it didn’t show. That was why, when he was arrested and brought to the nick, he’d carefully chosen a pair of socks that said it all. On the sole of one was “Fuck” and on the other was “Off”. He hoped he’d put them on the right feet – a spoonerism wouldn’t have been half so effective.

  ‘What old lady?’

  Jane picked up her cigarette, fighting the urge to stick it up the little shit’s angelic nose. ‘Look, Anthony, George has talked, OK? We know it all anyway.’

  ‘You don’t know squit,’ the boy assured her.

  ‘Sure we do. It was all your idea. George is as green as goose-shit. He wouldn’t have had the bottle to break into the house without you. He says you hit her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The old girl – Miss Winchcombe. She woke up, didn’t she? While the pair of you were crashing about downstairs, she heard you. What did you use? Poker? Rolling pin?’

  ‘I never touched her,’ Anthony shouted. ‘George is a lying shit.’

  ‘No, he’s not, Anthony.’ Jane took a long drag on the ciggie. ‘You are. He hasn’t got the imagination. If he says it happened, it happened. I was just hoping you could tell us something which means we don’t throw away the key in your case, that’s all.’

  ‘She was already dead,’ Anthony insisted.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jane laughed. ‘And I’m Arnold Fucking Schwarzenegger.’ She stood up, scraping the chair back. ‘Five to ten in a Young Offenders Institution,’ she said, deadly serious now. ‘After that? Well, you’re bound to have pissed somebody off in there, so it’ll be the big boys’ prison then.’ She looked hard at him. ‘I know some old poofs in there will just love you.’

  For a moment, she saw his eyes widen, his lips quiver. The old lag, the hard man, was gone. And in his place sat a little boy, alone, vulnerable and very frightened. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

  She sat down and this time he took the outstretched ciggie. ‘The truth,’ she said.

  ‘Mr Wilkes?’ Peter Maxwell called through into the lamplit office at the Arquebus. It was in that new part of the theatre, the one that was all glass and breeze blocks and had won some sort of award.

  ‘Mr Maxwell.’ The Theatre Manager glanced up. ‘I was just about to lock up. Have you finished – the rehearsal, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. I wondered if I might have a word.’

  ‘Of course. Time for a night cap?’

  ‘That’s very civilised. White, please. Two sugars.’ Maxwell was grateful to collapse into a chair. It had been a long day and an even longer evening. David Balham had gone down with something andMaxwell was the only spare body to squeeze into the unutterable cardboard interior of Audrey II. By the end of the rehearsal, Maxwell felt less like a man-eating plant and more like the contents of a parcel, kicked from pillar to post by courtesy of those careful gentlemen in the Royal Mail.

  Wilkes looked oddly at the man. ‘I meant a night cap,’ he said and hooked open his desk drawer with an expert, suede-capped toe. He hauled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses that flashed their cut facets in the half-light.

  ‘Even better,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘Just one sugar with that.’ And he already had to adjust his position to relieve the cramp in his leg.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Wilkes poured and passed him the glass.

  ‘Gordon Goodacre,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Don’t you find it all rather odd?’ Maxwell asked. Ashley Wilkes was of an indeterminate age. Anything between twenty-five and forty, with a mane of mousy hair. He had an odd, expressionless face with small, sharp grey eyes that seemed not to miss a trick. Out of his bulky topcoat, he was actually quite scrawny.

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Gordon Goodacre and Martita Winchcombe,’ the Head of Sixth Form said, savouring the Scotch. ‘Both dead inside three days of each other.’

  ‘Not really,’ Wilkes slurped, turning in his swivel to switch off his computer. ‘Gordon’s death was an appalling accident. As was Martita’s, but she was an old lady, living on her own. Literally an accident waiting to happen, I should have thought.’

  ‘How long have you been theatre manager?’ Maxwell asked him.

  ‘Nearly four years now,’ Wilkes told him.

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I was an outreach worker for the Nation
al Youth Theatre; London mostly, but the odd provincial gig. Look, Mr Maxwell, why all these questions?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘A natural curiosity, I’m afraid. My better half’s in the police.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Sort of matrimonial hybrid, I suppose. Other couples talk about interior decorating, shopping, the garden. We ruminate over great serial killers of our time.’

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting that either of them – both of them – were murdered?’ Wilkes was frowning at him.

  ‘I really don’t know. Like I said, I’m intrigued.’

  ‘All right,’ Wilkes said. ‘Come down to the proscenium with me, will you?’ And he led the way. Down the open-plan stairs they went, their feet thudding in unison on the treads, past posters of performances past, until they reached the plush, Arts Council-sponsored carpet. ‘I found Gordon’s body, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Maxwell said. ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Gordon?’ Wilkes sauntered down the central aisle, making for the stage. ‘No, he was something of a cipher, I’m afraid, although it sounds unkind to say so now. Matilda – she wore the pants in the family. Gordon just did odd jobs around the place to keep her sweet, I think. I’ve been at the sharp end of Matilda Goodacre’s tongue-lashing; believe me, it isn’t fun. Here.’

  The pair were standing centre stage now, in front of the great burgundy backdrop of curtains that masked the rear wall of the stage. ‘Gordon was lying just here.’

  ‘Which way?’ Maxwell asked. He’d stood on the site of sudden death before. It made the hairs on the back of his neck crawl every time.

  ‘Um,’ Wilkes had to think for a moment to get it right. ‘This way.’ He crouched. ‘His head was over here. Feet a little further back. There was…quite a bit of blood.’

  ‘From the head?’

  Wilkes nodded. ‘Skull smashed,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t really have known what hit him.’

  ‘What did?’