Maxwell’s Match (13 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ she said once she had no more tears left. ‘I’m not usually so emotional.’

‘Sshh,’ he said and cradled her head, holding her to him as he had for the last hour. She pulled away slightly and looked into his steady dark eyes, smiling back at her. She’d give half her salary for those eyes on the cold night, on the lonely road, when her mouth was bricky-dry with fear or wet with salt-tears, as now.

‘Have a shower,’ he said. ‘Get out of those wet things.’

‘I must get back,’ she said. ‘Hall will need me.’

He put a finger to her lips. ‘Hall has half of the Hampshire constabulary at his disposal,’ he said. ‘He can manage without you for a while longer.’

And he made her a strong, black coffee, lacing it with a little brandy from Room Service while she showered. Then she sat on the floor while he combed her long flame hair and kissed her forehead every now and then. She’d fallen asleep in his arms a little before dusk and he’d crept quietly away, leaving her a note and ringing for a taxi. Hall was now no doubt handling the official end of things with his usual taciturn aplomb. But there was no one to speak for Mad Max except Mad Max himself.

Then he’d watched a grim film in front of a hundred or so boys who were fast becoming men in the face of murder. He’d made his excuses as soon as Hilary Dwyer’s screams died away across the bleak Suffolk landscape and he’d wandered the grounds under the all-seeing silver of moon. He was still crossing and re-crossing silent Grimond’s quad a little before midnight.

Who goes home?

8

Friday, Friday. Hate that day. Every pair of eyes was on DCI Henry Hall in the old village hall at Selborne, doubling as an Incident Room. And the incidents were multiplying. The fourth day of one possible murder enquiry had become the second day of another. It clouded issues, muddied waters, tangled tales.

‘Chief Superintendent Mason is holding a press conference this afternoon,’ Hall told his team, ‘in conjunction with Dr Sheffield from Grimond’s. They both want some answers, people. What can we give them?’

‘DI Berman, guv,’ a keen looking detective began. He was a solid six-footer with forward-combed hair and the tenacity of a bulldog. ‘My team are working on last movements.’

Hall nodded, sitting on the corner of his desk in the outer office.

‘The deceased was a PE teacher. Had two lessons after the usual school assembly in the chapel.’ He checked his notes. ‘Er … Upper Four Cee and Lower Four Bee. They were both in the gym. Third lesson he had a free.’

There were murmurs. Half the room would have killed Tim Robinson for his free period alone.

‘Where was he then?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘He was seen in the staff room … er … Senior Common Room … by a Jeremy Tubbs, Geography teacher. At that point he seemed to be marking books.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Eleven-thirtyish. He was back in the gym b just after twelve, trampoline coaching.’

‘This would be lunchtime?’

Berman nodded.

‘What did he have?’ Hall asked.

‘Sandwich,’ the DI told him, ‘er …’

‘Tuna,’ somebody else piped up.

‘You are … ?’ Hall frowned, trying, in the sea of faces, to locate the voice.

‘Sorry, guv. DS Walters.’ A prop-forward type was on his feet, shirt straining across his pecs. ‘I’ve been working on the pathologist’s report.’

‘Christ,’ somebody said from the far side of the room. ‘They on overtime?’

There were guffaws and hubbub. Hall let it go He knew the importance of a joke in a murder enquiry. But this was possibly a double murder perhaps it needed twice the levity. ‘After lunch?’ He pressed Berman again.

‘He taught another three lessons, all of them out on the fields. Rugger practice with the Second Fifteen, then Cross Country.’

‘Was he on the school premises throughout” Hall crosschecked.

‘No, guv. He ran with the boys. Apparently, it was the usual circuit, round trip of a mile and a half. DC Gostelow’s working on a plan of it.’ An anonymous hand waved somewhere at the back. ‘Robinson was back at Grimond’s by three quarter-past,’ Berman went on. ‘Robinson had shower – Richard Ames, his Department Head, will vouch for that.’

Eyebrows raised here and there, camp looks were exchanged. Sometimes, the only way to stay with their job at all was to be flippant and cynical in equal measure.

‘Did Robinson live on site?’ Hall asked.

‘No, guv. DS Chapell.’ If Walters was a prop-forward, Chapell was a fly-half, wiry and tough-looking. ‘Checking out the background. I’ve drawn a bit of a blank one way and another.’

‘Where does he live?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘Little semi on the edge of Petersfield. Rented. Not been there long.’

‘He hasn’t been in the job long,’ Hall confirmed. ‘So, Mr Berman … Sandy, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, guv,’ the DCI flicked over a page in his notebook. ‘Robinson left Grimond’s at about five, five-fifteen. Sometimes apparently he eats at the school. Last night he didn’t.’

Hall eased his rapidly numbing right buttock. ‘Who’s been over the semi?’

Nothing. There were glances in various directions. Berman found his voice first. ‘Word was we were to leave that alone, guv. That … er … you’d do it.’

Hall nodded. ‘Good,’ he said and risked the ghost of a smile. ‘Relax, everybody. I’m on secondment, remember. This is all done to see how well you follow orders. Jacquie and I will get out there later.’

All eyes swivelled to the alien DS sitting alone at the other side of Hall’s desk. She hadn’t slept well and the circles around her grey eyes told their own story.

‘SOCO?’ Hall changed the subject.

‘DS McGovern, sir,’ a wraith-thin woman stood up, pencil-pleated with straw-coloured hair straight out of a bottle. ‘The body was found by DS Carpenter and Mr Peter Maxwell in the lake at Grimond’s at approximately one-oh-five yesterday. It was floating seven or eight feet out from the bank, the body fully clothed. Forensic reports a blow to the back of the head, probably with an oar …’

‘Any weapon found?’ Hall asked.

‘No, guv,’ McGovern shook her head, ‘although Forensic are still checking all of them in the boat- house.’

‘How many is that?’

‘Twenty-four.’

Hall never let anyone know how impressed he was with an answer and the DS swept on. ‘There, were dozens of footprints around the bank. Forensic are still eliminating them. Kids, teachers, DS Carpenter, yourself.’

‘So there may or may not be an alien set?’ Hall was thinking aloud.

‘That’s right, guv.’

‘All right. Keep at it, people. We want answers quickly on this one. DS Carpenter and I will …’

‘Guv,’ an Essex fly-half called from the corner where the cigarette smoke wreathed thickest.

‘Yes … er … DS Chapell.’

‘Well, there’s something fishy about this Robinson, guv.’

‘Oh?’ Hall seemed bored by the whole topic. ‘What?’

‘Well, it’s like a bloke with no fingerprints or no shadow. This one’s got no past.’ There were murmurs around the room.

‘Explain.’ Hall was at his curtest with two potential murders on his plate.

‘He joined the staff at Grimond’s in January, right? Three months ago.’

‘So?’

‘So where was he before that?’

Hall blinked. ‘Don’t you know? Haven’t you checked with Sheffield?’

‘Oh, yes, guv,’ Chapell nodded. ‘According to the Headteacher, he came from Haileybury.’

‘Then, I don’t see your problem, sergeant,’ Hall shrugged.

‘Well, it’s just that Haileybury haven’t heard of him.’

Silence.

‘Yet here,’ and Chapell held up a piece of fax paper, enjoying doing his Hercule Poirot bit, ‘is the reference from that very school, duly signed by their Head.’

‘Where’s this going, Chapell?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘Well, I rang Haileybury first thing this morning, guv. Just as back-up, you know. Confirmation. I explained the situation and the Head was kind enough to fax me through a sample of his signature. This,’ he waved the reference under Hall’s nose, ‘is a forgery and a bad one at that. The last Robinson they had taught Physics and Chemistry. His name wasn’t Tim and he retired, according to the records, in 1948.’

There were whoops and whistles around the room from impressed colleagues.

Hall’s hand was in the air to shut them up. ‘This is not a three-ring circus,’ he snapped, ‘and since when do officers applaud a problem? Can you explain this, Chapell?’ I

‘No, guv,’ the DS confessed. ‘That’s why I’ve drawn a bit of a blank.’

‘Well, when you’ve found a solution,’ Hall said quietly, standing now and looking his man squarely in the eye, ‘when you’ve rubbed out the blank you’ve drawn, that’s when we’ll have a little in the way of congratulation. Until then,’ he raked them all with his blank lenses, ‘I believe there’s work to be done. Jacquie.’

‘Maxwell.’ It was a name that had crossed Henry Hall’s lips more than once before.

‘Sir?’ Jacquie, sitting beside him in the Volvo, was mentally miles away, kissing a dead man in her darkest dreams.

‘Maxwell,’ he repeated. ‘What’s he up to?’

‘He’s observing, sir,’ she told him. ‘Watching how they do things at Grimond’s. Bit like you here, I suppose.’

‘Nothing like me here,’ Hall growled. Jacqui Carpenter had known Henry Hall, girl and woman, for six years. Most of what she’d learned she’d learned from him and whereas the bland bastard didn’t exactly convince as the master, it was at his knee that the learning had been done. She couldn’t remember a time when the guv’nor had been as tight-lipped and grouchy as this.

‘Are you sleeping with him?’ Hall asked.

She stared at him, then looked away, her neck mottling with fury, her eyes flashing fire. ‘I consider that an inappropriate question, sir,’ she said.

‘Do you? What if I say it’s perfectly appropriate?’ He rattled up through the gears as the hedges flashed by.

She looked at him levelly. ‘I still wouldn’t answer it,’ she said.

They drove in silence for a few minutes. ‘All right,’ Hall tried a new tack. ‘We’ll let that go. What does he know?’

‘About what?’

‘Jacquie!’ Hall shouted so that the DS jumped in her seat-belt. ‘We are a long way from home, you and I, longer than you know. We need all the friends we can get.’

‘Even Mad Max?’ she asked and waited. A year ago, six months even, she wouldn’t have dared ask a question like that. Now, it was different. She was sure of herself because she was so sure of the man she loved.

Hall’s lips twitched. It was as close to a smile as she’d be likely to get this side of rigor mortis. ‘Even Mad Max,’ he nodded.

They snarled round the roundabout that led off the road below Butser Hill and on through sleepy Petersfield, past the Bear Museum and the Doll’s Hospital and the green-sheened spelter of the Dutch William statue. Then they were growling down Spain Street and out towards the country again, the railings of Churchers flashing in the morning sun; Churchers who had faced Grimond’s on many a bloody rugby field and hallowed cricket turf.

Tim Robinson’s semi was very ordinary indeed, one of countless ’60s erections that had seen seriously better days. Hall ignored the curtains twitching to the right and the old boy tinkering with a lawn mower noisily to his left, two potential witnesses that Jacquie would have talked to, had she not been with the guv’nor; two potential witnesses that Peter Maxwell would have talked to had he been there; two potential witnesses that Henry Hall walked past.

His key clicked in the Yale and they were inside. Jacquie Carpenter had stood in dead men’s houses before. They were all the same. Cold. As dead as their owners. There was an indefinable sadness about them. She’d known it first as a girl when her grandfather had died and she’d gone with her mother to sort his things out. She remembered the old man’s pipe still lying by his bed, his hat and coat in the hall, his book half read and the crossword unfinished.

It was like that here. She hadn’t known Tim Robinson. The first time she’d seen him he was lying face down in a brackish lake, cold as the grave and heavy with water. Their first introduction was the kiss she’d given him, a kiss which he’d returned with one of death. Then she’d done her best to break his ribs, to pound breath in the breathless, life into death. The remnants of cottage pie lay abandoned on an unwashed plate on the kitchen table and there was a bottle of cheap wine half-drunk on the top of the fridge.

‘What are we looking for, sir?’ she asked Hall although she knew the answer already.

‘Anything.’ He didn’t disappoint her. ‘Anything that will tell us how the man who lived here ended up dead in a lake.’

There was a pile of exercise books on the large coffee table. Hall was thudding upstairs, turning out drawers and rummaging in cupboards. It took Jacquie a while to work it out; what was odd about this little semi that was a dead man’s last home. There were no photos. No wife. No kids. No family at all. Not even the ubiquitous Night Out With The Lads. She checked the sideboard, the drinks cabinet, the space under the stairs. Tim Robinson had drunk Stella in fairly copious quantities and had a secret stash of Malibu. No ciggies, although Jacquie, who had long since given them up, would kill for one about now. The dead man’s wallet lay on the table. Credit cards. An old theatre ticket stub.

‘No AA,’ she found herself saying aloud. ‘No phone card.’ But there was his blood group. O Neg. Just like hers.

‘Guv?’

Hall was already back on ground level. ‘There’s nothing here, Jacquie. We’re wasting our time. Whatever we’re looking for is back there, at Grimond’s.’

‘But, guv …’

‘Jacquie,’ he interrupted her. ‘We’re going to have to work double shifts from now on. Saturday and Sunday. Can you handle that?’

‘Sure,’ she nodded, trying to read that inscrutable face. ‘But what about the local boys? Don’t we need … ?’

‘No, Jacquie,’ he cut in again. ‘We don’t need them. We just need us. Where will I find Peter Maxwell?’

Chief Superintendent David Mason was used to press conferences, those media circuses where cameras flashed and intelligent journalists like Duncan Kennedy asked questions that were just shade too much to the point. He fielded them with his usual tangential skill, schooled as he was in days of Thatcher and Major. Nobody’d invented the phrase ‘spin policeman’, but David Mason was one. Dr George Sheffield was less secure. Parents were his usual audience, governors and Old Boy supportive, friendly, united in the cause of education-with-snobbery. And when he addressed them, he wasn’t talking about murder.