Maxwell’s Ride (10 page)

Jacquie shrugged. ‘We don’t know anything about Hamlyn yet,’ she said, ‘but even Warner had no form.’

Hall nodded. ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘He was very discreet. The secretary – Mrs Pringle – you said she didn’t seem to know about Warner’s men friends.’

‘That was the impression I got,’ Jacquie told him.

‘The impression I got,’ Bartholomew was wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, ‘was that she knew perfectly well, but didn’t approve. Bit of a frosty, stuck up old cow, I thought.’

‘Thank you, Frank.’ Hall glanced at his sergeant for the first time. ‘Your input, as always, is invaluable. Let’s have your version of Hamlyn, then.’

The DS lolled back, happy to be the centre of attention, his coffee mug in his hand. ‘He had the means,’ he said. ‘The rifle.’

‘Assuming he can use it,’ Jacquie countered.

‘Well, I’m not going to hand the bloody thing back to him to find that out,’ Bartholomew said. ‘He was in the SAS. We’re talking about blokes with talent.’

‘He says,’ Jacquie commented.

‘Look …’ Bartholomew started, but Henry Hall’s raised hands blew the whistle for half time.

‘The bottom line is, we don’t have enough yet. It’s early days. But Hamlyn bothers me. He’s … a vacuum, a space. There’s something missing.’

‘A motive,’ said Jacquie.

‘Could he have got into Magicworld with the gun?’ Hall was thinking aloud.

‘Of course,’ Bartholomew told him. ‘Golf bag, large holdall. If that bloody thing strips down – and if he’s in the SAS he knows all about that – he could possibly get it in a Wallace and Gromit backpack. All he has to do is pay his entrance ticket, follow Warner and pick his spot.’

‘It was heaving with people,’ Jacquie complained.

‘So was Dallas,’ Hall said, ‘when they got Kennedy, Tel Aviv when they hit Yitzhak Rabin. Nobody expects an execution in broad daylight. It’s the suddenness, the shock. Frank’s right, Jacquie. Hamlyn could have done it.’

‘Means and opportunity,’ Bartholomew crowed, never a man to disguise how pleased he felt with himself.

‘Which still leaves us without a motive.’ Jacquie was sticking her neck out that morning.

‘Frank,’ Hall finished his coffee. ‘Get onto Hendon. I want anything and everything on Hamlyn’s gun. And I want it today.’

‘Saturday,’ Bartholomew sucked in his breath and shook his head.

‘I don’t care if it’s Judgement Day,’ his DCI told him. ‘I want that lab open and working on this. Whatever else they’ve got, can wait. Jacquie, has Hamlyn asked for a brief yet?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Right. Let’s keep it that way. We’ve read him his rights, but we’ll have to move fast. Ring Bartlett.’

‘Sir?’ he caught her raised eyebrow, her enquiring look.

‘There’s something missing, Jacquie,’ Hall said again. ‘Perhaps Bartlett can find it for us.’

‘Uncle Maxie,’ Tiffany was mooching around the lounge, chewing the ends of her blonde hair in an effort not to bite her nails.

‘Yes, darling,’ the Great Man was in the kitchen trying to make sense of a recipe by Ainsley Harriott.

‘I saw something.’

‘Hmm?’ Maxwell barely looked up. Why, why, why were all these measurements in foreign? It was all kgs and mls; whatever happened to good old lbs and ozs? And come to think of it, rods, poles and perches, guineas, half crowns and groats? And when had Peter Maxwell given Brussels permission to change all that?

‘In the park. Magicworld. On the Wild Water Ride. I saw something.’

He looked at the girl, her staring eyes, her open lips. Perhaps Sylvia Matthews had been right. In her estimation, Lucy was okay. She was tough, resilient, could cope. But Tiffany? Sylvia hadn’t been so sure about Tiffany. He grabbed the nearest cloth to wipe the flour off his hands and led her back into the lounge where Metternich sprawled on the settee.

‘Manners, Count,’ Maxwell said and upended the animal, who hit the floor with what dignity he could and sauntered into the kitchen. If there was going to be sobbing, he wanted out. Maxwell sat next to the girl, draping an arm around her shoulders. ‘Tell Uncle Maxie all about it.’

‘Well,’ Tiffany was frowning, trying to remember, trying to make sense of it all. ‘I’ve been having nightmares, Uncle Max,’ she said. ‘Dreams where we’re on the car, riding the water. Mummy and Daddy are there too, but you’re not. You’re on the one in front, sitting with that dead man. And …’ he felt her shudder, ‘this is the horrible bit. He’s already dead. He’s sitting bolt upright, next to you. And you’re talking to him. And you don’t know he’s dead. It’s horrible. There’s blood …’

He shook her gently by the arm, then cradled her head against his cheek, softly kissing her parting. ‘Now, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘It was awful, I know. But it’s over now. We’re fine, aren’t we? All of us. We’ll be okay.’

‘Lucy thinks he’s still out there, doesn’t she?’ Tiffany looked up at him, eyes like her sister’s, all hip sophistication gone.

‘It won’t be long now,’ Maxwell assured her. ‘Most murders are cleared up in a few days. They’ll get him.’

But Tiffany was shaking her head. ‘No, they won’t, Uncle Max,’ she told him. ‘Not without you. I saw a flash.’

‘A flash?’ Maxwell frowned.

Tiffany was nodding now, gazing into the middle distance, letting memories flood back. ‘High up, to our left,’ she shut her eyes to focus more clearly. ‘Up there,’ her left arm waved around in the air, ‘Above some rocks. There was a flash.’

‘Like a gun going off?’ Maxwell asked.

‘No. Not like that. It was like… when Mummy and Daddy had some studio portraits done of us a couple of years ago. It was like a camera.’

There was a sudden hiss from the kitchen as Maxwell’s milk boiled inexorably over the saucepan rim and hit the hot plate. The Great Chef leapt from his niece’s side and sprinted away.

‘How many times have I told you, Metternich?’ he bellowed. ‘Never leave your cooking unattended.’ And as the smell of burning milk hit his nostrils, ‘Oh, bugger!’

The bells of St Mary’s were ringing out that morning over sleepy Leighford where Englishmen, Christians all, ignored them and washed their cars or drowned out the clanging with strimmers and hovers. Maxwell watched Miss Troubridge, his very own Neighbour From Hell (he had no need to watch the programme) making her way down her primrose path towards the everlasting bonfire sermons of Father Wainwright. Miss Troubridge was a sprightly old besom, Church of England through and through and the last time she’d missed a service was the day the doodlebugs came to Leighford, courtesy of Mr Hitler. She of course still called the lad with his collar back to front ‘Vicar’. ‘Father’ was a threat too Papist for her.

The old girl peered over the communal privet, as she always did. Bras and knickers on Maxwell’s rotary, so those girls were still there – unless of course, her worst fears were justified and her neighbour had turned. Maxwell saw her greeting somebody further along the road. That would be Mrs Brownleas, her companion of a mile, the chum beside whom she dozed during Father Wainwright’s soliloquy and whose cheek she pecked during the Peace. But it wasn’t Mrs Brownleas. It was a young policewoman in plainclothes walking down his path, making for his front door. He noticed the old girl break her stride and almost break her back looking over her shoulder to check on Mr Maxwell’s doings.

By the time the doorbell rang, he was there, looking at the girl through the reedy fuzz of his door panel.

‘Jacquie,’ he bowed. ‘Or is it Policewoman Carpenter?’ She shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

‘It’s Jacquie,’ she said, not quite ready to look him in the face, ‘if you want it to be.’

8

‘Have the girls gone?’ Jacquie asked, standing in Maxwell’s lounge. This wasn’t the first time she’d stood here, heart pounding, unsure of herself, like a schoolgirl again and hating herself for feeling that way.

‘No,’ he told her, ‘they’re still in bed. Disgraceful, isn’t it? In my day, I’d already ploughed the lower meadow, fed the chickens and geese, built a windmill and been called to the colours by half past ten.’

‘I’ve come to apologize,’ she said.

He looked at her, the grey eyes clear, the head held high, its chestnut hair cascading over her shoulders. ‘There’s no need,’ he said. The last time she’d stood here, in his lounge, on his turf, he’d leaned across and kissed her. Now she wanted it to happen again. But it didn’t.

‘PMT, I suppose,’ she said.

‘Ah, pre-Maxwell tension,’ he nodded. ‘That’s biology for you.’

She fished in her handbag, the one dangling from her right shoulder. ‘And that’s for you,’ she said. She handed him a video in a plain white cardboard box.

‘Not
Dormitory Nights – The Director’s Cut
?’ he leered. ‘You’re spoiling me, my dear.’

Her face twisted into a half smile. ‘I think you’ll find this a lot more interesting,’ and she sat down.

‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked.

‘You can get me some answers,’ she said, leaning back in the chair as he fiddled with the video.

‘My generation put a man on the moon, you know, but I still have trouble with this.’

There was no preamble. No forthcoming attractions in which a sandpaper voice-over rasped ‘at a cinema near you’.

‘Max,’ she stopped him before it started. ‘If the girls come in, you must switch this off.’

‘So it is
Dormitory Nights
,’ his eyes widened.

It wasn’t. A fixed camera looked down from a ceiling onto a spartan table. Two men sat facing each other, the glare from the bad light bouncing off the bald head of one of them. The other appeared to be in combat gear, sitting bolt upright, like a robot. At the bottom right of the screen was a date and logo and an electronic timer. Saturday night at the movies.

‘The bald guy is Dr Richard Bartlett; he’s a psychiatrist. The other one is Neil Hamlyn; he’s just confessed to the murder of Larry Warner.’

Maxwell pressed ‘pause’ on his remote and sat down heavily opposite Jacquie open-mouthed. On the screen a band of white static crackled across Hamlyn’s shoulders as he raised a hand to make a point. A man in the freeze-frame. ‘Jacquie …’ Maxwell began.

She held up a hand. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Should I be showing you this? No. Should I even have it in my possession? No. If anyone found out, would I lose my job? Yes. There,’ she sighed, as if with relief, ‘now we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s get on with it.’

Maxwell looked at her, the remote still in his hand. This girl had put her career on the line for him before, and more than once. But in the past, he’d had to ask her, using all the old Maxwell charm, the public-school offensive. Now she’d come unsolicited, with classified information which could sink them both. ‘You know,’ he said softly, ‘I have to ask why.’

She looked at him, biting her lip. What was she supposed to say? That she loved him? Was that why? Could it be that simple? And did she love him? More than the job that had become her life? More than that life? The other answer was easier. ‘Bartlett’s convinced – so now the DCI is convinced that Hamlyn did it. He’s based his beliefs on this interview, taken yesterday.’

‘Only one?’ Maxwell asked.

Jacquie nodded. ‘He says he’s sure. Doesn’t need any more.’

‘This Bartlett – who is he? Some sort of Cracker?’ He didn’t look much like Robbie Coltrane.’

‘He’s a forensic psychiatrist, on loan to the force,’ she explained. ‘We don’t, by and large, set much store by people like him. It’s all a bit Quantico and the FBI. Psychological profiling is the darling of armchair detectives – oh, sorry, Max.’ He beamed and bowed low. ‘Hard-bitten coppers don’t tend to buy it. It was all Frank Bartholomew could do to stop himself chucking up.’

‘Hmm,’ Maxwell mused. ‘One of nature’s gentlefolk, our Mr Bartholomew. Why are you risking your neck showing this to me, Jacquie?’

Would he never leave it alone? Get off the subject? Just play the bloody thing and be grateful. ‘The chalk face,’ she answered. ‘You’ve been there, you told me, for ever. You know people, Max. How they work, what makes them tick. I’d like your expertise on this one.’

He nodded, the remote still idling. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Hamlyn.’

‘Neil Thomas Hamlyn,’ she began, once Maxwell was sitting comfortably. ‘Corporal, SAS.’

‘Cool,’ said Maxwell, in his best Bart Simpson.

‘Are you impressed by that?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Fashionable things, regiments. And fashions come and go. No one had heard of the SAS before the Iranian Embassy siege, when you were a mere slip of a gel. Now suddenly they’re everybody’s idea of hard men. Then there was Two Para in the Falklands. No, I’ll take the Light Brigade any time, thanks. Three feet of cold steel and three bloody miles of nerve.’

‘Well, the point is, we don’t know if he’s kosher even there.’

‘Won’t the SAS talk to you?’

‘Let’s say they’re evasive.’ Jacquie gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Working with the army is never easy.’

Maxwell chuckled. ‘That’s what’s so marvellous about this great country of ours, isn’t it? We know the name of the chappie who runs MI5 – he even advertises in the paper; “Spies Wanted – For a Dangerous Time, Ring Whitehall 12345”. But you try to find out any info on a serving soldier, a serving policeman or even Rudolf Bloody Hess and you’re wasting your time.’

She nodded. ‘So at the moment, we only have his word. We’ve been over his flat, though. His dogtags, his uniform, such paperwork as he’s got seems genuine. And he appears to be a marksman.’

‘Does he say what he used?’

‘A Ruger Mini 14. He even brought it to show us.’

‘I thought those things were illegal in private hands.’

‘So’s murder,’ Jacquie told him. ‘But it happens anyway. And if he is SAS, it’s a moot point whether it’s private hands or not.’

‘Run the film,’ Maxwell said.

‘Tell me about Larry Warner,’ Bartlett was saying on the screen, his right hand cradling a polystyrene coffee cup.

‘He was a target,’ Hamlyn shrugged.

‘Is that all?’

‘What more is there?’

‘Why him?’ Bartlett persisted. ‘Why not me? DCI Hall? Your next-door neighbour?’

Hamlyn shrugged again. ‘He was as good as any.’

‘You followed him to the park?’