Maxwell's Mask (17 page)

‘My money's on this one,' Maxwell had said, as another spring onion shard got right up his nose. ‘Martin Lincoln.'

‘What about him?' Jacquie had hoped their conversation would drown out the gurglings from her stomach; Sonny Jim on the rampage again.

‘Lost his job at Ampleforth's two months ago. Something dodgy in accounts. I'd chanced my arm getting Goodacre's file from Larter. I thought
asking for somebody else's was pushing it a bit.'

‘You should send that lad of yours,' Jacquie had suggested. ‘Whatsisface? Anthony Wetta. See if he can break in and burgle it for you.' She had stolidly attacked her prawn mayo wrap.

‘Do I detect a note of disapproval in your usually dulcet and supportive voice, Woman Policeman?' Maxwell had asked.

‘This is very naughty of you, Max,' she had scolded him. ‘You had no right to see this file. You bullied the man into it.'

‘Careful, Woman Policeman,' the Head of Sixth Form had warned. ‘Your training's showing. To me, the rules don't apply.'

She had blown a raspberry at him. ‘So what'll you do with the information, now you've got it?'

Maxwell had scanned the notes he had made. ‘Find this Martin Lincoln,' he had said. ‘See where he was on the Night in Question.'

‘Max.' Jacquie had become serious about then. ‘You know all this is flying in the face of reason, don't you?'

‘Maybe,' Maxwell had nodded, looking laughingly into the steady grey eyes of the girl. ‘But at least it's flying.'

‘Hello?' He rattled the theatre's side door along Bakewell Street, where it turned its sharp angle to curve towards the river. The rain had stopped now, but Surrey was wet and heavy as Maxwell leaned
the clapped-out creature against his bum. ‘Bugger!' he muttered as he realised he'd missed the whole shooting match. All was locked and barred and no one was tying a dark red love knot into her long, dark hair. He hoisted Surrey to the upright and trudged off into the darkness. Squeak. Rattle.

They lay in the back of his Mondeo, blowing cigarette smoke to the roof.

‘Isn't this where I come out with another cliché?' Deena Harrison asked. ‘Asking how it was for you?'

Ashley Wilkes laughed. ‘And if this was television, you'd get up with an entire sheet wrapped around you as if I'd never seen your body before.'

She ran a hand down between them, cradling his manhood and smiling. ‘Not bad,' she mused.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘For a man of your age, I mean.' And they both burst out laughing.

‘I'd better get you home,' he said.

‘I'd rather go to yours.' She began moving her hand backwards and forwards, stroking his stiffness again.

‘Uh-uh.' He removed her fingers reluctantly. ‘Not tonight.'

‘Mrs Wilkes?' She looked up into his face.

‘Mrs Wilkes departed the scene a long time ago,' he told her. ‘By mutual consent. Exit stage right.
She was only ever a bit player. What about you? Anybody in your life?'

Deena's face darkened, even in that darkened back seat with its steamed-up windows. ‘Not any more,' she said solemnly.

‘Well, it happens.' Wilkes reached across to stub his cigarette out.

‘Suicide? Yes, I suppose it does.'

‘Suicide?' Wilkes repeated.

‘It's nothing…' and she extinguished her cigarette too.

‘No.' He stopped her, cradling her left breast as she lay there. ‘No, it's not nothing. Tell me.'

‘It was – like you – a long time ago.'

He laughed softly. ‘Deena. How old are you?'

‘I'm twenty-two,' she told him.

‘So,' Wilkes nodded. ‘How can anything be a long time ago? Tell me – please.'

She shrugged, snuggling down into his embrace. ‘I knew a boy at Oxford. His name was Alex. He was tall, dark and handsome. There we go with those clichés again. A little vulnerable, perhaps. A little…other-worldly, really. He came from the country, from the south-west. His wild, singing county, he called it. He wrote folk songs. A bit retro, really – sort of John Denver meets Neil Young. Something of an ingénu, I guess. Well… I fell for him big-time.'

‘He was reading Drama?'

‘No,' she smiled fondly. ‘No. Alex wasn't an
extrovert. He'd never actually perform the songs he wrote. He was reading Chemistry. We loved each other. Oh, we had such plans. You know how it is.'

Ashley Wilkes couldn't remember when he'd had plans of the kind Deena Harrison was talking about. Had he been that blind, once? That young? That hopeful?

‘But Alex had his problems,' Deena sighed, nuzzling into Wilkes' naked shoulder. ‘I didn't see it at first; couldn't see it. He found people difficult. He hated college. There's no privacy, of course. Endless hall dinners and coffee at so-n-so's. I was into the party scene. We Thesps, you know?'

This time Wilkes did know. He hadn't been sober for six years between his undergraduate days and landing the Arquebus job. He knew all about that.

‘Alex got worse,' Deena remembered. ‘He'd dipped out of parties, was too busy to go punting. Just stayed in his rooms, twanging the guitar. Eventually, he started missing lectures. Couldn't handle the pressure.'

‘It must be a hothouse at Oxford,' Wilkes commiserated. ‘There were moments at Manchester… What happened?'

The girl was gripping his arm until her knuckles were white. ‘In the end, he started avoiding me. I felt crushed. Left out. All at once, I was just “people” as he called all his old friends. We'd talked marriage, kids, the whole nine yards. One day…' Her voice trailed away.

Wilkes lifted her face. It was sweet and smooth and soft and streaked with tears.

‘One day,' she struggled on, ‘I found him in his rooms at Balliol. He'd…taken an overdose. I thought he was asleep at first. He was lying on his bed, his face turned to the window, staring at the sky. The window was open. I remember hearing the birds singing. I just…just sat on the bed. Our bed. I sat and held him. They say I was still talking to him hours later when they found us both.'

‘You poor darling.' Wilkes kissed her forehead, his own problems forced into perspective by the dazed, broken girl in his arms. ‘How can you get over a thing like that?'

And she nuzzled under his chin. ‘I'll let you know,' she said.

‘I have to say, Mrs Elliot, you were a little difficult to trace.' Henry Hall was standing in her hotel lounge as the morning sun lit it, throwing strange September shadows across the magazine racks and the tourist posters that offered so much from sunny Leighford.

‘Was I?' The woman looked a little more relaxed than when she and Henry Hall had parted last, looking down at an old woman, dead on a mortuary slab. ‘In what way?'

‘In the way that we didn't know where you were,' Hall felt obliged to explain.

‘I didn't care for my first hotel,' she explained. ‘Too many draughts. And the room service was abysmal. No wonder people go abroad these days. Well, now you've found me – what progress on the murder of my aunt?'

‘Were you in regular touch?' Hall asked, watching an old boy wandering through in search of his morning paper.

‘Aunt Martita and I?' Fiona sat back in the snug fit of the Lloyd Loom. ‘Not until very recently.'

‘How recently?' Hall asked. ‘I have your address here as West Bromwich.'

‘Since last week,' she told him.

Hall blinked, but behind those bland glasses' lenses, who could tell? ‘But your aunt died two weeks ago.'

Fiona Elliot closed to the Detective. ‘She has been in touch from the Other Side.'

‘The other side?' Hall echoed.

‘The Other Side,' she confirmed.

‘I'm afraid you'll have to explain that one, Mrs Elliot.'

‘My husband and I have been members of the Christian Spiritual Church for several years.'

‘I see,' Hall said. ‘And your aunt has been in touch…'

‘I wouldn't expect you to understand,' she snapped. ‘Well, we're used to it, God knows. The arrogance of little men, with their rationalism and logic, their earth-bound science. How often have you heard some over-qualified, over-paid idiot on the television say that there can be no life on other planets because those planets do not contain carbon? And, of course, all life contains carbon. Bunkum and hogwash! I have
seen
dead men walk, Chief Inspector. That's why I wanted to see my aunt.'

‘I don't follow.'

‘Her neck was broken,' Fiona Elliot explained, ‘but
her legs were intact. She was able to come across.'

‘Across?'

‘From the Other Side.' The woman was incredulous. ‘How can you be so blinkered? The newspapers said you were using a psychic on this case. I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to hear you say that. Sense at last. I thought you'd go down in history as an enlightened liberal, with an open mind and deep respect for the spirit world. Instead, I find you're a myopic idiot, with all the prejudices of your calling.'

‘My mind is as open as anybody's, madam,' Hall told her. ‘I'll try any avenue to catch a murderer. Right now, I'm concentrating on the here and now. This Side, so to speak.'

‘Very well,' she sighed.

‘Other than…very recently…when were you in touch with your aunt last?'

‘Oh, let me see.' The woman stared out across the sea front and the gardens where the grey sea rolled high and menacing beyond the peeling paint of the hotel's portico. ‘Two, two and a half years ago.'

‘You say she lived alone?'

‘Yes. She had some sort of companion, an older woman, a few years back. I understand there was some sort of falling out and the woman left.'

‘Was she, from what you know, self-sufficient?' he asked. ‘I mean, did she have a cleaner, shopper, any help from the neighbours?'

‘I believe she coped by herself, by and large,'
Fiona said. ‘Like all us Winchcombes, Martita was a stalwart. Came from a long line of copers. My great-great-great-grandmother was with her husband through the siege of Lucknow, you know.'

Hall didn't know, but he wasn't sure it had much bearing on his case.

‘One or two of the theatre crowd used to help her occasionally,' Fiona said. ‘You know, shopping on line, that sort of thing.'

‘Anyone in particular?'

‘You'd have to ask them,' Fiona said. ‘But I understand that Daniel Bartlett was one such.'

‘Daniel Bartlett is dead,' Hall told her.

‘I have read the papers, Chief Inspector,' she assured him. ‘What are you telling me? That someone killed my aunt and then killed Mr Bartlett because he was kind to her? That would seem to be taking spite to extremes.'

Hall's eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what we're looking for, Mrs Elliot?' he asked. ‘Someone with spite in them?'

‘After tomorrow night,' she said, leaning back and folding her arms over her ample bosom, ‘I shall be able to tell you who you are looking for. You can judge their spite for yourself.'

‘Tomorrow night?' Hall repeated. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Clearly.' She pursed her lips. ‘Tomorrow night, we are holding a séance. Aunt Martita will tell us what you want to know.'

He was only a blur at first, bits of leaf and twig flying in the air. And Maxwell heard him rather than saw him. One of those tractor jobbies that the Council use for their playing fields was rattling its way across the turf of the Francis Chichester Centre, ripping shit out of a hedge.

In a gentler age, Maxwell told himself, there'd be an old hedger standing there in the mad, unstable changeability of the weather, a little nut-brown man with hands and face of leather, leaning for a moment as he sharpened his hook and caught his breath. He'd toil all day under an English heaven, in his gaiters and waistcoat, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a navvy's scarf and laying the most immaculate hedge, weaving the saplings into a pattern that would last for years.

Now, the tractor with its murderous blade fitment was hacking branch and root and stem, great filches of ground bouncing and flying as it took the crest of the hill. Maxwell stood like an ox in the furrow and waved him down. The driver considered evasive action, but thought better of it and switched his engine off, hauling on the brake and tilting up his visor.

‘Mr Lincoln?' Maxwell called. The man didn't
look
like an ex-rail splitter with Marfan's syndrome, but you couldn't have everything.

The tractor driver wrenched the earmuffs off and sat in his saddle, glaring down at this interruption.

‘Mr Lincoln?' Maxwell asked again.

‘I'm Martin Lincoln,' he nodded. ‘Who are you?'

‘Peter Maxwell.' The Head of Sixth Form held out his hand. ‘Wrongful Dismissal Claims.' He'd been careful to leave his scarf and cycle clips at home.

‘What?'

‘Sorry.' Maxwell rummaged in his jacket pocket and produced his Teachers' Countdown card. ‘Social Services. Legal Department. We're investigating cases of wrongful dismissal.'

‘I've never heard of that,' Lincoln told him.

‘Well,' Maxwell closed to him, popping the card away quickly. ‘Strictly between you and me, it's a bit of a sop.'

‘Is it?'

It was difficult to gauge Martin Lincoln's age in the earmuffs and the County overalls and the grime of oil hanging round him like a shroud.

Maxwell moved closer still, braving the heat of the machine's engine and the overwhelming smell of diesel. ‘One of the criticisms of the government just prior to the last election. It's all about targets, isn't it? We're having to move fast, fulfilling a few manifesto promises, if you catch my drift.'

‘Drift caught,' Lincoln said, wiping his forehead with a grubby towel on the tractor's controls. ‘Why are you talking to me?'

‘Well, our records show that you recently lost your job with Ampleforth Components?' Maxwell pretended a certain vagueness. He'd met
jobsworths before. They were about as interested in details as in flying to the moon.

‘That's right,' the tractor man nodded. ‘Two months ago, now.'

‘Can I be absolutely frank?' Maxwell asked. He risked the old joke in reply, but all he got was a nod. Disappointing, really. ‘We have reason to believe that a Mr…Gordon Goodacre…' he was carefully reading his shopping list from his other pocket, ‘may have been, shall we say, a little overzealous in his hiring and firing.'

‘Gordon?' Lincoln blinked. ‘Never. Er…you know he's dead, don't you?'

‘Dead?' Maxwell decided to play a hunch.

‘About two weeks ago now. Tragic accident at the local theatre.'

‘No! What happened?'

‘Seems a ladder fell on him. There's a certain irony there, of course.'

‘Is there?'

‘Well, Gordon was personnel manager. Sedentary occupation if ever there was one. And he's killed by a ladder. Here I am, accountant of sorts and I'm doing one of the most dangerous jobs known to man.'

‘Accountancy?' Maxwell was surprisingly good at playing the idiot. It must be the people he worked with.

‘Tractor driving!' Lincoln realised he had a bright one here. ‘Do you know how often these things turn over?'

‘Just once, I guess,' he said, but Lincoln wasn't in a responsive mood. ‘But to get back to Gordon Goodacre.'

‘Nice bloke,' Lincoln concluded.

‘Even though he fired you?'

‘Look, Mr…er…Maxwell. I know you've got a job to do and so on, but really, this is a no-no. All right, so Gordon called it wrong. He thought my bookkeeping was less than immaculate. I disagreed. But I didn't bear him any ill will or anything. To be honest, Ampleforth's and I had reached about the end of our run anyway. No, I'm freelancing now, building up my own client base. Oh, it'll take time, of course. Hence this bit of groundsmanship. It's marvellous, really. I just went down the Job Centre, filled in a few forms, did a few circuits on this thing and here I am. It's quite therapeutic. I recommend it. You ever leave the rat race of the fake claims world,' he slapped the tractor, ‘this is the life. I've never felt so well.'

‘So…you didn't bear Mr Goodacre a grudge, then?'

‘Good Lord, no. Matter of fact, I had a drink with him, only a couple of days before the poor bloke bought it.'

‘You did?'

‘Yes, at the Sword and Buckler. Mind you,' Lincoln frowned at the memory of it. ‘I must say he didn't seem himself that night. Not himself at all.'

‘So who did he seem, Count?' Maxwell's hands were clasped behind his back as he lolled back in his modelling chair. ‘Well may you ask.'

The great black and white beast appeared to be dozing in his time-honoured place on top of the basket in Maxwell's inner sanctum under the eaves at 38 Columbine, his War Office. He
appeared
to be but, actually, one eye was open. It was a subterfuge many an ex-rodent had fallen for.

‘It seems that our Gordon was quietly petrified in his own suburban little way. Ever seen
Night of the Demon
, Count? It's occasionally on TCM, quite late, but I appreciate you're often out on your rounds by then, so you may have missed it. Poor old Dana Andrews, of all people, is the recipient of a curse, a mere slip of paper that prophesies that the demon of the title is on its way to get him. It's based on a short story by that creepy old bugger late of my own university, MR James. From what Martin Lincoln told me, Goodacre was afraid of something in the theatre. Or perhaps the theatre itself.'

Maxwell let his chair rock forward and uncoupled his hands to pour himself another Southern Comfort. ‘What do you think of all this, Count? The supernatural, I mean. Things that go bump in the night. Happens to you all the time, I suppose.'

The cat flicked an ear. The only things that went bump in his night were the mice he flicked across the kitchen floor in what would prove to be their last ever game of footie.

‘There are some people,' Maxwell said, ‘who believe that evil can lurk in a building. That something happened in a place, so appalling that it's somehow imprinted in the very stones, the very fabric of the building itself. Let's see, the Arquebus has been on that site for…what…a dozen years or so. Before that, warehouses. Derelict. Abandoned. Great happy hunting ground for you, I shouldn't wonder, as a kitten on the quays.' He glanced at the cat. ‘No, you can't use that one, it's copyright P. Maxwell. Eat your heart out. It was like that for ever, if I remember rightly. Let's see.' He lolled back again, talking to the cat and the air and watching the dark clouds scudding across the moon through his skylight. ‘I came to Leighford in '75. Maggie Thatcher became the new leader of the Tories that year, ousting the best band leader of our times, Edward Heath. King Faisal was killed by his mad nephew and the then unknown Jack Nicholson made
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. And what, I wonder, was happening – or had happened – at the warehouses along the Leigh? What do you think, Count, a local history project for Year Eight or should I wait till Hell freezes over?'

He took a sip of the amber nectar and glanced at the open trap to his left. ‘On the other hand,' he murmured, ‘I know a woman whose investigative skills are second to none. And she's not doing very much at the moment…'

She heard the voice as if far off, in the echoes of her mind, down the labyrinthine tunnels which offered no escape, the endless dark twists of her own fear. ‘How are you feeling now?' the voice asked, over and over again. It was cold. It was mocking, and it didn't really want an answer.

‘Max?' Patrick Collinson was peering over the balustrade to the auditorium below, leering, like dear old Charles Laughton's Quasimodo, at the crowd below. ‘Max, can I have a word?'

‘Sure.' Rehearsals were over for the week and the cast of
Shop of Horrors
had been given the weekend off for good behaviour. And because they were all knackered, falling prey to that eternal disease of school plays the length and breadth of the land – cold feet. What had seemed a rattling good idea when Angela Carmichael had bullied Geraint Horsenell into it last year, was everybody's worst nightmare now that Opening Night loomed. Horsenell had wanted to do
The Threepenny Opera
, complete with unplayable music and a plot more lifted than Zsa Zsa Gabor. It was time to take stock. Time for a rest. Psyche up. Focus. Focus.