Maxwell’s Curse (14 page)

‘A horned god … ?’

‘The male beast,’ Maxwell explained, ‘monarch of the glen. It was all to do with ancient fertility rites – the first of Spring and so on. Maypole, dances and kissing the Devil’s arse. Most of it was nonsense, dreamed up by frustrated Catholics in hair shirts – not that it’s my period, you understand.’

‘Of course not,’ she said, well used to his encyclopaedic ways.

‘Today, most Catholics are quite content to watch Mass of the Day on telly, but in the good old days …’

‘There were … things on the altar.’

‘What things?’ He looked up from his coffee.

‘Black candles. A five pointed star in a circle. A sheep’s heart …’

‘… and a cuddly toy,’ Maxwell finished the list for her, but neither of them was laughing. ‘Are we talking Satanism?’ he asked, ‘Jacquie, are we talking about black magic? I mean, this is the twenty-first century.’

‘I never thought I’d hear you say that,’ she tutted. ‘I was hoping you’d say something rational, make some sense out of all this.’

‘Sorry. Like I said, it’s not my period. What about Crispin Foulkes?’

‘Crispin?’ She sat up. The name still caught her attention, even after all these years. ‘What about him?’

‘He knows a bit about Satanic abuse. Met it before in his social work. He seemed to think I knew something about it too, what with the calendar and all.’

‘Ah, yes, the calendar. He did happen to mention that to me.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re a fair cop. I helped myself to it and I shouldn’t have done. I’ll hand it over to you or put it back if you like.’ And he put his wrists out ready for the bracelets.

‘Put it back? Max, where did it come from?’

He blinked at her. ‘Well, from Myrtle Cottage, of course, from Elizabeth Pride’s place. But you knew that …’

‘Max.’ She was staring at him now, worried, frightened even. ‘When did you go to Myrtle Cottage?’

‘God, I don’t know. Er … nine, ten days ago? Why?’

‘That would be the day after we went over the place with a fine tooth comb.’

‘So?’ He didn’t follow.

‘So, there was no calendar there, then, Max, no calendar at all. Unless …’

‘Unless?’

She shook her head, rapidly, like a terrier shaking a rat. She was shaking herself free of a sudden thought she couldn’t face. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just forget it. Your coffee’s getting cold.’

9

‘Come on, give us a fuckin’ fag.’

‘I ain’t got one.’

‘Yes you have, you shit. Cough up!’

Wayne and Darren went back a long way, to the buggies their mothers had wheeled them in down Asda aisles through the nursery years when
Danger Mouse
was still on the telly and Kurt and Courtney were love’s young dream. They’d always been there for each other, when Wayne had pinched his first packet of Pickled Onion Flavour Monster Munch and when Darren had had his stomach pumped to get rid of his dad’s vodka. It was a case of mi casa su casa where they found Wayne’s dad’s stack of tasty videos and they’d taken turns keeping watch while the other one went on a rummage of discovery in Jade O’Brien’s knickers; it was a well-worn path.

Tonight was Sunday. Skateboarding in the Barlichway. They lived on the edge of the huge sprawling estate that threatened to dwarf sleepy Leighford. It was like Birkenau to Auschwitz and just as grim. No birds sang here, around its wet, windy corners. They just huddled in the angles of the high rise and dropped their contempt on the buggers below.

The rain was driving in from the west, spattering on the graffiti-daubed boarded-up windows that had been the Raj Tandoori Takeaway before certain racial differences had driven its owners away. Darren fumbled in his jeans and passed a Sovereign to his mate. Out came the cheap lighter that had replaced the one confiscated by that old fart Maxwell on Friday and the boys’ hard, cold faces lit up for seconds in the dark.

Wayne inhaled deeply, resting against the wall, his trainered feet expertly rocking the skateboard on the pavement. ‘What about that new bit, then?’ He was always asking Darren’s opinion, especially when it came to women. Darren, the sophisticate, the roué, belched noisily and swigged from his Carling, pondering the matter before giving his days- younger protégé the benefit of his wisdom.

‘Great rack,’ he nodded.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Wayne conceded. ‘Does she go, though?’

Darren shrugged. ‘You can never tell with Pakis, can you?’

‘Can’t you?’

Darren pulled his fleece higher under his chin. ‘Don’t you listen to nothin’ in old bag Byfield’s SRS lessons? It’s your comparative religions, innit? They’re all supposed to be virgins before they get married.’

‘Get on!’ Wayne guffawed. ‘That’s only in Pakiland, though, innit? All them mosques and Islams.’

‘Anyway,’ Darren wiped the lager froth from his mouth. ‘What about Roxanne, you two-timing git?’

‘Nah,’ Wayne half-turned. He had loved Roxanne for most of his teenaged life, all fourteen months of it. He’d scratched her name on the underside of his desk in Maths – well, there wasn’t much else to do in Maths of a wet January. And last year, he’d broken into his mum’s purse and sent the object of his affections a Valentine card – ‘Violets are red, Roses are blue, what colour are yours?’ it had said. But he already knew the answer to that. They were a virginal while. It had become his favourite colour. He and Darren went back a long way, but he wasn’t going to tell him any of this.

‘Nah,’ he said again, bending to pick up the skateboard. ‘Not my type.’

‘Right!’ chuckled Darren, ‘I’ve seen you …’ and his voice trailed away in the darkness.

‘What?’ Wayne followed his friend’s gaze. Darren was staring transfixed at something lying huddled in the far corner, next to the battered supermarket trolley. ‘What’s up?’

Darren was fumbling with the lighter again. Out of the yellow light of the street lamp, that particular corner of the estate was deepest black. The boys made their way forward as an empty beer can rolled noisily across the tarmac. In the flickering light they saw a sight that neither of them would ever forget. It was an old man, sitting in the refuse of a derelict doorway, his white hair plastered to his forehead by the rain, his knees tucked up as though he was sitting by a roaring camp fire. They didn’t take in the fact that he was naked, that his white flesh hung like an old wrinkled sheet from his bones. All they saw was his face, looking at them, grinning at them. And he was dead. They, who had never seen death before. They who knew that when you died, pumped full of bullets by Wesley Snipes or John Travolta, you just somersaulted backwards in slow motion and rolled in the dust. Things to do in Barlichway when you’re dead.

Jim Astley had seen death before. Too much of it. Too often. He looked oddly incongruous in his dazzling white hooded suit in the Barlichway night. Coppers in luminous striped coats came and went all around him and the SOCOs were busy erecting a makeshift tent over Astley and a dead man.

The Barlichway crowd had gathered, track-suited, anoraked, a walking ad for Nike and Adidas huddled together in the rain beyond the police cordon stretched across the quadrangle, muttering and jostling. They who never saw a field event.

‘This’d never happen if you blokes did your job,’ someone called.

‘I ain’t seen a copper on this estate for years.’

‘Who is it? What the fuck’s going on?’

Each jeer, each question was echoed by the crowd’s dark rhubarb, like some predictable Greek chorus lamenting a hero’s woes.

Henry Hall crouched with the police surgeon under the glare of the arc lights. Jacquie Carpenter was behind him, trying not to look at the hideous grin on the dead man’s face.

‘
Risus sardonicus
,’ Astley was prising the dead lips with gloved fingers, tapping the decayed teeth with something metal. ‘Your classic
strychnos nux vomica
. It’s almost textbook.’

‘Bear with me,’ Hall said grimly. ‘You and I clearly read different textbooks, Jim.’

‘We’re lucky this is the twenty-first century.’ Astley shone his pencil torch into the dead man’s bulging eyes. ‘Strychnine is a stimulant. It used to be available in patent medicines – Easton’s Syrup, for one. It’s an alkaloid found in a tree in India – er, I’m not boring you, am I? I mean, no snooker or anything on the telly?’

‘I’ve got a sergeant somewhere,’ Hall looked at his watch, ‘whose wife’s going into labour as we speak. His attention may be elsewhere; mine’s here.’

‘Makes you almost philosophical, doesn’t it?’ Astley was going about his business. ‘One life begins as another ends.’

‘You were talking about strychnine.’

‘I was,’ the doctor sighed. ‘The stuff tastes terrible, so it would need to be administered in something sweet – jam, maybe, or custard. This poor old bugger would have had difficulty breathing and would have gone into convulsions. It’s bloody painful. Whoever did this is making a point, Henry.’

‘A point?’

‘He wants to be noticed. There are more humane ways to take a life. The number of convulsions varies. Each one lasts from one to five minutes. Look at his eyes.’

Hall forced himself to.

‘Pupils dilated, eyeballs prominent. What is odd is this.’

‘What?’ Hall couldn’t see what Astley was pointing at.

‘His general position, curled up like a bloody armadillo.’

‘That’s odd?’

‘Happens in less than ten per cent of strychnine cases. Usually, the back arches the other way, so that only the head and heels touch the floor – a little acrobatics we in the profession call opisthotonos. This one’s emprosthotonos – that’s bending forward to you.’

‘What sort of dose are we talking?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘Hundred grams to be certain, but he was an old man … what, seventy-five, seventy-six? It probably took less. He’d have died within hours. Who was he?’

Hall shook his head. ‘I’ve got men going door to door,’ he said. ‘But this is the Barlichway, Jim. The locals’ll be as forthcoming as a Trappist monastery.’

‘Hello,’ Astley’s torch beam was playing behind the dead man’s head. ‘This looks familiar.’

‘What?’ Hall craned forward. A bloodless wound, about an inch wide, gaping and dark, ran across the nape of the old man’s neck, leathery and brown.

‘Either I’m having one of my increasingly common attacks of déjà vu,’ Astley rested back on his booted heels, ‘or this is the same knife thrust wound I saw on the late Elizabeth Pride.’ He looked at the chief inspector. You’ve got a real live one, Henry.’ His smile was as sardonic as the dead man’s. ‘You’ve found yourself a serial killer.’

‘Are we talking about a serial killer. Chief Inspector?’

It had taken the assorted gentlemen (and ladies) of the press precisely five minutes to get around to that one. Henry Hall was mildly surprised – he’d expected it in two.

‘What makes you say that, Mr Barton?’

The cameras were popping and wheezing in the congestion of the press conference room, the two dozen microphones thrust forward to the desk where Hall sat alone. People sat poised with cassettes in their hands, notepads on their laps, ciggies in their mouths. Mobile phones warbled and chattered like demented swallows on a wire. It was the paparazzi in full cry.

‘Come on, Chief Inspector,’ another voice came back at him. ‘Three suspicious deaths inside fifteen days and within a radius of ten miles and you’re telling us it’s coincidence corner.’

Hall held up his hand to quieten the hubbub. ‘We are unaware of any specific connection at the moment.’

‘Who was the dead man?’

‘I cannot tell you that at this precise moment.’

Fingers were jabbing the air, cassette-filled hands probing forward like the lean and hungry men around Caesar, scenting a rent in his toga.

‘What can you tell us?’ somebody else wanted to know. ‘I mean, you called this bloody press conference.’

Guffaws and ‘hear hears!’ filled the morning.

Hall was on his feet, waiting for a modicum of silence. He wasn’t going to get it. ‘When I know anything,’ he shouted at them all, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

Kevin Brand watched him go, white-gilled and rock-jawed. He leaned across to Jacquie Carpenter. ‘Longest time I’ve ever heard it take for anybody to say “No comment”. How long d’you think it’ll be before he gets a red-hot call from the Chief Constable?’

‘As long as it takes for one of these bastards to get through to him,’ she shrugged.

‘DS Carpenter?’ she found herself staring into the cassette-player of a hawk-faced woman from the Telegraph. ‘Janet Ruger. Can you tell me, what’s the link between the dead man and Elizabeth Pride?’

‘No comment.’ Jacquie had tangled with the fourth estate before. They had a habit of smashing defences, uncovering secrets and then printing what they damn-well chose. She swept past the woman in the wake of her retreating DCI.

Brand was either less lucky or less nimble on his feet. ‘How about you, DC Brand?’ Janet Ruger had an NVQ in persistence. ‘The link between the Barlichway body and Elizabeth Pride?’

Brand’s expression didn’t change. He leaned forward and licked his lips with a ‘this is for your ears only’ wink. ‘Siamese twins,’ he said darkly and followed Jacquie out.

The DCI was even greyer when he got off the phone to the Chief Constable than when he’d left the press conference. He was back in the Incident Room at Tottingleigh, the phones jumping, the computer screens flashing messages, the e-mails and faxes coming and going in the communications jungle that was Maxwell’s millennium.

The Chief Constable,’ he announced above the row, ‘has Social Services and I quote “climbing up his arse”. He’d like to see some results. And so would I. What have we got?’

‘The dead man was Albert John Walters,’ a stocky detective volunteered. ‘Lived on the Barlichway …’

‘And died on the Barlichway,’ Hall finished the sentence for him. ‘Anything else?’

‘He lived alone, guv,’ Jacquie was checking her hastily scribbled notes, ‘Fourteen A Coniston Court.’

‘SOCO are going over the place now,’ somebody chipped m. ‘Chances are he died there.’

Hall nodded. ‘So somebody carried a naked man along a balcony, down two flights of stairs, across a quadrangle and propped him thoughtfully in a corner. Why?’ Hall was still standing, his tie-knot loosened, his shirt sleeves rolled, watching every face in front of him, every last member of his team. They’d lost the euphoria of the chase they’d found after the death of Andrew Darblay. Albert Walters had rattled them. They were panicky, jumpy, pressed by the press, leaned on by their guv’nor. People like that made mistakes; missed things. One wrong click on a mouse and Vlad the Impaler could walk free. Worse, it made them desperate for a result, overzealous. People like that put innocent men in the frame.