Maxwell’s Ride (9 page)

‘Then why … ?’

‘We won’t beat about the bush, Mr Wiseman,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m sure you’re a busy man.’

‘We’ve got
The Duchess of Malfi
opening next week,’ the impresario said. ‘Everybody else is at the Green Rooms, rehearsing. I’m waiting for the bloody set builders. Honestly, it’s hopeless. We’ve only just got rid of one lot doing refurbishment.’

‘It’s about Larry Warner,’ Maxwell said.

‘Oh, dear God, yes. Isn’t it tragic? Life’s a bitch, Mr Maxwell and then somebody shoots you.’

‘I was there when it happened.’

‘Really?’ Wiseman pulled off his glasses, searching Maxwell’s face. ‘My God. Did you see what happened?’

‘No. That’s just it. I had my two nieces with me, but all we saw was the result, as it were – a dead man lying in one of those car/float things they have.’

‘Must have been a hell of a shot,’ Wiseman was thinking aloud. ‘The car bobbing around like that. I saw the place on the news. Do the police have any suspects?’

‘God knows,’ Logan said. ‘Leighford CID are playing this one very close to their chests.’

‘Have they been to see you?’ Maxwell asked.

‘In connection with Charts, yes.’ He slipped his glasses back on. ‘Apparently, they’re following up all Larry’s clients. He was very busy, I believe – a popular practice.’

‘It’s his other practices that interest me,’ Maxwell said.

‘Other practices?’ Wiseman looked at the man over his glasses.

‘“Predatory homosexual”,’ Logan said. ‘That’s how he was described to us.’

‘Really?’ Wiseman chuckled. ‘What a quaint phrase. Smacks of Mary Whitehouse. Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised.’

‘But you didn’t know?’ Maxwell asked.

‘No, I didn’t. In my game, you meet all sorts. It almost goes with the territory. Look, have seats, gentlemen. There are plenty to choose from.’

Maxwell and Logan lowered the plush seats, lay back and thought of England.

‘No, Larry was … well, a loner, I suppose. He had a secretary, and I think a housekeeper. I believe that was all.’

‘You don’t know the secretary’s name?’ Logan asked.

‘Pringle, Patricia, I think. Mouse of a woman, but loyal, I’m sure. Look, Mr Logan, I understand why you need to know all this, but Mr Maxwell …’

‘Morbid curiosity,’ Maxwell chuckled.

‘Ah, that kills cats, I understand.’

‘Not mine, sadly,’ Maxwell said.

‘You’re a cat person. Marvellous. What have you got?’

‘Fleas, probably. But if you’re asking breeds, I’d have to say Heinz.’

‘Ah, shame. I have two Siamese.’

‘“If you don’t please”,’ Logan quipped and immediately wished he hadn’t. Too many years as a cub reporter doing the local musicals had left him indelibly imprinted with lyrics.

‘This is perhaps rather a silly question,’ Maxwell ignored his oppo, ‘but did Larry Warner have any money worries?’

‘I really don’t know. Are you thinking of blackmail?’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘In this day and age? I should have thought the ’nineties were too openly naughty for that. It’s only in my profession that people still raise eyebrows.’

‘Well,’ Wiseman said, ‘perhaps you’re right. But there’s a skeleton in every cupboard, they say.’

‘They do,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Mr Wiseman, the nieces who were with me that day … the younger of them is … well, not unnaturally, she’s afraid. I want to iron this out. Put her mind at rest.’

‘Isn’t that what the police are for?’ Wiseman asked.

‘Do you know,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘I’m not really sure what the police are for.’ And he stood up feeling the seat fold up behind him.

‘My card,’ Logan passed it to him. ‘If you know anything,’ he said, ‘or if anything occurs to you on Larry Warner, give us a bell.’

‘Oh, I will,’ Wiseman promised. ‘I will.’

7

‘Good of you to see us again, Mrs Pringle,’ DS Bartholomew perched on the corner of the late Larry Warner’s desk. They’d been all over the office already, bagging up rainforests of paperwork and taking it away.

‘I’m not sure what more I can tell you.’ Pat Pringle was the wrong side of fifty with rather more chins than God had originally given her.

‘Mrs Pilgrim mentioned a number of young men friends that Mr Warner had …’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the ex-secretary pouted.

‘Is there anyone who came to the office, Mrs Pringle,’ Jacquie Carpenter asked from her chair near the door, ‘who wasn’t a client, I mean?’

‘I told you,’ Mrs Pringle said. ‘Mr Warner saw relatively few clients here. He was mostly on the road.’

‘Yeah,’ Bartholomew eased himself off his numbing buttock, ‘or in parks.’

‘There was a man,’ she ignored him, ‘who came a few times.’

‘What can you tell us about him?’ Jacquie had her notepad at the ready.

‘Not much. He said he was an old friend.’

‘Mr Warner’s age?’

‘No. Younger.’ Pat Pringle flashed a look of defiance at Bartholomew, but he just smirked and looked out of the window. ‘Perhaps thirty. Short brown hair. Could have been ex-army, something like that.’

‘How often did he call?’

‘I don’t know, three or four times, perhaps.’

‘An old friend,’ Jacquie was thinking aloud, ‘so he didn’t have an appointment as such.’

‘No.’

‘So you don’t have a name?’ Bartholomew turned from the window and leaned against it.

Mrs Pringle shook her head. ‘Oh,’ she suddenly remarked, ‘when he first came, he called himself Jeff.’

‘That’s all?’ Jacquie checked. ‘No surname.’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right.’ Bartholomew kicked himself off the wall and strode to the door. ‘By the way,’ he hauled it open, ‘has anybody been to see you about Mr Warner, anybody but us, I mean?’

‘No,’ Mrs Pringle frowned. ‘Nobody.’

‘Good,’ Bartholomew jerked his head towards the door for Jacquie to lead the way. ‘If they do, two men in particular, posing as his relatives, give us a call, will you?’

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘Yes, of course.’

They clattered down the wooden stairs to the entrance lobby. ‘He hasn’t got this far, then.’

‘Who?’

‘Your boyfriend.’

‘You what?’ Jacquie had turned to face him.

Bartholomew sniggered. ‘Peter Maxwell, the Miss Marple of Leighford High.’

‘You don’t know it was him,’ Jacquie fumed.

‘Yeah, and I don’t know there isn’t a Father Christmas either. I just put two and two together. Now, I’ve been hearing tidings about you, Jacquie.’

‘Really?’ She turned and made for the front door.

‘Really.’ He was there ahead of her, ‘Your Mr Maxwell gets himself into all sorts of scrapes, doesn’t he? A real little Don Quixote. He’s also, from what the lads at the nick tell me, well informed. Exceptionally well informed, in fact. Pillow talk, is it? While he’s giving you one?’ He softened his voice, ‘Ooh, darling, you’re so big tonight. Here’s a little titbit from CID.’

Frank Bartholomew wasn’t really ready for what followed. Jacquie spun on her heel and slapped him hard across the face, sending him staggering back against Larry Warner’s front door. Instinctively he grabbed her wrist. But Joe Public was passing in a busy street and now wasn’t the moment.

‘You little bitch!’ he hissed. ‘I could have you up on charges.’

‘You can do precisely what you like,’ she told him coldly, ‘but you impugn my professionalism again and you’re on the carpet in front of Mr Hall and that’s a promise. You’re new here, Mr Bartholomew, so I’m making allowances. This time. Catch my drift?’

It was that time in the shift John Merrill dreaded. Cocoa time. When he was at rock bottom. The last nick he’d been in had been a bell-push job, manned only at certain times. Leighford was twenty-four hours and so, it seemed, was his shift. He was still on Fourteen Down in the Mail crossword and the skin on his cocoa was thickening. He checked his watch. Half past bloody one. What was that bloody word? Tee-something-en-something-ar. And the clue was ‘copy powder’. What sort of sense did that make?

‘Toner.’ A voice made him look up.

‘What?’ Sergeant Merrill frowned, staring through the glass at what faced him.

‘The answer to the crossword clue, it’s toner. The black stuff they use for photocopiers.’

‘Really … Mr … er … ?’

‘Hamlyn, Neil, Lance Corporal.’

Merrill hadn’t time to take in the pale blue beret, the flak jacket, the cold eyes. All he was looking at was the rifle in Hamlyn’s hands, presented across his chest as if he was on parade. Instinctively he moved back from his counter, but that took him away from the panic button, panic driving him in the wrong direction.

‘Now, then

‘The Warner murder,’ Hamlyn said, staring his man down. ‘I’m the one you’re looking for.’

‘Just give me the …’ But Merrill was silenced by the slamming of the rifle mechanism. Hamlyn took a step back and swung the muzzle to face him. The sergeant’s hands were in the air now. ‘Come on, son, there’s no need for this.’ There was an iron lump in his throat and he heard his own blood roaring in his ears. ‘You’re right.’ Hamlyn uncocked the gun and unslung the strap from his elbow. With a speed that terrified Merrill, he reversed the thing and presented it to him butt first. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Do you want this or am I going to have to smash the bloody glass?’

After the coppers in the siege of Sydney Street had faced the automatic Mausers of the East End anarchists in 1911, they had a cup of tea and went back to work. John Merrill was given a Valium and counselling and three weeks off and nobody had fired at him at all. It was a sign of the times – the softening of the century.

DCI Henry Hall had left his wife snoring softly under the new duvet. There was a time when Helen had got up with her husband, when he was a struggling detective making his way. But that was when the kids were small and it was all breast-feeding and nappies and odd hours anyway. Now, as they neared their teens, the Hall kids could fend a little for themselves. The terrible twos had given way and the nasty nineteens had yet to be. Margaret snored on.

Hall didn’t shave; didn’t even grab a tie. If John Merrill was rattled, it was for real. Men like John Merrill were the rocks of constabularies the length and breadth of the country. A maniac had dropped into Leighford nick and it looked as if another case was closed.

DS Frank Bartholomew grabbed the nearest shirt and rummaged on the floor for his trousers. His electronic alarm clock told him it was two fifteen, a time he’d forgotten existed. He looked at the girl still asleep in his bed, her peroxide hair splayed on the pillow, her breasts rising and falling in the half light. He saw her bra and knickers draped over the chair-back and half expected to see her teeth in a glass by the bed. He took his wallet and cheque book, just in case. Bloody one night stands.

DC Jacquie Carpenter hauled her tights on and fished in the wardrobe for her skirt. She’d been awake when the call came through from the nick. The girl on the switchboard had a quiver in her voice. Some bastard had pointed a rifle at John Merrill. Code red. She glanced at the Dorothy L. Sayers she’d tossed into a corner. Murder at the vicarage. Something sinister in the hamlet, with half-Tudor thatchery and cream teas and an aristo detective. Yeah, right.

‘Mr Hamlyn.’ Hall sat opposite his man in the lamplight of Interview Room Two. ‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Hall. This is Detective Sergeant Bartholomew. Would you give me your full name, please, for the tape?’

‘Neil Thomas Hamlyn, Special Air Service.’

‘SAS?’ Bartholomew wanted clarification.

Hamlyn nodded. ‘You don’t want to believe that Andy McNab bollocks, Mr Bartholomew,’ he said. ‘We’re not all bloody John Wayne meets Arnie Schwarzenegger.’

Neil Hamlyn was a fit, wiry-looking man, perhaps thirty-one, thirty-two. Dressed as he was in full combat rig with the sand, black and white of Desert Storm, he could easily have been Wayne or Schwarzenegger. His biceps bulged under his rolled up sleeves and his dog tags caught the lamp light.

‘You live at 25, Benington Street, Leighford?’ Bartholomew checked.

Hamlyn nodded.

‘For the tape, Mr Hamlyn, please,’ Hall reminded him.

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Are you still a member of the Special Air Services?’ Hall asked.

‘Yes,’ Hamlyn said. ‘I’m on leave just at the moment.’

‘And the gun?’

Hamlyn leaned back in the hard, upright chair. ‘It’s a Ruger Mini 14. I have a licence for it.’

‘Why did you come here tonight, Mr Hamlyn?’ Hall leaned back too, out of the lamp’s glare, out of the line of fire.

‘To give myself up,’ Hamlyn said. ‘I killed Larry Warner.’

‘Why?’ Hall asked.

For the first time, Hamlyn’s concentration seemed to slip. His eyes flickered, as if he’d been asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question and he was stuck for an answer.

‘Mr Hamlyn fails to respond,’ said Bartholomew for the tape.

‘All right,’ Hall leaned forward again. ‘Do you want to arrange some tea, Frank? I expect we could all do with some of that, couldn’t we, Mr Hamlyn? Then we’ll try another tack.’

The other tack they tried didn’t work. Neither did the next.

All Corporal Hamlyn was doing was, in effect, giving his name, rank and serial number.

The unlikely trio sat in the police canteen, Jacquie Carpenter cradling her coffee mug with both hands. Henry Hall sat opposite her, the neon lights reflected in his glasses’ lenses like some alien shapeshifter who had inhabited the body of a DCI. Frank Bartholomew was tucking into his bacon and eggs and a pile of something that, under the microscope, would probably turn out to be baked beans.

‘Theories, Jacquie?’ Hall leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair.

‘You want my honest opinion, sir?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ he nodded.

‘I don’t think he did it.’

‘Oh, come on!’ It was a predictable response from Frank Bartholomew, delivered with a mouthful of full English.

‘Go on, Jacquie.’ Hall insisted quietly.

‘He doesn’t have a motive,’ she said.

‘He isn’t giving us a motive,’ Bartholomew interjected, ‘no. But there’s always a motive. There’s got to be.’

Hall was looking at Jacquie. ‘According to our information, Warner was homosexual,’ he said. ‘Is that the link?’