Maxwell's Inspection (26 page)

Maxwell leaned against the wall across the road, Surrey parked around the back of the Old Library. He saw Hall chatting to his plainclothesman in the car park, saw him get into his car, saw him drive away. No point in
tackling
loquacious George again. What you saw with the hotel deskman was what you got. The Head of Sixth Form looked up at the fierce sun already burning through the shoulders of his shirt. Phew! Another scorcher. He
wondered
where Jacquie was this morning, what she was doing and how she felt. ‘A bit like shit, I expect,' he
muttered
as he swung Surrey into action. He knew. He was there himself.

It wasn't the droning that woke him. It had been the
droning
that had sent him to sleep. It was what summer Sunday afternoons were all about. An Englishman
mowing
the lawns of his castle, thanks to the ingenuity of Messrs Black and Decker and the twenty percent off of Messrs B and Q. No, what woke Peter Maxwell on that impossibly hot Sunday was the ringing of his phone.

Metternich the cat lay on the Great Man's patio,
looking
for all the world as though he'd been flattened by a steam-roller, to allow his important little places to be as cool as possible. Nobody who didn't wear a fur coat for a living could possibly understand. There was that
irritating
noise again and sure enough, yes, there he went. The mad old duffer was clambering off his garden recliner and dashing indoors.

‘Jacquie?'

‘Er …no, it's Duggsy, Mr Maxwell. Matthew Douglas.'

‘Matthew.' Maxwell tried to contain his
disappointment
. ‘How the Hell are you?'

‘Never better, Mr M. Sorry I couldn't talk the other night – you know, at the Grad Ball.'

‘Well, you were obviously busy, Matthew. And I never stay to the end of these bashes, in case I turn into a
pumpkin
or worse, have to clear up somebody's vomit. Been there; done that.'

‘Yeah, quite.' Duggsy gurgled. He wasn't sure what a pumpkin was, but he was at home with vomit. You had to be, in his line of business. ‘Well, I just wondered if you'd caught the lunchtime news.'

‘No, Matthew, sorry,' his ex-Head of Sixth Form said. ‘Leighford High burnt down?' There was always hope.
Or was Matthew hoping to enrol in September in the school's new Current Affairs AS level? It was to be run by Dierdre Lessing and the prospect of the Senior Mistress dealing with Affairs was something Peter Maxwell was probably not going to be able to resist.

‘No. It's him, Mr Maxwell. Wal wasn't sure. Iron Man was adamant it wasn't, but I know it was.'

‘Sorry, Matthew,' the Great Man confessed. ‘You've lost me.'

‘The photographer at the Ball.'

‘Yes?'

‘It was him. It was that bloke they found murdered in his studio. Craig Edwards. He was the photographer at the Ball.'

‘Are you sure?' Suddenly, Maxwell was wide awake.

‘And that's not all. Iron Man said no, but I reckon he's wrong. It's the bloke, Mr Maxwell. That bloke having an up and a downer with that Ofsted woman at the Vine. The one in the e-fit. And now, somebody's gone and put his lights out.'

Peter Maxwell was no stranger to the
Leighford Advertiser
nor they to him. At one time half its reporters were Old Leighford Hyenas or else Old Leighford Hyenas had made the front page for various crimes against humanity. He took advantage of his first lesson being ‘free' that Monday morning (although he knew, like every teacher, there was no such thing as a free lesson) and cycled to their offices in Handover Street.

Neil Henslow had been one of the Great Man's great white hopes some years ago, but he'd never quite got it together. Oxford aspirations ended in Sheffield Hallam
and the dreaming steelworks equipped him, not for Fleet Street's cutting edge after all, but the flower shows and car boots of the
Advertiser
.

‘Day off, Mr Maxwell?' the cub reporter asked.

‘We never sleep,' Maxwell winked at him, a Pinkerton man at heart. ‘What'll you have, Neil?'

A floozy had appeared at their table in the welcome cool of the Jury House coffee shop and patisserie, order pad in hand, gum in cheek.

‘Oh, er … latté, please.'

‘Two of whatever that is,' Maxwell beamed up at her. The floozy scribbled something down, transferred her gum from one side to the other and disappeared into the bowels of the building. ‘I appreciate this, Neil.'

‘We could have talked across the road, Mr Maxwell,' Henslow said.

‘Too open.' Maxwell shook his head. ‘I've often
wondered
why newspaper offices the world o'er are open plan.'

‘Nothing secret about the Press, Mr Maxwell,' the lad said earnestly. Maxwell looked at him. What was he? Twenty-five? He'd never get away from the flower shows with an attitude like that. Napoleon Bonaparte had been a general at his age and William Pitt had been running the country for a year.

‘Well, that's a pity, Neil, because it's secrets I wanted to talk to you about. You've got the file I mentioned on the phone?'

‘The Edwards file. Sure. Not that there's much in it yet.' He hauled a manila folder out of his briefcase.

‘You're writing a piece, though?'

‘Yes, but,' Henslow's eyes burnt bright above the table
cloth and the doilies. ‘The editor said it was time I won my spurs.'

‘Excellent!' Maxwell beamed, pleased with the
historical
allusion and trying not to look too eager. ‘A sound
fellow
. May I?' He eased the folder round to his side of the table and opened it.

‘This never happened, of course,' Henslow said.

Maxwell looked at him. Perhaps the lad wasn't quite the ingénue he appeared. Maybe there was hope for him after all. ‘Of course not,' his old Head of Sixth Form said. ‘It would be most improper. Well, well,' he'd flipped open the cover and a face grinned up at him. ‘Joe Public.'

‘Sorry?'

The floozy arrived with the coffees and passed the bill to Maxwell. He waited until she'd gone. ‘Nothing,' he smiled at Henslow. ‘Tell me about the murder of Craig Edwards.'

The pieces were beginning to fall into place, Maxwell thought to himself as he pedalled along the High Street in the Monday morning traffic, weaving past the buggies and babies and avoiding the old people at the kerb, who had grown old waiting to cross the road. The man with the black bag at the Vine, the man in the leather coat in the pub's gents, had smiled up at Maxwell from Neil Henslow's file. The man seen by the drummer of the Yawning Hippos having an upper and a downer with Sally Meninger in the pub car park. The man Peter Maxwell had christened Joe Public. That man was dead. The police had released no details to the Press as to the cause of death yet, but that was irrelevant. Peter Maxwell knew that it would be a skewer to the throat, delivered,
like Kenneth Connor's funeral services in
‘Allo! ‘Allo!,
swiftly and with style.

And he was the photographer at the Grad Ball. Shit! Why hadn't Maxwell been more observant? He lashed Surrey to the usual rail and pointed at a hapless lad
scurrying
about the school buildings. Instinctively, the lad tucked in the tails of his shirt and checked that he wasn't wearing trainers.

‘Kelly?' the Great Man had swept like a galleon in full sail through the school and was at his desk and on the phone in a twinkling of an eye. ‘Peter Maxwell, from Leighford High School.'

Kelly was still in bed, the prerogative of ex Year 13
students
whose exams are over, before the grey, gritty reality of shelf-filling at Tescos kicks in. She sounded dazed,
confused
. Certainly, she'd never had a phone call from Mad Max before. ‘Oh, hello.'

‘You were on the Grad Ball committee? Right?' Her already ex-Head of Sixth Form cut to the chase.

‘Yes.'

‘The photographer, Craig Edwards. Who hired him?'

‘Well, I did, I suppose,' the bleary-eyed girl told him, sitting up in bed and trying to focus. ‘The first bloke we got pulled out. Mr Edwards had done my mum's
wedding
. So I knew he was all right. As it turned out, he was late.'

‘Yes,' Maxwell nodded. ‘That seems to have been a
failing
of his. Although two days ago he may just have been too early. Who knew you'd hired him?'

‘Um … only a couple of us on the committee.'

‘No staff?' Maxwell checked. ‘No adults?'

‘No, I don't think so. Oh, Mrs Maitland knew.'

Yes, Maxwell smiled to himself. His Number Two, Helen Maitland. How
did
Assistant Heads of Sixth Form amuse themselves other than by slaughtering people with skewers? Kelly had got it in one. ‘Thank you, darling,' he said. ‘And for the rest of your life, may God keep you in the hollow of his hand.' And he hung up.

Bugger! Look at the time. Peter Maxwell was hurtling along the corridor past Aitch One, opened again now and a classroom once again, the swivel chair in which Alan Whiting had died only a Leighford memory and under plastic in the regional crime lab. No enterprising Year Ten kid had yet thought to make a few bob by opening the room to the public; but it was early days. In ten minutes, he had to cast pearls before swine again in the
unforgiving
white heat of history. Time was of the essence.

‘Headmaster,' the Head of Sixth Form had not waited to be asked in to James Diamond's office. He was a
middle-aged
man in a hurry and he'd long ago stopped
looking
at the bad artwork and indescribable sculpture that littered the Head's surfaces. His desk, of course, was empty. ‘How's it hanging?'

Diamond looked terrible. His usually crisp shirt was unironed, his hair a tangled mess. Maxwell could believe that Margaret had ironed her husband's shirts, but surely, he combed his own hair? ‘I'm here, Max,' Diamond said, as if that was an achievement in itself. ‘I'm not going to let this thing beat me.' But he didn't sound sure on that score.

‘Indeed not, Headmaster,' the Head of Sixth Form patronized. ‘And to that end, I need the addresses of the Ofsted team who've just left.'

‘Max …'

‘I know you have them, Headmaster.' Maxwell stood
his ground as he had so often before Legs Diamond, his legs astride, his shoulders set, like an ox, as the late Rudyard Kipling described the Saxons, in the furrow. ‘All you need do is tell me where. Oh, and give me two days off.'

‘Max …'

The Head of Sixth Form closed to his man, leaning over his desk, hands spread on his mock-wood surface. ‘Let me take the gloves off, Headmaster,' he grated. ‘I don't know how the Governors are reacting currently to your being under police suspicion for murder. Or how the gentlemen of the Press will portray you when they finally tie it all together, which, by my reckoning will be about …' he checked his watch, ‘half past two this afternoon – which is your good side, by the way?'

‘Max …' the Head was particularly articulate this morning.

‘Give me the addresses and two days, James, and I'll give you the murderer's head on a plate.'

James? Maxwell had done it again. Used the Christian name, the ‘J' word. If James Diamond didn't think things were serious already, he knew they were now.

‘Reception will have them,' he said. ‘Ask Emma. Two days, Max? Can you deliver in two days?' Diamond had a look of desperation on his face.

The Head of Sixth Form stood up. ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods, Headmaster?' he asked. And neither of them had an answer to that.

That Monday was a mad house at Leighford nick. Phones rang off the hook, VDUs flickered, faxes poured in and fans blasted sheets of paper all over the place. There was
no natural breeze. The trees on the Dam hung heavy and still in the summer heat and the kids at Leighford High were extra-tetchy or extra-listless depending on their
natural
proclivities.

Henry Hall was sifting through his paperwork. On the Paula Freeling enquiry, house to house had turned up nothing. Of the hundred plus garages and lock-ups in the area, not one of them had so far yielded any links to the dead woman at all. In the Craig Edwards murder, no one had so far admitted to seeing anybody arriving at the photographer's studio on Saturday morning. No
milkmen
, no paper child, no postman had seen a damned thing. Indeed no one had seen the photographer until the police had carried him out in a body bag. It was part of the culture of the twenty-first century. No one looked out for anybody any more. John Donne was wrong – every man is an island.

‘Henry.' It was Jim Astley's voice at the end of the
endlessly
ringing phone.

‘Jim.' The DCI tucked the receiver under his neck as he sorted yet more files, hands full, brain whirling.

‘You won't hear me say this often, so I'll come to the point and make it brief.'

‘I wish you would.' Hall was a man in a hurry.

‘I missed something on the Paula Freeling case.'

‘What?' Hall stopped shuffling papers. This was indeed a moment to cherish. When Jim Astley admitted a mistake, you
knew
the writing was on the wall.

‘I said …'

‘No,' Hall interrupted. ‘I mean, what did you miss?'

‘You know there were microscopic particles of alloy on the skin and clothing?'

‘I do,' Hall confirmed.

‘And something else too, largely in her hair and on her stockings.'

‘Pieces of a black plastic bag, yes?'

‘Black plastic, certainly. Bag – no. They're hard; the chemical consistency is totally different. Any help?'

‘Hard plastic? I don't know,' Hall frowned. ‘Can you fax over the specifics, Jim?'