Maxwell’s Ride (24 page)

Amy Weston looked tired and old. Not that Maxwell habitually went around guessing the ages of ladies, especially poetesses. After all, he’d been to a good school. She stood in the hall of her Mock Tudor home, more than a little surprised to see him. And certainly more than a little surprised to see him suddenly crouch and feel her parquet flooring.

‘It’s a bitch, this stuff, isn’t it? Endless scuffing. What caused this particular bit, I wonder? One of the cats? The stiletto heels of an autograph-hunting fan – or Chris Logan’s head as it hit the deck, a split-second after you put a bullet into him?’

He was standing again now, his eyes on a level with hers, watching for the tell-tale signs. ‘Let’s talk you through it,’ he said, edging forward to close the front door. ‘Your throat’s gone dry, you’re experiencing tunnel vision. All you can see is me, no right, no left. You can barely hear what I’m saying, can you? That’s because of the noise of your heart thumping in your head. Your chest – forgive my bluntness – feels tight, compressed. Your hair is detaching itself from your head. And, my, aren’t those hands heavy? What’ll go first, I wonder, your knees or your bladder?’

Amy was blinking, walking backwards, trying to cope with the verbal battery he was giving her. ‘What are you talking about?’ The voice was thick, strangled.

‘I’m talking about guilt, Ms Weston; more specifically, I’m talking about murder, Ms Weston. I’m talking about shooting a man, right here, I’d say, in the hallway.’ He looked around him. ‘I must say, your repairman has done an excellent job. No splintered woodwork, no torn wallpaper. How did you explain a bullet in the doorframe to the handyman? Unless of course,’ he had circled the space, sliding his fingers reflectively over the surface, ‘your handyman speaks with a genteel Yorkshire accent and has a reasonable grasp of Cervantes. You know, Don Quixote? And then, of course, there’s that other little matter – which one of you has my niece?’ He wasn’t smiling now, but standing, head to head, staring hard.

‘I’m going to call the police.’ Amy Weston snapped out of the hold his eyes had on her and made for the lounge.

‘Excellent!’ Maxwell’s strides were longer and the Devon Rex leapt a mile as he snatched up the receiver. ‘Allow me to dial for you. What’s the number? Or shall I cut out the middle man and just ring 999?’

She grabbed the phone from him and put it down, breathing heavily, fighting for calm, desperately seeking composure.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Citizen’s arrest. I don’t know the form of words. “You’re not obliged to say anything”? No, they’ve changed that now, haven’t they? And for the worse in my opinion. Worse than the New English Bible. How about “You’re nicked”? That packs a certain punch, even when it’s not delivered by the long arm of the law.’

‘Please,’ she said, both hands in the air in supplication, both hands trembling. ‘Please, I’m frightened enough.’ And she sat down on the chintz settee, taking breaths, feeling her heart-beat slow towards simple hysteria.

‘Why did you leave the rose and poem at the Arches?’

‘Mr Maxwell,’ she looked at him through pale, sad eyes. ‘Will you let me make a phone call?’

‘To Mr LeStrange? I think not.’

‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Not Anthony. Someone else.’

Maxwell hadn’t really paid much attention to Robert Hart at the Garrick the week before last. He’d never met a Booker prizewinner before, but he wasn’t impressed. It had been an hour or so before he arrived at the Mock Tudor house at Lammas Green, and he looked older, scruffier – a tank top and deck shoes; but perhaps that’s what the literati were wearing these days.

‘Bob.’ She threw her arms around his neck, clinging there as though to the wreckage of her life. ‘I think we have to talk to Mr Maxwell.’

‘Amy …’ he began. Then he saw Maxwell leaning on the lounge doorframe. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘That,’ Maxwell said, ‘is what I hoped you were going to tell me.’

‘Bob. I think we’ve found an ally in Mr Maxwell.’ She led the writer into the lounge and they sat down together. ‘Drink, darling?’

‘I think I might need one,’ Hart said.

She filled two glasses with fingers of gin and splashed in the tonic. ‘Mr Maxwell?’

‘No thanks,’ he shook his head. ‘But I’d like some answers.’

‘Bob?’ she sat down again and laced her fingers through his.

Hart took a swig and faced his man. ‘All right, Mr Maxwell, what do you know about Archie Godden?’

‘Basically, only what he told me when I met him. Music critic for the
Observer
. Clearly a member of the Garrick Club. Something of a BOF, I gather.’

‘Bof?’ That wasn’t an acronym Hart knew.

‘Boring Old Fart.’

‘Yes, well, he’s certainly that. But that’s not all. Mr Maxwell, have you heard of an organization called the White Knights?’

Maxwell looked at them both. ‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ he said.

‘And what do you know about them?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid. They’re a right-wing group, opposed to ethnic minorities various. That’s about it.’

‘They were formed back in the ’sixties,’ Hart told him, leaning back in the settee and savouring his g ’n’ t. ‘A rather exclusive club at Oxford.’

‘Oxford?’ sneered Maxwell. ‘I might have known.’

‘I won’t embarrass the particular college in question, although, to be fair, they came from everywhere, cross-faculty sort of thing. They did a great deal of damage in the ’seventies. Remember the winter of discontent? The three day week?’

‘That’s what I still work in honour of,’ Maxwell told him.

‘What about the miners’ strike? Scargill?’

‘Arthur Scargill is a member of the White Knights?’

‘No, no,’ Hart shook his head. ‘You’re missing the point. Wherever two or three hundred are gathered together, Mr Maxwell, you’re going to find the White Knights. I detest the word arcane, but it’s the only one that fits these people. Working behind the scenes, faceless. Never in the crowd, never caught on security cameras. Scargill, Tariq Ali, Danny Cohn-Bendit, they were the names we knew, the faces the media showed us. They had their agendas, some of it laughable, some of it laudable. No, I’m talking about the puppeteers, the string pullers. What we saw, what the media ranted about – and still does – are Rent-a-Mob. We’re talking about the brains behind.’

‘Archie Godden?’

Hart was warming to his theme now. ‘Think about it. Godden was at Oxford in the early ’sixties. They held a party on the day Kennedy was killed.’

‘Really?’

‘Sick, wasn’t it? They were celebrating the fall of a Good Guy. All right, so he wasn’t quite King Arthur, we know that now, but he had time and respect for the blacks, the underdog. There was a killing in Oxford the next day. A Jamaican was found beaten to death in an alley.’

‘Godden?’

Hart managed a laugh. ‘Oh, not personally, no. But he was there, organizing, planning, holding coats. The police interviewed him, but of course, got nowhere. That man could lie for England.’

‘And often has,’ Amy added. ‘We believe that since his Oxford days, Godden has been orchestrating every bit of mayhem he can. He despises the left, obviously, but he now also despises every government since the war. The only politician who made any sense to him, after Oswald Mosley, was Enoch Powell.’

‘Rivers of blood, hmm?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Of course.’ Hart got up to freshen his glass. Amy declined. ‘He’s moved with the times. He was never your front man. No dire warning speeches from him, not even irate, loony letters to
The Times
. Just quiet control of money and people.’

‘Money?’

‘Charts,’ Amy said. ‘As far as we can tell, it’s a front.’

‘A front?’

‘Money laundering.’ Hart winced as the gin hit his tonsils. ‘We don’t know the mechanics of it yet, but under the guise of a charity, backing worthy causes like your school, he’s stashing away a fortune for whatever the next little anti-social spree’s going to be. What would be your guess, Amy? The Millennium Dome? Jesus, the damage doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘And Warner?’ Maxwell wanted to know.

‘Ah,’ Hart raised a finger, ‘now that I can only guess at. The man’s a forensic auditor – was, sorry – and about the best in his field. We think he’d got a sniff of something, what Godden was up to with the money – really, that is. I’ll lay you odds the law haven’t got a clue about any of this.’

‘It’s the first place they’d look,’ Amy said. ‘An auditor dies suspiciously – you assume a financial motive. Except they haven’t, as far as we know, been able to find one.’

‘What about Neil Hamlyn?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Who?’

‘The man helping police with their inquiries and currently, I presume, in Leighford Nick. Ex-SAS I understand.’

Hart shrugged. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Godden’s never the front man. He couldn’t shoot his way out of a paper bag. This Hamlyn is Rent-a-Mob. If he’s ex-SAS he’d have been drummed out for instability. Classic, isn’t it, the government trains a man to kill and then become alarmed when he does. Whatever happened to common sense in the world?’

‘Now, Bob,’ Amy scolded gently. ‘We aren’t here to sermonize.’

‘You’re right,’ Hart smiled at her and held her hand.

‘And Logan?’

‘Logan found something out,’ Amy said. ‘We don’t know what.’

‘About Godden?’

‘We don’t know.’ Hart shook his head. ‘But we know a man who might.’

‘Who?’

‘Hilary St John.’

‘The fashion photographer?’

Hart nodded. ‘He was at Oxford with Godden. They used to be close, but I gather there’s been something of a rift.’

‘Much more to the point, people,’ Maxwell said, ‘my niece.’

‘What?’ Hart asked.

Amy turned to him. ‘Mr Maxwell was telling me about it before you got here, darling. Someone’s kidnapped his niece … er … Tiffany.’

Maxwell nodded.

‘My God,’ Hart growled. ‘This is intolerable. Mr Maxwell, you must be beside yourself. What can we do?’

‘Find her,’ said Maxwell.

‘If Godden’s got her …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, he lives in Oxford. Got a town house not far from the Radcliffe Camera. Look, I’ve got an idea.’

The others looked at Bob Hart. Even the Devon Rex seemed interested.

‘It’s going to take some nerve on your part, Mr Maxwell. Are you game?’

Maxwell leaned forward. ‘If it’ll get my niece back in one piece, Mr Hart,’ he said, ‘I’m a brace of pheasant.’

Working, Hilary St John looked even more dissolute than when relaxing at the Garrick. Leaving Amy near a phone, Hart had driven Maxwell up to town. It may have been mid-evening, but Fashion Photography in general and Hilary St John in particular took no notice of office hours.

St John was lying on the floor when Hart and Maxwell arrived, lights and white umbrellas in all directions, pointing a ludicrously expensive camera at a slim, naked girl gyrating in front of him.

‘That’s it, sweetheart.’ The camera whirred with a life of its own, ‘Give me more of that. Yes, pout. Excellent. Back. And again. Great. Just move …’ He suddenly saw them out of the corner of his trained eye. ‘Fuck!’

The mood was broken, the magic gone. The girl stood limply, then threw both hands on her hips in resignation. She was used to this. St John rolled upright and hung the second of two cameras around his neck. ‘I can’t say I like your timing, Bob,’ he growled, a tad gruffer than when Maxwell had met him last.

Maxwell, for all his sang-froid, found himself staring at the girl.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, snatching up a cigarette packet. ‘Never seen a pair of tits before?’

Maxwell went into his coy routine. ‘Not since dear Mama’s,’ he said.

‘Weirdo!’ she muttered and stomped off to find a robe.

‘You’ll have to forgive Jessica,’ St John said. ‘It’s been a long session.’

‘What particular fashion are you photographing at the moment, Mr St John?’ Maxwell felt bound to ask.

‘Do I come into a classroom and tell you how to teach?’ the camera man asked.

‘Touché,’ Maxwell bowed.

‘We’ve got a problem, Hilary,’ Hart said. ‘I gather you remember Mr Maxwell.’

St John nodded sullenly while Maxwell began fiddling with a light gadget. Deftly, the photographer removed it from him.

‘Yes,’ he said pointedly, ‘I do.’

‘It’s Archie,’ Hart said.

St John looked at them both. ‘Is this something I’m going to need a drink for?’ he asked.

‘Better make that three,’ Hart suggested and found a low, soft chair out of the circle of lights.

‘That’s a wrap, Jess,’ St John called to a room beyond a curtain. ‘Same time tomorrow.’

The reply was a slammed door.

‘Tart!’ St John growled. ‘Now,’ he fussed with three Scotches. ‘What of Archie?’

‘Mr Maxwell thinks he’s involved with the murder of Larry Warner.’

St John stopped in mid soda squirt. ‘Does he, now?’

‘Not to mention Chris Logan,’ Maxwell added.

‘Bob,’ St John sat down on the little leather stool, perched, vulnerable. ‘Can I have a word?’

‘Hilary,’ Hart frowned, ‘anything you have to say to me you can say to Mr Maxwell.’

St John looked from one to the other, gnawing his lip, looking for space to manoeuvre. There wasn’t any. ‘Archie and I go a long way back,’ he said.

‘Hilary,’ Hart said. ‘You can’t hide behind old loyalties for ever. Two people are dead. And we think Archie’s got Mr Maxwell’s niece.’

‘What?’ the photographer gaped. ‘No, no,’ he chuckled, ‘that’s not Archie’s style. Why should he have your niece, Maxwell?’

‘To shut me out, shut me down. I was asking questions about Larry Warner. So was Chris Logan. I think that’s why he died.’

‘I’ve told Maxwell about Archie, Hilary,’ Hart explained. ‘It’s time. What do you know?’

‘Oh, God,’ St John sighed and drained his glass, feeling the searing on his tonsils. ‘When we were at Oxford, it was all a bit of a giggle. A laugh. There were Leftist groups and Rightist groups. All indulging in debate. Just average schoolboys – and girls – really. Intoxicated with the sound of our own voices. But Archie? Well, Archie took it all seriously. There was a black lad, not a student, a local. Archie paid some thugs to beat him up. He died.’