Maxwell's Retirement (22 page)

‘It’s not that he knows, but that someone who thinks they recognise him has been in touch. And I have to say, Henry, that your talk of a tag has made my short hairs rise a bit. This man we’re talking about has absconded from an open prison.’

Hall leant forward. ‘What? When?’

‘Last weekend, as far as I can tell. He’s the nephew of our cleaning lady and she asked me … well, she asked Max—’

‘So, she hasn’t identified the body, as such?’

‘No. But someone who knows her, one of the dinner ladies at school, was at the paintballing and saw the man’s face.’

‘The dinner lady was at the paintballing?’ Henry was intrigued in spite of himself.

‘It was some team-building thing. Legs – you know, the Headteacher – wanted all the staff to go.’

‘So, how does the dinner lady know your cleaner?’

‘Mrs B works up at the school as well.’

‘So why wasn’t she paintballing?’

‘Good question. Too much common sense, I expect. Anyway, Doreen – the dinner lady – went away and thought about it and then rang Max and said that she thought it was Mrs B’s partner for the Christmas dinner.’

‘A while ago.’

‘Four months, guv, that’s all. I know Doreen’s not the brightest noodle in the wok, but she can remember that far back.’

‘I’ll look into it.’ Henry pushed himself back from his desk then paused. ‘Your computer is blinking.’

‘Oh, yes, sorry. I have some more news. The girls have been found safe and well.’

‘Where? Don’t tell me. Max knows where.’

She sat silently.

‘Well?’

‘You said don’t tell you.’

‘You mean they really are at your house?’ Hall had not really expected that to be the answer.

‘No. They’re next door. With Mrs Troubridge.’

Hall screwed up his eyes and pictured the woman. Small, wizened, mad as a box of frogs. Not the typical child abductor, though. His head was too full for this. ‘I’m not going to ask for details, Jacquie. This was always more your job than mine. Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ she said triumphantly. ‘This!’ she opened the laptop and signed into her emails quickly. She turned it round so that Hall could see the screen.

Hall adjusted his glasses. The varifocal idea was still not second nature. He read out the email. ‘A family will be almost overcome by death. The red red ones will knock down the red one.’ He looked up at Jacquie. ‘Should I recognise this?’

Jacquie jumped up and went round behind his desk. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Wrong email. That was one that Max got at home. I forwarded it to myself for later. Umm … this is the one I meant to show you.’ She stayed behind him to read over his shoulder.

Angus had attached the scans separately and when they were opened the two read silently as
Hall scrolled down the page. When they had finished, she went back and sat down. He closed the laptop thoughtfully. ‘I assume you know whose diary this is,’ he said at last.

‘Yes. It is the diary of Gregory Melkins’ stepdaughter, Julie. One of the missing girls.’

‘We know that for certain? How did we get hold of it?’

‘Well, we know that her diary is missing, that she slapped her best friend when she realised that someone else might read it.’

‘And we got hold of it …?’

‘Umm, Max found it down the back of a bus seat.’

He looked at her from behind his blank lenses. She started to whiffle.

‘Well, he was going to the paintballing on the bus. Haha, Nolan and I thought it might be amusing. Well, he found this and gave it to me. At the paintballing.’ She started to run out of steam. ‘When I was there.’

‘Yes, why
were
you there? And with some vampire girl, or something.’

‘Maisie. Yes, she was helping me with the email and text thing. She is a very nice girl, in fact. She goes to the same school as Yvonne’s kids. Her boyfriend works at the paintballing place and … well, we heard there was a dead body and …’

‘Jacquie, I say this without any unpleasant
motive. You have got to stop expecting Max to be every dead body we find.’

She hung her head. She didn’t want to say it out loud. He’s not as young as he was. He shouldn’t be cycling, paintballing, fossicking about after bodies left and right. He shouldn’t even be teaching. There were knives, guns, infectious diseases.
Stairs
, for God’s sake. They had wasted enough of his life already, what with her not being born early enough. She wanted to have as much of the rest as she could. She just said, ‘I know, guv.’

‘Not to worry. I do understand.’ And oddly enough, he did. He had seen that the maddest teacher in town had made his favourite sergeant happier than even the laughing policeman, and so, if only for that, he liked the man. ‘The find has good provenance, at least. It wasn’t some drunk foraging in a bin. But even so, it’s not enough for an arrest. We’ll have to get prints or something off it.’

‘In hand, guv.’ She realised that perhaps she should have wrapped that statement up a bit. She had clearly circumvented normal procedure.

‘Angus?’ Hall raised an eyebrow.

‘He tries to be helpful,’ Jacquie muttered.

‘Wait for prints,’ Hall said. ‘Give Angus a call and say I will requisition in retrospect.’

Jacquie couldn’t help Maxwell springing into her head. She heard him say, as a retrospective of his own, in full Michael Palin mode, ‘Nobody
expects the Spanish Requisition.’ She tried to concentrate on her boss.

‘When you have definite identification that the diary is hers – perhaps you could ring your neighbour and ask Julie to describe it, just to be sure.
When
you have definite identification, we can pull the stepfather in. Give him something to do over the weekend.’ He almost gave her a rare smile. ‘Well done, Jacquie. And well done to Max. Meanwhile, I’ll contact Jim Astley with the other news and we’ll see if we can give this body a name. Do you have your cleaning lady’s number handy?’

‘I do, but …’ Jacquie looked at the clock. ‘You’ll probably just catch her at Leighford High School. She’ll be finishing up in about half an hour, so you’ll have to be quick.’ She jotted the number down anyway and got up to leave. Hall handed her her laptop across the desk.

‘That email Max had – a bit weird, isn’t it?’

‘It is odd. He hasn’t had any texts today, at least. I’ve been carrying his phone.’

‘Texts?’ Hall was yet again in the dark.

‘He’s had just the one. We’re not jumping to conclusions yet, especially now that we’ve found the girls. The email is from Nostradamus.’

‘What, the pot noodle guy?’

‘Not exactly. Sixteenth century seer, got most things wrong, but various web loonies can find anything in his prophecies – you name it.’

‘Oh, I know the kind of thing. And the world to an end shall come, in tumpty tumpty tumpty one. One size fits all.’

‘Exactly. It’s Quatrain 19 from Century eight.’

‘You seem to know an awful lot about it,’ he said, without thinking.

‘Well, Max has …’

‘… got a book on it. Of course he has. Even so, it sounds … I can’t quite put my finger on it. It reminds me of something.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. It will either come to me or it won’t.’ He reached for the phone. ‘Good luck with Mr Melkins. Keep me in the loop. I’d rather like to be involved in this one.’

She went out and as she did, heard Hall say, ‘Squad car to Leighford High School.’ What she didn’t hear him say, because she had closed the door was, ‘Calm down, Dave. No, we’re not going to arrest that mad bugger Maxwell.’

Wheels were turning, but with glacial slowness. Angus was on to it, Astley was on to it, Donald was on to it. Then, as if everything hadn’t got bogged down enough, the entire intranet system of the Leighford nick gave a hiccough and a shrug and closed itself down. Anyone passing at that moment would have heard a whole building shout ‘What?’ at once, followed by the kind of profanity which the general public would prefer their policemen not to use. ‘Evening all’ it most certainly was not. And coppers the length and breadth of a south coast town were sticking pins into wax models of Bill Gates.

Henry Hall had gone out to interview Mrs B with the intention of getting an identification of the paintball body. He had caught her just as she was winding up the cord of her Hoover, going home at the end of another day moving the Leighford High filth from one spot to
another. He had been gentle with her. He had sat her down. He had waited while she dried her tears. The description had made it pretty much a foregone conclusion, so that he felt able to give Astley and Donald a while to make her lost nephew a bit more presentable before she had to make the official pronouncement. Tomorrow would do. For today, she had calls to make, arrangements. Colin’s mother had to be got to Leighford somehow, put up in the spare room. She felt better with something to do; the only concession she made was to accept a lift home in a squad car. As long as she could sit in the front – her neighbours were nosy bastards and she didn’t want to give them any more ammunition. She still wasn’t sure who had shopped their Colin to the fuzz in the first place.

With nothing to do until the IT boys had done their bit, Jacquie took the opportunity to go home, if not early then at least in daylight. She picked up Nolan and got back to Columbine in time for supper. The lad was exhausted and fed up with his stitches. He stomped up the stairs and ignored the cat, always a sign that the best medicine would be a quick spaghetti on toast and bed. Maxwell was lying in a strange position in his favourite chair, but his eyes were open and moving, so no cause for alarm.

‘Hello, dears,’ he called. ‘Don’t mind if I don’t get up.’ He
had
gone to a good school.

Nolan, taking no hints at this advanced stage of grump, and with the advantage of a good run-up, leapt onto his lap. Maxwell
jackknifed
, flinging the boy to the floor. There was a small pause, before the screaming began. Jacquie scooped the boy up, with little sympathy. ‘Did I tell you in the car that Dads had a bad back?’

‘Yes.’ The boy’s face was set in injured pride mode.

‘So, did I say be careful? Not to hurt him? No jumping or gouging? No feet tickling and running away?’

‘Yes.’ The boy wriggled in her arms. ‘But I want to play.’

‘Yes, mate,’ Maxwell said, trying to sit a bit more alertly. ‘But I’ve hurt my back, you see. I fell on Mrs Troubridge.’

Nolan’s eyes were like saucers. ‘You fell on Mrs Toobidge?’ He looked up at his mother. ‘You didn’t tell me Dads fell on Mrs Toobidge,’ he said accusingly.

Jacquie looked alarmed. ‘I didn’t think that Dads had really fallen on her,’ she said. ‘I think I thought he meant … well, I’m not sure now what I thought, to be honest.’

Maxwell twisted his neck round to look at her. ‘When you’ve worked out what the other
meaning might be,’ he said acidly, ‘you might care to let me know.’

She went over and knelt at the side of his chair. She smoothed his hair. ‘I’m sorry, Max,’ she said and dropped her head onto his shoulder. Then she looked up again. ‘Was it … was it very funny?’ She tried not to laugh.

‘By all accounts,’ he said smartly. ‘Now, clear off, woman. Feed your child. And your cat. Then I suggest you go round next door and see if the squashee is all right and that the girls are settled. I’m assuming they won’t be going home?’

‘Well, Leah is free to, of course, except that there are child protection issues, since her mother didn’t turn up until nearly three this morning and then absolutely bladdered in the company of two naval ratings she had met in a club.’

‘Oh, so the fleet’s in,’ Maxwell remarked. He sang a few truncated bars – ‘I’m Popeye the sailor man. Poop. Poop.’ Pooped he most certainly was.

‘Indeed. And Julie’s dad hasn’t replied to any calls as yet. That will turn out to be quite complicated, I think. Henry has asked me to wait for confirmation of the diary before I bring our man in. But if Julie is safely here, then that’s fine.’

‘Have the parents been told that the girls are safe?’

‘Yes. But no details. It was interesting that Leah’s dad was just totally relieved. Julie’s parents
wanted her back immediately as if she was a lost handbag. Tough luck on them.’

‘Off you pop, then, sweetheart. Sooner you’re gone, sooner you’re back.’

‘I’ll just get Nole’s supper and then go round if you’ll mind him.’

‘No problem, as long as he will sit still. He’s got ants in his pants tonight.’

‘He’ll behave. He just didn’t understand.’ She turned to the boy, who had plonked himself down in front of the television and was engrossed in a programme about seaweed. Two thousand channels and nothing to watch as always. ‘Nole, come and get your supper. Then you can talk to Dads for a while when I’m next door.’

He got up with an easy grace that Maxwell could only envy. The boy looked up at his mother. ‘Is Mrs Toobidge flat, Ma?’

‘No, darling, not flat. But I’ll have to check she’s all right.’

‘Did you get her any flowers?’

‘Oh, babes, I forgot. Why don’t you go out into the back garden, see if you can pick her something? She’d like that. Some primroses, there are a lot along the back fence. Careful down the stairs, now.’

Maxwell lay back and closed his eyes, letting the family prattle wash over him. He felt that he could actually sense each bruise as it popped to the surface. It was one thing to be not covered in
paint after paintballing. It was another to be black and blue all over. He began to snore quietly.

Nolan clambered up the stairs clutching some sweaty primroses, a few dandelions and some grass. Jacquie arranged them in a jam jar and knew that Mrs Troubridge would be bowled over by them. Nolan could have presented her with a bouquet of dog poo and it would have received pride of place.

She put the boy in front of the television with his plate of pasta on toast and a boxed drink. She made extravagant shushing gestures and crept out of the room. Maxwell slept on. Metternich sashayed up to his Boy and nosed the spaghetti experimentally. Blecch! He had learnt over the years that Nolan occasionally had some quite good stuff on his plate, but today was not one of those times. He sneezed and scrubbed his nose with a paw. Nolan shushed him and slurped up the spaghetti, a strand at a time. He liked the way it whipped round and smacked him gently on the cheek. It was fun to try and guess which side would get the last slap. Even Metternich seemed to be enjoying the fun. Finally, with all the tomato sucked out of the toast and all the juice squeezed out of the box, the cat and his Boy slid quietly out of the room and left the poor old geezer to his snooze.

Soon, there were few sounds in 38 Columbine. Quiet snores and mutters from the sitting room.
The sound of tomatoey fingers being sucked in Nolan’s room and the furtive licking as Metternich tried to clean the Boy up a bit. Really, the youth of today – no standards. And the beeping of a very old computer in the study, trying to tell someone in the only way it knew, ‘You’ve Got Mail.’

Jacquie knocked at Mrs Troubridge’s door and, when it was flung open a few moments later, could only step back in amazement. Mrs Troubridge had had what had to be described as a makeover, as there was no other word for it. And yet it was a makeover from a parallel universe. Somewhere underneath the shading, the eyelashes, the lip liner and the hair gel was a little old lady having a whale of a time.

Jacquie recovered quickly. ‘Mrs Troubridge! You look amazing.’ She held out the flowers. ‘These are from Nolan.’

The old woman took them as though they were orchids and inhaled deeply. ‘Primroses,’ she said. ‘The smell of spring, I always think. These and bluebells.’ She then stood in the doorway, waiting for Jacquie’s next move. ‘You haven’t come to arrest the girls, have you?’ she asked nervously.

‘Of course not,’ Jacquie laughed. ‘But I would like a word with them, if I may. I’ve brought some biscuits and a few essentials. I know how girls can eat.’

‘My word, yes,’ Mrs Troubridge agreed. ‘But I like to see a healthy appetite on a girl. None of this faddy nonsense. Come in, Jacquie. Come in.’ She ushered her neighbour up the stairs.

Jacquie was always amused by the differences between her house and Mrs Troubridge’s. Once, they must have been identical, but now they looked as though they had been built in different centuries. Maxwell may be an historian, but his tastes in furniture ran to comfy and squashy, his taste in colours muted and earthy. Mrs Troubridge preferred to live in an era in which her grandmother would have been comfortable. Huge dark-brown furniture loomed out of corners. There was a stuffed dog on the hearth; this creature had given Nolan nightmares for weeks when he realised it was, as he called it, a real empty dog, not a toy. There was an odd smell, comprising old lady, cabbage and just a hint of gin.

The girls were a bright spot in the fusty lounge, sitting on the floor surrounded by bottles and tubes. Leah looked up as the two women came in. ‘Mrs Maxwell,’ she said calmly, as though she had not been the subject of a county-wide search for over twenty-four hours. ‘We hoped you would pop round.’

Julie didn’t look up. Jacquie greeted them both, but then spoke directly to Julie. ‘Do you want to have a private word with me, Julie?’ she asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘What about, anyway?’

‘Your diary?’

The girl looked up and her eyes flashed. ‘Have you read my diary?’ she said defiantly.

Jacquie thought fast and told what was, technically, the truth. ‘No, I haven’t.’ But Angus has, she added in her head, for the sake of verisimilitude.

‘Well, I don’t give my permission,’ Julie snapped. ‘I want it back.’

‘It’s the weekend now, Julie,’ Jacquie said. ‘The offices are closed until Monday.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ the girl said. ‘Police offices don’t close.’

‘The diary isn’t with the police,’ Jacquie said. ‘It’s with forensics. They thought it might help to trace you. They’re just swabbing it for DNA. They’re not interested in what it says.’ She crossed her fingers at this blatant lie. Behind her back, Mrs Troubridge saw her do it, but was uncharacteristically silent. She had become fond of the girls in her care, as she considered them to be, and had identified Julie as the one more in need of help.

Julie relaxed perceptibly. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Absolutely. I’m just here to check you are all right and also to ask Mrs Troubridge if she wouldn’t mind keeping you another night.’

Mrs Troubridge was torn. They were lovely
girls, but so expensive to keep. Jacquie saw her indecision.

‘Obviously, there is a contingency fund for this kind of occasion. You are, in a way, Mrs Troubridge,
in loco parentis
.’ And loco is dead right, she thought to herself, but fondly. The little woman swelled with pride.

‘I would be delighted, Jacquie,’ she said. ‘Or,’ she added roguishly, ‘since this is official, perhaps I should say Detective Sergeant Carpenter.’ She grinned broadly.

‘That’s sorted, then,’ Jacquie said. ‘And I have another favour. Mr Maxwell seems to have done something to his back …’

‘He fell on Mrs Troubridge,’ Leah offered.

Jacquie looked at her. It must be true, then. She hurriedly turned to Mrs Troubridge. ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked, possibly a little belatedly.

‘I won’t pretend it wasn’t very uncomfortable and embarrassing at the time,’ she said, through tight lips. ‘But no harm done. What favour?’

‘Could you have Nolan for me tomorrow? I’m not sure his father’s back would be up to it and I—’

‘Oh, say we can, Mrs T,’ Leah said. She was missing her little sister. ‘It would be great.’

‘Yeah,’ Julie said. ‘He’s a great kid.’

‘We’d be delighted,’ Mrs Troubridge said. ‘We could take him for a walk, perhaps. To see the bluebells.’

Jacquie thought quickly. She was grateful that she had not had to finish her sentence, because the obvious end to it would have been ‘… have to arrest your stepfather first thing, Julie.’ But on the other hand, it wasn’t such a good idea that the girls should be seen in public. Mrs Troubridge, in her new sensitive mode, saw her problem.

‘We can cut down the back lane at the end of the road. We’ll be at the woods in no time and no one will see us, except the odd dog walker. I’m sure it will be lovely.’

The girls, who would rather have been next door with the Wii and all the trimmings, nodded all the same. She was such a sweet old girl and her breakfasts were to die for. ‘That will be lovely,’ they said. ‘We can take a picnic.’

‘Oooh, girls,’ the old lady said. ‘No sitting on the wet grass. When I was a gel, I remember …’ The girls hunched closer. They loved her stories.

Jacquie took the opportunity to sneak back down the stairs and to look after her crocked husband. They would be good to go all night. She couldn’t wait to see what Mrs Troubridge would look like by the next morning. She had a feeling there were more makeovers in the pipeline. She went into the sitting room at 38, all ready to describe the new-look Mrs T. Maxwell was sleeping like a baby, relaxed at last. Upstairs, Nolan was also sleeping and, with rather more reason, he also slept like a baby. Jacquie made
herself a sandwich – beetroot, peanut butter and hummus, only allowed when there was no one there to see – and poured herself a beer. She covered Maxwell over with a throw from the other chair and turned out the lights.

Upstairs in her bedroom, with the beer and the sandwich on the bedside table, the curtains drawn and the TV on low, she mulled over the day. A distant beep from the study became part of the background hum and, only slightly beetroot stained, she went on watching a rerun of
War Games
. She knew that the film was more than twenty years old – so why did Matthew Broderick still look the same to this very day? And could a hacker really get into the Pentagon computer? Why did this seem important? Why did she always forget until it was too late that beetroot gave her wind? She slid down into the bed and, stretching across the unaccustomed space, she slept.