Maxwell's Retirement (9 page)

Helen patted him on the shoulder. ‘Off you go,’ she said. ‘There’s no one better than you at keeping a poker face. If you’re good, I’ll buy you a sandwich for later.’

‘You’re a star. Where will you leave it?’

‘In the drawer where you keep your custard,’ she said, with a questioning lift of an eyebrow.

‘Have you been reading my desk?’

‘Not particularly. But I understand that Nicole Thompson has.’

‘Clara? Why should she be behind my desk?’

‘She’s everywhere, Max. Behind every Great Man’s desk. Don’t trust her an inch. I certainly don’t. Don’t put anything personal on your laptop, she’ll be reading it in a flash.’ She looked up to see him staring at her. ‘Oh, sorry.’ She
gave him a push which nearly broke his arm. ‘What was I thinking? Off you go, don’t keep Mr Diamond waiting.’

‘I don’t suppose you know what it’s about?’

‘Not a clue. BLT?’

‘Another initiative? Like AFL?’

‘No, Max. Stop it, now, and be serious. BLT. Bacon lettuce and tomato. Sandwich.’

‘Oh, yes. Just practising.’

She spirited a large chunk of chocolate from somewhere amongst her clothing and bit into it with frighteningly efficient teeth. ‘See you later,’ she mumbled round it.

‘I hope so,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’ll try to come out alive.’

Helen waggled her fingers at him and sat down at her desk and flipped open her laptop. The faint grey light that lit her face seemed to turn her into someone else, someone of a species other than the one to which Maxwell happily belonged. She double-took something that pinged up on her screen and, deciding it might be amusing rather than horrendous, turned to tell Maxwell. But he had already left the office and was on his way back down the corridor. And he wasn’t humming now.

Jacquie had grown tired of her eagle’s nest fastness and had wandered back down into the scrum of the main office. She had had rebuff
after rebuff, phones ringing with no reply, several brushes with cleaning ladies and au pairs from unspecified and unidentifiable EU member countries of which no one has heard. She had had just one conversation that she counted as a success, with a very tearful and unhappy mother who she was visiting later in the afternoon. She wondered what the woman’s motive had been in going to the police. She felt that it was largely because of the disappointment she felt that her daughter had not shared everything that was happening with her.

‘I thought we were such good
friends
, Detective Sergeant Carpenter. We used to do
everything
together. And now this. She hadn’t said a word.’

Jacquie was of the school of parenting which believed that your child could have loads of friends, mates, acquaintances, later on many boyfriends, girlfriends, lovers, even multiple wives and husbands. But only one mother. Only one father. But if that was what this woman, Daisy Wilkins, wanted, then that was fine. She would never find out from the questions Jacquie asked that her opinions were not the same.

‘I think it would be easier if I popped round this afternoon,’ Jacquie had suggested. ‘So I can speak to your daughter … er …’ Her finger slid down the list.

‘Maisie.’

Of course. ‘Yes, Maisie. Do you have a good time for me to visit?’

‘Well, she has tennis on Wednesdays.’

‘But today?’

‘She used to have oboe on Thursdays, but it was giving her lines around her lips.’

‘So … a good time would be?’ Jacquie persisted.

‘Any time after five,’ Daisy said. ‘But not too late, because she has homework, of course. And she sometimes goes out. And, of course, she spends quite a lot of time on the computer.’ There was a little silence, full of unspoken regrets. ‘Looking up things for school, I expect.’

‘Yes, possibly,’ Jacquie said. She had to wind this up before Daisy drove her potty. No wonder Maisie spent time elsewhere. ‘Will your husband be home from work by then?’ she asked, innocently.

‘No,’ Mrs Wilkins said tartly. ‘He hasn’t been home for the last ten years.’

‘So it’s just the two of you, then?’ Jacquie asked and immediately wished she had not spoken.

‘Yes.’ The woman dissolved into fresh tears. ‘Just the two of us. My baby and me.’

‘Right. Well, I’ll be round after five, then. Try to keep her at home until I arrive, Mrs Wilkins, won’t you? ’Bye for now.’ Jacquie wanted to suggest that Daisy didn’t tell Maisie that Jacquie was on the way. But, of course, she reminded
herself, they shared everything. She sighed and put down the phone. Some days she wondered whether she shouldn’t have just gone in for social work and be done with it.

A voice in her ear brought her back to earth. ‘Jacquie. How’s the office?’

She turned and found that the speaker was one of the WPCs from Traffic along the hall. ‘Fine, thanks, Yvonne. How did you know about it?’

‘I heard from Steve.’

‘Steve?’

‘Front desk.’ The woman looked for signs of recognition. ‘Kipper?’

‘Oh. Yes. Well, it did smell really horrible.’

‘Nothing quite like it, is there? But you know something? Matt couldn’t smell it. He’s got hardly any sense of smell.’

‘Oh,’ Jacquie said, a bit bemused. ‘I’m sorry, Yvonne. It’s been a bit of an odd day so far. Why is that funny? Surely it spoilt the joke.’

‘No, no, Jacquie.’ Yvonne poked her in the ribs. ‘Think about it. He’s sitting in there, smell enough to choke you. Someone goes in. Does Matt say, “Phew, can you smell that smell?” No, he doesn’t say anything. So … everyone assumes he is responsible. Now do you get it?’

The light dawned. ‘So everyone thought he had …’

‘Yes.’ The WPC’s laugh rang out around the room. ‘And with his surname being Carter, of
course, well, he’s got a whole new nickname now! Anyway, I must be off. Just thought I’d pop in and see if I could have a chat. How’s Nolan?’

‘Oh, fine,’ Jacquie said. ‘Just a bump at school.’

‘They will do it,’ Yvonne said. ‘My kids are in the Sixth Form now and not quite so clumsy, but they make up for it in being miserable little sods.’

Yvonne’s twins were legendary in the nick as being the tearaways to watch and, if possible, remove from the scene before they got their mum into trouble.

‘I thought they were quite …’ Jacquie had to think for a second for a word that wouldn’t give offence and finally found it, ‘boisterous.’

‘Yes, that was them all right. But now they just mope about. I’m at my wits’ end, tell you the truth.’

Jacquie thought fast and didn’t like the results she came up with. ‘Yvonne, have you got a minute? If the guv’nor is free, I think we’d like a word with you. You probably won’t like it, but you may well be the answer to a maiden’s prayer.’

Yvonne looked at her quizzically. ‘Why won’t I like it?’

‘It may be nothing. But if it’s what I think, we may have found ourselves a very useful mole. Are you game?’

‘I’ll tell you later, can I?’

‘Of course.’ Jacquie took her by the elbow and
led her across to Henry Hall’s door. She tapped on it and listened for his murmured response. She put her head round the edge and Yvonne heard her say quietly, ‘Guv, I think we may have a bit of a breakthrough in the phone and Internet thing.’

The traffic cop’s heart constricted in her chest. It was an instinctive chain reaction, built into the synapses of any mother of the twenty-first century. Internet. Paedophile ring. Her little girl. Oh God. She was almost in tears already as Jacquie opened the door and ushered her in.

The bus reached the end of its journey. When it had begun, edging out of Leighford bus station, it had been almost full, its passengers representing the many and various sections of the population. There was the obligatory little old lady sitting at the front, smugly ensconced in the ‘Please give up this seat to anyone who is elderly or disabled’ seat. Her bad leg was prominently displayed in front of her in the best position to get kicked by anyone joining the bus. This gave her a perfect opportunity to wince and clutch her calf, whilst muttering imprecations against babies in buggies, babies not in buggies, toddlers, school-age children, mothers, fathers, other old people and anyone else not covered by her rather comprehensive list. There were many from the babies and mothers camp. Some were screaming, some just whimpering. Some of the babies were also making a reasonable amount of noise. Add
to the mix the tinny flick of the iPod earphones screwed into ears so pierced it was a miracle there was still an unimpeded hole to take the plugs. Apply on top the whine of the motor as the driver changed gear as he crept through the daytime traffic past the shopping centre, and it was easy to see why no one noticed their fellow passengers. The aural and olfactory overload was such that everyone just battened down their personal hatches and tried to bear the journey until their stop.

Soon, the town was left behind and the passengers got fewer and fewer. The bus wound over The Dam and up onto the Downs, its destination a village so remote that only the most determined tourists ever went there. The driver was alone with his thoughts for the last five miles and that was how he liked it. He switched on his radio and sang along lustily with the Golden Oldies of Coast FM, mercifully devoid of DJ diddle-daddle as it was. So he didn’t know about the two abandoned mobile phones on the back seat of his bus, although they had been bleeping and ringing throughout the journey. He found them along with empty crisp packets and a particularly nasty-looking half-chewed Wispa when he did his lost-property sweep after he had turned his empty vehicle round. He hefted the phones thoughtfully in his hand and considered what to do with them. He had several options and they needed careful thought. He could hand them
in at the depot. This would result in paperwork. He could toss them in the waste basket at the bus stop where he was parked for the regulation ten minutes as he waited for the phantom passenger who never came. No paperwork. He could keep them and see how much they would net him on an Internet site. Again, no paperwork, save a few boxes to tick and possibly a few quid in his pocket.

He was sitting in his seat looking down at them and had just decided to go with option three when a voice made him jump.

‘Hello, driver.’

A passenger after all this time. He straightened in his seat and looked up, blinking. ‘Hello. We don’t usually get anyone getting on here. Sorry if I seemed rude.’ All the drivers on the Leighford routes had gone to customer services courses. He, along with all his colleagues, had found them a complete waste of time, but the constant threat of customer feedback had kept them all on their toes. Even on the school runs when they had to battle with those psychos from Leighford High.

‘Not at all. I don’t usually use the bus myself, but my car is off the road. You do go straight to Leighford, don’t you? Not the scenic route or anything?’

‘As straight as the road is,’ the driver said and, looking again at his passenger, added, ‘Vicar.’

The man smiled. He always liked to know
that he could trust the ocular powers of a man who was, albeit briefly, to be responsible for his life. He looked down at the phones in the driver’s hand. ‘Two mobiles? My word, you like to stay in touch, I can see.’

The driver knew when he was beaten. Option three might be all right, but God seemed to have weighed in for option one. ‘Lost property, Vicar,’ he said. ‘Going to hand them in at the depot.’

‘Well done,’ the vicar beamed. ‘Honesty is the best policy. Now, how much is a return to Leighford?’

‘Six pounds twenty, Vicar.’

‘
How much?
No wonder no one uses these buses.’ The man of God moved off down the bus, inspecting and rejecting seats as he went for various reasons ranging from smears of rusk to smears of something unidentifiable. When he reached the back, he decided to settle. He braced himself in the corner as the bus lurched away from the stop; these seats were really not terribly comfortable. Something was sticking into what his mother had always called the top of his leg, but which he more prosaically, despite his calling, called his bum. He wriggled to make himself more comfortable and the small notebook was pushed down even further between the cushions. Its secrets were pressed tighter together as his weight and the vibrations of the bus wedged it more firmly into its hiding place. Would anyone find it now?

Maxwell sat in Diamond’s office, not in his usual chair, which had been snaffled by Bernard Ryan, and tried not to lose his temper. Bernard Ryan defied description really. As Deputy Heads go – and they usually do – he was just the acceptable side of God-awful. Tipped for the top he would never reach, he looked increasingly burnt out these days. Like Maxwell, he knew where the bodies were buried, but, unlike Maxwell, he wasn’t talking. As always he was trying to minimise the problem. Yes, the girl could hardly be called ‘missing’ when she had only been off the radar for a couple of hours at most. But, there were extenuating circumstances, which Ryan didn’t seem able to grasp. Mrs Donaldson sat at Diamond’s right hand, with a pad on her knee. Maxwell wished that he had been there to witness the small power struggle which must have gone on before she bagged the pole position from Ryan. Finally, he could take it no longer.

‘Bernard,’ he cut into the man’s droning. ‘I don’t know about you, but I have work to do, even though it is only teaching, which I appreciate is very little of your day. May I recap, Headmaster?’

Diamond was spread too thin to argue.

‘Imagine these remarks as bullet points, Bernard. It might help you cope better. Bullet One is that there is something going on in this area in general but, for our purposes today, in Leighford
High School which is potentially serious. Bullet Two is that our girls and only the girls are being targeted by someone who has their mobile numbers and their email addresses. Bullet Three is that one of the identified girls, which I think we have already agreed may be the tip of the iceberg,’ he glanced across at Mrs Donaldson, who flicked over a page or two and then reluctantly nodded assent, ‘now seems to be, if not actually missing, not where she ought to be. And Bullet Four, I have to add, is that I think we ought to call the police.’

Diamond and Ryan both chorused, ‘Police? No.’

Maxwell looked at them, both professionals, both allegedly intelligent, and not able to make a simple decision to save their lives. Or anyone else’s life. ‘Compromise, gentlemen?’

Diamond was quicker on the uptake than Ryan, who was mulling over what trick Maxwell was trying to pull. ‘Mrs Maxwell?’

‘The same.’

‘That reminds me, Mr Maxwell,’ Mrs Donaldson piped up. ‘I had a rather annoying call from a woman this morning who claimed to be your wife but didn’t seem at all sure what her name was.’

‘I heard about that,’ Maxwell said. ‘Detective Sergeant Carpenter, as she is still known at the nick, is also Mrs Maxwell. Confusing old world, isn’t it?’

‘I had no idea …’ she blustered.

‘Did you ask Thingee? She knows Jacquie. They go way back.’

‘Thingee?’

‘He means Emma, on reception,’ offered Diamond. He and Maxwell went way back too.

‘Well, why didn’t he say so?’ she muttered, annoyed that she had been made to look silly. ‘I prefer my staff to be called by their proper names, not some stupid nickname. It is very demeaning.’

Maxwell snorted quietly. Bernard Ryan, every cell in his body screaming against it, spoke up for him. ‘Mrs Donaldson. If Max started calling people by their real names, we would think the world had come to an end. They are just terms of endearment, Max, aren’t they?’

‘Mostly,’ he conceded, with ice in his smile.

‘For example,’ Diamond chipped in, ‘behind my back, Max calls me Legs, after Legs Diamond, the famous gangster of the Thirties.’

‘Well done, Headmaster.’ Maxwell’s admiration and amazement almost cancelled each other out. ‘And Nicole Thompson from IT is Clara.’ He paused. ‘After Clara Bow, the It Girl.’ Their faces remained blank. ‘Never mind. You won’t remember him, Mrs Donaldson, but we used to have a caretaker, Mr Martin. So I called him Betty, after “all my eye of a yarn and Betty Martin”, a phrase whose meaning is now lost to time and even to me. Do you see how it works?’
They clearly didn’t. He was dreading the next question and, right on cue, it came.

‘What do you call us?’ Mrs Donaldson asked, indicating her ample self and Bernard Ryan.

Maxwell’s brain, working overtime as it had been, folded its tents and left the oasis. He longed to come out with a merry quip to cover the fact that Ryan was too boring to have a nickname and he had christened her after a hated concentration camp guard. But there was just a void where that merry quip should be. He resorted to mimicry, the true last resort of a scoundrel. ‘I’ve got nothing.’ His perfect Randy Disher was wasted on them. If they had Hallmark on their TVs, they were clearly not aficionados of
Monk
. Heaven knew, they could do with a preternaturally talented private investigator now. And they’d all thank him later.

The silence ticked on for a few more seconds. Then, ‘So, Max, perhaps you’d like to ring your wife,’ Diamond suggested. ‘Just in the first instance. Unofficially, as it were.’

‘Why not?’ Maxwell said and proudly brought out his mobile phone. He hit the speed dial and they all sat waiting as the connection went through.

Yvonne Thomas could hardly sit still. Jacquie took a seat to the side of Hall’s desk, unconsciously mirroring Pansy Donaldson, miles away across town. The traffic woman policeman sat facing them, perched on the edge of her chair.

‘For God’s sake,’ she burst out. ‘What’s going on? Are my kids OK?’

Hall never lied. ‘We don’t know, Yvonne. There is a problem which has only just come to our attention, but could or could not be extremely serious. Someone is targeting girls of about the age of …?’ he paused. He had no idea what her daughter was called, but it seemed only polite to at least suggest that he had the name at the tip of his tongue.

‘Amanda. Seventeen, nearly. What do you mean, targeting?’

‘They get texts on their phones, emails. That kind of thing.’

‘I would know if she was,’ the woman said, her throat tight with indignation and fear. ‘She tells me everything.’

‘I think we have to accept,’ Hall said patiently, ‘that no child tells its parents everything. I’m not sure it would be good for any of us if they did.’

‘I’m already glad that Nolan keeps things to himself,’ Jacquie said. ‘If I knew half of the things he did at school, my hair would be white.’

‘Do Amanda and her brother share a computer?’ Hall asked. He gave himself a pat on the back for remembering that she was a twin.

‘Yes. Well, we all share it, really. I didn’t want them to be hiding away upstairs on chat rooms and things so it is in the dining room. Well, study, now, I suppose.’

‘But she has her own email account?’

‘We all do, yes. You have to give them
some
privacy.’

‘Of course you do,’ said Hall.

‘Is it password protected?’ Jacquie said. ‘Can you access it from any computer?’

‘We all have the same password,’ Yvonne said. ‘For the same reason we didn’t want them to have a computer in their rooms. But I wouldn’t pry. We’ve promised them that.’

‘I suggest you pry now,’ Hall said. ‘Are they close, the kids?’

‘They’re twins,’ she said simply. ‘Although I know twins of different sexes aren’t always closer than ordinary brothers and sisters, these two are. They are hardly ever apart.’

‘So he will know, then? About this, if she is getting these texts and emails?’

‘Certainly. His name is Josh, by the way.’ She knew Hall was waiting for the information.

‘Josh. Of course.’ He sounded as though he had always known.

Jacquie turned Hall’s laptop towards Yvonne. ‘Can you log on to Amanda’s email account, please?’

‘You can’t get it from this server,’ the woman said, naively. ‘It’s blocked.’

‘Yvonne,’ Jacquie said. ‘This is DCI Hall’s computer. Nothing is blocked from here.’

‘Oh, yes. Silly.’ She tapped a few keys and
waited. She looked up at them, gnawing her lip. ‘A bit slow,’ she said, with a nervous laugh. ‘Oh, here it comes.’ She tapped in a few more letters, then frowned at the screen. ‘Hang on, I’ve probably put it in wrong.’ Hall and Jacquie exchanged glances. ‘Oh, God!’ She pushed herself away from the desk and stood up, her hands to her mouth. ‘Why has she done that? She’s changed her password. I can’t get in.’ She looked frantically from one to the other, her eyes wide and filling with tears. ‘What does it mean? Is she all right? Has anyone …?’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. Even in traffic, a police person was well aware of man’s inhumanity to man.

Jacquie went over to her and put her arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently back into the chair. ‘Come on, Yvonne. Calm down. We have no reason to assume that whoever is doing this is hurting the girls or even meeting them. But we need to get in touch with Amanda and get into her emails.’ Her phone rang out with Rimsky-Korsakov’s finest. She foraged in her bag and pulled it out. She looked at the display and hit a button. ‘Not now, Max. I’ll ring you back.’

The phone rang just a few times before it was answered. Before he could speak, Jacquie said, ‘Not now, Max. I’ll ring you back,’ and the line went dead.

‘Sorry, gents and lady,’ Maxwell said. ‘It
appears the little woman is busy. Probably with entrails or something, if we are to believe Nurse Matthews. I’ll ring back later and then get back to you, if that is acceptable?’ He beamed round the room. On each face relief was written large, particularly large in the case of Pansy Donaldson.