Maxwell’s Ride (25 page)

‘You were involved?’ Maxwell asked.

‘No,’ St John sighed. ‘No, I wasn’t, and I’ve often asked myself what I’d have done if I’d been there. Would I have tried to save the boy, waded in? Or would I have helped to kick the shit out of him.’ He reached across for another Scotch. ‘I’ll never know.’

‘And Godden?’

‘We went our different ways,’ St John said. ‘I took pictures. Good ones. I make an awful lot of money, Maxwell. Exhibitions from the Palace to as far as the eye can see. Archie . . Archie is more your philosopher.’

‘Philosopher?’ Maxwell echoed.

‘Oh, yes, here,’ and the photographer passed him a book. ‘Only the author’s name has been changed to protect the guilty.’

Maxwell read the title aloud. ‘
Nietzsche Now
.’

‘It’s a sort of brave new world,’ St John said, ‘in which the British Empire is restored, handed over with a generous helping of neo-Nazi race hate. Tony Blair is publicly burned, I believe and the letters t, u and c are removed from the alphabet.’

‘Really?’

St John laughed. ‘All right, I’m being flippant, Mr Maxwell. I’m being flippant because actually it’s all so bloody frightening. Archie’s not talking about some fantastic Never-Never, he’s talking about tomorrow. Christ, he’s talking about today.’

‘What about my niece?’ Maxwell closed to the man.

‘I don’t know,’ St John told him. ‘Maxwell, if I had any idea, I’d tell you. As I said, it’s not Archie’s style. He isn’t the muscle, he just buys it.’

‘Is that what he did?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Bought the muscle to hit Warner and Logan?’

‘That’s his style,’ St John nodded.

‘Tell him about the phone call,’ Hart said.

‘What phone call?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Archie and I only meet occasionally,’ St John told him. ‘Charts meetings, the odd media bash. Last week he rang me, out of the blue, asked me about the Warner business.’

‘Asked you what?’

‘Whether anyone had been snooping. He mentioned this Chris Logan.’

‘He did?’

St John nodded. ‘Archie liked to think I was still his, still loyal to the cause. I wasn’t. Christ knows I’d told him that often enough. He wouldn’t let it alone. He told me this journalist, this Logan, was pestering him, asking questions.’

‘The next we heard,’ Hart butted in, ‘Logan was dead. It was all over the
Evening Standard
and the local news. We put two and two together.’

‘But you’ve no proof?’ Maxwell asked.

‘I told you,’ St John said, ‘Godden’s style. He’ll have distanced himself. Alibis coming out of his arsehole. There’ll be nothing to link him with Logan at all.’

Something of a silence fell. ‘I rather think,’ Hart said, ‘that that’s going to be Mr Maxwell’s aim in life, establishing that link. Am I right, Mr Maxwell?’

Maxwell had been to the Bodleian before. Several times. But now, it was for research of a different kind. He sat in Duke Humphrey’s Library, the sun gilding the magnificent fan vaulting of the low ceiling. Learned tomes gathered dust in the rarefied air and assorted students, such culture wasted on their callow youth, were dotted around, poring over faded manuscripts. Maxwell was delighted to see there wasn’t a computer in sight.

It was nearly eleven before his target arrived and Maxwell had been up since shortly after dawn, having availed himself of Robert Hart’s spare room. The author had driven him up to town and he’d caught the seven forty-eight from Paddington. Archie Godden appeared to be wearing the same bow tie he’d worn at the Garrick, obviously a sort of uniform for the music critics’ society or that of the White Knights. Maxwell waited until the man had found a seat and had settled himself with a pile of volumes and a notepad.

‘Rattling good yarn,’ Maxwell whispered and placed another book on top of the pile.

Godden started. He read the title ‘
Nietszche Now’
and the name of the author ‘Hans Welt’.

Maxwell sat down next to him. ‘Good morning, Mr Welt,’ he said. A frowsty old spinster, comatose and cobwebbed, rustled into life in the far corner. She looked as if she’d been here since Duke Humphrey bought his first book, waiting for someone to cast her as Miss Havisham. ‘Sshh,’ was her highly original contribution to the proceedings.

‘How did you find me?’ Godden ignored the warning.

‘How did I discover you were Hans Welt or how did I know you’d be here at this hour?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Either,’ Godden would settle for.

‘Bob Hart and Hilary St John,’ he told him.

‘Sshh,’ the old girl hissed louder.

Godden looked up, interested. ‘Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Mr Maxwell.’ And he swept out past the ancient reader. ‘If you can read that, madam,’ he growled at her, thank a man.’

Her mouth fell open.

‘And a teacher,’ Maxwell echoed. And they were gone.

Roger Garrett was First Deputy at Leighford High. Like all Deputy Heads his insecurity complex could more accurately be described as a conurbation. He also had a brown nose from all his years of being up somebody else’s bottom. ‘Well, where is he?’ he asked all and sundry. ‘It’s not like Max to be off. And there’s no answer from his answerphone.’

Sylvia Matthews swept past him, dithering in the Hall as he was, being roundly ignored by multitudes of children. It wasn’t like Sylvia Matthews, who was good and loyal and true. She’d given fifteen years of her life to Leighford High School, but suddenly, today, she’d had enough. ‘Roger,’ she said, ‘Get a life.’

Maxwell was mother in the Crypt Tearooms. He poured for them both as Godden eyed him suspiciously. He still didn’t like the man’s bow tie and without that charming lady Deirdre Lessing, he was afraid that Maxwell would probably be even more of an oaf. It came as something of a surprise to him that Maxwell didn’t actually drink coffee from his saucer or pick his nose with his elbow.

‘I must admit,’ Maxwell was saying, sparkling at his man, ‘I underestimated you.’

‘You did?’

‘Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I’d just bought
Nietzsche Now
when we met at the Garrick.’

‘Really?’

‘I was particularly interested in the Ethnic Cleansing section.’

‘Well, it seems to be in vogue, doesn’t it?’ Godden asked. ‘Africa, the Balkans. The bottom line is that coffee-coloured people won’t do.’

‘Well, quite,’ Maxwell sipped his Earl Grey. ‘I had a ticklish situation the other day. One of our brown brethren caught stealing from the School Tuck Shop.’

‘Well, there you are. Breeding will out, you see, Mr Maxwell. But I had no idea you were of … shall we say, like mind?’

‘Oh, my dear fellow. It all started when I was at Cambridge.’

‘Oh dear!’ Godden crowed. He sounded as if he’d swallowed an even bigger plum than usual.

‘I know,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘But we’ll have to agree to differ on the Varsity front.’

‘Well, we’re white men all,’ Godden smiled at him.

‘We’re of an age, you and I. Good school. Good college.’ Maxwell felt the skin on his back crawling. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could keep up. ‘Then, suddenly, I looked around my college and there were Americans and Jamaicans and Lord knows what else.’

‘Tell me about it, dear boy,’ Godden nodded. ‘I tell you, the day we lowered the Union Jack in India … well, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Maxwell nodded, attacking his Danish. ‘But what can be done?’

‘Done?’

‘About it all. The situation. I’m not just talking corner shops here, Mr Godden …’

‘Oh, Archie, please.’

‘Archie, I’m talking about politics, medicine, the media, for God’s sake.’

Godden leaned forward. ‘Queers and Jewboys,’ he said. ‘In the Beeb of course, it used to be Queers and Catholics. Give me your honest moronic nigger any day. At least they have a history of slavery – knowing their place.’

‘Well, quite.’

‘But the Yids, well – God’s chosen people!’ He almost spat his Genoa the length of the table. ‘The arrogance of it. The unadulterated nerve.’

‘Homosexuality.’ Maxwell shook his head despairingly. He thought that if he spread his arms it would look too Jewish.

‘Cabinet’s riddled with it,’ Godden assured him. ‘Riddled. And as for the Church, well …’

‘Oh, appalling,’ Maxwell concurred. ‘Absolutely appalling.’

‘So what can be done?’

‘I asked you that.’

‘Well,’ Godden sat back so that his stomach never parted company with the table rim. ‘One or two things, actually.’

‘I’m all ears.’

Godden looked at him, then glanced around, mostly, Maxwell noticed, to the right. ‘How well do you know Tony LeStrange?’

‘The magician? Not at all.’

‘Mm,’ Godden munched on his Genoa. Other than that, the silence was deafening. ‘There are things to be done, Mr Maxwell ‘Oh, Max, please.’

Godden smiled. ‘Max. But there’s a little fly in the ointment.’

‘A nigger in the woodpile?’ Maxwell twinkled.

For a second Godden was silent, then he roared with laughter, pounding the table with the flat of his hand. ‘
Nietzsche Now
is doing rather well,’ he said, suddenly quiet and sitting closer to his man. ‘You know how some books are world-shakers – the Bible, of course,
Mein Kampf
, John Hackett’s
Third World War
– there’s no doubt that the groundswell of opinion is changing. Stephen Lawrence is only the beginning.’

‘Stephen Lawrence? Were you involved … ?’

‘No, no,’ Godden beamed as though delighted by the notion. ‘No, that case is just symptomatic. Joe Public are just sick and tired of being dictated to and milked by every
Untermenschen
group from here to eternity. There’s a reckoning coming, Max, you mark my words – a great reckoning.’

‘Marlowe,’ said Maxwell. ‘“A great reckoning in a little room” – Shakespeare’s description of Marlowe’s death.’

‘Pooftah, wasn’t he?’

‘And a Cambridge man,’ Maxwell nudged the great critic, who roared with laughter once again. ‘What’s the little fly in the ointment?’

‘Oh, that?’ Godden was suddenly serious again. ‘Look, Max, I have to be somewhere in half an hour. Can you hang around, do the sights or something? Come and see me tonight, say, eight? Have a spot of dinner.’ And he passed Maxwell his card.

‘Thanks,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Dinner it is,’ and he raised his Earl Grey. ‘Here’s to Nietzsche,’ he toasted, ‘and to flies in ointment.’

The other women in Maxwell’s life looked at him, each unsure of the other.

‘When was this taken?’ Jacquie asked. The photograph showed Maxwell under the slouch hat of a Confederate general, all dim and flaring lamps. Around him, a group of other uniformed gallants and their Southern belles stared back from the sepia.

‘A History Department dinner,’ Sylvia told her. ‘They always have them at Leighford – the outgoing Year Thirteen historians and the staff meet to celebrate or drown their sorrows, whichever.’

‘In fancy dress?’

Sylvia closed the album and put it back on Maxwell’s bookcase. ‘Historical period, I think he’d call it,’ she said. ‘Takes it all very seriously. Notice nobody’s smiling. They all had a whale of a time, but apparently nobody in the Civil War smiled very much. Something to do with exposure time.’

Jacquie crossed to the settee and curled up on it, wrapping her hands around a cup of coffee that said ‘Get the Max taste’. She already had. And so had the woman who sat opposite her now, idly stirring her cocoa.

‘How long have you loved him?’ Jacquie suddenly asked.

Sylvia looked up just as suddenly, scalding her top lip. ‘I didn’t know it showed,’ she winced. ‘How about you?’

Jacquie was going to deny it, but she saw there was little point. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t tell you how long.’

‘Fifteen years in my case,’ Sylvia said. ‘Ever since I’ve been at Leighford High. I was going through a pretty messy divorce then. And no, before you ask, Max wasn’t involved in that. He was funny, he was kind. He was … there. Sometimes that’s all it takes, isn’t it?’

Jacquie nodded. It was like looking into a mirror.

‘What do we do?’ Sylvia asked. ‘Draw lots? Claw each other’s eyes out? I expect Max would suggest pistols at dawn or something like that.’

‘We go on,’ Jacquie said. ‘We go on doing what we are doing. It’s up to him.’

‘Up to him?’ Sylvia’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘My dear girl, I could give you fourteen years. I’m supposed to be the resigned one, the little woman generation. I thought you lot were all Greenham Common and It’s My Body Right Or Wrong.’

Jacquie chuckled. ‘It was your generation who discovered female orgasm,’ she said.

Sylvia found herself laughing in spite of herself. ‘And the only reason I didn’t burn my bra was that I couldn’t afford to.’

It was odd. Two women in the house of the bachelor they loved, his niece upstairs asleep, his soldiers saddled in the attic, his cat out on the tiles and the two of them laughing together like old friends. Then the phone rang.

‘Hello?’ Sylvia answered it under silent, nodded instructions from Jacquie.

‘Sylv, is that you?’

‘Max, where are you?’

‘Never mind. How’s Lucy?’

‘She’s fine. Sleeping.’

‘Any more calls?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine. Jacquie’s here.’

‘Jacquie. Put her on.’

Sylvia held the cold receiver to her heart for a moment, then passed it across.

‘Max. Where are you?’

‘It doesn’t matter, Jacquie. I’m making headway.’

‘What sort of headway?’

‘White Knights. Tell Hall I’m on to something. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Max …’

But the line had died.

‘Come to think of it,’ Jacquie was thumping 1471, ‘he’s the most stubborn, cantankerous, awkward bastard on God’s earth.’

‘Isn’t that what we can’t resist, either of us?’ Sylvia asked.

‘Oxford,’ Jacquie said. ‘He’s in Oxford.’

‘Why?’

‘Let’s find out.’ She was dialling again. ‘Pauline? It’s Jacquie Carpenter. Look, can you check a number for me please? Oxford. Yes, I’ll wait.’ She cupped her hand over the receiver. ‘Do you mind if I stay tonight?’ she asked. ‘Keep an eye on Lucy?’

Sylvia nodded, smiling. ‘That’s what Max would want,’ she said. ‘I do too.’