Maxwell’s Ride, page 3
part #6 of Peter Maxwell Series
‘“Tax gatherers and others”,’ Astley quoted smugly, wrenching paper towels from the dispenser.
‘I thought that meant prostitutes,’ Hall frowned.
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Astley shook his head. ‘Nothing wrong with a little healthy prostitution. Madame Sin of Golden Calf Road, Damascus. No, no, the unmentionable in society. The lot the Jews cleared out of the Temple. The profession – and I use the word guardedly – that dare not speak its name. You mark my words, Henry, for this one you’ll have a list of suspects as long as your arm. It’s the root of all evil, it makes the world go around. And I’d be prepared to bet it put a bullet through Mr Larry Warner, who probably had it coming.’
‘What kind of bullet?’ Hall wanted to know.
‘Oh, now you’re being picky!’ Astley scolded. ‘Robert Churchill the gun expert I’m not. Still, you buy me a cup of coffee upstairs in what we still laughingly call a hospital and I’ll give you the benefit of my years of speculatory wisdom.’
The rain set in mid-morning, sending those who thought spring had sprung scurrying for cover, forcing them to spend a few minutes extra in the Leighford Asda or, God forbid, the Leighford library.
Peter Maxwell was lolling back in his modeller’s chair at the top of his town house, his gold-laced Crimean forage cap at a jaunty angle on his head, a paintbrush at a jaunty angle between his teeth. Before him on his desk, under the glare of the lamp, was scattered plastic arms and legs, 54 millimetres of careful reconstruction. Bored with watching the rain, the Master Modeller leaned forward again and took up the white head.
‘What did you really look like, Albert Mitchell, Private, 13th Light Dragoons?’ he asked it, focusing on the standard plastic features under the magnifying glass. ‘Any ideas, Count?’
The menfolk at 38 Columbine had, it must be admitted, retreated upstairs to Maxwell’s Inner Sanctum. The people he allowed this far into his private world were few indeed. And every one of them had gazed in awe at the plastic horses and their riders on the huge diorama under the skylight and the triangular roof. Three hundred and forty-eight Light Cavalrymen ready to ride into the Jaws of Death, the Mouth of Hell. Albert Mitchell would be the three hundred and forty-ninth.
‘Count?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’
The cat called Metternich flicked an ear. It was the nearest in acknowledgement that Maxwell was likely to get. ‘Ginger, you think? Well, it is possible, I suppose. Bit of a bugger, though, paint-mixing wise. But no, you’re right. I’ve done too many with saddle-brown hair. It is a bit of a cop-out.’
Downstairs, Maxwell’s nieces were working their way through his vast video collection. It was just as well for Will Smith that Independence Day’s president of the United States just happened to be an ex-USAAF pilot, or the world would already have come to an end. Maxwell had calmed them down after the bizarre events at Magic world, dried Lucy’s tears, taken them all out for something repulsive at the local Thai restaurant. Escapism now. That was the order of the day. He’d do them some soup for lunch, then hit them with Babe. No nightmares there.
And in the meantime, there was a little male bonding and plastic bonding to do.
‘Mitchell sailed for the Crimea on board the Culloden, Count.’ Maxwell had ditched his paintbrush and was smearing the soldier’s neck with glue. ‘Had a horse killed in the Charge. Bay, do you think? OK. He reached sergeant eventually – Mitchell, that is, not the horse.’
Metternich ignored him. There was a time he used to listen to his master’s interminable ramblings. But not now. Too much verbiage under the bridge. Too many thermometers up his bum.
‘Ended up a copper of all things, Instructing Constable to the Kent Force. 1885, if my extraordinary, computer-like memory serves. Oh, bugger!’
The doorbell shattered the solitude of the late morning. Metternich raised an ear as if to accuse Maxwell. What haven’t you paid now, untermensch? If he had his way, it wouldn’t be just Maxwell’s water he’d cut off. In his more wistful moments, the cat wondered whether Maxwell knew what it felt like to be a neutered torn, blank-firing.
It was Tiffany’s voice at the bottom of the stairs, ‘Uncle Max, it’s the police.’
It was. A broad-shouldered, dark-haired attitude, who eyed Maxwell as if he were Dr Crippen, was standing in his living-room.
‘Hello, Jacquie.’ Maxwell ignored him and took the police-woman by the hand.
‘Oh,’ the attitude said. ‘You two know each other.’
‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘a detective. Constable … er . . ?’
‘Sergeant,’ he corrected him, flicking out the warrant card. ‘DS Frank Bartholomew. I clearly don’t need to introduce DC Carpenter.’
‘Clearly not,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘Jacquie, it’s been a while.’
It had. They trod a line, did Jacquie and Maxwell, always fine, often a hair’s breadth. It was a line each of them knew they couldn’t cross, wouldn’t cross. Could they? Would they?
‘I’d offer you both a drink,’ Maxwell said, ‘but I fear you’re on duty.’
‘That’s right,’ Bartholomew said, finding a chair. That meant that Jacquie would have to take the settee, with its Maxwell-shaped space next to her. In the event, he stood with his back to the dead electric fire.
‘You’re … let’s see … Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High School. Am I right?’
If Bartholomew had been blindfolded and on the music-hall stage in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Maxwell might have been more impressed.
‘Indubitably.’
‘And these kids …’
‘These young ladies,’ Maxwell corrected him, ‘are my nieces, Tiffany and Lucy Clarke. They’re staying with me for a few days.’
‘That’s weird,’ Bartholomew commented.
Tiffany and Lucy looked at each other. Maxwell crossed to them, putting an arm around their shoulders. ‘The Maxwells are a weird family,’ he smiled. ‘We make the Addamses look like the people next door.’
Bartholomew thought he heard Jacquie stifle a chuckle, but he couldn’t be sure and swept on. ‘You witnessed the shooting at Magicworld yesterday,’ he said.
There was an involuntary gasp from Lucy and Maxwell turned her away. ‘Jacquie, could you take the girls into the kitchen and do us all a coffee? You know where everything is, I think.’
For a moment, Jacquie hesitated, then she gathered the girls up and shepherded them away.
‘I’d appreciate a little more of the softly softly,’ Maxwell rounded on his man. ‘Lucy’s only thirteen.’
‘A man is dead,’ Bartholomew reminded him, like something out of Clichés R Us.
‘Yes, and as far as Lucy’s concerned, from a heart attack. She didn’t see the blood, thank God, and I’ve kept her away from the TV news. Typical of Henry Hall to send a bull into china shop.’
‘Mr Maxwell.’ Bartholomew’s jaw was flexing. ‘Regardless of your niece’s sensibilities, I have a job to do. You claim you witnessed the death.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Maxwell corrected him. ‘I was in the car behind the dead man’s. All I saw was his body slumped in the thing as our car reached the jetty. I told all this to a constable yesterday before we left the Park.’
‘Uniform,’ Bartholomew muttered. ‘Might as well talk to that sofa. I shall need a written statement, Mr Maxwell. From you and your nieces.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Maxwell said. ‘But I must be there when you question them. And I want them questioned by DC Carpenter.’
‘Really? Is there anything else you’d like? Wall to wall carpets in the interview room? A few canapés with the Ferrero Rocher?’
‘What I’d like,’ Maxwell leaned over the man, ‘is civility from a public servant who is an uninvited guest in my house.’
‘One with a statutory right of entry,’ Bartholomew reminded him, standing up.
There was a clearing of a throat behind them. ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Jacquie Carpenter stood at the kitchen door with steaming mugs in her hand. ‘Do you take sugar?’
Neither girl had ever been in a police station before. Maxwell had, not once, but several times. But he’d forgotten the smell, the dust, the piles of paper and the cups of tea. He hadn’t forgotten the bastard on the desk, though, a tall, silver-haired sergeant who was presumably supposed to be the acceptable face of modern policing. Repressing the urge to scream ‘institutionalized racist’ at him, Maxwell merely smiled as the man ushered the three of them into an interview room.
‘Uncle Maxie,’ it was a very small girl who put her hand around the lounge door later that night, ‘Uncle Maxie …’
‘What is it, sweetheart?’ Maxwell put down his glass on the coffee table and cradled Lucy as she cuddled up beside him on the settee.
‘It’s that man,’ she was whispering as though the furniture had ears. ‘The man at Magicworld.’
‘Yes, poppet.’ Maxwell brushed her hair away from her forehead. His own Jenny would be way past this age now, had she lived, had she not gone to that party, had the roads not been wet and that police car in such a hurry. Perhaps with babies of her own. He put his head down to hers and took in the scent of her hair. It took him back. Back to the days when he was a young Head of Department, naive, strong of heart and head, shortly before Queen Anne died, and his own baby lay curled in his arms.
‘He was shot.’
‘Lucy,’ he took her gently by the shoulders and sat her upright, looking hard into the wide, grey eyes. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded. And sniffed. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. She looked smaller in her scruffy tartan pyjamas, her feet encased in lurid pink fluffy mules. Miss Sophistication was Little Miss Muffet by night, Bolshy Spice turned into Thumbelina by the lamp’s glow.
‘I’m sorry about the police station,’ Maxwell said.
‘That’s all right,’ she smiled and leaned back against the sofa ‘She’s nice, your Jacquie.’
‘My Jacquie?’ he raised an eyebrow.
Lucy looked at him, wiser than her years. ‘Uncle Maxie, you fancy her, you know you do.’
‘Do I?’
She suddenly reached across and grabbed his glass, sniffing the amber contents. ‘Southern Comfort,’ she said.
‘From the banks of the good ol’ Mississippi,’ he clicked his tongue and winked at her. ‘And before you ask, no, you can’t have any.’
‘I’m a Malibu girl,’ she said, tossing her long hair and putting the glass down.
‘I’ll have to have a word with your mother about you.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Lucy could be as arch as her uncle when she had a mind. She even raised the same eyebrow. ‘You know she’s having an affair, don’t you?’
‘What?’ Both Maxwell’s eyebrows were raised now.
‘Just kidding.’ It was her turn to wink at him. Then she was quiet for a while. ‘Why didn’t you ever get married, Uncle Maxie?’
Maxwell looked at her. Clearly the girl didn’t know. Her mother could never have told her.
‘I did,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ Lucy scowled, ‘Divorce. It’s very common these days. Brenda Pargeter’s parents are going through one at the moment. Brenda doesn’t mind. Can’t stand her mum, anyway. She drinks.’
‘Brenda or her mum?’ Maxwell thought he’d better ask.
‘We are allowed to, you know,’ Lucy tucked her feet under her bum in what was obviously a family tradition and started playing with a cushion. ‘Legally, drink that is, at home, once we’re twelve …’
‘It wasn’t divorce,’ Maxwell found himself saying. ‘It was an accident. My wife and daughter. They were killed in a car crash. A long, long time ago.’
Lucy sat upright, then she felt her lip go and she threw her arms around her Uncle Maxie, crying bitterly into his shoulder.
‘Now, darling,’ he patted her head, ‘I’m sorry. There was no need to tell you about it. Not now, anyway. Not today. Look, come on,’ he held her at arm’s length, fishing in his pocket with the other hand to find a handkerchief. ‘I’ll never forget my girls,’ he told her, ‘but this week, well, I’ve got two more, even if they are just on hire. Now, blow into this. That’s it. Give us your world famous Poo Lorn impression.’
Lucy trumpeted as ordered, although she’d never heard of Poo Lorn and sat there, looking red-eyed and rather sheepish.
‘Who shot him, Uncle Maxie?’ she asked.
‘The man in the ride?’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, darling. I’m sure the police will find out.’
‘But all the way home in the taxi, Uncle Maxie, you were slagging them off.’
‘Was I?’
‘I think your exact words to Tiff were “incompetent bastards”. Then you turned to me and said “excuse my French”. But the French for bastard is bâtard, Uncle Maxie. Celestine McCracken told me and she should know. Her mother’s French and she is one.’
‘One what?’
‘A bastard.’
‘Oh. Well, it’s all relative, niece of my dreams. It’s true I don’t have much faith in the boys in blue. But sometimes they’re wonderful. And occasionally they solve crimes.’
Lucy was quiet again. ‘Have you seen Cape Fear, Uncle Maxie?’’ she asked him.
‘The Robert Mitchum or the Robert de Niro?’
‘I didn’t know there was a choice,’ she said. ‘The Robert de Niro.’
‘I have,’ he nodded, ‘though I think I preferred the original.’
‘It scared me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Robert de Niro can be a pretty scary bloke. However,’ he put on his teacher’s voice, ‘Cape Fear has an eighteen certificate.’ The eyebrow raised again, ‘Something you watched while sipping Malibu?’
She giggled. It was good to hear. Then she was serious. ‘But the thing that scared me, is that Robert de Niro is out there, isn’t he?’
‘Out there?’ He remembered the song – wasn’t Robert de Niro waiting, talking Italian? ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he’s like … in the school, on the street, he’s everywhere. He comes for the girl.’
Maxwell reached out and took her hand. ‘It’s only a story, sweetheart. A sort of grownups’ Hansel and Gretel. He gets his in the end, doesn’t he? Just like the witch with the gingerbread house?’
‘Oh, I never believed that one.’ She shook her head dismissively. ‘Or perhaps Mummy wasn’t very convincing. I always knew Hansel and Gretel would be okay. But … well, Cape Fear was so real.’
‘It was well done,’ Maxwell agreed.
‘And Magicworld,’ Lucy’s voice was small again, like her in the shadows, ‘That’s real too, isn’t it? Somebody killed that man, murdered him. And he’s still out there.’
‘Like the truth,’ Maxwell murmured, looking the girl full in the face.
‘Can you get him, Uncle Maxie?’ Her voice was scarcely audible and her eyes were like saucers.
‘Get him?’ Maxwell repeated.
‘Can you get Robert de Niro? Like Nick Nolte in the film, can you get him? Stop him?’
‘Sweetheart,’ he squeezed the girl’s hands, ‘he isn’t after you, poppet. Or Tiff. Or me. What happened yesterday was awful, but it’s nothing to do with us.’
‘Isn’t it, Uncle Maxie?’ she asked him in a way that made the hairs on his neck prickle. ‘Isn’t it?’
4
He didn’t like leaving the girls. But at least they were in good hands. Sylvia Matthews’s hands, strong and kind and there. You couldn’t define Sylvia. She was ageless, like Shakespeare’s Egyptian queen. Steady as a rock, comfy as a blanket – but Maxwell’s metaphors (or was it similes?) always did have a habit of getting away from him. Sylvia had been the School Nurse at Leighford High longer than either of them could remember, long before, certainly, the paranoia of Ofsted and the banality of the National Curriculum. Long before any grey at all had begun to appear in Maxwell’s thatch of hair.
Now Sylvia Matthews knew things. And she had secrets. Secrets she kept from the world; that Tanya Blinstock had had an abortion in Year 10; Adam Price’s dad wore women’s undies at the weekend; Sarah Quarrie still, at twelve and a half, wet the bed. But her biggest secret was that she loved Peter ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell. He didn’t know it. Couldn’t know it. Three quarters of the staff at Leighford High and perhaps half the kids had a pretty shrewd idea – that half of the kids that could walk and chew gum, that is. But Peter Maxwell? He was ignorance itself.
And in that ignorance, he’d rung Sylvia that Wednesday morning and explained the situation. A man was dead, in police parlance. The girls were fine … well, fine-ish. Tiff seemed okay, but Lucy? Maxwell was worried about Lucy. Sylvia had called for them at eleven, that time of day that Tiffany felt able to face the world for the first time, after the daily zit check was over, nose to mirror, locked in the bathroom. Maxwell could have reassured her that all was well. Sylvia Matthews, with all her many talents, was the zit nurse too. He watched them drive off into the gilded weather, to do something girly in Guildford.
Then, heigh-ho for the open road. White Surrey was never in mothballs, even in the worst of weathers and the old Raleigh warhorse, named for the charger of the last Plantaganet, chain oiled, rat-traps dangling, spokes spraying silver in the sun, had carried his master now for long, long years. Maxwell hadn’t sat behind the wheel of a car since the accident – the day the music died. He just tucked his trousers into his socks, remembering the Granta days and off he pedalled, in and out of season. Just another facet of being Mad Max.
He knew of course where Jacquie lived. But he knew she had neighbours and didn’t want to make life difficult for her. He parked White Surrey against the wall of the Greasy Chip cafe and went in, ordering a coffee and a Danish. The window seat was taken by two fat ladies, wedged into their chairs, but beyond their bobbing heads and through the nets of the window, he could see the Victorian gates of Leighford nick plainly enough.
He unfurled his Guardian and when the scalding coffee hit his lips, pretended that the tears in his eyes were the result of some particularly moving editorial. He was in serious danger of making a giant hole in his meagre teacher’s salary when on the fourth cup, he saw her, stepping out from the front door. He abandoned his paper, the crumbs of his Danish (which could well have been Viking from the taste) and left the door clanging in his wake. The enormous women in the window stared after him and wondered aloud what his generation was coming to.
