Maxwell's Mask (15 page)

‘Ask yourself,' Henslow rather enjoyed the limelight, even among this most critical of audiences, his own oppos, ‘why a bloke whose family is supposed to have owned half of Sussex is living in a poxy little bungalow.'

‘Wasn't
that
poxy,' Bill Robbins felt he had to counter. ‘Damn sight bigger than mine.'

There were heartfelt grunts all round.

‘Alimony.' Jane Blaisedell provided the woman's touch.

Henslow clicked his fingers. ‘What she said,' he nodded. ‘If you ask me, Mrs Bartlett was bleeding him dry.'

‘We
are
asking you, Gavin,' Hall said,
straight-faced
as only he could be. ‘I don't want assumptions, lad.'

‘No, sir.' Henslow might have got A-level Maths, and a degree in Social Sciences, but he wasn't a total ignoramus. He recognised a knuckle-rap when he felt it. ‘These are the figures according to the dead man's bank account. But he may have had offshore.'

‘
May
have had?' Hall queried.

‘His High Street bank said they couldn't shed any light, guv.' Henslow realised now how empty that sounded. When he'd been face to face with the pretty Polish teller, commiserating with her lot in life, that sort of stonewalling seemed entirely reasonable; now, he wasn't so sure.

‘Midland?' Hall wanted to know.

Henslow nodded.

‘Tomorrow morning, Gavin, you will go back to the premises of the Midland HSBC in the company of DS Walters here. And he will stand over you, or hold your hand, whatever it takes – until we have those offshore details. Are we at one on this, Gavin?'

‘Yes, sir. Of course.'

‘Good. Anything on forensic follow-up, Giles?' Hall scanned the tired faces in front of him.

‘No prints in Bartlett's house have produced anything meaningful, guv. Nothing on central computer. Ditto in Brighton and Hove records.'

‘We do have a possible sighting, guv.' Tom O'Connell was pounding his cigarette butt into submission in an ashtray by his PC.

‘When was this?' Hall was all ears.

‘On the night in question. A girl, well, woman, I guess. Mid- to late twenties.'

‘Whose sighting?'

‘Neighbour.' O'Connell was tapping keys, flicking images across his screen. ‘A Mrs Wilkins. Lives at number 86, diagonally opposite the Bartlett house, but some way away.'

‘What did she see?'

‘Bartlett arrived home at some time in the evening. Mrs Wilkins wasn't certain of the time. He had this woman with him.'

‘What did Bartlett drive?'

‘Toyota,' Dave Walters chimed in. ‘Soft top.'

‘So,' Hall crossed to the street plan in the corner, on the third of the hastily erected whiteboards. ‘Where's this Mrs Wilkins live?' He was tracing the area with his Biro tip.

‘There, guv.' O'Connell talked him through it. ‘No, south. That's it.'

‘Did Mrs Wilkins say which direction Bartlett drove in from?'

‘West, guv,' O'Connell was sure. ‘Leighford.'

‘Could be the theatre.' Jane Blaisedell, like everybody else there, was going through the route in her mind.

‘Could be,' Hall nodded, scanning the options in front of him. ‘There again, it could be any of the discos in the High Street or the pubs west of the river. Bartlett goes cruising – we know from his wife he had a penchant for that – and picks somebody up. They go back to his place. Nightcap. Whatever.'

‘And he's made a bad choice.' Henslow was with him. ‘Gets a psycho, a night stalker.'

‘Or somebody who just wouldn't play along.' Jane was there with the woman's angle again.

‘Did you get the impression,' Hall asked her, ‘from Mrs Bartlett that her husband was into anything odd? Kinky?'

‘She was a bit coy about that,' Jane told him. ‘Said it was all a long time ago. They had been separated for some time.'

‘Eight years,' Hall put something finite into it. Cross tees and dot eyes and you catch murderers. ‘What's wrong with the night-stalker scenario, Gavin?'

The DCI had sauntered back to his chair. The DC had the spotlight again and he wasn't sure he liked it anymore. It made him feel vulnerable, alone. ‘Umm…?'

‘Anybody?' Hall switched the spotlight off and Henslow breathed again.

‘MO.' O'Connell was already reaching for another ciggie.

‘How?' Hall chased him.

‘If he picked up a casual for a one-night stand and suggested something she didn't want to play or maybe refused to pay her, she'd…what? Grab the poker, a bottle, some
objet d'art
.'

‘Precisely,' Hall said, glad his team were still thinking, wrestling with it. ‘The frayed flex is premeditated, remember. It was the work of somebody who knew the layout of Dan Bartlett's house. Knew the wiring. Knew his habits, too. His bath time. Now who would fit that description, hmm?'

Hall said nothing else. But he saw it all. For Gavin Henslow to fall short was one thing. He was new, green, over-ambitious. The rest of his team were experienced detectives; and they were missing things, perhaps vital, perhaps not, but missing them nonetheless. And that Henry Hall didn't like.

‘Let me put one over-riding question to you all,' he said. ‘What made Dan Bartlett get out of his bath and walk, wet and semi-naked, along the corridor? If we can get a handle on that, we might just have our killer.'

‘Pizza, mate?'

‘Hawaiian, easy on the pineapple, anchovies and olives?' The man with the wiry hair peered round the door at him.

‘No,' the delivery man frowned, looking instinctively down at the box in his hand although he knew perfectly well what was in it.

‘Just checking,' Maxwell smiled and passed him the cash. ‘Keep the change…Ralph.' He was reading the name on the van.

‘No, mate.' The delivery man felt he had to put his deranged customer right. ‘Ralph was four managing directors ago. I'm Liam.'

‘Of course you are,' Maxwell winked, wondering anew why a beautiful Celtic name was always given to idiots, the rather large Mr Neeson excepted, of course. ‘Thanks again.'

He turned with a dexterity surprising in a man of his years and took the stairs of 38 Columbine two at a time, hurtling through the lounge and into
the kitchen, careful to keep his box level.

‘So, Signorina,' he lapsed into his Italian waiter routine with an almost legendary smoothness. ‘Pizza Napolitana – without the odd bits they put on a
real
Neapolitan pizza – we bigga Italian boys, we knowa what you Englisha girlsa like.'

‘Wine?' Jacquie held up the bottle, an amusing little Chianti from the south side of Tesco's.

Maxwell obliged of course with a high-pitched nasal intonation that had the Count flexing his claws in the lounge next door. It was trite, it was corny, but it was all part of Mad Max and his lady and neither of them would change it for the world.

She poured for them both as Maxwell unpacked and bisected the pizza with an expert hand, only a few mushrooms going wild. ‘Oops,' he apologised. ‘Just dropped yours.'

She raised her glass while he threw the salad together, having inadvertently watched a Jamie Oliver programme once.
And
he did it fully clothed. ‘Here's to Sonny Jim,' she smiled.

‘Sonny Jim,' he clinked his glass with hers. ‘May all his bills be little ones.'

‘Amen to that,' she said. ‘I heard from Jane today.'

‘Oh?' He sniffed the dressing and thought better of it. ‘How is she?'

‘Still scared shitless, by the sound of it. It's too bad of Henry to pass the buck to her like that. She's not up to it.'

‘She always struck me as being quite resilient,' he said, burning his tongue on a piece of salami.

‘Oh, sure,' Jacquie agreed. ‘On the outside. In the Incident Room, brief and debrief, she'll be as cool as a cucumber. Inside, she's falling apart.'

‘Tell me about psychics, then.'

Jacquie took a large gulp of her Pellegrino; the Chianti was for Maxwell. ‘I thought we'd had this conversation.'

‘That was for Jane's benefit,' he said. ‘There comes a time when the bullshit has to stop.'

‘Well, talking of bullshit, the idea comes from America, of course – psychics helping police, I mean. According to Jane, it's all the Chief Constable's idea – that dickhead Slater – he must have been on a course. Who knows, he might come out with something
really
cutting edge like fingerprints next.'

‘Ah.' Maxwell wagged a wedge of Napolitana at his love. ‘But as Leviticus tells us, “Do not turn to mediums or spiritists, do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord thy God.”'

Jacquie smiled benignly at him. ‘I don't doubt that for a moment, my darling,' she said. ‘Anyway, how do you know all this stuff?'

‘Leviticus?' he sighed. ‘Well, let's see. When I was a lad they hadn't invented computers or skateboards. I had yet to discover the dizzying world of women and drink. So I hunkered down with the Good Book. Actually, it wasn't all that
good – I guessed who'd done it by Deuteronomy.'

‘May you be struck down, Peter Maxwell.' She tutted around a particularly obstinate piece of lettuce.

‘More importantly,
anima divina mea
,' he stabbed a particularly recalcitrant bit of salami, ‘who is next to be struck down at the Arquebus?'

‘You'll have to ask this Magda Lupescu,' Jacquie suggested.

‘The wolf,' he mused, half to himself.

‘Sorry?'

‘Lupescu in Wallachian – er, Romanian – means wolf.'

‘God, Max, are we into vampire country now? This is all getting a bit weird.'

‘Wolfcoats.' Maxwell leaned back, masticating. ‘The undead wandering graveyards wreathed in mist. Ms Lupescu comes from the most vampire-haunted country in the world. But I'd be even more worried if she came from California. The West Coast has more Goth and Visigoth weirdos per square inch than you've had takeaway pizzas. They make dear old Vlad the Impaler look like a choirboy. But, stick to the point, Woman Policeman, and tell me about psychics,' he repeated. ‘Allowing for the Chief Constable and his course.'

‘Well,' Jacquie leaned back on Maxwell's woodwork. It had to be said, her bump was causing her more than a little gyp today and judging by his wrestling skills, Sonny Jim didn't appreciate
Napolitana and Pellegrino. Maxwell had already predicted that his offspring was more of a steak and kidney pie man, if indeed he was to be of the masculine persuasion. ‘Usually, of course, psychics are brought in by the back door by some desperate, hick sheriff in the Boondocks whose case is going nowhere.'

‘And that's not true of this one?'

‘Max,' she pointed to the slowly gyrating Sonny Jim. ‘It may have escaped your notice, but I'm not actually down the nick at the moment. I've no idea how far Henry's got.'

‘No, no.' Maxwell cradled his glass in both hands. ‘But you've worked on dozens of cases with the man. You know how his mind works. How's he going to use the Madame Arcati of Sighisoara?'

‘That depends on what kind of psychic she is,' Jacquie explained. ‘Some use physical objects, from the crime scene. Er…the paintbrush that Gordon Goodacre was using, the blanket wrapped around Martita Winchcombe, Dan Bartlett's towel. Mind you, that buggers up crime scenes pretty comprehensively and the whole chain of custody thing becomes a complication.'

‘How?'

Jacquie never knew when Maxwell was being patronising. Was he putting her through her paces to make her feel useful, she whose brain was already addled with domestic boredom? Or was he thick as a parrot?

‘Chummy kills Martita Winchcombe,' she patronised right back at him, using his own Fifties police jargon too. ‘Person unknown, motive unknown. He – or she – covers her body in a blanket – reason unknown. Whose dabs are on the blanket?'

‘Miss Winchcombe's, if Chummy wore gloves.'

‘And if Chummy didn't?' It was like drawing teeth.

‘Chummy's too.' Maxwell was coming along like a copper.

‘SOCO will handle it with every
non-contaminant
known to man, so will the lab. If we give it to Magda Lupescu, that's another set of gloves, dabs. At very least, it'll cause confusion in court. Chummy's brief will get him off on a careless technicality. Anyway, that's not Lupescu's method.'

‘Jane said she just walked about, didn't she?'

Jacquie shrugged. ‘Seemed to,' she said. ‘But Jane's really frightened, Max. She obviously thinks the woman has genuine powers.'

‘Uncle Tony,' Maxwell remembered.

‘Yes.' Jacquie risked leaning forward and incurring the wrath of her little bundle. ‘Whatever that's all about. Of course, it's important to the investigation that she believes.'

‘Is it?' Maxwell was on a learning curve, a rare experience for him.

‘Anybody who's anti – any copper, I mean – shouldn't work with them. I imagine that's why
Henry didn't get involved directly. Their negativity can block the psychic's energy. Allegedly.'

‘Yes, indeed,' Maxwell smiled, ‘but aren't they supposed to get results? That Peter Hurkos bloke back in the Fifties was pretty impressive, if memory serves.'

‘Psychics? Yes. But since my own profession's clear-up rate is only running at twenty-three per cent at the moment, I'm not sure league tables should be the name of the game.'

‘Wash your mouth out,' he growled, wide-eyed with mock fury as he topped up her glass with fizzy water and his with still wine. ‘I don't want to hear the LT phrase mentioned again in this house. Savvy?'

She chinked her glass against his. ‘What'll you do when Sonny Jim's taking his GCSEs?' she asked. ‘What'll you do about LTs then?'

‘I shall be dead,' he laughed.

Very quickly, Jacquie's face darkened. And she started to cry. Out of a blue, cloudless sky. Maxwell scurried around the table to hold her, cradle her head, kiss the tears away.

‘Hey,' he whispered, lifting her tear-streaked face. ‘You know I've got a picture of myself in the attic,' he said. ‘Along with the lads of the Light Brigade. And haven't we always promised ourselves, when the time comes, that we'll drive to Brighton and beyond and go off Beachy Head together, hand in hand?'

She nodded, sniffing, trying to smile through the tears. ‘Don't say that again, Max,' she pleaded. ‘Promise me. Promise me you'll never say that again.'

He didn't have to ask her which phrase she meant and he promised her.

Jane Blaisedell was on the phone to Jacquie Carpenter for nearly an hour the next day. It was her lunch break and she was psyching herself up for what was to come. And what was to come was night and Magda Lupescu.

‘Tell me.' The Romanian woman stood just inside a dead woman's front door. At her request, no one turned on the lights.

‘About Martita Winchcombe?' Jane was at her elbow, watching, waiting, her heart thumping under her ribcage. Jane had Martita's house keys in her hand and had turned the heavy lock in its rattling hole. Ahead lay the hall, lit only by the fitful moon from the skylight over the door, and the deadly stairs rising to the left.

‘No, no,' Magda said quickly. ‘The boys who found her.'

‘Er…well, they're fourteen-year-olds, go to the local comprehensive school. They were out to burgle.' Jane was more rattled than ever now. What did this mad bitch want to know about the boys for? How relevant could those little bastards be? Unless…but that didn't bear thinking about.

‘They didn't come in the way we did.' Magda
jerked her head behind her to the heavy, Victorian front door.

‘No. From the kitchen. Straight ahead.' Jane could have kicked herself. She was doing what fairground fortune tellers relied on, giving too much information. Well, in for a penny… ‘They've both coughed.'

‘Coughed?' Magda frowned.

‘Confessed,' Jane clarified. ‘Told us everything.'

‘Their names?'

‘Is this relevant?' the Detective asked, snapping at last. ‘I mean, we have rules in this country about minors.'

‘It is relevant,' Magda assured her. She had that annoying habit of Eastern Europeans on unfamiliar ground; she didn't smile. Jane found herself wondering anew about Henry Hall's antecedents; was the bland bastard from Romania too?

‘Er…Anthony Wetta and George Lemon.'

‘Wetta is the thief,' Magda said, ‘the professional. This Lemon, he is the…fall-guy, hm? Went along for the ride?'

Her English was clearly learned from some
mid-Western
university Stateside.

‘Probably,' Jane nodded. ‘That would be my reading of it.'

‘There.' The Romanian pointed to the base of the stairs. ‘That is where she died. Her neck was broken.'

‘That's right.' It was happening again. Jane had seen the SOCO photographs, the sprawled corpse
wrapped in a blanket, the weird angle of the head. Jane had seen these. Magda had not.

The Psychic crossed to the stairs and knelt on one knee, tracing the ghastly swirl of the hall carpet with her fingers. ‘Pain,' she frowned, her face a living mask in the half-light of the stair windows. ‘She felt pain here.' She was running a hand around her throat. ‘And another…' She slid upright, using the banister as a counterweight and almost slithered up the stairs, gripping the smooth, worn wood as she went. ‘Another, here. Her ankle. She tripped…' She was on the third stair from the top now, looking up into the total blackness of the landing.

‘Don't you want some light?' Jane asked. She'd had enough of the darkness, fear lying like a cold mask over her face and creeping down her neck onto her shoulders.

‘Not yet,' Magda said. She knelt down on both knees on the top stair, head bowed, back straight, hands extended and touching the wall on her left, the banister on her right. ‘She's cold. It's night. “What do you want?”'

Jane Blaisedell froze, the hairs on her arms and neck standing upright. Two days ago, she'd heard the woman barking in a man's voice. A voice that ended in a scream. Now she was quavering like an old woman, the voice this time high and brittle. ‘“What are you doing in my house? You've no right to be here. No right. I've told you. You're wasting your time.”'

It was a bleary-eyed Peter Maxwell who cautiously opened the door. Minutes ago, he'd been asleep. Then he'd heard the doorbell, shattering his dreams, insistently forcing him to the here and now. It was gone midnight, the witching hour when demons stalked the earth in the shape of black and white cats. And his eyes hadn't quite acclimatised to recognise the shape beyond the glass of his front door. It was Jane Blaisedell and she was crying.

‘Oh, Max!' She threw herself into his arms. ‘Max! For God's sake…'

He caught her with a dexterity born of a lifetime of coping with fainting girls and boys and he bundled her inside. ‘It's all right,' he said, patting her head and bearing the weight of her quivering body as he half carried her up his stairs, trying to find a way of doing it without grabbing her breasts. After all, he
was
a public schoolboy.