Maxwell’s Reunion (12 page)

‘For solace?’

‘Yes, but I gave him lunch too.’

‘Did he seem his usual self?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Tell me, Ms Dickinson, was Anthony in the habit of confiding in you, his thoughts, feelings and so on?’

She shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you remember anything that Thursday? Something that was bothering him?’

She smiled. ‘He had his mouth full for part of the time,’ she said. ‘But no, nothing in particular. The usual whinges about chambers – what arseholes they all were. But that’s de rigueur among lawyers, Mr Maxwell. They all hate each other.’

‘Someone hated Anthony Bingham enough to want to kill him,’ Maxwell reminded her. ‘Do you have an address?’

‘I thought you were a friend of his,’ she said.

‘So I was, but that was a long time ago. I’ve lost it.’

‘Denbigh Street, Pimlico. Number eighteen.’ She blew smoke down her nose. ‘Now, was there anything else? I’m expecting someone.’

Maxwell took in the tight pedal-pushers, the skimpy top pulled taut across the nipples, and didn’t doubt it for a moment.

‘It’s been quite a blow, Mr Maxwell.’ The lady in the crisp white apron bustled in with the tray.

‘I’m sure it has, Mrs Daniels.’ Maxwell took the cup she held out to him.

‘Now.’ Mrs Daniels sat down on the chair, looking wistfully at the photograph of the bewigged judge on the table. ‘Where were we?’

‘Monday,’ Maxwell reminded her. For a moment the impact of the jasmine tea unsettled him, then he recovered.

‘Of course. I prepared Mr Bingham’s breakfast as usual. Bligh was due to call at nine-thirty.’

‘Bligh?’ Maxwell sniffed a naval connection.

‘Mr Bingham’s driver. Justices of the High Court always have drivers, Mr Maxwell.’

‘So I understand,’ Maxwell said. ‘Tell me, was there anything … odd about Anthony that morning?’

‘Well, not at first,’ Mrs Daniels said. ‘Then he had the phone call. I told the police about it.’

‘Phone call?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘What time was this?’

‘Um … about nine o’clock, I think.’

‘Who was it?’

‘I don’t know. A woman certainly.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I took the call, Mr Maxwell. Justices of the High Court do not take calls themselves, you know. It could be a cold sell. What would Mr Bingham do with double glazing or life insurance … ? Oh dear.’

‘Did she give a name?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Who?’

‘The lady caller.’

‘Not at first. She said it was personal, but I told her I couldn’t accept an anonymous call; I had to have a name. She told me she was Joanna Smith, but she refused to tell me what she wanted. I took the call in the drawing room, but when Mr Bingham picked it up he transferred the call to the study. There were raised voices.’

‘You didn’t … er … ?’ Maxwell glanced at the phone.

‘Listen to the conversation? Mr Maxwell, please. It has been my privilege to be housekeeper to Mr Bingham now for nearly eight years. I do not listen to other people’s telephone conversations and I do not peep through keyholes.’

‘Forgive me, Mrs Daniels, but the telephone call could explain a great deal about Anthony’s death. What happened afterwards?’

‘Mr Bingham was clearly agitated. He kept looking at his watch and never got round to finishing his breakfast. He told me to contact his chambers and cancel his day’s engagements. Luckily he wasn’t due in court until Wednesday.’

‘And then he left?’

‘Yes. He asked me to throw a few things into an overnight bag and when Bligh arrived, he told him to take the day off.’

‘And he didn’t tell either of you where he was going?’

‘Only that he had someone to see, urgently.’

‘That was probably me. He must have guessed I wouldn’t be at home and probably remembered where I worked. Mrs Daniels, this Joanna Smith; did you know her? Had you heard the name before?’

‘No, Mr Maxwell.’ The housekeeper shook her head. ‘The police took away Mr Bingham’s phone book and diaries, but it was a withheld number. Well, that’s standard in the legal profession, of course. Even Justices come into contact with some extraordinarily low life.’

‘Who did you speak to?’ Maxwell asked. ‘From the police, I mean.’

‘There was a DCI Wentworth, from the Met; I’ve met him before on official business at the court. The other was a woman, not local.’

‘DCI Tyler?’ Maxwell asked.

‘That’s right. Rather a deep type, I thought. Didn’t give much away.’

‘No, indeed.’ Maxwell sighed. ‘They never do.’

The carpets in Sussex Gardens hadn’t got any less lurid since Maxwell’s student days. He’d met a girl from the LSE (but he was the forgiving type) and they’d spent a night of torrid lovemaking together in one of those idyllic little love-nests behind Paddington Station. The B & Bs always had a quaint fifties air about them, as though they ought to be lived in by the first generation of Jamaicans to step off the boat, or dodgy young Cambridge spies with names like Burgess and Maclean. The same smell had hit Maxwell that had hit him all those years ago; old sausages and cheap perfume.

‘How much?’ His jaw dropped slightly on being told the tariff for the night. He seemed to remember it had done much the same back in ’65, with the bee-hived Stephanie on his arm, clinging like a limpet to his beatnik jumper. He wasn’t sure this was the same hotel, but the landlady looked at him just as suspiciously now as her mother may have done all those years before.

‘Mr and Mrs Maxwell, is it?’ the old crone had asked, scanning the students’ fingers for signs of rings. ‘Sure it isn’t Smith?’

‘By yourself, are you?’ the slightly newer crone had asked, looking for luggage and marking him down secretly as a paedophile. ‘We don’t have no Net facilities ’ere.’

‘Good, good.’ Maxwell beamed. ‘I’m all surfed out; suffering from a surfeit, you might say.’

Clearly that was the last thing the old crone would say, and she wandered off to do whatever it is proprietresses of cheap hotels do.

That night, Maxwell rang Jacquie.

‘It’s good to talk.’ It was the best Bob Hoskins she’d heard in a while.

‘Max, where are you?’ she asked.

‘The Ritz.’ Maxwell sprawled on the bed. ‘I’ve just thrashed Mr Al Fayed at backgammon and I take over his yacht and the corner shop in Knightsbridge tomorrow morning.’

She laughed. ‘Seriously, Max.’

‘Seriously, I’m in bed-sit, dropoutsville in search of the bastard who killed Cret Bingham. Sussex Gardens, to be precise.’

‘Max …’

But he interrupted. ‘Now, no lectures, Jacquie. Some teachers go fishing over half-term, some paint the parlour. There’s even an ugly rumour, which I can’t believe, that some of them prepare lessons for next week. Me? I solve crimes. How about you?’

‘You know,’ she told him firmly, ‘I can’t help.’

‘I know.’ He sighed. ‘And I didn’t call to put you on the spot. I miss you, that’s all. What’s that old song Sir Cliff used to sing?’ ‘Miss You Nights”? “And the warm wind that embraced me just as surely kissed your face.” Not quite Byron. But not bad.’

‘Oh, Max.’

They looked, both of them, into the middle distance and saw each other’s faces.

‘Willow,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘The fibres found embedded in Anthony Bingham’s skull and hair; the pieces of wood. They were willow.’

‘Willow!’ Maxwell was sitting up. ‘What about George Quentin?’

‘Max,’ she said softly, ‘I’ve just broken every rule in the book telling you what I have. George Quentin is somebody else’s patch, remember? I’m just a passer-by up there.’

‘Nadine Tyler’s working with the Met,’ Maxwell told her, ‘on Cret’s case.’

‘Of course she is. It’ll be a three-pronged attack, Max. That’s how it works these days. We don’t call the Yard in any more. They’re just as likely to call us. Quentin died in Warwickshire – that makes it the local CID’s business. Bingham died in Leighford – that’s our pigeon. But they both lived in the smoke, hence the Met. Actually, there’s a further complication there.’

‘Oh?’

‘According to what we have, George Quentin was in business in the City. That means the City force. My guv’nor’s driving up tomorrow.’

‘Saturday?’

‘Vandeleur Negus are opening up specially for him.’

‘Are they, now? Time?’

‘Uh-huh, Max. Love may be blind, but this little neck of mine only sticks out so far.’

He wisely stuck to toast for breakfast. And kept the dubious-looking coffee to one cup. Then he was gone, taking out a second mortgage to hire a cab to convey him eastward. The Old Lady beamed at him as the black vehicle growled along Threadneedle Street. He swung left into Bartholomew Lane and left again along Throgmorton Street. He toyed with tipping the cabbie, then remembered he hadn’t gone for the £2,000 threshold payment and thought better of it.

The offices of Vandeleur Negus put the ‘o’ into opulence. They soared to the leaden sky of a City Saturday while the pigeons flapped across those air-conditioning pipes that Prince Charles so publicly hated. An electronic door slid open and a security man the size of the Tower stood there.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Hall.’ Maxwell flashed his NUT card. ‘West Sussex CID.’

‘Mr Vandeleur’s expecting you,’ the Tower said. ‘I’ll take you up.’

Maxwell was already suffering from oxygen deprivation by the time the lift shuddered to a halt.

‘Keith Vandeleur.’ A snowy-haired cadaver of a man was rising from his massive seat beside a huge mahogany desk. Behind him, a picture window gave a better view than the London Eye. It was like Hitler’s playroom at the Berghof.

‘Henry Hall,’ Maxwell lied, taking the man’s outstretched hand. ‘It’s good of you to give up your Saturday.’

‘I didn’t expect you till eleven,’ Vandeleur said, obligingly giving Maxwell a timeframe by which he needed to be out of there.

‘Sorry about that.’ Maxwell took the indicated leather chair. ‘Got quite a bit on.’

‘George Quentin,’ Vandeleur said. ‘Hell of a player. Er … no Roger Bacon?’

The only Roger Bacon Peter Maxwell knew was a monk who’d discovered gunpowder. And he’d been dead for seven hundred years.

‘Bacon?’ He chanced his arm.

‘DCI, City force. I understood you’d both be here.’

‘Ah, sorry.’ Maxwell smiled, in an ‘I know a lot of Bacons’ sort of way. ‘Roger was called elsewhere last night. I’ll have to brief him later. Tell me about George Quentin.’

‘Good golfer was George,’ Vandeleur remembered, clasping his hands across his scrawny linen-shirted chest. ‘That’s what I liked about him. A ruthless bastard after my own heart.’

‘It’s who was after his heart I’m concerned with, Mr Vandeleur.’

‘Quite. Rum business. Was it you I spoke to on the phone yesterday?’

‘Er … no, that would be my sergeant. Sergeant Rackham.’

‘Ah, right. So, am I correct in this? He was hanged?’

Maxwell nodded. ‘I can’t tell you too much, of course.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘George? Er … Friday. Week yesterday, that is. He was quite excited. Had this old school reunion. Personally, I couldn’t imagine anything worse. I hated my old school. Even tried in my amateur way to burn the place down. Oh!’ Vandeleur laughed. ‘Shouldn’t really be telling you about all this, should I?’

Maxwell laughed with him. ‘One case at a time.’

‘Yes, there was some nonsense about a joke,’ Vandeleur remembered.

‘A joke?’

‘Yes. I was having coffee with George and he said he’d had this phone call, asking him not to go to the agreed gathering place – some hotel, wasn’t it?’

Maxwell nodded. ‘The Graveney.’

‘Well, this call apparently asked him to go directly to the school.’

‘On the Friday night?’

‘Presumably,’ Vandeleur said. ‘You’d need to check it with Paulo.’

‘Paulo?’

Vandeleur looked at his man. ‘I’d have thought Roger would’ve been on to that. Paulo is – or rather was – George’s lover.’

Maxwell’s face must have said it all.

‘Come, come, Inspector. This is the twenty-first century; half the bloody government are left-footers these days. It can’t come as that much of a surprise to you.’

‘Sorry,’ Maxwell flustered. ‘I haven’t been well.’

‘Mind you, I think it was the making of George. Being bent gave him an edge. He had to prove himself, I think. And keep proving himself. That’s important in our line. No room for sentiment in the money game, you know.’

Maxwell nodded. ‘Indeed not. Look, these multi-force things are always a little delicate. You know Roger well, I take it?’

‘He’s done the odd little favour for us,’ Vandeleur said.

‘Well, there you are.’ Maxwell became confidential. ‘And I don’t want to do the guy down – I’ve only met him once. You couldn’t give me an address, could you? For Paulo, I mean? I’m afraid Roger’s been a little remiss.’

‘Sure.’ Vandeleur turned to a computer screen and exercised his mouse. ‘Lived with George. Yes, I thought so.’ Letters flickered on to the screen. ‘Grange Road. Acton. I never could understand what led George to live there. It was up and coming a few years back, I suppose. By the way …’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m no bigot. Far from it. But when you talk to Paulo, you might want one or two beefy blokes with you.’

‘Really?’

‘Psychotic,’ Vandeleur confided. ‘I’ve little experience of that whole milieu, Inspector, but I know a malevolent young queen when I see one.’

Peter Maxwell saw himself out and, as he did so, slipping out of a side door, he heard a voice he thought he knew.

‘Hall,’ the voice was saying to the Tower that was Vandeleur Negus’s security guard. ‘Do I have to spell it for you?’

8

Grange Road, Acton had up and come all right. A modest semi that in Leighford might make a hundred grand was Monopoly money here. Maxwell rang the bell and a swarthy young man answered it, wearing an expensive silk shirt nearly open to the waist and hand-made jeans.

‘Henry Hall, West Sussex CID.’ Maxwell believed in consistency in his lying. ‘I’m investigating the murder of George Quentin,’ He was flashing his NUT card again.

‘From West Sussex?’ The dark young man frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’