Maxwell’s Match (34 page)

‘So what’s going on?’ Maxwell was finding it quite difficult to keep up with the younger man’s stride.

‘I wish I knew,’ Graham muttered, peering into the line of the hedges as they approached them.

‘You said Selwyn missed your lesson today.’

‘That’s right, he did. And lunch, too.’

‘And he rang me to invite me to a non-existent debate, at, I might add, incredibly short notice.’

‘You came,’ Graham observed. ‘Did he know you would?’

‘Meaning?’ Maxwell had stopped, his head thudding with the exertion. The pair had left the level of the pitches now and were striding over the tufted grass that led to the lake. It was dark here with only the mist for horizon and the odd squawk of disturbed ducks breaking the stillness.

Graham threw his hands in the air. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This is all crazy. Selwyn, Ape and Splinter are usually joined at the hip. If they don’t know where he is, then something’s really up.’

‘When do we call in the police?’ Maxwell asked.

‘No,’ Graham said emphatically. ‘No police, Max. Not yet. Those kids have been through enough in the last fortnight, God knows.’

‘And what if,’ Maxwell looked hard into the Housemaster’s face, ‘what if John Selwyn is a victim? What if he’s Number Three?’

Graham twirled away, waving his arms in the darkness, listening to the little splashes of the ducks at the water’s edge. It was getting cold down here and both men felt it.

Maxwell didn’t give the man an inch. ‘What is it, Tony? You’re Head of Tennyson, for Christ’s sake. If you don’t know what’s going on, then nobody does.’

Graham stopped pacing and turned to face his man. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth, I think Bill Pardoe was a pederast. And I don’t think he was working alone.’

‘He wasn’t,’ Maxwell said quietly.

‘He had a collection of porn,’ Graham went on, piecing together what he knew, collecting scraps. ‘Hanging around the showers, that sort of thing.’

‘Did you see this?’ Maxwell asked.

‘No,’ Graham shook his head. ‘He was too fly for that. But the boys don’t miss much. Two or three of them came to see me.’

‘They did?’ Maxwell frowned.

‘What could I do?’ Graham asked. ‘Take … take, your Dierdre Lessing at Leighford.’

‘Must I?’ Maxwell shuddered.

‘What if one of your sixth form girls came to you and told you Dierdre was a lesbian? Had made advances to her? What would you do?’

‘Say I told you so and run to the editorial offices of the
News of the World
, I suppose.’

Graham was shaking his head again. ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Like me, you’d agonize over it, weigh up the pros and cons. I was on the point of deciding when all this ghastliness happened.’

‘You were?’

‘I chickened out, I suppose,’ Graham confessed. ‘I should have seen Sheffield earlier, but when the Leighford exchange came up, I thought I’d just do that first, give myself a little breathing space. Then Pardoe jumped.’

‘So that’s it?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Neat and tidy?’

‘Hardly that,’ Graham muttered. ‘And before you ask, I haven’t the first idea how Tim Robinson fits into all this. My guess would be that’s a horse of a different colour.’

‘Now there, Tony,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘you have my full agreement. Come on, we’ve got a Captain of House to find.’

She watched him crossing the park in the early morning, a grey light failing to break the clouds to the west. His Tesco bag was slung nonchalantly over his shoulder. He was wearing trainers and it was her guess that the bag contained his school shoes. That would figure; he was rebel enough not to fit in with Grimond’s rigidity, but old habits die hard. He’d taken his shoes just in case, in case the rebel lost his nerve. He looked younger in his black school sweat shirt and he wasn’t wearing the baseball cap. She waited until he’d reached the gates and then she dashed from the bushes and stuck her warrant card under his nose.

He gasped in surprise. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Carpenter,’ she told him, ‘and I have absolutely no intention of chasing you all over Petersfield again. We need to have a little chat, Brian, you and I.’

‘I’ll be late for school,’ he whined.

‘I don’t somehow think that’s going to break the habit of a lifetime,’ she said. She took him by the arm and yanked him down alongside her on a park bench. It was out of sight of the main drag and anyway, most of Brian’s classmates had gone now, hurtling with the pure exhilaration of learning, the joy of the comprehensive chalk face. Sometimes, in fact, she wondered how Peter Maxwell stood it.

Until well after closing time, Jacquie Carpenter had sat with Martin Skinner in the Dawlish Arms, one of the many places the hack called his local. She promised him exclusives left, right and centre and was feeling pretty guilty about that until he started slobbering over her and making a grab for her breasts. Instead, she’d grabbed his car keys and driven his car back to Barcourt Lodge to get a well-earned zizz, leaving the reporter swaying confusedly in the Dawlish doorway. For all of four minutes, she felt guilty about that too, but she had told him where he could pick up his vehicle and since she’d protected him from losing his licence by being in charge of a vehicle while under the influence, reckoned they were more than quits.

‘How long have you been on the game, Brian?’ Jacquie asked, sliding the warrant card away.

‘What?’ The lad looked confused. ‘How do you mean?’

‘How old are you, Brian?’ The question was softer, more mumsy.

‘Sixteen,’ he told her.

‘Year Eleven, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Okay, so there’s no law against homosexual acts involving sixteen year olds.’

‘I’m not a poof!’ he shouted, then quieter, glancing around him, ‘I ain’t.’

‘You can drop the street talk, Brian,’ she told him. ‘I know you used to go to Grimond’s. I can’t imagine Dr Sheffield tolerating “I ain’t”.’

‘All right then,’ Brian was prepared to concede. ‘I’m not.’

‘That’s a bit like saying you’re not a murderer while you’re tightening your hands around someone’s neck, isn’t it, Brian?’

‘You said there was no law against it,’ he reminded her.

‘Not exactly, Brian,’ she patronized. ‘The law covers consensual sex, in private and must not be for gain.’

‘You what?’

‘It’s my guess you charge for your services. What? Ten quid for a wank? Twenty for a blow job? And the stalls of a gents’ loo aren’t exactly private, are they, Brian? Hence the correct term for them,
public
conveniences.’

‘Are you going to arrest me?’ The lad was shaking from the lips down.

Jacquie looked at him. Brian was an unlovely child, pasty with hair the same colour as his skin. ‘You see, son,’ she leaned towards him. ‘You’re on the slippery slope. First it was Grimond’s. Now Dotheboys Hall. Next it’ll be the dole queue and you’re already hanging around loos and bus shelters for dirty old men. I’m the only brake in all this you’ve got.’

‘So are you going to arrest me?’

‘Been arrested before?’ She saw his eyes fill with tears as he shook his head. ‘Tell me about Grimond’s,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘And tell me the truth, Brian or you and I will take a little stroll to the police station. The judge might go easy with you, first time and all, but your mum and dad will have a pretty whacking fine to pay and your name, depending on when you’re seventeen, will be in the papers. And even if it’s not, you know how these things have a habit of getting out, don’t they? There again, if you’re unlucky, we’re talking about a custodial sentence and you don’t want to know what’ll happen to a young thing like you inside.’

‘What do you want to know?’ Brian asked quickly.

‘Why did you leave Grimond’s?’

‘Thieving,’ he said. ‘I stole a wallet.’

‘Whose?’

‘Graham’s. Mr Graham. He was a bastard.’

‘No doubt,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘Which House were you in?’

‘Tennyson,’ Brian said.

‘Mr Pardoe’s House?’

Brian nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘Tell me about Mr Pardoe. Did you like him?’

‘Yeah, I did. He was a good bloke. Not like Graham and that bastard Sheffield.’

‘How long have you been on the game, Brian?’

The boy’s gaze faltered. ‘About two years,’ he said.

‘You were still at Grimond’s at the time?’

Brian nodded again.

‘How many “clients” would you say you’ve had in that time?’ she asked.

The lad shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘But enough,’ Jacquie suggested, ‘to know the type.’

‘There’s no special type,’ Brian corrected her.

‘Maybe not, but you know, don’t you? The bloke driving slowly in his car, you know whether he’s a punter or just somebody looking for directions?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Brian said.

‘Mr Pardoe, then,’ Jacquie pursued it. ‘Was he that type?’

Brian looked at her. ‘Pardoe?’ he frowned. ‘No, never in a million years. He was about the only decent teacher they had at Grimond’s. I couldn’t believe it when they said on the news he’d killed himself.’

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the news, Brian,’ she said.

‘So?’ He looked at her, still shaking, still unsure. ‘You going to arrest me, then? ’Cos if you do, I’m taking a few of them with me.’

Jacquie knew this game. How easy it would be for Brian to name names. Anybody he didn’t like, anybody who’d ever looked at him funny. It sounded as if Tony Graham might be top of the list.

‘I thought you might,’ she said. ‘Anybody in particular?’

Brian thought for a moment. ‘There is one bloke,’ he said. ‘Not a regular exactly, but I’ve met him two or three times now.’

Jacquie wasn’t really interested in this, but she’d need to talk to the boy again and needed to keep whatever trust he had in her. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, he keeps a record, like, about me, about other lads, I expect.’

Jacquie frowned. Suddenly she was interested. ‘How do you mean, Brian, “keeps a record”?’

‘Uses a cassette. You know, a tape recorder. I’ve seen it in his car, seen him use it when we’ve finished.’

‘This man,’ Jacquie said. ‘Does he have a name?’

‘Dave,’ Brian said. ‘He calls himself Dave.’

‘Can you describe him?’

Brian shrugged. ‘It’s been pretty dark when we’ve … you know. He’s a big bloke, solid like, spiky grey hair. Drives a big, dark car. Sorry, don’t know the make.’

Jacquie was already on her feet. ‘Brian,’ she said. ‘I want you to do something for me. Will you do it?’

‘What’s that?’ he stood up with her.

‘Have you arranged to meet this man again?’

‘No,’ Brian said. ‘He don’t work like that. I may see him, I may not.’

She fished in her handbag. ‘Here’s my mobile number,’ she said, aware of the risk she was taking. ‘If you see this man again, anywhere, anytime – I don’t care if it’s three in the morning, you ring me. Got it?’

‘I don’t know …’ Brian said.

Jacquie closed to him. ‘I know the school you go to, Brian,’ she said, levelly. ‘And I know where you live. Remember that slippery slope we talked about? And that brake? You think about that, Brian. Now,’ she glanced up at the Petersfield day going on around them. ‘Hurry up or you’ll be late for school. And Brian … this man …’ She looked deep into his eyes. ‘Do yourself a favour. Don’t get into the car with him. All right?’

20

They didn’t find John Selwyn. Ape and Splinter met Graham back in his study at the appointed hour and had drawn a blank. They’d got into Northanger unobserved by everybody except Janet Boyce who had attempted to wither them with her glance. Selwyn wasn’t there.

‘What about Cassandra?’ Graham asked the obvious.

‘She was there,’ Ape remembered.

‘We met her coming back from supper,’ Splinter added. ‘No John.’

Graham and Maxwell had produced nothing either. There was no one by the lake or the boat-house, no one at the CCF hut that Ape and Splinter had already checked. The chapel was locked and dark in its nightly neglect with a solitary red flame burning somewhere in its nave. On the way back through Tennyson the pair had checked all the obvious places – the little theatre that doubled as the film studio where rows of videos lined the walls; Prefects’ Study where the lockers were lined with photos of Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue and, in one case, Will Young. Of Selwyn there was no sign.

Neither of them wanted to risk a journalistic incident by enquiring of the two furtive geezers, the rump of the moved-on paparazzi who were slowly crawling back, on the off chance that something broke. A missing prefect would be grist to their mill and it was not something either Graham or Maxwell wanted to hand them on a plate.

At shortly after two o’clock, they’d called it a night and Tony Graham had run Peter Maxwell out of Grimond’s, courtesy of the Housemaster’s key, through the silent country lanes to Barcourt Lodge.

‘Thanks Tony,’ Maxwell waved to the man. ‘And don’t worry. When you get back, it’s my guess John will be there, large as life and twice as sassy.’

‘I’ve never lost a lad yet, Max,’ the Housemaster said, crunching into gear. ‘I don’t intend to start now.’

‘Good for you.’

The man on the desk was the very antithesis of Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates; in fact, he was rather more Oliver Hardy’s Oliver Hardy. With that old skill he’d picked up in the classroom years ago of reading inappropriate notes upside down, Maxwell found Jacquie Carpenter’s name and room number. Had he been of a different disposition, or a funnier time of life, he might have sought DCI Henry Hall’s company. As it was, he made for Room 26, knocked and waited. Even with a head that still thudded for England, he had noticed her yellow Ka was not in the car park. After Tubbsy’s MG it was probably the second-most-noticeable vehicle in the world. And it wasn’t there. No one answered his knock. He checked his watch. It
was
very late. And Peter Maxwell turned in.

‘A search, Chief Inspector?’ George Sheffield was due to teach his one lesson of the week that Tuesday morning. It had been two weeks since he’d stood in that ghastly white tent they’d erected over the dead body of Bill Pardoe, but the grey face of the man and the colour of his congealed blood had never left him. He couldn’t forget Tim Robinson either, purple-blue and waterlogged, lying inert under the frantically working body of that policewoman.