Maxwell's Retirement (8 page)

Nurse Sylvia Matthews went back to her office feeling in some ways better, in others worse. She had passed on the warning. There was no more she could do. But she knew, with her long years of experience of human nature and Peter Maxwell in particular, that it was unlikely to be heeded. There was more interesting quarry to hunt and Maxwell was off on the scent while the rest of the hounds were still in the kennel.

The little line of whingers would get short shrift today. ‘I’m busy,’ she said tartly. ‘Anyone with verrucas?’ Four hands went up. ‘Get back to classes, all of you. No,’ she held up a hand to stop their protests at source. ‘I don’t care if it’s Games. Wear plimsolls. Right. Headaches, anyone?’ Two hands went up, but tentatively. ‘Any flashing lights?’ One head nodded vigorously. ‘If you can do that, you’re fine. If you don’t have
flashing lights, you’re fine. Off you go.’ There were two left in the queue. She spoke to the first one, a lad who clearly wished he was anywhere but there. ‘And you would have symptoms of what, Michael? Ebola? Smallpox? A bad case of
burkholderia mallei
perhaps?’

Michael wasn’t stupid. It was just that he was more stupid than Sylvia Matthews. He knew about Ebola and smallpox. He hadn’t heard of the other thing, but he thought he’d give it a go. ‘Yes, that one. Burkhold’s Mallet. It’s in my thigh. I can hardly walk.’

‘Well, you surprise me, Michael. You don’t have enough legs.
Burkholderia mallei
is the causatory bacillus in a disease of horses. Off you trot.’

He knew when he was beaten and he slunk off to the horrors of Maths. Looking on the bright side, he had missed half of the lesson, so it wasn’t all bad news.

Sylvia turned to her last customer. ‘And how can I help you?’ she said.

The girl immediately burst into tears. ‘Oh, Mrs Matthews. I’m so worried. I keep on getting these emails.’

Sylvia put her arm round her and ushered her through into the privacy of her back room. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I think we need to talk, don’t you?’

Nicole Thompson knocked on the door of the Headteacher’s office with a smart little tattoo. She didn’t realise that she did that on every door and that the sound was one which many people had come to dread. She was so immersed in computers that she also didn’t realise that she was rapping out the Windows opening sound.

James Diamond was trapped. And he had been ever since he’d gone into education. He was a superficial, sound-bite sort of chap, forever blowing in the wind of County Hall directives, a prey to nervous disorders and desperately trying to balance books and climb higher in the league tables. Teaching? He’d have to leave that sort of thing to people like Peter Maxwell. Except that there weren’t any people like Peter Maxwell. Not any more. Diamond looked frantically behind him; no luck there, the window had been painted shut by over-zealous County operatives some years before. He could see the outline of Mrs Donaldson’s head, surely too large for any normal human – the woman was a different species – looming through the frosted glass in the adjacent office. No help there. He even peeked under his desk and quickly assessed the likelihood of getting away with hiding in that dark, stale-smelling cubbyhole. But no – he could only imagine the embarrassment should his ruse not succeed. There was only one thing for it.

‘Come!’ He hid his trepidation beneath a peremptory tone.

Nicole’s head peered round the door. ‘Do you have a moment, Mr Diamond?’

He grasped the opening, small as it was. ‘Well, just a very small moment, Nicole,’ he said. ‘I am expecting a phone call.’

‘Well, I’ll just get as much of what I want to say said, then,’ she said, sliding round the door and sitting down, ‘before the call comes through.’ She gestured behind her. ‘I’ve slid the “engaged” sign on your door across. I hope you don’t mind but what I want to say is really rather private.’

His heart leapt. Resignation? Oh, joy. Perhaps she was going to go and make IT mayhem somewhere else. He hated himself for it, he liked to think that he was at one with modern trends, but there was something about the IT Department in general, and Nicole Thompson in particular, that made his short hairs stand on end. She was a pleasant enough woman on the surface. She even had a sense of humour, or so he had been reliably informed. But she was so clearly on the make that it made her a very abrasive colleague. Even though he knew that she wasn’t qualified to steal his job, he wasn’t sure that she knew it. As for her staff, he wasn’t sure why they were there. They were to be seen around the school, sure enough, but even so, computers didn’t work and if they did it wasn’t usually for long. Sabotage was a big
word, but Diamond couldn’t help suspecting it.

He laced his fingers together and pressed the sides of his hands firmly down on the desktop, to stop them trembling too much. ‘How can I help you, Nicole?’

‘It’s about Peter Maxwell.’

Oh, for pity’s sake
, Diamond thought. If he had a quid for every time someone had sat in that chair and said that selfsame sentence, he wouldn’t still be in teaching, and that was a fact. But he said, ‘Maxwell? What seems to be the problem?’

‘I think he’s losing it, Mr Diamond.’

‘Can you be more precise?’ Diamond knew full well that not everyone understood Peter Maxwell. He himself had more than a little difficulty getting on his wavelength, but he knew that the man could get results out of the kids that everyone else wrote off, was as loyal as Lassie and that he would move heaven and earth to help any of God’s creatures. He didn’t care whether he liked a lame duck – he was going to help it over the stile, even if it didn’t know it wanted to go. He had a vague idea that he might have got his metaphors a bit mixed, but if he couldn’t take a few short cuts in his own head, where could he? And anyway, he had been a Biology teacher once.

‘He sent a very strange email last night.’

‘An email? Well, that’s excellent,’ Diamond beamed. ‘I thought we’d never get him online. What else?’

Nicole was confused. This wasn’t going according to plan at all. ‘He left himself a note about custard on his desk.’

‘Custard on his desk? That must have been annoying. I’ll have a word with the Premises Manager.’

‘No.’ Nicole could feel her dander getting ready to get up. ‘The note was about custard. The note was on his desk.’

‘I see. Probably a shopping list, something of that nature.’

‘And then I went past his classroom just now and it sounded as though World War One had broken out.’

At this, Diamond snapped. ‘Miss Thompson,’ he said, with an acid smile on his anonymous features. ‘Peter Maxwell consistently gets the best results in the school. And that is in a subject generally considered to be one of the most difficult at both GCSE and A Level. If he wants to teach in a bear garden, I don’t care. I don’t hear any complaints from his fellow
teachers
.’ He couldn’t help putting the emphasis on the word, it just slipped out. ‘So I don’t expect unqualified staff to get involved. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’

‘But, I wasn’t complaining,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘I just wanted to—’

‘Yes, Miss Thompson. I’m sure you did.’ And then, like a small miracle, his phone began to ring.
Diamond tried not to look too smug, or surprised. ‘Thank you. Can you see yourself out?’

She got up reluctantly and made for the door, aware in her ambitious little heart that she had made the biggest mistake of her working life so far, even if you included the day she had crashed the entire computer network of Southern Water.

‘Good,’ he smiled as she went. He picked up the phone. ‘Diamond.’

The phone quacked in his hand.

‘Doctor Melkins. How are you?’

Quack.

‘I’m so sorry … Mister … of course. Umm, how can I help you?’ He listened intently. ‘I have no idea why Julie should have missed her dentist appointment today. I’ll look into it. Yes, immediately. At once. Yes. Goodbye.’ He didn’t so much put the phone down as hurl it back onto the cradle. What did these people think teachers did all day? Just played nursemaid? How should he know where she was? He took a deep breath and picked up the phone again and dialled an internal number.

‘Mrs Donaldson?’ Through the frosted glass he saw her head turn from grizzled brown to pink as she instinctively turned towards him. He just resisted the urge to wave. ‘See if you can track down Julie … umm, her name isn’t Melkins, is it?’

‘No,’ her voice came, rather disconcertingly in
uneven stereo through the glass and through the earpiece. ‘I’ll check, but I’m almost certain it’s Jackson. Why do you want to know?’

‘I need to find out if she’s in the school at the moment.’

‘I’ll check the computer records,’ she said. There was a brief and bitter laugh, ‘Unless she should have been in Mr Maxwell’s class, of course.’

But Diamond was feeling a bit pro-Maxwell at that moment, a condition he was in but infrequently. ‘In that case, Mrs Donaldson,’ he said, ‘I could ask Mr Maxwell and he would know. The world isn’t all about computers, you know.’

Again, he slammed down the receiver. He wiped his lightly sweating forehead with a handkerchief. He must be coming down with something. He had stuck up for Maxwell twice in the last five minutes. There was a tap on the door and a grizzled head popped round the edge.

‘Headmaster? Do you have a mo?’

Diamond froze, but at least he knew one thing. This latest intruder would not be here to complain about Peter Maxwell. ‘Come in, Max. How may I help you?’

Maxwell threw himself into his usual chair. He tried to spend as little time as possible in Diamond’s company and, of that little time, he preferred to spend the greater part of it in public fora. But, with all of that said, he had still spent enough time facing Legs over a desk to have a usual chair.

‘You’re looking a tad frazzled, Headmaster,’ the Great Man said thoughtfully.

Diamond drew a deep breath and let it out shakily. ‘Max, you have no idea.’ This was unfair as it was still less than a year since Maxwell had found himself Acting Headteacher while Legs languished in hospital. But they both knew what he meant. ‘Do you want me about anything …?’ What was the word he wanted? ‘Major’ could mean anything. ‘Important’ sounded very condescending.

‘Vital?’

Yes, that was a good one. ‘Yes, Max. Vital. Do you want me about anything vital?’

‘That’s a bit of a tough one, Headmaster,’ said Maxwell. ‘I have several layers, as it were, to my reason for being here today. The topmost layer is concern for some of my girls.’

Diamond looked up from his introspective examination of the mock wood grain on his desk. ‘Girls? Max, you know we don’t use gender-based descriptions of the students at Leighford High.’

One of these days, Maxwell pondered, Diamond’s political correctness would choke him. Or he would; it was a close thing which would come first. ‘I don’t see how I can avoid it in this instance,’ he said, quite snappily, ‘since all the students involved are girls. Would “female persuasion” be better?’

Diamond tried out a few ripostes in his head and once or twice got as far as moving his lips, but no sound came. In the end, he spread a conciliatory hand across the desk and muttered, ‘Sorry, Max. Please go on.’

‘Thank you. I am, as I say, concerned for some of my girls. Well, perhaps there are also causes for concern lower down the school, but I suspect that Sixth Form girls are the main target.’

‘Target? For what?’ Diamond felt his ulcer lurch. He had been told to avoid stressful situations and here was one, sitting right in front of him.

‘I think they call it grooming. Except that I had always assumed that that implied someone being nice in order to get the girl’s trust.’

Diamond had attended the workshop. Since it had been advertised to the staff by email, obviously, Maxwell had not. ‘Yes, you’re right. It is usually an adult male posing as either a younger male or another girl. It is said to be rife.’

‘Indeed. This particular problem doesn’t quite fit the pattern, then. The texts are unpleasant and threatening. The emails, I understand, although I haven’t seen one, are worse. But the general tone is that someone knows what they have done, and that they are watching.’

‘Done? What do you mean, done?’

‘I have no idea, Headmaster. But you know what these girls are.’ He looked closely at Diamond. It was obvious from his face that he didn’t. ‘They sometimes … well, go a bit too far, with boyfriends, after nights out and so on. We have to be realistic.’

‘So you’re saying that these texts are spelling out …?’

‘No. That’s exactly what they
don’t
do. They just seem to imply things, but the girls are rattled and the police are involved.’

‘
Police?
’ Diamond’s screech was almost off the scale of human hearing. ‘Police? Do you just mean Detective Sergeant Carpenter? I mean, Mrs Maxwell? Oh, dear. Police?’

Maxwell could not help a wry grin. ‘Headmaster,’ he said. ‘Surely the idea of the police at Leighford High School can’t really come as too much of a surprise? I’m only amazed that they don’t have a satellite police station somewhere on the grounds.’

Diamond was on his feet. ‘What can you mean?’ He would have shouted, but he seemed to be having difficulty getting his breath.

‘Don’t get in a state, Headmaster.’ Maxwell was also on his feet by now and making his way round behind the desk. He needed to be nearer to catch the man when he fell over in a faint. ‘I just mean we are not strangers to police investigation, are we? Last year. Year before. Then the year before that …’

Diamond waved him away with a flapping hand and sat down heavily. He patted his forehead again with a handkerchief he seemed to keep ready for the purpose. ‘I’m sorry, Max. I’ve been under a lot of strain.’

‘You still seem to be, Headmaster, if you don’t mind my mentioning it. Is it something you can tell me about?’

Diamond fell under the Maxwell charm as easily as generations of bolshie sixth-formers had done since time immemorial – immemorial to everyone but Peter Maxwell at least. ‘It’s all these cutbacks, staff redundancies, new initiatives. Sometimes I think they’ll never end. League
tables, SATs, AFL.’ He looked up at Maxwell and apologised. ‘Assessment for Learning.’

Maxwell looked affronted. ‘I do
know
what AFL stands for, Headmaster. That I consider it and its myrmidons a waste of time is my own affair. I personally prefer the AFQL initiative.’

Diamond tried to look intelligent. This was one he thought he should know but, what with the stress and everything, couldn’t call to mind. He settled for a generic, ‘Ah.’

Maxwell smiled and leant forward. ‘Don’t worry, Headmaster,’ he whispered. ‘You don’t have to know this one. It is a favourite of mine because it stands for Anything For a Quiet Life.’ He leant back. ‘You should try it sometime.’

Diamond tried a smile but it came out rather a poor, crooked affair and it was all Maxwell could do not to start back in horror.

‘Anyway, Headmaster, if you don’t mind getting back to the main reason for my visit. Time’s a-wasting, you know. Helen will have poured the boiling water on my Pot Noodle by now and I don’t want it to go soggy and lose its huge nutritional value. We need to think of a way to speak to all of the sixth-form, boys as well, I suppose, so as to start fewer hares, and just make it clear that this email and text thing is pretty widespread and people who know what to do are on to it.’

Diamond looked thoughtful. That sounded
a reasonable idea and one he could, with luck, leave to Maxwell to arrange. ‘Sixth Form assembly might be the right place, Max, don’t you think?’

‘Excellent idea, Headmaster.’ Maxwell stole a look at his watch. Not a bad decision to have arrived at in only twenty minutes. He looked up with a smile. ‘I’ll get onto it, shall I?’

‘If you would.’ Diamond felt a little more in control again. ‘Oh, but, wait a minute.’ He felt he had to at least take into account the comments from Nicole Thompson and Pansy Donaldson. ‘It has been brought to my attention that you are not … um, how shall I put this?
Embracing
the enhanced IT ethos of the school.’

‘Me, Headmaster?’ Maxwell splayed hurt and amazed fingers on his chest. ‘But I am legend wherever IT gurus gather.’

‘That could be taken both ways, Max,’ Diamond was quick to respond.

Darn. The man was back to his nit-picking self. ‘No, really, Headmaster. I have come on in leaps and bounds.’ Distant music grew in volume and filled the room.
Diddle iddle diddle iddle diddle iddle iddle iddle iddle iddle
. Maxwell looked around, confused.

‘It’s your phone,’ said Diamond, raising his voice over the noise.

‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell said. ‘
The Bum of the Flightlebee
. I thought I recognised it.’ He
pressed the right button first go and looked up at Diamond proudly. ‘Maxwell.’ His salutations were usually much more baroque, but he was trying to impress the Headmaster. It was never too late to start that kind of thing.

On the other end of the phone Jacquie, with lightning reflexes honed as both DS Carpenter and Mrs Maxwell, realised he was somewhere rather more public even than his office. ‘I assume you’re with someone.’

‘Absolutely on the money as always, heart,’ he said.

‘Right. I was just wondering how it went with Leah.’

‘Not wonderfully, to be frank.’

‘Ah. Have you spoken to anyone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Diamond?’

‘Again, spot on.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Umm …’

‘Sorry. One, two, three, four …’

‘Let me stop you there.’ Out of ten, that was a reasonable score for the success of his interview with Legs, he felt.

‘Oh, rats. I was hoping you might have got somewhere. It’s a bit of a dead end here, really. I’m tracking down the other names I have via the parental contact details but, surprise, surprise, they’re not in, or they wish they’d never been to
the police or the other million excuses we always get.’

‘Great. Well, that’s wonderful. Give the little chap a kiss from me and I’ll see you at home. Bye now.’ Maxwell clicked the right button for the second time in a row and ended the call. He looked at Diamond. ‘Jacquie,’ he smiled. ‘Just giving me an update on Nolan.’

‘Yes,’ Diamond said, concern wiping across his face on cue. ‘How is the little one?’

‘Bruised. Loves his stitches. Hopefully, he will have learnt that when the steps run out on a ladder, it’s a good idea to stop climbing.’

Diamond gave a half-hearted chuckle. If only Nicole Thompson could learn the same lesson.

Maxwell opened the door and made to leave, but turned in the doorway. ‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ he asked. ‘Because, obviously, if you’re not I would be more than happy to help out.’

Diamond was round the desk and behind Maxwell with his hand in the small of his back like a rat up a pipe. ‘Ha ha,’ he laughed mirthlessly. ‘Oh, yes, always the jokes, eh, Max? Well, can I leave that assembly thing to you, then? Excellent.’ They heard movement in the adjacent office and through the frosted glass both men saw the unmistakable shadow of Pansy Donaldson, and she was coming their way.

Maxwell showed the whites of his eyes and was away up the corridor with a turn of speed
creditable in a man half his age. James Diamond stayed where he was, transfixed like a rabbit in the thrall of a stoat, albeit the largest stoat in the whole world.

The door opened. ‘Mr Diamond. Glad to have caught you.’ She looked up the corridor and said with some venom, ‘Was that Mr Maxwell in there with you all that time? He should know better than to waste the time of someone as busy as you.’

‘No, no, Mrs Donaldson. It was an important meeting. Now, how may I help you?’

She snorted in Maxwell’s direction and tossed her head. Then she turned what she liked to think was a calming and professional countenance on Diamond. In fact, her face looking, as it did, like a particularly malevolent currant bun, made him feel quite queasy. ‘I just thought I’d bring you up to speed on the Julie Jackson scenario.’

Diamond compressed his lips and suppressed a remark along the lines of the fact that it was his lunchtime and she was being paid almost what he was and why couldn’t she just update the Julie Jackson scenario herself and leave him alone? The words that crept out were different. ‘Thank you, Mrs Donaldson.’

She stood there complacently, hands clasped over what she no doubt considered to be her waist.

He nodded at her encouragingly. ‘So, what is
the speed up to which you wish to bring me?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Diamond,’ she said with a barely discernible bridle. ‘I assumed you might want to continue this in your office.’

‘Why?’ he snapped. ‘Everybody seems to want to come into my office today. Just tell me.’

‘All right,’ she said. What she didn’t say, but was thinking it so obviously that she might as well have spoken aloud was – you ungrateful pig. I was just trying to stop you getting bad news out here in the corridor. But OK, here goes. ‘She seems to have disappeared.’

‘What?’ The corridor walls and ceiling spun round and he closed his eyes. That was worse, as they were then spinning round in the dark. He raised his lids quickly and there was the doughy face of Mrs Donaldson, much closer than it needed to be. ‘Aaghh. Oh, sorry, it’s the strain.’ He drew himself up and took a deep breath. ‘Mrs Donaldson. I want Bernard Ryan and Peter Maxwell in my office now.’

‘But, Mr Diamond, you don’t look at all well.’

‘I wouldn’t expect to, the way I feel,’ he spat. ‘Just fetch them and then come in yourself. I think this thing just got bigger than all of us.’ He looked in horror at her size thirty bulk and wished he could eat his words. But she had not noticed as she hurried away, excited to be in on an adventure, even if it was to include that sarcastic so-and-so Peter Maxwell. That he had
sunk to getting people to make prank calls to her switchboard wasn’t something she was going to forgive in a hurry, oh no. Her door swung to behind her and James Diamond, feeling rather less than sparkling and using door jamb and sundry furniture to support his wobbling legs, made his way to behind his desk and waited for the chaos to begin.

Peter Maxwell hummed snatches from other Rimsky-Korsakov ditties as he trotted along the corridor to his office. A Pot Noodle wasn’t terribly exciting, but he found pleasure in the small things these days and to find that the thing was edible on even a basic level was always a nice surprise, for all Nostradamus had not had the foresight to warn us about them.

He walked in, hand outstretched for the comestible, lovingly prepared by Helen Maitland, the Fridge, safely re-ensconced as his deputy after a short stretch in the madcap world of the SLT. But there was no noodle-based snack to hand.

‘Helen? Where is my Satay Pot Noodle?’

‘I’ve eaten it,’ she said. ‘It was going soggy. Anyway, you wouldn’t have had time to eat it. Legs wants you in his office.’

‘Just been there,’ he said, shouldering past her to the real fridge to see if the cheese that he had stashed there some time ago was still remotely edible.

‘Yep. I’ve eaten the cheese, by the way. He wants you there again.’

‘That must be about what Pansy wanted to tell him.’

‘Pansy?’

‘Yes. Upsetting, isn’t it? There were so many other less attractive plants after which Mrs Donaldson’s parents could have named her.’

‘Bladderwort,’ suggested Helen.

Maxwell laughed. ‘I literally cannot top that one, Helen,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure you won’t mind if I claim it as my own from now on. I hope Pansy hasn’t been called to the presence. I won’t find it easy to face her after that.’