Maxwell's Return (4 page)

He listened in his usual silent way, absorbing every word, not interrupting with even a grunt.

‘Well, Maxwell should know, I agree, but…’

The phone muttered in his ear.

‘But doesn’t this make it worse for Ryan? If he is behaving out of character?’

The sergeant shuffled his feet and Hall raised a finger again.

‘I do see what you mean. I think. But he isn’t really a suspect, Jacquie. I can see that a concrete alibi might make it easier for him to get back to work, but as far as we are concerned, it makes no difference. I’ll make a note, though.’ He coughed discreetly. ‘And… we will be seeing you, Monday?’

The phone muttered again.

‘Good. We’ve just had someone call in – a body on the beach.
Nothing much, I don’t think. They’re not even sure it’s a body. It will turn out to be a tangle of clothes or something, caught up in that landslip at Willow Bay.’

This time the phone asked a question.

‘I think you were away. There was a storm and some trees came down the cliff. No one hurt but there was a bit of a kerfuffle for a while. You know what it’s like. Missing people, are they buried under the rubble? The usual.’

He glanced up as a civilian receptionist appeared in his doorway and spoke in a low voice to the sergeant, whose head came up in surprise. He gestured to Hall, who spoke rather more urgently.

‘It looks like something has come up, Jacquie,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you on Monday. ’Bye,’ and he rang off, keeping the phone in his hand, as if at the ready. He looked at the sergeant, who was looking portentous. ‘What?’

‘It’s not just clothes, guv,’ the man said. ‘It’s a body. It’s another one.’

Maxwell raised an eyebrow at his wife. ‘That sounded a little like the bum’s rush,’ he remarked, his voice as inflection-free as he could make it.

‘No,’ she said, putting the receiver down slowly. ‘It… well, they seem to have found a body on the beach. No biggie.’

‘No biggie?’ Maxwell queried. ‘I know we are by the sea here, heart, but even so, bodies on the beach… surely not an everyday occurrence. You’re not in California now, you know.’

‘There were less than three hundred homicides…’ she caught the eyebrow again as it whizzed upwards, ‘murders in LA last year, as a matter of fact,’ she said. ‘They have the lowest h-murder rate for a city of that size in the world.’

Maxwell didn’t move. He merely sat looking the picture of rapt attention. Then he slumped. ‘You didn’t say it,’ he whined.

‘What?’

‘So there.’

‘So there, what?’

‘No, I expected you to say “so there”. They have the latest h-murder – I’m assuming that is just murder you mean there, rather than the much rarer h-murder,’ and he ducked as the magazine whooshed past his head, ‘murder rate for a city of that size in the world,
so there
! But you didn’t.’

‘Well, they have.’

‘Dear heart, of course they have. And I bet when the figures come out for this year, the rate will have gone down further still. But if my own ridiculously full brain can come up with a figure, then I would reply that the whole of England and Wales had less than twice that. So, that’s why I must repeat that a body on the beach is certainly not ‘no biggie’.’

She shrugged a shoulder and reached for the magazine. It wasn’t
there, having slid harmlessly down behind Maxwell’s chair when she flung it.

‘So, would you like me to fish your magazine out, or would you like your jacket?’

She looked at him and then gave a sigh. ‘Jacket,’ she murmured, then reached up her arms to him. ‘I do love you, Peter Maxwell.’

‘And I love you, Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell. Just as well, eh?’ Planting a kiss on her nose, he went upstairs to fish her jacket out of the wardrobe. He knew she would never make it until Monday. But never mind; this would give him the moral high ground and would grease the wheels when it came to wheedling details out of her. Even after all this time, she still wasn’t up to all his little games and long may that situation flourish. He wiped the smile off his face and went back down to where she stood in the lounge, already twirling the car keys.

‘Don’t wait up,’ she said as she made for the stairs.

‘I’m not even sure what the time is,’ he said. ‘I may go up and do some modelling. Or I might also suddenly fall over fast asleep. Expect me where you find me.’ He blew a kiss and watched her safely down the stairs. There wasn’t much he could do to keep her safe at work but he did what he could. The door slammed and he waited to hear the car engine start before going back into the sitting room. The phone was ringing.

‘War Office.’

‘And don’t think that just fetching my jacket and letting me go in to
work gives you the moral high ground,’ his wife’s voice sounded softly in his ear. ‘I’m wise to your tricks, Peter Maxwell.’

‘Ha. Ha.’ He put the phone down and spoke to the room in general. ‘And yet you still fall for them, dear heart,’ he said. ‘Luckily for me.’ And he twirled on his toes and made for the attic and TSM Linkon.

DI Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell let the car coast to a halt at the kerb where only twenty four hours before the hire-car had dropped them after their eleven hour journey. It seemed almost unbelievable that Los Angeles was only a few days ago; already, it felt like another life time. And here she was, back in harness and a dead girl on the beach. No, correction;
another
dead girl on the beach, albeit under different circumstances. The new sergeant, Jason Briggs, had been already suited and booted to go off and arrest Bernard Ryan but in the end he had been countermanded by Henry Hall. Hall didn’t believe in coincidence, gut reactions, coppers’ noses or anything else of that nature. Nor did he believe that Yakult was good for him, but he dutifully drank the horrible stuff every day, just to please his wife. So, had Briggs had any decent reason for pulling Ryan in, he would have let him do it, in that same spirit. But apart from the no smoke without fire reason – another aphorism for which Henry Hall had no time – Briggs had nothing, so Bernard Ryan could spend another night in
blissful ignorance of the axe that was undoubtedly about to fall.

Jacquie suppressed a little smile as she eased the car door quietly to. It had been very gratifying, the genuinely happy faces she had met when she walked in to Leighford Nick. No one was happier than Henry Hall but she had to judge by the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth and the double flicker on the flat lenses of his glasses as he dipped his head before she knew just how much he had missed her. A lot.

‘Jacquie,’ he had said as he pulled out a chair. ‘I’m not sure you know Jason.’

‘Ermm, no.’ She could have added, ‘only by repute.’ The emails from her colleagues had not painted a very attractive picture. Crawler. Brown-noser. Smartarse. But time would tell. ‘Hello, Jason,’ she said as he extended a hand.

‘Ma’am.’ He had touched her fingers briefly, but that was that. She couldn’t blame him. He would have been filling her shoes while she was away and it was never easy to step back down again. And it still felt odd to be called ‘Ma’am’.

‘Thanks for coming in, Jacquie,’ Hall had said, and clearly meant it. ‘We’re down to the wire as far as personnel go. So many out sick you would hardly credit. God knows what it’ll be like when the flu season kicks in. Still, you’re back now so let’s get on.’

Jacquie knew that that would be the last she would ever hear about her absence. And now, here she was, creeping up her own stairs, checking instinctively for innards. Metternich had settled back into the routine of Columbine without a hitch. Presumably, cats didn’t have any truck with jetlag. When you spend twenty out of every twenty four hours asleep and the other four disembowelling things, jetlag is for other people. The great beast met her at the top of the stairs with a querulous miaow.

‘All right, all right,’ she whispered. ‘Did you have your sachet last night?’

The animal looked at her wistfully. It had been rumoured in their neighbourhood in LA that Antonio Banderas had been seen in the yard taking lessons in cute looks from Metternich. The miaow this time was just a mime, as he clearly had not the strength to make a noise.

Jacquie looked at him and pursed her lips then went into the kitchen. ‘I think you’re lying,’ she whispered severely. ‘How do I know? Because your tail flicked to the left and down – always a sign whatever they say on
Lie To Me
. But just this once you can have the benefit of the doubt.’ She pulled out a sachet of his favourite food and emptied it into his bowl. He nudged her with his substantial backend and dived right in. She kicked off her shoes and trod softly on the bottom stair, listening, then remembered that Nole was at Plocker’s for the night. She could just pick up the soft breathing of her husband from their bedroom, the soft
breathing that other people might call snoring, but she was too well brought up. She undressed in Nolan’s room and then slid open the door to her own bedroom and slipped in alongside Maxwell, who murmured in his sleep and budged over to give her more room.

‘A’ri’?’ he asked.

‘Yes, fine,’ she muttered, turning her back so he could fit around her like a spoon.

‘Henry a’ri’?’

‘Mm-hm.’ She was dropping off already. Heaven knew what time it was, on this continent or any other. She waited for another few seconds for the other question, but it never came. She closed her eyes and offered up a silent prayer to the god of jetlag. She would at least be spared the third degree until the morning.

‘So,’ the curtains flew back with a rattle and DI Carpenter-Maxwell screwed up her eyes against the August sunshine. ‘A body on the beach, eh? Have they arrested Bernard yet?’ She looked up to see Maxwell looming over her with a tray and a smell of coffee and toast filled the room. She struggled upright.

‘I thought we agreed…’

‘Of course we did. But you know how it is,’ he smiled at her and
pushed a small errant lock of hair behind her ear. ‘I can’t help asking.’ He paused and looked at her. Antonio Banderas had not been in the yard in vain. ‘You can’t help telling me what I need to know.’ His Svengali impression was among the best in the world.

She took a slurp of coffee. ‘Not much to tell,’ she said. She looked at the tray. ‘No strawberry jam?’

‘Soz, heart,’ Maxwell said. ‘Just grape jelly. It will be a while before we completely exorcise the American within. There’s peanut butter, look.’

‘Okay.’ Jacquie was famished, having missed many meals, she wasn’t sure which ones.

‘So, not much to tell,’ he prompted.

‘Not as yet. There was a body on the beach, caught up in the driftwood and whathaveyou at Willow Bay. There had been a significant cliff fall back in the spring but that was by the way. The body had been there around two or three weeks, the forensics guys thought. Hard to tell because the tide only reaches there when it is really high and they have got to work it out. There are no charts for that kind of situation.’ She took a huge bite of toast, jelly and peanut butter and sighed. ‘I do miss the food, you know, already.’

Maxwell smiled. Had their forebears fought the War of Independence in vain? ‘The fridge is full of it, as are all the cupboards. Sylv’s back bacon is fighting a rearguard action, I’m afraid.’

‘We can cook fusion style,’ Jacquie said.

‘So, this body…’

‘You’re relentless, you know that?’

Maxwell decided to consider it a compliment.

‘They have an ID already, because this girl had been posted as missing three weeks ago in Brighton. The time of death seems to fit with her having died straight away, but we’ll have confirmation soon, I hope.’

Maxwell sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at her. ‘Are you well?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘Because I am not having to prise all of this out of you with hot pokers and other Torquemada-like devices.’

‘Well, she probably won’t be ours, will she?’ Jacquie said, starting to butter her second slice of toast. ‘She went into the water at the Brighton end and just washed up on Willow Bay beach. The murderer, if there is one, will live in Brighton, the crime will have been committed in Brighton. Henry will have a friendly meeting with the Brighton boys and da daaaaaaa – we hand her back.’

‘If there is one?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Does it look accidental, then?’

‘Well, she was dressed for a night on the town. She’s not a working girl. In fact, girl is the word; she was just fourteen. But like all of them, she looked a lot more with all the slap on. She had a sparkly thing,’ she sketched the shape of a boob tube with her half-eaten toast, ‘and a skirt up
to her tonsils. And a pair of fuck-me shoes, pardon my French. She could have just drunk too much and fallen in.’

Maxwell looked dubious. ‘Fourteen, though,’ he muttered.

‘Surely, Max,’ she said, leaning back, ‘surely I don’t have to tell you what these girls can be like?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘you don’t, unfortunately. I just can’t see a fourteen year old going out on the piss on her own. And at that age, I would think that at least one of her mates would have coughed to her mum. Or on Facebook. Whichever is the sooner.’

‘That might turn out to be the case,’ Jacquie said, wiping her mouth and offering up the tray. ‘Henry is getting the notes across today and by tomorrow, we’ll have the autopsy…’

‘PM.’

‘Yes, PM, sorry… results through, hopefully, although it probably won’t help us much. The alcohol levels for example will have degraded by now. Any DNA will be helpful, but that won’t be ready for ages and of course we need to have a suspect before we can make a match.’ She kicked Maxwell lightly to move him off the bed and he got up, holding the tray, still looking thoughtful. She stood up and reached over to give him a kiss. ‘Let’s forget about dead girls today, shall we, and get the photos sorted. I’ve promised them to Mum and Sandy and the girls.’

Maxwell turned and walked to the top of the stairs with the tray. Forget about a dead girl. How do you begin to do that?

CHAPTER FOUR

Jim Astley looked over his half-moon glasses at Donald and asked him the question his assistant knew he would ask. As he had left the house that morning, in answer to the call, he had told his temporarily significant other that he would say it, and now here he was, saying it. ‘Why have we been called in on a Sunday for this, Donald? This girl has been dead for weeks.’