Maxwell’s Match (36 page)

‘No, sir.’ Henry Hall was stone faced. ‘I’m afraid it can’t. Do you know what this is?’

‘Looks like an audio tape,’ the Head of Classics said, rummaging through a pile of books on his study desk.

‘Is it one of yours?’ Hall asked.

‘Mine?’ Helmseley reached for it, but Hall pulled back. ‘Well, I can’t tell you if I can’t examine it, can I? Is it labelled?’

‘No, sir. It’s plain.’

Helmseley shrugged.

‘Do you know anyone called Brian?’

‘Brian? Brian?’ Helmseley was thinking. ‘There was a Brian Hedgepath who taught here a few years ago. I expect there are one or two Brians in the school now, among the student body, I mean. I’m afraid I’m the old-fashioned sort, Chief Inspector, I use their surnames. Now, I really must …’

‘Do you use their surnames when you pick them up, sir?’

Helmseley stopped in his open doorway, turning to the man, blinking. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘Where do you find them? Oh, I know it’s Petersfield, Petworth, Portsmouth – the three Ps. But I’m talking details here – gay pubs, public loos, parks?’

Helmseley slammed the door, horrified. ‘What the Hell are you talking about, man?’ he croaked.

‘I seem to remember from our last little chat, Mr Helmseley, you aren’t married.’

‘Neither is the Pope,’ Helmseley snapped. ‘What’s the relevance of that?’

‘May I use your cassette player, sir?’ Hall asked him.

‘All right,’ Helmseley nodded. ‘Be my guest.’

There was a machine on Helmseley’s desk and Hall flicked it into position and pressed the play button with a latex-gloved finger. There was silence for a moment, just the soft whirr of the tape coming into play, then a gravel voice, intense, calculating. ‘Ten-thirty-four,’ it said. ‘He’s reaching his front door now. Age about fifteen, possibly younger, blond. Nice looking lad. He seems pissed. This is quite promising. I’ll keep you posted on this one … I think he’s a natural.’

Hall clicked the pause button. Helmseley sat down.

‘Good God,’ the Head of Classics looked at the Chief Inspector. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘A few feet behind you,’ Hall said, pointing at the study door. ‘In the pocket of your coat.’

‘My …’

‘Perhaps you’d like to hear some more,’ Hall was pushing switches again. ‘This one’s aged fifteen. But he’s not alone. Seems to live along William Street. Can’t make out the number. He was drinking in the pub earlier. Under-age of course. May be able to use that.’

Helmseley stood up, shaking, but staring Hall in the face. ‘I have never heard this filth before in my life,’ he said solemnly. ‘That is not my voice.’

‘Oh, no, Mr Helmseley. I know that.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes,’ Hall nodded. ‘I know whose voice it is. What I want to know is what this tape was doing in your coat pocket.’

He pressed the button again. ‘Not bad,’ the voice grated. ‘Uses the handle “Janet”. Sixteen or so he claims. Seemed to like the porn. I’ll probably use him again. Not sure he’s your type, though.’

Hall released the tape. ‘There are other references,’ he said. ‘More mentions of “Janet”, some to someone called Brian. What was wrong with “Janet” then, Mr Helmseley? Why wasn’t he your type?’

‘This is appalling,’ Helmseley was sitting down again, staring at the floor. ‘Absolutely appalling.’

‘The porn that the tape refers to.’ Hall pocketed the evidence. ‘Would that be the magazines that Bill Pardoe was getting in the post? Compare notes, did you?’

Helmseley looked up at him. ‘You utter shit!’ he growled. Hall’s phone shattered the moment, vibrating in his pocket. He turned his back on the Head of Classics.

‘Sir?’

‘Jacquie. I’ve been trying to reach you. Are you at Selborne?’

‘Yes. I’m sure Denise McGovern just brought in Jeremy Tubbs.’

‘You mean you’re not in on the interview?’ Hall frowned, suddenly aware that he’d been double-crossed.

‘No. Should I be?’

‘Get in there,’ he ordered.

‘Sir, there’s something else. I tried a long shot last night. I’ve been trying to reach you too. I spoke to a lad in Petersfield, a kid on the game.’

‘Really?’ Hall straightened. ‘What’s the lad’s name?’

‘Brian,’ Jacquie told him.

‘Brian.’ Hall turned to where Helmseley was still sitting. ‘Tell me, Jacquie, did Brian mention Michael Helmseley at all?’

‘No, guv,’ Jacquie said. ‘Though he is an Old Boy of Grimond’s. What interested me more, sir, was one of his punters. Drives a big, dark car and has spiky grey hair.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Hall said. ‘And who does that sound like to you, Jacquie?’

‘Well, I know this is going to sound pretty preposterous, sir, but it sounds like … it sounds like …’

‘DCI West?’

Peter Maxwell had had a fruitless day. There was no Jacquie over breakfast. And she wasn’t answering her phone. For a while he toyed with getting a cab to Grimond’s and loitering with the paparazzi pair outside the gate. He wasn’t up to hauling himself over the wall again and anyway, was rather concerned that if George Sheffield or Maggie Shaunessy saw him, he’d be shot on sight.

So he’d loafed around in Petersfield again, chatting up barmen over Southern Comforts and picking up what tittle-tattle he could about Grimond’s. Then, having failed to raise Jacquie for the umpteenth time, hailed a cab to Selborne, partly to commune with the shade of the naturalist Gilbert White and partly to meet the ogre with whom his light o’ love now worked.

‘I told Mr Maxwell you were busy, sir,’ Denise McGovern’s hard face appeared round the door, hot on the heels of the Head of Sixth Form. ‘Come on, you,’ she barked at him. ‘Out!’

‘Maxwell,’ West had abandoned the Nicorettes as a lost cause and was back on the hard stuff, smoke wreathing around his flaring nostrils. ‘No, no, Denise. I’ve heard a great deal about Mr Maxwell one way or another over the last few days.’ He pointed to a chair. ‘I’ve got a little windowette in my schedule at the moment. Have a seat, Mr Maxwell. Tell me where you fit into all this.’

‘Oh,’ Maxwell pulled up a chair that was still faintly warm. ‘You know, just passing,’ he smiled.

‘Just bollocks,’ West was smiling too.

‘Ah, I just knew I’d enjoy meeting you,’ Maxwell winked at the DCI.

‘You arrive at Grimond’s, and people start dying, Mr Maxwell. Bill Pardoe goes off a roof. Tim Robinson falls into a lake. And old Tubbsy sends you a warning phone call to get out just after his own disappearance. Now, I understand a sixth former’s gone walkikins. Tell me, Mr Maxwell, is any of this down to you?’

‘Sir,’ the door crashed back and Jacquie Carpenter stood there.

‘Not now, sergeant!’West bellowed, ‘Your boy-friend here is about to fill in a few blanks for me.’

‘Jacquie.’ Maxwell crossed to her.

‘Look at me!’ West snarled. ‘I’ve been talking to an old friend of yours this afternoon.’ He was on his feet, confronting them both. ‘A sad bastard of a geography teacher called Jeremy Tubbs.’

‘Tubbs?’ Maxwell repeated.

‘He was most helpful,’ West smiled, before blowing smoke rings to the ceiling. ‘He’s been staying in your old room, apparently, at Grimond’s. But I’ve got a feeling he doesn’t know the half of it.’

‘Sir,’ Jacquie interrupted. ‘Mr Maxwell …’

‘Is your sugar daddy,’ West finished the sentence for her. ‘Your bit on the side. Yeah, I know. But he’s also up to his fucking neck in what’s going on at Grimond’s and I intend …’

But another voice was filling the Incident Room at Selborne. Another voice, but not another voice. And it was getting louder.

‘Not bad,’ it was saying. ‘Uses the handle “Janet”. Sixteen or so he claims. Seemed to like the porn. I’ll probably use him again. Not sure he’s your type, though.’

DCI West walked numbly past Maxwell and Jacquie, out of his Inner Sanctum, the cigarette trailing in his right hand. His team were out there, all of them – Sandy Berman, Steve Chapell, Pete Walters, Denise McGovern. Most of them were on their feet and he seemed to be walking in slow motion. His mouth wasn’t moving, but his own voice was filling the room, with an electronic hiss behind it. His team were all there and they were all looking at him, recognizing the voice and what it meant. Then, quite suddenly, the voice stopped in mid sentence with a click and DCI West was staring into the blank, expressionless face of DCI Hall.

‘Mark,’ he said softly. ‘Can I have a word?’

21

They met briefly in the car park as the rain began, kissing under the narrow, unforgiving eaves of the Incident Room.

‘DCI West,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘So Henry’s got his man, then?’

‘One of them,’ Jacquie said, looking back through the Inner Sanctum windows where Hall was lowering the blinds and a shattered Mark West sat with his head in his hands.

‘You’re staying here, aren’t you?’ he squeezed her hand.

‘There are a lot of hurt people in there, Max,’ she said. ‘Some of them will have kids of their own. You work with a man for years, trust him, believe in him. Maybe, in our line of work, you put your life on the line for him, or he does the same for you. And then …’ she sighed, ‘At the very least, Henry will need help with the paperwork.’ She turned back to him. ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ he shrugged. ‘Home, I suppose. Time I got Grimond’s out of my system. I’ve got a Sixth Form to run.’

‘Call me,’ she said, pecking him on the cheek, and she was gone.

Maxwell called a cab and waited in the lee of the Incident Room. He hated loose ends. They were like unfinished jigsaws and they irked him. And answer came there none. Patrol cars came and went, but it couldn’t be called business as usual. At Selborne a murder inquiry hung in the balance, like a film frozen in mid-frame, while the team leader’s career was being shredded. Dumpy Lynda was trying to make tea for the two DCIs locked in the Inner Sanctum, but she kept crying and her tears were wetting the sugar. Sandy Berman watched the others, numbly going about their business, avoiding eye contact, staring at the paperwork, or the VDU screen or the ground. He knew he’d have to snap them all out of it, pull the team together. But that would have to come later. He was having trouble pulling himself together first.

Outside in the rain, Maxwell’s phone warbled in the gathering dusk.

‘Max?’

‘Yes.’ Triumph! He’d pressed the right button again.

‘It’s Tony Graham. Look, we’ve found John Selwyn. I can’t talk over the phone. Are you back home?’

‘No, I’m in Selborne as a matter of fact.’

‘Really? Well, look, I hate to ask you this, but you couldn’t come over, could you? There’s a problem. With John, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Yes, Tony, I expect there is.’

Old Jedediah Grimond’s opulent pile looked black and oddly lonely in the purple of the night sky. There was a frost of stars shimmering in God’s Heaven now that the evening cloud had cleared. Peter Maxwell paid his taxi fare and sauntered through the open gates. This was odd. Even the two remaining paparazzi had drifted away to chase other stories, make other people’s lives a misery. The wrought iron was thrown back, chained against the stone pillars and the rampant lions snarled soundlessly in the still of the night. His feet crunched on the gravel until he reached the limes that formed an avenue into the main quad. He saw a light burning in Parker’s window and the moon cold on the parked cars. He checked his watch as he passed the chapel. Gone nine. Supper would be over. Prep should be done too, except for the late bird, the anorak to whom good grades were everything and who would be burning the midnight oil.

He heard the chatter of the younger boys in the lower Tennyson corridors as he rounded the corner. A clutch of lads were laughing and rough-housing on their way to the television room. One of them, less happy than the rest, a quiet-looking blond boy the wrong side of thirteen, stopped for a brief moment, looking solemnly into Maxwell’s eyes. Then he was gone.

‘Courage, Jenkins,’ the Head of Sixth Form muttered to himself. ‘It won’t be long now.’

He heard his feet echo on the wooden stairs and turn to a clatter as he reached the stone. In front of him was the solid oak door of Tony Graham’s study; Bill Pardoe’s study. He knocked.

‘Up here, Mr Maxwell.’

He turned at the sound of his name. Roger Harcross stood there, dressed to the nines in his CCF uniform, boots polished, buttons gleaming, a corporal’s stripes on his sleeve and a black beret across his forehead.

‘Evening, Ape,’ Maxwell said.

‘Up here, sir,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting for you in the theatre.’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell said. ‘Special showing of the Film Club tonight?’

‘Not exactly, sir,’ Ape said, as the Head of Sixth Form reached him on the upper landing. ‘More of a debate, of sorts. You’ll see.’

Maxwell walked with the boy along the gloomy corridor that led past the stairs to his old room, past the door that led to the roof, to that cold lonely place where Bill Pardoe had said his farewells to the world. ‘I gather John Selwyn’s returned to the fold,’ Maxwell said.

‘He has, sir,’ Ape smiled. ‘He strayed a little yesterday, but he’s back now. One of us again.’

Ape led the way up the small flight of steps that led into the theatre. The auditorium was in darkness, the rows of plush seats silent and black in the gloom. On the little stage below them, in front of the huge white screen, a knot of cadets sat facing the newcomers. John Selwyn was there, in his sergeant’s uniform and crimson colour-sash, his face pale and grim under the beret. Antonio Splinterino was on his left, grim-jawed and jackal-eyed in khaki, watching Maxwell make his entrance. And in the centre, in his mortar-board and gown, smiling benignly, sat Tony Graham, the Head of Tennyson House.

Maxwell heard the door click and lock behind him. In the state sector, nanny state regulations would insist on at least three exits from this room. But this was the private sector. This was Grimond’s and the only way out was locked. He felt Ape at his shoulder. ‘Could I have your mobile please, Mr Maxwell?’ he asked.

‘Never carry one, dear boy,’ Maxwell held out his arms to allow a body search. Ape hesitated, glancing down to the stage, but Graham nodded and the lad rummaged through the man’s pockets, patting his chest, ribs and back.