Maxwell’s Match (14 page)

Mason metaphorically held up his hand, shoulders and lapels glittering silver. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to thank you for coming along this afternoon. Dr Sheffield is, as you know, headmaster of Grimond’s School and he is as anxious as I to assure you all that there is cause for alarm at the present time.’

A barrage of microphones probed forward and a forest of hands filled the air.

Mason selected his questioners carefully.

‘Tom Simpson,
Guardian
,’ the first one was on his feet. ‘Dr Sheffield, how many pupils have left the school in the last few days?’

‘Er … none,’ the Head shifted uneasily, suddenly hating the spotlight.

‘But surely,’ Simpson persisted amid the hubbub, ‘with two murders in five days …’

‘As I said a moment ago,’ Mason cut in with that fixed smile of his, born of long hours in front of the cameras, ‘we are keeping an open mind on the death of Mr Pardoe.’

‘Oh, come on, Chief Super,’ the local hack, John Bennett, challenged him. ‘I mean, what are the odds?’

‘
News of the World,
Chief Super,’ another cut in. ‘We might get away with that on April 1; not at any other time.’

‘Superintendent Mason,’ another hand was straining forward. ‘
Daily Mail
. Surely you have a suspect? Is it sex? Drugs? Our readers have a right to know.’

‘No, they don’t,’ Sheffield was shouting. ‘These things are personal, private. You have no right to …’

Mason cut in again. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. What we would both ask you, Dr Sheffield and I, is that you give the boys and girls the privacy to which they have a right. My officers are on the job and believe me, they will get results. Dr Sheffield’s job is infinitely more difficult. He has to keep a sense of calm and order and to do his best to keep morale high during an intensely difficult time in the life of any school.’

‘Who’s leading the enquiry, Mr Mason?’ the
Guardian
wanted to know.

‘Er … I cannot comment …’

‘Come off it, Chief Super,’ Bennett was there again. ‘We at the
Chronicle
know the local boys. Is it Joe Nelson or Mark West?’

‘Neither,’ Mason snapped, getting to his feet and snatching up his cap and gloves. ‘Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen,’ and he shepherded Sheffield away amid a cacophony of questions.

‘God, that was awful!’ Sheffield groaned striding out of the room, still dazed by the light and the whole experience.

‘Worse than that,’ Mason grunted, closing the double doors behind him.

‘Worse?’ Sheffield turned to his man in the corridor outside. ‘In what way?’

‘Never mind. How many kids have you lost?’

‘As of this morning, thirty-one. My Chair of Governors is on the point of closing us down.’

‘No,’ Mason frowned. ‘Nobody leaves Grimond’s. Not now. Not yet.’

‘How exactly do you propose to stop them, Chief Superintendent? Throw an armed cordon around the Grimond walls and pick off stragglers with your SWAT snipers? I’m not sure that would do much for community relations initiatives.’

The Headmaster spun on his heel and stormed off to the waiting car. ‘We need more men,’ Sheffield shouted. ‘One Inspector and a sergeant will hardly suffice.’

Mason reached the vehicle. ‘I thought you’d appreciate the low-key approach,’ he said, checking that no-one was within earshot.

‘Low-key?’ Sheffield snarled, stabbing Superintendent with a rigid finger. ‘Two of my staff are dead, Mr Mason. Tomorrow all this be all over the front pages. Grimond’s will be on television tonight. It’s a little late, don’t you think, for low-key?’ And he bundled himself into Mervyn Larson’s car.

‘How many?’ he asked his deputy, hauling the seat-belt into place.

‘Eight since lunch-time,’ Larson told him. ‘The MacMister brothers, the Turtle girl. I’ve taken Miss Horsefield off the switchboard. She’s been in tears all afternoon, poor soul.’

‘Just drive, Mervyn,’ Sheffield growled, sinking down in the seat to avoid the camera flashes popping beyond the windscreen.

David Mason reached into his limousine to grab the radio. ‘Get me DCI West,’ he barked. ‘And move your arse.’ He could feel his tooth bothering him again.

If there was one thing Detective Chief Inspector West liked, it was being proved right. He got the call from the Chief Super a little after four-thirty and by five was driving through the horizontal rain for Selborne and Henry Hall’s Incident Room, ready to be brought up to speed. Mason, of course, was going to pay for this, West smiled, rolling his chewing gum around his tongue. Only time would tell how much. What had the stupid bastard been thinking of?
He
was the man on the ground, the insider. Foreign imports were okay, but they couldn’t handle murder cases, not on their own. What was Mason on?

‘It was just … odd, Max,’ Jacquie was only playing with her tagliatelle; she wasn’t eating it.

‘How, odd?’ The candlelight shone on Maxwell’s wine glass. The pair faced each other in the dining room at Barcourt Lodge. A particularly raucous Rotary dinner was happening in the annexe through the double doors, streamers flying, glasses clinking and cherry-nosed old farts making spectacles of themselves.

‘Well, usually a search like that would take two hours, perhaps more and that’s with a full team. Hall went through the place like a bloody tornado. I reckon we were there less than twenty minutes.’

‘What did you find?’

‘Questions,’ Jacquie pushed her plate away.

‘Ah,’ Maxwell waggled his fork at her. ‘Now, what did your Mummy say about eating your greens?’

Jacquie twisted her lips. ‘You haven’t met my mummy yet, have you, Max?’

The Head of Sixth Form grabbed a spoon and held it in the air in the form of a cross with his fork, eyes wide with terror.

‘Well, then, shut it,’ Jacquie advised, doing fairly bad John Thaw in
The Sweeney
, ‘or I’ll arrange it.’

‘“Questions” you said,’ Maxwell knew the moment to change a subject.

‘That’s right,’ Jacquie held her wine glass in both hands. ‘No answers.’

‘For instance?’ He sipped his wine.

‘There wasn’t a single photograph in the house, at least not on the ground floor. I didn’t see upstairs.’

‘So he’s not a photo person,’ Maxwell shrugged.

‘One of the DSs, a bloke named Chapell, has been assigned background. He can’t find any. Seems Robinson forged his references. The odd thing is that having been to his house, we’re none the wiser now. Hall just didn’t seem interested.’

‘Perhaps he thought somebody else should have combed the joint,’ Maxwell suggested.

Jacquie shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t pique. He chose it, apparently. Specifically told the team that he and I would handle that end of things.’

‘I see.’

‘He didn’t talk to neighbours, check phone messages. Nothing. You don’t think he’s losing it, do you?’

‘Henry?’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Not a bit of it. How old is he?’

‘The big five-o next month.’

‘A mere stripling,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Probably hasn’t lost all his milk teeth yet.’

‘There’s something else.’

‘Oh?’

‘The forensics report said that Tim Robinson was a teetotaller.’

‘And?’

‘I saw lager and spirits in his drinks cabinet. Half-drunk bottle of wine in the kitchen.’

Maxwell flared his nostrils. ‘From which you deduce, Watson?’

Jacquie closed to him. ‘From which I deduce there’s something bloody peculiar about this case, Max. And I mean
bloody
peculiar. By the way, Hall hasn’t spoken to you yet, has he?’

‘No, should he have?’

Jacquie shrugged. ‘He implied he was going to.’

‘Is he here now?’ Maxwell asked. ‘In the hotel, I mean?’

Jacquie shook her head. ‘Out. Said he’d be back later.’

He looked into her steady, grey eyes, burning into his with the intensity he loved. He reached out and held her fingers around the glass. ‘You haven’t by any chance got a key to Mr Robinson’s abode?’ he asked.

She suddenly dangled one in front of him. ‘I thought you’d never suggest it,’ she said.

It was a little after ten that Henry Hall drove into the car park at Selborne. The rain had eased, but it was still spraying onto his windscreen from passing traffic and the street lights threw diamond wetness onto the tarmac. The skeleton night shift were there, ready to burn the midnight oil, coffee steaming in cardboard cups and tired eyes straining at VDUs.

He was halfway across the outer offices when he realised. His inner office was occupied. More, it was occupied by DCI Mark West, sitting in his swivel, jacket sprawled over its back, shirt sleeves rolled, eyes squinting against his cigarette smoke, crumpled coffee cup at his elbow.

‘Ah, Henry,’ West looked up. ‘Welcome aboard.’

Hall looked at the trio of officers with West. DS Chapell he knew, and Sandy Berman. He’d never seen the third man, a thick-set copper with a shaved head who might have been a bouncer in a previous existence.

‘Could I have a word, Mark?’ Hall said.

‘Not just at the moment,’ West lolled back, smiling. ‘I’m conducting a double murder enquiry, and have quite a bit of time to make up. Any problems with that, perhaps you could talk to Chief Superintendent Mason, could you?’ He pressed the intercom button. ‘Lynda, bring us a cup of coffee through, could you, love? DCI Hall will see himself out.’

‘Can’t you stay a bit longer?’ Janet lay in the shadows in the corner of her little hideaway.

‘You know I can’t,’ Cassandra swayed upright, silhouetted against the curtains.

‘Yes,’ Janet said, fighting back the tears. ‘I know.’ She watched the lithe girl clip on her front-fastening bra and pull the lacy panties up her bare thighs, smoothing the thong around her bum.

‘Look,’ Cassandra faced her, hands on hips. ‘We’re going to have to be careful from now on,’ she said. ‘With all this … whatever … going on. There are eyes everywhere.’ And she pulled her tracksuit bottoms on.

‘I don’t care,’ Janet said defiantly. ‘I don’t care who sees us.’

‘Yes,’ Cassandra snatched up her top and pulled it and the hood over her head. ‘Well, I do, dear. We’re all out of here in June and some of us are off to Cambridge. Oh, I’m sorry, you’re Reading-bound, aren’t you? Never mind.’ And she bent down, steeling herself as she felt the heavier girl’s hand roving over her breasts, then stroking her cheek.

‘You do love me, Cassie?’ Janet whispered.

‘Of course I do,’ the taller girl sighed. ‘But please, Janet, don’t call me that. Now, I really have to go. Oh … got any stuff?’

He sat alone behind the steering wheel, face darkened under the street lamp. His headlights were out and he wasn’t moving, just watching the house across the road with an intensity he’d acquired over the years.

‘Ten-thirty-four,’ he whispered into a handheld cassette recorder. ‘He’s reaching his front door now. Age about fifteen, possibly younger. Blond. Nice looking lad.’ He watched as the boy fumbled with the lock. ‘He seems pissed. This is quite promising. I’ll keep you posted on this one … I think he’s a natural.’

And he clicked off the machine, watching and waiting in the darkness.

9

This time they’d do the job for real. Jacquie parked the Ka around the corner in the average-looking estate on the edge of Petersfield. They linked arms and marched off purposefully, an average-looking couple out for a stroll. Except that it was well past midnight and the pair’s eyes were everywhere except on each other.

There were lights on in the right hand house that provided the other half of Tim Robinson’s last known address. Squealing from somewhere down the road told them that the Petersfield youth were on their way home, lurching from bus-shelter lager-fest to quick gang-grope in the shrubbery. Ah, the youth of today.

Jacquie clicked the key in the lock and they were in, drawing curtains before switching on lights.

‘What are we looking for?’ Maxwell asked. Like Jacquie he’d done this before, combed through the debris of a dead man’s life. But he was an amateur, what crime writers call an amateur’s amateur. Jacquie was the professional. He was happy to defer.

‘Something.’ She was getting her bearings in the lounge. ‘Anything. I’m going to start upstairs. Check the answerphone, Max.’

She hadn’t had time to do it last time, before the DCI had unceremoniously whisked her away.

Nothing. Just Tim Robinson’s voice. ‘Hi, you’ve reached Tim Robinson. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.’

‘No, you won’t, Tim,’ Maxwell said softly and began to rummage in the sideboard. The furniture was extraordinarily standard, MFI flat pack and it looked as if it had been delivered all together, as a job lot. There was a pile of exercise books on the table; GCSE PE. Maxwell riffled through them. Clearly, Tim Robinson was of the new school – ignore spelling and grammar problems.

‘That’s odd.’ He was still talking to himself.

‘What is?’ Jacquie was back on the ground floor, making for the kitchen.

‘What’s a synapse?’

‘You what?’

‘Synapse. According to this, it’s where two nerves meet and it resembles an arboretum.’

‘Max, what are you talking about?’

He checked the front cover of the book. ‘The gospel according to Jamie Atkins, Upper Four Bee. He thinks a synapse is like an arboretum.’

‘Which tells us what?’

‘Probably nothing,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Except that Tim Robinson wasn’t a very careful marker. The kid means dendrite – the branch-like description of nerves; not a bush collection.’

‘Does this have any significance?’ Jacquie was combing the magazine rack.

‘No,’ Maxwell told her. ‘It’s the Leighford High school of marking too. Skim read and slap a level on every fourth page, with a merit sticker on every fifth just to keep morale up. Sure beats intellectual rigour.’

‘No PC,’ Jacquie said, checking cupboards and alcoves.

‘Not all bad, then, Tim Robinson,’ the velociraptor of Leighford High commented.

‘He was thirty-two, Max,’ Jacquie countered. ‘Most thirtysomethings surf the Net.’

‘Do you?’ Maxwell put the book back into the pile. ‘Ah, but it was my generation that put a man on the moon.’