Maxwell's Crossing (22 page)

‘Bob! Yes.' He waited for the rest.

‘What if it is? What if it's Sandra and she wasn't being blackmailed at all. What if she's our murderer?'

Hall extended an arm to the door. ‘You saw the state she was in. Do you really think it could be her?'

Jacquie slumped. ‘No. I really think it's Jeff O'Malley. But it can't be, unless he has some kind of clone.' She swung her bag over her shoulder and snapped off her desk light. ‘I'm off home, now, guv. Night night.'

He patted her shoulder as she went past. ‘Good night, Jacquie. See you tomorrow.'

‘Same old, same old,' she said with a wry smile as she went out through the door. ‘See if we can catch someone, perhaps.'

‘Got to keep fresh for Bob Thorogood's leaving do tomorrow night,' Hall said.

Jacquie was taken aback. ‘Are you coming?' she said.

‘Wouldn't miss it for the world. How else will I know if he's really gone?' Hall said, switching off the light and following her onto the landing.

Jacquie opened the door to a waft of tomatoes and garlic. Ah, Betty Spaghetti, the very meal she would have made had she been able to get home in time. She hoped they had saved her some. Maxwell had clearly been listening out for her key in the door and popped his head round the wall at the top of the stairs.

‘Up you come, you busy detective inspector, you,' he said. ‘We've saved you some.'

She climbed the stairs on leaden feet and gave him a kiss. ‘Lovely,' she said. ‘Umm … who's here?'

‘Just us chickens,' he told her, the standard response meaning no nasty sparrowhawks or O'Malleys, except by marriage.

She let out a breath. ‘Thank goodness for that. Today has had enough in it, thanks all the same.' She stuck her head round the dining room door. ‘Hello, everyone. Nice to see you. Nolan, you have tomato on your 'jamas.'
She forebore to mention that everyone had tomato on whatever they were wearing; Alana particularly looked as if she had been the victim of a particularly vicious stabbing. It seemed unfair to single out her son, but he was her only legitimate target. ‘See you in a minute. I'm just taking my coat off.' Everyone wiggled fingers or smiled round a mouthful of spaghetti. Nolan leapt down from his seat and on the rebound was up in her arms. She gave him a kiss and immediately joined the tomato club, by proxy.

Maxwell squeezed past her and disentangled his son. ‘Come on, mate. She'll be back in a minute. She just needs to wash the day away.' He plonked the boy back in his seat and ushered his wife across the landing. ‘Here you are,' he said, giving her a glass of something sparkling and ginny. ‘I thought we could all be teetotal tonight, to help Alana. But it doesn't need to apply in here.'

‘You're a lifesaver.' She took a huge swig. ‘I wonder who Gordon is? I'd like to marry him and have his children. Look, you go back in and I'll be there in a minute. Dish mine up.'

He gave her a kiss on the nose. ‘Unwind for a minute. You look stressed out. You can tell me all about it later.'

‘Nice try. Shoo, now. I'll be there in a flash.'

He trotted off back to the dining room. Hmm, that had gone quite well. There would be info coming down the line later or his name was not Gottfried Clutterbuck.

A few minutes later and Jacquie was as tomatoey as the rest.

It quickly turned out, as the extended temporary Maxwell family sat down after dinner, that Mrs Troubridge was the Trivial Pursuit Player From Hell. No subterfuge was too sneaky, no cheat too outrageous for her and soon her full cheese was whizzing round the board to cries of dismay from the others. Alana secretly believed that the old broad had memorised the answers. Maxwell realised that she knew the History answers because she'd been there at the time. She was approaching the centre and the rest of them had their heads together to choose a really knockout category to keep her at bay for another round when the phone rang.

‘Null and void,' cried Maxwell merrily as Jacquie went into the kitchen to answer it.

‘Rubbish, Mr Maxwell,' Mrs Troubridge riposted, the scent of victory in her nostrils. ‘I've never heard that rule.'

‘On the other hand, Jessica,' Hector offered, ‘I've never heard of the rule where you are allowed to look at the answers.'

‘It only applies to the over-eighties,' Mrs Troubridge told him, flicking him with the rules booklet.

Alana, lying back in Maxwell's favourite chair weighed down by a fully extended Metternich, smiled at her friend. ‘Good one, Jessica,' she murmured. She wasn't feeling too well and her empty cheese showed that she wasn't firing on any cylinders, because she was not in fact a stupid woman. Things she had put to one side for the last few decades were beginning to
surface and they made her stomach churn.

Jacquie stuck her head around the door. ‘Darling,' she said brightly. ‘Could you just come here for a second? Something I need to check with you.'

‘Certainly,' Maxwell said, equally brightly. He turned in the doorway. ‘Null and void,' he said. ‘More than one player has left the room.'

Mrs Troubridge's twittering was diminished as he closed the door. ‘What's up, duck?' he asked Jacquie in his best Bugs Bunny. She was standing waiting for him, phone in hand.

‘It's Henry,' she said, waving the phone. ‘He says there has been a 999 call to say that there is a big bloke in Columbine, shouting obscenities and throwing bricks at a house. He wants to know if we're all right.'

‘O'Malley?' Maxwell asked.

‘Presumably. There's a car on its way.' She lifted the phone to her ear and spoke into it. ‘Sorry, Henry. Just checking with Max.' Covering the mouthpiece she spoke to her husband again. ‘Just pop up to our room, will you, and look along the street, see what's going on? Thanks.' As Maxwell left on his errand she spoke to Hall again. ‘No, guv. We can't hear a thing and it certainly isn't our house he's throwing bricks at. Are you at home?'

The reply was pithy.

‘Oh, sorry. A hot bath is relaxing as long as you are in it long enough to get the benefit, I agree. I'll ring you back. Bye.'

She put down the phone and went to wait for Maxwell
at the foot of the stairs. He came down quietly, so as not to wake Nolan.

‘There is some kind of kerfuffle along the road. I can't quite see because it's round the corner, but it looks to be outside eighteen, or maybe twenty.'

‘That's O'Malley, then. He can't remember houses or anything, he can't even remember where he lives himself. I can't believe our roads are that different, but there you are. Some cop he must have been.'

‘A case of
Car 54, Where Am I?
' Maxwell said, remembering the television of his youth.

‘What's he doing?' Jacquie asked.

‘I opened the window and listened out, but I couldn't hear much. What I did hear sounds very O'Malley. I know the word “mother” seemed to occur surprisingly often. He's not throwing anything now. He appeared to be widdling on the lawn.'

‘Good luck to him in this weather. I'd lost track of time. I thought he wouldn't be out yet.' She looked thoughtful.

‘You were expecting this?'

‘Weren't you? He's come looking for Alana, I expect. He wants his stuff back. I thought Henry might try and keep him on the charges we—'

Maxwell smiled, the smile of the alligator on its final approach on the unwary swimmer. ‘Charges? What charges?'

‘Peter Maxwell, you are a shocker. There were a few things that cropped up and … well, I might tell you later, if you're good. Meanwhile, what are we going to
do about O'Malley? He'll realise sooner or later it isn't our house.'

Through the landing window, they saw a blue light go past and knew that sooner had probably arrived.

‘We'll have to tell Mrs Troubridge,' Maxwell said. ‘It's only fair, really. She'll have to decide whether it is safe to keep Alana with her.'

‘It isn't,' Jacquie said, shortly. ‘She'll have to go to a safe house. Or home, for preference.'

‘She's in a safe house,' Mrs Troubridge suddenly said, from behind her, making her jump.

‘Mrs Troubridge—' Jacquie began.

‘Jacquie. As I pointed out just a few minutes ago, I am over eighty years of age. Well over, if truth be told. And if I can't have a friend to stay at my age, I don't know when I can.'

Maxwell chipped in. ‘Jeff O'Malley is a nasty piece of work, Mrs Troubridge,' he said. ‘He's been throwing bricks at a house down the road.'

‘Why on earth would he be doing something as silly as that, Mr Maxwell?' She looked perplexed.

‘He thought it was our house, Mrs Troubridge.'

‘Well, good heavens, Mr Maxwell. If he can't even find your house, I don't see what risk he is to anyone. The car is parked outside. Surely that would be clue enough for anyone.'

‘I expect the taxi brought him in the other end,' Jacquie explained. To Mrs Troubridge there was only one end of Columbine and that was
this
end. Anthropophagi lived at the even numbers lower down and heaven only
knew what went on in the odd numbers. ‘I really think you ought to reconsider, you know …'

‘I have reconsidered,' the little woman told her, drawing herself up to her full height and looking not unlike one of the more feisty voles that Metternich sometimes encountered. ‘I've been through a lot in my life, although you might not find it very exciting. The war, for example. The loss of poor dear Mr Troubridge and, of course, all the unpleasantness with my fall and the Incident. So I am not going to send Alana off to a refuge and certainly not back to America. She's staying here with me. We're going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on Wednesday evening. It's all arranged. I have a taxi booked and everything.'

It was typical of Mrs Troubridge to lump a murder attempt on her and an injudicious act of Metternich's involving giblets and count those two imposters just the same. She was like a lioness, not a vole, Maxwell decided and shocked them both by suddenly planting a kiss on her wrinkled papery cheek.

‘It's a deal, then, Mrs Troubridge,' he said, as she leapt backwards, twittering. ‘But we'll have to rig up some kind of alarm system. I'll speak to the Design Technology Department tomorrow. Old Ken keeps telling me he was thrown out of NASA for being too darn clever. I'll put him to the test.'

‘I don't want wires everywhere, Mr Maxwell,' she said. ‘I won't have wires everywhere.'

‘It's the deal,' Jacquie told her. ‘Wires, or no Alana.'

Mrs Troubridge looked into her eyes and saw she was
not moving on this. With a single nod of the head, she trotted back to the sitting room, to check on her single chick.

‘Oh, rats! I forgot.' Jacquie exclaimed. ‘I must ring Henry.'

‘I'll come along,' Maxwell smiled.

‘If you like,' she said, poking him in the ribs. ‘But you'll learn nothing, I can guarantee it.'

The Maxwell family were hospitable people and were therefore often at the mercy of guests who didn't know when to go home. This evening was not one of those when the Head of Sixth Form was forced to appear in his pyjamas yawning and carrying a mug of cocoa to convince people it was time to go. By quarter to ten Mrs Troubridge and Alana were back next door and Hector had withdrawn to the guest room, having rinsed out his smalls and put them on the radiator. He was going back to the Mosses' house the next day to retrieve his clothes and books and then the planning would have to begin.

Henry Hall's news had been disquieting. When the squad car had got to Columbine, they had found some outraged householders, some broken windows, a partially uprooted brick driveway but positively no Jeff O'Malley. He had legged it, according to a watching neighbour, as soon as the first flicker of blue light had appeared at the other end of the road. And, big though he was, and although he was not exactly the youngest vandal they had ever seen heaving bricks at a house, he certainly had a remarkable turn of speed. He had clearly
worked out in the past and the muscle had not entirely turned to flab.

Jacquie had gently shared the knowledge with Alana and the woman had been almost preternaturally calm. She seemed to look upon Jeff O'Malley as if death by his hands was probably in her stars. She was beyond afraid of him; she was all scared out. Mrs Troubridge, copied in on the information, was as adamant as ever that she could withstand any attempt on her castle. She had so many bolts and bars on every door and window these days that even she was sometimes defeated by them and the locksmith had her address set to ‘favourites' on the satnav of all his vans. Hector Gold was merely unsurprised.

Maxwell and Jacquie sat in peace at last in the sitting room, on the sofa as he absent-mindedly kneaded her feet.

‘Hard day, Mrs M?' he asked her.

‘I've known harder, but let me think. Disembowelled body this morning. Discovery that Hector has hidden depths, Jeff is a money-and power-crazed psychopath, that one of the constables in my team has been, nominally at least, prostituting herself—'

Maxwell dropped her foot and sat up sharply. ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I will tell you that bit of info, but in a minute. I'm whingeing, if you don't mind.'

‘It all happens at Leighford Nick, I must say,' Maxwell said, picking up her foot again. ‘Leighford High is very boring by comparison.'

‘Only this term,' she reminded him. ‘It's not usually so quiet. That's the wrong foot, by the way. You've already done that one. I'll be walking funny unless you do the right one.'

‘Sorry.' He changed feet. ‘So, prostitution, yes. What else?'

‘There doesn't need to be much else does there, not really? But, to round the evening off, the psychopath already mentioned has been heaving bricks at one of our neighbours' houses. Thank goodness he has absolutely no sense of direction. And I suppose that's about it.'

‘How did you get on with ringing the States?' Maxwell asked, faux innocence dripping from every pore.

‘Nicely, thank you. Magnum PI was very helpful.'

‘His name was actually Magnum?' Maxwell was amused.

‘No.' She flicked him with her spare foot. ‘He just sounds like Magnum. Rather laconic. Handsome.' She had gone off into some kind of dream.

‘He
sounds
handsome? That's clever. Do I sound handsome?' He fluttered his eyelashes in what he thought might be a winning manner.

‘No – now there you are, you see,' she told him. ‘You sound like a curmudgeonly old git, which is what you are. So, as he sounds handsome, then I am assuming that that is what he is, too.'

‘Well, that told me,' he said, drawing himself up in mock dudgeon. ‘What did he say, handsomely?'