Maxwell's Inspection (12 page)

‘What is?' he frowned.

She took a breath and launched herself, like many a battleship Maxwell thought she resembled. ‘Yesterday, about half two it was, I went to see the Head. It's the old shorts issue again, you know.'

Maxwell did. Every year the shorts issue came up, the brazen hussies of Year Twelve and Ten wearing the skimpiest of netherwear. This year of course the obsession
for driving red hot needles into one's navel and showing a Faberge-like cluster of jewels to a gawping world,
contrived
to make it less and less likely the girls would be wearing anything below the waist come September. Looked at in a positive way, it would save time behind the bike sheds later.

‘I should have knocked,' Dierdre was saying, as though to her Father Confessor. ‘I should have knocked and I didn't. Oh, Max, it was terribly wrong of me. So is this …' She was halfway to her feet when he stopped her.

‘Let it go, Dierdre,' he said softly. ‘Better we know. Both of us.'

She looked into those dark, flashing eyes. God, how she hated the man. Yet now, he was her dad, her big brother, the husband she'd loved once and lost, her priest. She wanted to tell him, wanted to trust him, just this once …

‘I opened the door,' she said. ‘She was in there.'

‘Who?'

‘Sally Meninger.'

‘And?'

‘They were … canoodling, Max. There, in his office.'

Maxwell's hands fell away from her shoulders and he sat there, open-mouthed. ‘Canoodling?' he had to hear the word again to convince himself he hadn't
misconstrued
the first time. ‘We are talking about Legs Diamond here, Dierdre, the most insipid …'

‘Max!' she bellowed, on her feet now, dry-eyed, Morgan Le Fay again, chewing on men's bones in her blood-slick lair.

‘All right.' He followed her to the window, hands in the air. ‘I'm sorry, Dierdre. I shall need details.'

‘What?' she spun to face him. ‘So you can gloat?'

‘She came to see me last night,' he told her. ‘Sally Meninger.'

‘What? At home?'

He nodded. ‘I think we're talking chameleon-woman here, Dierdre. She's involved and she's scared. Now tell me
exactly
what you saw in Diamond's office.'

Dierdre Lessing was taking several deep breaths. This was Mad Max, the man who had solved the murder of Jenny Hyde, the man who had faced lunatics with
high-powered
rifles. Insufferable old fart he undoubtedly was, but he got results. ‘They were the other side of his desk,' she said. Maxwell could picture the scene. ‘They had their arms around each other. He was kissing her.'

‘Fully clothed?' he checked.

‘Of course,' Dierdre snorted. ‘Good God, Max. There's a limit.'

‘Is there?' he asked her. ‘I wonder. Think back, Dierdre – when Whiting came on that preliminary visit, the one before half term, did Sally come with him?'

‘No,' Dierdre said. ‘He was by himself. Why?'

He brushed past her to consult his desk diary. ‘You're privy to the Ofsted timetable. What is it?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘How many sessions did Sally have with the Headmaster? Before the balloon went up, I mean?'

‘None, as far as I know.'

‘None?' Maxwell looked at her.

‘Why should she? She's Humanities and Pastoral. She may have had a plenary session with him and the others and I daresay she'd be in at the final briefing – that was supposed to be happening this afternoon. But the only
one who had one-to-ones with James was Alan Whiting.'

‘Not much time to strike up a relationship, then?' Maxwell asked.

‘None at all, I shouldn't have thought.'

‘Unless Sally is a
very
fast worker.'

‘I still can't believe I saw what I did. Poor Margaret.'

‘Poor Margaret indeed,' agreed Maxwell. Diamond's wife deserved a medal for marrying the lacklustre git in the first place.

‘What did she come to see you about?' Dierdre asked.

‘One thing at a time,' Maxwell brought her back to the here, the now. ‘What was their reaction when you walked in on them?'

‘Well, James was flustered. You know how he blushes in moments of stress?'

Maxwell did, but unlike Dierdre apparently, found it less than cute.

‘He straightened his tie, came out with something about a rescheduling of the Inspection and sort of… hopped from foot to foot.'

‘Par for the course,' Maxwell muttered. ‘What about her?'

‘Well,' Dierdre was letting her Puritan streak hang out. ‘If you ask me, she's no better than she should be. She looked like the cat that's got the cream.'

Some cream, Maxwell thought. Dierdre had already convinced herself that Legs Diamond was the innocent party, that Sally had thrown herself on him, tearing at his clothes and compromising him. ‘Was he enjoying it?' he asked her.

‘What?'

‘The snog, the embrace, the moment of passion, the
clacking of tongues; call it what you will.'

‘Of course not,' she bridled.

‘Dierdre …' His tone said it all.

‘Oh, all right,' she flustered. ‘Yes, if truth be told, he was. He was enjoying it. That's what's so … oh, Max. What can we do?'

‘We, white man?' It was the old Tonto and Lone Ranger joke, but since Dierdre Lessing would deny ever having heard of the pair, it fell a little flat. He took her by the hand, leading her to his office door. ‘
You
do nothing. When you see Legs today, smile and nod as though
nothing
had happened. Leave the rest to me.'

He opened the door for her. ‘What are you going to do?' she asked him. Outside in the corridor, the Leighford world was already buzzing, kids wondering who'd be left in their classes today and whether the law would be back to arrest anybody. They'd resist, of course and there'd be a fantastic shoot-out in the Sports Hall, all flak jackets and SWAT teams. Instead, for some of them at least, it was Double Physics.

‘Me?' he said, watching the merry throng jostling its way down the corridor. ‘I'm going to earn my
embarrassingly
inflated salary and teach some history.'

‘Right.' Henry Hall's ham sandwiches lay like lead on his diaphragm. It was Friday lunchtime and the July sun was at its zenith, burning through the Venetian blinds in the Incident Room at Leighford Nick. ‘Let's recap. Philip, Miss Freeling.'

‘Paula Freeling,' Bathurst took centre stage in the smoke-filled, coffee-brown room. ‘Last seen for certain in the Cunliffe, presumably making her way towards her
room at some time during Wednesday evening. We know from the hotel staff that her bed had not been slept in – that was confirmed by Sally Meninger who went to call for her the next morning. Her handbag had gone which presumably contained cash, credit cards and so on, but her suitcase and clothes were still in the room. None of the staff remembered seeing her after Wednesday's dinner.'

‘What about surveillance?'

‘Ah, well, there's a snag there, guv.'

Henry Hall wasn't surprised by this. Any police
operation
was only as good as the team. ‘Who fouled up?' the DCI wasn't in the mood for papering over the cracks.

Bathurst shifted uneasily. He didn't like his lads exposed like this. Everybody was human. Well,
everybody
except Henry Hall. ‘Roger King does admit to a little ziz, sir,' he said quietly.

Hall scanned the room. If Roger King had been
standing
in front of him, he'd let him have a totally different definition of being on the carpet. ‘King was on the nine ‘till six slot?' the DCI asked.

‘Yes sir.'

‘And this … ziz. Is DC King remotely aware of when or for how long he dropped off his twig?'

‘He thinks … about twelve thirty, but he can't be sure.'

‘Time enough for Miss Freeling to leave the building.' Hall was clarifying the situation. ‘Or to be helped out by person or persons unknown. The Cunliffe doesn't have anything helpful, I suppose, like a video loop?'

‘No, sir. At least, it has, but it's faulty.'

‘Do tell,' Hall sighed. Twenty first century technology was wonderful were it not for the gremlins, the ghosts in the machines, the dipsticks to whom maintenance was an
empty gesture. ‘All right. Tell DC King I shall be seeing him in my office tomorrow morning, nine sharp. Clear?'

‘Crystal, guv.' Bathurst could only protect his lads so far.

‘Right. Where are we on Miss Freeling? Jacquie?'

‘Spinster lady.' Jacquie took over from a grateful Bathurst. ‘Fifty-eight years of age. Lives alone in Eastbourne. Local CID there have checked. She hasn't been home since last weekend. According to a neighbour, she left on Sunday afternoon. The Ofsted team seem to think she travelled by train. Southern Trains have yet to confirm this. Their computer was down yesterday and this morning.' She couldn't help an inner smirk. Infuriating though it was to police enquiries, it would have given the technophobic Peter Maxwell yet another chance to say ‘I told you so.'

‘Next of kin?' Hall asked.

‘There's a sister in Colchester; another Miss Freeling who hasn't seen her sister in months. We're still checking on friends, but she seems to have been a bit of a loner.'

‘Are we going
Crimewatch
on this one, guv?' somebody asked.

‘No, no,' Hall was shaking his head. ‘Chins up,
everybody
. It's only Day Four. I've arranged a Press Conference for Monday. I don't want to break our stride as early as this. If we go public at the weekend there'll be questions about our efficiency. And that would never do, would it?' He scanned the room like Robocop. ‘Especially for
efficient
, dedicated officers like DC King.' This wasn't like Henry Hall. Everybody in the room had worked with him before. He had his levels of tolerance, but they were
usually
higher than this and Jacquie couldn't remember him
as waspish. ‘She found the body,' Hall reminded the room.

‘Allegedly seconds after Mr Peter Maxwell.' Geoff Baldock was a young man in a hurry. Reputations and promotion didn't come to blokes who sat on their arses all day long. One or two in the room, those in the know, risked sideways glances in Jacquie's direction. She ignored them.

‘Who interviewed her?'

‘I did, guv.' Pat Prentiss was reaching for his notepad. ‘This was Tuesday, five thirteen. I've got it all on tape, of course.'

‘Just the basics, Pat,' Hall nodded.

‘Well, she was pretty shaken up at first, as you'd expect. Obviously, the thrust of my enquiry was Alan Whiting, what she knew about him and so on. She'd never worked with him before, although they did know each other.'

Hall had read all his team's interview transcripts and he'd made a start on listening to the tapes. Even so, it
didn't
hurt to go over old ground, especially now that the focus had changed. ‘In what context?'

‘Various conferences, workshops, that sort of thing.'

‘But never on an actual inspection?'

‘No, guv.'

‘Remind us of her movements last Monday,' Hall said.

Prentiss flicked back in the book. ‘She was in the Music Department when the fire alarm went off. Seemed a little confused by it, apparently, but followed the crowds to the assembly area.'

‘She was back sooner than most,' Hall observed. ‘We've depositions from teaching staff that they got back
to their rooms ahead of the hordes to get the little darlings back to work. But they know the short cuts and most of them are fit enough to double up. Was she fit, would you say, Pat, Miss Freeling?'

‘Not in any sense of the word, sir,' the sergeant said and Henry Hall was content to let the ripples of laughter build around the room. Time, maybe, for a little light relief. But he'd still be seeing DC King in his office next morning, nine sharp.

‘Could a woman have done it, Jim?' Henry Hall didn't like mortuaries. He liked corpses even less, especially now in the height of summer, when the blue-bottles droned, heavy with blood. It made his flesh crawl. Mercifully, he'd caught Dr Astley on the golf course, it being the good doctor's day off and the good doctor was less than pleased about that.

‘It
could
have been the fairies, Henry,' he scowled as his ball sailed high through the blue to thump into a thicket. ‘Shit!'

‘Seriously, though,' Hall followed the cloth-capped pathologist as he rammed home his iron and hauled the bag over his shoulder. Above them was a cloudless sky and the breeze was stiffening from the south-west. Out to sea, a crowd of sails billowed together as the yachts went through their paces, making for the sea-roads of the Solent. Rich men without a care in the world.

‘Seriously?' Astley looked at him. ‘It's possible. The skewer was pretty sharp, wasn't it? I mean, I don't know much about these things. Contrary to every other family in the land, Marjorie always does our barbecues – excuse for her to nip the Meths. Now, where the bugger is that
ball?' He'd sloped off beyond the green to rummage in the rough.

‘You're saying if the skewer was sharp enough, it could have been used by a woman?'

‘Yes. How can you lose something that's brilliant bloody white?' He was hacking about in the
undergrowth
. ‘But you've got the weapon, surely?'

‘We have. It's your bog standard barbecue skewer. Comes with a spatula and a pair of tongs. Every garden centre and supermarket sells them, from here to John O'Groats. Except this one had been doctored.'

‘Oh?' Astley paused in his vicious attack on the
undergrowth
. ‘In what way?'

‘The point had been filed.'