Maxwell's Point (10 page)

‘Links, people,’ Henry Hall was lolling against his desk, the coastal map on the PowerPoint behind him.

‘Distance.’ Sheila Kindling must be bucking for promotion, biro behind her ear.

‘Go on.’

The DC smoothed down her skirt before she waddled to the front. In her first week as a detective, she’d got the damn thing caught up in her knickers, with the inevitable result. No wolf whistles this time; no ‘get ’em off, darling,’ so she assumed all
was well. She just remembered to whip the biro off her head.

‘If we go by road from Dead Man’s Point to the Gardens, that’s the best part of two miles. But by the coastal path,
much
shorter. That’s how it was done.’

‘Why?’ George Bronson wasn’t convinced.

‘How busy is the path?’ Hall still wanted to know. ‘Anybody followed up on this?’

Benny Palister had. ‘The National Parks Authority did a survey in the area two years ago. The average age of a coastal path walker is fifty-three. There were six accidents in 2004 and three examples of litigation costing the taxpayer…’

‘Benny,’ Hall cut in softly, rather like the Policeman’s Excuse Me. ‘Is this going anywhere?’

‘Sorry, guv. It’s all they’ve got.’

‘Right,’ Hall sighed. ‘So we’re back to common sense. Timings. Jacquie?’

‘We’ve nothing conclusive on Taylor, guv,’ she said. ‘We can only assume he was buried after dark since broad daylight would be a little risky.’

‘And Henderson?’

‘He must have been dumped in the bushes at dusk.’ Geoff Hare was stabbing out his fag. ‘Same reason.’

‘Why not night?’ Jacquie checked him.

‘That’s the big one, people,’ Hall nodded. ‘And we’re going round in circles on this.’

‘Perhaps our boy’s got a death wish. Wants to be caught.’

It wouldn’t be the first time. Jacquie knew it. Hall knew it. Benny Palister knew it now, although he didn’t before. Shrewd lad was Benny; he watched his elders and betters and he
learnt
. Peter Maxwell would have been proud of him.

‘He could give himself up,’ Hare shrugged. ‘Save us all a bloody job.’

‘Ah, but then there’d be no fun,’ Bronson grinned. ‘No sense of challenge. And think of the overtime you’d be losing.’

Sniggers all round. Geoff Hare was the Scrooge of Leighford Nick. The sort of bloke who checks the collection plate in church for signs of stolen goods, then passes it on.

‘Links,’ Hall was nothing if not persistent.

‘Bing-go!’ Sheila Kindling had gone back to her seat now, her attempt to trace the trajectory of the killer having been somewhat sidelined. Now her arm was in the air, like a kid desperate for a pee. Bronson and Hare were unimpressed. Women on the Force, sure, but why couldn’t they all be like Jacquie Carpenter? But all eyes were on the girl, so presumably she was happy enough, pen behind her ear again. ‘Gerald Henderson did a building job last year – in Brighton.’

‘And?’ Hall was waiting for the other shoe to fall.

‘His client was one James Doolan.’

‘Jimmy the Snail,’ somebody muttered. Somebody else whistled. Everybody was secretly impressed. Sheila tried not to preen too much.

‘Well done,’ Hall said. ‘Did you talk to Mrs Henderson about this…George?’

‘Didn’t know about it then, guv,’ the DI had to admit, a little shamefaced. ‘We can go back.’

‘Jacquie, you do it. Can you get there this afternoon?’

‘Yes, guv.’ She didn’t even look at her watch. This was the first breakthrough they’d had and everybody knew it.

‘Good. What’s the lab got for us, Geoff?’

Hare was well into his next ciggie, but he waited for the
smoke to clear from his eyes first. ‘The lab says Taylor was killed in a vehicle, guv.’

One or two people in the room hadn’t got the goss on that yet, so the murmurs rippled like the sunlight shafts between the venetian blind slats.

‘And he was naked?’ Hall checked.

‘Astley thinks he was naked at the time of death, yes.’

‘Naked in a car.’ Hall was underlining it for everybody.

‘
Cherchez la femme
,’ George Bronson crowed. He’d been to a Language College. ‘Assuming
femmes
were Taylor’s thing.’

‘That’s exactly what we’re doing,’ Hall said. ‘What’s the lab got on the car?’

‘His own, guv. Merc. Clapped out,’ Hare told him. ‘Either that or the fibres came from another vehicle of the same age and make.’

‘What are the odds?’ somebody muttered.

‘All right.’ Hall was piecing it together. ‘So let’s assume Wide Boy was enjoying a little R and R in the back of his car…’

‘Front, guv,’ Jacquie said.

‘Don’t tell me there’s a difference between the fibres of back and front car seats.’ Hare couldn’t believe it.

‘I’m not telling you anything of the sort, Geoffrey.’ Jacquie could bridle for England when the mood took her. ‘Astley now thinks Taylor was strangled from behind, not from the side. And with quite a bit of leverage involved. So unless our man was sitting with the nodding dog on the shelf, Wide Boy was sitting in the front.’

Whistles and a ripple of applause. Collapse of stout sergeant.

‘Anything similar on Henderson?’ Hall brought the moment to a halt.

‘Definitely killed in his clothes, guv,’ Hare said. ‘The blood pattern is very distinct. Shirt, trousers. And he was standing up.’

‘Attack from the front?’ Hall’s mind was focusing, but it was George Bronson who got there first.

‘We’re talking about two different killers, surely.’

‘Go on, George.’

‘Taylor is killed, naked, in his car, from behind, using a ligature – some instrument inserted in the loop of his crucifix until life was extinct. Henderson, fully clothed, standing up, so presumably not in a car, by six stabs of a knife. Different MO, different scenario, different direction. Hey presto, two killers.’

‘Yet,’ Hall reminded them, ‘two middle-aged men, bodies found a stone’s throw apart. And they knew each other. Jacquie, get your wheels out as
The Sweeney
taught us to say. In the meantime, people, keep probing. I want the last known movements of both men on my system by chucking out time. Clear?’

It was.

‘No, it wasn’t just that,’ Maxwell was sprawled on his settee, getting a Southern Comfort down his neck. ‘No, Louise Bedford was definitely rattled.’

‘Can you wonder at it?’ Jacquie asked him, sipping her more modest red wine. ‘Crusty old fart of a teacher she hasn’t seen for the best part of a year comes the heavy and starts asking about dead bodies. I’d run a mile.’

‘Thanks, heart of darkness,’ he grunted. ‘And less of the old, if you don’t mind. I can still give Mr Burns a run for his money. Doh!’ and he slapped his head in a perfect Homer Simpson.

‘You were out of line, Max,’ she shook her head. ‘What did you hope to learn?’

‘There you have me,’ Maxwell confessed, watching the lamplight glow in the clear amber of the glass. ‘You and I, angel face, belong to that exclusive and slightly shell-shocked club called The People Who’ve Stumbled On Bodies. You in your line of work. And me? Well, just lucky, I guess. Louise has joined that club now. There’s no doubt about it – you’re never the same again.’

‘But she’d already had a grilling, Max,’ Jacquie told him. ‘Me, the first uniform at the scene, Henry Hall. She’d had a bellyful on the night in question. She didn’t need you adding to it all.’

Maxwell looked up at her. ‘Do I sense a little bit of needle here, Woman Policeman? What is this? All girls together?’

‘It’s nothing to do with that, Max.’ She finished her drink. ‘It’s that old problem of yours, not being able to keep your nose out.’

It was her turn to look at him. She put the glass down and coiled herself on the arm of the settee, cradling his neck. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I know it’s difficult. You and Louise go back a long way. Hell, you and I go back about the same time – though hopefully in a rather different capacity.’ She raised an eyebrow at him and they both laughed.

‘Body language,’ Maxwell hugged her with his non-
glass-holding
hand. ‘That’s what it’s all about. All right, you’re right
of course, I shouldn’t have gone snooping. But having done it, I somehow opened a can of worms. No doubt she was shaken by the whole thing and no doubt, she didn’t want to relive it. But there was something more. I can’t explain it.’

‘Max,’ Jacquie was firm. ‘Promise me you’ll stay away from the kid. It’s none of your business and you’ll only get yourself into trouble. It’s been touch and go so far, but one day Henry Hall is going to reach that distant end of his tether and you won’t know what day it is. I just don’t want that to happen, sweetheart. Not to you. ’Cos,’ she kissed him on the forehead, ‘if it happens to you, it happens to me too.’

‘Well, there it is, Count. The official kiss off from my good lady partner. Tears and fears from a former student who used to be Little Miss Cheerful. Two men on a dead man’s point. Yo ho ho and a barrel of laughs.’

Maxwell caught the narrowed yellow eyes in the gloom of his Inner Sanctum at the top of the stairs. That and the single sweep of the tail, like a car’s rear wiper on intermittent. ‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘Not exactly a moment of high comedy, is it? And I have done a better Robert Newton in my time.’

He hung the pillbox on its familiar peg, squeezing his tired eyes. It had been a long academic year and Mr Retirement was staring him in the face.

‘Do you know the Point at all, Count? Bit far for your nightly range, isn’t it? Great field mice out that way, though, I shouldn’t wonder. No, it’s no good.’ He switched off his modeller’s lamp. ‘I’ll just have to research it myself. Oh shit!’ and he saw extra stars as he caught his temple a nasty one on the way out.

In the beginning, God created librarians. It was on the third day, between plants bearing seeds of their kind and trees bearing fruits, all the vegetable kingdom in one place. It gave them all a rather superior air, as if they were the Chosen People. Time was when they’d behaved like Kipling’s Silent People, pursing their lips behind upright fingers if somebody so much as sniffed. Maxwell could accept all that – it was, after all, part of the Old England of regular, multiple postal deliveries, little blue sachets of salt in crisps and aircraft going bang when they hurtled through the sound barrier. What Maxwell could not accept, however, was the supine dumbing down, the meek acceptance that nobody read books any more. So now, the Chosen People allowed videos and DVDs on the shelves and the Dewey Decimal Sytem began with Arnie Schwarzenegger. Not that Maxwell objected to
films
– they were his lifelong interest, but you shouldn’t be able to borrow them from a book depository. He might as well go to his local undertaker’s to watch one, or perhaps his beautiful launderette. Come to think of it, it wasn’t
that
beautiful the last time he’d looked.

Edna Roxbury saw it differently. She looked not unlike Elsa Lanchester in the
Bride of Dracula
, with a
retroussée
nose and
wild, grey-streaked hair. She definitely saw herself as one of the Elect, that band of custodians of culture that had the key to the secret garden. And she noticed Peter Maxwell sneaking in, appropriately enough, past the gardening section.

‘Aren’t you Peter Maxwell?’ She leaned over the counter like a gargoyle straight out of Notre Dame.

‘I might be, I might be,’ he chose to reply in his best Homer Simpson.

‘You owe the library a maximum fee as a result of losing
Windows for Dummies
four years ago. We’ve sent you plenty of reminders.’

‘Indeed you have,’ Maxwell nodded, leaning on the woman’s counter, echoing her posturally, ‘and I have replied to all of them in like vein. “A window” – and I’m quoting now from my favourite reply – “is an opening, usually made of glass, which allows light into a room.” Conversely – and again I quote “a dummy is a rubberoid instrument designed to soothe fractious babies by resembling a nipple.” – Oh, dear, I’ve shocked you. The Americans call them pacifiers – dummies, that is, not nipples. Now, I am a man of the world, Librarian, and I am aware that the book to which you refer is neither about glass apertures in walls nor infant comforts. That may possibly give you some idea of the likelihood of my having borrowed the wretched thing in the first place. I am not now, nor have I ever been, remotely interested in computing.’

‘Our records are never wrong.’ Ms Roxbury bridled, furious at the man’s arrogance.

‘Oh, come now, dear lady.’ Maxwell threw his arms wide. ‘Your records are stored on the very machines we are talking about. A very wise man once told me you only get out of one
of those contraptions what you put into it. His name was Bill Gates.’

‘Meaning?’ Ms Roxbury arched an eyebrow.

Maxwell surveyed the staff at Leighford Library. One was a hundred and sixty-eight years old. Another hadn’t yet learned to shave. And the third was a combination of the two – Ms Roxbury.

‘I rest my case,’ Maxwell said. Then he froze and pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Madam,’ he said with a gravel that could freeze blood. ‘You appear to have moved the Local History section.’

‘County policy,’ Ms Roxbury spoke with all the weight of local government behind her. ‘Due to a lack of interest, alack, in local studies, all such material has been removed to Public Records.’

‘Public…?’ Maxwell was aghast. He closed to her, remembering to close his mouth, despite the shock of the news he’d just heard, praying that his heart was still beating. ‘Are you telling me,’ he asked, ‘that you have placed priceless artefacts in the hands of Malcolm Desmond? Malcolm “eBay” Desmond? It defies belief. Not, you understand, that I know what “eBay” is.’

‘All I wanted, Count,’ Peter Maxwell was sprawled on his sofa, his infant son doggo on his chest, ‘was to ascertain the local low-down on Dead Man’s Point.’

The cat was unmoved. He had no idea where this place was or of its significance. It was just part of his Master’s madness; you learned, in the end, to live with it.

‘Yes, I know it’s remarkable that libraries are open on Sundays, when in our day etcetera etcetera…’ (it
was
a good
Yul Brynner in
The King and I
) ‘but they do close on Thursdays by way of compensation, so let’s not get
too
dewy-eyed
about it. Or dewey-decimalled for that matter. The plain fact is, I’m no further forward.’

‘Bedtime, young man.’ Jacquie hurtled round the corner, a pile of fresh nappies under one arm.

‘Young man,’ Maxwell gurgled. ‘How sweet you are.’

‘Not you,’ Jacquie scowled at him. ‘Come on, little one.’ She hauled Nolan up onto her other shoulder. ‘Wooden hill to Bedfordshire time. You boys, human and feline, chew the fat for a while. Supper in half an hour, OK?’

‘Wonderful, heart,’ Maxwell said, reaching for the Southern Comfort he’d all but forgotten about. ‘And don’t say “OK”. It’s unbecoming of an officer and a lady.’

Metternich yawned. It had been a long, hot, summer’s day, not exactly full of soda and pretzels and beer, because, to be brutally frank, he didn’t really like those things. The leftover chicken was scrummy, though, for lunch, and he’d ambushed a vole for High Tea. He’d have liked a bit of a doze, but the sidewhiskered old fart would keep whittering on.

‘You see, I can’t help thinking,’ Maxwell winced anew as the amber nectar hit his tonsils, ‘that all this has to do with Steph Courtney and that rather bizarre little scene she witnessed at The Dam. But what
did
she see, Count, eh? Oh, you with your twenty-twenty hindsight vision wouldn’t find it a problem, would you? But it was a
naked
body. And the good lady who shares this house with us let slip in an unguarded moment that David Taylor, spinster not of this parish, was killed while naked. Killed by a man and a woman. What’s that, then? Some sort of Lonely Hearts re-creation? Oh, it’s
before your time, Count – two charmers called Beck and Fernandez lured lonely men with promises of nuptial bliss and killed them for their money. Anyhoo,’ he heard the bedroom door click and Jacquie’s feet on the stairs, ‘that’s enough about her. She’s walking in.’

‘That little man is really pooped,’ Jacquie said. Maxwell poured her a large one as she reached ground level. ‘Must be all that chicken.’

‘Yep,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘Bit of a trencherman is our Nole. Well, heart – decision time.’

Jacquie flopped down in the chair opposite the sprawling mass that was her partner in crime. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘
Mañana
, isn’t it?’

‘You’ll do it?’ he asked her.

‘I’m the one with the warrant card,’ she smiled.

‘I’m the one with the colleague who speaka da lingo.’

‘Well, that’s right,’ Jacquie said. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that. You can get…thing to ring.’

‘No, dearest,’ Maxwell was patience itself. ‘Thing – or to be accurate, Thing
ee
is the morning receptionist at Leighford High. Not to be confused with Thingee Two, who is on in the afternoons. They’re both lovely people, but I’m not sure they’re up for long distance calls to Menorca to ask a Spanish couple where the Hell their daughter is.’

‘No, no,’ Jacquie was getting her head around the Tia Maria, ‘I was talking about that Spanish girl – what’s her name? Carolina? She could do it. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll step in with my Interpol hat on.’

‘And very nice you’ll look, too,’ Maxwell nodded sagely.

Sarah Rossiter didn’t much like the look of the pallid young man with the hoodie who was sitting in the front office of the
Advertiser
whizzing through the microfiche on the screen. He had taken his hoodie off, to be fair, but even so, there was something about his stare that she didn’t care for. And he’d asked to see anything they had on the Taylor murder. He had one of those annoying i-Pod things stuck in his ears, the bass coming through loud enough to bring on one of her heads. How he could hear anything with that noise going on she couldn’t imagine. And not content with all that, he suddenly dashed out of the office, nearly bowling over the two journalists nattering in the doorway.

Bernard Ryan was in full cry that Monday morning as the eager Young Turks that were Leighford High students dragged themselves onto the premises.

‘You’re late.’ He caught the eye of a hooded young man lurching along by the limes that shaded the gates. The Deputy Head wasn’t
quite
sure whether he attended Leighford High or not, but dressed like that, he must have been one on Maxwell’s Own. It was only nine o’two and the sun was already blazing. The lad under the hood must have been awash with sweat, but Peter Maxwell recognised the syndrome. Earlier forms of life had sacrificed all to be the slaves of fashion – broken ribs, ruptured diaphragms, infertility, blood poisoning – all in the name of looking one’s best.

‘Sorry, Mr Ryan,’ Maxwell swung out of Surrey’s saddle with a grace and agility surprising in one so old. ‘The traffic’s a nightmare on the Flyover this morning.’

‘I didn’t mean you, Max.’ Ryan bridled as soon as the hoodie was out of earshot.

‘No, really?’ Maxwell was aghast. He toyed for a moment with handing the man Surrey to park, but he sensed that Bernard Ryan had probably reached the nadir of respect in this school as it was, and Peter Maxwell never kicked a man when he was down. Unless it was James Diamond, the Headmaster. ‘Seen
Señorita
Vasquez this morning? Pretty creature apart from the nose? Flouncy dress and castanets?’

‘Yes, I know who she is, Max. Don’t you know the meaning of political correctness?’

Maxwell’s look would have killed an older man. Or one more sensitive. As it was, Bernard Ryan was probably mid-
to-late
thirties, born in that deadly decade when education was already going to the dogs. When he was a young teacher they’d brought in Inclusion – Jack’s as good as his master. He was still a young teacher when they’d invented Syndromes and naughty little buggers were found to have all kinds of disorders and deficiencies that not only explained, but excused their behaviour. And Bernard Ryan had swallowed it all, hook, line and sink school.

‘Wash your mouth out, Bernard,’ Maxwell bridled in hushed tones. ‘And think yourself lucky that I’m not a bleeding victim of fucking Tourettes, that’s pissing all.’ He wheeled Surrey towards the Languages Block, turned and winked. ‘You have a nice day, now, y’hear.’

‘Smile and Come In’ was written in various languages on the double doors. Maxwell parked Surrey at a rakish angle designed to trip up the German Assistant and obligingly
pushed up the corners of his mouth. He tipped his hat to the CCTV camera overhead.

‘Look at him,’ snarled Dierdre Lessing, the Assistant Headteacher, Girls’ Welfare, half a mile away in Reception, watching the screen monitors as she usually did at that time of the morning. ‘What a reprobate.’

Thingee glanced up from her endlessly ringing phone. She
liked
Mr Maxwell. OK, he didn’t know her name and he all but patted her bum given half a chance, but he was that vanishing breed, a gentleman and a scholar. And there had been one, magic day, when Thingee was very new, when Peter Maxwell had intervened when a particularly obstreperous parent had rung the school, complaining as particularly obstreperous parents will. She remembered every word of the dialogue. It was etched on her heart.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello? Who am I talking to?’

‘Do you mean “To whom am I talking?” This is Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form here at Leighford High. I have just taken the phone from the receptionist here to whom you have just been appallingly rude.’

‘You what?’

‘Whatever your beef is, low-life, take it elsewhere. All policy decisions at this school are taken by the Headteacher, Mr Diamond. Vent your spleen, if you must, on him, but do not, on any account, raise your voice or swear in the telephonic presence of our receptionist. And for the fact that you are able to make this call at all, thank a teacher.’

‘You can’t talk to me like that,’ the disembodied parent had said.

‘
Au contraire
, sir,’ Maxwell responded. ‘I just have. And if you call this number again with the attitude you currently hold, I think I can guarantee you will be charged with making malicious phone calls. We do, after all, know where you live.’ And he’d slammed the receiver down, winking at the girl. ‘Done and done, Thingee. Telephone manner? I’ll say.’

So when Peter Maxwell raised his titfer at the CCTV screen, Thingee couldn’t help but smile. And when that old cow Lessing said what she said, it was all Thingee could do to stop herself kicking her in the shins.

‘Carolina,’ Maxwell hailed his colleague. ‘Are you free?’ His Mr Humphries was a
little
wasted on the Spanish girl, but he did it anyway.

‘I have no lesson at the moment, Mr Maxwell,’ she admitted.

‘Splendid. Fancy making a call?’

‘A call?’

Maxwell deftly removed the baseball cap from Dom Creddle. The hapless lad hadn’t expected to see Mad Max this far south in the building and he’d been taken unawares. ‘End of the day, Dominic. My office. Three of the clock sharp. Or I put this disgusting piece of sartorial inelegance through the shredder.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Dom Creddle hadn’t really understood the last line, but the time and place were already burned into his brain. It was enough.

‘To Menorca,’ Maxwell swept the girl into the Modern Languages Office, piled high with text books and tapes, looking vainly for a telephone he knew must be there somewhere.

Carolina looked blanker than usual.

Maxwell handed her the phone number that Fiona Henderson had given him just days ago. He’d held off doing what he was now doing for long enough. ‘Juanita’s home,’ he said. ‘She still hasn’t come back and we’re getting a tad worried now.’