Maxwell’s Reunion (20 page)

Jacquie agreed with the sentiment. She stumbled backwards until she found herself in the hall, then turned and ran.

She wasn’t exactly equipped for a night raid. She had a torch, but a torch in the Lodge’s grounds was asking for trouble. And her heels would bite into the soft soil near the walls. Above all, she had no clue as to the place’s layout and no jurisdiction whatsoever. It wasn’t even her patch.

She turned her collar up and tucked the mace into her pocket. The rhododendrons loomed large and monstrous in the early hours’ dark, but they gave her shelter and she was grateful for that. She knew that the front door was alarmed, with surveillance cameras and sensitive lights, but what about the rest of it? She felt her shoes squelch on the springy grass and wiped the water dripping from her eyebrows.

It was like those corny old B-features that Max loved – the creaking old house and the driving rain. All that was missing was the thunder lode and thunder light she remembered from Chesterton’s poem at school. Pathetic fallacy, Max called it; when old Mrs Danvers stood at the burning window of Manderley or Richard Johnson’s ghost-hunting team came unglued in
The Haunting
. But this wasn’t celluloid. It was real. And she was scared.

The back of the Lodge had a row of windows that reached to the ground. Here, a gravel patio led to steps, where the ground fell away to landscaped gardens and a circular pond whose fountain had been switched off for the winter. Jacquie edged her way in as close as she dared, but the gravel would betray her and the flagstone path that led to the back door was certain to be alarmed. Her only hope was the single-storey wing that stretched ahead of her, the stables of the old house.

Now she was in the Lodge’s shadow, the building rearing up above her at this lower level of ground. Then she saw it; a window half hidden by wisteria giving on to the path. She edged closer, checking to left and right. Then she was on the ledge and putting her weight against the panes. Nothing. It was locked, probably bolted on the inside. She angled the mace can, covering her face with her jacket against flying debris, and smashed the glass.

She knelt there in silence, her heart pounding. There was no alarm. Now that the glass had stopped falling, there was no sound at all. She picked out the remaining shards and found the catch. Then she wriggled forward on her hands and knees and was in. It took a while for the room to reveal its secrets. It was a half-cellar-cum-storage room, with packing cartons and piles of Bibles with lurid dust wrappers. She checked the corners and found the door. Beyond it, a faint glow lit stone steps snaking upward. These, she knew, were the old servants’ quarters, where tweenies long dead would scuttle with buckets and brooms and tubs of hot water.

There were doors to both sides and she tried them all. Broom cupboard one. Broom cupboard two. A toilet. All the usual offices. The fourth door wouldn’t budge. Locked. She used her shoulder. Nothing. She put her ear to it. ‘Max.’ Her whisper sounded like a yell. ‘Max, are you there?’ Nothing. She turned and made for the light.

There was no door at the top of the stairs, just another glow from the candles and the stained glass that created the reflected image in the centre of the hall floor. Two rooms off here she knew – the chapel where she’d drunk coffee with the Preacher and the little library where the Preacher had talked to Max. A third door faced her, and it was this one she tried. She couldn’t see any surveillance cameras in the corners, nor in any of the usual vantage points. Anyway, by the time they came to check the loop in the morning, she’d be long gone.

The door opened into an office, wide and spacious, with two computers, banks of filing cabinets and a clutter of phones. Now, and only now, would she risk her torch. The pencil beam darted here and there, flickering over papers, letters and memos without end. There was a visitors’ book, but it had not been maintained. The last entry was nearly four months ago. Besides, no one denied that Peter Maxwell had been here; it was just that no one, apparently, had actually seen him leave.

She mechanically checked the filing cabinets, flicking through a battery of names. Angel Kesteven was there and Gilda Schultz, but the name that caught her eye was John Wensley. She was in the act of fishing out the manila when she heard footsteps. She grabbed the file, killing the torch beam as she did so, and ducked behind the cabinet. The light hurt her eyes when it flicked on, and a dark-haired, handsome man stood there, silk shirt open and a belt glinting with studs around his waist. The Preacher followed, no longer in the grey kaftan but booted and hatted, dressed for the road.

The young man was rummaging about, looking for something.

‘What are you after, Paulo?’ Jacquie heard Wensley ask.

‘My keys.’ The voice was different, foreign. Jacquie couldn’t quite place it.

There was a jingle. Perhaps the Preacher was holding them in his hand; perhaps Paulo had found them. ‘Come on,’ she heard Wensley say. ‘There’s a long way to go yet.’ And the light went out and the door closed.

It was already light by the time Jacquie reached Leighford. The sea was a great silver slab, cold and shifting in the early dawn. Not that Jacquie saw it. Her mind was racing with the events of the night and the contents of the file, along with the potential significance of the cricket bat in the back of her car. She clawed at the handbrake, killed the ignition and a moment later was leaning on the doorbell.

‘Jacquie?’ A large, attractive woman opened the door, housecoat thrown on in a hurry, no slippers on her feet. ‘Jacquie, may I say you look like shit?’

‘Thanks, Mrs Hall.’ The detective brushed past her. ‘Is your husband in?’

‘In,’ Henry Hall was standing in his dressing gown, looking more than a little bemused, ‘and until two minutes ago in bed. Jacquie, you look like shit.’

Jacquie Carpenter hadn’t hear the DCI use the ‘sh’ word very often. It wasn’t really part of his vocabulary. But then she’d rarely seen him without his glasses and never in his pyjamas.

‘I think you should read this, sir.’ She held the file out to him.

‘Suppose you paraphrase for me.’ It was a little early for Henry Hall. He led her into the living room. Jacquie had never been here before, either. She’d always met the guv’nor on communal turf; the nick, an incident room or among the blood of some murder scene. ‘Be a love and put some coffee on, would you?’ Hall said over his shoulder.

‘Of course, o Master.’ But she was calling from the kitchen, with the coffee-maker already in her hand.

Jacquie sat on the settee as Hall opened the large curtains. The brightness of the sky hurt his eyes for a moment, then he turned to face her. ‘You know I didn’t buy the leave story, don’t you?’ he said.

She came to the point. ‘It’s Maxwell, sir. He’s missing.’

Hall moved to a chair, sliding aside a pile of newspapers and his kids’ homework. ‘Men like Maxwell don’t go missing, Jacquie, they go ape.’

‘I’m serious, sir.’

He knew that. The girl in front of him was tense, pale and worn out. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. ‘What’s the file all about?’ he asked.

Jacquie paused, gnawing her lip. Max always told her off for that, said it made her look like Richard III. She usually swiped him around the head with something, and she’d have given anything to have been able to do that this morning. ‘Maxwell was carrying out his own enquiries, sir.’ She’d taken a deep breath before saying this, only too aware of the DCI’s likely reaction. But there wasn’t one. He didn’t shout, snarl, throw his hands in the air or sob. He just looked at her.

‘He went to see all his old mates from the Halliards reunion,’ she went on. ‘First Alphedge, then Muir, then Asheton, then Wensley.’

‘And?’ Hall had found his glasses on the coffee table and he put them on. Once more they hid his eyes from the world; exactly the way he liked it.

‘I’ve no proof that he left any of them, other than their word, of course. I began to think … well, all sorts of things. What if it’s a conspiracy and they’re all in on it?’

Hall nodded. ‘It’s been known.’

‘Then I got to the Lodge, the place where Wensley is staying until he leaves the country. I think that’s what he’s going to do now.’

‘Doing a runner?’

Jacquie nodded.

‘Why?’

‘I got this from the office at the Lodge. It’s Wensley’s file. He’s got form.’

Hall shrugged. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘Warwickshire CID came up with that. While he was still at that hotel in Birmingham. Various charges against the Church of God’s Children …’

‘No,’ Jacquie cut in, ‘you don’t understand, guv. This has nothing to do with that – or perhaps everything. Wensley did time for murder.’

Hall sat upright. ‘Murder?’

‘He killed his own family – mother and father.’

‘Jesus.’ Hall snatched the file, riffled through it, then grabbed the phone, pushing buttons as if his life depended on it. ‘Ian? Henry Hall. Look, I want a national alert out, now. A John Wensley, possibly travelling in a priest’s get-up. All ports, airports, everywhere. South and east, west. I don’t know. He’ll probably head for the States, but we can’t bet on it. Get in touch with DS Rackham at Leighford. If he’s not there, get his home number and wake him up. He’s got a detailed description from Warwickshire CID. Then get me Interpol. I need to talk to somebody in Spain, just in case.’

Margaret Hall came in with the coffee, sensing the electricity in the air. ‘Three-piece today, Henry?’ She sighed. ‘I’ll take the boys to Mother.’

Hall was waving the file in the air. ‘This is good work, Jacquie,’ he was saying. ‘A breakthrough at last. I’m getting dressed. Margaret, get this girl a bacon sarnie or something.’

He crashed through the large door in front of him and the red- kaftanned woman screamed and leaped back from her desk. The apparition before her was wild eyed, swaying like a wounded bear with dark brown blood in rivulets the length of his face.

‘Call the police,’ he snarled.

‘W … what happened to you?’ The woman was shouting hysterically, cowering in a corner between desk and filing cabinet.

‘Gilda!’ a voice thundered, and she froze in mid-shriek. ‘Gilda.’ It was calmer now. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. Jesus, Max. What happened to you?’ It was John Wensley, standing in the doorway.

Maxwell turned faster than he should have, the room swimming in his vision. He snatched up the phone, the only weapon that came to hand. ‘No bat this time, Preacher?’ He was edging the man back, out through the door, ripping the phone line from the wall, cradling the plastic in his hand.

‘Max?’ Wensley was retreating, shaking his head, his hands in the air. ‘I don’t understand. What’s happened to you?’

‘Let me make a shrewd guess,’ Maxwell hissed, unsteady, sick and shaking. ‘When I left you last night, you decided to make me number three on your mad bloody list. Quentin you bashed and hanged. Bingham you just bashed. What’s the matter, John, lost your touch, old man?’ He raised the phone, about to smash it against Wensley’s skull when the Preacher suddenly folded like some outsize marionette. His knees hit the parquet of the hall and his head flopped against Maxwell’s groin. He was sobbing uncontrollably. For a moment, Maxwell swayed there, unsure what to do. Then he dropped the phone and fell to his knees, cradling the crying man’s head in his hands. He was the Head of Sixth Form again, everybody’s daddy, taking away the woes of the world in his strong arms.

They sat together in the light of the mock coals, Maxwell and his Jacquie. Metternich the cat had been as concerned as anybody about his master’s disappearance, but he wasn’t going to show it.

He just brushed past Maxwell’s one good leg and on out into the night – it was a cat thing.

Jacquie looked up at him, her head on his lap, her arms on his arms, warm and soft and safe. She still hadn’t slept and it was nearly Sunday morning, the rain pattering down on the dark windows of 38 Columbine.

‘You ought to be in hospital,’ she told him again as he reached across her for his Southern Comfort. ‘You can’t fool around with concussion.’

‘Concussion, conshmussion,’ he murmured. ‘And that goes for both of you.’

‘Max?’ She sat up suddenly. ‘Are you still seeing double?’

‘No,’ he growled, to reassure her. ‘Just one and a half.’

She tutted. ‘Men!’

He chuckled. ‘Now, don’t start on that. We’ll be here all night.’

She put her arms around his neck, looking at the dark eyes under the white of the bandage. ‘I’m just glad it’s all over … Max?’ There was an unusual edge to Jacquie’s voice. ‘I know that look. Tell me. What?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘It isn’t over, is it?’

‘What does Hall say?’

‘I don’t know. He seemed pretty convinced by Wensley’s file. But then he was also convinced Wensley would run. Wonder why he didn’t.’

‘All right,’ Maxwell said, easing his aching head back gingerly, ‘let’s put it all together, shall we? I go to the Lodge to talk to the Preacher. He’s even curter than usual. Refuses to talk. I leave … and wallop. When I wake up, it’s in some cellar or other and apparently three days later. I’d lost track of the time – well, you do when you’re enjoying yourself, don’t you – and assumed it was only one.’

‘Which is precisely why you should be in hospital,’ she told him again.

He ignored her. ‘I managed to get out, don’t ask me how, and end up with my attacker blubbering all over me.’

‘Max, you haven’t read the file. He’s a very strange man.’

‘Right.’ Maxwell tried to focus on the wall lamps around the room. ‘Talk me through the file again.’

‘When Wensley left school, his family moved, to Spain. Something to do with his father’s business.’

‘That’s right,’ Maxwell recalled. ‘His old man was in import-export. Sherries. Wines. Something like that.’

‘Do you remember him? The old man, I mean?’

Maxwell’s cheeks puffed out. ‘Yes, I do, actually. I only met him a couple of times, of course. We didn’t do the sleepover thing like kids do today. He was a bastard, though, that I do remember. The Preacher was terrified of him.’

‘That’s right.’ Jacquie nodded. ‘As he was of somebody at school.’