Maxwell's Crossing (27 page)

The sports centre was not too far from Leighford High and looked like a gulag. Apart from wide low windows along one side which gave swimmers a bleak view out at the ring road, it was grey concrete blocks under a flat roof. Anything more calculated to depress and least likely to make a person want to fling themselves about in a flurry of exercise was difficult to imagine. A handwritten sign, laminated but, because of the many drawing-pin holes, no longer waterproof, told him in weeping letters that Reception was away to the right. This led him right round the building, past various grey doors going nowhere and some wheelie bins overflowing with old Christmas decorations, to a door about six feet to the left of the notice.

Pushing the door open, he was assailed by a wall of warm chlorine-and feet-scented air. He tried to breathe through his mouth as schoolday horrors revisited him. He was worried even more now that he didn't have his kit. And none of his name tags were sewn in.

‘Can I help you?'

Well, she seemed friendly enough. ‘Is Mr Moreton in?'

She looked at a board to her right. It was divided into squares and in one of them Maxwell could see a scrawled ‘TM' and a tick.

‘Yes. He's in the building but he'll be at lunch at the moment. Can I ask why you want to see him?'

Maxwell thought quickly. Although the Mrs Whatmough subterfuge had not been a million per cent successful with Mark Chambers, he decided to try it again. He explained and the woman looked suitably doleful.

‘He told us about that. Terrible. He said she was such a nice woman as well.'

‘I understand she was. I didn't know her, but my son did.'

‘Boyfriend?' she asked, grimacing understandingly.

‘Reception class,' he told her. ‘Could you call Mr Moreton, I wonder?'

‘You can go through,' she said. ‘He's in the canteen. It's open to the public. It's just through there.' She pointed to a double glass door in the opposite corner of the lobby.

After his experience of finding his way into the building, Maxwell was moderately surprised to find himself immediately in a large room smelling vaguely of tuna sandwiches, overlaid still with the smell of chlorine and old gym shoes. He had thought that Tim Moreton would be easy to spot but he had not taken into account that at the sports centre pretty much everyone would be there for the purposes of pec enlargement and glute firming – Maxwell sometimes watched the QVC shopping channel for amusement in the middle of the night if he was experiencing one of his rare dark midnights of the soul, so knew the jargon – and so
the room was full of big men and frighteningly firm women eating mounds of green stuff, laced with seeds and various nutritional additives. He assumed the tuna sandwiches were consumed by the staff serving behind the counter.

There was nothing else for it. ‘Mr Moreton?' he called. A big man in the corner looked up.

‘Yes?'

He was big in a way that Jeff O'Malley had once been big, hard and firm without a wasted inch. The receding hairline and expression of general discontent took something away from the impression of discreet strength, but even so, he was a very powerful-looking bloke, and easily capable of any of the murders so far committed.

Maxwell crossed over to him. ‘May I join you for a minute?' he asked.

Moreton assessed him briefly. Not a potential customer for any of his services, whether council-sanctioned or not. ‘I'm nearly done with my break,' he said, to cover himself should the guy be a Jehovah's Witness of unusual persistence.

‘This won't take a minute,' Maxwell assured him, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘I'm just here to get your address for Mrs Whatmough, Sarah Gregson's Headmistress, you know. She's arranging a small tribute to Sarah—'

‘Let me stop you there,' Moreton said. ‘I happen to know that Sarah's husband is arranging all that. Perhaps you ought to let this Mrs Whatmough know she will be
doubling up. That could be embarrassing for her. And we wouldn't want that, would we?'

Was that the kind of remark a blackmailer would make? Was there a hidden agenda or was this a perfectly nice man who didn't want to see someone embarrassed? Maxwell found it hard to tell. ‘My word, she doesn't know that, obviously. I'll certainly tell her. I expect she would like to thank you herself. Where did you say you lived?'

‘I didn't. I don't need thanks, just glad to be able to help.' Moreton was starting to think that he had been right in the first place. This man
was
a Jehovah's Witness, with a brief to collect names and addresses. Had he read something about that, once, or was that the Seventh Day Adventists? He often got them mixed up and had once enraged a hapless door-knocker by accusing him of polygamy when all he was doing was delivering the
Watchtower
. He mopped up the last of his no-fat no-taste dressing with a piece of gluten-free bread and drank the last of his power drink in one mouthful. ‘I must be getting back. Very nice to have met you, Mr …' Some hidden synapse reminded him that if you met someone who seemed like a stalker it was a good idea to try and identify them, although the name was likely to be false; stalkers were tricky and in his heyday Tim Moreton had had a few. Mainly deranged menopausal women who had taken his attentions for genuine love, but nevertheless, he was an expert by most people's standards.

‘Maxwell,' Maxwell told him. At this stage, he had no reason to lie.

‘Well, Mr
Maxwell
,' Moreton said with heavy-handed sarcasm, ‘Thank you for coming. Give my thanks to Mrs … Whatmough, was it?'

Maxwell nodded.

‘Mrs Whatmough. But I really do recommend she gets in touch with Sarah's husband. Reverend Mattley, All Souls. He'll give her all the details.' He stood up, stowing his plate and glass neatly on his tray. ‘Nice to have met you, goodbye,' and he was off, with a springing, power-filled step, to the door.

Maxwell sat there for a moment, undecided. He was a judge of people, of all ages. No one could survive for five minutes, let alone for five centuries as he had, in the teaching profession without being a good judge of people. And Maxwell was pretty sure that he had just spoken to a rather nice, if limited, totally honest man. Damn! He wasn't sure how he was going to get the details of the others – the funeral director, the landscape gardener and the rest – out of his reluctant wife. He would have to think of another way.

Another way didn't present itself. All evening there seemed to be something else to do. There was Nolan to get to bed, which for the first time was proving to be a struggle. The events of Troubridge Tuesday had had a profound effect and he tried every trick in the book, and some he appeared to have invented himself, to prevent bedtime arriving. Hector Gold took turns at reading to the child, taking glasses of water and then supervising the subsequent trips to the loo. The only thing that
stood a chance of working was the ancient ploy of going to bed with him, something they hadn't had to do for years. Eventually, he was tucked up in the middle of the parental bed, looking very small and vulnerable, his curly hair damp from the bath.

‘It's no good, Max,' Jacquie said, as they were finally sitting down in front of the fire. ‘I can't keep this pace up. Work is mental and it seems to have come home with me. Nolan doesn't see enough of me, and then there's this latest—'

‘Don't be daft, woman. Whisht and bejabers, as our various Celtic cousins would no doubt advise. If we are being precise, then it was me who brought this lot home with me. Hector and all that. In fact,' Maxwell continued on his search for six degrees of separation, ‘it is all Paul Moss's fault. Or, let's say, his kids, who wanted to live in the land of the foot-long hot dog. I would go further – it is the fault of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who made us all think that the Special Relationship was really special.' He looked up to see if she was smiling yet. Almost there. ‘Then there are the colonists in Boston all sitting round that bar and shouting “Cheers!” … Need I go on?'

‘I know,' she said. ‘I'd make a rubbish housewife. It's just that these murders … they are so grubby, somehow. They demean the victims and make them seem as guilty as the killer, somehow. I don't like it. Then there's this weather. Will it ever stop being cold?'

‘It's been a long old winter, that's for sure. But, how do you mean, the victims are guilty?' He saw a revelation
poke its nose out of its hole. Time to tease it out with a promise of a nice piece of tempting cheese.

She had closed her eyes but now she opened them. The man sitting opposite her was as mad as a cake, but perhaps the wisest fool in Christendom. He had taken a girl and made her into the woman she was today, not afraid to let her education show, not afraid to cry when she was sad and laugh like a drain when she wasn't; in fact, she often ended up laughing anyway. She would tell him just one thing. That couldn't hurt and knowing him he was halfway there already.

‘We think we have a vigilante on the loose. Not O'Malley, someone else. That means that from a very small selection of possibles, we have the whole damn county to choose from.'

Maxwell tried to look amazed.

‘You knew already, didn't you?' she said, deflated.

‘Not knew, no. But if Matthew Hendricks is the first murder, then you have to consider it. I mean, whatever the cause of his behaviour, he was hardly Mr Goodbar, was he? I'm not sure of the other two, but is there such a thing as an innocent solicitor?'

OK, perhaps not just one thing. In for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Sarah Gregson was battling with the fact that she had considered helping her mother to kill herself. She didn't, but it was her demon, her husband told Henry, and so she told everyone she met, practically. It was pretty much common knowledge among anyone she had ever known socially. She was doing talking therapy to anyone who would listen. Henry also thinks that the
solicitor was not the target. He thinks the man who lived below, and also above, his office was the victim. He is a sex offender with a long history, now reformed, but who knows? So, there you are. You know what we know.'

Maxwell was stunned. Usually he had to tweak the knowledge out in fits and starts. ‘Thank you for telling me,' he said, simply. ‘I know now why this case is getting to you. The list of potential victims is … endless.'

‘The murderer is a blackmailer as well, we think now. If he finds out something he can make money from, he does. If he thinks the person needs a … lesson … he gives it to them. Simple as that.'

Maxwell sat in silence. This was bigger than he thought. Bigger than Jeff O'Malley, at any rate.

There was a tap on the sitting room door and Hector Gold stuck his head round it. ‘I've just checked that Jessica and Alana are back from their AA meeting OK,' he said and smiled. ‘I think Alana is going to find Jessica a rather strict jailer, but it will all be fine in the end. Be prepared for leaflets is my advice. Anyway, I'd like to clear my head a bit, so I'm going for a walk. Don't wait up, I've got Jessica's spare key. Goodnight.' And with that he was gone.

‘He's no trouble,' Maxwell remarked after they heard the front door slam. ‘It's rather like having a hamster.'

‘I even wonder if he can possibly be that nice,' Jacquie said. ‘My confidence as a people-watcher has taken a bit of a knock, after my mistake with the sex offender; I thought he was a thoroughly nice man. Pete Spottiswood knew, and I didn't. Pete Spottiswood wouldn't usually
recognise a baddie if he was wearing a badge saying “I Did It”.'

Maxwell slipped out of his chair and knelt beside his wife. He leant over and gave her a kiss. ‘Look, go and have a bath. A nice, long, soaky one. It won't fix anything, but you'll feel better for it.' He shuffled back to let her get up. ‘Go on. Off you go.'

She smiled at him. ‘Do you know, I think I will. I'll go to bed, then. Have an early night.' She glanced at the clock. ‘Earlyish.'

‘I'll be up later. I'll probably watch a bit of telly and then call it a day myself. See you later.' He settled himself down with the remote. What he was looking for was something quite mindless, to wash over him and clear his head. So why was it, with about four million channels to watch, there was nothing on but
QI
?

Starry starry night. Robbie McKittrick yawned and tackled the next Sudoku. He was getting rather good at them and understood now why his sister had bought him the
Monster Book
of the same for Christmas. He saw the people carrier cruising along Columbine, headlights dipped, registration plate grey with the filthy spray from the treated roads and was alert at once.

McKittrick noted the time as the vehicle slowed to a halt down the road. Ten thirty-eight. A dark figure got out and he saw the lights flash as the electronic lock clicked. A big man, dressed for winter. He saw him half turn, wave and call something to somebody on McKittrick's side of the road before entering the garden gate of Number 28. Another false alarm and he got back to the Sudoku. This one was a bitch.

Peter Maxwell was thinking of calling it a night. Nolan was sound asleep in the middle of their bed and would
have to be relocated before he and Jacquie hit the hay. It wasn't that they had strong views of children sharing a bed with parents, but the child was like a windmill to sleep with and it wouldn't be comfortable for anyone if he stayed. Jacquie was dozing in the scented steam of a well-deserved bath, trying to soak away the cares of the case gnawing away at her. He had just watched for the thousandth time at least the final shootout in
Shane
, when gloved grinning Jack Palance goes down in the blaze of Alan Ladd's .44 and gun smoke drifts along the bar.

‘Maybe one day the bastard won't beat him to the draw.' Maxwell spun away from the screen to face a .44 of his own. It wasn't a Peacemaker and it wasn't smouldering Alan Ladd in his buckskins standing there. It was a Magnum and the gunfighter was Jeff O'Malley.

The American put a finger to his lips. ‘Where's my sonofabitch son-in-law?' he asked. Maxwell genuinely had no idea. Hector had gone out over an hour ago and hadn't come back yet.

‘How did you get in here?' Maxwell asked.

‘Back door, Max, just like a regular neighbour poppin' round to borrow a cup of sugar.'

‘I don't appreciate having
that
pointed at me in my own house,' Maxwell told him.

‘I don't appreciate being hunted by your goddamn police force for something I haven't done.'

Maxwell's brain was whirling. Feet from him, on the floor above, the dearest people in the world were wrapped up in their own little cosiness. This was 38 Columbine,
a newish, average town house on the edge of a little seaside town that had managed to miss every exciting event in history. That was then. Now, it was a potential crime scene filled by a psychopath the size of an outside toilet and the man was holding in his hand the most powerful handgun in the world.

Maxwell knew his
Dirty Harry.
The thing held six bullets in the chamber, and close as he was to O'Malley, he didn't have a hope in hell of reaching him before the American pulled the trigger. A novice might miss because the gun had a kick like a mule, but O'Malley handled a .44 like Maxwell used to handle chalk. He was deadly at any range in the classroom, but ‘deadly' was only a word and a figurative one at that. His only hope was to keep the lunatic talking until he could distract him. Jacquie wouldn't be down; she was turning in for the night once she was out of the bath. Nolan getting involved in the crossfire didn't bear thinking about. And where was that black and white tough guy when you needed him? Maxwell realised anew that when the going got tough, the tough got voling.

‘Is that what you killed Jimmy Hendricks with?' he asked, edging slowly to the window.

‘Me?' O'Malley growled in outrage. ‘You stupid Limey sonofabitch. I was a beat cop for more than fifteen years. I know a vigilante killing when I see one.'

‘Vigilante?' Maxwell frowned.

‘You people!' O'Malley snapped. ‘You arrogant bastards. OK, I may not be the brightest apple in the barrel, but I recognised the signs. This Hendricks –
wife-beater, wasn't he? Went to work on his kids as well? What kind of a man does that?'

‘You, for one,' Maxwell said, looking his man in the face. The muzzle of the gun jolted upwards and he heard the hammer click. ‘I never laid a hand on Camille in my life,' he hissed, barely audible.

‘What about Alana?'

‘Well,' the gun lowered a little. ‘Maybe a slap or two. There was nothing in it. This Hendricks was a fucking animal according to the locals. They were talking about it at the card school.'

‘So you killed him?' Maxwell had his back against the window pane now. He knew there was a surveillance officer across the road, watching his house and Mrs Troubridge's. He'd be bound to see the odd position, perhaps even O'Malley and his gun. The houses opposite only had two storeys. The man with the binoculars was on a level with the Maxwell's sitting room window. Surely he would see a man pressed against the window?

‘If I'd done it, I'da shot the bastard's kneecaps out first. Make him suffer. No, that Sandra had it right, that female cop.'

‘She did? In what way?'

‘Said you pinko-liberals over here are so fucked up with red tape and political correctness you never convict anybody. Hendricks would be doing ten to twenty in Folsom back home.'

‘Ten to twenty?' Maxwell echoed.

‘Sure. It's the tariff for attempted murder. I'd get him on that, with a little help from the redneck DAs I
know. You bastards bleat about his broken home and his syndromes and extenuating circumstance. Somebody wasn't happy with that and somebody killed him.'

‘But not you.'

‘I told you, no. Now, for the last time, where's Hector?'

‘For the last time, Jeff,' Maxwell said slowly, ‘I don't know. Why do you want him?'

‘I got my reasons,' O'Malley said.

‘I hope you have,' Maxwell said, ‘because there's a police marksman across the road. He'll have your head in the cross wires by now.'

O'Malley looked beyond the Head of Sixth Form to sleeping Columbine, the houses half lit across the road. But there was one window in total darkness, the one in line with the Maxwells' living room. ‘Shit!' He jammed the gun into the shoulder holster under his coat and dashed for the stairs. Maxwell spun to the window. Marksman, my arse. He couldn't see anyone at all.

He heard O'Malley clattering down the stairs and the furious scream of a black and white cat as the pair briefly collided near the door.

‘Max?' Jacquie called from upstairs. ‘Is anything wrong?'

‘Popping out for a minute, sweets,' he called as though he was off to get a paper or top up his stash of Southern Comfort. Jacquie sat up in the bath, frowning. That didn't make sense.

At the door, Maxwell saw O'Malley lumbering down the road towards the Mosses' people carrier outside Number 28. White Surrey flashed briefly in his mind but
even when both of them, man and bike, were in their prime they were no match for a two-litre engine driven by a madman. There was nothing else for it. He didn't want Jacquie putting her life on the line and whoever was supposed to be watching across the road had clearly gone to sleep. Without thinking he snatched Jacquie's car keys hanging by the hall stand and was out into the night.

Across the road, a startled Robbie McKittrick was gabbling into his mobile. ‘Guv? McKittrick. Sorry to bother you so late but you said you wanted to know if we sighted O'Malley?'

‘Where is he?' a tired Henry Hall wanted to know.

‘Driving south along Columbine in a people carrier, silver, I think. Registration number's illegible. Maxwell's after him.'

‘What?'

‘Peter Maxwell, guv, he's chasing him.'

There was a long pause. ‘On his bike?'

It was McKittrick's turn to pause. ‘Ha, ha; like it, guv.'

‘How is he chasing him?' Hall's voice was stern at the other end of the phone.

‘In his car, sir,' McKittrick had a lot of time for Henry Hall, but this took the biscuit. What
was
he on? The line went dead.

And as it did so, Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell, wrapped in a housecoat and head towel, reached her sitting room window. Below, she saw her car kangarooing down Columbine and she screamed.

Peter Maxwell had not driven a car for more years than he cared to remember. Not since that mad wet day that he had let his wife do the party run while he roared England on at Twickenham from the comfort of his settee. They had collided, his wife and child, with a police car in pursuance of a suspected felon, or so they had said in court, and Maxwell's world had turned upside down. He'd tried, in the days and weeks afterwards, to turn the ignition key, to grip the wheel and release the handbrake. He couldn't do it. Instead, his mind went numb and he found himself sitting there, tears trickling down his cheeks, a driven man who could not drive.

Something changed all that. Tonight. This one night. And that something was Jeff O'Malley, with a gun under his armpit and murder in his heart. Maxwell had no clue where he was going but he had to follow him, stay in sight of those tail lights flashing red as he hurtled round corners. He ran a red light at the corner by the library. So did Maxwell and they were out across the Dam making for the sea.

One by one the patrol cars picked up the message. People carrier driven by Jeff O'Malley, murder suspect, armed and dangerous. Possibly pursued by Peter Maxwell, deranged and equally dangerous, in his own way. Proceed with caution.

Caution was the last thing on Henry Hall's mind as he roared through the night to 38 Columbine. Jacquie was waiting for him. There'd been no time to wake Alana and Mrs Troubridge and of Hector Gold there was still no sign. Robbie McKittrick found himself off
surveillance and babysitting Nolan. His rifle was now unpacked and ready, just in case. And he wasn't playing Sudoku now.

Sharp left, swing right, taking the roundabout at a ludicrous speed, Maxwell was hanging onto the wheel as though his life depended on it. Somebody else's did. He saw the brake lights of the people carrier explode in a flash of scarlet and watched as O'Malley, breath snaking out in the night cold, hit the ground running and hammer on the nearest door. Maxwell hit the brakes too, killed the engine and the lights. Funny how it had all come back, the driving. Like falling off a bike, really.

He slipped out of the car and crouched beside it. A light came on beyond the frosted glass and a figure was outlined by the porch light. O'Malley's gun was in the man's face and he pushed him backwards. It was vital that Maxwell get there before that door closed – ringing the bell once it was wasn't likely to elicit much of a response and it wasn't the season for carolling or trick or treat. He didn't know he still had it in him and his lungs were bursting as his shoulder hit the glass. Anybody else caught in the back by a flying door would have been catapulted sideways, but this was Jeff O'Malley and he just recoiled, the gun still in his fist, but waving at both men in front of him.

‘Mr Moreton.' Maxwell eased his suddenly painful shoulder. ‘Hope you don't mind us calling in?'

O'Malley slammed the door shut and held the Magnum's barrel horizontally against Moreton's head,
leading him by the shirt sleeve into his lounge. The television screen still flickered in one corner, the sound on mute.

‘You alone?' O'Malley asked him.

‘Yes,' Moreton said, eyes wide, his thoughts racing, helpless in this situation.

Maxwell tried to read the situation. There were folderols of the female persuasion dumped on the settee and a rather nasty sepia wedding photo on the sideboard. O'Malley was ahead of him. ‘Little woman not home?'

‘Staying at her mother's.' Moreton was thinking on his feet. Janet Moreton was in fact snoring quietly in the second bedroom to the left at the top of the stairs.

‘Just as well,' O'Malley said. ‘She wouldn't like what's going to happen now. On your knees.'

‘Jeff—' Maxwell tried to intercede.

‘Shut up!' O'Malley barked and forced the fitness instructor to the ground. He clicked back the hammer and pointed the gun. ‘Left knee first? Or right? I've been told it hurts more when the victim is in this position.' Something about the way he said it made it clear that his information was first hand and on the spot.

‘Are you mad?' Moreton gasped. ‘What's going on?'

‘Why'd you do it?' O'Malley asked him. ‘Hendricks, Gregson, Shears?'

‘Who?' Moreton blinked. ‘Do you mean Sarah Gregson? I just played cards with her, that's all.'

‘OK,' O'Malley shrugged casually, but there was a murderous glint in his eye. ‘I don't need the whys. I'll settle for a confession.'

‘I didn't do it!' Moreton was shouting now, beyond trying to keep Janet out of all this. Perhaps she'd wake, realise what was going on, call the police from the upstairs phone.

O'Malley jerked the gun upwards, locking the cold muzzle under Moreton's left ear. ‘I'm not a cruel man,' the American said, ‘despite what some guys say about me.' He flashed a glance at Maxwell. ‘So we'll dispense with the kneecaps. Better meet the guy upstairs with a clear conscience, fella.'

‘For the last time,' Moreton was nearly incoherent by now, ‘I didn't kill anyone.'

Maxwell stood, flexing his fists. He still faced the same problem. O'Malley's trigger finger was faster than any part of the Head of Sixth Form you cared to name. He wouldn't be able to cross the carpet in time.

‘OK.' O'Malley relaxed his thumb, clicking the hammer back gently and he stood upright. ‘So … what is it you Limeys say? I know a man who did.' He holstered the gun and was gone.

‘Call the police,' Maxwell barked at the quivering heap on the carpet and he clattered out into the night.

Hall and Jacquie knew these lonely streets in the early hours. So did the patrol cars circling the Dam, purring down St Martin's Street and beyond the Tesco site. There was no one on the streets now, no one on foot. It was too late for revellers staggering home from the Vine, too early for the most ardent dog walker. Only in the cars was there a hive of activity, the radios crackling. Hall
was coordinating it all while Jacquie drove. He didn't want her to do it in the state she was in but he couldn't trust her with the coordinates either, for the same reason. At least with the mechanics of driving, she'd be able to focus on one thing at a time.