Maxwell's Crossing (9 page)

There were nods and grunts of agreement around the table.

‘Well, I've had enough. If any of you want to come back here and play with him again, that's your affair, but I won't be here. There're always people wanting to join. There won't be a gap for long.'

The only other woman in the room stood back from the table and looked as though she might burst into tears. She had only joined this card school because Sarah had joined and she was in an agony of indecision. She had come up through the ranks of playing the National Lottery, playing bingo online to playing poker online to here. She wasn't sure whether she could go back to being fixated on the computer day and night but she knew she couldn't keep on coming here without Sarah Gregson.

‘Sarah,' she said, trying to keep her voice level, ‘don't be hasty. I'm sure when you've slept on it—'

The teacher raised her head. ‘Sandra,' she said sharply, as though to a naughty child. ‘I haven't slept since Jeff O'Malley joined this group and I would love to have one, just one night of sleeping without worry.' While she was speaking, she was counting the money into piles. Finally she was finished and she looked up. ‘Right, I was spent out, so five hundred of this is mine.' She pushed the pile to one side. ‘I know O'Malley was spent out as well, so five hundred is his and I think that's mine as well.' That pile joined the other. ‘The rest,' and she waved her hand over the remaining piles, ‘must by definition be yours. I know that Sandra was spent out, so one of those piles is hers.' There was silence and no one moved. ‘Take it, Sandra. I'm not joking.' Tentatively, the woman reached out and picked up the money, shoving it into her bag without looking.

One of the men, a short, weaselly-looking creature with glasses mended at the side with Elastoplasts, cleared his throat. ‘I have fifty left, but, honestly, Sarah, I don't need you to give me the money back. I wouldn't gamble with what I couldn't afford to lose.'

She refused to believe that he had money to burn. For a start, who wore glasses mended with plasters if they had enough money? She knew his job didn't pay very well, though he was cagey about what it was exactly. Rumour had it that he was a traffic warden for the council, but he always denied it. Perhaps if she were a traffic warden, she would deny it too. So she took two twenties and a ten from the top of one pile and pushed the remainder towards him. ‘Even so, Mark. That's yours, then. And
this one,' she put the notes on top of the last pile, ‘must be yours, Tim. Go on, take it.'

‘You won it fair and square, Sarah,' he said. ‘I don't gamble to get my money back as a present.'

‘Tim, don't come the he-man with me. I know that money is your holiday fund.' She pushed it to him again.

‘How the hell do you know that?' he snapped.

‘Because …' She paused. They all tried to keep their private lives as private as they could, but sometimes poker and reality had to collide. ‘Because I happened to bump into your wife, who happened to tell me that you were probably going to have to cancel your holiday because so many of your colleagues were off sick that you had had your annual leave refused.'

Tim Moreton stepped forward and for a moment Sarah felt quite intimidated. The man was built like a brick privy and until Jeff O'Malley had joined the group had been the hulk at the table. He was a training instructor at the local council-run gym and, or so rumour had had it, had once been a bit of a lad with the women. As he had hit forty his charms had begun to fade as his hairline had retreated, and his extra training sessions with a guaranteed happy ending had brought him in fewer and fewer tips from grateful clients. He could ill afford to lose this money and so, after a suitably macho pause, he took it.

Sarah Gregson pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. ‘Well, I won't say I'm sorry to be leaving you all, because that would be a lie. But I have enjoyed our Saturdays and Wednesdays over however long it's been.
I'm just sorry that I ever clapped eyes on Jeff O'Malley and am just glad that I will never have to see him again. If you are wise, you won't be here on Wednesday, but I doubt you'll listen to me. Just remember before you drag some other poor soul into this room to take my place that you should check that they can afford it.' She turned away and started to collect the glasses on the small counter at the back of the room. Turning her head, she said, ‘Off you all bugger, then. It's my turn to sort the room out. No need to change that.'

Muttering collective thanks and generic farewells, the three made their way to the door and she was alone. She methodically collected the glasses and empty bottles onto the tray, wiped the counter, tucked the chairs round the table and went over to the door. She turned out the light and took one last look at the room in the faint glow from the street lights coming up the stairs. There had been some good times here, some good friends made and lost – playing cards for money isn't a good way to keep friends, she had found – but she wasn't sorry to be going; Jeff O'Malley seemed to hang in the room like a sour fog. Maybe, in the real world out of the pool of light, Tim could drop a weight on his foot, Sandra could feel his collar or at the very least Mark could give him a taste of the Denver Boot. She shuddered and turned to go, pulling the door shut behind her. Her footsteps died away down the stairs and the room settled down to wait for the next time.

As she reached the car park she had no trouble remembering where her car was; it was the only one on
the top floor, except for one which had clearly been there for days, with a crisp rectangle of snow still on its roof. The frost sparkled on her windscreen and she watched the twinkling lights out to sea where strange and silent tankers slid through the night waters like ghosts. After she opened the door to get the scraper she turned the key to get the blowers going to warm the inside up. Finally the windows were clear and she walked around the car to get back inside.

Silently, a dark figure detached itself from the shadow of the nearest pillar, and walked round widdershins to meet her.

‘Hello' was the last word she heard. The last sound was the grunt as the air left her lungs as she was pushed over the edge of the roof. The last sound she made was a sickening thud as her head hit the pavement below. Her blood ran for another minute or so, freezing into the slush on the ground. One last breath smoked on the air and she was still.

Jacquie Maxwell snuggled under the covers until just one curl was showing on the pillow and tried to make the morning go away. The Christmas Day shooting was still rumbling along, making no headway, or so it seemed. The forensics had been held up by the repeated falls of snow and so it had been two steps forward, three steps back. The SOCO team had identified at least nine sets of footprints in the fall that lay on the night in question. One was the dead man's. Another the shallow depressions of his wife's slippers. Then the snow had started again and the detail had gone to the devil.

The
Leighford Advertiser
had a field day. After the usual endless round of panto reviews and speculation on what the new year would bring vis-à-vis the projected wind farm, a mindless shooting was a breath of fresh, if bitter air. The nationals had got wind of it too.
‘Drive-by shooting in seaside town.' Nottingham had come to Leighford. Yet none of it made sense. The bullet case came from a large-calibre weapon, a .44, the sort of thing you'd expect in Chicago or LA, but never in Leighford. Had the world, after all, gone mad?

Apart from all of that, the usual festive domestics had hit a new high this year, with families who could usually stomp off separately to the pub being snowbound together with too much booze and far too much turkey. Heads were bound to roll and it had only been sheer good luck that that had not literally happened. The shelters were full of bruised and battered wives and husbands, where I'm Going Home To Mother and I'm Taking the Goldfish was not an option, but slowly, surely, Leighford was returning to what its denizens called ‘normal'.

From the kitchen, she could hear the muffled shrieks and laughter that meant that Maxwell and Nolan were making breakfast. From the weight on her left foot, she knew that there was not any meat on offer, as Metternich had decamped to his second favourite place on a Sunday morning. This must mean pancakes, so her intervention was not required and she could enjoy another ten minutes, probably more. Easing her foot from under the cat, she curled up in a ball and closed her eyes. She could still hear the phone, sadly, but when it began to ring, she decided to ignore it. It was Sunday. She had worked ten days straight and even more if you discounted the single afternoon she had had off the week before last. She heard Maxwell pick up in the kitchen and the questioning burble as
he found out who it was on the other end. She waited, fists clenched, for the happy burble which would mean it was a friend or family member. Although she tried to make it sound different, there was no mistaking the sudden clear words.

‘Oh, hello, Henry. She's still in bed. Is it urgent?'

Jacquie lay quietly and counted the seconds of silence. Ten for a call to check that paperwork was up to speed for Monday. Fifteen would be a request for a meeting to sort out some lingering staffing issues, particularly Bob Thorogood. Twenty was—

Twenty-three seconds after the silence began, the bedroom door opened apologetically and Maxwell was suddenly in the room.

‘Soz, Mrs Maxwell,' he said, quietly. ‘Henry's on the phone. It sounds a bit urgent.'

She didn't speak, just held her hand out from under the duvet at the side of the bed. She felt the phone being gently placed in it, then heard the door softly close. It was only the combination in the kitchen of Nolan, a frying pan, pancake batter and syrup that had forced Maxwell to be on the other side of it.

Still in her warm nest, she pressed the phone to her ear. ‘Guv?'

‘Where are you?' he asked. ‘You sound as if you have your head in a bag.'

‘I'm under the covers, to tell you the truth. I was planning on making a bit of a morning of it. But that obviously isn't going to happen.' She struggled upright and spoke again. ‘That better?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘You sound better upright. I didn't want to do this to you on a Sunday, especially after the couple of weeks we've had, but we've got a bit of a nasty one.'

Now she was all attention. ‘Where?'

‘Town centre. Woman found this morning, on the pavement. Seems to have jumped from the roof of the multi-storey car park.'

‘Suicide?' Jacquie frowned. It wasn't like Henry Hall to call her on a Sunday anyway, not if he could help it. And for a suicide?

‘Well … possibly. It certainly looked like that at first. Can you come straight here? There are elements of this I need a bit of brain for, and what I've got here isn't really cutting the mustard.'

‘Bob?'

‘Hmm.' Henry Hall was inscrutable as well as professional.

‘He
is
trying hard, isn't he? I'll be over ASAP. Can I have some breakfast first?'

‘As long as it's not too many courses. She isn't going anywhere, but there are things I want you to see before we move anything. Just to make sure I'm not seeing things. We're on the High Street side. Halfway along. Pray for no more snow.'

Jacquie didn't have her guv'nor down for the praying kind, but she knew the place well. In her mind she saw the chemist's on the corner and the pet shop with the electric fish that Nolan had to have a look at every time they passed. Just an ordinary street in an ordinary town.
Now it was a crime scene. And soon it would be a shrine with plastic flowers and bedraggled teddy bears. She thanked him and pressed the red key to ring off. Only Henry Hall would think it necessary to tell her precisely where the police investigation would be taking place, as if there might be three other white tents along the pavement that day. She slid out of bed and dressed in the clothes she only seemed to have taken off a couple of hours before. Maxwell reappeared in the bedroom door as though by magic.

‘Breakfast is served, modom,' he said, in his best Jeeves. ‘Or do you want that to go?'

‘No, I can eat it here,' she said, dragging a brush through her hair. ‘I'll be down in a mo, I just need to quickly wash my face and brush my teeth and I'm done.'

‘So much for the leisurely day,' Maxwell said, sadly, not feeling it right that morning to upbraid her for her split infinitive.

‘I know,' she said, going through into the en suite and talking over the hum of the toothbrush and through a mouthful of foam. ‘Iz a ugger.'

‘Indeed it is,' Maxwell agreed. ‘A ugger.'

Down in the kitchen, he doled out a stack of pancakes and drooled on the maple syrup. He sliced a banana over the whole thing and set it down in Jacquie's usual place. Nolan was halfway through his and the maple syrup was already slicking his ear lobes. This was what came of letting the child eat a pancake like a slice of watermelon, but it was Sunday after all.

Jacquie came in and slid into her seat, cutting through
the stack as she did so. ‘I'm so sorry, guys,' she said. ‘It's a pig on my day off, but …'

‘We understand, Mums,' Nolan said indistinctly.

‘We'll have a nice day together, but we will miss you too.'

‘What a nice child you are,' she remarked.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘And you are a nice …' he was stuck for a description, ‘detective inspector.'

Maxwell stifled a laugh. ‘What about me?' he said. ‘Am I a nice anything?'

Nolan looked at him for a long minute. ‘You're nice too, Dads,' was what he settled for and another diplomat was born.

Henry Hall was not usually a man who dressed for the weather. Summer and winter, he turned up for work immaculate in a suit and crisp white shirt. They were still there on this freezing January day but his wife, a mother hen temporarily chickless, had wrapped him in a thick coat bought in the hopes that one day they would go on the long-awaited cruise to the Arctic and had topped it off with a scarf that reached up from collar to lens. The gloves he had managed to lose in the car on the way over but the scarf seemed to have become an integral part of his face and resistance was useless. He left it where it was, pulling it down each time he needed to speak. Not for Henry Hall the Maxwellian type of neckwear, the Jesus College scarf worn with bravado and just a hint of snobbery. Hall also had hiking boots on, which were proving far more treacherous on the glassy surface of the
pavement than any shoe would have been, and he stayed near to the railings which skirted the margins of the car park, to have something to hold on to. He had resisted the white suit and was staying well back.

Jacquie joined him there, at the back of the crowd, dressed in a sensible ensemble, it seemed to him, of padded jacket, rubber boots and a rather natty hat with a tassel. Nolan had insisted on the hat, but otherwise her clothing had been her own idea.

‘Guv?' She peered between the bent backs of the forensics team to see what was going on. ‘Jumper?'

Hall was wearing one of those too, as part of his many layers, but knew this was not what she meant. ‘Yes. At least, that's what it looks like.'

His voice was rather muffled and Jacquie gave him a quizzical glance. ‘Can I help you with that scarf?' she asked.

‘Would you? Margaret is afraid I'll catch cold.' Jacquie reached behind him and undid the intricate knot, memorising which Girl Guide extravaganza it was, so that she could put it back again at the end of the day. Hall flexed his neck, colder but far more comfortable. ‘That's better. Right. It looks like she was a jumper from down here, but it is up there that I am interested in. Shall we?' He ushered her through the pedestrian door, into the mixed smells of urine, cold metal and weed that made up that popular air-freshener fragrance, L'eau de Garage Parking.

Jacquie pushed the call button of the lift.

‘Not working,' Hall remarked, as he pushed open the
door to the stairs with his shoulder. ‘Let the door swing to; they haven't dusted here yet.'

Without speaking again, their lungs straining on the biting cold air, they made their way to the top. Just inside the door, a uniformed constable, snug in his cape, kept watch.

‘I hope it's all right, DCI Hall,' he said, ‘if I stand inside. It's bitter out there.'

‘Can you see everything from in here?' Hall asked the man.

‘Yes, sir. The car is over there.'

‘Stay in here, then. We don't want you to die of hypothermia and this might be a bit of a long job. Have they dusted up here?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good. This way, then, DI Carpenter Maxwell.' Hall was always punctilious about formality in the company of uniform. ‘It's that car, over there.'

Jacquie listened. It was easier than looking; the snow had started up again and evil little frozen grains hit her in the face and lodged in her tassel. ‘Is the engine running?'

‘That's right.'

She walked over to the car, treading in the footprints of the SOCO team who had preceded her. She walked around the vehicle, looking carefully. ‘That's peculiar,' she said, at last. ‘She'd cleared the windscreen. In fact, she'd cleared all the windows.'

‘Yes. And she'd turned the engine on to warm the car while she did it. It's been here all night. There's no new
frost on it and the exhaust has even melted some of the snow on this abandoned job next door.'

‘It wasn't suicide, then, guv, surely?'

‘No, it wasn't. But not just for these reasons.'

‘There's more?' Jacquie had opened the door and was looking around the interior of the car.

‘Pick up the bag and look inside. It's OK, it's all been checked by SOCO.'

Jacquie reached inside and grabbed the handle of the bag which was in the passenger footwell. She opened the clasp and looked in. ‘Good God, guv,' she said, on an intake of frosty breath. ‘How much is in here?'

‘One thousand pounds,' Hall told her, his voice flat and expressionless.

‘Is there a note?' She already knew there wouldn't be a note, but it had to be asked.

‘No, not that we can find. Someone from uniform is round at the house going door to door while SOCO do the inside, but there's nothing yet. There's an ex somewhere – I gather that he is on his way to the station to talk to us. We'll get back there now you've seen this. I just wanted you to see what was what.'

‘That's good of you, guv.' She paused. ‘Do I gather you are in the minority here?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I'm afraid so. I'll be logging it as suspicious, no matter what the forensics boys say. They are having to put warm bags round the body to unfreeze it from the pavement. They'll be a while. Jim Astley's still on his way. Let's go and talk to the husband. I'm parked round the corner. You?'

‘I'm behind you,' Jacquie said. ‘I'll just quickly ring Max and tell him not to hang on for lunch and then I'll be along.'

‘To tell him not to hang on for lunch.' Hall managed to get a world of meaning into that simple remark.

‘Yes,' Jacquie said. ‘Precisely that. We have a brave new world at 38 Columbine this year, where I don't tell him about any of my cases.'

‘Not even Matthew Hendricks?' Hall raised an eyebrow.

‘
He
told
me
about that,' she protested but didn't add that technically that didn't count because it was last year. ‘We haven't discussed it since.'

Hall was sceptical, but he knew Maxwell as a man who could bide his time. If an iguana on a rock knew something that Maxwell wanted to know, Hall knew who he would have his money on as to who blinked first. But that could wait. ‘Make your call, then,' he said. ‘I'll see you at the station.'

Jacquie went to the far corner of the car park to maximise the signal and pressed ‘1', the speed dial for home.

‘Carpenter Maxwell residence.'

‘How very formal,' Jacquie said.

‘Hello, sweetness. How're things?'

‘Cold.'

‘Are you wearing a vest?' Maxwell asked, with a tut in his voice.

‘Many vests. It's still cold. I'll be home later this afternoon, I think, but don't wait for lunch. The forensics
is going to be important on this one, and we're going to have to be patient on that because the body is totally frozen.'