Maxwell's Return (16 page)

Maxwell sighed and ruffled his son’s hair. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Who knows? Quick game of Snap before bedtime?’

‘Can we play Scrabble?’ Nolan was already out of the chair and halfway across the landing heading for the games cupboard.

‘All right,’ Maxwell said. ‘But be gentle with me. You know you always win.’

Nolan stopped and turned. ‘Do you
let
me win, Dads?’ he asked.

Maxwell slumped and shook his head. ‘I did that once, when you were about two,’ he said. ‘Since then, it’s been a fair fight.’

Nolan pulled out the box and opened the lid. He looked up at his father and winked at the cat, stretched out on the sofa, possession being nine points of the law. ‘Best of three?’

Later that night, bloody but unbowed, Maxwell tucked the Scrabble King
into bed and went one floor up into the attic to start work on another member of the Light Brigade, Private Charles Cooper of the 11
^th
Prince Albert’s Own. Not much was known about this man. He had been a plumber beforehand and was killed in theCharge, so Maxwell could use a little licence. He thought he might make him look like Bernard Ryan and then, in years to come, he would be able to work back to when he was made. He was an historian. He couldn’t help it. He began by carefully gluing Cooper’s legs together and then the legs to the torso. The angle of the head was always a problem. The moment Maxwell had chosen to depict was the one when Louis Nolan (no relation to his son) had ridden up to Cardigan with the fateful order that would do for men like Trooper Cooper in the next twenty minutes. The Brigade were just sitting their horses, waiting. Now, for a challenge, he’d give the ex-plumber a boiled egg to eat, as some of the real men had. So, he head would be… he checked it through his modelling lens… like so.

He looked over his shoulder at the purring mound of cat on top of the old linen basket which, over the years, had taken on the shape of the animal’s body. ‘Awake, Count?’ he asked.

The purring changed tone and he took it for a ‘Yes.’

‘I wonder how the Mem is getting on with young April?’ he said. ‘I can’t think she is still with her, can you? It’s…’ he squinted over into the gloom beyond his lamplight, ‘. . . can you see the clock from there, Count? No? Well, let’s just call it late, then. Perhaps she’s out making an
arrest, eh? That
would
be a bit of a result.’

He carried on positioning Cooper’s arms for a moment or two, bringing the plastic hands together as though shelling an egg and then leaned over and prodded the cat in a particularly portly part with his brush.

‘I said, that
would
be a bit of a result.’ The cat turned over with a grunt and Maxwell nodded. ‘Exactly. The poor kid is still pregnant, though. Just another statistic, you might say and before you were Done I daresay you were responsible for many such. But you didn’t prey on kittens, did you, unless you fancied a snack, presumably. This is an adult, not a kid who opens his flies and his brains fall out. He knows better. It’s a choice and it’s a choice we’ve got to prevent him making again.’

There was a pause, totally silent apart from a slight creak from the linen basket.

‘Yes,’ Maxwell said, gesturing at the cat. ‘I did say “we”. After all, it was me who got Bernard’s alibi, it was me to whom Lindsey came with her little problem… No, I don’t know why. Race memory, I suppose. So, yes, the bottom line, my feline friend, my companion of a vole, “we” I said and “we” I mean. Let’s talk serial killers, Count.’

Maxwell set the 54mm ex-plumber aside to dry and stared up at the stars beginning to come out beyond his skylight. ‘Since you are one, I expect your input to be pithy and precise. As I understand it, we left 74% of them behind when we left the dear ol’ US of A. So all we have to
worry about are the remaining 86% who live here in Leighford. Sorry.’ He caught the cat’s steely gaze. ‘A
little
flippant perhaps, bearing in mind the subject matter. Let’s look at the victims first of all. Two dead girls, both mid-teens and a possible third – attempted. Did they know each other? Josie went to St Olave’s – most kids meet via school unless they’re neighbours. Molly went there too, but only for a few days, tasters for this coming term. Lindsey’s girl was at Leighford for a while – yes, of course, Count,’ he heard the animal’s disapproving inrush of breath. ‘I’ll be checking with her Year Head tomorrow; although… Year Seven, that’s Angie ‘Airhead’ Skillington, so my hopes are not of the highest.’

He was twirling the paintbrush in his fingers. ‘Of course, they could have met at a disco, nightclub, wherever girlies go after dark. School may be a red herring,’ and he winked at Metternich. ‘Makes your mouth water, doesn’t it, me ol’ piscavore? One type of serial killer is disorganised. He’s driven by forces he can’t control, so he’s an opportunist. He’ll launch a blitz attack one night and he’s brought no murder weapon with him. In this case, the cause of death is strangulation so the weapon of choice is a ligature of some kind or his bare hands. He leaves the body where it is and does a runner…’

Maxwell sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was getting too old for this. Close-focus modelling
and
crime-solving, all at the end of a day’s work. Where was the light at the end of the tunnel?

‘But that’s not his MO, is it, Count?’ he said, picking up the two
halves of Private Cooper’s horse, minus, for the moment, head and tail. ‘Chummy doesn’t leap on people out of the shadows. He selects them, grooms them. Hell, if Lindsey’s girl’s bloke is our man, he lives with them. Sex, presumably, is consensual, so that’s not likely to be the motive. But power, you see, Count, power. Robbie Coltrane in
Cracker
used to do it well, didn’t he? Remember?’

The cat didn’t.

Maxwell lapsed into Lowland Scots. ‘He’s won the girl away from her family, her friends. She’s his plaything now. She belongs to him.’ He dropped the Coltrane suddenly, and became what passed for himself again. ‘The Home Secretary assures us that domestic slavery is all too common in this great country of ours. Subservients brought up in confined spaces, locked into some ghastly Stockholm Syndrome relationship with their captors. Is that what we’re talking about here? And does the captor suddenly have no more use – or no more space – for these girls? So he discards them, like so much recyclable waste?’

He frowned at the black and white beast coiled in front of him. ‘Talking of which,’ he sighed, ‘Isn’t it about time you began your cycle of killing? I’m sure there’s a rodent out there somewhere with your name on it – if you’ll excuse the unlikely idiom for a moment. Off you bugger – I think I just heard the Mem draw up outside and she’ll want a bite to eat.’

CHAPTER TEN

The Head of Sixth Form’s ears had not misled him and he met Jacquie on the landing, she at the top of the stairs, he at the bottom. She smiled weakly at him and mimed a cup of tea and a sandwich as she headed for the sitting room where he heard her bag land with a thump on the floor. This was standard practice for his wife who, although clean, could never be accused of being tidy. The floor for her was just one enormous shelf and she used it to its maximum. The house was still Hector Gold clean – which meant very clean indeed – but things were beginning to gather in the corners, including a new civilization of socks in the corner of the bedroom. Never mind, Maxwell smiled and looked back over his shoulder to where Jacquie’s shadow danced on the wall between the windows overlooking the street, he wouldn’t have her any other way.

When he joined her in the sitting room, cup of tea steaming and the sandwich a tempting round of her favourite ham and hummus, he found her relaxed back in her favourite chair and her feet up on a stool. She held out a hand wordlessly for the tray and took a swig and a mouthful, in that order. She chewed with her eyes closed and then sighed. ‘You have no idea how much I was looking forward to that,’ she said, looking up at
him. ‘Your ex-star mathematician might be bright but she’s not much of a hostess.’

‘A lot on her plate,’ Maxwell suggested.

‘Hmm.’ She took another bite of her sandwich and nodded. ‘She does have a houseful. But I don’t know if it is going to get much bigger after all.’

‘Oh?’ If Maxwell was surprised at the level of sharing, he didn’t show it.

‘I’m telling you this because I have no doubt Lindsey will be round tomorrow telling nice Mr Maxwell all about it, how his nasty wife asked her April all sorts of things that are rude and unnecessary. She has suddenly decided to pretend that April is as innocent as a babe unborn – is that a quote? It sounds like one. Anyway, I think someone, her mother perhaps or a friend, has told her that if she admits that April has been at it like a weasel since she left Junior School, the Social will be round to take the kids, including her own unborn one. So we had a bit of an uphill struggle, to say the least. I kicked the mother out from the first – she really does call a spade a spade. Some of the words she used for having sex I’m going to have to look up later. Lindsey isn’t foul mouthed, but she seems totally… unsurprised, is the word, I think. When she remembered, that is.’

‘She did take me aback a bit, being so casual about the promiscuity.’ Maxwell had thought he knew it all, but he had to admit
that Lindsey took lax parenting to a new level.

‘Yes, well, in the end, we had to get her to leave the room as well. We could hear the two of them at it hammer and tongs in the kitchen. Blaming each other, I suppose. Fortunately, one of our appropriate adults had just come in with her expenses sheet as I was leaving the Nick and I nabbed her to come with me.’

‘Ah, you had your precognition turned on all right,’ Maxwell smiled.

‘I certainly did. For some reason, the kid really took to her. Most of the time she does the appropriate bit with some real low-lives so she came into her own when dealing with basically a very nice, very scared little girl.’

‘You mentioned the family not getting bigger…’

‘Yes,’ Jacquie frowned and put her hand on her own stomach, reminiscently. ‘I think April may be planning a termination. She isn’t very far along and she certainly fits all the criteria for getting one quickly. And…’ she paused, struggling for words. Since having Nolan, it was sometimes hard to be hard. She swallowed and took another run at it. ‘It will be easier for us to extract DNA. From the foetus, you know, rather than by amniocentesis.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said softly.

‘Anyway, she’s seeing a social worker tomorrow. I personally think that is the only way out, but it has to be her decision, in the end.’

‘Does it make any difference the baby being the result of sexual assault?’ Maxwell checked.

‘Is it?’ Jacquie said, suddenly remembering her sandwich and taking another bite. ‘There was no assault as far as I could tell. This bloke…’

‘Do we have a name? We can’t keep calling him “this bloke” can we?’

‘Bearing in mind that you shouldn’t be calling him anything at all,’ she reminded him.

‘Always bearing that in mind, dearest, of course,’ he said. ‘So, name?’

‘No, and funny you should call me “dearest” at that point, because apparently, he told her that names were only labels, that they were no longer who they had once been before they met and so they only used endearments.’

Maxwell whistled through his teeth. ‘What a very,
very
clever predator you have to catch, Detective Inspector Jacqueline Bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-with-links-of-iron Carpenter-Maxwell, to give you your full title.’

‘Now, that
is
a quote!’

‘Macaulay, well spotted, yes. But that is just what I would do, if I wanted to trap and discard someone. Disorient them by taking away their identity, whilst making them think that losing their name is a good thing
and
meanwhile
making sure they don’t know who you are. Genius!’ Maxwell tried not to grin – this man was a monster and had to be stopped. But still… it was damned clever.

‘We asked her if she had any seen any post, had anyone rung and overheard him answer with his name, all that; but the answer was no – he never slipped, not once. And of course, using random endearments makes it foolproof in bed. None of this accidentally murmuring the wrong name.’

‘Indeed, Mousehabit,’ he said. ‘It does. This bloke… oh, for heavens’ sake,’ he said, ‘you must have a name for him. The Vole or something.’

‘The case has been assigned a random name, yes, just for filing and reference, but it came out as Umbrella. The next one copped Viking which would have been easier to use without laughing, but that went to someone who has been widdling in other people’s wheelie bins. Quite impressive range, by all accounts.’ She finished her tea in one gulp and put her tray to one side, brushing random crumbs from her lap. ‘Delicious, thank you,’ she smiled.

Maxwell was delighted, however. ‘Umbrella man!’ he said. ‘From the Zapruder film.’ He looked at her before her went on.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, flapping a hand. ‘Grassy knoll, all that. Okay, Umbrella Man he is. However, may I point out that this is no help at all, except for convenience. We can’t search the electoral roll for Mr U Man,
can we?’

‘No, but it helps him seem more real, rather than a nebulous “bloke”. Next, address?’

‘Absolutely no help. She ran out in a blind panic, was driven home by what she describes as a nice lady, she thinks she might be foreign because she was sitting on the wrong side of the car.’

‘Tourist.’ Maxwell slumped in his seat.

‘Indeed. Tourist. And she could be anywhere in Europe by now. We’ll have to leave that strand as something to follow when all else fails. In any case, April thinks she may have run as much as half a mile before getting picked up.’

‘Umm, what else is there?’ Maxwell held up a wagging finger.

‘Well, description, I suppose. Sadly, she was looking through the eyes of love.’

‘Uh oh! Let me guess. In the old days it would have been Sean Connery. Who is it now?’

‘Well, this is where I was surprised. Daniel Craig, so same franchise. I took this to mean that he really is that type. Daniel Craig rather than Daniel Radcliffe. So we have settled on medium height, up to six foot. Lightish hair rather than dark. Thirties rather than twenties…’