Maxwell’s Ride (11 page)

‘Yes.’

‘From his house?’

‘No.’

‘You saw him outside the park and you followed him in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you fire from?’

‘The Wild Water Ride. In the rocks.’

‘Go back,’ Maxwell interrupted the documentary unfolding like bad drama before him. He’d passed the remote to Jacquie so that he could concentrate. The heads jerked at high speed.

‘You followed him to the park?’

‘Yes.’

‘From his house?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ Maxwell repeated. ‘Freeze it there.’

Jacquie stopped the action.

‘Let me get this straight. He gets to the theme park, to Magicworld, how?’

‘Car,’ Jacquie told him. ‘Hamlyn drives a clapped out Cavalier.’

‘He’s carrying the gun,’ Maxwell was trying to get a handle on the whole thing.

‘In a holdall. Apparently, the rifle strips down. It can be assembled and disassembled in minutes.’

‘Seconds.’

‘What?’

‘If he’s SAS,’ Maxwell explained, ‘and if he wants to get away from a murder scene, he’s got to move quicker than that.’

‘All right, then,’ she conceded. ‘Seconds.’

‘So,’ Maxwell went on, ‘He’s waiting outside the gates of Magicworld, carrying a holdall, when he spots Warner.

‘At random,’ Jacquie added.

‘Run it back again.’

She did and they heard the conversation for a third time. ‘He was a target,’ Hamlyn said.

‘Is that all?’ Bartlett asked.

‘What more is there?’

‘Freeze.’ Maxwell was in full Dragnet mode now. He might as well have added ‘Sucker’. But he didn’t. ‘A Hell of a lot, I suspect. “What more is there?” This Hamlyn,’ Maxwell had turned away from the screen and was looking intently at Jacquie, ‘Is he a Michael Ryan clone?’

‘Ryan wasn’t a member of the SAS.’ Jacquie remembered the Hungerford massacre all too well. She had been a schoolgirl at the time, rather as she felt now sitting in Maxwell’s lounge on a sunny Sunday morning, watching a man confess to murder. In a way, it was because of Ryan that she’d joined the police in the first place. One of those who had died in Hungerford was a family friend, Roger Brereton, a family friend who had driven the wrong way, into Ryan’s line of fire.

‘But he wore the gear and carried the guns,’ Maxwell said. ‘If I remember, he was a member of a rifle club.’

‘Devizes,’ Jacquie nodded.

‘What about Hamlyn?’

‘No record,’ Jacquie told him.

‘Ryan was a loner, a podgy, baby-faced shite with an attitude problem. I bet there are half a dozen teachers in Hungerford who weren’t that surprised the day the bastard opened up on people. The same will be true of Hamlyn.’

‘That’s what Dr Bartlett thinks,’ Jacquie said.

‘Run it on.’

‘How many shots did you fire?’ the balding man asked, taking a careful sip of his coffee.

‘One.’

There was a pause. The answer had clearly thrown Bartlett. ‘You’re that good?’ he asked.

‘I’m that good,’ Hamlyn nodded.

‘Self-effacing sonofabitch, isn’t he?’ Maxwell murmured.

‘How could you be sure he was dead?’

There was another pause, while Hamlyn thought about that one. ‘I’m that good,’ he repeated.

‘Rambo country,’ Maxwell muttered, frowning.

‘Have you killed anyone before?’ Bartlett asked on the screen.

‘No,’ Hamlyn said.

‘Warner was your first?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did it feel?’

‘What?’

‘When you killed him? When you saw him go down, a bullet in his head.’

Hamlyn shrugged. ‘I’d done my job,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t in his head. It was in his back, about a foot below the skull.’

‘Freeze,’ said Maxwell. ‘Is that right, about the bullet?’

‘Near as damn it. Bartlett’s trying to catch him out.’

‘Clumsy,’ Maxwell commented.

‘You’d be amazed. I remember at police college we studied the Black Dahlia case.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Maxwell closed his eyes, struggling to remember. ‘Beth Short, Los Angeles, 1947.’

Jacquie nodded. ‘The LAPD were inundated with oddballs who confessed to that one. They were all eliminated by one question – what was forced into the dead woman’s rectum?’

Maxwell winced. ‘My, my, but you’re in a nice job, Policewoman Carpenter,’ he said.

‘Tell me about it,’ she sighed.

‘What was?’

‘What was what?’

‘Forced into Beth Short’s rectum.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not telling you that. The case is still unsolved. You’d only go and confess to it.’ She winked at him. For one glorious, fleeting moment, Jacquie Carpenter held all the aces. But with Mad Max Maxwell, that moment never lasted. He always had five more up his sleeve, in his trouser turn-ups, in the drawer with his socks.

‘All right,’ Maxwell conceded. ‘So Hamlyn knows where the bullet went. Doesn’t that clinch it?’

Jacquie got up and wandered to the window. The faithful would be returning from church soon. The aroma of roast lamb and mint sauce wafted along the leafy curve that was Columbine. ‘Before he interviewed Hamlyn, the DCI asked Bartlett to give him a profile – the sort of man who would kill in the way Warner was killed.’

‘And?’

Jacquie was remembering Bartlett’s words. ‘Driven,’ she said. ‘A mission-oriented killer.’

Maxwell looked at her. ‘You mean Hamlyn hears voices? He’s a cross between the Yorkshire Ripper and Joan of Arc?’

Jacquie shook her head. ‘That doesn’t come out on the tape,’ she said. ‘That’s not Bartlett’s conclusion.’

‘All right,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Run the thing through,’ he told her. ‘I won’t stop it this time. Let’s get a sense of our Mr Hamlyn. Find out where he’s coming from, as we used to say in the ’eighties. See what makes him tick.’

Maxwell’s clock ticked. Maxwell’s cat came in, saw Jacquie and went out. She was simply one woman too many for Metternich at the moment. Hormonal overkill. Maxwell’s nieces slumbered on past midday. And Maxwell’s neighbour, Miss Troubridge, noted that Jacquie’s car was still parked in the street, several hundred yards from Maxwell’s house.

When the video had stopped, with an abrupt click, Maxwell sat back. ‘Why does Bartlett think Hamlyn did it?’ he asked.

Jacquie had been watching the Head of Sixth Form intently. She wanted answers. She’d settle for a miracle about now.

‘For one thing,’ she said, ‘he’s accurate on all practical counts. He knows where Warner was shot, both in terms of site and location of wound on the body. The gun could be right…’

‘
Could
be?’ Maxwell sensed a yawning loophole.

‘We haven’t found the bullet,’ she admitted. ‘The Wild Water Ride is a big area. Even fifty blokes on their hands and knees have had no luck. It’s the DCI’s guess the bullet hit the water and was washed away.’

‘But wouldn’t there be a spent cartridge?’

‘We can’t find that, either.’

‘All right,’ Maxwell mused, ‘back to Bartlett. Why else is he convinced?’

‘Attitude. What it comes down to in a police inquiry, Max, any inquiry, not just murder, is whether somebody’s telling the truth or not.’

‘And Bartlett thinks Hamlyn is?’

‘Yes. But he’s refused a lie detector test.’

‘Good,’ Maxwell bounced. ‘Place gets more like the Bronx every day. I hope you people read Mr Hamlyn his Miranda.’

‘Well, that’s another thing,’ Jacquie said. ‘He doesn’t want a lawyer. That works in our favour at first. You know we’ve got so many hours we can hold him, then it’s walkies.’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘the wisdom of Habeas Corpus.’

Jacquie was less convinced. ‘But there comes a point where we have to let a man have his phone call or we’d be accused of violating his rights.’

‘Fair enough,’ Maxwell nodded.

‘He didn’t, Max,’ Jacquie explained. ‘Not only did he not make a phone call, he didn’t want a solicitor when we offered one.’

‘So, he’s going to defend himself?’

‘There’s no defence. He’s admitted guilt. I doubt there’ll even be a trial. Bartlett will just commit him.’

‘Case closed,’ Maxwell said. ‘At least my girls will sleep easy.’

Jacquie looked at him. ‘I hope so, Max,’ she said, ‘Because Neil Hamlyn no more killed Larry Warner than I did.’

‘Convince me,’ he said, sitting back and clasping one ankle.

She screwed her courage to the sticking place and launched herself. ‘First …’

But he checked her. ‘Please, Jacquie,’ he said, holding her hand suddenly, ‘no fingers.’

She found herself blushing in spite of herself and sat on her hands. ‘Sorry, Max,’ she said. ‘First, the random target. Michael Ryan’s first hit was Mrs Susan Godfrey, picnicking with her children in Savernake Forest. The place was secluded, in semi-darkness in fact because of the trees and the kids too little to stop him. He knew he’d get away with it.’

‘Whereas,’ Maxwell took up her thread, ‘Neil Hamlyn opens up in broad daylight, blinding sunshine, in front of hundreds of would-be onlookers.’

‘Precisely.’

‘But he got away with it too.’ Maxwell was good at Devil’s Advocate.

‘Second, rifle nuts like Ryan – and that bastard at Dunblane – aren’t content with a single hit. They go berserk, shoot as many as they can. They carry Kalashnikovs and handguns. Often turn the gun on themselves, cheating the law in some sort of perverted triumph.’

‘Whereas Hamlyn fires a single shot, then goes home to feed his goldfish or mow the lawn.’

‘And he gives himself up,’ Jacquie reminded him.

‘Ah, but that’ll be the fear,’ Maxwell said. ‘I almost had a nervous breakdown in ’75 over a library overdue I had. For all chummie knew, you might have been about to feel his collar anyway.’

‘Christ, Max,’ Jacquie shook her head. ‘We were nowhere on this one. No forensic, no sighting …’

‘Sorry.’ He shuffled his feet.

‘Without Hamlyn, we’d be absolutely no further forward one week on.’

‘Bartlett didn’t follow up on the homosexual thing.’

‘The what?’

‘The late Mr Warner’s proclivities.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Jacquie hadn’t wanted to raise it. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? Who visited the housekeeper?’

‘It might have been,’ Maxwell affected mock bridle. ‘But if Juliette Pilgrim – doh!’ And he slapped his forehead Homer Simpson style. ‘There, I’ve been and gone and admitted it.’

‘Be careful, Max,’ she suddenly pleaded, the eyes steady, the mouth earnest.

‘Policewoman Carpenter,’ he returned the gaze. ‘You give me above top secret scuttlebutt like this,’ he nodded in the direction of the screen, ‘and you tell me to be careful? Am I getting mixed messages, or what?

‘Frank Bartholomew,’ she said, ‘I’ve known some shitty Detective Sergeants in my time, but he takes the biscuit. He’s after you, Max. Seriously.’

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Can I keep this?’

She looked across at the television screen. ‘Yes. It’s a copy. Christ, they’ll hang me as it is. If I’d taken the original out of the nick, God knows what they’d do.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he caught her hands and winked at her. ‘You can always retire early.’

‘What do you think, Max?’ she said, tightening her grip on his hands so that it almost hurt. ‘About Hamlyn?’

‘Hamlyn?’ he blinked. ‘Oh, he didn’t do it, my dear girl. So it’s our job to prove who did.’

He thought he saw her eyes fill with tears, but it might have been a trick of the light. Her head inclined forward and down and he leaned towards her, softly sweeping away a rogue lock of hair from her face. He held her cheek, smoothing it with his thumb. Her lips parted, so close to his. Then they jumped apart, the Head of Sixth Form and the detective.

‘Uncle Maxie,’ a still-sleepy Lucy stood there, all fluffy mules and tartan pyjamas. ‘What’s for lunch? I’m starving.’

9

It is a little … irregular, Max.’ It was James Diamond talking, Leighford High’s less than redoubtable head teacher. When he’d joined the school, only a twinkling ago by Maxwell’s reckoning, the Head of Sixth Form had christened him ‘Legs’ in the fond hope that by giving him the sobriquet of a ’twenties Chicago gangster, the man might obtain some colour. Alas, the Head of Sixth Form had been mistaken. James Diamond remained as bland as the day he was born.

Maxwell found him now, in the early ’nineties banality that was his office. An indescribably awful painting of the school was pinned above his head, like the sword of Damocles utterly unknown to he at whose head it was aimed.

‘I mean,’ Diamond always felt uncomfortable when Max said nothing. Only a little less uncomfortable than when he said something. ‘They must have schools of their own.’

‘Oh indeed so,’ Maxwell assured him, ‘but,’ and he held his fingers in the sign of the cross, ‘we’re talking Private Sector, here, Headmaster.’ Only Peter Maxwell called James Diamond Headmaster. Again, in the fond hope that one day he’d become one. It hadn’t happened yet. ‘And the Private Sector, like all good schools, has not gone back yet. Thursday, my nieces assure me.’

‘Thursday?’ Diamond was horrified. ‘Is that how long they’ll be here, then?’

‘They’ll be here,’ Maxwell blinked smilingly, ‘for as long as it takes for their parents to collect them … with your blessing, of course, Headmaster.’

‘So you’re literally in loco parentis, then, Max?’

‘In my case, just loco,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Do I have a decision on this, Headmaster? Mr Prentiss, with the usual sadism of an exams officer, has put me on invigilation this morning. GCSE PE, whatever that may be.’ And he stood up.

‘Very well, Max.’ Diamond knew when he was being hustled. This was the bum’s rush and he was the bum in question. ‘But you’ll have to brief the staff concerned.’

Maxwell bowed. ‘Your wish, as ever, Headmaster, is my command. Consider them briefed.’

And he left.

The winds that blew between A and C blocks, they cut him like a knife. For all the sun burned bright across Leighford High, dazzling off the chromework of the bike sheds and the staff car park, there was a distinct nip in the air. His nieces fell into step behind him as he fought his way through the main corridor.

‘What’s that smell, Uncle Maxie?’ Lucy nudged him in the ribs.

‘Seven B Four,’ Maxwell said, ‘either that, or it’s my heartfelt advice not to touch the beefburgers for lunch,’ and they swept into his office. For all they’d lived with the Great Man for over a week now, nothing could prepare Tiffany and Lucy for the inner sanctum that was the office of the Head of Sixth Form. His desk was buried in bits of paper, signed by his very good friends Doug McAvoy and David Blunkett. In the corner, piles of tottering exercise books, whose graffiti-worked covers proclaimed that the world should know that ‘PL loves JA’ and that ‘911 Are Cool’ hid the cobwebs. But it was the walls that really held them. Giant posters hit them between the eyes, reflecting in glorious technicolor a misspent life. A terrified Lilian Gish clutched her baby and recoiled from the cruel hand of
Intolerance
; an over made-up Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert would have them believe that
It Happened One Night
, and Lana Turner and John Garfield looked hugely relieved that
The Postman Always Rings Twice
. In fact, Tiffany had seen that one, but she remembered the bloke as Jack Nicholson and the girl as Jessica Lange. And that version was old.