Maxwell's Inspection (19 page)

‘You were friends?'

Harding looked at the constable. Probably as thick as he looked. That's why he was still a constable. This shouldn't take long. ‘Of course. Why not?'

‘You tell me, sir.'

‘Oh, very well.' Harding was on his feet now, pacing the patio. ‘We
were
friends, yes, but … well, if you must know, he cheated me out of a job.'

‘How so?'

‘I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say he made a few phone calls, called in a few favours. Knew people in high places, did Alan. He got the Ofsted job I should have had. Imagine his chagrin when I finally turned up on his team.'

‘Miffed?' Prentiss wanted to be sure he'd correctly understood ‘chagrin'.

‘Livid,' Harding confirmed. ‘But what could he do?'

‘More importantly, sir, what could you do?'

‘Meaning?'

‘Well,' Prentiss took time sipping his orange juice. ‘Here you were, with a man you clearly detested. Aman you'd reason to … what, exact a certain revenge on …'

Harding spun round to face him, blotting out the sun with his slovenly bulk. ‘Are you suggesting I got my own back on the bastard by sticking him with a skewer? That's not only ludicrous, it's slanderous.'

Prentiss looked up at him. He'd been here before. ‘If I'm wrong,' he smiled, ‘I will of course withdraw the implication completely.'

‘How long have you been a detective, Mr Baldock?' Sally Meninger had insisted on being interviewed in her room.

‘Eighteen months, madam. Now, if we could …'

‘I think you've got a great future. Are you sure you won't join me?' She waved her Scotch at him.

‘Not on duty, thank you, Ms Meninger.'

‘Oh,' she cooed, sitting on the chair opposite his with one delectable thigh crossed over the other. ‘I think we know each other well enough to dispense with the
formalities
, don't you? I'm Sally,' and she held out her hand.

‘Um …'

‘What shall I call you?' she asked, her eyes widening.

‘Geoffrey,' he said, limply.

‘Geoffrey.' She dropped her hand and sat back,
allowing
her skirt to ride up just a little higher. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?'

‘It's a routine second interview… Sally. Covering your relationship with Mr Whiting.'

‘Relationship?' Sally frowned. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Well, um … You were colleagues, obviously, but how well did you know him?'

‘If you mean was I sucking him off every night after a hard day's inspection, why not come out and say it?' she twinkled.

Geoff Baldock wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. He'd begged the DCI for a crack at this woman and the DCI had been reluctant. Frankly, he
wasn't
sure the lad was ready. Pencilled in the margin of
Hall's notes from the first interview were the words ‘Watch this one'. And that was precisely what the DC was doing. In fact, he couldn't take his eyes off her.

‘I shouldn't tell you this, Geoffrey,' Sally Meninger was suddenly sitting up, her face dark, her eyes uncertain. ‘And I should have told the Chief Inspector when we spoke, but …'

‘Yes?' Baldock's pen was ready.

‘Well, I don't know what it is, but I feel I can trust you.' She leaned further forward still. ‘It must be me, I don't know.' She looked at his left hand. ‘There's no Mrs Baldock?'

‘Oh … er … No,' the DC laughed.

‘Girlfriend?'

The DC shook his head, deciding at that very moment that whatever he had with Kirsty Dale was over.

‘Good.' He felt her hand caressing his knee, felt her eyes boring into his. ‘Alan Whiting was a bastard. He was stalking me.'

‘Stalking you?'

She nodded, pulling her hand away abruptly and
getting
up to stiffen her drink from the bedside cabinet. ‘He specifically asked for me for the Leighford assignment. I didn't realize that until after he was dead and I rang Head Office for some sort of clarification.' She took a swig and shut her eyes. ‘He must have seen me at some conference or other; been introduced. I don't remember.' She turned to face him, pencil slim and radiating heat. ‘He was all over me on that first night, on the Sunday. I had to,' there was a catch in her voice, ‘I had to fight him off, physically defend myself.' Baldock was on his feet, uncertain what to do. Sally Meninger shuddered, the Scotch in her glass
quivering. ‘He was an animal. His poor wife …' and she buried her face in her hands, the half empty glass pouring its contents over the rug.

Instinctively, although he knew he shouldn't be doing it, Geoff Baldock held her in his arms. Their lips and tongues met as she lifted her face to his and they swayed there for a moment. When they parted, Sally turned away. ‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘Don't be,' and he turned her back, eager to continue where they'd left off.

‘No.' She held her fingers to his lips. ‘I can't. I promised James.'

‘James?' Baldock was even further out of his depth than he knew.

‘James Diamond,' she explained. ‘The Head at Leighford High. He and I were … lovers once.'

‘Really?' Baldock knew he should be writing this down, but couldn't remember where he'd put his pocket book.

‘Oh, it was a long time ago. I couldn't believe it when I realized it was
that
James Diamond who was the Head. And when that bastard Whiting came on strong, well,
naturally
, I turned to James for help.'

‘You did?' Reality was flooding back into Geoff Baldock's fevered brain. ‘You told him?'

‘It was weak of me, I know. I should have coped on my own. But,' she turned to him again, her lips closing to his. ‘It's like you and the DCI,' she said. ‘There are just some people you know, instinctively, you can trust; you're one of those,' and her tongue snaked between his lips and her fingers curled in his hair. She pulled back a little. ‘James Diamond is another. He was furious.'

‘When was this?'

Sally was running her fingers around the boy's face. ‘Hmm?'

‘When did you tell Diamond?'

‘Oh, I don't know,' she said. ‘The Tuesday morning, I think. The day … oh, my God,' and she spun away from him.

‘What?'

She half turned back. ‘Well, you don't think … oh, no, it's too ghastly. What have I done?'

‘Sally,' Baldock took her firmly with both hands,
planting
a kiss on her forehead. ‘It's not what
you've
done, is it? I think we both know what this case is all about.'

He kissed her hard on the lips and left. Unbelievable, he thought, as he bounded down the stairs into the foyer, a woman like Sally Meninger had the hots for him
and
she'd given him the case on a plate. He checked his watch. What do murdering Headteachers do, he wondered, of a Thursday afternoon?

‘Well, we had this idea, Mr Maxwell.'

The Loup Garoux wasn't the usual haunt of the Yawning Hippos. In fact, they'd got some pretty dirty looks from the maitre dee, who really
was
French and not just some bloke from Walthamstow with a talent for
mimicry
. But Mr Maxwell had vouched for the unlikely trio, so the maitre dee had reluctantly let them in – albeit only to the garden.

‘Oh yes?' Peter Maxwell was with the band on the
elegant
wooden table under the sycamore. After the heat of the day, it was glorious to be up here on the Downs with the breeze lifting from the west and the line of the blue horizon an uncertain haze between sky and sea.

‘About that bloke,' Duggsy was, as ever, the spokesman. ‘That e-fit.'

‘Yes?' Maxwell had got the call from Duggsy at school that afternoon and had cycled all the way up here, much to the chagrin of his back and calf muscles, because the Hippos wanted somewhere private and Wal had never had a drink with a firework in it before. It was Maxwell's decision to use the Loup Garoux, but he thought Wal might be disappointed. But no, the bass player was as happy as Larry with his sparkler, proving how little he got out.

‘We could find him for you.'

‘How?' Maxwell was all ears.

‘Tell him, Wal.'

Wal was still staring at the sparks flying upwards from
his curiously pink glass. ‘I read a Sherlock Holmes story once,' he said.

It came as a faint surprise to Maxwell that the boy could read at all, but he tried not to let it show.

‘He has these kids, don'e?' Wal explained. ‘The Baker Street Irregulars.'

‘Indeed he does,' nodded Maxwell, quietly impressed.

‘Well, we'd sort of be
your
Irregulars, Mr M.,' Duggsy chipped in.

‘Why?' Maxwell asked.

‘Well,' Duggsy cradled his pint, vaguely ill at ease in his scruffy leathers with all the Guccis loafing around. ‘We're all feeling prats, to be honest, Mr Maxwell. I mean, this bloke, this e-fit one, he's involved in the murders, right?'

‘I don't know that, Matthew,' Maxwell said. ‘But I'd certainly like to find out.'

‘Right. Now, if he hangs around pubs and other places of ill repute, well, that's where we hang out too. And we feel, sort of, involved. ‘Mean, if he
did
it, we seen him,
didn't
we?'

‘But only Iron man saw him up close,' Maxwell reminded them. ‘How do you feel about all this, Iron?'

The drummer shrugged. ‘We'll keep an eye,' he said. ‘No promises, though.'

‘Guys.' Maxwell leaned back. ‘I'm flattered, of course, but there's a problem. Sherlock Holmes used to pay his Irregulars a shilling every time they worked for him. That's five pee to you, but more realistically, using the multiplier effect, the current rate of inflation and a
following
wind, that means I'd have to cough up eighty pounds to each of you whenever you were on my payroll.'

‘Yeah, well, you're a teacher.' Wal was still making neon circles in the twilight with his dying sparkler, trying to roast the hovering gnats. ‘You're loaded.'

‘Shut the fuck up, Wal,' Duggsy ordered, unaware of a certain bridling from the paying customers at the nearest table. ‘This is Mr Maxwell you're talking to. Won't cost you a thing, sir.'

‘That's uncommonly decent of you, gentlemen.' Maxwell raised his glass.

‘You'll come and watch us in the Leighford Festival, though, eh?'

‘Duggsy,' Maxwell gave the man a high five. ‘I
wouldn't
miss it for the world.'

The lights burned blue at 38 Columbine that night. After he'd made his pact with the Hippos, Maxwell had watched them pile into Iron Man's van and had cycled back from Loup Garoux in the embers of the sun. The other customers were audibly delighted when they left and Maxwell had pressed something brown and folded into the maître dee's hand for his understanding. The rays had flashed on his spokes as Surrey swooped along the Downs road where the grass was cropped short by the sheep and the trees lay flat and stunted in their timeless battle with the wind. He'd freewheeled into Tottingleigh as the street lights came on – ‘twas almost fairy time.

Captain Bob Portal looked nearly finished now as Maxwell carefully painted the yellow double stripes on the rider's overalls, reflecting sadly as he always did that to anyone not of the cavalry persuasion double yellow stripes meant no parking. The Master Modeller's tongue may have been protruding through his teeth as it usually
was at moments like these, but his heart wasn't in
modelling
tonight. He knew there were four Ofsted inspectors idling their time away at the Cunliffe not two miles away from him and he couldn't get at them. They were under constant protection from Henry Hall's boys in blue and with that particular gentleman, Maxwell was decidedly
persona non grata
at the moment. He checked his watch. Half past eleven. Too late for any meaningful contact now even assuming he could somehow sneak past the cordon. They'd be tucked up in their truckle beds – except for Sally Meninger who'd be tucked up in somebody else's. He'd swung that way from Tottingleigh, taking the sharp bend by the flyover in a flurry of gravel and a whirr of gears. He'd almost purred into the Cunliffe's drive, but he'd seen the squad car near the front door and had thought better of it. One of Leighford's finest would still be inside, perhaps more than one, and they would be looking out for Peter Maxwell almost as much as they were looking out for Boiler Man. Hell, some of them
probably
hoped they were one and the same person.

He rinsed his paint brush in the white spirit and slid his swivel chair backwards. The cat flap crashed
ominously
three floors below – the Count on one of his visits. Maxwell had found Olly Carson earlier in the day and showed him the e-fit of Joe Public that Jacquie had made up for him. It had been like pulling teeth. It
could
have been him Olly had said, but there again … Boiler Man had worn a baseball cap that partially hid his face. He was … what? Thinner? Older? Difficult to say. Olly, with his
particular
obsession, had learned to be cagey with strangers, people in authority, friends,
everybody
really. Maxwell had thanked the lad, his usual patient, understanding self,
when really he wanted to pin the little freak against the wall in the UFO section of the library and shout at him, in Klingon, of course.

‘So,' he stood up in his attic and looked out of his open skylight where the night breeze was still warm and the moon lay a frosted silver on the silent ridges of the sea. The pigeon that seemed to live next door had stopped cooing now and was dozing somewhere, its head under its wing, poor thing, praying not to meet the black and white killing machine that was Metternich. ‘Paula Freeling,' Maxwell murmured. ‘You should never have gone down to the edge of the town without consulting me.' He caught sight of his own reflection in the arch of the window pane, eyes tired and hollow, hair a mess. ‘You're talking to yourself again, Peter Maxwell,' he said. ‘Time for bed.'

The Head of Sixth Form's eyes locked on those of his Headmaster the next morning. Peter Maxwell was
leaning
sideways, his left leg firmly on the ground, his right still over Surrey's crossbar and fumbling blindly for the pedal. James Diamond was in the back seat of a police car, its siren blaring, its lights blazing as it screeched out of the school gates. It was difficult to know which of them was the more gobsmacked.

‘I don't usually pull rank, Anthony, as you know,' he said to an equally amazed Year Ten kid standing nearby, his backpack on the floor in his astonishment. He tossed him a padlock. ‘But park this for me, will you? I feel a
crisis
coming on.'

Anthony caught first the lock and then the bike as it left Maxwell's grasp. Somehow he snatched up his own
baggage and wheeled Surrey away towards the bike sheds, wondering how it was remotely possible that a thing this old could still be on the road. He thought the same about the bike. Maxwell was up the steps, weaving past knots of astonished kids and staff, all of whom had seen the Headmaster's going. He dummied through the Reception Offices, where every lady was on their feet and peering through windows; shimmied through Reprographics, where the technicians had abandoned their photocopying to watch the action, side stepped his way down the deserted Corridor of Power and hurtled into James Diamond's office. Those two fine Machiavellians, Bernard Ryan, the Deputy Head and Dierdre Lessing, the Senior Mistress stood there as though they'd been pole-axed, gazing wistfully at the door.

‘Well, well, Acting Headmaster,' Maxwell saluted Ryan with the flat of his hand, army style. He'd known this man, idiot and jerk, ever since he'd arrived at Leighford with pretensions to be able to do the timetable. Now, through natural wastage and the odd nervous breakdown, he was Number Two in the school. And, as of this moment, it seemed, Number One. Dear old Patrick McGoohan would, of course, have retorted that he was not a number, he was a free man. But there was so such thing as a free man. Not even a free lunch.

‘Don't say anything, Max,' Ryan warned.

‘What just happened?' the Head of Sixth Form felt he had a right to know.

‘The police arrested James,' Dierdre said, still
wide-eyed
with the shock of it all. She sat down sharply, as if she wasn't sure her legs would hold her any more,
wishing
, all over again, that she hadn't given up smoking eight
years ago. She was sitting in the Head's chair.

‘Er … I think that's Bernard's now, Dierdre,' Maxwell said gently. ‘When the colonel's dead and the gatling's jammed, it's usually the number two who takes over. That would be Major Ryan here …' and the film buff couldn't resist, ‘… recently promoted from Private.'

‘For God's sake, Max,' Ryan thundered. ‘Have a heart, will you? Didn't you hear what Dierdre just said?'

‘With respect, Acting Headmaster,' and those words brought terror to the hearts of any Senior Management Team member who had ever worked with Peter Maxwell. ‘I am waiting for some semblance of sanity to emerge from this morning. Who arrested Diamond and for what?'

‘I didn't catch his name,' Dierdre said. She was
twisting
her many rings as she tried to make sense of it all, too.

‘Baldock.' Ryan had caught it. ‘DC Baldock. Some kid still wet behind the ears.'

Maxwell was secretly impressed. Ryan was starting to sound like the Head of Sixth Form. ‘And the cause?'

Ryan glanced at Dierdre. Neither man had seen her so drawn before, so old, so ill. Better leap back into that magic flame, Maxwell thought, or she'd crumble into dust, thousands of years old, the Ayesha of Leighford High.

‘Suspicion of murder,' the Acting Headmaster said.

‘He's what?' DI Bathurst was incredulous.

‘Interview Room Two,' Jacquie said, waving her arms in the same disbelief.

‘Who the fuck authorised this?' Bathurst was on the move already.

‘Nobody, Phil,' Jacquie told him. ‘He just bulldozed his way into Leighford High this morning and brought him in here. He's been closeted away for nearly two hours.'

‘You're a bloody detective sergeant!' he yelled at her while grabbing a pile of incident sheets. ‘Why didn't you pull him out of there? We've got enough to do without fending off the bleeding Complaints Authority.' And he was gone, his heels clattering along the corridors that led to his quarry.

‘Geoff,' he put his head round the door. ‘A word?'

Baldock got up, looking at James Diamond sitting opposite like the cat who'd got the cream. The Headteacher looked ghastly, pale and gaunt under the brightness of the neon strips. His tie was loose, his jacket hanging on the back of his chair. Bathurst nodded to him before he closed the door.

‘Before you say anything, sir,' the DC had prepared for the onslaught he knew was coming. Baldock may have been green, but he wasn't emerald. ‘You'd better read this.'

Bathurst was boiling mad, but the professional
policeman
in him took over for long enough for him to take in the gist of the sheet of paper Baldock had given him; Diamond's statement. ‘These are his words?' he checked, eyes still blinking, teeth grinding in annoyance.

‘They are,' Baldock assured him.

‘Procedure,' Bathurst snapped, slapping the younger man in the chest with the statement sheet. ‘You, as a
detective
constable, do not,
ever
interview a potential suspect or even a witness, without the express authority of your case officer – in this case, me. And, regardless of where this leads, you may well have compromised our position
hopelessly by going out there like a bull in a fucking china shop. Where's his brief? Where's the tape? Have you taken leave of your bloody senses?'

The corridor was still ringing with Bathurst's verbals and various personnel, who felt it necessary to walk in that direction carrying vital pieces of paper, scurried away when faced with the DI's scowl. Where was that nice,
reasonable
Mr Hall when you needed him? Bathurst's finger was prodding Baldock in the chest. ‘You will write all this up, now. You will explain in words of one syllable – because that's probably all you can manage – why you took the action you did.' He closed to his man. ‘And if you still have a job by this evening, you obnoxious, cocky little wanker, I'm a one-legged transvestite.'

Bathurst waited until the DC had gone, then he took several deep breaths and went back into the Interview Room. He noted that a tape was still, in fact, recording in the machine to his right. At least Baldock had got
something
right. James Diamond, B.A., B.Sc., M.Ed., was not a happy man.