Maxwell’s Match (25 page)

‘Just a hunch,’ and he leapt around the room like Professor Frankenstein’s assistant, arms swinging and knuckles brushing the carpet. ‘Your alter-Igor.’

She threw a pillow at him.

‘The lad admitted it, but it won’t do any good now. He feels I’ve let him down. Haven’t worked out who killed his Mr Pardoe.’

‘
His
Mr Pardoe?’

‘Hero worship,’ Maxwell nodded, in memory far, far, away, smiling. ‘It doesn’t happen any more, not in the state system, anyway. If a teacher appears to be a hero now, he’s a pervert, there’s a hidden agenda. The world’s gone mad, Jacquie.’

She looked up. He hardly ever called her that. Only when the world really had gone mad.

‘Anyway,’ Maxwell sighed, ‘I suspect young Jenkins has just turned thirteen. He’s slipped over that fine line that demarcates sanity and sagacity from testosterone-impulsed rebellion. Allowing for the tie and the blazer and the cut glass accent, he’ll turn into Harry Enfield’s Kevin now; mark my words. I’ve lost him.’

‘How did he get the tape?’

‘He found it. Bill Pardoe threw it out. It was the skip at the back of Tennyson.’

‘Which explains his fingerprints.’

‘And you’d have found young Jenkins’ prints there too, I dare say, had Henry Hall had the balls and the manpower to fingerprint everybody.’

‘You think Tubbs made that tape?’

Maxwell poured his second coffee. Jacqui declined. ‘I don’t know. It’s just … oh, I know the Pardoe tape is distorted. But it was done apparently on the Music Department’s machinery. Why shouldn’t Tubbs be involved? According to Gaynor Ames, he couldn’t stand the man.’

‘Gaynor … ?’

‘Ames. The wife of the Head of PE. Haven’t you talked to her?’

‘Yes, we have,’ Jacquie said, looking at her watch. ‘Which reminds me, interviews in twenty minutes. Henry will want a briefing before we start.’ She got up to go.

‘Won’t he have missed you at breakfast?’

‘I pleaded the headaches last night. I was bushed. Gaynor Ames wasn’t very forthcoming, incidentally.’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell tutted smugly. ‘I’ve told you before about the matches under the fingernails technique. Softly, softly every time. With you and Henry it’s Nice Policeman, Nasty Policeman. With me, it’s just Nice Teacher, Nice Teacher. Gets results.’

‘Bollocks!’ she snorted. ‘Where did you get to last night? I rang.’

‘Sorry.’ He wandered to the window to watch blazered youngsters in the quad below beginning to loiter on building-corners. ‘I switched the thing off. I spent a happy hour in a state-of-the-nation debate, followed by a happy hour at the pub. What do you make of David Gallow, by the way?’

‘Head of History? Bit up himself, I thought.’

‘He’s an assistant Housemaster, isn’t he?’

Jacquie was rummaging in the pile on the chair for her coat. ‘Yes, Kipling, I think. Why?’

‘So, he lives on site?’

‘Yes. As I understand it, all Housemasters and their assistants do. And the Head of PE.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Max,’ she spun him away from the window. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to share, anything else that’s slipped your mind? So far we’ve had young Jenkins, Gaynor Ames and rather a lot of nookie in the boat-house.’

‘No, no,’ he laughed. ‘It’s just that Gallow dropped me at school after the pub and then drove off, heading somewhere else.’

‘What time was this?’

‘God, way after closing, but don’t tell the law. Must have been nearly twelve.’

‘Which way did he go?’

‘Er … let’s see, past the gate … East.’

‘Towards Petersfield.’

‘Could be.’

‘Is he back?’ It was Jacquie’s turn to look down from the window. ‘What does he drive?’

‘Um, ah, now you’ve asked me.’

‘Oh, Max, you’re hopeless.’

‘No, wait a minute. That’s it. Green jobbie, next to the Range Rover.’

‘Ah yes,’ Jacquie smiled. ‘What we in the real world would call a Proton.’ She could have bitten her tongue. She, of all people, knew why Peter Maxwell didn’t drive, couldn’t tell one car from another. She knew about his wife and baby, the loved ones before he’d known her. She’d held him in the lonely watches of the night when he’d stirred, reliving it all in his mind, the roar of steel and the splinter of glass. She’d kissed the tear that trickled sometimes in the keenness of the wind.

‘There’s something else.’ She broke away, making for his door, her public face on already. ‘I talked to DCI West yesterday.’

‘I suspect you deserve a medal for that,’ he said.

‘Hall’s here working under cover.’

‘Henry told you this?’ Maxwell crossed the room to her.

‘No, West. Max, stay with the plot.’

‘What did he say?’

She sighed. ‘Either he was fishing. Or he thought I know more than I do. Or … Christ, Max, I don’t know which way is up any more.’

‘All right, all right,’ he took her cheeks in his hands and kissed her forehead tenderly, leading her back to the bed and sitting her on it. ‘Now, think, sweetheart. What exactly did West say?’

She blinked in concentration. ‘He said “I know about the drugs bust and I know who’s involved.’”

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes. But, Max, it has to be something like that. I never went along with all this inter-force cooperation, swappy-swappy cobblers. There may be forty-three police forces in this country, but we all operate on similar lines, for God’s sake. What’s to be gained?’

‘What’s to be gained from my being at Grimond’s?’ Maxwell was asking himself again.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ she said. ‘It only makes any sense if Henry’s been drafted in to clean up a case.’

‘And?’

‘And that would only be necessary if there’s police involvement. Somebody on the Hampshire force is bent.’

‘Drugs?’ Maxwell was trying to piece it all together. ‘Who?’

‘Not West,’ Jacquie said. ‘He told me about it. Could be one of his team, I suppose. I’ve only met a couple of them.’

‘Drugs, Jacquie,’ Maxwell was crouching on his heels in front of her. ‘You’ve interviewed all staff now, a goodly proportion of the sixth form. Anything?’

‘Every school has a drugs problem, Max. Christ, you know that, you teach at Leighford High, for God’s sake.’

‘Thank you for that, darling,’ he sighed. ‘It’s difficult to soar with eagles when you’re working with turkeys.’

‘Yes, but it’s usually worse in the private sector, Max,’ Jacquie told him. ‘They’ve got more money. They’ve already got the designer jeans and the platinum mobiles, so what other kicks are out there?’

‘Tut, tut, Woman Policeman,’ Maxwell scolded. ‘Do I detect a teensy bit of the politics of envy there?’

‘You get my drift, Max.’

‘I do. But would you say it merits West’s use the word “bust”? Is it that major a problem?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jacquie said. ‘If that’s Hall’s aim, his questions have been pretty oblique. But on thing’s for sure; I’ve got to tackle him about it. The DCI has some explaining to do. Thanks the tape, Max. And thanks for the breakfast Now, I’ve really got to go.’

Maxwell was still crouching in front of her. ‘Of course you have, darling,’ he said. ‘And I’d love to let you, but unfortunately, my knees have seized up. And that’s rather bad news bearing in mind I’m playing rugger on Saturday.’

15

Just another manic Thursday. Mark West was tetchier than usual, out of ciggies and out leads. It was briefing time at Selborne and team crowded around him, wreathed in smoke and hoping for something, anything, from the guv’nor. It was always the same ten days into murder enquiry. Everybody’d tried the obvious. The house-to-house on Tim Robinson elicited almost nothing. He’d shopped at local Asda, had his bike fixed by the local bike dealer. He probably went to the local cinema and the local library, but nobody remembered that. They tried the pubs, did Mark West’s foot-sore coppers, in an attempt to resolve the dilemma over the drink question. A teetotaller with booze in the house. Kept for friends? If so, who? Did he go drinking with them, even if he was sitting at the bar sipping sarsaparilla with a dash of cherry? In the event, nothing. The morgue photo wasn’t horrific, but it was clearly of a dead man who didn’t look his best.

‘Course, I wouldn’t have seen him with his eyes shut,’ was the banal, if predictable, response from many a landlord in Petersfield. ‘Not unless he had a real skinful. Talking of which, we’ve got special offer on Theakston’s at the moment.

The Blundells, Robinson’s neighbours, had given useful descriptions of the men who paid the late PE teacher a visit one dark night. Or at least, Mr Blundell did, his wild-haired wife muttering the script at his elbow. But useful descriptions or not, they were just three blokes, needles in haystacks.

As for the missing Mr Tubbs, another resounding blank. His Mummy and Daddy lived in Harlow, on the probable grounds that somebody had to, and could not have been more helpful.

‘Jeremy’s a good boy,’ the slightly dotty Mrs Tubbs had told DI Sandy Berman. She had a long chelonian neck and hair like a Gorgon’s. ‘We’re enormously proud of him. I’ve got his graduation photo somewhere …’ and by the time Sandy Berman left, he could have written the man’s biography. Only one note had jarred. On his way out, the silent Mr Tubbs senior, still upright, still sprightly, had shown him to his car. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ he muttered. ‘Jeremy’s a little deviant. Always has been. Had this cocker spaniel once … well, you can fill in the details, I’m sure. Whatever’s going on, he’s up to his unpleasant neck in it, believe me. And to think, I wanted him to follow me into the Paras! I ask you!’

But Sandy Berman wasn’t able to ask the old disappointee anything, because he slammed the door and Berman heard the bolts slide. Cooperation seemed to have come to an end.

‘It’s a bright yellow fucking MG!’ West bawled, tired of brick walls and signs that read ‘Road Closed’. ‘How many of those can there be? Pete, what’s the news from Dover?’

‘Usual thing, guv,’ DS Walters said. ‘They’re snowed under with fighting the tide of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.’

‘I want a bastard who’s trying to get out, not a load of foreign spongers trying to get in. Who’s on airports?’

‘Me, guv.’ Chapell was waving a piece of paper at him. Clearly it was not peace in his time.

‘Right, Steve. Anything?’

Chapell was shaking his head. ‘No yellow MG,’ he said. ‘No one’s answering his description.’

West looked at the sheet on his desk, the mug shot faxed through from Grimond’s and now distributed nationwide. Jeremy Tubbs smirked back at him, smug, defiant, as elusive as the scarlet fucking pimpernel. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘Get me Grimond’s. I want to talk to Hall. And, Lynda …’

‘Yes, sir,’ the dumpy little WPC looked up, pleased to be asked to do anything really.

‘Get me some ciggies, will you? I’m out.’

‘Well, well.’ Henry Hall put the phone down and looked at Jacquie. It wasn’t elevenses yet and they’d just started on Austen House. Cassandra James had arrived first, a fashionable few minutes late and had sat cross-legged in front of the Chief Inspector, swinging one foot and smouldering at him with those deep, dark eyes. It usually worked. Today was no exception. By the time she left, she had Henry Hall eating out of her hand. Or at least opening the door for her. Jacquie was less impressed. And less convinced. ‘That was DCI West,’ Hall told her.

Jacquie was adjusting the tape, ready for the next interview. ‘Oh?’

‘He’s got a proposition for us … well, for you, really.’

‘Oh.’ Jacquie didn’t like the sound of this already.

‘He’s proposing a swap,’ Hall told her. ‘In the interests of solving the case. Or cases or whatever we’re actually dealing with here.’

‘A swap?’

Hall nodded. ‘I get DS Denise McGovern. He gets you.’

‘I sound like a concubine,’ she frowned. It was a word she’d learned from Peter Maxwell.

‘I don’t think it’ll come to that,’ Hall said with just a hint of a smile.

‘Are you ordering me to go, sir?’

‘No.’ Hall rested his hands behind his head, lolling back in his chair. ‘But I think it would be a good idea.’

‘For whom?’

‘For me,’ he answered her. ‘I’m too cut off here, Jacquie.’ He flicked the clicker on his biro. ‘I need a window on the outside.’

‘And West needs one in here.’

Hall nodded. ‘Phones and faxes aren’t doing it, are they?’

Jacquie clicked in the new tape. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. But I want some answers first.’

‘Oh?’ This wasn’t like Jacquie Carpenter. She had a mind of her own, certainly. And there were times when, fleetingly, Hall had had cause to question the woman’s loyalty. But that had usually been because somewhere in the background, lurked the Svengali that was Peter Maxwell. Was that what this was all about? ‘Answers to what?’

She took the bull by the horns. ‘Something about a drugs bust. Something about a bent copper?’

There was a silence. ‘Who’s been putting those ideas into your head?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘DCI West,’ Jacquie said. ‘It was something he let slip when I was at Selborne last.’

‘So the grapevine works,’ Hall nodded.

‘Sir?’

‘DS McGovern was, as I suspected, a plant. Oh, I’m not surprised and it doesn’t matter. It works rather well, in fact.’

‘What does?’

‘You’d have done the same, I’m sure.’

‘Sir, you’ll have to excuse my French, but what the piss are you talking about?’

‘It’s not drugs, Jacquie,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a paedophile ring.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Here at Grimond’s?’

Hall nodded. ‘Partly.’

Jacquie sat down. ‘So that’s why none of your questions were about possession … or dealing, for that matter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hall said. ‘I should have filled you in from Day One, Jacquie, but I wasn’t sure who knew what. In fact,’ he sat forward again, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses, ‘in that respect, nothing’s changed. I was called in by David Mason, the Chief Superintendent. One of his team is part of it.’

Jacquie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh because some, at least, of Hall’s sloppy policework was falling into place. And cry because the cold-hearted bastard had left her out, sidelined her. ‘Why did you send for me, then, if you weren’t prepared to trust me?’