Maxwell's Chain (6 page)

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I am DCI Henry Hall. And you are?’

‘Mike Crown,’ the hunk replied. He turned to Lara’s mother. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ He planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘I am so sorry to be late, but we went to another set.’ He looked at the old geezer. ‘Dad behaving himself?’

‘Not really,’ his wife said, gazing adoringly at him. ‘Sit down, darling. I’m afraid it is bad news.’

‘Oh, sweetie,’ he said, without a trace of emotion and turned to Hall and Jacquie. ‘It’s her, then. Been dead long? Since she went, I mean?’

Henry Hall could not keep the ice out of his voice. Now that the family entanglements had been sorted out, it
ought
to have been better; in fact, it was slightly worse. ‘No, Mr Crown,’ he all but spat. ‘She has not. She has been dead just over two days. In the months between, we believe she has been living rough or in squats, with her dog. She has recently been selling the
Big Issue
in Leighford.’

Crown seemed oblivious to his tone. He may
be better looking than his dad, Jacquie thought to herself, but he takes ‘horrible’ to new depths.

‘Oh, right. We wondered where she’d gone, didn’t we, darl?’

Marianne Crown had lost all semblance of distress. Her daughter may be dead, but her gorgeous young husband was still here and that was, after all, what counted. ‘Well, she’d just gone off, honey, hadn’t she?’ she fluttered at him. ‘We hardly missed her, after a bit. They grow away from you, don’t they, in the end?’

Do they? Jacquie wondered. Would that little pink thing she had at home, cuddling into her neck when he was tired and twining his fingers into her hair,
ever
grow away? And what would it do to her if he did? Jesus, she realised, she’d become Marianne Crown.

‘He missed her, I reckon,’ came a growl from the end of the sofa. They had all forgotten Mr Crown Senior.

His son jumped up and bundled him from the room. ‘Now, then, Dad,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go and do some gardening or something?’ They could still hear him muttering as he made his way down the hall. ‘Mum died a few months ago,’ Crown said. ‘Dad came to stay for a bit and he’s proving a little difficult to dislodge. But Marianne’s a wonder with him, aren’t you, darl?’

She simpered. But the police pair had noted his comment and it clarified a lot of things for them. It’s all very well marrying an older wife with her own home. But it’s even better if she has a pretty daughter on the premises to remind you you’re still young.

Neither Jacquie nor Henry Hall had much stomach for continuing the interview once Superman arrived. They took the photograph with them, carefully removed from its silver frame by Crown before he handed it over. They paid lip service to their condolences, walked silently down the path and got into the car, faces frozen in blank expressions until they were safely up the road. Only then did they turn to face each other.

‘What a wanker,’ Jacquie exploded.

‘Now, now,’ said Henry Hall, awake now, driving and in control. ‘That’s such a nasty, judgemental word. We never use that at home.’

Jacquie looked crestfallen.

‘No, for people like Crown, we always prefer “tosser”.’

‘But I left a message,’ Maxwell was placatory. He knew he was looking his best; a bathed, changed, fed and smiley baby in one hand, a gin and tonic, ice and lemon, in the other.

‘True.’ Jacquie took the baby and the gin from him, not necessarily in that order. A kiss and a sip and things might look better. She tried both. No, no good, it still sounded rubbish. And it was all made worse by the fact that they were carrying on this conversation at a low hum, through the clenched teeth of secrecy. ‘I don’t understand why you invited a suspect in my latest murder case to stay with us.’

‘I’m not sure I invited him, as such.’ Maxwell, relieved of son and gin, flopped down in his chair. ‘He had left about a million messages and Emma has left him and…well, I knew you wouldn’t really
mind. You can’t seriously think he is a suspect. I mean, go and look at him. He just doesn’t look like a murderer.’

‘Neither did Crippen. Nor do I, but I may well become one in a minute. I don’t want to ask this, but where would I go, were I wishing to look at him?’

‘Ermm…in the spare room?’

‘
What
? My spare room, I mean, our spare room? Here? In this house?’

‘Well, yes, woman policeman. Where else do we have spare rooms?’

‘At my mother’s fortunately. Because I think that’s where I’ll have to go if he stays here.’

‘Oh, come on. It isn’t that serious.’ To Maxwell, for anyone to consider seriously living with Jacquie’s mother, there would have had to have been a nuclear holocaust.

‘Yes, Max, it is that serious.’ Nolan sensed the mood of the moment. His Mummy was upset. His Daddy was a prat. What’s a boy to do? He put his fingers on Jacquie’s lips as if to say ‘Hush, now’. But she wasn’t having any of it and gently turned her head away. ‘William Lunt is a suspect in the murder of Lara Kent. Not a very
suspect
suspect, I grant you, but he is on file in the police station
where I work
! Max, this is extreme, even for you.’

Maxwell got up and made for the door. ‘You’re right. I was stupid. But he is just so…pathetic, somehow. I just
know
he didn’t do it. Why should he? He didn’t know her or anything.’

‘How do you know he didn’t? I’ve got the stats somewhere of the number of murderers who “find” their victims. They can’t bear the wait for somebody else to happen on it and they try to control the proceedings. You only see Lunt once a year for the annual photo. Just because he is married to an Old Leighford Highena doesn’t make him automatically innocent, you know.’

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry. Metternich told me I was doing a stupid thing, but if I didn’t ignore him sometimes, he’d be unbearable.’ He moved onto the landing and started up the stairs. ‘I will get him to leave. I don’t think he’ll mind. The shop certainly does well enough for him to afford a hotel if he can’t bear it at home.’

She blew him a kiss. ‘Thank you, Max. You know it makes sense.’ She settled down to play aimlessly with Nolan’s toes. She didn’t know whether he liked it or not, but it certainly calmed her down. ‘Piggy,’ he gurgled, which she hoped referred to the game and not his mother’s profession. She had only got as far as the porcine who had roast beef before Maxwell was back.

‘Problem solved,’ he said, his brow furrowed.

‘Oh?’

‘He appears to have gone.’

‘Gone? You mean, out? Or gone, as in taken all his things?’

‘Gone. Left. Vamoosed.’

Jacquie immediately felt bad. ‘Oh, Max, do you think he heard us? I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.’ Jacquie’s stomach somersaulted in the way it does for all of us at moments like these. The rational bit – that Bill Lunt had overheard their whispered conversation, taken umbrage and packed his bags, creeping noiselessly past their open door; and all in a few minutes, never entered her head.

‘Does a suspect have feelings?’ he asked her, one eyebrow raised. Maxwell was not one of those blokes Julius Caesar would have wanted with him on the Ides of March, that’s for sure.

‘Oh, please. I feel awful.’

He crossed the room and gave her an absentminded hug. ‘Where’s he gone, though?’

‘I expect he’s gone home,’ she said. ‘At least, I hope he has. I would imagine when they released him without charge, they asked him not to leave the immediate area.’

‘Yes, I expect you’re right, heart,’ he said. ‘He will have gone home. I mean, as you so rightly say, there
was no reason for him
not
to be at home.’ They sat in silence for a while. ‘I wonder if he’s had time to get back yet?’ Maxwell added.

‘It all depends when he left, I suppose,’ Jacquie said, shifting Nolan onto the other arm. She suddenly got up and went to the phone. ‘For goodness’ sake, Max. Why don’t we behave like adults? What’s his number?’

‘Battle of Barnet,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ Jacquie tapped in 1471. ‘Has no one phoned since him, then?’

‘No,’ Maxwell said, fighting down the urge to hug her. He’d make an historian of her yet, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her know how proud he was. On the other hand, Nolan didn’t seem to have any grasp of dates at all, and he was fifteen months old next Thursday.

‘It’s ringing.’ He could hear the tinny sound easing out round the bones in her head. ‘No reply, though.’

‘Leave a message.’

‘Oh…sssh.’ With no hand free, she flapped Nolan at him. ‘Hello? Mr Lunt, this is Jacquie Carpenter. Um…I was just wondering if you had gone home because…well, Max and I were wondering if you were coming back. You’d be very welcome. Ummm. Well, give us a ring when you get in. See you later. Bye.’ She put the phone down and turned to face Maxwell, who was sitting with arms folded, histrionically drumming
his fingers on his bicep, tapping a foot in time. ‘What? Well, he
is
welcome. It’s just not…well, not very sensible. I’d still like to know he’s OK, though.’

‘Of course, woman policeman. I can see your dilemma. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Now, would you like a shrivelled up piece of Freezer Bottom Special with vegetables glued to the plate or would you like me to phone for a Chinese?’

Jacquie leant back in her chair. ‘Chinese,’ she said, while the words were still leaving his mouth. ‘Delivered.’

‘Is there any other kind?’ he asked her. He moved towards the phone.

‘Heavy on the chilli beef,’ she reminded him. ‘And prawn crackers. And chips.’

‘I’ll just order the whole menu, shall I? I trust you won’t be telling me you’re eating for two.’

She sighed. She had promised herself she would tell Maxwell nothing about this case. He would be kept totally in the dark. He would get not one single detail from her. She sighed again. ‘It’s been a prawn cracker and chips kind of day, Max. It started when Henry Hall went to sleep in the car…’

Maxwell replaced the phone and, in a surprisingly limber movement for one of his advanced years, curled up at her feet.

‘Say on, Scheherazade. I’m all ears.’

She cuffed him round the nearest one. ‘Chinese first. Then story.’

Grumbling, he got to his feet.

‘And make that extra pancakes with the duck.’

‘Duck?’

‘Yes. Half a one should do it. That’s why I want extra pancakes.’

‘You drive a hard bargain, light of a thousand camels.’

‘But I’m worth it,’ she replied, with a more than passable stab at the Garnier advert. ‘But if I die of starvation, you might never know.’

He dialled for all he was worth. He timetabled it in his head. Phone. Order. Get Nolan into bed; the child already had an unhealthy appetite for sweet and sour. The Yellow Peril was getting closer. Eat. Get the goods. And then twelve hours tomorrow, marking GCSE coursework. Typical! Even the Lord had a day off, but not Peter Maxwell. What a lovely way to round off a weekend. Even Monday looked good from here. Hang on, though. Lesson Three; Ten Eff Four. Cancel that.

‘Hello? Mong Wing? Get an extra pencil sharpened – I think you might need it…’

Mad Max marked thirty-seven pieces of coursework that Sunday. By lunchtime, he’d lost the will to live.

The dawn that Monday was a particularly splendid effort. It was pink and pearly grey, with a mist wisping off the sea inland, making a promise of a beautiful early spring day to come. In the silence of the park that measured the length of the Esplanade, just one road’s width from the sea, a listener might almost fancy that they could hear the creak of an unfurling daffodil, the whisper of a crocus opening to the morning light. That same listener, walking from the entrance of the park at the west end into the dawn light to the east would then have sensed, no fancy needed, a faint noise, coming from one of the benches along the path that meandered through the wakening lawn. It was a whimper, very faint and growing fainter. It sounded like someone saying, whispering with their last breath, ‘Help me. Oh, help me. Please.’ And that horrified listener, should there be one to hand, would discover that it didn’t just sound like someone dying. It really was someone dying, there on a park bench, in Leighford Esplanade Park.

Peter Maxwell was in the middle of explaining to Nine Eff Gee the niceties of the War of Jenkins’ Ear. He found a nice rant on the shortcomings of the Foreign Office of today vis-à-vis that of Walpole was as good a way as any of starting the week. It
didn’t help poor, bemused old Nine Eff Gee that the Foreign Office wasn’t called the Foreign Office then, but the Department of the North, or it might have been South; no, Samantha, there wasn’t a Department of the East or West, but there were, of course, wicked witches from there. No, Melanie, that was a joke – do keep up!

There was a timorous knock on the door and when it opened, there stood Thingee One from Reception, looking strangely ill at ease without the desk she usually hid behind.

‘Mr Maxwell?’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘You’re wanted in Reception.’

‘Speak up, Thingee, old chap,’ said Maxwell, full of the joys of incipient spring, the scent of the chase and of Saturday’s soy sauce still, metaphorically, in his nostrils. After all, Captain Jenkins had lost an ear and what with the acoustics in Aitch One…‘Who wants me in Reception?’

Thingee crept closer and mouthed a word.

‘No, sorry. Can’t you go back down and ring me up. I can hear you when you use the phone.’

She crawled a tiny pace nearer and whispered as nearly in his ear as she could manage, ‘It’s the police.’

‘Is it?’ he stepped back in amazement. Nine Eff Gee were agog. ‘Why does Mr Plod want to see me, I wonder?’

‘It’s not a Mr Plod,’ Thingee said, bemused (no child of the Blyton generation she). ‘It’s a Detective Sergeant Carpenter.’

‘No, no, Thingee,’ Maxwell chortled. ‘That’s not the police. That’s just Woman Policeman Carpenter. You know, little Nolan’s mum?’

Thingee smiled. They all knew Nolan. Nine Eff Gee smiled too – at least, the girls did. The lads didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Nolan had been breaking hearts at Leighford High School from a few weeks old. Whenever his dad or his mum wheeled him in, there was always an adoring bevy of wannabee mums crowding round. They’d moved on from dollies years ago and their body clocks were winding up for the real thing. ‘I know Mrs Maxwell…I mean, Sergeant Carpenter, Mr Maxwell,’ she said. ‘But she said to particularly say this was the police. Not just Mrs…I mean, Sergeant Carpenter.’

Maxwell looked serious, then turned to the class. ‘If any of you so much as twitches a finger,’ he said, ‘I will continue this lesson later using a
real ear
. Savvy?’ The last word (which Maxwell always had) was pure Johnny Depp by way of Jack Sparrow and since Nine Eff Gee couldn’t tell Captain Jenkins from Captain Sparrow, that was good enough.

They savvied. No finger twitched until the bell
went and they all left the lesson with a collective sigh of relief. The thing about Mad Max, you knew where you were. If he said he was going to cut someone’s ear off, the only question would be; whose?

Down in Reception, Jacquie waited by the desk, making small talk with Thingee Two, Thingee One’s afternoon replacement. It was odd to see them both together; perhaps it presaged death or something, the way seeing your own doppelgänger was said to do. And, in a way, it did. She turned as Maxwell came into the glass booth built into a side of the Hall.

‘Hello, Sergeant?’ he said, managing to impose a question mark at the end of the greeting.

‘Sir,’ she said. She was accompanied by a rookie constable Maxwell didn’t know and the niceties must be maintained. ‘We are here in connection with a suspicious death.’

‘Well, yes,’ he said, perplexed. ‘I found the body last week, if you recall.’

‘Not that suspicious death,’ she said. ‘Another suspicious death. Is there somewhere we can go? Your office?’

He led them through the labyrinth that was Leighford High, that Sixties shell that bore the
brunt of generations of schoolchildren creeping unwillingly to school. Their faces weren’t beaming anymore and nobody knew what a satchel was, still less carried one. Their black shoes left scuffs on the lower reaches of the walls and curious grey blobs decorated the carpets – thirty year old chewing gum for the archaeologists of the future to ponder.

They crossed the Quad in silence under the bare arms of the trees and took the stairs to the Mezzanine floor where Maxwell reigned as Head of Sixth Form. You couldn’t hear the pandemonium from the Languages Department on this side of the building and Maxwell ushered the police people into his office, his Inner Sanctum.

The rookie stood just staring at the film posters around the wall. Jacquie plonked herself down on the ghastly, itchy, flimsy L-shaped seating as Maxwell hit the kettle switch.

‘A body was discovered this morning at seven o’clock by a jogger in the Esplanade Park,’ Jacquie continued, as if the trek through the school had not intervened.

Maxwell looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s probably just me, but I don’t know why a body in Esplanade Park should be anything to do with me. If I can say this without distressing your colleague here, who I am sure is of a sensitive nature, you
do know
exactly
where I was from around 5.30 last night until 8 o’clock this morning. So, in short, I’m not the guy. You’ll have a coffee before you go?’ He turned on his heel.