Maxwell's Retirement (21 page)

‘Well, if you wanted to tell it, Donald, why didn’t you just go ahead in the first place,’ said Astley testily. Even pets begin to irritate after a while.

‘A tag?’ Hall said. ‘You mean, this guy is on a curfew, something like that? ASBO?’

‘That or working from an open facility,’ Donald said. ‘Tags are really common, these days. I’m just running the prints now. We’ll be able to tell you who he is in about ten minutes. IDENT1 is foolproof.’

‘Well,’ Jim Astley said. ‘This won’t get the cause of death identified.’ He pinged the cuffs of his gloves and shouldered his way out of the room. ‘There are
some
things a machine will never be able to do.’

‘Broken neck,’ muttered Donald.

‘I’d say so,’ Hall agreed.

‘He likes to be thorough,’ muttered the Fat Assistant. ‘We’ll be up to our knees in internal organs unless I get in there. Can you hang on until the result comes through, Mr Hall? It will
print out there.’ He pointed to a fax machine on the bench.

‘How many minutes did you say?’ Hall asked.

‘About two, now, by normal standards,’ Donald said. ‘In fact, I can’t think what’s keeping it.’ He barged the doors open and was gone.

Hall stood there, wondering what to do to while away the time. Two minutes wasn’t long if you were in your own office, sitting at your own computer, in front of your own TV. But sitting in someone else’s ante-room, with the strange smell of preservatives, disinfectant and fried chicken in the air, he found it hard to relax. He stared out through the windows of the double doors and watched as Astley and Donald, working, against expectations, like a well-oiled team, started their first preparations for the post-mortem. Astley pulled the microphone down towards him and Hall knew what he was saying, although the sound barely reached him at all. He was giving the date, the time, his name and credentials and Donald’s name and credentials. He was so lost in thought that the ring of the fax phone made him jump.

He turned, to see the paper start to emerge from the bottom of the machine. It was quick; not like the fax at the nick, which still used heat-sensitive paper and took an age to print out the simplest thing. The image emerging was a set of ten prints across the top, too small to be useful
but there as a reminder of what the fax was about. Below, a stark line. ‘Prints not on database.’ Hall looked at it, amazed. Donald and Astley might look like a couple from a children’s Sunday morning cartoon, but he had never known them, particularly Donald, miss their guess. He tapped on the glass and Astley gestured to Donald to go over and see what the nuisance DCI wanted.

Hall was waving the piece of paper in the air as Donald barged through the doors.

‘Ah,’ said the assistant smugly. ‘Who is he, then?’

Hall held up the paper in front of his face, like a yashmak. This made him even more difficult to read than usual, with only his blank lenses in view. Donald leant forward and his lips moved soundlessly. Then, he reacted.

‘Not found?
Not found!
What do they mean, not found?’ He stuck his head round the door and called to Astley. ‘This bloody system needs a bloody good kick. They say he’s not found.’

‘Not found?’ Astley repeated.

‘Gentlemen,’ Hall said. ‘Please stop saying “not found” over and over. I could have done with a result as much as you could, but the man who knows says he’s not on the database, so we’ll have to go back to first principles. At least his face isn’t marked; we can do a photo.’

‘But …’ Donald refused to accept what was being waved in front of his nose. ‘He was wearing
a tag. He
must
be on the bloody database. It’s their sodding system. It’s crashed or something.’

‘I think we’d know, don’t you?’ Hall said mildly. ‘Wouldn’t they say that the system was currently unavailable, something like that?’

‘This isn’t a bloody car insurance comparison website,’ Donald howled in frustration. ‘It’s a national – no,
international
– police database. It can’t crash, freeze or otherwise not work. It
can’t
be wrong, but it is. He was definitely wearing a tag.’

Astley tried to calm his mountainous assistant. ‘Donald, perhaps we made a mistake. Perhaps the marks are from something else.’

‘What?’ spat the man. ‘What something else?’

‘Well, a friendship bracelet?’ hazarded the pathologist. ‘Something like that.’

‘If you give friendship bracelets that leave that kind of mark,’ Donald sulked, ‘I’m glad I’m not friends with you.’

Astley was a little crestfallen; he had always thought they got on quite well, all things being equal. ‘Can you give us a while, Henry? I think we need to do a bit more work on this. We’re obviously going to have to identify this chap the hard way.’

‘But that’s stupid,’ Donald burst out. ‘He
has
to be on the system.’

‘I’m heading off back to the station, now,’ Hall said. ‘If you get anywhere, can you let me know?’

‘Of course,’ Astley said over his shoulder,
shepherding Donald back into the PM room. He grimaced at Hall and nodded towards Donald.

Hall turned and made his way back to some fresh air. He realised he still had the fax in his hand and he thoughtfully folded it and put it in his pocket. He was the last person to think that Astley and Donald were always right, but they were right ninety per cent of the time and for him that was enough. He would have to make a few calls back in his office; there must be someone who could unravel this – it would just be a matter of finding out who they were.

At Columbine things had taken a strange turn. The girls, having established that Maxwell would contact Jacquie as soon as he could and that he was all right, no, really,
really
all right, had gone back to spend the rest of the afternoon with Mrs Troubridge. She was, apparently, really cool and had some brilliant stories to tell about when she was a girl. Only, she called it ‘gel’ and they’d had a few minutes the previous day when nobody knew what anybody was talking about. Maxwell encouraged them to take supplies – there was no need to antagonise the old girl further than strictly necessary.

The front door slammed down below and Maxwell eased himself back gingerly in his chair. Just a few minutes, perhaps, not sleeping, just resting his eyes. His back pain had reduced to
just a dull roar, and by sitting back in the chair twisted round to one side, he could just about get on with it for now. He exhaled slowly and tried to relax. The warm sun coming in through the large window was soothing and spoke of nicer days to come. He let his mind wander, to walks he had taken with Jacquie and Nolan and without them, a different child prattling at his heels, a different pair of eyes looking up into his.

Metternich padded softly in and lay outstretched in the printed yellow panes on the carpet, dusty with sunlight and warmth. Maxwell had only ever had one cat and that cat was Metternich. He had come to him through a weeping sixth former, years ago. The girl had a sad story to tell; her cat had had kittens, but they would all have to die that night in a bucket of water if she couldn’t find homes. Maxwell, living alone in bachelor austerity didn’t need or want a cat, but somehow he found himself that evening the proud vassal of a scrap of black and white fur. It was only when the cat had Maxwell’s heart firmly under its white and pink hand – Maxwell could never call it a paw, especially when the Count was listening – that he discovered that the kitten scam was played out every year and almost every member of staff with a kind heart had a sibling of Metternich’s ruling their house.

In a rare moment of affection, Metternich bared his canines at Maxwell in what the man
chose to believe was a smile. What the cat believed was nobody’s business. The room slowly relaxed into a somnolent doze.

Suddenly, Metternich was up and out of there. That blasted plastic thing which his people held to their ears for hours on end was shrilling. Maxwell jumped too, and was still softly cursing with pain when he pressed the green button and the caller was in his ear.

‘Mr Maxwell?’

‘Yes.’ It came out as a sibilant groan.

‘Mr Maxwell. It’s Doreen. You know, up at the school.’

‘Yes, Doreen. Hello.’

‘Are you all right, Mr Maxwell? You sound a bit funny.’

‘Nothing a course of intensive physiotherapy won’t put right, Doreen, thanks for asking. How may I help you?’

‘I’ve remembered where I saw that bloke, the dead one.’

‘Really?’ As a rule, Maxwell would have sat up to attention, but it was clearly out of the question.

‘It was with Edna. At the staff Christmas dinner. At the Horse and Groom, you know, out Tottingleigh.’

‘Edna? What staff Christmas dinner at the Horse and Groom? I only remember one mince pie and some British Sherry in the staff room.’

‘Oh, that would be the teachers’ do. No,
the ancill’ry staff have a good do, families and everything. We don’t always do the Horse and—’

‘Yes, Doreen. Lovely. Edna?’

‘Edna! You know, Mr Maxwell,
Edna
! Your cleaner at school.’

‘Oh. Mrs B.’

‘Umm, yes, that’s right. We call her Edna, of course.’

‘On account of that being her name. Yes, fair enough. Who is he, then, Doreen?’ A sick feeling was beginning to form under Maxwell’s ribs.

‘That’s the trouble, Mr Maxwell. I can’t really remember. In fact, thinking about it, he might not have been
with
Edna. Perhaps he was just sitting next to her.’

‘Was his name Colin?’

‘That’s right, Mr Maxwell. However did you know that? I remember, because it was like that black bloke, that general in a war sometime. I can’t remember which one … Coe-lin. Like that. Not Colin, like we’d say. Edna’s sister always was a bit posh, not that I’ve met her that many times. I remember—’

That was rather unlikely, given Doreen’s usual form, but Maxwell was never impolite except on purpose. ‘Doreen, you’ve been amazing. I’ll let Mrs Maxwell know straight away. But, can I ask you something?’

‘Yes, Mr Maxwell?’ Doreen sounded nervous. She’d just about emptied her head for the moment.

‘How did you get my number?’

‘Oh, Mrs Donaldson has everyone’s number on her database.’

‘I daresay she has, but how did
you
get it?’

‘It’s pinned up on the wall in the office. Haven’t you ever noticed it? On that big board along one wall.’

Maxwell closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene. The trouble he had was that whenever he tried to imagine the office, Pansy loomed so large, both really and metaphorically, that he couldn’t see beyond her. ‘I’m sorry, Doreen, I haven’t.’

‘Margaret in photocopying was fiddling for ages. She had to have a sandwich in her room, she was so pushed for time.’

Maxwell knew that Margaret’s output was somewhat ad hoc, giving twenty copies where two hundred were required, and once accidentally setting the machine to produce five thousand copies of the school play poster, but surely one copy of the staff phone numbers couldn’t have been that big a job. He hardly dared ask. His brain was beginning to lay down tracks and he didn’t want to catch the train that was running down them. ‘Why was the job so big, Doreen?’

‘She had to copy all the staff details, numbers, addresses, emails, and then the same for all the kids. It was a really long job. She had to make sure they all fitted on the page and everything. Mrs Donaldson wanted them big enough so she could
see them without getting up. It takes up a whole wall. I can’t believe you’ve never noticed it.’

Maxwell’s mouth was dry. With difficulty he said, ‘You’ve been a brilliant help, Doreen. See you Monday. Ciao.’ Somehow that seemed the most appropriate sign off to a dinner lady.

‘Oh, yes, right. OK, Mr Maxwell. See you Monday.’ He could be a terse old bugger when he wanted to, she thought. Still, that was one job jobbed, and she trotted out of school with a clear conscience.

Behind her, in the back room of the main office, where she had been using the phone, a pair of eyes watched her from the darkness. Things were getting a bit out of control. Threads would have to be pulled. Favours called in. And, if necessary, murders committed.

Another day. Another dollar.

Donald had told Angus that he had about an hour, in his opinion, to work on the diary before the cohorts arrived bearing scrapings, Sellotape samples and various insects to pore over. It hardly seemed worth starting, with just an hour to spare, what with the preparation of the cabinet, the labelling of the tubes and all the thousand natural shocks forensic scientists are heir to, but he had the choice of that or an hour of paperwork from a previous case. No real contest.

Angus gave the case a number, one which he had taken out of circulation some time before to give him wiggle room for occasions just such as this. He printed out a whole load of bar code labels and moved over to the cabinet, slightly pressurised to keep what was in there in there, and keep his own dandruff out. He opened the diary at the first page. The outside was so compromised now that it wasn’t even worth addressing. He
swung the lens across so that he could pick up any visible objects before he swabbed the page. He liked this kind of work; in his own life, outside in the world, there could be no bigger slob than Angus. He liked his friends, he liked his drink, he liked his baccy to be wacky, but here, in the cool, calm quiet of the lab, he could let his mind wander into the realms of the other Angus, sent to save the world. That bit of him was soaring over the rooftops when something caught his eye and brought him down to earth with a bump.

It was hard to scan a page of writing without sometimes focusing on the writing. It was rather untidy, often leaving the lines, and the ink was smudgy, as if it had got wet. He had been told it was a diary, but there were no dates, just breaks to show different days. Sometimes the ink was a different colour. Then, one line got his attention and he had to keep reading. After that the swabbing and other analyses seemed unimportant.

‘He came into my bedroom again last night. He says he will kill my mum if I tell. I’ve heard all about this, it’s on the telly in an advert and they’re trying to say it never happens. But it must do sometimes. He’s a doctor. He could kill her and no one would know. And then he’d have me all to himself, all the time.’

The blood was pounding in his ears. Surely, Jacquie must already know the contents of this diary. But no, he rationalised. Jacquie was a good
policewoman. She knew procedure. He was the first person ever to read the contents of this diary. And like Jacquie, he knew the right thing to do. He calmly closed the sliding door of the cabinet. He peeled off his gloves and went into the office. He dialled Jacquie’s number from his capacious memory.

‘Carpenter. I’m driving, can I call you back?’

‘Jacquie, it’s Angus.’ To hell with formality at a time like this. ‘This diary.’

‘Hold on.’ Faint sounds of an indicator clicking and a handbrake being applied came to him down the line. For God’s sake, woman. Health and Safety be blowed. ‘Right.’ She was back on the line. ‘Angus. The diary.’

‘I’ve read a bit.’

Jacquie’s heart slowed and her breathing went quiet. Every bit of her was concentrating on what he would say next. She felt a breakthrough coming on. ‘Come on, Angus. What did it say?’

He told her and listened to the silence. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Angus, you are my favourite person in the whole world. I’m about halfway at the moment, between you and the nick.’

Please turn round, Angus begged her in his head. Come back and congratulate me properly. Angus’s daydreams could be very vivid.

‘I think I’ll go on, though. I don’t think the DNA and the rest is important now. Can you
copy a few pages and fax them to me. Better still, email them. You’ve got my email? It’s—’

‘Got it.’

‘Yes, of course you have. Right. Could you do that for me, Angus?’

His skin prickled. ‘You know for sure who this guy is, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And he’s got something to do with all this texting, emails and that.’

‘What do you know about that?’ Was nothing confidential in this place?

‘IT guys. Lunchtime. You know how it is.’ Cyberspace. The last frontier. Angus and the others often boldly went there.

‘Fair enough, I suppose. We’re all on the same side, after all.’

He could tell she was not listening to herself. But he enjoyed the matey ‘we’ for what it was worth. ‘Well, Jacquie,’ he risked another lapse of formality while the going was good. ‘I’ll get on with that scan and email, shall I?’

‘You’re wonderful,’ Jacquie said. ‘I’ll make sure you get credit.’

It was only after he had put down the phone that Angus realised that meant all sorts of pain coming down the line. Requisitionless jobs. Bar code numbers being used against regulations. Reports not done. He sighed. It was almost worth it.

Jacquie sat for a moment, digesting Angus’s news. Could the answer really be so simple? She shook herself. Why not? This wasn’t an episode of some ridiculous TV cop show, with twelve murders one by one in the same town. In fact, there was only one dead body knocking around at the moment and that was surely just a coincidence. Her coincidence muscle gave a twitch – she and Henry both refused to acknowledge coincidence, whilst accepting that it usually reared its head at some point in most investigations. She was about to turn the ignition when her phone rang again. She looked at the screen and a smiling Metternich looked back at her. Home. So Maxwell had got back OK. That was one more box in her ‘things to worry about’ list that she could tick.

‘Hellooooo.’

‘I assume from your merry response you are not in the nick, dear heart?’

‘No, I’m not. What’s the matter? You sound strange.’

‘I’m having you burnt at the stake first opportunity, woman,’ he said. ‘My back is playing me up. How can you possibly tell over the phone?’

‘My secret. Anyway, sorry to hurry you, but is this a check-in call or do you have actual news, because I must get back to the nick?’

‘I have news as well, but it isn’t very good, I’m sorry to say.’

‘Go on. Do I have to write it down?’

‘Well, it comes in several parts, but I think you’ll remember it all without recourse to papyrus.’

‘Is it good news and bad news?’

‘In a way. I’ve found the girls. And I know who the dead man is. I suppose they both come under the good news banner, but only just. Julie is hysterical that we have found her diary and the dead man is Mrs B’s lost nephew.’

‘What?’ Jacquie jumped and lost her grip on the phone. She could hear Maxwell talking as she fumbled in the footwell to find it.

‘… so that was where they’d been all night.’

‘What? I’d dropped the phone.’

‘The girls. They’d been at Mrs Troubridge’s. That’s why she kept coming round.’

‘Poor old soul. She must have thought we were trying to avoid her.’

‘Weren’t we?’

‘Fair comment. Why were they with her?’

‘They came round to see you. I would love to think it was me, but I hope I’m a humble man and the finer points of Castlereagh’s foreign policy probably have relatively little interest for them.’

And, thought Jacquie, despite the regard and love he was held in, he really
was
a humble man. ‘Why me?’

‘You’re a police person. They were ready to tell all about their problems, I’m assuming.’

‘Well, I doubt that, sweetheart. Because I’ve just had … I don’t have to tell you this is a deadly secret thing I’m telling you.’ It was a statement, not a question and one she’d made a thousand times before.

‘Of course you don’t. Everything you say is considered a secret. Always has been.’

She thought back to all the times over the years when he had dropped her in it up to her earlobes but decided to let it pass. ‘Well, I took the diary for analysis, DNA and the rest, you know, to Angus in Chichester. In case it would help us find out who might have taken them. If they had been taken. He started to swab it and all the other things they do, but he couldn’t help reading as he did so.’ She stopped.

‘Don’t keep me in suspenders, Woman Policeman. What did it say?’

‘No need to quote, Max. The drift is … Julie is being abused by her stepfather. Usual threats. Kill her mum if she tells, that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, no.’ Maxwell’s groan came from the pit of his soul. ‘Poor little girl. I said, didn’t I? A poor little girl.’

‘Yes.’ Jacquie’s voice was soft. ‘Are they with you now? I’m assuming they’re not.’

‘No. They’re next door. They and Mrs Troubridge have bonded in some bizarre and unexpected way. They’re probably coercing the old neighbour to change her will in their favour.’

‘Well, keep it that way if you can. We need to keep tabs on them now.’

‘Do you think the stepfather is also sending the emails and texts?’

‘That’s what I don’t know. He’s a busy man … I know everyone thinks they are, but he really is – hospital, all that. I don’t see how he could do it. But it’s a tempting scenario.’

Maxwell thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think he is, you know. He’s controlling her by threats and coercion in the home. There’s no need to embroider it.’

‘He may just get a kick out of it. I must say he is the most horrible, controlling …’ Jacquie ran out of words she cared to use on an open network.

‘I know, hon. But I think an open mind would be best on this one. But, in other news … the body.’

‘How did you find out about that? I hope you’re not basing this on a family resemblance or anything so vague.’

‘No, Doreen, one of the dinner ladies, rang me and told me she’d seen him with Mrs B.’

‘So, not definite, then.’ Doreen’s lack of mental acuity had had the Maxwell dinner table in hysterics many a time.

He gave a small chuckle. ‘I know. Poor old Doreen. But, no, I think she may have it right this time. I mean, think about it. Colin goes missing.
A man resembling him turns up dead in the area. He had been holed up with Mrs B before he got caught for this particular crime.’

‘Which was?’

‘Some computer thing, I gather.’

‘Max! For heaven’s sake. Computers! I … I … Did you not put two and two together?’

‘Why ever should I?’ He was rather nettled. ‘The damn things are everywhere. I might just as well suspect the guy who comes to mend the dishwasher. That’s all done by microchips now.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She wiped her hand over her face. ‘It’s been a long day. Too much information. I’ll get back to the nick and find Henry. He’s in charge of the murder investigation. He’ll probably be in touch. Can you stay at home for a bit?’

‘I’d be hard-pressed to do anything else, dearest. I can only move my legs if I watch them. My back has seized up completely. I fell on Mrs Troubridge earlier. It could have been quite unpleasant. No, it
was
quite unpleasant.’

‘Max, you’re whittering. Fell on Mrs Troubridge, indeed. I’ll ring you later.’ And she was gone.

Maxwell put the phone down on the arm of his chair. He half turned, as best he could, to Metternich, who had slunk back and was sitting in the doorway, making significant glances towards his food dish in the kitchen. ‘I did fall on her,
didn’t I, Count? Were you watching? Clearly not, as you’re not laughing. And you can forget any food. Unless you can open that pouch yourself, my lad, you’re getting nothing.’ He relaxed back into the chair and grimaced. ‘Count?’

The cat chirruped helpfully.

‘Am I getting old, do you think?’

It was something the cat had been chewing over himself lately, that and the shrews of Juniper Lane. He was either getting on a bit, or the game was sprightlier these days. Best not discuss it and perhaps it would go away. He wandered over and sank his claws into Maxwell’s leg. Unless he had misunderstood the drift of a
Discovery Health
programme he had caught a few minutes of the other night, pain in a different place could be helpful in certain circumstances. It was hard to tell from the yelling and writhing it caused; people! He’d never understand them if he lived to be one hundred and forty in what humans for some odd reason referred to as cat years. What other kind of years were there?

Jacquie got the car into gear and back into the traffic before any more calls could come in. She was only about twenty minutes away from Leighford nick now, given a following wind, and she had a lot to share with Henry. She wasn’t sure how much weight to give to the news about the identity of the body. Doreen was notoriously
flaky, but it seemed too much to believe that she would choose to identify the dead man as someone known to be missing, by a mere fluke. She would deal with that one quickly, though. She was so looking forward to dragging that pompous pig Melkins in on child sex abuse charges that she really wasn’t too bothered about anything else. If it cleared up the text abuse as well, so much the better.

Before she realised it, she was at the nick. The Doblò wasn’t exactly a Ferrari, but it covered the miles OK and there was more room for the accumulated Maxwell rubbish in the back. She retrieved her laptop from beneath a pile of crisp packets and toys on the back seat, flipped it open and logged on. As usual, the dratted thing was taking an age to boot itself into life, so she closed it and let it do its thing while she went up to the first floor and Henry Hall’s office.

She tapped on the door. ‘Yes?’ Obviously his day wasn’t going too well. She stuck her head in and saw that he had loosened his tie. This was usually a sign that a case was solved. So why the long face?

‘I’ve got a bit of news that you might be interested in, guv,’ she said.

‘Oh, make it good news,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit fed up with the other kind.’

She sat down, with her computer on her lap. ‘I’ve just had Max on the phone …’ she began.

‘Jacquie, I really mean it when I say I only want good news.’

‘I’m not saying this is cast in stone,’ she told him, ‘but Max thinks he may have a lead on who the dead man is.’

‘Really? And is that because he has an unusual birthmark in the shape of a ferret which turns out to be a gravy stain? Something like that?’

‘Have you had a hard day, Henry?’ Jacquie asked kindly.

He did something totally unexpected and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. ‘No worse than usual. I’m sorry to be rude, but Astley and his performing gorilla have rather annoyed me today. First, they say they will identify the guy in no time because he was wearing a tag at some time. Then it’s – oh, sorry, we can’t identify him, his prints aren’t on file. They just don’t provide the service these days. DNA won’t be ready for days and when it is, it’s only any help if it’s on file and if his prints aren’t on file … well, you can see where this is going.’ He put his glasses back on and tightened his tie knot. ‘Anyway, you were saying. Max thinks he knows who the man is?’