Maxwell’s Flame (6 page)

‘That was different,’ Maxwell said. ‘Jenny was one of mine.’

It was and she had been. Jenny Hyde was in the sixth form at Leighford High. When she was found, Maxwell had felt responsible. There were members of the West Sussex CID who felt he was responsible too. But it was a painful memory for Maxwell. He had no wish to be reminded of it.

‘Liz Striker was somebody’s,’ Sally argued. ‘Rachel King told me she was married. What’s her husband going through about now, I wonder?’

‘It’s not the same.’

There was another knock on the door, more furtive, doubtful.

‘Well, well,’ Maxwell said, rising. ‘I am in demand today.’

He opened the door to the hunched, rather unprepossessing figure of Jordan Gracewell. He was glancing nervously up and down the dimly lit corridor.

‘Selling the
War Cry
, padre?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Mr Maxwell,’ Gracewell blurted, ‘I was wondering if I might have a word?’

‘Be my guest.’ Maxwell threw the door open.

‘Oh!’ The chaplain caught sight of the long legs of Sally Greenhow across the bed and hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had company.’

‘No, no.’ Maxwell closed the door and ushered Gracewell into the room. ‘Not company, exactly. Just Mrs Greenhow. We were discussing the role of Intermediate Level GNVQ, weren’t we, Sally?’

‘Bollocks, Max!’ the girl snorted and rummaged in her bag for her ciggies.

‘Before she joined us,’ Maxwell explained, ‘Mrs Greenhow was at the Ernst Röhm School of Charm.’

‘I … shouldn’t really be here,’ Gracewell said. ‘I’d better go.’

‘Why?’ Maxwell stopped the man with the edge in his voice. ‘What have you got to hide, Mr Gracewell?’

The chaplain looked so utterly vulnerable at that moment, so totally alone, that Sally wanted to pick him up and run with him.

‘Nothing,’ Gracewell said. Then he wandered into the corner of Maxwell’s room and stared out of the window, across Carnforth’s manicured lawns and rose-beds. ‘Everything.’

Maxwell then took another sexist offensive step. Well, why not? He’d been taking them all his life. ‘Sally,’ he said, opening the door, ‘would you mind?’

Sally Greenhow would and did. She sat there with a cigarette clinging to her lower lip and her lighter flickering in her left hand. ‘Maxie?’ was all she could manage.

‘If I were you,’ Maxwell took her arm and lifted her off his bed, ‘I’d concentrate on your strategic intent. I particularly like your concept of the exercise book – archaic, but somehow, in this day and age, innovative. Do keep in touch. Remember, synergize to maximize.’ And he slammed the door in her face.

He waited for the furious knock. All he got was a strangled cry as Sally Greenhow dashed off down the corridor. Not a bad Greta Garbo, he mused as he turned to face the back of Jordan Gracewell.

‘Are you a drinking man, padre?’ he asked.

‘Er … no.’ Gracewell had not turned. Only his hands fluttered convulsively to his sides.

‘No.’ Maxwell raided the courtesy bar again, looking for Southern Comfort. ‘Unfortunately, I am. Running up quite a little bill here, one way or another. I’m sure County will accept eight Southern Comforts as necessary subsistence; what do you think?’

There was a pause. ‘I think I know who killed Liz Striker, Mr Maxwell.’ The chaplain had turned to face his man. Jordan Gracewell was nearly thirty. He’d been a priest for three years, a teacher for two. The great love in his life was God. God and Elizabeth Striker.

‘Really?’ Maxwell said. ‘Perhaps you should talk to the police.’

‘I can’t.’ Gracewell sat down heavily in Maxwell’s chair. Maxwell sat down more gently on his bed. Ever the master of body language, he didn’t want to be higher than Gracewell. Not now. The last thing he wanted to appear was an authority figure. And he leaned forward, giving an air of concern without invading the young man’s space.

‘I can’t talk to Warren. He frightens me.’

Maxwell nodded. ‘That may be part of his job,’ he said. He felt the warm, dark gold nectar hit his tonsils. ‘Distilled on the banks of the good ol’ Mississippi,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you won’t …?’

Gracewell was already shaking his head. Not once did he look Peter Maxwell in the face. ‘I’d like to talk to you, Mr Maxwell,’ he said. ‘I feel I can trust you. I can’t trust anyone else here. But you, you’re different …’

‘Mr Gracewell,’ Maxwell warned softly, ‘perhaps you need a priest …’

Gracewell turned away, suddenly, savagely. ‘No,’ he said, his voice like gravel, ‘that’s the last thing I want. Will you …’ He turned back, looking into the steady, grey eyes of Mad Max Maxwell for the first time. ‘Will you hear my confession?’

Maxwell spread his arms in supplication. ‘I’m not exactly qualified,’ he said.

‘Please?’ Gracewell was on the chair again, this time perched on its arm, staring at Maxwell with pleading eyes.

‘All right,’ Maxwell said.

Gracewell took a deep breath and launched himself. ‘For two years now, I’ve been … in love with Liz Striker.’

‘In love?’

‘Yes. She was a married woman and I am a man of the cloth.’

There was a silence.

‘Is that it?’ Maxwell thought he’d better ask.

‘Isn’t that enough?’ Gracewell bellowed, tears welling in his eyes. For Maxwell, it wasn’t. He’d half suspected something about sniffing the saddles of little girls’ bicycles or at least a little ragged breathing over the phone to the local convent. It was all rather tame, really.

‘Did you have an affair with Mrs Striker?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Anything physical, I mean?’

‘No, no,’ Gracewell shuddered. ‘Although I often thought about it. Often imagined … Sometimes, when we were alone together, working late on marking or preparation, the temptation was strong.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Appallingly strong. I … I will have to resign.’

‘As my lately departed colleague said, if my memory serves, bollocks, padre.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a euphemism for testicles,’ Maxwell explained.

‘I have committed adultery in my heart,’ Gracewell sobbed, the tears starting to trickle down his cheek and splash on to his black cuffs.

‘Yes, well,’ Maxwell fished out a relatively respectable hanky, ‘better there than somebody’s bedroom. Now, come on, old chap, buck up. I can’t stand to see a grown chaplain cry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gracewell sniffed, accepting the handkerchief gratefully. ‘I actually feel a lot better now. Now it’s off my chest.’

‘Oh, good,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘good.’

‘Thank you, Mr Maxwell.’

He suddenly felt his hand being shaken warmly, by both of Gracewell’s. ‘Not at all,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘The pleasure’s been mine. Now, who did you say killed Liz Striker?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Gracewell said, ‘but I’m making an educated guess, with all the information at my disposal.’

‘Yes?’

‘Rachel,’ Gracewell said, as if he’d just ordered chips. ‘Rachel King.’

6

It was Peter Maxwell’s turn to rap on Sally Greenhow’s door.

‘Why, Max,’ she did her Southern Belle to perfection, ‘Ah declare, you’ve come to escort me tuh the lecture.’

‘Sod the lecture!’ Maxwell brushed past her and slammed the door.

‘Oh well,’ sighed Sally. ‘Looks like I’m not going to the ball after all.’

‘Cheer up.’ Maxwell had flung his heavy carcass into the girl’s chair. ‘Some day your prince will come.’

‘Yes.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Some day. Can I rustle you up a coffee?’

‘You can.’ He sat fuming, his grey whiskers standing even more on end than usual. ‘White. Three sugars.’

‘Three?’ She fiddled with the kettle on the bedside cabinet. ‘Max, you’re regressing. That’s nursery food. You’ll be angling for spotted dick next.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ Maxwell said, wiping his hands down his face as though to wipe away his features.

‘Not for my scintillating company, then?’ Sally professed. ‘Or the opportunity to apologize for throwing me out of your room so unceremoniously no more than half an hour ago? I was tempted to go and play Mummies and Mummies with Valerie Marks.’

‘I’ve just heard the most ludicrous load of guff in my life,’ he told her.

‘That was this morning, Max.’ Sally found the sugar packets. ‘This afternoon – “Experiential Learning” – could have been even better.’

‘I’m not talking about the lectures, dear girl,’ Maxwell said, hauling off his bow-tie. ‘I’m talking about the cock-happy clergyman.’

‘Who?’ Sally’s eyes widened as she looked at Maxwell over her glasses.

‘Jordan “Superstud” Gracewell, that’s who. Tell me, Sallance, in your quieter moments, when hubby’s at the office, or the squash club or waxing his CD player, do you ever read whodunnits?’

‘It has been known,’ she confessed. ‘Ruth Rendell, that sort of thing.’

‘Motives,’ Maxwell ruminated, bending himself oddly to take off his jacket and flinging it on the floor, ‘do they ever feature? In this Rendell person, for instance?’

‘Often,’ she told him.

‘Right. Let me try you with this one. Are you sitting comfortably? Only you’ll need to, I think. A has such a goddammed powerful sex aura that women just flock to him. He has to fight them off. That’s not that difficult, because A happens to be a Catholic priest, so he’s had the training. Undergone the Bell test or whatever where they tie electrodes to your nuts then show you photos of Sharon Mammothtits to curb your natural testosterone levels. Unfortunately for A, B and C are so crazy for his body that they come to blows – behind the scenes, that is. And B ends up stoving in C’s head in order to gain unimpeded access to the aforesaid body beautiful. And if you haven’t guessed it by page two, I’m a Chippendale.’

Sally had been about to pour Max’s coffee. Now she sat down on the bed instead. ‘All right,’ she nodded, ‘apart from the body beautiful bit, A is Jordan Gracewell. C must be Liz Striker …’

‘Got it in one.’

‘Who’s B?’

‘It’s obvious.’ Maxwell waved his arms in the air. ‘And I could have kicked myself for not guessing it sooner, Watson. B is none other than our old friend Professor Moriarty, otherwise known as … Rachel King.’

Sally blinked at her old colleague in disbelief.

‘Well, say something,’ Maxwell said. ‘Most people are quite impressed by my Basil Rathbone.’

‘Oh, Max,’ Sally frowned, shaking her head, ‘is that what Gracewell told you?’

He looked at the girl. It must be all those years teaching in Special Needs. ‘Do you think I made it up?’ he asked.

‘What does Rachel say?’

‘Rachel?’ Maxwell laughed. ‘Do you think I could tell her? My dear girl, that’s why I came to you.’

‘Well,’ Sally resumed her housewifely duties at the coffee front, ‘Max, I’m flattered.’

‘Don’t be,’ Maxwell rumbled. ‘Yours was the first room I passed after I ran out screaming.’

Sally ignored him. Underneath that bluff exterior was a core of solid, molten gold. She knew it. And in her own way she loved it. ‘Three sugars.’ She handed him the cup. ‘And the Lord have mercy on your arteries.’

‘We have an understanding, the Lord and I,’ Maxwell told her. ‘He won’t let me go of the cholesterol and I won’t sing in any of his churches. It’s a fair deal, I’ve always felt. Ta,’ and he took the cup.

‘Gracewell wasn’t serious, surely?’ Sally said.

‘Oh, but he was,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘He genuinely had to confess to stirrings under his cassock for the late Mrs Striker.’

‘And the current Mrs King? Oh, sorry, Max.’

‘Look,’ Maxwell said, ‘Mrs King and I were a long time ago, Sally. She was Miss Cameron then and I hadn’t celebrated my eightieth birthday – at least, not quite. You don’t have to talk about her in hushed tones, you know.’

‘But still,’ Sally shrugged, grateful that it was Max who had said it, ‘you can’t believe that she’s a murderer.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Maxwell said. ‘Gracewell does. Good God, girl, I don’t believe Belgium exists, but it’s there on the bloody map. I don’t believe Bill Clinton’s the President of the United States –’

‘He isn’t,’ Sally said straight-faced. ‘Hilary Clinton is.’

‘Oh, ha!’ Maxwell slurped his coffee. ‘I got the impression, while we’re on American Presidents, that if I hadn’t kicked Gracewell out when I did, he’d have confided in me that he thinks Rachel shot Kennedy.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked him. Sally Greenhow had seen that light in Maxwell’s eyes before. Somehow it excited her.

‘Prove the egotistical befrocked bastard wrong,’ Maxwell said, eyes narrowing as he planned. ‘I think we owe it to Rachel to sort this out before Father Dowling out there blabs to the fuzz.’

‘We?’ Sally exploded. ‘When I asked you, not an hour ago, to undertake just that, you virtually told me to piss off.’

‘Did I?’ Maxwell paused in mid-slurp. ‘Dear lady, I think you must be confusing me with somebody else.’

Then, suddenly, Peter Maxwell was deadly serious. ‘Sally,’ he said, ‘this is not going to be a game. We can expect no help whatever from the boys in blue. In fact, if once they find out we’re snooping, we’ll probably be up before the beak ourselves. And, more importantly,’ he held her hand, ‘there is a murderer somewhere in this building.’

‘Why are you squeezing my hand, Max?’ she asked him.

‘Freudian substitute,’ he grinned gappily at her. ‘If I told you what I’d like to be squeezing you’d have me committed to the Home for Repulsive Old Roués. And who’d catch a murderer then?’

‘Max,’ her face was close to him, ‘Max, I think I’m scared. Do you know, I check these locks a dozen times a day. Catch myself looking round corners before I walk down corridors. Daft, isn’t it?’

His eyes locked on hers as he shook his head. ‘Keep feeling that way, kid,’ he gave her his best Bogart. ‘That’s the way you know you’re still alive.’

Little Sam McBride discovered Playmobil that Sunday. It was his fifth birthday and his mum and dad had bought him the boxed set of knights at a tournament. Peter Maxwell, had he known, would have been proud. Parents with foresight – the Middle Ages was part of the National Curriculum’s History Key Stage 2 – educational toys, if ever there were some.

If the truth were told, John McBride already hated his son’s birthday. Nothing to do with the lad himself, who was very much the apple of his father’s eye. No, it was the dozen or so other five-year-olds who descended on the unsuspecting semi that killed it for John. By the time night came and a sort of peace returned to the estate, Inspector McBride had lost track of the crimes perpetrated by the vile little monsters. Only his inordinate self-control had prevented the addition of another crime to theirs – he had not quite committed infanticide.

Cathy McBride was five months pregnant. She sat that night still surrounded by the debris of the day, slowly twirling the little plastic knights in her fingers. ‘Thanks, daddy,’ she said.

John looked up from his notepad, and laughed. ‘How many more of these have we got to do?’

‘Well,’ she said, adjusting the lump that would be little Sam’s brother or sister, ‘that depends on how you care to calculate it. If you go on throwing parties for Sam until he’s sixteen – I expect after that, he’ll just want you to pay for them and go away – that’s another eleven. Then there are another sixteen for the Embryo here; that’s twenty-seven. Assuming we have no more kids. Then of course, there’s your grandparental contribution …’

‘I don’t notice Sam’s grandparents very much in the offing, do you?’

‘Ah, you’re just a rotten old stick-in-the-mud, John McBride. Fancy a drink?’

‘I’d kill for a beer,’ he said, but his head was back in his notebook and he wasn’t really there any more.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she said, nudging him with the cold can she’d liberated from the fridge.

‘Oh, it’s this bloody case, Cath,’ he said.

She’d heard it all before. Every time it was this bloody case. He hated murder. No one ever gained. No one ever won. She’d seen this, even from the outside. She knew he had to tell people their loved ones were dead. It might be a wife. It might be a husband. It might be a son. Everyone had someone. That was how it was. And here they were, with the party streamers of their little boy’s birthday still twirling in the air, and they were suddenly talking about death.

‘Tell me,’ she said, as she always did.

He couldn’t, of course. Not really. Not the nitty gritty of things. He couldn’t show her the shattered head of Liz Striker, her cramped little grave of paper packages in that stock cupboard. Nor would he have wanted to.

‘It’s this woman,’ he said, seeing in his mind’s eye the black and white photographs of the corpse, the green sheet and the pallid, waxy face. ‘The victim, Elizabeth Striker. She’s too bloody good.’

‘She’s dead, John.’ His wife didn’t need to remind him.

‘I know.’ He closed his eyes and let his head loll back. For the past few hours he’d sunk himself into his rest day, bitten the bullet that was his son’s birthday party, played all kinds of ghastly, exhausting games. But she was still there, Liz Striker, at his elbow. That and the fact that she was dead.

‘She taught Family Studies, whatever the hell that is, at St Bede’s, a Catholic comprehensive in Bournemouth. She was married to Leonard, two years her senior. He’s in computers in a local firm. They seemed happily married. No obvious financial worries.’

‘Was the attack sexual?’

He sipped his beer. ‘No. At least, no signs of it. St Bede’s might give us a clue, of course. The guv’nor’s going over there tomorrow.’

‘Aren’t you going with him?’

‘No,’ her husband told her. ‘The natives at Carnforth are getting restless. One of them’s threatened to go tomorrow. My job is to try to stop him.’

‘Can you?’

‘Of course not,’ McBride shrugged. ‘The guv’nor’s stuck his neck out keeping them all there this long. I didn’t expect that kind of thing from Warren. I hope he hasn’t overreached himself. Three days. I think he expected somebody to crack after three days.’

‘No sign?’

McBride shook his head. ‘What did you think of your teachers at school, Cath?’

His wife laughed. ‘They were all right, I suppose. Except old Pearson. Used to get the girls to stand on chairs if they got things wrong in Maths. I think they took him away in the end.’

‘Hmm. More than one weirdo at the Carnforth Centre, I shouldn’t wonder. The problem is deciding which of them wanted Liz Striker out of the way. Good old Liz, about whom nobody has a bad word. But somebody didn’t like you all that much, did they, Liz? Somebody snuffed you out like an altar candle.’

The lights burned late in Room 101 that Sunday night. Peter Maxwell had seen more Agatha Christies and police procedurals than Sally Greenhow had had hot flushes. Accordingly, he knew how it was done. On the plasterboard wall of his room, Supersleuth had pinned dozens of bits of paper.

‘You know, Max,’ Sally said, between puffs, ‘that lot is almost a flow chart. We’ll make an energetic go-ahead teacher of you yet, storming, norming and so on.’

‘Wash your filthy mouth out,’ Maxwell growled, putting the finishing touches to his deductive reasoning. ‘I look nothing like the American Commander in the Gulf. There. What do you think?’

Sally looked at the arrows, names, question marks, all of them radiating out from the name ‘Liz Striker’ in the centre. ‘I think it is absolutely incomprehensible, Maxie.’ She smiled wide-eyed. ‘Are you sure you never lectured in a college of education? Perhaps if you talked me through it.’

‘Oh, ye of little brain,’ he sighed. ‘Watch the blackboard while I run through it.’

She tucked her feet under her bum on the bed and listened carefully.

‘The murdered woman, Liz Striker,’ Maxwell said, ‘what do we know about her?’

‘I thought you were telling me,’ Sally said.

‘Now, come on,’ Maxwell wagged a finger at her, ‘question and answer. It’s a tried and tested classroom technique. I learned it at university, circa 1849.’

‘All right.’ Sally was game. ‘She was Head of Family Studies at St Bede’s, Bournemouth. Very keen on GNVQ.’

‘That’s it!’ Maxwell shouted.

‘What?’ Sally nearly jumped out of her skin.

‘Being keen on GNVQ is reason enough for anybody to be murdered.’

‘Maxie …’ Sally growled.

‘All right, all right. Keep your bra on. Oh,’ he glanced at her pert chest, ‘too late, I see. Right. What else?’

‘Urn … according to Jordan Gracewell …’

‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell’s roving finger strayed to another part of the wall, ‘the Gospel according to Gracewell.’

‘… according to him, she fancied him something rotten.’

‘Right. Well, let’s indulge his incense-induced fantasies for a little longer. Liz fancies Jordan …’

‘… who fancies Rachel.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Maxwell corrected her. ‘I think Jordan fancies Jordan.’

‘You’ll need to talk to Rachel.’

‘I know,’ Maxwell’s face darkened, ‘I know. That’ll have to wait till morning. When did she arrive?’

‘Liz? Thursday.’

‘Who with?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I beg your pardon, heart,’ Maxwell apologized, ‘it’s the emotional strain. With whom?’