Maxwell's Chain (13 page)

She laughed. ‘Max, for someone who is around kids all day, sometimes you have no clue. There are no circles. They go out when they have a bit of money. They go out and cadge when they haven’t. They go where their favourite bands are. They go inside for the warmth. If they are at the bottom of the heap, they’ll go inside for the off chance of a half-eaten pie. I’m not saying they were friends, but I bet they would have recognised each other.’

‘Polly Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, Mary Kelly,’ Maxwell murmured. ‘All victims of Jack the Ripper. Did they know each other? I wonder…’

They were silent for a moment, imagining the cold, lonely world of both of the murder victims,
random or planned, it made no difference. Once, they were beloved children, hugged, fed, kept warm. Someone had hopes for them, looked forward to seeing them grow up. Then, in what was just a heartbeat in the scheme of things, they were mysteries sent for solving on a pathologist’s slab.

As one, they got up and went into Nolan’s room, where their little son lay sleeping. Together, silently, they wished on the stars circling his bedroom ceiling and leant their heads together. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t tell their wishes; they both knew they were just the same.

Wednesday was the usual thing; middle of the week sort of time, so all the flakeys from both staff and pupil cohorts had gone down with a touch of the usual. But that was over and above the Plague of the Spanish Lady, Bird Flu, e-coli or whatever else was decimating the south coast that winter. Maxwell’s cover requests were, as usual, completely insane. Wednesday was supposed to contain two lessons of what teachers laughingly call protected time, so obviously, he had been asked to cover a dance lesson and a childbirth module for Health and Social Sciences. One of those he was a dab hand at; but who wants to learn the foxtrot these days? And he could be struck off for trying the Lambada (although in his day, the word had meant ‘scooter’). He palmed off the dance class onto the Teaching Assistant – totally illegal, but
since she had a degree in drama and dance, it seemed the natural choice. As Maxwell would have said, had he been known for his puns, she had De Knees for it. The mystery was why Denise was a teaching assistant in the History Department; another cracking appointment by Legs Diamond and his Flying Monkeys of the SLT. The childbirth class he gave to Juliette Simmonds of the English Department, a woman so extremely pregnant that she could become a hands on example at any moment – Minnie Ha Ha, Breaking Waters.

Metaphorically dusting his hands together to celebrate a job well done, he ensconced himself in his office with cries of ‘I owe you one’ and picked up his phone. He jabbed the speed dial and waited, humming a tune he couldn’t quite get out of his head. If only he had been concentrating in the Sixties, he might be able to put a name to it. The Cambridge History Tripos was all well and good, but the real world had passed him by. He was
forty-six
before he realised the Doors were anything more than part of the furniture. With this particular tune he could get as far as ‘De dum de di di di di de de de dum,’ but after that it was a dead loss.

‘Yes?’ someone had picked up at the other end. ‘History office.’

‘Oh, Paul. Max. Are you free at all today?’

‘No, I’ve been given lots of cover. Would you believe two in one day?’

‘Tsk, tsk. Well, everyone’s off with a touch of that thing that’s going around. Skivers’ disease, that’s the one.’

‘Was it anything important, Max? Only, I’ve got reports to check. Oh, not yours, of course. Immaculate as ever.’

‘Oh, still? Never mind, Paul. I just wanted a word about…’ Maxwell’s door opened and Gregory Adair walked in and sat down opposite the Head of Sixth Form, ‘…setting Year Nine.’

‘In February? Are you bonkers, Max?’ Time was when Paul Moss would never have dared ask the Great Man such a question. Even now, he felt his heart stop the second he’d said it.

‘Well, yes, of course,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Hence the name. Bye now.’ He looked up at the NQT, sitting stiffly in the chair. ‘Can I help you, Gregory? Only, this is my protected time, you see, and…’

‘Look, Maxwell,’ the man snarled. ‘Stop following me, right. I’m fed up with it. I saw you last night.’

Maxwell looked at him levelly. ‘Before you make an idiot of yourself and also force me to report you to your mentor, I feel I must point out that that is exactly what I did do. Stop, I mean. I was just going to say hello, like you do when you meet a
colleague out and about, but you disappeared up that passageway quicker than a rat up a drainpipe and I let you go.’

‘Lost me, you mean,’ snapped the NQT.

Maxwell leant forward and in a voice that generations of children had learnt to dread, said, ‘Listen to me, sonny, and listen well, because I will say this only once.’ The chilling thing was that there was no sign of
Allo! Allo
!
, no funny voice at all. ‘I don’t care what you are doing in your spare time, but I suspect that it is both sordid and underhand. For all I know it may actually be illegal. You are this far,’ he held up his thumb and forefinger pressed together, ‘from failing your NQT year. What say we speed everything up and make that happen now?’ The fingers clicked and Adair flinched backwards. ‘However,’ and Maxwell leant back, clasping his hands behind his head, ‘you do seem to know a hawk from a handsaw, as our English colleagues would once have had it when they knew enough to quote from anybody, and so I think we’ll give you another chance. But I suggest that you stop skulking in passageways after dark and especially that, if you see Ms Lessing of an evening, you smile politely at her and make sure you are not doing anything untoward.’

‘Ms Lessing?’ Gregory Adair was confused. Sweat
stood out on his brow and upper lip.

‘Oh, yes. Her spies are everywhere, and so is she. Don’t annoy her, Gregory. Don’t annoy me. Walk wide of us both. Don’t annoy
anyone
and you might just make it. Right,’ he shuffled some papers on his desk. ‘Off you bugger now, I have work to do.’

The NQT could hardly get out quickly enough and actually collided in the doorway with Paul Moss.

‘Oops!’ A born raconteur was Paul Moss. ‘What are you on about, Max?’ the Head of History asked as he closed the door.

Maxwell nodded his head towards the departing colleague. ‘I wanted a word about the great pedagogue there and he came in,’ he said.

‘Oh, right.’ The light dawned. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you’d gone a bit nuts.’

‘And as I concurred, I probably have. But I really think we need to keep an eye on him, Paul. I saw him in town last night, behaving very oddly. He was meeting with someone and I couldn’t see who.’

‘That’s not a crime, Max,’ Paul reminded him gently. Perhaps in Maxwell’s day, NQT’s weren’t allowed company. In Maxwell’s day of course, such people were called probationers and those eccentric Wright brothers were mucking about on Kitty Hawk beach.

‘No, I grant you that. But he is over-reacting to everything anyone says and if a kid did that, you’d suspect them immediately. And rightly so.’

‘I’ll put it in his record. We’ll talk again in a week or so.’

‘You’re the boss,’ said Maxwell, although neither of them really believed that. He waved his hand as Moss left his office. Now then, priorities. First, coffee; not the awful stuff that Adair had provided, the sweepings of some supermarket floor, but some of the good stuff from home. Then, a bit of brainstorming with Nursie. When it came to life’s failures, Sylvia Matthews was an expert. They all came to her, at some stage. Either they thought they were pregnant and wanted out. Or they thought they might be gay. Or, in one case that had kept the staff room agog for weeks, they
had
thought they were gay, but were now pretty sure they weren’t. Everybody was waiting for the first gay pregnancy, such was the speed of genetic engineering these days. Sylv would know the ones who were having trouble at home, had left home or hung out with those who had. Maxwell needed to know whether they should be looking out for anyone. It had come pretty close to home with Darren Blackwell and he didn’t want it any nearer to his doorstep than that.

Jacquie had paperwork again. Surprise, surprise. As Henry Hall had said, when you bring in a job lot of hooded ASBOs, you must expect the odd bit of paper to come your way. She was perfectly sure that they had not murdered Lara Kent or Darren Blackwell. But they had clearly done something, and if she could pin it on them, then perhaps their ASBO radius could be increased to include Leighford. And Brighton. Then it would be London, Colchester, Belgium and all points east.

‘Jacquie?’ a voice said, rather too close to her ear. She looked up into the unlovely nostrils of Alan Kavanagh, leaning into her personal space, brandishing a file.

‘Sorry, Alan,’ she said, backing away out of range of his coffee breath. ‘Miles away. What can I do for you?’

‘I’ve got this file on a missing person. I thought you ought to see it.’ With a conspiratorial wink, he placed it across the pile of paper already on her desk. She could hardly complain. Across the entire acreage of Leighford nick, similar piles of paper stood like so many towers of Babel, all clamouring in urgent tongues and all of them failing to reach heaven.

Gingerly, she opened the file. She read the first line and, mesmerised by its contents, groped for her mobile phone, hidden in the depths of
the bag hanging on the back of the chair. She hit the first speed dial button and got through to an interminable answerphone message, giving her so many options her head swam. ‘To speak to the Premises Manager, press one. To leave details about your child’s absence, press two. To express amazement that anyone can doubt machines have taken over the world, Press a flower.’ She must be catching this technophobe thing from Maxwell, she thought. She always used to be able to cope with stuff like this. But then, she hadn’t always just had news like this.

‘Hello? Leighford High School, Reception.’ Finally, a human being.

‘Hello, Tansy?’ Trust Jacquie not only to know both Thingees’ names but be able to tell them apart. ‘It’s Jacquie Carpenter here. Can I speak to Mr Maxwell, please?’

‘He’s in a meeting at the moment,’ Tansy came through loud and clear. ‘With Nurse Matthews. Can I give him a message?’

Jacquie knew perfectly well that this was not a meeting
per se
, more a bitch session, but there again, Maxwell wore his heart on his sleeve and for all his world-weary exterior, if he and Nursie were interviewing some kid, there was a reason for it. ‘Um. It’s very difficult, really,’ said Jacquie, chewing
the corner of her thumbnail in her anxiety.

‘Oh,’ breathed Tansy sympathetically. ‘Is it something to do with,’ she dropped her voice to the edge of inaudibility. Any lower and only whales could have heard her, ‘your work?’

‘In a way,’ Jacquie said. ‘It involves us as neighbours. Our next door one has disappeared.’

‘Oooh,’ Tansy was thrilled to be surfing the breaking wave of police news. ‘Do you think she might have been…you know, murdered, or something?’

‘Almost certainly something,’ Jacquie said. ‘But could you get Mr Maxwell to ring me as soon as he is out of his meeting?’

‘Straight away,’ Tansy said. Even her voice was
wide-eyed
.

‘Thanks,’ said Jacquie, but the phone was already halfway down and she was re-reading the front page of the file. It was dated the day before, quite late, and the details were scant. But the name leapt out at her; ‘Troubridge’. The description could not have been more accurate and also more general; there had to be hundreds of small, mousey-haired, slightly infirm but still pretty good for her age ladies in Leighford and its surrounding area. If they put an APB out for her, the nick would be swamped with grannies within hours. She sighed and felt quite melancholy. If only there were
other boxes to tick. Accent you could use to engrave titanium. Tick. Attitude that you could strike matches on. Tick. Ability to hold a grudge until hell froze over. A really, really big tick. Those extra things were what made Mrs Troubridge what she was. A cantankerous, miserable, nosy, basically kind at heart but, most of all, missing old lady. Peter Maxwell would already be re-running scenes from
The Lady Vanishes
. But the absent heroine there was a spy. You don’t think Mrs Troubridge…?

Jacquie glanced across the room to where Alan Kavanagh was trying to look at her out of the corners of his eyes whilst appearing to study his computer screen. He obviously didn’t know that Jacquie was quite fond of Mrs Troubridge. That the mad old dear was their cat-feeder and plant-waterer in chief. And whenever she could would cuddle little Nolan and slobber over him, regressing his language development by many months with her baby babble. All Kavanagh knew was that the address was just one number different. That it would look to the powers that be that Maxwell had, yet again, managed to get shit on his own doorstep. He would immediately have added, of course, had anyone been privy to his thoughts, that he didn’t wish the old besom any ill. Even so…a sly smile was beginning to twitch the corners of his mouth.

Jacquie turned the page. Another thinly filled out pro forma was all that remained of the file. There was a photograph pinned to the corner of Mrs Troubridge in a rather unexpected hat, looking a little like Mrs Pankhurst and squinting into the sun. It had clearly been taken some years before and Jacquie thought, irritated, that they almost certainly had a better picture of her at home than this one. It would have also included Nolan at various sizes and Metternich in various attitudes of disgust, but they could always crop it for the paper. She made a mental note to get that sorted.

Last seen; bus station. Bus station? It was a well known fact that Mrs Troubridge rarely left the confines of Columbine. Some kind soul shopped on line for her, and although Meals on Wheels had made any number of overtures, the old lady had made it plain she wasn’t ready for
them
yet. You had to be
really
desperate. She found that all the gossip she could possibly need beat a path to her door. And she did own a telephone. The first tick in the box marked ‘unusual behaviour’. Time of last sighting; 21.30. That let the hoodies off the hook – they were tucked up waiting for processing at the nick by then. But…Jacquie tapped her teeth with her pen, a habit Maxwell hated, except when doing it himself…Why were they so set on the idea that
there was only one set of dodgy teenagers in hoods in town? Red herrings swam in more than one shoal, after all. And Maxwell had clearly encountered at least two. Contact name and…her phone rang and she snatched it up.

‘Carpenter.’

‘Hello, Carpenter. What on earth is going on? I’ve just had Thingee One in here even more incoherent than usual. Something about next door. Is it on fire? Have they saved my summer hat? It’s not Metternich smoking in bed again, is it? If I’ve told him once…Oh, Jesus, not the Light Brigade?’

‘Max. Stop a minute and let me tell you. It’s Mrs Troubridge.’

‘Mrs Troubridge is on fire?’

‘No, Max.’ Jacquie hardened her voice. It was the only way to bring him back on track. ‘She’s missing, actually.’

The silence on the other end of the phone was thick with embarrassment. ‘Oh. How do you know?’

‘I work in a police station, Max, in case you had forgotten.’