Maxwell’s Match (33 page)

Mason glanced through to where his wife was being accosted by an elderly woman with lariats of pearls around her neck.

‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Fiona’s just been got by Lady Whatserarse. That should give you a clear window of two hours or so.’

‘Can we do this in private somewhere, Dave?’ West asked. ‘It’s like Piccadilly fucking Circus out here.’

‘That’s because it’s the Hampshire County Club, Mark. They do an impressive house red and a mean crown roast, which I’d quite like to get my teeth into round about now, by the way, now that I can.’ He patted his jaw, from which Dr Josef Mengele had ripped his throbbing tooth only the week before. ‘What’s in here?’

What was through the door the Chief Super had just opened was an empty room with stacked chairs and music stands. Mason closed it behind them. ‘What about Hall?’

‘What’s he really doing here?’ West asked.

Mason looked at the man in the half light. Beyond the double doors the world and his wife were still passing by, between bar and ballroom.

‘I don’t believe this,’ the Chief Super said. ‘You drag me out on my bloody anniversary …’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Dave,’ West snarled. ‘We go back too far, you and I.’

Mason hesitated. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Interforce co-operation, my arse,’ hissed the DCI. ‘That’s for outside consumption, media, maybe even the Home Office. But we’re in here now, Dave. You and me. This is Marky, remember?’ He hauled up his shirt sleeve above the wrist strap. ‘I took a fucking bullet for you,’ he shouted. The purple scar shone in the dim light from the distant twirling glitter balls.

‘I know, Mark,’ Mason nodded, patting the man’s shoulder. ‘I know.’

He still saw it in all his waking nightmares. A kid on the run, scared, alone, out of his mind on acid. He’d gone in alone on a tip-off from West. The DCI had been a sergeant then, Mason a DI. He hadn’t realized the kid was armed, didn’t think he’d use the gun even when he had. It was only West’s presence of mind, working as back-up, that saved his life, brought the kid down. He was fifteen with a neat black hole just below his hairline, lying on a spreading pillow of black-red blood. All David Mason’s nightmares were about that.

‘I never thought I’d say this, Dave,’ West growled, looking the man straight in the face, ‘but you owe me.’

‘My life,’ Mason acknowledged. He looked back through the round window in the door to where Fiona sat chatting to her old friend. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘The truth,’ West told him.

‘Ah,’ Mason smiled. ‘That old thing.’ He wandered across to a stack of dining chairs and pulled a couple out, before sitting himself down. ‘How long have you got, Mark?’ he asked.

‘Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?’ Jacquie Carpenter was getting edgy. She looked at the ferret-faced man with the roll-up and the terminal acne in the green glow from his dashboard lights.

‘Like I told you,’ Martin Skinner said. ‘Waiting.’

‘Mr Skinner,’ Jacquie turned to him. ‘I could, of course, do you for wasting police time.’

‘Now then, darling …’

‘That’s sergeant to you, slime,’ she growled.

‘Well,’ he bridled. ‘So much for police co-operation.’

‘You said you had something important. We’ve been sitting here now for the best part of an hour.’ Skinner’s car was not exactly state of the art. Jacquie was cold and couldn’t feel her left buttock at all.

‘Yeah, well,’ Skinner chortled. ‘That’s the name of the game, isn’t it? We both play it, Jacquie …’ He caught the look on her face. ‘Oops, sorry, DS Carpenter. We both sit and stand around, don’t we? Stake-outs, tip-offs, surveillance. Lots of shoe leather, lots of bum-ache. Doesn’t always pay off, does it?’

‘Get me back to Selborne,’ she said, reaching for her seat-belt. ‘Do it now and I’ll go easy on you.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Skinner’s ciggie bobbed up and down in his tight lips. ‘How easy’s that, then? Aye up,’ and he shuffled down in his seat. ‘There he is.’

‘Who?’ Jacquie was looking through the windscreen into the darkened square ahead.

‘There, in the corner by the church. That’s Brian.’

‘Who’s Brian?’ Jacquie couldn’t see anybody.

‘That lad. Jeans, bomber jacket, baseball cap.’

‘What’s he doing?’ Jacquie asked.

Skinner sat up again. ‘Christ, love, I thought you were the filth. Where’s your career been up to now, then? Tracking people down for non-return of library books? Brian’s obviously waiting for a bus.’

Jacquie ignored the sarcasm. ‘What’s he got to do with what’s been going on at Grimond’s?’

‘Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. He used to go there. Before they gave him the elbow. Goes to the local comp now.’

‘I don’t see …’

‘Look,’ Skinner was stubbing out the butt on his dashboard, ‘Do you want to talk to him or not?’

Jacquie hesitated.

‘He’s a rent boy, as my colleagues in the Sundays put it,’ Skinner explained. ‘Bum bandit, fudge-packer. Do I have to spell it out?’

‘Thanks,’ Jacquie frowned. ‘I think you already have.’ And she got out of the car.

‘Oh, no,’ Skinner was with her. ‘This is
my
story, sergeant dear. You don’t talk to Brian unless I’m with you.’

But it was too late. The lad was looking in their direction, turning, running into the night.

‘Shit!’ Jacquie gave chase, then stopped. ‘Can we use the car?’

‘No chance,’ Skinner shouted. ‘We’ll lose him in the back doubles. Come on then, let’s see what you lady coppers are made of.’

Their boots rattled on the cobbles, then the tarmac. Skinner was slim enough for a night exercise like this, but the years of roll-ups and Scotch had done him no favours and Jacquie was soon outrunning him. Her head felt like bursting and her lungs were torture as she clattered around corners into the darkness, skidding in those little bits of nastiness with which urban dwellers decorate their towns. The bright lights of the square had gone now and there was no passing traffic. Ahead of her was a park, its gates locked, its trees black against the night purple of the sky. She stopped, listened. Somewhere, a dog barked, a distant train rumbled. She was walking softly now, head tilted to one side, trying to catch breathing, rustling, anything that gave her a scent of her quarry.

The infuriating thing was she seemed to have lost Skinner too. Perhaps that was for the best, but even so, if she found this boy, what was she going to ask him?

Then, none of it mattered, because he broke cover, hurling dustbins over as he leapt at the park railings, hauling himself up and over, ripping his jacket and shirt on the spikes before crashing into the bushes on the other side. Jacquie was slower, less desperate perhaps and she couldn’t manage the climb. Twice, three times, she threw herself at the cold, rusting metal, only to fall back again.

‘You lost him!’ Skinner was at her side now, panting, holding his ribs. ‘Christ Almighty!’

‘I didn’t notice you breaking any speed records!’

Jacquie snapped, resisting the urge to smack the hack around the head, chain him to the railings with her cuffs and leave him there overnight. Above all, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know she’d broken a nail. ‘All right, so he’s gone. What happens now?’

Skinner shrugged. ‘I could tell you what I know,’ he said.

Jacquie straightened her jacket, peering one last time into the darkness of the park. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Where?’

‘Well,’ Skinner was still getting his breath back, ‘There’s a lot of pubs in Petersfield.’ He closed to her, taking in her warmth, her scent. ‘Or we could go back to my place.’

Jacquie was momentarily between a rock and a hard place. She wouldn’t usually be seen dead in public with a reptile like Skinner. But the prospect of ‘his place’ and all that that entailed didn’t bear thinking about. She stood up to her full height, looking down on him. ‘We might wake the wife and kids. First round’s on you,’ she said.

‘It’s only me.’ Denise McGovern was peering round Henry Hall’s door, and it wasn’t a very good Harry Enfield.

He was in his shirt-sleeves, looking at his watch. ‘I was just going to bed,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have come unless it was important.’

Hall held the door open for her. All in all, he’d had a bitch of a day. Steadily, the two of them had begun working through the younger lads of Tennyson House, asking about Bill Pardoe, Tim Robinson, the whole sorry episode of the last two weeks and before. Alongside each kid was a bewildering, ever-changing rota of minders – parents, solicitors, social workers; all the cloying cottonwool of the nanny state that conspired to wrap up the innocent and let the guilty go free.

Barcourt Lodge was typical of hotels of its type. After dark, they became empty, soulless. Who stays in these rooms? What dramas and tragedies go on behind these doors? No soap can ever do it justice, no painting and no photograph can capture the essential loneliness of a place like that. And Henry Hall had been there for two weeks, to the day. The police house he’d been in before they found Bill Pardoe was too far out. Barcourt was handy for Grimond’s, but Barcourt had no soul. He’d die rather than admit it, but Henry Hall missed his wife and he missed his kids. In his own three-piece, anal way, he even missed Leighford.

‘This isn’t about drugs, is it?’ Denise took his offer of an armchair.

‘Sorry?’

‘Look, guv,’ she sighed. ‘I’ve been in on a lot of interviews in my time. Some of it’s boring, some of it’s slow, some of it turns your stomach. But I’ve never been on interviews when the questioner doesn’t get to the point.’

‘It’s a murder enquiry, Denise,’ Hall told her. ‘I don’t think I’ve been too obscure. You’ve got to keep all the options open.’

‘But the drugs, guv,’ she persisted. ‘The source of it all. You’ve got nothing.’

‘Nothing, Denise,’ Hall shrugged. ‘That’s how enquiries go, sometimes.’

‘Yeah, well,’ the DS said, reaching in her bag for the inevitable ciggie. ‘Like I told you, I’m in a hurry. Got a glass ceiling to crash through, remember. And I’ve got an idea …’

Earlier in the evening, a solemn bell had sounded through the corridors of Grimond’s, tolling the faithful to supper.

‘Vespers,’ Tony Graham stood up. ‘Max, I’d invite you to dinner, but …’

‘Thank you, no,’ Maxwell reached for his coat and hat. ‘I’m not sure George Sheffield’s speaking and Maggie Shaunessy would probably have my throat out.’

‘What’ll you do?’ Graham asked. ‘Head home tonight?’

‘No, I tried getting through a day’s work this morning,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Couldn’t take it. I’m afraid the old get up and go etcetera etcetera …’ The immaculate Yul Brynner was lost on the Housemaster, film buff though he claimed to be. ‘No, I think I’ll catch me a cab to Barcourt Lodge. They do a mean cocoa there, I understand. Could I just use your phone, Tony?’

‘Be my …’ but Tony Graham never finished his sentence. There was a thud at his study door and it burst open. Roger Harcross stood there, still in his blazer and tie and crimson in the face.

‘Ape?’ Graham looked at the lad. He was sweating and clearly in a hurry. ‘Something amiss?’

‘John Selwyn, sir,’ the lad blurted. ‘We can’t find him. He’s gone.’

‘Gone, Ape?’ Graham echoed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s not in his room, sir. He’s not in the Prefects’ Study or anywhere in Tennyson. Splinter’s tried the gym, the CCF hut.’

‘Has he tried the boat-house?’ Maxwell thought it politic to ask.

‘The boat-house has been locked recently,’ Graham said, stony faced. ‘Too many goings-on going on.’

Maxwell took in the anxious faces on both men, the Housemaster and his prefect. ‘Has John done this before?’ he was asking them both.

‘No, sir,’ Ape was adamant.

‘Never.’ Graham was shaking his head. ‘And ordinarily I wouldn’t concern myself. But with all this going on … Ape. Catch supper later, will you? You and Splinter take the Houses. All of them. If Miss Shaunessy tackles you in Northanger, don’t mix it with her. I’ll sort that later. You were ringing for a cab, Max …’

‘I think you need help on this one, Tony.’

‘No, really …’ Graham began.

‘Tony …’ Maxwell looked at Ape.

‘Double-up, Ape,’ Graham said. ‘You and Splinter meet me back here in … what, half an hour? And softly on this one, eh? We don’t want the world and his wife to know.’

‘Yes, sir,’ and Ape was gone, flying down the dimly lit corridor.

‘Like a bull in a china shop,’ Graham tutted. ‘Max, there’s no …’

‘Look, Tony,’ the Head of Sixth Form closed the door. ‘I’ll eat my hat afterwards if I have to, but I think John Selwyn’s involved in all this.’

‘You mean … ?’

‘Pardoe. Robinson.’

‘Come off it, Max,’ Graham guffawed. ‘You’re talking about my Captain of House here.’

‘More especially,’ Maxwell said, ‘I’m talking about Bill Pardoe’s Captain of House. Who, coincidentally, had a pretty public stand-up row with Tim Robinson in the gym the day before the man died.’

‘No,’ Graham was shaking his head. ‘No, I can’t accept that, Max. It’s nonsense.’

‘It may be,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘And I very much hope it is. But the fact, according to Ape, is that he’s vanished. What are we talking about here? A fairy ring? The Bermuda Triangle? I’d like to help you look.’

Graham hesitated. ‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘But you don’t know Grimond’s like I do. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, I suppose. Stick with me. Head okay for walking?’

‘I don’t walk on my head, Tony,’ Maxwell reminded him. ‘But thanks for asking.’

They combed the corridors on their way down, beyond Maxwell’s old landing, past the staircase that led to his room. ‘He wouldn’t be up there, I suppose?’ the Head of Sixth Form asked.

‘We only use that for the odd guest, Max,’ Graham said, perhaps privately conceding they didn’t come much odder than Maxwell. ‘No, that’s locked now. Come on; we’ll do the grounds.’

There was a mist in the hollows, wreathing the dip below Sheffield’s French-windowed study and snaking around the bases of the rugger posts, white and ghostly in the evening dark. The timing for the search was perfect. Everyone except Ape and Splinter would be indoors, having supper in the Dining Hall, Dr Sheffield sitting with his staff at High Table, wondering how long he’d got until his Chair of Governors threw him out and he saw his own job advertised in the
Times Educational Supplement
. From there, everyone would troop back to their prep bases, their studies and dorms. There should be no one out on the field at all.