Maxwell's Crossing (24 page)

When she had finished reading, she sat for a moment, thinking. Then, glancing up at the clock, she chugged back her cold coffee and slammed the laptop shut. So much for having more time this morning! And now she
had to somehow make sense of this email and share it with Henry. Damn Jeff O'Malley.

Henry Hall was, as always, totally organised. He put the statements from the remaining two card school members on Jacquie's desk. She wasn't in yet, but if she was late it was always for a reason. He had a quick staff meeting and went to his office to read the post-mortem report and the witness statements on the Jacob Shears case.
I must be getting old,
he thought to himself.
Some of these names sound as familiar as my own. Have I now met everyone in this town? Is Margaret right? Is it time to retire and move somewhere else and grow vegetable marrows, like Hercule Poirot?

But of all of the people who were having less than perfect days, the one whose day had gone most
pear-shaped
had to be Jeff O'Malley. He was cold. He was hungry. He was pretty much lost. But most of all, he was really,
really
angry.

Maxwell was doing some marking in his office waiting for Jacquie when he heard footsteps coming along the corridor. They were accompanied by an uneven trundling, as though a very heavy supermarket trolley with a wonky wheel was being dragged by someone with a gammy leg over cobbles. If it wasn't that, it simply had to be Mrs B, redoubtable cleaner and redistributor of dust for Leighford High, 38 Columbine and any institution not fast enough to say no when she applied for a job. Maxwell hunkered down in the chair and hoped that a cursory glance from the woman would make her assume the room to be empty. This would almost certainly make her miss it out; she only cleaned for an audience and an empty room was a cleaned room, as far as Mrs B was concerned. Opening the door moved the dust around, for heaven's sake, and that was ample. Maxwell held his breath.

The door opened and he could almost hear the eyes raking over the room. This must have been how the first mammals felt, lurking beneath a hollow log as Tyrannosaurus Rex stalked the land, snuffling and sniffing for the taste of warmer blood than his own. The door closed and he exhaled.

‘Hello, Mr M,' a voice said, almost in his ear. He thought for a moment that his heart had stopped for good, but it sped up again after a small hiccup. ‘Didn't see you there. It's bad for your back, you know, slouching down like that. Doing a bit of marking? That's nice. That Metternich brought in something 'orrible last week I had to clean up. He needs a talking to. That DVD of Nolan at Christmas, ain't it lovely? Mrs Troubridge ain't half proud.' Shortage of breath stopped her and gave Maxwell his entrée. He stood up, public schoolboy as he was at heart.

‘Mrs B. Hello!' He limbered up for his serial replies to her monologue. This took concentration and it had been a long day. ‘Didn't you? Is it? Yes, I am. I don't really think so. Did he? He certainly does. It certainly is. She is indeed and who can blame her?'

The woman beamed. The world was spinning correctly when she and Mr Maxwell communicated on this special level. No one else bothered like him. He was a gentleman, Mr Maxwell was, of the old school. He might be an old git, but he was her old git and she had missed him over the Christmas holidays, when cleaning at 38 Columbine would have been not only pointless but impossible. Normal service had resumed
the previous week, not that there was any way to tell, except the three crisp tenners had disappeared from the hall table and the kettle was warm when he got home.

‘Innit cold?'

Maxwell waited. There had to be more.

Mrs B flicked a duster with a crack. ‘Innit cold, Mr Maxwell? In the school?'

‘Oh, sorry, Mrs B. I wasn't ready. Yes, it is cold. I'm sure it's barely legal. Temperatures in the workplace, duty of care, things of that nature.'

‘Too right, Mr M. I had to put my coat on yesterday I was that cold. That's not right, indoors when you're working. What are you doing here still, in the cold?'

‘I'm waiting for Jacquie. We're going to someone's leaving do.'

Mrs B was all ears. ‘Somebody from here, is it? Going? Is it that Mrs Donaldson? Her what drinks? No better than she should be, that one.'

‘No, Mrs B. It's someone Jacquie worked with. She should be here shortly. We won't be staying long.'

‘Want to be back for little Nolan, I expect,' Mrs B told him. She didn't hold with children being babysat for, unless she was doing the babysitting. She and Mrs Troubridge waged a silent war on the care of Nolan.

‘Well, yes, but Mr Gold is going to be there when he gets in from Mrs Troubridge. He goes there on a Tuesday, as you know.' In the whole exchange, Mrs B had not raised a duster and the vacuum cleaner was in the corridor where she considered it belonged. ‘Have you met Mr Gold?'

Mrs B sniffed. Her xenophobia was more bred in the bone than Maxwell's and she was not one to forgive. Her mother had made dark remarks about the behaviour of Yanks Over Here in the war and her mother never lied, as everyone knew. Mrs B had been born in 1944 when her dear old dad had been fighting his way through Italy, so it wasn't fair that the Yanks had been over here, safe and sound, while he was laying his life on the line. Yanks! Her sniff said it all.

‘He's a nice chap. You'd like him, I'm sure. He's staying with us for a bit.'

The sniff was more resounding this time. ‘I understood he was married. That wife of his went in our Beyonce's nail bar last week and created something rotten because her acrylics weren't the right length. Our Beyonce told her, she only stocks the mediums, there's no call for the longs in Leighford. People don't want them, there's just no call.'

‘How did Beyonce know it was Mrs Gold?' Maxwell knew that Americans were fairly rare in Leighford, but surely the Golds weren't unique.

‘Made the appointment, didn't she? Said her name and where she was living. Mr Moss's wife, she has her eyebrows threaded at our Beyonce's and she'd told her all about it. She's very meticulous, Mrs Moss.'

Maxwell was wondering what eyebrow threading could possibly be and decided it sounded painful. He tried to move the subject on. ‘There has been a bit of a problem at home,' he said, settling for the vague option. ‘Mrs O'Malley is with Mrs Troubridge, Mr Gold is with us.'

Mrs B's eyes gleamed. She could hardly wait for her
next session at Columbine, where she would wheedle details out of Mrs Troubridge, as she gave her a ‘quick whizz', as she termed it, before cleaning next door.

Then, just as she had Maxwell on the ropes and about to tell all, they both heard Jacquie's heels tapping along the landing of the Mezzanine. She stuck her head round the door.

‘Hello, Mrs B,' she said. ‘I thought that was probably your Charles outside.' Catching Maxwell's puzzled expression, she clarified. ‘Hoover,' she said. Mrs B drew breath to make some opening gambit that would get more detail about Hector Gold, but Jacquie was too quick for her. ‘Must go,' she said with a smile. ‘Leaving do. We're not staying long, so we'd better not be too late. Ready, sweetheart?' The last remark was to Maxwell, who was adding scarf, gloves and hat to the coat he had had on all the time.

‘Can't wait,' he said and joined her in the doorway. ‘See you later, Mrs B,' and he shut the door behind him.

Mrs B, baulked of her prey, flicked her duster at a film poster showing Michael Caine facing down a Zulu warrior. She loved Michael Caine. A lot of her courting had taken place in the cinema and she was a bit of a film buff as a result. She looked with misty eyes at the poster of Yul Brynner lurching through Westworld. He was lovely as well and she only had to hear the theme music of
The Magnificent Seven
to remember the first time she met the first Mr B, in the queue to see the film when it came out. She gave Yul a reminiscent wipe and rejoined Charles for a bit of a trundle down the landing.

The pub where Bob Thorogood had chosen to hold his farewell party was not what Maxwell was expecting. Somehow, the gastropub with its faux Italian (or should that be
fingere
Italian, he wondered, dredging his memory banks) was more suited to young things having a glass of chilled cheap Chardonnay than a load of coppers nursing pints. And yet here they were, not exactly crowding into Gino's early on Tuesday evening. The owners – neither of them called Gino – had been happy to give hefty discounts in this usually very quiet couple of hours in the midweek doldrum of the worst month of the year. Jacquie and Maxwell shrugged their coats over the back of two chairs tucked out of the way behind a polystyrene quarter-size copy of Michelangelo's
David
, with pockmarks in his bum where bored drinkers had picked at it, and settled down to be politely convivial.

Bob Thorogood was already at the bar, with a few of his diehard oppos from Leighford Nick. He glared as Jacquie and Maxwell came in and said something derogatory to the men standing next to him. None laughed; Jacquie was a little disappointed by that. Obviously her promotion had made more differences than she had thought. She sent Maxwell to the bar for drinks and to buy one for Thorogood. He had never been known to refuse a freebie.

‘Hello, Bob,' he said pleasantly, when they were standing side by side waiting for the
barista
to notice they were alive. ‘Congratulations on the new job. What can I get you?'

Thorogood was between a rock and a hard place. He hated this bloke, older than him, without his charm and obvious charisma, and yet able to pull the best-looking woman in the station. Thorogood had once had a small success with a desperate civilian admin assistant in the stores cupboard which had convinced him of his attraction to women, and all the snubs before and since had not been enough to make him see that it had been a strictly one-off occurrence, brought on by overexposure to fumes from the photocopier. Now, here the old git was, offering him a drink. His hindbrain took over, the lizard we all carry within us.

‘Thanks. I'll have a pint.' He paused, just for effect. ‘With a whisky chaser, if that's OK with you?'

‘Of course,' Maxwell said affably and nodded to the girl behind the bar who bent to her task. ‘Can you also make that one orange juice and … I think I will join this gentleman in a whisky. But no pint with mine, thank you.' He turned to Thorogood again. ‘So, change of direction, Bob. Have you started in the new office yet?'

‘Yesterday,' the other man growled. ‘I was filling a vacancy so DCI Hall kindly let me go.' He picked up his pint and raised it slightly in Maxwell's direction. Drinker's courtesy. ‘Thanks. Yes …' He leant one elbow on the bar, his prepared story tumbling out, as it would throughout the evening, becoming less coherent with time. Maxwell was lucky to be getting it in more or less mint condition. ‘… Yes, Henry didn't want to lose me, of course, but there was, as I say, this vacancy, and they
were pretty desperate. So I agreed to start straight away.'

‘I should think Henry was very grateful,' Maxwell said, with no emphasis.

‘Yes.' There was no emphasis in Thorogood's reply, either.

‘You got this do arranged quickly,' Maxwell remarked, sipping his whisky.

‘This is my local,' he said. ‘And it doesn't do to linger. If you have your do too late everyone has forgotten who you are.'

‘Very true. So,' Maxwell turned to survey the room, ‘who's here? Are they all colleagues?'

Thorogood looked round the room. There were about fifteen people, divided into small knots of three, with the odd one standing alone looking awkward and nursing a glass. ‘Except those two totties in the corner, yes,' he said. ‘You probably know the ones from Leighford Nick by sight. That chap over there,' he gestured with his glass, by now only a quarter full, ‘is one of the wardens from my New Department. Seems a nice chap, very ambitious. Should go far. I've got a supervision interview with him tomorrow, see how he's getting on.'

The man didn't look ambitious. He was rather weaselly to look at, with an unresolved spot on one temple. His glasses were mended with a piece of grubby Elastoplast but his coat, which he had opened but not removed, was an expensive one, all pockets and flaps with a designer lining. Perhaps it was a Christmas present. Probably from his mum, Maxwell decided.

‘He doesn't look ambitious,' he remarked.

‘You're right,' Thorogood agreed, putting his empty glass down, emphatically. Maxwell nodded to the
barista
, who provided a refill. ‘Thanks,' continued the Traffic Supremo. ‘No, you're right. He looks very ordinary, but he was in my office yesterday afternoon while I was still dusting off the spider plant. Had a lot to tell me about my predecessor. Very useful.' He tapped the side of his nose, meaningfully. It was probably the last time he would succeed in doing so that evening.

Maxwell realised he still had Jacquie's orange juice in his hand, warming up nicely. ‘I must go,' he said to Thorogood. ‘Better take the old ball and chain her drink, I suppose.'

The Party Boy watched him go.
What a nice bloke,
he thought to himself, through a haze of beer and whisky.
We've all been wrong about him.
His ex-oppos flowed back to surround him as Maxwell walked away but didn't stand as close as they had before. Thorogood had started to take on the smell of a dead man walking and that was a smell that could stink up your own career before you knew it.

In the next half an hour Gino's started to fill up and Bob Thorogood was a gratified host. Most people from Leighford Nick were there to make sure he was really gone; most people from Traffic, based at County Hall three doors down from the bar, were there to toady up to the new boss. Bosses didn't last long in Traffic. It was considered, by those who knew the term, to be a kind of Chiltern Hundreds of the division. The place they sent you while they thought about what they were
really 
going to do with you, that wouldn't involve tribunals and huge payouts.

Maxwell and Jacquie sat in their David-shielded seat and Maxwell picked a few more polystyrene granules out of the statue's bum, just to show he had been there. When Henry Hall arrived in a blast of cold air, he scanned the room and joined them, bringing drinks with him. They watched him greet Bob Thorogood and buy him a drink and then he nodded to others in the room as he made his way to their table.

‘I'm surprised to see you here, Henry,' Maxwell said. ‘Not that I'm not delighted, of course.'

‘Just need to see that the bugger has really gone,' Hall said, sipping his Virgin Mary, heavy on the Lea & Perrins. ‘I can't believe it went so smoothly. Enid … what was her name, Jacquie? Not Blyton, surely?'

‘Burton,' Jacquie supplied.

‘Yes. Enid Burton was finally written off as retired on health grounds last week. She'd been off for nearly a year with stress, so not a moment too soon. We couldn't recruit while she was in post but as soon as we could – well, there was Bob and it seemed ideal.' His glasses flashed in the mock candlelight and Maxwell swore he saw a smile sleet past. ‘Well, cheers.'