Maxwell’s Curse (28 page)

‘So this woman … er … Pride, was it? She was a practising witch?’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell mused. ‘And I’m Beelzebub.’

‘Baal,’ Zarina murmured. ‘Lord of the Flies, Prince of devils, next in crime to Satan. Now, why should you mention him, Mr Maxwell?’

‘It was a sort of joke, Dr Leibowitz,’ Maxwell said.

Zarina was shaking her large head, the chins wobbling, the earrings swinging.

‘There’s nothing funny about this, Max,’ Foulkes was solemnity itself. ‘What happened on the Barlichway tonight proved that.’

‘It happens on estates,’ Zarina said, her eyes never leaving Maxwell’s. ‘Rochdale, Broxtowe …’

‘What happens?’ Maxwell shouted. He shook the crumpled piece of paper. ‘This sick nonsense? Where does it come from?’

Zarina leaned back, taking a calm sip from her amber class. ‘Mr Maxwell, Crispin suggested we come to you in your position as a teacher.’

‘Oh?’

‘Leighford High, isn’t it?’ she checked. ‘Where you teach?’

He nodded. ‘So rumour has it.’

‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ she smiled. ‘I’m not familiar with British High Schools. How old are your kids?’

‘Eleven to eighteen,’ he said.

‘Okay. You … er … picked up any vibes from them, oh, I don’t know, scraps of conversations, parties, swimming pools maybe? Dead babies?’

‘Dead babies?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Leibowitz, I don’t have the time to eavesdrop on the children I teach. But if I catch any conversation at all, it’s about last night’s match or who’s groping whom. I don’t tend to get complete recitals of the Black Mass.’

‘Please don’t joke, Mr Maxwell,’ Zarina was stone-faced. ‘I don’t think you realize how much trouble you’re in.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell leaned back now, trying to make this woman out. ‘How?’

She looked at Foulkes, who nodded. ‘Elizabeth Pride’s body is found on your doorstep. You go to her house and find an occult calendar – you say.’

‘That’s right,’ Maxwell said. ‘I do.’

‘You talk to Andrew Darblay, the rector, who dies next. We haven’t been able to establish a contact with Arthur Walters … except you were at the Barlichway tonight, for example, where the old guy was found dead. Janet Ruger comes to your house … this house, before she dies. And it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility that you and Alison Thorn knew each other – I mean, two teachers in a small neck of the woods …’

‘Wait a minute,’ Maxwell said. ‘You’re forgetting I’ve got a blackish cat and live alone. Sorry, I can’t help with the broomstick; would a Hoover do?’

Zarina was shaking her head again. ‘I’m afraid flippancy won’t save you, Mr Maxwell,’ she said.

‘Save me?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘From what?’

‘Life imprisonment,’ she told him. ‘Or a padded cell – I can’t decide which.’

‘So,’ Maxwell raised both his hands. ‘Let’s see if I’ve got this right? I’m some sort of black magician, a sort of Agrippa-cum-John-Dee-cum-David-Copperfield. I decide to kill people, starting with one I leave cunningly on my own doorstep to belay suspicion. That’s so fiendishly clever, I frighten myself sometimes.’

‘Mr Maxwell,’ Zarina was calmness itself, focused, in control. ‘We’ve got to let you in on a teeny white lie.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell couldn’t wait to hear what else the woman was going to charge him with.

‘I’ve been in Leighford, staying at the Grand, for a few weeks now, ever since Elizabeth Pride died, in fact. Crispin wired me the moment it became public knowledge. I recognized all the symptoms on the Barlichway. He did absolutely right to call me. I’ve interviewed all of Ms Thorn’s little class at Wetherton School. And I think we’ve got hard evidence of ritual Satanic abuse.’

Maxwell remembered to close his mouth. ‘Such as?’ he asked.

‘Witch parties,’ she sighed, appalled by the litany she was about to recite. ‘Dead babies. Specifically abortion, infants with their heads bashed in, animal sacrifice, transportation. Murdered children hanging around the necks of adults. Talk of a monster, urine, faeces, a mysterious church, the drinking of human blood.’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘Could be a storyboard for Home and Away,’ he nodded.

‘For Christ’s sake, Max!’ Foulkes snapped. ‘This isn’t make believe. It’s happening. Here. In Leighford. On the Barlichway. In the twenty-first century.’

Maxwell looked at them both. ‘Dr Leibowitz,’ he said softly. ‘I assume, perhaps because I’m impressed by qualifications, that you are an intelligent woman. You’re familiar with that late great countryman of yours, Senator Joseph McCarthy, one of the sickest, most bigoted men the world has produced. And, no doubt, you’re familiar with another countryman of yours, John Hawthorne of Massachusetts. Different era, same sickness. What was it Arthur Miller said in
The Crucible
“the devil’s loose in Salem, Mr Proctor”? Well,’ he leaned forward, ‘the devil’s not loose in Leighford. Nor on the Barlichway, take my word for it. Whoever killed these people is flesh and blood, like you and me. And, Dr Leibowitz, I don’t know where you got that nonsense from, but it’s not from any kids I ever knew.’

Zarina Leibowitz hauled herself to her feet. ‘That’s a pretty speech, Mr Maxwell. I would imagine Father Urbain Grandier said something not dissimilar in the market place at Loudun before they burned him alive. Just look at the evidence.’ She snatched up the leaflet from his coffee table. ‘You’re supposed to be a historian, dammit. Witch parties – you been to a party recently, Mr Maxwell?’

He was standing with her now, remembering the first time he’d met Prissy and Willoughby Crown.

‘What about a mysterious church? That – and the pun’ll no doubt kill you – ring any bells?’

The Gothic tomb of Sir John Viney crept into his vision, dark with Andrew Darblay’s blood.

‘How about swimming pools? Had a dip the other day?’

He saw Sophie Clark hit the water like an arrow and heard Prissy laughing at him from her corner of the Beauregard pool.

‘Satanic indicators, Mr Maxwell,’ Zarina was saying, staring into his eyes. ‘Crispin and I, we’ve been there. And what you saw on the Barlichway tonight, that was just the beginning, believe me.’

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked as they made their way to his stairs.

‘We’re bringing in the full weight of the law. Police, the courts, child protection agencies. There’ll be arrests, a full public inquiry of course, we need to do some rooting out here. There’s a nest at the Barlichway. But you should be grateful, Mr Maxwell; John Hawthorne would have burnt the place down. Oh, by the way,’ Zarina paused at the top of Maxwell’s stairs with Foulkes at her elbow, ‘you might be able to interpret this one for me. A little girl, right here on the Barlichway, told me she’d seen a naughty policeman killing babies. You got any ideas about that, Beelzebub?’

It was sixth form assembly that Monday, when the cream of Leighford’s youth shambled into their Common Room for ten minutes of uplifting haranguing from Mr Maxwell. Except Mr Maxwell wasn’t there. And Helen Maitland, aka the Fridge, did the honours instead.

Peter Maxwell was helping the police with their inquiries.

‘Everything all right, Max?’ Legs Diamond, the Headmaster, had asked as he saw Maxwell escorting a pretty plainclothes woman he thought he knew towards his office.

‘Sweet,’ Maxwell grunted, winking at him, leaving Diamond wondering which of his many personae Maxwell was being this morning.

‘You heard about the Barlichway?’ had been the question on everybody’s lips in the staffroom that morning. James Diamond had moved among his staff, reminding them not to gossip with the kids, but to keep their ears open. Careless talk costs lives. Be like dad – keep mum etc, etc.

‘Not a social call, then?’ Maxwell read Jacquie’s body language like an open book.

She stood, arms folded in his office, facing a fanatical James Cagney in
Shake Hands With the Devil
, I left the uniformed copper in the car,’ she said, ‘because I wanted to say things I can’t say while he’s around.’

‘Won’t you at least sit down?’ He did, trying to ease the moment.

Jacquie ignored the offer and crossed to the window. A leaden sky promised rain beyond Leighford High’s boundaries. An old man walked his dog and a sudden shaft of sunlight caught the flat line of the sea. ‘Max, what were you doing at the Barlichway last Friday?’

‘Ah,’ he turned to her, looking up at the back of her head.

‘Who’s been talking? The Mr Plod whose gonads I crushed or the one intent on strangling me with his nightstick?’

‘We’ve got you on CCTV,’ she said. ‘You and lots of others. But the scarf was kind of distinctive.’

‘Curses!’ Maxwell clicked his fingers, ‘it took you a while to recognize it.’

‘Well?’ It had been a long weekend, one way or another.

He stood up and took her shoulders in his hands, spinning her round. ‘Jacquie,’ he said softly, his dark eyes burning into her soul. ‘Are you asking me as Detective Constable Carpenter of Leighford CID or as Jacquie Carpenter, the woman I love?’

‘The woman you … ?’ and her voice tailed away. For a second she looked away. Had to look away. Then her head was up again, her eyes on a level with his. ‘Why were you there?’

He dropped his hands, his question answered. ‘I was following Willoughby Crown,’ he said.

‘Willoughby?’ she frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because he was at the Barlichway that night and I need to know why. Did you pick him up on your tellies?’

She shook her head. ‘No, but we found his car, wrecked and abandoned.’

‘So did I,’ he nodded. ‘Have you talked to him?’

‘We’re making inquiries,’ she said.

Maxwell smiled. ‘Cryptic as ever,’ he winked. ‘How’s young Hall?’

‘You gave him the calendar, Max. Thank you for that.’

‘That’s all right,’ he shrugged, wandering alongside her and gazing out of the window. Leighford’s hapless Under 14 rugger team were going through their paces, fumbling badly in midfield and using weak tackles as an excuse to wrestle. ‘Wouldn’t know a maul from a pear tree,’ he muttered. Then he turned back to Jacquie. ‘I duly await my summons to the Tower for withholding vital evidence,’ he said. ‘What’s he got now before the Chief Constable pulls the plug? A day? Two?’

‘It got to him, Max,’ Jacquie was leaning against the windowsill. ‘He sat in his office, either at the Incident Room or the nick. God knows how many hours he put in. He said it was flu that was making him just sit there. I think he’s cracked. He went on Friday. The last bit of news he got was the riot on the Barlichway. The irony was, he asked for those two days you suggested – I told him to. He had until February the 2
^nd
. Then that …’

‘I’m sorry,’ Maxwell said. ‘Talking of cracking, have you met the witch queen of New Orleans?’

‘Who?’ Jacquie frowned.

‘Zarina Leibowitz?’

Jacquie’s face said it all. ‘Pretty in your face, isn’t she?’

‘In your face, yes. Pretty? Well, it’s in the eye of the beholder, really, that one, isn’t it? What do you know about naughty policemen?’

‘What?’ Jacquie blinked.

‘Just a phrase I picked up. Something about naughty policemen killing babies.’

Jacquie’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She looked at him oddly, then cleared her throat. ‘Where did you hear this, Max?’

‘Leibowitz,’ he said. ‘She made a point of it. It was the last thing she said as she and Crispin left my house on Friday night. Or should I say Saturday morning?’

‘What did they want?’

‘Ah, well, there you have me. On the one hand she seemed to want to pick my brains, me being a teacher and all; on the other, she seemed to imply I was the anti-Christ doomed to spend eternity stoking the fires. She was obviously confusing me with dear old Betty Martin, our caretaker.’

‘Max, I’ve got to go.’

‘And the Barlichway?’ he turned to face her.

‘We’ll need a statement,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what will happen. We’re slowly rounding people up.’

‘I know what triggered the Barlichway riot,’ he said.

‘The leaflets,’ she nodded. ‘So do we.’

‘Found the source yet?’

She shrugged. ‘Anybody with access to a computer and a printer,’ she told him.

‘Well, that narrows the field. Jacquie,’ he caught her by the hand. ‘Promise me,’ he said, holding her as close as she’d let him, ‘promise me that when this is all over, you’ll be Jacquie Carpenter again.’

She felt an iron lump in her throat and a pain in her heart. He watched her shake her head and go, a silhouette down the corridor to the light.

Prissy Crown answered the door that night. At least she was dressed this time, in a heavy jumper and jeans. She hadn’t put her face on and Maxwell didn’t recognize her at first.

‘What do you want?’ she lolled on the doorframe, a large Scotch in her fist.

‘To leap into your arms, you wanton witch,’ Maxwell smiled.

‘Fuck you!’ she snarled, but Maxwell’s foot was faster as he held the door and stepped inside. ‘Get out or I’m fucking calling the police.’

He saw the phone on the hall table and picked it up for her. ‘I forget the number just now,’ he said. ‘Got lots of nines in it.’

He flicked the door closed with his heel and they stood looking at each other. ‘Now, what position do you hold in the coven?’ he asked, dropping the phone onto its cradle again. ‘You and Sophie. What do you call yourselves, the wicked witches of the east or west? Or is it something altogether more sophisticated? Astoroth or Asmodeus or something? Well, yes, they were male devils, but hey, this is the twenty-first century and it’s pretty obvious who wears the trousers in this family, isn’t it?’

‘What are you talking about?’ she slurred, trying to focus through the haze of the drink.

‘Where’s Agrippa?’

‘Who?’

Maxwell closed to her. ‘Willoughby. Where is he?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘No,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But he hasn’t gone to the Barlichway again, surely? Not after last Friday?’

‘Someone stole his car,’ Prissy said. ‘From right outside here.’

‘And it was found abandoned on a council estate not a million miles away.’

‘How did you … ?’

‘Have the police talked to him?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Well, he talked to them.’