Maxwell's Retirement (23 page)

Maxwell was still in the armchair when day and battle broke. He woke up with a jolt which brought stars to his eyes and he realised anew that he hadn’t been to bed. He had, though, ‘dropped back’, as the Maxwells had it: that is, he’d woken up once and gone to sleep again, and he suddenly had sharp memories of the first time.

Little Nole had been dancing around until his mother hushed him, shouting ‘Picnic! Picnic!’ like he’d won the lottery. He’d planted a slobbery
kiss on his father’s cheek and vanished in the company of his mother, who seemed as pleased as the Boy. Metternich may have the cream (he usually did) but it was Jacquie who said ‘Gone arrestin” with a smug satisfaction only usually seen when Dirty Harry was pointing his Magnum at somebody.

Maxwell checked the sitting room clock as he groped for the Nurofen. Ten to ten; the bleeding time.

On the telly, they wore flak jackets and struck at dawn, smashing through front doors with those heavy metal things while half the SWAT team watched the back. In reality, Jacquie and Matt Carter, looking like a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses out on their Saturday morning swoop, ambled up the path to the house in question.

‘Mr Melkins,’ she said, flashing her warrant card as he opened the door. ‘I am Detective Sergeant Carpenter. This is Detective Sergeant Carter.’

‘I know perfectly well who you are,’ Melkins told her. ‘Is there any more news?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jacquie, wide-eyed. ‘The news is that I am arresting you on suspicion of child abuse. Do you have a coat or a wife you’d like to bring? Sergeant Carter will read you your rights on the way to the station.’

Melkins’ eyes darted fire. ‘I know my rights,’
he assured her. ‘I have the right to a lawyer.’

‘And you have the right to remain silent. Let’s start with that, shall we?’

Jim Astley didn’t do Saturday mornings. Whenever he could and there was a ‘y’ in the day, he was to be found on Tottingleigh Golf Course, slicing little white things through the cloudless blue of a perfect picnic day. So it was Donald who did the honours at the morgue, dutifully pulling back the green sheet that covered the dead man. And it was he who saw the little, suddenly old, lady hold her hand to her mouth and sway a little until DCI Hall caught her and led her away.

And it wasn’t Colin Russell’s mother who finally identified him on the slab; she had lost her nerve and had asked her sister to do it. It was Mrs B, who did for the Maxwells and up at the school.

It must have been mid afternoon when Maxwell’s doorbell rang. The tablets had kicked in by now and he could just manage the stairs. Love him dearly though he did, please God don’t let this be Nole back already from the picnic, otherwise he’d have forgotten all about Dads’s back and demand endless renditions of ‘Stop the cavalry’ complete with bouncing on the knees. He was relieved to see that it didn’t look as if DCI Hall would relish the same treatment.

‘Henry,’ Maxwell said. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘I’ve just come from the morgue, Max,’ he told him.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘You need cheering up.’ He ushered the man in. ‘Tea? Coffee? Yard of ale?’ Maxwell still had enough flexibility in his spine to make a moderate sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘I’d offer you Southern Comfort but I suspect you’re on duty and I’m not sure the sun’s over the yard arm by very much.’

Hall declined it all and sat down. ‘What can you tell me about a Colin Russell?’ he asked.

Maxwell blinked. ‘I don’t think I can tell you anything about him, can I? Who is he?’

‘Mrs Bee said she’d told you all about him. And I wouldn’t like to think that you’re not helping police with their inquiries.’

‘Oh,
Coe
-lin! Sorry, yes. Mrs B’s nephew. I didn’t know the surname. He
is
our corpse in the copse, then?’

Hall nodded. ‘What exactly did Mrs Bee tell you? She was a little less than coherent with me. Seemed to be speaking in sound bites.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘You need practice to manage Mrs B. Well …’ He dredged up the memories. ‘Colin, sweet boy and apple of the family’s eye and so on, was doing bird in Ford Open Prison, but he had done a runner. Mrs B,
of course, wouldn’t have it; her Colin wouldn’t do that sort of thing.’

‘It looks as though she may be right, doesn’t it?’ Hall said grimly. ‘We’re waiting to find out how long he had been up at the paintball copse, but the money is on almost a week.’

‘According to Mrs B, he had been missing since last weekend.’

‘Well, forensics will confirm that for us.’

‘What I don’t understand, amongst many other things,’ Maxwell said, ‘was why you couldn’t identify him. I mean, he does have a record.’

‘Good point. It seems young Colin had a bit of a way with computers. He had been put away for fraud connected with some software he had developed.’

‘Yes, Mrs B told me about that. No details, but he had taught her to use a computer rather well.’

‘He used a false name and sold the software rights to a load of different companies. One of them had CCTV. Also, and this was where he was unlucky, two of the managers from where he had sold the rights happened to be golfing partners and also a bit loose-lipped on the industrial espionage front. So they got him, bang to rights.’

‘But that means he has a record, surely. Prints, DNA, that kind of thing. I do watch TV, you know.
CSI
. The police procedural never lies.’

‘Well, it frequently does,’ Hall corrected him, ‘but we won’t quibble about that now. What
Colin had done was to leave his name in the prison system, but wipe his prints and DNA, personal description, all that. He kindly did it for all his friends on the wing. Leaving his name was a stroke of genius; that way, all his prison records remained on the system, so that the officers could update him, book visits and everything. But from outside, he was invisible.’ Hall sighed. ‘Clever.’

‘So he really was a computer whizz?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Only, Mrs B tends to deal only in superlatives and it’s sometimes a little difficult to judge.’

‘Oh, no, he was clearly very talented in that way. The software he had designed was never discussed in court; apparently it is still subject of a legal wrangle between all the people he sold it to – but it’s bound to be a workable product. I don’t think he was naturally bent.’

Maxwell had a thought. ‘Where was he working, on licence? Asda? An estate agent?’

Hall barked what may have been a laugh. ‘You might like this. He was working for a software company.’

‘What?’ Maxwell leant forward and was pleased that his back just gave a warning whimper rather than going into a complete spasm. ‘I had no idea he had access to computers. Have you linked him at all to this texting and emailing problem?’

Hall looked thoughtful, then shook his head. ‘No. No need to pursue that, anyway. Unless
Jacquie has been very unlucky, I think she may have someone for that today.’

Maxwell was between a rock and the usual hard place. He couldn’t let Hall know how much he and Jacquie had discussed. But he really didn’t think that Melkins was the man for all the other problems. He settled for a simple ‘Ah.’

‘Jacquie is like the Mounties,’ Hall said. ‘She always gets her man.’

Maxwell tried and failed to picture Jacquie in a rather strange hat and a scarlet coat, wrassling a bar and stirring her coffee with her thumb. It wasn’t a picture that came easily to him, but he agreed with the general principle. ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ he said.

‘For the record,’ Jacquie said clearly into the tape-recorder, ‘interview commencing one-thirty in the presence of DS Carpenter and Carter, Mr Gregory Melkins and …’

‘John Whitby,’ the brief filled in, adjusting his glasses and straightening his tie. Jacquie noted that the man looked six. When lawyers start looking younger than policemen …

‘Tell us about Julie,’ Jacquie said.

Melkins looked at her. Then at the brief, who nodded. ‘My stepdaughter,’ he said, ‘currently attends Leighford High School.’

‘Is that it?’ Jacquie asked.

‘What more do you want?’ Melkins snapped. ‘Her bra size?’ The silence was tangible.

Jacquie sat back. Leighford CID, one; child-molesting bastard, nil. ‘That’s rather an odd question,’ she said.

‘Look.’ Melkins came the heavy. ‘First, my stepdaughter goes missing, which by the way you people didn’t really seem to take very seriously; then you say she’s safe, but you won’t say where. And now you’re charging me with child abuse.’

‘You haven’t been charged yet,’ Jacquie reminded him.

The brief nodded.

‘Does your stepdaughter keep a diary, Mr Melkins?’ It was Matt Carter’s turn.

Melkins looked at him. ‘I really have no idea,’ he said flatly.

‘Well, allow us to enlighten you,’ Jacquie said. ‘She does. It’s a rather frilly, girly thing, all pink with a kitten—’

‘You can’t believe a word she says!’ Melkins shouted. ‘The lying little bitch! Whatever’s in that diary is a pack of lies. I never touched her! Never!’

He was on his feet now, trembling and looming over Jacquie. He barely felt his lawyer’s restraining hand on his sleeve.

‘For the record,’ Jacquie said, ‘Mr Melkins is … at one-thirty-four … using intimidating body language.’

‘Greg,’ the brief called his client to one side. ‘If I may just have a moment, Sergeant?’

‘For the record,’ Jacquie said, ‘Mr Whitby is conferring with his client.’

She and Matt Carter sat stony-faced while the whispering on the far side of the desk hissed this way and that. At the end of it, Melkins sat down, avoiding everyone’s gaze.

The brief cleared his throat. ‘My client wishes to state that he has had sexual relations with his stepdaughter, that these have not been with her consent, but there has been no penetration.’

‘So that makes it all right, does it?’ Carter asked.

Melkins’ eyes came up level with his. ‘What do you know about it, you moron? There she is, night after night, swaying her hips, putting her make-up on, leaving her bedroom door open. I’m only human, for God’s sake.’

‘Let’s leave God out of this, shall we, Mr Melkins?’ Jacquie suggested. ‘Tell us about the texts.’

‘Texts?’

‘And emails. The “I know what you’ve done” business.’

Melkins frowned at her, then at the brief. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘Don’t you?’ Jacquie asked. ‘We shall, of course, be checking your PC – at home, at the hospital. And your mobile phone.’

The doctor threw the thing onto the desk with a clatter.

‘For the record,’ Jacquie said, ‘Mr Melkins has just volunteered his mobile phone.’

‘I certainly have,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll put my hand up to interfering with Julie, but you’re not going to pin every unsolved crime on your books on me. Not by a long chalk.’

And there was something in the way he said it that made Jacquie realise the interview was over, even before she spoke the words into the microphone. She should have been happy. She had a result. She’d got her man. And yet, it somehow didn’t all tie up. Not quite. There was still something missing and she had to know what it was.

Maxwell was still mulling over the image of Jacquie arresting a clutch of lumberjacks single-handed when Hall suddenly spoke. He had been trying to remember what else he wanted to speak to Maxwell about and it had finally come into his head. One of these days he would master the reminder gadget on his mobile phone, but until then he had to rely on his increasingly leaky memory.

‘I know what I was going to ask you,’ he said. ‘What did you make of that strange email, the “red red ones” thing? Have you had any more?’

Maxwell sat up straighter. He hadn’t really
thought about it in the last twelve hours, wrapped as he had been in his personal world of pain. But Henry was right. It was strange. He could believe all sorts of things, but not that Nostradamus had predicted this. And he hadn’t checked his emails since that message had arrived. ‘I wondered if Jacquie had discussed it with you,’ he said. ‘I can’t make it out. I was assuming the family overcome by death was … well, was mine. Although that is very ancient history, I suppose, for anyone but me. There is literally no one left alive now who was affected by it, except me. That’s a sobering thought, Henry.’

They sat in silent contemplation for a moment, of the passing of time, the fragility of human life. Henry had sat at the bedside of his dangerously ill wife within the past year. He had got her back, but it had been touch and go; he could only imagine how Maxwell had felt, still felt, sometimes.

Maxwell pulled himself back to the present. ‘But I realise now that it probably refers to Mrs B and her family. But what the “red red ones” can mean, I have no idea. Old Michel de Notre Dame had a rather sideways view of the world. He’s not talking about Communism, that’s for sure. Or Native Americans.’ They had a little silent mull. Henry liked these moments with Maxwell. The man may be perceived by many to be a meddling old idiot, but he didn’t speak when speech wasn’t called for. And his brain was the best that Hall
could tap into. ‘Sorry,’ he said suddenly, making the DCI jump. ‘You asked if I had had any more. I haven’t checked. Would you like to look now?’

‘Is that … all right?’ Hall was aware that Maxwell wasn’t exactly a major player when it came to computers.

‘Henry, that was a nice thing to say,’ Maxwell said, reading his mind. ‘But I’m not quite the total moron that people believe me to be. I can read my own emails. I can send them, too, pretty reliably. I don’t like forwarding, attaching, all that stuff. But I’m fine on the basics. No, the problem here is me negotiating the stairs, but if you’re willing to go at my speed, we’ll manage. I’ll tell you what would be a good idea. If you go into the kitchen and make us a drink. Everything is out on view, so you’ll be all right, I’m sure. That way, I can get a head start and we won’t have to make small talk while I take it a step at a time.’

‘Good idea,’ Hall said, who had been beginning to regret his refusal of a drink when he had arrived. ‘Coffee?’

‘Tea for me,’ Maxwell said. ‘But have what you prefer.’ He went to the foot of the stairs and started the climb, painfully lifting one leg onto the bottom-most tread. He listened carefully. Hall seemed to be busy with mugs and kettle, so he sped up; not much, but a little. He didn’t have anything to hide, but he just wanted to read the message before Henry.