Maxwell’s House (18 page)

His best guess was that she’d gone into the sea towards the end of July. And the appalling wounds to her pelvis that had carried off her legs were not the cause of her death. They were clearly post-mortem injuries, however horrific, and Astley clung to the probability that a ship’s propeller had done the deed. She had not drowned either. There were tell-tale diatoms, those little creepy things that live in water, as Astley had condescendingly written for Hall’s layman’s benefit in the margin of the print-out. But they were confined to the air passages. There were none in the bloodstream and none in what was left of the internal organs. The deceased had been placed in a black plastic bin liner and dumped into the sea. Whatever had been used to truss the bag up, rope or wire, had long ago become separated from the corpse.

‘Black bin liner,’ Hall murmured to himself. Well, that narrowed it down to however many million citizens bought these things from however many supermarkets there were in the south of England.

The cause of death, Jim Astley believed, was a blow or blows to the back of the head. Those injuries, which had caused a collapse of the cranium and radial fissures from it, were certainly ante-mortem and would have caused immediate unconsciousness, followed rapidly by coma. Death would have ensued within minutes.

What am I doing this for? Hall wondered to himself. He didn’t owe Tom Groves anything and whoever this woman was she’d been battered to death and her body thrown into the sea. There was obviously no link with Jenny Hyde or Tim Grey. He read to the bottom paragraph. The face was unrecognizable – but he knew that – and even the fingerprints were lost because the skin of the hands had peeled off like rubber gloves. Only the sea knew her secrets now.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Jacquie?’ Hall looked at her over his glasses. ‘Come in.’

‘I know it’s late, sir,’ she apologized.

‘Is it?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well another day tomorrow. You look like you could do with a smoke,’ and he ferreted in his pocket and threw her a packet of ten.

‘Sir.’ She sat down opposite him.

‘Hmm?’ He was consigning Astley’s report to the tray that said ‘Out’. He’d have it passed to Tom Groves in the morning.

‘Why do you carry ciggies when you don’t smoke?’

‘Just in case,’ he said, ‘in case I get the urge. I gave up four years, eight months, three weeks ago. But in this job, you never know when you’re going to have to start again. Besides, what would you do without me?’

It was a rare moment in Jacquie Carpenter’s life. She saw the Chief Inspector smile. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Time is money, so they tell me. What’s up, Jacquie?’

‘Can I talk to you about Peter Maxwell, sir?’ Her face was lost momentarily behind a cloud of smoke.

‘Everybody seems to be talking about Peter Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Everybody except Peter Maxwell.’

‘I’ve just had the medical report on Janice Dodds.’

‘Just?’ Hall frowned.

‘I stole it, sir.’

‘Jacquie?’ Hall didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

‘It was in the vehicle of one of my superior officers, sir.’

‘And you broke into this vehicle?’

‘Not exactly. It was open. But I broke into the briefcase inside it.’

Hall leaned forward, hands clasped on the desk. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Let’s just say I had my suspicions,’ she said, swallowing hard. Her eyes were large and steady in the lamp’s glow. But the mottling on her neck said it all. DC Jacquie Carpenter was walking a razor’s edge and she knew it.

‘What does the report say?’ Hall asked.

The girl swallowed hard. ‘That Janice Dodds was not raped, sir,’ she said. ‘There was no evidence of recent intercourse, nor rough penetration. No bruising on the genital area or thighs.’

‘I’ve read DS Gilbert’s report,’ Hall told her. ‘It talks about extensive bruising to the face.’

‘Three teeth missing,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘That’s what the medical report says too. It also says something else.’

‘Oh? What?’

‘Janice Dodds was attacked not by one man, but by two. There were distinct fingerprints on her wrists where one of them had held her down. The ones on her throat were different.’

‘Are you telling me Maxwell had an accomplice?’

‘No, sir.’ She felt her nerve going. As though she’d explode.

‘What then?’ Hall wanted her to spell it out. Needed her to.

‘I …’ and the gaze faltered and her hands trembled on the unsmoked cigarette.

‘Whose car was it, Jacquie? Whose briefcase?’

And her answer was barely audible. ‘DI Johnson’s, sir,’ she said, it was DI Johnson.’

If there was a bigger estate than the Barlichway, it was the one below the railway, to the south of Leighvale. It wasn’t the sort of place to be out and about in, not in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, not if you were a senior copper and a DWPC.

‘Do you know what fuckin’ time it is?’ The sound of Janice Dodds, woken from her beauty sleep. Only she wasn’t very beautiful just at the moment. There was a livid bruise around her left eye and a jagged purple line around her throat. She wrapped her housecoat tightly around her.

‘May we come in?’ Hall asked.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

He showed her his warrant card. ‘DCI Hall, West Sussex CID. I believe you’ve already met DC Carpenter.’ And he pushed past the girl into the narrow hallway. A dilapidated buggy almost took off his kneecap, but he kept going. It was less than salubrious, the Dodds’ home. A tiny four-roomed flat on the fourth floor of an anonymous tenement block, terraced with other tiny four-roomed flats just like it. It made Del Boy Trotter’s studio mock-up on the telly look positively palatial.

‘Who is it, Janice?’ a scrawny, middle-aged woman in curlers asked.

‘It’s the fuzz, mum. You go back to bed. I can ’andle ’em.’

‘Like you handled them before?’ Hall turned to her.

She frowned up at him. ‘Waddyou mean?’ she pouted.

‘Look,’ Janice’s mum had not gone back to bed, ‘my Janice has been through enough, thanks to you bleeders. What do you want now?’

‘The truth, … er … Mrs Dodds, is it?’

‘It might be.’ She squinted at him.

‘You see, we didn’t get that last time.’

‘You ain’t got no right…’ Janice’s mum protested.

‘I’m afraid we have every right,’ Hall told her. ‘Now if you intend to stay, I must ask you to be quiet.’

‘What about a nice cup of tea?’ Jacquie Carpenter suggested.

‘Janice …?’

‘It’s all right, mum. Go on. I’ll be all right.’

‘May we sit down?’ Hall asked as the woman clattered and clashed in the tiny kitchen.

‘I can’t stop ya, can I?’ Janice flounced, her housecoat falling open to reveal her powerful thighs.

‘You spoke to Detective Sergeant Gilbert and DC Carpenter here the day before yesterday in connection with an assault,’ Hall said.

‘That’s right. Has he coughed? That Maxwell? What’ll he get? A smack on the wrist, I bet.’

‘Let’s just see if I’ve got it right,’ Hall said. ‘Maxwell took you back to his house.’

‘Nah,’ Janice corrected him. ‘I took him.’

‘Oh, yes, he’d been in a fight. With Keith Miller.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He’s a shit, that bloke,’ Janice’s mum told the company from the kitchen.

‘Put a cork in it, mum,’ Janie told her. ‘I’m telling this story.’

Hall looked at Jacquie. ‘So you got Maxwell home. That was a kind thing to do.’

‘Yeah, well, he was all right. At first, I mean.’

‘What did you talk about?’ Hall asked.

‘We ain’t got no sugar,’ Janice’s mum shouted through.

Hall jerked his head to Jacquie Carpenter who joined the woman in the kitchen. ‘Can I help, Mrs Dodds?’ she asked.

‘What did you talk about?’ Hall asked the girl again.

‘Oh, I dunno. This and that.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, it was mostly about Kay – Keith Miller. Maxwell thought he had somefink to do with that girl what was murdered. That Jenny Hyde.’

‘And did he?’

‘I dunno. Oh, he liked ’em young, but I don’t know ’e ever knocked ’em off. He might of done. I told Maxwell. I didn’t know.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Well,’ Janice’s eyes flickered from left to right, ‘It must of been all that talk about girls ’n’ that. Or ’e’d got the ’ots for me all along …’

‘I’ve told you about wearing them short skirts, ain’t I, Janice?’

Janice’s mum had escaped Jacquie Carpenter’s help in the kitchen and was back in the living-room, four mugs of tea in her hands.

‘Oh, come on, mum. You used to wear ’em an’ all. I remember your weddin’.’

‘What happened at Maxwell’s?’ Hall asked her.

‘I told ’er,’ Janice nodded at Jacquie, ‘’an’ that ovver copper.’

‘And now I’d like you to tell me,’ Hall said.

‘’E raped me,’ she said flatly, as if he’d asked her the time.

‘How?’

Janice looked at him open-mouthed. ‘You what?’

‘I asked you how he raped you.’ Hall showed no emotion whatsoever.

‘Well …’e …’ Janice looked at her mother, who was still staring at Hall. ‘E ’eld me down an’ put it in.’

‘Held you down, how?’ Hall asked.

‘By me shoulders,’ Janice blurted, her colour up, her eyes flashing.

Janice’s mum slurped her tea loudly. ‘Bastard,’ she growled.

‘Not by the wrists?’ Hall asked.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Janice saw what Hall could see and slid the cuffs of her housecoat over her bruised arms. ‘Later, yeah.’

‘And while he was doing that,’ Hall said, ‘holding you by the wrist and shoulders, what was the other copper doing?’

‘Oh, he was squeezin’ me froat an’ …’ and Janice Dodds froze in mid-sentence.

‘And hitting you across the face.’ Hall finished it for her. ‘You see, Miss Dodds, the medical report on you doesn’t tally with an attack by one man. And it doesn’t tally with a sexual assault at all. What kind of cab did you take to Maxwell’s?’

‘Er … I dunno … a black one.’

‘A hackney carriage?’ Hall pressed her. ‘A London taxi?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘With plastic seats?’

“Ow the fuck should I know?’ Janice snapped. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘You see, your coat, the one you were wearing when you came in to report the incident, it had fibres all over it. Fibres which we believe came from a car with grey seat covers. One of my colleagues drives a car like that.’

‘Wass ’e talkin’ abaht, Janice?’ her mum wanted to know.

‘Nothin’.’ Janice was on her feet. ‘Why didn’t yer go to bed like I asked yer?’

‘I want to know,’ her mum said. ‘You told me that teacher ’ad done it to yer. Who are you sayin’ done it now?’

‘No one, Mrs Dodds,’ Hall told her, ‘no one raped her, at least; did they, Janice?’

‘Well, what of it?’ Janice bellowed. There was a cry from the room next door. ‘Oh, fuck. You’ve started ’er off now; my Trace.’

‘So what really happened, Miss Dodds?’ Hall stood in the girl’s way, blocking her exit with his tall, grey-suited body.

For a moment the girl stood there, swaying, all five feet two of her, her fists clenched, her head sunk into her neck, like a gladiator in the ring. Then she melted. Her lip trembled, her eyes flickered, her hands relaxed. ‘They said they’d kill me,’ she mumbled, ‘if I didn’t say Maxwell done it. They ’eld me down in the back of their car an’ one of ’em ’it me. Kept on ’itting me. I was to tell the coppers,’ she said, ‘that it was Maxwell. That ’e raped me.’

And she sat down heavily on the sofa, Jacquie Carpenter beside her, patting her as she sobbed into her hands.

‘Who were they?’ Hall didn’t need to ask.

‘They was filth,’ Janice wheezed as the sobbing racked her. ‘I seen one of ’em at the nick. Big bloke wiv black hair.’

‘DC Halsey,’ Hall nodded. ‘And the other one?’

‘I don’t know,’ the girl sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘The black-’aired one called ’im guv.’

‘DI Johnson,’ Hall said softly. He should have felt elated. But he didn’t. He just felt sick.

‘Why?’ Janice looked up at him with tears and mascara trickling down her face through the bruising. ‘Why did they want me to say that? I felt ever so bad about it. That Mr Maxwell. ’E’s a nice old boy, ’e is. But I was scared. They said they’d ’urt my baby, my Trace.’

The crying from the other room had stopped now.

‘Bastards,’ muttered Janice’s mum.

18

Peter Maxwell had never been so glad to see Geoffrey Smith in his life. The bald old bugger sat in his car at the back of the Leighford cop shop. Except it wasn’t his car. It was Hilda’s.

‘Jesus Christ, Maxim.’ Smith helped his old oppo in, with much heaving and shoving. ‘2CVs weren’t built for elderly cripples like you. What the hell happened?’

‘Broken ribs.’ Maxwell winced and flapped his right hand uselessly until Geoffrey Smith passed him the seat belt.

‘Don’t tell me the law did that?’ For all he’d seen Magnum Force, Geoffrey Smith’s idea of the police was still essentially Jack Warner.

‘No.’ Maxwell let his head fall against the seat rest. ‘Keith Miller did.’

‘Keith Miller?’ Smith was astonished. ‘Hang on. I’ll come round.’

He disappeared behind the vehicle and nipped into the driver’s seat. ‘I’m taking you home, Max,’ he said.

If possible, Geoffrey Smith was a worse driver of his wife’s 2CV than he was of his own Honda. You could argue that, in so confined a space, Maxwell didn’t have so far to slide. Conversely of course it meant that his swollen side same into contact with hard objects like the door handle all the more frequently. Smith couldn’t help noticing that Maxwell’s eyes were shut tight throughout the whole journey, though whether through exhaustion, pain or just plain terror, he couldn’t tell.

Metternich the cat peered down at the pair as they staggered together up to Maxwell’s lounge. Then he turned his bum, raised his tail in the air and was gone.

‘Great to see you too, Count,’ Maxwell said and lowered himself, gingerly, to the sofa.

‘Southern Comfort, Maxie?’ Smith was already at the drinks cupboard.

‘Comfort in all directions would be nice,’ Maxwell said, ‘but we’ll start in the south, yes. And a small one for yourself.’

‘Hilda told me about your call.’ Smith poured for them both. ‘What the hell happened – as I believe I’ve asked you before?’

Maxwell sighed. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said, ‘I went to Little Willie’s last night.’

‘The night-club? Good God, Max, I should’ve thought an inflatable woman would have been preferable.’

‘As things turned out, you’re probably right.’ His old oppo grimaced. ‘I was looking for Maz.’

‘Max looking for Maz. Go on. I’ll buy it.’

‘It turns out that every bugger and his dog knows who Maz is. Sally Greenhow’s heard of him; the law have talked to him; Janice thinks he’s a shit.’

‘Maxim,’ Smith peered into his friend’s tired old eyes, ‘how many fingers am I holding up?’

Maxwell drove his left pupil in hard against his nose. ‘Two, as always,’ he said.

‘Thank God.’ Smith leaned back. ‘I thought for a minute you were talking absolute gibberish there. Not a bad Ben Turpin, by the way. Who’s Janice?’

‘Janice Dodds. Do you remember her? Always smoking out beyond the hedge at school? Blonde. Solid piece. Built like the Pontypool second row.’

‘Lord, yes. Cadged a fag off old Farson on Mufti Day.’

‘It was his last year.’

‘Yes.’ Smith remembered. ‘Gaga as a Peer of the Realm. What of her,
mon vieux
?’

‘I met her in Little Willie’s. Guess who she was with?’

‘’Er … Woody Allen.’

‘Keith Miller.’

‘Aha. So I was close.’ Smith wagged a triumphant finger.

‘He’s K.,’ Maxwell said soberly through the glow of the Southern Comfort.

‘What?’

‘K. You know. In Jenny Hyde’s diary. “K. told me he loved me.” He is K.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Let’s just say he was prepared to break my ribs rather than admit it.’

‘So you went to the police?’

‘No. I went in search of Maz.’

‘And did you find him?’

‘No. I found two of our boys in blue who were kind enough to escort me to the police station.’

‘So have they felt Keith’s collar?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. I didn’t press any charges.’

‘Max. On the phone to Hilda, you said – and I think I’m quoting correctly here – “I didn’t rape anyone.” She didn’t know what you were talking about any more than I do.’

‘Janice Dodds’, Maxwell said, ‘took it into her head to accuse me of raping her.’

‘Christ! Why?’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s her idea of the ultimate shakedown. Some women would rifle your wallet. Perhaps she gets a vicarious kick out of crying wolf. Damn near worked.’

‘But it didn’t?’

‘Is the Pope a Seventh Day Adventist? It was all very odd, actually. Hall gave me a grilling in his own politically correct way and told me I’d be kept until the morning, at which time I’d be charged.’

‘But?’

‘But … I’d barely got my head down when the cell door opened and it was Hall. He told me I could go. That all charges had been dropped. Naturally, I thanked him for his hospitality and buggered off into the night. And lo, who should be waiting there, but Geoffrey, the landlord’s daughter, plaiting a dark red love-knot into his non-existent hair. How long had you been waiting?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Max; I’d only just arrived. I’d gone to the Odeon. Then Hilda had dropped off and didn’t give me the message for ages. Sorry, old man.’

‘What did you see?’

‘What?’

‘At the Odeon.’

‘Oh,
The Fugitive
. Harrison Ford. Not at all bad. Not a patch on his dad, John, of course.’

‘Can’t make cars like his granddad, Henry, either, I understand,’ Maxwell winked. ‘How does it compare with the telly series?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Smith mused. ‘My ol’ mum used to tell me about it.’

‘Cobblers,’ Maxwell growled.

‘No,’ Smith chuckled. ‘Nobody mumbles like David Jansen, do they? Looked as if he carried the sins of the world on his shoulders.’

Maxwell smiled, nodding. ‘Geoff,’ he said, ‘you’re good to look after me like this …’

‘I know I am,’ Smith nodded, waiting for the next bit.

‘You couldn’t run me down to Barlichway, could you? I think I know where to find Maz now.’

‘Time was,’ Smith reminded him, ‘you’d rather die than travel in a car with me.’

‘Geoffrey!’ Maxwell was outraged. ‘How can you think it? I’m not sure I’ve got the balls to mount White Surrey tonight. Anyway, my dynamo’s on the blink.’

Smith downed the last of his drink. ‘Don’t ask me why I’m doing this,’ he said. ‘Dying man’s last wish, I suppose. Come on.’

DCI Hall didn’t wait for DI Johnson and DC Halsey to come on duty. He sent for them. Two separate cars were despatched from the station. Tight-lipped uniformed men banged on their respective doors – Johnson at home; Halsey at the station house.

They stood in front of Hall in his office in the incident room.

‘Put your warrant cards on the desk.’ He looked up at them.

‘You what?’ Halsey grinned.

‘Don’t ask me to repeat myself, Detective Constable. As of now you … gentlemen … have no powers of arrest or detention. You will go to your homes – you, Halsey, to your own division. You will talk to no one, on the force or off it. You will not discuss this matter with your families or friends. You will report on Wednesday morning at nine sharp; you, Detective Inspector, at Leighford; you, Detective Constable, at Chichester.’

‘Report?’ Halsey frowned. ‘Who to?’

‘Internal Affairs,’ Hall said levelly. ‘You are suspended until further notice.’

Halsey’s grin faded. He threw his warrant card down and turned on his heel. At the door, he turned. ‘You lacklustre bastard,’ he sneered.

‘Guv …’ Johnson’s rigidity melted and he rested his hands on Hall’s desk.

The Chief Inspector’s raised finger stopped him. ‘Not a word, Dave,’ he warned him, the eyes narrow, the jaw grim.

‘What’s all this about?’ Johnson held his hands out. Hall was already crossing the floor past him. He spun to his man. ‘I’ll tell you what it’s about Dave. It’s about a copper. A good copper. A man I knew once. He was tough. He was cynical. But he was straight. The sort of bloke you’d want at your back if things got rough out there.’ He jabbed a finger to the blackness of the window. ‘Then something happened,’ he whispered. ‘Something snapped. What was it? The pressure of the job? Some government-inspired bollocks about the quota of arrests? The need to get results? I don’t know. But it made this copper, this tough, straight copper, bend like a fucking horseshoe. He got a man in his sights for a murder. A cantankerous old bastard, I’ll grant you, but just a man for all that. And when the evidence didn’t quite come together, do you know what this tough, straight copper did? He just made it up. He and his zombie worked over a working girl and made her cry “Rape”; just, presumably, until something better came along.’

Hall’s face was pressed close to Johnson’s now. ‘That’s what it’s about, Dave. Got it now?’

Johnson blinked. He felt cold. Dead. For a moment, Hall thought he might burst into tears.

‘Now, get out.’ Hall’s voice was gravel in an open wound. ‘Before I forget I once knew that tough, honest copper at all.’

In the corridor, DC Jacquie Carpenter saw Dave Johnson go. Alone into that limbo where bent coppers go. Where they put those men who have crossed the line. The line that is thin and blue.

How long the two of them waited there was anybody’s guess. The clock on Hilda’s 2CV had stopped long ago and neither Smith nor Maxwell had a watch. All they knew was that it was damnably cold and, what with Maxwell’s breathing problems, they both felt like John Mills feigning death in the snows of Pinewood Studios.

‘Great God!’ Smith stirred. ‘Look at that sunrise.’

‘I didn’t know they made a time like this,’ Maxwell murmured. Only his eyes were visible between his scarf and his shapeless hat. ‘Jesus, Geoff, Hilda’ll be worried.’

Smith shook his head. ‘She won’t be stirring for hours yet,’ he said, ‘but neither, I suspect, will your boy … Well, I’ll be buggered.’

‘Is that a quote from Edward II?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Look.’ Smith nodded towards his window to where a lanky, fair-haired young man with a pitted face and cold, grey eyes emerged from the dilapidated Edwardian house on the rise.

‘Maz,’ Maxwell breathed. ‘Wipe your window, Geoff, I can’t make him out.’

‘What are you going to do?’ The Head of English daubed the condensation with a cloth.

‘Talk to him. Can you get me out of this corrugated pram? My knees have seized up.’

Smith was gone into the pinky gold of the morning with a rush of cold air. He lifted the bulk of Peter Maxwell out on to the pavement and the two of them ambled across the road and on up the path that skirted the still-sleeping Barlichway Estate and twisted through the parkland that further on became the Dam.

‘Maz!’ Maxwell called. He was in no state after all he’d been through to hobble after the younger man for long.

The lad half turned, eyes narrowed against the glow of the sky. Two old men. Not filth, certainly. Press? No. No cameras. Dads, then? No. No shotguns. Pushers? Possible. Maybe here was a deal. He toyed with running. But they’d seen where he’d come from. Could always find him again. He stood his ground, hugging a huge coat round him, his lank, blond hair hanging thickly over his collar.

Maxwell saw him again, as he’d seen his stand-in on the television screen, shaking little Jenny by the shoulders, and he heard her shout ‘No’ over and over again.

‘Are you Maz?’ he asked, his breath snaking out on the morning.

‘Who wants to know?’ The voice was cultured, quiet.

‘I’m Peter Maxwell,’ Maxwell told him, standing on the gravel of the path. ‘This is Geoffrey Smith.’ The taller man nodded.

‘So?’ Maz was unimpressed.

‘We’re teachers.’ Maxwell waved his hand between them as though that would hold his quarry rooted to the spot.

‘Congratulations,’ Maz sneered, ‘I’m sure you’ll have long and happy careers,’ and he turned to go.

‘We’re Jenny Hyde’s teachers,’ Smith said.

They saw Maz’s head come up to the level, his shoulders straighten.

Maxwell loped over to him, clutching his side, and he looked the boy in the face. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I have dreams about you.’

Maz just looked at him, then laughed. It was brittle, uncomfortable. ‘You’re a funny age, granddad,’ he said.

‘So was Jenny,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘And she’s dead.’

The smile faded from the boy’s face. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘well that’s how it is. Life’s a bitch. Then you die. What do you two want with me?’

‘You knew her,’ Maxwell said. ‘You were seen talking to her the day she died.’

‘Was I?’ He was smiling again.

Maxwell could feel his hackles rising again. ‘We need some answers,’ he said.

‘Yeah, right,’ Maz smirked.

It was the smirk that did it. Peter Maxwell was thirty years older. Light years slower. But he’d had it for one day. He’d been accused of murder, shoved around, questioned, accused of rape, and had his head and body caved in by a boot.

‘I don’t need this,’ he growled and his good arm came up suddenly, thumping into the pit of the boy’s stomach. Maz jack-knifed and Smith caught him, wrenching him backwards and across the grass where his scrabbling feet left two tell-tale tracks in the dew.

‘Jesus,’ the lad hissed, but he was weighted down by twenty-six stone of teacher and he couldn’t reach his pockets. Maxwell could – and did. First he hauled out a silver foil packet.

‘Well, well,’ he grunted, resting his full weight on the lad’s chest. ‘Talcum, Malcolm?’

Maz twisted to his right but Smith’s elbow was pressing on his throat and he gave up. Maxwell was ferreting in the lad’s coat again. ‘Aha.’ His eyes lit up. ‘What have we here?’

‘It looks like a razor, Maxie,’ Smith answered him.

‘It does, Geoffrey.’ Maxwell gave his best Zippy impression from the old children’s programme. ‘An interesting offensive weapon. I should think Mr Plod would be very interested in the contents of these pockets, wouldn’t you?’

‘I should think he would, Maxie, yes.’

‘Come on, you bastards,’ Maz gasped.

Maxwell checked to see that the peculiar trio were out of sight of the road before he tried his next trick. He flicked open the razor and held it glinting in the dawn’s light.

‘All right, you little shit. I don’t suppose a visit to your friendly neighbourhood magistrate holds many terrors for you, does it? So let’s see what it’ll take to soften you up. Everybody tells me what a wow you are with the girls. What do they go for, I wonder, your pretty little face?’ He pressed the cold curved steel against the boy’s cheek and read the fear in his eyes. ‘Or perhaps you’re hung like a bloody donkey.’ And he suddenly slashed the razor down, carving a jagged line across the lad’s shirt, ripping the material just above the belt buckle.