Maxwell's Crossing (19 page)

‘In Leighford?'

‘No. In England. It's an American bar. If …' and again he checked his evidence bag, ‘Jacob Shears has not been there on holiday recently, it may well be a clue.'

Jacquie was silent on the other end of the phone. She could hardly believe her ears. Had Jeff O'Malley managed to sneak off another one before they took him down to the station? And if so, why?

‘DI Carpenter? Jacquie? Are you still there?'

‘Sorry. Sorry, Angus. Train of thought. Thank you very much. Are there likely to be prints?'

‘Doubtful. It was very screwed up and also was very bloodstained. I've taken swabs, but—'

‘Yes, I know,' Jacquie said. ‘We have to have DNA on the file to be of any help. Never mind. I know you'll do your best. Was there anything else?'

‘Just the usual.' Angus was feeling a happy glow that came to him when he had pleased DI Jacquie Carpenter Forget The Maxwell. ‘Fingerprint – well, thumb, but you know what I mean. The shoes from the secretary. A paper clip – just like all the ones we all have in our drawers. I'll have to be a bit careful when I'm testing that; don't want it getting mixed up, but I don't know of any cases of a fingerprint being lifted from anything that small. DNA, I suppose.'

‘Well, keep looking, Angus. Thank you.'

The phone went down with what Angus considered indecent haste, but his angel was probably busy, so he would forgive her. Humming tunelessly to himself, he went off in search of his chocolate. He had once had an iPod, but had put it down somewhere and
lost it. Now he just hummed. The sound quality was better and Angus was always on random shuffle.

Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell sat at her desk, the phone receiver still in her hand, her finger pressed down on the button. She needed more information before she jumped to conclusions, but if she waited, Jeff O'Malley's time helping them with their enquiries would be up and he would be back on the streets. She needed to sort so much out before that happened, not least of which would be getting a watch on Mrs Troubridge's house and logging her number with the nick for rapid response should she need help. She didn't think that Jeff O'Malley liked his possessions wandering off and staying with defenceless old ladies without his express permission. He was likely to get them back by any means at his disposal. She needed to find out what Hector planned to do longer term and also there was the question of Camille. Was she just waiting back at Manda Moss's ruined house, to see who finally returned? Or had she not even noticed everyone had gone? Camille was a blank to Jacquie for the simple reason that she
was
a blank. Anything beyond nails pretty much left her cold, which left an awful lot of the world unplumbed by her on any level.

But first, and it had to be now, Jacquie must ring the mortuary and find out the time of death. If it was after nine last night, they were in trouble. Please, please,
please
let it be before nine, she intoned to herself as she hit Astley's speed dial number.

‘Leighford Mortuary.'

‘Donald?'

‘Yes. It's Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell.'

‘Oh, hello.' It was Donald's attempt at insouciance and almost passed muster. ‘How are you?'

‘Well, Donald, thank you. Look, I've just been speaking to Angus and he has made me wonder about something.'

‘Angus is always coming up with funny ideas,' said Donald, jealousy making his left eyebrow twitch. ‘What would you like to know?' There was a very slight emphasis on the word ‘know' to suggest know, rather than to surmise. It was subtle, but Jacquie spotted it.

‘Well, Donald, you know what these forensic chaps are like. I just want to know time of death, really. Then we can put this clue in or out of court, as it were, should it come to that.'

‘Well, I hope it does come to that, DI Carpenter,' Donald said, severely. ‘This was definitely not suicide, you know. Most people don't go for disembowelling these days. Especially not when they then put the liver in a filing cabinet and shut the drawer.'

‘No, no I do see that, Donald. It was a figure of speech. Umm … do we have time of death?'

‘Dr Astley is just getting started, DI Carpenter,' Donald said, formally. ‘But the rectal temperature is taken early in proceedings. I don't know whether he has measured the degree of rigor yet. I'll ask.'

The phone was put down and Jacquie could hear Donald's ponderous footsteps retreat, then the creak and slap of a mortuary door. She heard a distant boom,
like the guns in Flanders sounded on the coast of Kent in 1914, or so Maxwell had told her. After a moment, the sounds were reversed and he was back.

‘Dr Astley says you seem to be in a bit of a hurry, DI Carpenter,' Donald said, because stirring up trouble was his favourite hobby, after eating, and this seemed a good opportunity. ‘He says to tell you that the deceased was killed not a moment before ten o'clock last night and not a second after one this morning.'

‘That's the very earliest, is it?' she asked, with a slightly plaintive note.

Donald hated to disappoint her but the truth was the truth after all. ‘Sorry. He is absolutely adamant. When did you want him to have died?'

‘Not at all would obviously be favourite,' Jacquie was massaging her temples with her free hand, ‘but assuming that his time had come, I wish that time had been about five hours earlier. Never mind, Donald. Thank you.' And again, the phone went down on a disappointed man. Donald had prepared various witty rejoinders which would now never be said. He sighed and rejoined his boss; he had organs to weigh, even if they had spent some hours filed under ‘Pending'.

Peter Maxwell sat in his office that cold snowy lunchtime, hunched over a warming but not very nutritious cup of instant soup, and thought about his morning. Away across the fields, out of sight of the staffroom and the Head's office, most of the lads of Year Ten were snowballing the Year Seven boys to death. It hadn't
done Napoleon any harm when he was at the military academy, so Maxwell let it pass. That he had seen an unexpected side to Hector Gold was in no doubt. The only question that needed to be addressed was whether this was indeed a product of the stress he was under, or whether the Hector Gold they had been seeing was just a veneer over the real and rather scary one beneath. He tended to think that it was the former; no one could have kept up a front that laconic if they were in fact a seething mass of anger and fury. Jeff O'Malley was the furious one in the family, Hector was just along for a rather bumpy ride. The psychopath and the cipher, you might almost say. Maxwell gave a little chuckle to himself; why was there never anyone around when you thought of a brilliant thing like that? He looked into his mug and swirled the contents around. What was a
Mulliga,
he wondered, and was it tawny in the wild or only when domesticated for the soup trade? There was a tap on the door.

‘Yes?' Maxwell carolled. He usually left the door open but the corridor was so arctic that to do so would be to invite pneumonia at the least. ‘Who is it?'

‘Me,' said his wife, popping her head round the door. ‘May I come in? It's really cold out here.'

‘Sweetness!' Maxwell leapt up, slopping his sludge over the edge of the mug. ‘What brings you here?'

She dropped into a chair and sighed. ‘I don't know, really. I certainly shouldn't be here, not with what I've got.'

He sat down opposite and looked grave. ‘Two and
six?' The old jokes were indeed the best, but he didn't think that was really why she was here.

‘Max,' she said, on another sigh. ‘I have a problem and I should be sharing it with Henry, or at the last resort Pete Spottiswood, but it is so … complicated, I thought that the only person who would understand all my whifflings would be you.'

‘Absolutely right, of course,' he agreed. ‘Didn't the bit about whifflings come between honour and keep you? I know I was thinking it, even if I didn't say it out loud at the time.'

‘I hardly know where to begin,' she said. ‘Any chance of … what is that, anyway?' She leant forward to peer into his mug.

‘It claims to be mulligatawny and I suppose it isn't too bad. You have to watch out for the undissolved lumps, though, or it blows your head off. Want one? There are some sachets over by the kettle.'

‘I'll pass, I think. Are there any other flavours?'

‘Broccoli and stilton. They tend to build up a bit. Helen brings in the mixed boxes but she only likes pea.'

‘What a strange life you lead, Mr Maxwell, when I'm not here to see.' She flicked the switch on the kettle and tore the top off a sachet. ‘I'll join you in a mulligatawny after all, I think.' She stood at the worktop with her back turned. ‘I must ask you not to share any of this, Max,' she said, quietly.

‘What, that you drink mulligatawny soup?'

‘No, idiot. What I am about to tell you. It involves … well, people.'

‘No, tell me it isn't so. A crime, involving people. Surely not. Now, stop stirring that soup to death and come and sit down.'

‘Promise?'

‘Yes, I promise.'

‘Not even Sylv.'

‘I don't tell Sylv much. She usually tells me things.'

‘Fair enough. OK.' She took a deep breath and a sip of soup. ‘The other murder, the one I heard about this morning first thing.'

‘Yes. When you were on the phone to me. What about it?'

‘It didn't seem at first to be connected, although it would seem odd not to be, coming so soon after the others.'

‘So you are linking Hendricks and Gregson?'

‘I don't even know that, yet. It could be the gambling connection. We haven't been able to speak to Linda Hendricks yet, but if ever there was someone who liked to gamble, it would be her husband. So there might be a link there. Also, Sarah Gregson was a social worker at one time, so she might have known Hendricks.'

‘It's unlikely she would have played cards with him if she knew his history, surely?' Maxwell slipped into the role of devil's advocate with hellish ease. You could almost smell the brimstone, although it could have been the soup.

‘True. As I say, everything is very tentative at the moment. Then this morning, the victim was a Jacob Shears, a solicitor in town.'

‘Shot?'

‘No.' She sipped her soup again and tried to forget the charnel-house interior of the solicitor's office.

‘Thrown from a high building?'

‘Uh-uh. Stabbed and then … disembowelled, rather thoroughly.'

Maxwell knew his serial killers. He had a working knowledge of all of them, and a specific knowledge of some. He was still undecided about the infantile arson, the bed-wetting and the cruelty to animals, but he was clear on one point; they all had a method they liked and stuck to it. ‘So … with three different MOs, why are you guys treating it as a series?'

‘We're not. But it is.'

‘Precious Bane, we have been together now, Teacher and Woman Policeman, for a lot of years, taken by and large.'

‘I didn't like you for some of them,' she pointed out.

‘Nonsense. It was love at first sight.'

‘No. You misheard me at the time. “Loathe”, I said. Not “love”.'

‘Well,' said Maxwell, ‘I'm with Christopher Marlowe on this one. Love at first sight it was. But, I digress. We've been together now a long time but I am totally confused. Why is it a series? Before you answer, I should say that I agree with you, but I know my reasons. I need to know yours.'

‘First,' Jacquie said, holding up a thumb, ‘Matthew Hendricks was killed by having his head blown off by a .44 Magnum.'

‘The most powerful handgun in the world,' Clint Eastwood said, through the medium of Peter Maxwell.

‘Yes. An American gun.'

‘Most are,' Maxwell remarked, mildly.

‘An
iconic
American gun,' she added, ‘to be precise. Number Two,' and she held up her forefinger, ‘Sarah Gregson was thrown off a multi-storey car park—'

‘Definitely thrown?' Maxwell thought he would check.

‘Yes. So everyone says. Where was I? Yes, thrown off a car park after playing poker. Three,' she held up her middle finger, ‘Jacob Shears is killed in his office.' She sat back. ‘Shall I tell you the link, now?'

‘If you would,' Maxwell said mildly.

‘Hendricks, American gun. Gregson, played cards with an American. Shears, an American chocolate wrapper was found alongside the body, covered in blood.'

‘American chocolate is hardly a clincher,' Maxwell thought he should say. ‘They have Reese's Pieces in the vending machine at the bus station …' He caught her eye. The healthy eating New Year resolution had not really taken hold as she would have liked. ‘… I would imagine.'

‘This was a much more unusual one, available only in America or online. We have someone checking availability back at the nick – the first two websites we tried don't have stock. So it is likely that it is only an American who would have one.'

‘Would you stand and eat a chocolate bar while you
disembowel someone? I mean, there is casual and
casual
, surely.'

‘I agree that it isn't usual, but what is usual about stabbing an innocent man and spreading his intestines all over the place? His liver was in a filing cabinet.'

‘Nasty.' He put down his mug. He seemed to have lost his appetite. ‘Apart from the chocolate wrapper, is there any other link with the other two?'

‘No, not that we can see at the moment. He has lots of files around the office and some of them are a bit …' She settled for ‘difficult to decipher. We'll have to check what he was working on. His secretary is in shock. She found him.'

‘Poor thing. Young?'

‘Yes. One of yours, inevitably. Tia Preese.'

‘I remember her,' he said, pointlessly. He remembered everyone he had ever taught. Sometimes all it took was that he had met them in the corridor, but that was only if they had a noticeable feature, like one eye in the middle of their forehead, something like that. ‘Business Studies.'