Maxwell’s Ride (16 page)

‘Chris, you old bastard,’ a young male voice said. ‘Where the fuck are you? Pick up, you turd. You owe me lunch.’

An older, gravel voice came next. ‘Chris, where are you? The
Advertiser
might be small potatoes to you, but it’s bread and butter to some of us. I allowed a day in London, but you’re pushing it a bit, old son.’

Then the line went dead. And as it did, there was a thud from the front door, a series of sharp knocks.

‘Who’s there?’ Maxwell heard a male voice through the letterbox. ‘Come on, I know you’re in there.’

He flattened himself against the wall, then ducked out of the lit room into the darkness. The beam of a torch through the letterbox was spraying light in erratic spears down the passageway. He heard muttered conversation outside and the rattling of keys in locks. The front door crashed back on its hinges and the lights came on.

Maxwell knew when his number had come up and sauntered around the corner, smiling broadly at the uniformed officer and the other bloke who stood there, filling the entranceway.

‘So that’s where the lights are,’ he said.

‘That’s him,’ the civilian was an overweight, pasty faced slob of a man. ‘His bike’s outside. Watch it, he’s got an umbrella.’

‘Could you put that down, please, sir?’ the constable asked.

‘Certainly,’ Maxwell said. ‘It’s not loaded.’

‘We’ve had reports of a break-in,’ the constable told him.

‘When?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Just now,’ the constable said.

‘Ah, well, that’s interesting,’ Maxwell leaned against the wall. ‘You see, the break-in happened some time ago, I would say. Hours, days – I’m not sure. The back door was open.’

‘Could I have your name, sir?’ The constable still had not moved.

‘Peter Maxwell,’ Maxwell confessed. ‘38, Columbine Avenue. I’m one of those countless, faceless, honest citizens of this country who pay your, if I may say so, rather over-the-top salary.’

Maxwell regretted it as soon as it left his lips. It was textbook anti-police aggression, second only to ‘Why aren’t you out there catching real criminals?’ But the deed was done.

‘We’ve seen you before, haven’t we?’ The constable’s face was set in stone. It seemed to be a night for swapping clichés.

‘Possibly,’ Maxwell said. ‘I shop in Asda, except on payday when I run amok in Marks and Sparks. My route to and from work is within a mile of your establishment at Leighford Nick – and I’m available for bar mitzvahs and Police Revues.’

The constable was already talking into the gadget fitted to his shoulder, as Long John Silver might have chatted to his parrot. In this case, though, the parrot squawked back. ‘I’ve got a car on the way, Mr Maxwell,’ the constable said. ‘Perhaps we can all sit down and you can tell us what you’re doing here.’

The lights were burning long into the night at Leighford Police Station. Peter Maxwell was sitting in Interview Room Number One opposite a less-than-amused Frank Bartholomew.

‘So,’ the sergeant had finished wading through Maxwell’s statement. ‘Would you like to elaborate on this load of bollocks?’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘how wondrous the English language sounds when it drips from lips such as yours.’

‘Cut the bullshit, Maxwell,’ Bartholomew snarled. ‘There’s no fucking tape running now.’

‘Hmm,’ Maxwell recognized the moment. ‘Rubber truncheon time.’

‘You went to Logan’s because …’

‘He’s an old boy of Leighford High. I like to keep in touch with my old charges.’

‘We’re talking about new charges on this one, sunshine.’

‘Sergeant,’ Maxwell leaned forward, ‘I am at liberty to enter the house of a friend to ascertain whether he is in or not.’

‘By the back door?’

‘By the skylight if I so wish.’

‘That’s what we in the crime business call “breaking and entering”,’ Bartholomew faced his man. He should have known better.

‘Yes, but the whole issue rests on the “breaking”, doesn’t it? As it says in my statement, the door was open. All I did was walk in.’

‘I’ve got blokes going over the flat with a fine-tooth comb. If your dabs come up …’

‘My dabs will be on Chris’s answerphone button and perhaps the knob of the porch door. That’s all. Oh – and the umbrella.’

‘You listened to his answerphone?’ Bartholomew’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

‘I want to find out where he is. I need to talk to him.’

‘Why?’ Persistent was Mr Bartholomew.

‘Auld Lang Syne,’ Maxwell often took refuge in Gaelic.

‘You what?’

‘Chris and I were arranging a reunion, kids of his generation. Class of ’87 if I remember rightly. The
Herald of Free Enterprise
went down. Danny Kaye and Fred Astaire went to that Great Stars Retirement Home in the sky – oh, and a madman called Michael Ryan went walkabout in Hungerford.’

Bartholomew leaned back in his chair. ‘Now why should you mention that?’

Maxwell shrugged. ‘It happened in ’87,’ he said. ‘And since my trip to Magicworld, shooting has loomed rather large for me.’

‘And what’s Christopher Logan got to do with all this?’

‘All this?’ Maxwell smiled at the Grand Inquisitor. ‘Absolutely nothing. Am I free to go?’

Bartholomew leaned towards him. ‘Then there’s Mrs Pilgrim,’ he said.

‘Ah.’

‘A man answering your description visited Mrs Pilgrim a week ago. The man with him could have been Logan.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s a simple matter,’ Bartholomew said. ‘An ID parade. You in a line-up of other sad bastards. See if Mrs Pilgrim picks you out.’

‘She might,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But you know better than I, Sergeant, how notoriously bad eyewitnesses are. Do you know how many different descriptions we have of the man who was Jack the Ripper, for instance? Then there’s the Hanratty case …’

‘Look, you!’ Bartholomew growled, his nose inches from Maxwell’s. ‘I’m not a helluvalot impressed by smartarses like you. From where I’m sitting, you’re in deep shit, obstructing police in the pursuance of their inquiries …’

‘Obstructing?’ Maxwell interrupted. Then he smiled, relaxed and sat back. ‘Sherlock Holmes never had this trouble.’

Frank Bartholomew would have liked to have thrown the book at Maxwell, followed by the chair, then the table. As it was, for the moment, his hands were tied. He kept him there as long as he could, waiting, wandering the Interview Room Number One. Then he had to let him go, to wreak whatever mischief the old bastard would. Frank Bartholomew knew how to wait.

12

‘So, the bottom line is, you don’t know where he is?’

‘Am I my reporter’s keeper?’ Maxwell recognized the voice from Logan’s answerphone.

There was no real answer to that. Was the editor of a provincial newspaper in any sense responsible for what his staff did on their days off?

‘But it wasn’t a bloody day off, was it?’ the editor had said. ‘Chris Logan is on the company payroll, using company time and company funds. When you find him, tell him his days are numbered and I want to see him, on my carpet, forthwith.’

The editor wasn’t built for the job any more. Too much of the sedentary lifestyle, too many convivial bevvies over lunch, too much linguini. His hair, along with his ace reporter apparently, had deserted him, and so had his sense of humour.

Maxwell felt the wind rush by him as the editor slammed out of the outer office into the bowels of the
Advertiser
where mysterious people did … no outsider quite knew what. The Head of Sixth Form just knew the man had on his desk the legend ‘You don’t have to be a surly bastard to work here and it doesn’t help.’

‘A martyr to his blood pressure, I would think, your editor,’ Maxwell winked at the young hopeful hovering nervously by the aspidistra.

‘Oh, he’s not so bad. It’s just as the deadline looms, he gets a bit tetchy. We all do. I’m Keith, by the way. Keith Kershaw.’ He extended a furtive hand.

‘Keith,’ Maxwell took it, despising the way that media people have of instant chumminess.

‘It’s Peter, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ said Maxwell and made for the door.

‘Um,’ Kershaw’s whine slowed him momentarily, ‘Can you tell me what Chris is up to, Mr Maxwell?’

‘About five foot nine,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’

The grin had long ago frozen on the lad’s face. He wasn’t cut out for this game and he knew it. Chrysanthemum shows were okay, but the local magistrates filled him with terror and he couldn’t look a councillor in the eye. ‘Oh, it’s just that Chris and I … well, we’re a sort of team, you know, working together …’

A strange glint appeared in Maxwell’s eye and he re- crossed the office floor. ‘So you know where he is, then?’

‘I know where he went, yes. An address in Bloomsbury. But … um … he didn’t actually say what he was working on.’

Maxwell frowned, peering closely at the boy. ‘I’m sorry, Keith,’ he said. ‘Did you think his going to London had anything to do with me?’

‘Well,’ Maxwell watched the lad’s neck mottle crimson in the midday sun, ‘I naturally assumed …’

‘Never assume.’ Maxwell shook his head, quoting a piece of Managerspeak he’d heard on a course once, just before he fell into a coma through boredom. ‘It makes an ass out of you and me. No, I was helping Chris organize a school reunion. Nice to catch up on old boys and girls – who’s screwing who, who’s doing time, that sort of thing, you know.’

‘Oh.’ Kershaw looked a little crestfallen.

‘Did Chris say why he was going to Bloomsbury?’ he asked.

‘No, not exactly,’ Kershaw said. ‘But he did mention you.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell smiled. ‘How flattering. In what context, exactly?’

‘Said he’d found something out.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Maxwell suddenly shouted so that the cub reporter leapt a mile. ‘Gray Tollefer!’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Gray Tollefer,’ Maxwell sat down with the shock of it all. ‘Oh, not his real name of course. I’m afraid I can’t tell you his real name. Suffice it to say that Gray had the kindness to mention at the last Baftas that he owed it all to me.’

‘He did?’ Kershaw asked.

‘Nice, wasn’t it?’ Maxwell was hugging himself. ‘I knew he was in London, when he’s not in Hollywood, of course.’

‘Hollywood?’

Maxwell looked up at the man. ‘Yes, you know, Tinseltown. The film Mecca of the World. They’ve got studios and actors and things.’

‘This Gray Tollefer …’ Kershaw was desperately trying to salvage some sense from the conversation.

Maxwell leaned towards him. ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ he hissed.

‘Spielberg’s film?’ Kershaw asked.

Maxwell tutted, shaking his head. ‘He’s just the front man. Tollefer made it.’

‘No!’

‘Yup! The English Patient?’

‘Anthony Minghella?’

‘Nope.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Gray Tollefer.’

‘Why … ?’

‘The man’s a recluse. Makes Stanley Kubrick look like Mr Goodbar. He was always like that. God, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve fished that lad out of the History store cupboard. Couldn’t stand people, you see. Why he’s become one of the world’s foremost film directors, I just don’t know.’

‘So Chris …’

‘Was at school with him, yes. Right here in Leighford. Er … you’re not from Leighford, are you?’ Maxwell suddenly checked.

‘No. Devizes.’

‘Bad luck. Chris must have found Gray’s London address – the one in Bloomsbury. Got it to hand?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact …’

‘Can I have it?’

‘Well, I thought perhaps I … I mean, if I can get an exclusive …’

Maxwell roared with laughter. ‘My dear boy, Gray Tollefer doesn’t give interviews. I believe he did talk once – to David Frost – but insisted on seeing the thing first and then stopped the Beeb from broadcasting. That’s how he is, I’m afraid. Still, I flatter myself, as his old master, I may be in with a slight chance.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course.’

‘So, the address?’ It was like drawing teeth.

‘Ah, yes. Here.’ He produced a notepad from his jacket pocket and Maxwell memorized the page.

‘Gordon Square. Excellent. Thank you, Keith.’ He got up and shook the boy’s hand. ‘Remind me to have a word with your editor about you. I think you’ve got a future.’ He leaned towards the lad. ‘One helluva future.’

‘Oh, thank you, Mr Maxwell,’ Kershaw beamed.

‘Oh, no, dear boy. Thank you.’ And he saw himself out.

Maxwell’s answerphone was about to click in when he picked up, disentangling himself from the cord and the pile of tatty exercise books he’d just dropped all over the floor.

There. Metternich caught the moment. He’d done it again. Every time that damned ringing sounded, the silly old duffer picked up that plastic thing. There were scarier times though. Sometimes, when Maxwell wasn’t there, that ringing sounded and people would start talking to him as if he was. Weird people, humans.

‘Darling!’ Maxwell recognized the dulcet tones from far Beirut. ‘How the devil are you?’

‘All is well, Max,’ he heard his sister say. ‘I’d hoped to catch you before we go up country tomorrow.’

‘Up country?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘What’s this, the Mem off to the Hill station for a spot of tiffin?’

‘Don’t be absurd, Max dear,’ Sandie scolded him. ‘It’ll just be a day or two longer than I originally thought. Can you cope, dear boy?’

Maxwell smiled. He’d been to a good school. ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’ he asked, by way of an answer.

‘I sincerely hope not,’ Sandie shuddered. ‘I’m sure there’s an encyclical against it. Put the girls on, will you?’

‘Ah, snagette there, soul sister.’

‘Oh?’

‘Slight crisis on the domestic front. I’ve palmed the girls till on a good friend.’

‘What?’

‘Trained nurse, divorcee, salt of the earth. No worries there,’ Maxwell assured her.

‘Is this one of your women?’ Sandie wanted to know.

‘How dare you!’ Maxwell growled. ‘If you must know, my cooker is on the blink. Can’t function too well. Sylvia was the answer to a History teacher’s prayer. She took the girls in like a shot. I can give you her number.’

‘Later, Max,’ she said. ‘Give them my best. I’ll have to go. Kenneth’s … oh, all right. Just how many hands do you think I’ve got? Bye.’ And with one click, she was gone.