Maxwell's Return (17 page)

‘Mr Craig would be delighted,’ Maxwell observed. ‘But I also assume this lets out the stepfather, the boyfriend, the builder… I don’t quite know what label to use for the man, lacking, as I do, his name.’

He smiled encouragingly at her but she just smiled right on back.

‘I don’t know why I assume stepfathers have to be older…’ he hinted.

‘Yes, it does let him out. For this one, at least. We are not anxious to put all our eggs in one basket just yet. But, anyway, if I can interrupt myself,’ Jacquie said, ‘we did ask her about age and got some photos out, just the usual suspects, you know, the equivalent of a quick identity parade. She immediately threw out everyone over around thirty five as an old git, so we decided that he is in his thirties.’

‘So, thirties, blondish, tallish… build?’

Jacquie almost blushed. ‘I don’t think you want to know the details. But apparently he does strip off quite well.’

Maxwell chuckled. It wasn’t often his wife was discomfited. ‘Any distinguishing marks or features?’

‘May I refer you to my previous answer?’ she said, ‘or I will have to take the Fifth.’

‘He has five of them?’ Maxwell said, throwing up his hands in horror.

‘To hear April, he would need every one. I think she was trying to shock me and Viv – the appropriate adult – but she gave up after a while. She got quite tearful, poor little soul. All she wanted was someone to love her.’

‘I wonder how he finds these girls?’ Maxwell mused, tapping a
forefinger on his chin.

‘Just prowls, I assume. He certainly picked April up on the Esplanade.’

‘
Leighford
Esplanade?’

‘No. Brighton. But he lives in Leighford. We know that for sure.’

‘So the fact that the other girls come from Brighton way is not a red herring?’ He didn’t usually use the same phrase twice in one evening if he could help it, but sometimes it had to be done.

‘We don’t know. Because we don’t know where he met them, how he got into conversation with them… in fact, without having the perp in custody, we really don’t know much.’ She stopped for a moment and ran the sentence back. She smiled across at Maxwell, who had raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Sorry about the perp thing. Umbrella Man, I mean.’

Maxwell decided to turn the conversation from its current cul de sac. ‘Do you think the DNA will help, however you get it?’

She shrugged. ‘I doubt it, except as proof later. I just don’t get the impression that this bl… Umbrella Man is on our books. His methods don’t really fit the pattern of a large-scale sexual predator. He has taken at least one girl back to his house. He doesn’t like having sex anywhere but inside, according to April, so he isn’t likely to be the sort to jump out at girls and drag them into the bushes. They are the ones that tend to get caught. The impulsive attackers. The flashers. That kind of thing.’

Maxwell looked across at her, noting the shadows under her eyes,
the way one bit of hair stood up at one side of her head where she had run exasperated fingers through it. ‘Early night?’ he asked.

‘Is it still early enough to count as early?’ she asked, squinting at the clock on the DVD player.

‘It depends on where you are,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty early in LA. In fact, it’s positively afternoon. Call it a siesta, and it will seem early. What do you say?’

‘I say I think that sounds like a plan,’ she said. ‘I’ll just look in on Nole and then hit the hay.’

‘If he’s smiling, don’t be surprised,’ Maxwell said.

She cocked her head and put her arms around him, leaning briefly on his shoulder. ‘Scrabble?’ she said, indistinctly.

‘I couldn’t possible comment,’ he said, rubbing her back then giving her a decisive pat. ‘Come on, bed for you, woman. Tomorrow it will be another day, another collar.’

‘Hopefully,’ she said and made for the stairs.

Down on the seafront at Leighford, there was a fin de siècle air abroad, as all the schoolchildren from the town made the most of the last of the late nights. Back to school tomorrow, back to scratchy jumpers, shiny-bummed trousers, new, squeaky shoes. Back to looking like a kid, instead
of anything upwards of twenty. There were a handful of boys there, leaning in gangs on the railings, shouting half-hearted insults at the girls as they tottered past in too high heels and too-tight jeans. They looked like baby colts, all legs and knees, eyelashes out to here, looking for love. Umbrella Man leaned in the shadows of a beach-goods hut, closed now that the season was over. The shutters over the serving hatch made a small niche of the doorway and he could hide in there without looking like a lurking pervert. Because he
wasn’t
a pervert. Of that much he was sure. He just had sex with these girls quite normally, nothing perverted, just a bit rough sometimes. They liked it really. And sometimes things could get… complicated. He felt his erection growing and pressed it with his palm in his specially adapted pocket, the one with no lining. Get down, he muttered. No good approaching his quarry with a hard on. These girls looked for that. Her mates would all laugh and he wouldn’t be able to peel her off from the herd. That’s how he thought of himself, a leopard, sinewy and lithe, a pretty face with a black, carnivorous heart. He leaned forward slightly as he heard the clack of a clique of girls heading his way. He carefully searched every face, looking for the right one. And, yes, what he had been hoping for, the laggard, the weakling, the runt of the litter, a few steps behind, looking a bit sulky, a bit left out. Pretty enough, though. He had his standards. He stepped forward and she turned to him, her little peachy cheek just asking to be stroked, her lips, jammy with gloss, parted in an unspoken question.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

Caroline Morton was in bed, but sleepless. She had gone to bed early, being bone tired, deeply exhausted as only weeks of lying awake can make a person. Her world had been turned upside down. A year ago, she had had everything. A loving husband. A loving father, stepmother, sister. Now, she had nothing. A self-pitying tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye to run down and join the others soaking into her pillow. She reached out for her phone, never far from her because she always seemed to be on call these days, always working. Working and crying, that was her life now. She ran her thumb around the edge of the phone and then punched two keys. She waited as the signal bounced from tower to tower until she heard the ringing sound. To her, it sounded like a standard ring. At the other end, she knew, it sounded like
Stairway to Heaven
played on the spoons in a bucket. Another tear squeezed out, ran down, soaked in.

‘Yes. Morton.’

‘Darling,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s me.’

‘Caroline.’ It wasn’t a greeting. Just a remark.

‘Darling… I… I’m asking you to come home. The house is so empty without you.’

There was a silence at the other end of the phone.

‘Well, it would be, of course, with Mollie gone.’

The tears were flowing now and she turned on her side so she didn’t choke. ‘Don’t be cruel, darling…’ she said. ‘It’s killing me having to act as though everything is all right all day at the office and then to come back here by myself. Darling?’

‘Sorry, what?’

She sat up and heard her own voice grow shrill, taking on the fishwife tone he hated so much. ‘Who’s there? Who have you got there? I can hear her. There’s someone…’

‘Caroline,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you can hear yourself. You ring me to beg me to come back to you and then you start accusing me of… well, whatever it is you’re accusing me of this time. Let me think, who has it been so far? Secretaries; well, of course. Our office has the ugliest lot of staff of any law firm in the country. Colleagues; naturally. Sadly, you can’t insist that the courts only ever use plain prosecutors. Neighbours; goes without saying. But Mollie, Caroline? That took the biscuit and as far as I am concerned all bets are off. I intend to wait a while so I don’t look a total bastard and then I’m divorcing you. I wasn’t going to be so blunt, but you came to me, remember?’

‘But,’ and this time she did choke on her tears, ‘you love me!’

‘Did, Caro, did.’ His voice softened. ‘Look, are you going to be all right? I can come round if you like, but you must understand, it’s over. It really is.’

She blew her nose and gave a determined sniff. She patted her hair into place as though he were next to her in the enormous, empty bed. ‘I don’t want to interrupt your evening,’ she whispered.

‘You’re not interrupting anything,’ he said. ‘Look, give me half an hour. I just want to wake up properly and have a shower or something. Freshen up. I’ll…’

‘Thank you,’ she said, almost inaudible. ‘Thank you, darling.’

‘I’m just talking to Caroline,’ she heard him say.

‘Who are you talking to?’ she screamed.

‘If you must know,’ he said, ‘I was talking to Suzanne. From the judges’ office, you know her I think.’

‘Why are you talking to Suzanne?’ she asked, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

‘Because before you rang, you mad bitch,’ a woman’s voice sounded in her ear, ‘he was screwing the arse off me. So thanks for ruining what was working up to a perfect evening.’ In the background, she heard her husband’s voice raised in mild protest. ‘Well, it’s time she was told,’ the woman snapped and the line went dead.

Caroline Morton bent over in pain, just as agonizing for not being real. She screamed soundlessly, jamming her knuckles into her mouth until she almost broke the skin. A cracked groan escaped her and she drummed her feet on the mattress, like a child having a tantrum. Then, with a sudden, convulsive movement, she sat up, wiped her eyes and took
up the phone again. Scrolling through her contacts she chose one and waited as the call connected. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and cleared her throat, ready for when it answered.

‘Hello?’ a sleepy voice said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell?’ she said, crisply. ‘It’s Caroline Morton here. I would like to give you some information about the death of my sister. I believe I know who her murderer is.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell lay on her face, her arm dangling over the side of the bed, her fingers slowly relaxing so that the phone dropped to the floor. Through the pillow, Maxwell could just hear her muttering ‘No, no and hell no!’ Could it be that bad if she was attempting a take-off of Will Smith in
Men in Black
? He risked a question.

‘Anyone I know?’ He leaned back, ready for the reply but she was too tired to rise to it.

‘Mollie Adamson’s half sister. Apparently, she knows who the murderer is.’ It took him a moment to translate, the whole being filtered through the pillow, but he was pretty sure that was the gist.

‘That’s good.’ The question hovered at the end of the sentence.

She nodded her head, face still down in the pillow.

‘Is she likely to be right, do you think?’

This time the head circled. ‘No. Yes. I have no idea.’ She sat up and turned to face him. ‘What time is it?’ she asked and he screwed round to look at the clock behind him on the bedside table.

‘Half past one.’ He groaned. ‘Why did she wait until now?’

‘If it was anyone other than her, I would say she has an axe to grind.
Most people who come in or ring in the middle of the night do it on the back of a row. But she wouldn’t row. She would pontificate. That’s her style. Oh, I won’t deny she was upset about her sister, but…’ she flicked the bedclothes back with a sigh, ‘. . . she wants to meet me at the Nick. I suppose I’d better go.’

Maxwell stopped her with an arm across her chest. ‘I don’t often do this,’ he said. ‘In fact, thinking back, I don’t think I have ever done this before. But I am doing it now. I am forbidding you to go in.’

‘Pardon?’ Shock made her eyes wide. ‘You’re doing what?’

‘Forbidding you. You are exhausted. You haven’t seen your son awake for days. You’ve hardly seen
me
awake, and I’m allowed to stay up late. Leave it to someone who is already up and at the Nick. Surely, they still have night shifts, don’t they, or has that nice Mrs May dispensed with those while your back is turned?’

‘Most police stations are daytime only… well, skeleton staff, you know. But Leighford Nick still has a proper night staff. Processing all the bingers.’ She flopped back on the bed and turned her head to look up at him. ‘Are you really forbidding me?’

‘Yup.’

‘Okay,’ she turned over and groped for the phone. ‘I’ll just tell the desk to take her statement. She won’t be happy.’

He patted her on the bum. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you put me in mind of the Rokeby Venus in that position.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said, then, into the phone, ‘Yes, hello, who’s that? It’s DI Carpenter-Maxwell here. Yes, hello. I have someone coming in shortly, a Mrs Caroline Morton. Could you just take a statement and tell her I will get back to her tomorrow? No, sorry, something’s come up. Be discreet – she can be a bit… Oh, right, at court. Yes. You’ll know what she’s like then. Thanks. Yes, tomorrow. Lovely, thanks.’ She pressed with her thumb to disconnect and then switched off the light. ‘I never liked him,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘That desk man. So I’m glad it’s him who will have to deal with Caroline Morton. She’s going to be pissed.’

‘Oh, you think that’s why she rang? Been drinking?’

‘No, American pissed, not English pissed.’

‘Oh,
American
pissed.’ He paused, then patted her bum. ‘I forgive you,’ he said. ‘It was clearly just a slip of the tongue.’

But DI Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell was already asleep.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Although the words were polite enough they lost their sweetness when delivered through lips stiff with anger.

‘I’m afraid that the Detective Inspector is unable to see you right now,’ the desk man said. He was enjoying this. This cow had put him
through the mill in court more than once and it was good to have the whip hand for once. ‘Something came up.’ Mind you, he had no time for Detective Inspector Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell either, so this was two birds with one stone time.