Maxwell's Revenge (10 page)

‘Yes, Mr Maxwell?’

‘Thingee, old thing. Has woman policeman Carpenter taken Mr Bevell off the premises?’

‘Just going, Mr Maxwell.’

‘Excellent. I shall count to ten so they are well and truly gone and then I will be out of the office for a few minutes, while I check on Mr Moss.’

‘Yes, Mr Maxwell. I’ll hold your calls.’

‘Hold my calls? How many are you expecting?’

There was a pause. ‘Well, there have been thirty-seven so far today, Mr Maxwell. You are the Headteacher, after all.’

‘Thirty-seven? I haven’t taken that many, surely?’

‘No, Mr Maxwell. I have dealt with them, mostly. But I just have to, you know, say “I’ll hold your calls”. Otherwise you won’t know that I’m, well, that I’m …’

‘I know. Holding my calls. Thank you, Thingee, you’re a diamond; no offence.’

‘No, Mr Maxwell,’ and he could hear the smile in her voice, ‘none taken.’ And she rang off. She shook her head indulgently. Mad old bugger, but it beat being condescended to by Diamond. He didn’t use her name either, but that was because he couldn’t remember it. Maxwell could
remember
, he just
preferred
Thingee and that was all right with her.

Jacquie’s Ka and the squad car arrived at Leighford nick almost neck and neck. Mr Bevell clambered out from the back seat, already jotting down a few crimes against humanity to which he had been exposed in the short drive from the school.

She deliberately avoided making eye contact with him and scurried up the steps and used the back stairs to Henry Hall’s office. She knocked gently.

‘Yes?’ Henry Hall in full curmudgeon mode replied from inside.

She stuck her head round the door and said, ‘Mr Bevell, guv. He’s downstairs.’

‘He can wait,’ Hall said. ‘Fill me in on what’s been going on. It seems to me that this poisoner of ours is all over town. At the hospital, and now again at Leighford High.’

‘Well, guv, it might not be in that order.’ Jacquie found a chair.

‘By which you mean …?’

‘The tablet that Mrs Bevell was given was certainly administered by an unknown assailant in the early hours. The sausage roll was certainly eaten this morning at the school, but may have been tampered with at any juncture. It had been in storage at the warehouse for months, possibly years.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Hall snapped. Oddly for a man of his generation, he had a thing about sell-by dates and food tampering and it was all beginning to get to him. ‘Sausage rolls aren’t stored for years.’

‘These are. They are pasteurised and
vacuum-packed
to last for virtually ever on a shelf. Once they are opened, they have a normal shelf life, but before that they could be older than the child who buys them.’

‘They sound disgusting.’

‘I would imagine they are. Paul Moss certainly thinks so. He took one bite and was immediately sick. He has had diarrhoea since then as well. I have the pack of rolls with me and I’ll get them to the lab as soon as I can.’

‘Did anyone else eat one?’

‘I gather that the little girl who gave Mr Moss his treat had eaten about half of the contents, guv.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘As ninepence. I know kids have cast-iron
stomachs, but I think she would have shown some symptoms, at the very least a bit of a gippy tummy.’

‘How could just one elderly sausage roll be poisoned in a pack, the rest of which being apparently all right?’

‘I don’t know, guv. The lab will tell us, I’m sure.’

Hall looked at his sergeant, less convinced than she was. ‘Do you have any of the one he had?’

‘No, guv, sorry. He managed to make it to the loo to be sick and … er … flushed. Same with the …’ she looked at her boss. ‘Well, you know. So we don’t have anything. Unless there is another dodgy one still in the bag.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Hall, sipping his tea. ‘So,’ he steepled his fingers and flashed his blank lenses at her, ‘what about Mr Bevell?’

‘Oh, guv,’ she said, eyes rolling ceilingward. ‘How long have you got? He’s suing everyone and everything in sight. He is making notes as we speak, no doubt, and is planning a class action against the entire county. I always thought those ads about Deeply Unpleasant Lawyers For You were designed to fill airspace. Mr Bevell was at a hotel overnight, the Excelsior in Reading, so he has no alibi as such. He could have left the place at any time. He travelled the remaining distance by train, so again, nothing he can rely on in
court. He is almost the most unpleasant person I have ever met, and yet no, I don’t think he tried to kill his wife.’

She filled him in on the details of the Bevells’ nice little earner. ‘What is it you do, Mr Bevell?’ ‘I’m a professional shit.’ ‘Nice one.’ Hall looked thoughtful.

‘Do you think he might have just intended to make her ill?’ he asked, hopefully.

‘I suppose that’s possible. But it’s a risk and also, without a car or local knowledge, almost impossible, I’d say. The lads are still checking the taxi rank but nothing so far. Physically, he fits quite well with whoever it was stole the glasses yesterday, but again, I don’t think he could have been in the area and then back at the hotel with no car.’

‘Are we sure he doesn’t have a car?’

‘Apparently they can’t get insurance.’

Hall leant back in his chair and blinked rapidly. ‘Jacquie, are you saying that this man can’t be a murderer because he can’t challenge Churchill?’ Hall didn’t try the take-off of the advert’s jowly dog; he left such things to those who could, like Peter Maxwell. ‘If someone has murder in mind, I don’t suppose a bit of driving without insurance would bother him much.’

‘Guv, as a rule, I would agree. But you’ve got to meet him to understand. The man is a total one-off. Obsessive, but not in a good way.’ She
looked at him quickly to see if he had recognised the small dig at his pedantic ways. Her luck was in; he had either not noticed it or had decided not to care. She decided to make her escape while the going was good and got to her feet. ‘Anyway, these sausage rolls aren’t getting any fresher. I’ll get them down to the lab boys, shall I?’

‘You don’t have to take them yourself. Put them in the internal mail.’

‘I want them to get there some day soon. I’ll take them. It’s no trouble. It’s only Chichester.’

‘As long as you’re sure. Don’t you want to interview Mr Bevell?’

Her merry laughter as she left his office rang in his ears, and he had to take that as a clue. ‘I’ll call that a no, then, shall I?’ he muttered, picking up the phone. ‘Hello? Desk? Is Mr Bevell in an interview room yet?’

The phone squawked at him indignantly.

‘I see. Well, I’m not sure you can be sued as an individual if you are doing your designated job.’

The squawking got louder.

‘As long as you just
want
to give him a smacking, Bill, but don’t actually do it, I’m sure it will be fine. I will be down in ten minutes.’

Squawk.

‘All right. I’ll try and make it five.’

Henry Hall sat back in his chair and tried to calm his rebellious stomach. He’d never been
bothered this way before, but unbidden pictures rose in his mind of sausage rolls older than his children, lurking in greening piles in a warehouse, ready to swamp the town. Of langoustines, Marie Rose sauce dripping pinkly from their twitching feelers, lurching down Leighford High Street, calling in shrill, deep-sea voices for revenge. He shook himself, took one more sustaining sip of his cooling tea and went down to meet Mr Bevell, possible murderer, serial suer and
all-round
unpleasant person. Another day, another dollar.

Maxwell crept into his office and peered over the back of the corner unit to see how his Head of Department was doing. Paul Moss lay in a sweaty heap and he wasn’t the sweetest smelling thing Maxwell had had in his office, although he was far from being the worst. But he was asleep and, as Maxwell’s granny had always been fond of pointing out, sleep was a great healer. Although nowhere near as great as penicillin, Maxwell’s rather more prosaic granddad had always rejoined. And that great knitter, William Shakespeare, had said that it was also a dab hand when it came to ravelling sleeves of care. And Anne Hathaway, or whichever bloke Shakespeare was sleeping with at the time, would probably have tutted in disgust; what, after all, did he know?

The Head of Sixth Form-cum-Acting Headmaster crept back into the corridor and closed the door behind him with infinite softness. He was just leaning on the wall finishing a warning note requesting silence when a noise exploded in his head. Mrs B, cleaner and
all-round
nosey person, was abroad with mop and bucket.

‘Ooh, Mr Maxwell, I hear you been elevatored. ’Bout time, if you ask my opinion. ’Ow’s Mr Moss, poor little bleeder? He don’t deserve that. I very nearly didn’t come in this morning, all that poisoning, you don’t know what’s in the air, do you? It could still be floating about. I’m surprised these kids are here. If I was their mother I’d keep ’em at home, where I knew what they was eating, wouldn’t you, Mr Maxwell?’

‘Ooh, Mrs B, I hardly know where to start. Let’s see, now.’ Maxwell had an uncanny ability to answer Mrs B in the order of her questions, statements or general whiffle. His mind was largely elsewhere today, but he thought he might give it a shot. ‘Yes, I have. It is and I don’t. He’s asleep, hence,’ and he fished out a piece of fluffy Blu-tack from his pocket and affixed his note, ‘this note saying just that. Umm, where was I? Yes. Didn’t you? Indeed you don’t. It could, but I doubt it. Are you? Best thing, and I would, should I find myself the mother of approximately
one thousand kids.’ He beamed. Another full house, nothing left out. And the list had been longer and more tortuous than usual. ‘Anyway, Mrs B, if you could refrain from hoovering while Mr Moss is having a rest, I would be grateful. I’ll be downstairs in Mr Diamond’s office if you want me.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘Quiet, now. He’s asleep. Sshh.’

‘I ain’t senile, Mr Maxwell. I ain’t got
short-term
memory loss. I know he’s asleep,’ she said, her feelings clearly hurt.

Maxwell was contrite. ‘I’m sorry, of course you do. What was I thinking?’ And he went off down the corridor, feeling a little ashamed of himself. Of course the woman knew how to behave. She wasn’t an idiot. Two blameless girls from Year Thirteen came towards him, speaking quietly, heads together, no doubt locked into a deep discussion on Bismarck’s motives in the Congress of Berlin. Their little bepumped feet made nary a sound on the corridor floor. He knew what would happen and turned to prevent it, but he was too late.

‘Oy!’ came the eldritch screech. ‘Be quiet. Mr Moss is trying to sleep.’

Maxwell sensed rather than heard the small desperate whimper from the Head of History, curled up in his office. He hesitated for a moment, then did the Acting-Headmasterly thing. He went down to his Other Office and
rang Sylvia Matthews’ number. Delegation; that was the name of the game and it sorted out men from boys.

Jacquie drove to Chichester and hardly noticed how she got there. This case was a bugger and for once she couldn’t seem to see the wood for the trees. It would be foolish to say that Maxwell’s involvement had shaken her; Maxwell was always involved sooner or later, usually sooner. But this case had infiltrated his life in a way that she thought could soon get out of control. When you couldn’t trust your food, what could you trust? Maxwell could have told her all this was commonplace in the Good Old Days. Unscrupulous retailers mixed chalk with flour, painted fish to make them look fresher, sold slabs of crawling meat. For such things were vindaloo and tandoori invented. But that was then and this was now. A doctored prawn cocktail was relatively unthreatening; all you need do is avoid prepared food. But a random sausage roll in a package bought in a school canteen? An innocent if not terribly appetising piece of snack food had turned out to be an instrument of, if not death, then at least grievous bodily harm. What next? Milk? Eggs? Bread? Water, even? She remembered the case of the Tesco blackmailer, who had terrorised a town by tampering with food. But his reign had been short-lived and he
had tipped his hand. He wanted money, pure and simple. But this case was different and she couldn’t get a handle on it. There’d been no demands, no proud boasting by some deranged member of the Save the Unborn Gay Whale Lobby. Nothing.

She drove into the car park of the forensic lab tucked discreetly away behind the Pallant and parked. She grabbed her evidence bag of sausage rolls from the back seat. She shouldered the door open and decided to climb the stairs rather than take the lift. This gave her more time to repeat the mantra that everyone who trod that way repeated over and over. ‘Please don’t let it be Angus. Please don’t let it be Angus. Please don’t let it be Angus.’

But, as was almost always the case, it was Angus. Angus was a master of the flexitime and could bend it, not just like Beckham, but like Doctor Who himself. Today, he was his own locum and therefore getting double time as himself because it was bank-holiday lieu time and also time and a half as his own replacement. A nice little earner, as he was wont to remark, acknowledging all the time his undying gratitude to Einstein and his continuum.

Jacquie sighed when she saw him. His laconic voice on the end of the phone was enough to make most police personnel turn to the Prozac. Face-to-face, he was even harder to take and
when he stood up his head seemed to reach the ceiling. ‘Hello, Angus. I have a bit of a rush job, here.’

He shifted his gum to the other side of his mouth, ever the professional. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. It’s a suspected poisoning.’

‘Dunnit.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Dunnit, en’ I? Yesterday. Phoned results to Hall. Aconite.’

‘Or a derivative, yes,’ Jacquie agreed. ‘But this is another case of poisoning.’

‘Dunnit.’

‘What?’ Her patience was wearing thin.

‘Blood test on that woman what had the tablet. Same. Aconite.’

‘No. Angus, listen to me. This is not something you have done. This is a bag of sausage rolls from Leighford High School, one of which poisoned a member of staff. This morning.’ She looked for some spark of intelligence in his eyes. ‘Today.’

He picked up the evidence bag, opened it and shook out the contents onto his counter. ‘I hate these,’ he remarked. ‘They sell them down our all-night garage. I had some last night. They’re ’orrible.’

Jacquie knew she shouldn’t, but she asked anyway. ‘Why did you eat them, then?’

‘Munchies.’

Well, that explained part of his personality anyway. ‘Right. Well, these were bought today in the school canteen and the thing is that they came from the same place the prawn cocktails did, though obviously packaged, not prepared by the chefs there.’

‘Chefs. Ha. That’s a laugh. Frozen prawns and ready-made sauce. Not exactly cordon-
bleeding-bleu
, is it?’

‘Well, no. But the difference is that the prawn cocktails …’

‘… had been put together by hand, yes I know. Whereas the poison in these rolls had been injected.’

‘How on earth could you know that?’ she asked. Angus had hidden depths, although she didn’t care to plumb them.

He held up the bag. ‘Hole,’ he said.

She peered at it. ‘It’s tiny,’ she said.