Maxwell's Retirement (7 page)

He grabbed it from her and tore it down the spine. He was so red in the face he matched the Kit Kat wrapper. He might be a cappuccino and a chocolate bar to the good, but she had definitely won that round.

She pointed to the paper cup. ‘Enjoy,’ she said and, taking her coffee with her, made for the stairs. Henry Hall, watching from his office, allowed himself a small and private chuckle. Jacquie Carpenter, Jacquie Maxwell, it didn’t matter what she was called; she was his favourite DS and, every now and again, she reminded him why.

Back in her office, she arranged her desk as she liked it. The file dead centre, the coffee to the right. She got out her sandwiches and her mid-morning snack and put them in a drawer, top right as always and known to her colleagues as ‘the pantry’. She plugged in her laptop and flicked it open and set it to one side. Reaching further into her bag, she encountered her mobile phone
and sat there for a moment, weighing it and her options up.

She was tempted to ring Maxwell, or to text him to tell him what an odd turn the day had taken. But, she reasoned, it would only wind her up; he wouldn’t answer, he wouldn’t reply to the text. She would end up grumpy and that wasn’t the way to start a new case. She tossed the phone up and down in her hand a few times and then, deciding, put that on her desk as well, just behind the coffee.

She opened the file and began to see the size of the task in front of her. At first glance, it seemed to have quite a lot in it. Then, as she turned the pages, she realised that in fact all it was was a collection of contact sheets from the front desk, brief details of phone calls and, in a few cases, a drop-in complainant. There were names, times, brief descriptions of the issue and that was it. Added to that, every one was basically the same. Précised, it came to the fact that
twenty-five
Leighford and Tottingleigh parents had seen fit to look at their daughters’ phones and had discovered texts on them that they found disturbing. What was not there, and what Jacquie would have to unravel, were the stories behind it. Why did the parents check the phones? Were these girls troublesome kids or did they have abusive parents, either psychologically or physically? Did these parents dig in pockets, pick the locks
of private diaries, have the passwords to their daughters’ email accounts? She flipped the file shut and took a slug of coffee. Cheers, Henry. The upside was that she would probably be in this office until Christmas. She might bring in a plant.

She drew a notebook towards her and started to make a rough plan of where the girls lived on a very basic map of the area. No help – they were spread widely and randomly around. This probably meant that they went to several schools. At least she could start by ringing Leighford High School and checking to see if any of the girls went there. She could secretly check up on Maxwell at the same time, since she and Thingees both One and Two, switchboard operators extraordinaire, had struck up quite a relationship since she spent so many hours of the average term making small talk with them whilst they scoured the school tracking down the elusive Head of Sixth Form.

She had the number on speed dial.

‘Good morning. Leighford High School.’

Jacquie drummed her fingers waiting for the rest of the recorded message.

Instead, she got a slightly testy Thingee One. ‘Leighford High School. How may I help you?’

Jacquie jumped and stammered into the phone, ‘Oh, you’re a person. Oh, sorry, of course you’re a person, it’s just that I was expecting the list of numbers to press and … sorry. It’s … er … Mrs Maxwell.’ It still sounded
strange in her ears, but equally it made her smile.

‘Oh, hello, Mrs Maxwell.’ Thingee One went into her Pavlovian response. ‘I’m not sure where Mr Maxwell is, but I’ll try and get him for you.’

‘No,’ Jacquie almost shouted, as Thingee One was particularly quick with her button pressing. ‘No, actually I think I want Student Services, Emma. I have a list of names I want to check off against your roll.’

There was a silence, in which Jacquie could subliminally discern the brushing of cloth on cloth, the whisper of skin on skin as Thingee beckoned to someone. Another voice, altogether less friendly than that of the redoubtable Thingee, came on the line. ‘Help you?’ it barked.

Jacquie felt she should straighten those seams and push back her shoulders. ‘Well, I certainly hope so. This is Detective Sergeant Carpenter. I—’

‘I distinctly heard Emma call you Mrs Maxwell.’

‘Yes, that’s right. I
am
Mrs Maxwell.’

‘You said you were Detective Sergeant Carpenter.’

‘Yes, you see, I … Do you mind telling me who you are?’ Jacquie suddenly snapped. After all,
she
represented the police state in this conversation.

‘Yes, I do mind. After all, I know perfectly well who I am already whereas you don’t seem to have the first clue who you are. This is a
school, you know, and I can’t have people who can’t identify themselves cluttering up my switchboard. Good day.’ And before Jacquie could protest, the phone was slammed down and that was that.

Jacquie sat staring at the receiver for a long minute. Who in heaven’s name was that? It sounded as if the school had been taken over by the Gestapo. Where were the Home Guard of Warmington on Sea when you needed them? There was only one thing for it. She scrolled down her contacts list until she reached ‘Maxmob’ and pressed the bar to connect.

After a short pause, after which she expected to hear her own voice tell her that Maxwell was unavoidably detained and would get back to her as soon as possible, the unexpected happened.

‘Peter Maxwell, no job too small, weddings and bar mitzvahs a speciality of the house.’

‘Max? Is that you?’ She was stunned.

‘Heart! How scrummy to hear from you. I was just this instant about to check to see if I had any messages.’ He told this lie with perfect aplomb and she was still so shaken by her experience that she didn’t detect it.

‘Max, who is that vile person in the front office?’

‘You can’t mean Thingee? She’s a dear girl.’

‘Of course not Thingee. A woman who sounded like … well, I’m lost for words.’

Maxwell’s chuckle echoed down the phone. ‘You mean Irma Grese?’

‘She’s foreign? She didn’t sound it.’

‘No, no, honeybunch. Her name’s, oh, I don’t know, I can hardly keep up, it’s Mrs Dominatrix or something. Donaldson, that’s the one. I call her Irma Grese after the most hated concentration camp guard in Auschwitz. Albert Pierrepoint hanged her, bless him. She’s not exactly like her, of course. She’s much nastier.’

‘I agree.’ Jacquie’s reply was heartfelt. ‘But who is she?’

‘What. I think you mean
what
is she? Well, she’s the new office manager.’

‘Is that an answer?’

‘Good question, Woman Policeman. We’ll make a detective of you yet, or your name’s not Dalmatia Entwhistle. There have been, as I think I may have ranted to you at some length, various cost-cutting measures here at the funny farm.’

Jacquie had memories of Maxwell, splashing gravy about willy-nilly as he gestured with his knife and fork, to the glee of Nolan and the despair of Metternich, who liked to keep his coat looking nice and not bespeckled with Bisto. Heads had been rolling since September, but she hadn’t heard of anyone new being appointed. That didn’t seem a very sound cost-cutting measure to her. She replied, ‘I do recall, yes.’

‘Well, that’s what she is. She is a cost-cutting
measure. By getting rid of three staff earning twelve thousand pounds a year and replacing them with Irma on a mere forty-five thousand pounds a year, Legs has contrived to save oooh, let me think, the old mental arithmetic isn’t what it was, that will be minus nine thousand a year, or thereabouts.’

‘Max, you work in a madhouse!’

‘Again, I refer you to my rants, 1995 onwards.’

She chuckled. ‘Indeed. Anyway, look, I didn’t actually ring to be yelled at by a psycho. And I wasn’t checking on you, although I admit I was going to later. I really wanted Student Services.’

‘You remember the three staff I mentioned just now?’

‘Yes … oh, I see. No Student Services any more, then?’

‘Not so’s you would notice. Can I help?’

‘I have a list here of girls whose parents have complained about …’ she paused to look around. This was confidential stuff. ‘About … you know.’

‘You’ll have to be a little more precise, my little cabbage. I know such a lot of things.’

‘Max! Behave. About our visitor last night. That thing.’

‘Oh,
that
thing. Well, that’s quite good, isn’t it? That the two of them are not alone.’

‘I didn’t think for a moment they were. But I need to know if the girls on this list – which
doesn’t include ours, by the way – go to Leighford High.

‘Fire away.’

‘Come on, Max. You can’t know all of them.’ He did, of course, have his school list somewhere, still, mercifully, on paper. But it was a point of honour with him to do without it.

‘Try me.’

‘All right, I will! Hang on while I get a pencil to check them off on my list. While I’m doing that, you could order your crow from the canteen for later.’

‘Let’s meet for lunch and I can watch you eat your humble pie.’

Jacquie snorted. ‘OK, eyes down, look in.’

‘Two fat ladies, Mrs Donaldson.’

‘Is she fat? She sounds thin.’

Maxwell kept quiet. Female logic was an odd creature and he preferred not to rattle its cage.

‘First name, Eleanor Capstick.’

‘Now, that’s an interesting one. No relation to Charlie Artful, by the way, that doyen of Scotland Yard when detectives were all men – oops, sorry.’

‘Don’t hedge, Max. If you don’t know, just say so.’

He chuckled. ‘I’m not hedging, sweetness. It’s just that she was with us, then went to Brighton Grammar, courtesy of Grandma.’

‘Kind of her.’

‘Well, she was dead, but doubtless she was a
nice old dear and would have approved of a vast amount of her money being spent on her only granddaughter for school fees. Next.’

The list ground on until all twenty-five had been docketed and accounted for. Three were current Leighford Highenas, three had been, but had moved on, though not necessarily up. The rest Maxwell didn’t know. Jacquie was convinced.

‘That was amazing, Max. How do you do it?’

‘It’s a blessing …’ It was a perfect Mr Monk.

‘… and a curse.’ Hers wasn’t so good and she laughed gently. ‘I still can’t get over you,’ she said fondly.

‘You’ll just have to get up and go round,’ he said and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘May I ask a question, delight of my life?’

‘Knock yourself out.’

‘Are you in the Big Boy’s office? I only ask because, as a rule, you don’t get the leisure for endearments.’

‘Ooh, I forgot to say. I was so excited that you answered your phone it went out of my head.’ It was just as well that she couldn’t see his face, a perfect mixture of pride and relief that he hadn’t been caught out. ‘I have the corner office upstairs.’

‘Next stop Pennsylvania Avenue,’ he said proudly. ‘How did you get that?’

‘I just asked Henry for somewhere quiet and
he came up with this. I must admit,’ there was a pause as she looked round her little domain, ‘it’s not the Ritz, but once I sort out the filing cabinet drawers so they aren’t so lethal and get rid of all the dead plants and a rather strange smell I’m having trouble identifying, then it will be really nice.’

‘Can I give you a bit of help on the smell?’ he asked. ‘But first I’ll need some extra information. Was the previous incumbent popular? Is he, I hope I should say. Dead men’s shoes are one thing, dead men’s offices something else entirely.’

‘No, he’s not dead,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit of a lout, but nothing wrong in the main.’

‘Has he been having a bit of a fling with anyone in the station?’

She lowered her voice. ‘Are you bugging the place, Max? He had a bit of a knee trembler, rumour has it, with one of the desk sergeant’s wives just before Christmas.’

‘Thank you, Miss Lemon,’ Peter ‘Hercule’ Maxwell replied. ‘Just look under the chair.’

‘I’m just putting you down a minute.’ He heard the phone go down on the desk and then the scrape as she got off the chair and turned it over. Distantly, he heard, ‘Eeuwwhh. What in God’s name …?’ The phone was picked up again. ‘Oh, God, Max. There’s what looks like a rotting kipper under this chair!’

‘I suggest you ring the desk sergeant in
question and get him to come up with a new chair and take this one away. He won’t argue.’

‘You’re scary, you know that?’

‘Oh, go on! You’re only saying it because it’s true. Anyway, heart, must go. I have— Oh, Leah waiting in my doorway.’

‘Leah? What, as in—?’

‘Well, must go, dear.’ And the phone went dead.

Jacquie stood staring at the phone in her hand and could have yelled with frustration. But she trusted Maxwell. All she could do was wait.

‘Come in, Leah,’ Maxwell invited. ‘Don’t just stand there, wearing out your knees or whatever the health gurus are saying these days.’ He gestured to a chair.

She sat on the very edge, hugging her backpack on her lap. She licked her lips and then said, in a very small voice as though the world was listening in and she only wanted Maxwell to hear, ‘Were you on a mobile just then?’

He looked down at the thing in his hand as though he had only just realised it was there. It was probably a hanging offence in some countries. ‘I seem to have been, yes.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘It was the wife.’

‘Everybody thinks you don’t know about mobiles and computers and stuff.’

‘Everybody thinks I don’t know about the coefficient of linear expansion, but what the hey?’ Maxwell plumped into a chair opposite and
flung one leg extravagantly across the other knee. There was a faint twanging noise and he carefully adjusted his position. He smiled again at the girl. ‘I really should stop doing that,’ he said. ‘Cyclist’s knee.’

She smiled momentarily and then went back to minutely examining a buckle on her bag. The clock’s intermittent digital click sounded like the crash of cymbals in the quiet room. Somewhere out there was a school full of life, chairs screaming back on wooden floors which had long since lost their polish, markers squeaking on whiteboards, the massed whisper of five hundred tongues muttering into five hundred ears as the seconds before the bell clicked slowly as a watched kettle boiling, sounding like waves on a distant beach. Doors slammed, but they were muted as if they slammed against marshmallow, toilets flushed distantly, but their water was molasses, slow and silent. Eventually, the sound of one tear splashing onto a sad girl’s hand broke the mood and Maxwell was out of his chair and holding that hand. Breaking the rule-book again.

‘Come on, Leah. It can’t be that bad. This too shall pass, as Abraham Lincoln almost said.’

The girl sniffed and scrubbed at her teary cheek with the back of her hand. Did they know, wondered Maxwell, how like a baby that made them look? That angry denial of the tears which gave away their age. ‘It is that bad, Mr Maxwell,’
she said. ‘I … I’ve been bad somehow, I know I have. And someone has found out.’

He let go of her hand and rocked back on his heels. ‘How can someone find out something you don’t know you’ve done?’ he asked, a little testily. He sometimes wondered if these girls liked the drama or whether they really thought there was no sadness in the world but theirs. He had to bring this to a stop right now.

‘Don’t be cross, Mr Maxwell,’ she begged him. ‘It’s just, well, I’ve been getting these texts.’ She looked up at him. Despite the fact that she had seen him using a mobile, she still wondered if he could follow the plot.

‘Yes, Leah,’ he said. ‘I know about texts.’

She scrubbed at her cheek again. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Well, I get these texts and they say all sorts of things. They say that the person watches me, that they know where I am, what I do. They say I … do stuff that I really don’t do, Mr Maxwell. Honestly, I don’t. They say they’ll tell my mum, the school. They say I won’t get into university. Oh, please, make them stop.’

He knew that this moment hung by a thread. There could be no flippant throwaway like ‘Well, it’s only Leeds Metropolitan, after all’. His answer was to take the simple way out, to change her phone number, to only give out the new number to certain people, then if the texts resumed she would at least have a small chance of finding out
who it was. But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

‘I think you need to talk to someone who really understands technology,’ Maxwell said in the end, rather lamely. ‘I can only just use these things. I used to be a technophobe. You need a technophile. I’m only a techn-OK.’

‘But I don’t want to talk to anyone else, Mr Maxwell.’ She grabbed his lapel. ‘You are quite literally the only person in the whole world who I know isn’t doing this.’

He chose to take it as a compliment, although in fact he fully realised that she only meant that he couldn’t have done it for technical reasons. He was still framing an answer when she went on.

‘Even now I’ve seen you with a phone, I know you’re rubbish at computers.’

He bridled slightly, but it was nothing if not the truth. Then he grasped her point. ‘You mean that you’ve been getting emails as well?’

‘Emails, instant messages, things like that. Messages on my wall.’

‘Your … you mean someone has been leaving graffiti on your house?’ It would be spirit writing next.

She looked puzzled, then she cottoned on. ‘No, no, Mr Maxwell. My wall. My cyber-wall.’

‘Ah.’ Maxwell didn’t know a lot about these computer communities, but he did know you had to join and get a password and everything. ‘But
you must know who is doing that, surely. An email says who it is from, and I suppose the others are the same.’

‘No, Mr Maxwell.’ She spoke slowly, as though to a small child. ‘An email says who the sender says it is from.’ She looked into his eyes to see if it had sunk in. Nothing. ‘When you set up the account, you say who you are. You could set it up to say you were, oh, I don’t know, the Duke of Wellington, say.’

He brightened up. ‘I could?’

‘Well, you could if you, like, wanted to hide who you are. It’s easy.’

‘Where did you find all this?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, did you find it out online, in a … chat room?’ The words were ones he used, but not usually linked together. He felt the real world recede and he didn’t like it.

‘No. It really is so basic, Mr Maxwell.’ Leah was relaxing now and the words flowed better. ‘I don’t know how I got to know about it. I just, like,
do
.’

He clambered slowly to his feet, knees cracking like pistols. ‘I think you need to talk to someone other than me, Leah. I understand people. I don’t understand the technical stuff.’

She jumped up as well and fetched him a smart one under the chin with her bag as he attempted to straighten up to his full height. ‘Sorry,’ she
muttered and ran from the room, bowling over Sylvia Matthews as she went. Maxwell rushed to haul her to her feet and they staggered into his office and collapsed on chairs. Sylvia looked closely at him.

‘Max, you appear to have “Hello Kitty” printed on your chin.’

He felt it, gingerly. ‘Is that what it is? I just prefer to think of it as a painful bruise,’ he said huffily.

Sylvia took a deep breath. ‘Max, I have to ask this, and obviously, you can stop me if you want but—’

He sighed. ‘Nothing, Sylv. She was upset about something and I didn’t give her the answer she wanted.’

‘No one ever gives them the answer they want at that age, Max. Surely you know that by now.’

‘Sylv. Can you keep a secret?’

‘I’m horrified you need to ask.’

He reached over and patted her arm. ‘Soz,’ he said. ‘I know you would never share a confidence, but I think you might be a bit conflicted with this.’

She drew back, making the sign of the cross with the forefingers of both hands. It warded off vampires, by all accounts, but would it work this time?

‘What is it?’ Maxwell asked, rather taken aback.

‘You just used psychobabble,’ she said. ‘From that I can only deduce, Sherlock, that you are not yourself, but some kind of clone.’

He looked at her with his head on one side. ‘There’s a lot of that about,’ he said. ‘I wear my armour of righteousness whenever I go near Bernard Ryan, but obviously something creeps through sometimes. I will rephrase.’

She patted her chest and fanned her face with relief. Nobody ever went near the Deputy Head without
some
form of protection.

‘I think you might find yourself, Sylv, between a rock and a very hard place.’

‘That’s better. But what are they, the rock and the hard place?’

‘Leah and, I happen to know, Julie and at least three other girls in this school are receiving unpleasant texts and, I have just discovered, emails and other cyber stuff which I don’t really understand, to be truthful. Leah and Julie have only told Jacquie and me about it. The other three have either told their parents, or their parents found out somehow and they are known to the police.’

‘So,’ Sylvia wanted to get it right, ‘Jacquie officially knows about all of them. You know about Julie and Leah.’

‘Yes. But Julie told Jacquie about Leah and Jacquie told me, though Julie asked her not to tell me. But now, Leah has been to see me, so I know.’ He looked up to the ceiling and muttered to
himself, pointing at invisible list items in the air. He looked back at Sylvia. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ He’d always found the ‘he said, she said’ enormously complicated at the best of times.

‘Max, you know the old saying about webs and tangles?’

‘Yes, yes, I know, Sylv. But this has moved on somewhat quickly. I’m glad that Leah came to me, because at least that’s one secret I don’t have to keep any more. But unless the other three do, I’m a bit hamstrung.’

‘Do you think it is only three others?’

‘I haven’t really thought about that. Do you think there will be more?’

‘I should think there will be
loads
more, Max. These kids spend half their lives on computers, phones and what have you. You see four girls walking down the road and they will all be on the phone, talking to four other people. Communication has gone mad.’

‘Sylv!’ Maxwell was ecstatic. ‘I’m not alone!’

‘Well, you are, Max, pretty well.’ Illusion shattered. Moment gone. She chuckled. ‘I at least use my phone and computer.’

‘So do I.’ He did a little wriggle, learnt from Nolan, who had learnt it from Metternich. Although in the latter case, it was a precursor to a pounce on a small and unsuspecting rodent. ‘In fact, I had a call from Jacquie just this morning. That’s how I know about the other girls.’

‘You mean you checked your phone?’

‘Umm …’ Maxwell could lie with the best of them, but never to Sylvia Matthews. Her skills had been honed over years of games-evaders, faux headaches and the occasional mock broken leg, although the last did not really take that much expertise to spot. ‘I was passing the drawer and it rang.’

‘Passing the drawer?’ The buck she had heard of, but this was a new one.

‘Looking for a biscuit, if you must know. My small and secret stash is in the next drawer down.’

Sylvia smiled. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

‘I know.’ He looked at her fondly. It occurred to him that of all the people he knew, she had known him for the longest. She knew him when the loss of his wife and daughter was a gaping wound he wore for the world to see, because to hide it would be an insult to their memory. She had seen it scab over, she had seen it heal. She was one of the few who knew that there was still a scar, a silver thread now, all but invisible, which wound around his heart.

‘Computer?’

‘Yes. I have one of those.’ He looked round the room and awe crept into his voice. ‘
Several
of those.’

‘Logged on today?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice, no.’ His tone was airy, but wary. ‘My name is Peter Maxwell and I am not a technoholic.’

‘So no one knows where anyone in your classes have been this morning.’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t think Pansy will think that that is good enough. I would imagine she has put Nicole on your case already.’

‘Pansy? Who, for heaven’s sake, is Pansy?’

‘Pansy Donaldson. In the office.’

‘Mrs Donaldson is called
Pansy
?’

‘Max, let’s not get sidetracked.

‘But—’

‘I really think you’re going to have to come to terms with this laptop business, Max. Just let’s say … well, I have overheard a few things as I make my quiet way around the school.’ She held up one foot to display her rubber-soled shoes, nurses for the use of. ‘I think there is an element here who are out to get you.’

He flung himself back in the chair and laughed until she thought he would never stop. Finally, wiping his eyes, he said, ‘Sylvia Matthews. You always know how to make me laugh. Of
course
there is an element trying to get me. I wouldn’t be doing my job properly as Leighford High School’s Official Subversive if there wasn’t. Legs could have wallpapered his office a dozen times with complaints about me. I am the fly in the ointment, the African-American in the woodpile, the wind in the willows, whatever. But we’re always all right in the end.’

‘Yes, but now you’re up against something bigger than Diamond and a few miffed staff. You’re up against Health and Safety, you’re up against the No Paper Lobby, you’re up against …’

He sighed and shook his head ruefully. ‘I know, Sylv. But if I give in to this techno-rubbish, where will everyone be, come the deluge? If we all go down that road, when the crash comes, we’ll be up shit creek without a paddle, digital or otherwise.’ He’d lost track of the metaphors he’d mixed.

‘Crash?’ Sylvia’s smile looked a little pasted on.

‘Don’t worry, Sylv,’ he said. ‘I’m not going paranoid. But, let’s face it, we rely so heavily on the chip that if anything goes wrong, we really will be doomed. Look what happened to the Irish in the 1840s.’

‘Max, do you remember the Millennium Bug scares?’

‘You know my views on the Millennium, but yes, I do. Planes were going to fall out of the air, everything on computers would be wiped as the hard drives thought it was 1900 and so nothing had been invented yet. And yes – before you tell me – nothing happened. But if it had, civilization would have not crashed but would certainly have gone over a very large pothole.’

‘But these things don’t happen, Max.’

‘They haven’t happened
yet
,’ he said darkly. ‘You mark my words, young lady,’ Sylvia gave him a rudimentary nod of thanks for the compliment, ‘I make a point of still writing everything down, against the day. Someone has to.’

‘And we all know that person will be you, Max.’ She got up to go. ‘But please be careful. Just register classes in the first instance. For me?’

He gave her a brief hug, which was half affection and half a means of getting up out of a low chair. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will. But only for you.’