Maxwell's Point (2 page)

‘What’s new, pussycat?’ Maxwell ventured. It was a passable Tom Jones.

Metternich wasn’t going to respond to a cliché like that. They just served to show his man’s age. He merely flicked his tail to give it the contempt it deserved and watched as the Great Man sank into his modelling chair, flicked on the lamp and picked up those stupid bits of plastic again.

The stupid bits of plastic in question were the legs and torso of Lieutenant Landriani of the Sardinian Army. And Peter Maxwell had been putting this one off for years. Laid out before him, under the skylight and stretching into the increasingly gloomy distance of the loft at Number 38 Columbine, sat Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade, 54 millimetre and correct – thanks to another of Mad Max’s obsessions – to the last detail; every buckle, every strap. ‘At the last count – oh, no pun intended,’ he mused to the cat, ‘Lieutenant Landriani makes the five hundred and sixteenth figure that I have assembled over the last quarter century. That only leaves…’ Metternich saw the man’s spare fingers and his eyelids flutter as he wrestled with the maths of it all, ‘…one hundred and sixty-two to go. Think I’ll make it, Count, before that great day dawns and I’ll go quietly into that netherworld called retirement? ’Cos they stop your pay and all this,’ he swept an arm over the brigade, ‘will be a thing of the past. Then there are Nolan’s school fees and what with university top-up.’ He tutted and threw Lieutenant Landriani’s legs in the air. ‘Problems, problems. Nothing but problems. Right,’ he caught the legs expertly. ‘Now I know more or less where the good lieutenant was sitting – with Cardigan and a little, I suspect, to his left. That puts him in front of Captain White’s
squadron of the 17
^th
. No, the problem, Count, is what the hell was he wearing? Sardinian, so lots of cocks’ feathers in his hat, I bet.’ Maxwell glanced up at Metternich. ‘You’re drooling, Count,’ he smiled. ‘Not even you would take on a full-grown cockerel, would you? So, the uniform, then. What…powder blue? I don’t mean to cast aspersions on our Sardinian allies, but they didn’t join until the damn war was virtually over.’

He suddenly stopped in mid-ponder. Over the intercom, the one Jacquie had insisted be set up in every room, Maxwell heard the gurgling sound and the sibilant lip-smacking of a little boy waking up. Jesus! Landriani – both bits of him – hit the deck, Maxwell’s chair overturning as he sprang. Metternich, not known for his sudden movements in daylight, launched himself off his perch and Master and cat hurtled down the stairs, Maxwell making contact with the treads only marginally more often than Metternich.

For one ghastly moment, Peter Maxwell expected to see a scene from that tragic story of the dog Gelert he had read as a boy; to find the nursery ripped and bloody and with, at first, no sign of his darling son. But there was no blood, no torn sheets, no bloodied but unbowed faithful hound and sure as hell no dead wolf. Just little Nolan Maxwell, rediscovering his toes with all the joy of an Archimedes or an Einstein and smiling up into his daddy’s anxious face.

Maxwell swept him up out of the cot in a deft movement and winced as the little tyke carried out his favourite parlour trick. It was called ‘Swinging from Daddy’s Sideburns.’ And it hurt like hell.

‘Where’s Juanita, fella? Hmm?’

Nolan gurgled his nearly toothless grin, not being terribly helpful.

‘Phew!’ Maxwell’s nose wrinkled. ‘Not been here for a while by the look of it.’ He gingerly removed his hand from Nolan’s nappy area. ‘What a squelcher. Come on, old son.’ He laid the baby down. ‘Assume the position.’

In moments like these, it all came flooding back. The memories of long, long ago, when his first child had been gurgling in her daddy’s arms. Maxwell had been a young teacher then, just starting out. And the smell of his little girl’s neck was just like Nolan’s today. He found himself smiling. Then the other memories started, the ones he couldn’t control, couldn’t separate from the sunshine and the laughter. The wet roads, the screaming tyres, the crystal hardness of broken glass that had shattered his heart and had seen his first family swept away. He shook himself free of it and pressed the boy’s new nappy into place.

‘Ah, Velcro.’ He rubbed his nose against Nolan’s. ‘Where would we be without it, eh? Come on, let’s you and me look for dragons.’

He knew exactly where to find one and he didn’t have to cross a river either. He swept up Nolan’s white hat from the kitchen and plonked it on his soft, fair curls. The little hands came up as he carried him through the house.

‘Oh, no,’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘That stays on. We’re going out into the sun now, dear boy. It’s still quite scorching out there and your mother would have a fit if I took you out without it.’ Their eyes met. ‘Women, eh? Cha!’ and Maxwell swept the lad downstairs. ‘And I’m not even going to mention mad dogs and Englishmen.’

The dragon was coiled in her scaly steelness on a special offer steamer-chair from B&Q, a large sun-stopping hat on her tousled old head and a little drinkie in her hand.

‘Mrs Troubridge.’ Maxwell announced himself these days, ever since he’d crept up on the old next-door neighbour with unintentioned stealth and she’d nearly decapitated him with her garden rake in her surprise.

‘Oooh, hello.’ The dragon uncoiled, laying her drink down on the patio table, and began poking baby Nolan with her talons, smiling inanely and cooing baby-babble, as incomprehensible to Maxwell as it must have been to his son.

‘Have you seen Juanita?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Who, dear?’ the old girl’s attention span wasn’t what it was and she was currently in baby-mode. Alternatively, she had been out in the sun for a while.

‘Juanita,’ Maxwell repeated with what patience he could. ‘Spanish girl. Looks after Nolan here. Lives with you.’

Mrs Troubridge blinked at him under the raffia of her chapeau like a startled iguana. ‘Isn’t she with you?’

‘No.’ Maxwell was still just about smiling, though he’d never got beyond NVQ level in Tolerance.

‘Well, that
is
odd.’ The old girl was still wrestling with Nolan’s fingers, grinning inanely. ‘What time is it?’

‘Sun’s over the yard arm,’ Maxwell told her, peering up into the great orb briefly. ‘Fiveish.’

‘Only, they do have their siestas, don’t they, these foreign people? Perhaps she’s snoozing.’

‘Perhaps,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But I’d have thought while she was in charge of my child she’d have the courtesy to snooze reasonably close to him. At least in the same house.’

‘Shall I check her room?’ Mrs Troubridge offered.

‘Shall we both check?’ Maxwell countered.

‘Well, I…oh, of course, Mr Maxwell. As it’s you. Ever the perfect gentleman. Could you manage the stairs by yourself? My hip’s playing up a little today, I’m afraid. It’s the sun, you know. Leave the little one with me. I’ll look after him.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Troubridge,’ Maxwell smiled, wrinkling his nose at her in what he hoped wasn’t
too
patronising a way, ‘but he’s a little fractious at the moment. I’ll just tuck him under my arm. So. We’ll be fine.’ And he was gone, striding across the garden of Number 40 Columbine, Nolan bouncing on his hip. Maxwell hissed at him, ‘Look fractious, dammit, unless you want to be dribbled on by Black Annis back there.’

Nolan just grinned at him, then shoved an obliging fist in his mouth. Angst, baby-style. Nice to see the Method School still going strong.

Maxwell knew where Juanita Reyes’ room was. Mrs Troubridge’s house was, of course, a mirror-image of his own. He padded through her chintzy lounge on his Eighties brothel creepers and on up her stairs to the landing. A rather disconcerting photo of the late Mr Troubridge leered at him from a silvered frame on a wall-side whatnot and Maxwell remained glad he had never had the pleasure. He clicked open the door of the Spanish au pair’s room. The bed was a tip, like one of those exquisite entries for the Turner Prize (although anything, it had to be said, was better than an original Turner). Clothes were strewn about, including the unmentionables that Mrs Troubridge hadn’t mentioned, but were clearly foremost in her mind when she momentarily dithered about letting Maxwell go up there. There was a half-read
Wendy Holden beside the bed (which didn’t surprise Maxwell at all) and a bra slung over it that looked as though it was designed to hold two pigeon’s eggs. A Spanish newspaper, days old, had been tossed into a corner. Franco was dead.

Maxwell checked the wardrobe. The drawers. Difficult to tell if anything was missing. If you don’t know how many skimpy tops a girl has to begin with, how can you do the calculations now?

‘Hello!’ He heard the dulcet tones of his neighbour waft up from two floors below. ‘Is everything all right, Mr Maxwell?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Maxwell called, muttering to Nolan, ‘Except for the fact that the woman employed to look after you, sonny Jim, appears to have gone walkabout. The curious incident of the girl in the daytime, hum? That’s an allusion to…’ He looked at his little boy, who was reaching out for the girl’s bra in a half-hearted way. ‘Oh, never mind. We’ll talk later.’ And he whisked him downstairs again.

‘You didn’t see Juanita go out, did you, Mrs Troubridge? I mean, her car’s not there.’

‘Isn’t it?’ the old girl frowned. ‘Well, how terribly queer. No, I’ve been at the back here for most of the afternoon. Even had my lunch on the patio. It’s such a glorious day, isn’t it?’

‘It certainly is,’ Maxwell beamed at her. ‘Getting more glorious by the moment. Well, thank you, Mrs Troubridge. Er…when Juanita gets back, could you ask her to pop round? Nothing vital, just a little matter of dereliction of duty, neglecting a minor, abandoning a helpless child, that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, Mr Maxwell. Juanita is a lovely girl. I’m sure she meant no harm.’

Maxwell nodded, intrigued by the old biddy’s relaxed take on it all. ‘Yes, so am I,’ he told her. ‘But all the same…’

‘Yes, of course. It
is
rather short-sighted, I can see that. Shall I hold baby while you conduct a fingertip search?’

Maxwell frowned. The old girl had been watching re-runs of
Frost
again. ‘Thank you, no. It’s time for his tea. I’ll see myself out.’

Peter Maxwell swore he’d never do what he was doing now. He’d placed Nolan in his bouncy thing and let him watch
day-time
television. True, it was gone six and technically evening television, but that wasn’t the point. And to be fair to Maxwell, he did have an urgent call to make. And Nolan seemed quite enthralled by the way Jessica Fletcher was clearing up the unsolved murder rate in Cabot Cove. What a woman! Everybody’s favourite granny. Jane Marple without the senility.

‘Jacquie Carpenter, please.’ He spoke into that weird plastic thing that Metternich had never understood, the one all these humans, except the little one, pressed to the side of their faces.

‘Can I ask who’s calling?’ the disembodied voice asked in the ether and the magic of late nineteenth-century technology.

‘Peter Maxwell.’

There was a pause. They all knew who Peter Maxwell was down at Leighford Nick. First, because he was Jacquie’s partner and second, because he was an interfering pain in the arse. If he wasn’t real, you’d have to make him up.

‘Sorry, Mr Maxwell. I’m afraid she’s been called away.’

‘Away?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘But it’s home time. She should have put her chair up on her desk and said her prayers by now.’

The desk man was Den Morrisey and he’d never really cottoned on to Maxwell and his off-the-wall take on life. He wasn’t going to let the chance pass. ‘Well, you see, unlike you teachers, we police persons don’t keep regular hours. No doubt she’ll be in touch when she can.’ Click. Brrr.

Bitch.

What Jacquie Carpenter was in touch with that bright, impossibly sunny July day, as afternoon turned to evening and the shadows lengthened over Dead Man’s Point, was all the ghastly reality of sudden death. She’d been here before, too many times if truth be told, and each time she wondered how much more she could take. They’d tied a yellow ribbon round the old oak trees that ringed the sandy slopes of the dunes. They were high here, higher than the herring gulls that glided below them on the air currents, shearing the sandstone face of the cliffs. The sea pinks nodded in the stiffening breeze and it felt suddenly chill.

Jacquie watched the surreal scene emerge as she had so often before. The men in white coats might yet come to take her away, but at the moment, they were taking photographs inside the hurriedly erected tent, measuring angles, microscopically checking broken twig-ends and teasing loose fibres into carefully labelled plastic bags. She was an attractive woman, thirty-something, with large grey eyes and a wave of auburn hair. Not far away as the gulls flew, the men in her life were doing their best to cope without her. Priorities. Always priorities. Putting her life on hold.

Silent, upon a peak near Leighford, stood Detective Chief Inspector Henry Hall, gazing, like his favourite sergeant, out
to sea. The gulls cried to each other, bickering as they circled, annoyed by the intrusion into their world. Beyond it all was the sibilant, rolling hiss of the surf, booming far below, and the line of wake that trailed behind a cross-channel ferry breaking the haze of the skyline.

‘Dead Man’s Point, Jacquie,’ Hall didn’t turn to her. ‘How corny is that?’

There is something about a Scene of Crime. What earlier today was a beauty spot, just part of a coastal path walk that echoed to the thud of ramblers’ boots and rang with the patter of tiny tourists was now a no-go area, taped off and guarded, crackling with radio contact and surveilled by the staccato thunder of a helicopter, its searchlight throwing lurid shadows along the line of the cliffs.

Inside the tent, throwing weird Jakartan puppet-shapes onto the canvas, Dr Jim Astley was summing up what he had. What he had was a long and rather undistinguished career. He’d been tipped for the top once, but…well, the breaks just hadn’t come his way. So here he was, police-surgeon-
cum-pathologist
attached to the West Sussex CID. He met more dead people than live ones. And such was the case that night as the last purple bars of the sunlit clouds built from the south-west and put out the summer light.

‘Male, Henry,’ Astley was peering at the corpse now. ‘Age is a bit trickier. Forties, fifties.’ He prised open the mouth. ‘Still got all his own teeth, which is more than can be said for some of us.’

‘How long in the ground, Doctor?’ Henry Hall was sitting slightly in front of the body, on a fold-up canvas chair. He
needed some answers, sooner rather than later.

Astley carefully forced the black and swollen tongue behind the lips. One of the dead man’s eyes stared up at him, dull and blank and still. Henry Hall had never got used to that, even if Jim Astley had – bright eyes no longer bright, blindness where there should have been sight. The other eye had all but gone, lost in a mass of blackish-purple tissue. ‘I’ll have to check for the blow-fly larvae,’ Astley said, ‘back in the lab. Text book stuff, but you’ll have to wait for it. My guess would be two weeks, perhaps three.’

‘Early to mid-June,’ Hall was mentally back-tracking.

Jim Astley looked at him, the arc lights shining off the rimless specs, hiding as always, the eyes and the soul of Detective Chief Inspector Henry Hall. ‘What were you doing on the night in question?’ It was an unusual moment of levity from the Chief Inspector.

Astley smiled. ‘I couldn’t vouch for yesterday, never mind three weeks ago. I don’t know how you blokes do it.’

‘Policemen do it on the job,’ Hall reminded him.

The men, except the dead one, looked up as the tent flap moved.

‘Jacquie,’ Hall eased himself upright. He’d been sitting watching Astley at work now with his tweezers and his gloved hands for well over an hour and his bum was as numb as his legs. He was grateful for the opportunity to move. ‘Anything?’

Jacquie Carpenter hadn’t been home yet. Nobody had. She’d briefly rung Maxwell to let him know she wouldn’t be back for a while and he was to go to bed. She’d got the answerphone because Max was up in the attic, (Nolan was asleep on the floor below), trying to make sense out of
Lieutenant Landriani’s uniform and waiting for the AWOL Juanita to give him some sort of explanation for her odd behaviour. He’d hurtled downstairs to reach the phone but Jacquie had already left her message and gone.

‘Sorry, darlings,’ he heard her voice say. ‘Something quite nasty’s come up at Dead Man’s Point. Don’t wait up. Love you both.’ Goodbye, that’s all she said.

Now, she was back on the coastal path, her Ka wedged between the police vehicles in the car park where they’d asked Luigi’s Ices to move on hours ago. Two uniforms had to stay with the vehicles at all times to keep away Nosy Joe Public. Nothing like the finding of a body to bring out the morbidly curious.

‘Right.’ Jacquie’s notebook was out of her handbag faster than you could say foul play. ‘Couldn’t get much out of the couple who found the body, guv.’

‘You got something, though?’ Hall motioned his sergeant outside. He’d never been at one with cadavers, and rummaging about in them all – Astley’s domain – had never really been Henry Hall’s thing.

Jacquie nodded, secretly as glad as her boss to be out in the cool, sweet air of the headland. ‘A Mr and Mrs Philip Downer from Carshalton. They’ve got a caravan at Willow Bay. Regulars, apparently.’

‘So they know the area?’

‘Patches does.’

‘Patches?’ Hall’s eyes narrowed. Not that Jacquie could see that behind the frosted lenses – only the faint reflection of the pale moon rising over the sea; twice.

‘Their dog. Border collie.’

Hall knew when Jacquie was trying to lighten the moment. She was the best DS he’d had in years. Anybody else would have smiled. But then, Henry Hall wasn’t anybody else. He was the Buster Keaton of Leighford CID and he had a reputation to maintain.

‘The Downers were naturally upset,’ Jacquie told him.

‘Naturally.’

‘Mr thought that Patches had found a rabbit or something. The place is riddled with them. By the time he got close, he realised it was an arm.’

‘Then what?’

‘Mrs Downer had the ab-dabs and had to be calmed down big time. She started screaming apparently to such an extent, volume and duration that Dave Conklin had to intervene to find out what was going on.’

‘Conklin?’

‘Luigi,’ Jacquie told him. ‘Has the ice cream franchise in the Dead Man’s car park over there.’

‘Indeed,’ Hall remembered. ‘Does a mean Ninety-Nine if memory serves.’

‘Well, he left his float to investigate, thinking something was going on.’

‘Good of him to get involved,’ Hall observed. ‘Many people these days wouldn’t.’

‘Said it was his civic duty. Anyway, trade was a bit slack by then.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Three, three-thirty. He couldn’t be sure.’

‘Anybody else around?’ Hall asked, wandering back along the path through the canopy of blasted oaks
overhead, their stunted branches black against the moon.

‘Couple of kids, the Downers remembered. Probably locals. Teenagers, certainly.’

‘From Leighford High?’ Hall had stopped and looked down at her. In the right light, Henry Hall could blot out the sun. Or by this time, the moon. She knew the reason for the question. She recognised the weight in the voice. Leighford High meant Peter Maxwell, their Head of Sixth Form, Jacquie’s partner in crime. Peter Maxwell meant trouble. Not perhaps, but definitely. Not now and again, but always.

‘Possibly,’ Jacquie was a past mistress at missing the point and she looked at her boss with as much wide-eyed innocence as she could muster. Hall was not impressed. He had, after all, known Jacquie and Maxwell for a while now.

‘Skivers, at that time of day?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Jacquie explained with the inside knowledge of a woman who lives with a teacher. ‘And I believe the phrase is ‘bunkers’ these days, guv. Could be Year Eleven or Year Thirteen after exams. They all finished a couple of days ago.’

‘All right.’ Henry Hall’s kids had grown up and flown the coop. He’d forgotten, as parents do, all the nitty-gritty of things like that. ‘Anybody else?’

‘Well, the world and his wife eventually. Word got round the car park. People coming from the Littlehampton direction. Apparently Dave Conklin’s got a lot of contacts and his mobile phone was red hot by the time he’d finished. I’m just amazed we haven’t had the
Advertiser
up here yet.’

‘We have,’ Hall nodded. ‘While you were back at the Shop talking to the Downers, the editor himself no less waddled up,
demanding exclusives like they’re going out of fashion.’

They both knew the two-edged sword that was the Fourth Estate. Handled well, the paparazzi could be your finest ally in the fight against crime. Handled badly, get them pissed off, and they’re about as useful as a sieve in a shipwreck.

Hall carried on walking, careful now that the path was dark and the ground uneven. Men in fluorescent jackets carrying torches walked past him on their way up to the Point, grunting greetings in the quarter light. ‘Anything untoward about the Downers?’

‘Don’t think so, guv.’ Jacquie walked with him until they reached the cars. ‘She’d calmed down by the time I talked to them. Seemed a very ordinary couple. Been coming to Leighford for the best part of fifteen years now.’

‘Hmm,’ Hall murmured. ‘Haven’t we all? What about Conklin?’

‘Salt of the earth type,’ Jacquie assessed the man. ‘Underneath the vest and the tattoos, just a nice fast food retailer trying to get out.’

‘And nobody saw anything – anybody – suspicious in the area?’

Jacquie knew what Hall meant. Suspects
do
return to their scenes of crime, not able to leave it alone. They’re not all Ted Bundy having sex with rotting corpses; but they just want to reassure themselves that all is well, that no nosy dog with extra scentsory perception hasn’t sniffed out their evil deeds. They’d have been seriously worried by this afternoon’s events.

‘We don’t know about the kids,’ Jacquie said. ‘We need to find them.’

Hall looked into her grey eyes, clear, cool, professional,
with just the merest hint of a stirring bitch in them. ‘Get on it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, Jacquie, go home. You’ve got a little baby waiting, haven’t you?’

‘So rumour has it, sir,’ she smiled.

‘Off you bugger, then.’ Hall sighed. He had no such excuse. ‘I’ve got a body to shift.’

The lights burned blue along Columbine and in the kitchen of Number 38, second floor back, a tired couple sat opposite each other on the benches of the dining table, propping up their eyelids with romantic smalltalk about murder.

‘What did they look like?’ Maxwell asked. He was in his pyjamas by now, but he hadn’t obeyed Jacquie’s instructions and gone to bed. He’d pottered around, sticking this bit of plastic, painting that. He’d settled on a roan for Lieutenant Landriani’s horse. Unfortunately, Messrs Humbrol didn’t do a roan colour, so Maxwell had to mix it a bit. Well, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘Now, Max,’ Jacquie scolded. She was still in her day clothes, minus the white galoshes she’d worn at the Scene of Crime, of course. ‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ he nodded, smiling and flicking the skin off his cocoa. ‘You’re going to say, “Max, don’t get involved. We don’t know who the kids are. They’re probably not yours anyway. And even if they are, they’ll have nothing to do with the murder. I am a detective sergeant in the West Sussex CID. You are a civilian and have absolutely no right of entry into what is entirely a police matter.” Something like that?’ He arched an eyebrow.

‘Astonishing!’ She threw up her hands in admiration. ‘It’s as if you can read my mind.’

‘Now, I’m not going to remind you of the criminal history lectures I hope you attended at the Police Academy Three, Woman Policeman. Of that little psychological weirdness called folie à deux, where two otherwise respectable youngsters spark off each other and become the couple from Hell – Burke and Hare, Leopold and Loeb, Jones and Hulton, Bonnie and Clyde…’

There was a pause.

‘What did they look like?’

She hit him with a kitchen roll. ‘Max, you’re such an infuriating old bastard.’

‘All right, all right.’ He held up his hands in supplication. ‘Let’s back track. Tell me about the dead man.’

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Is there
any
point in talking to you?’ she asked. ‘About integrity, I mean; professionalism.’

‘Noooooooo!’ He shook his head. ‘But two heads are better than one, Woman Policeman, and you know you won’t sleep tonight anyway.’

She looked at him. The Old Fart she’d come to love. The father of her baby. No, she wouldn’t sleep tonight and yes, how well he knew her. Two heads
were
better than one, especially when one of those heads belonged to Peter Maxwell, Cambridge Historian and all round clever dick. He knew his onions, did Maxwell. They were hanging in the veg rack. He knew his murders too.

‘Seemed to be middle-aged.’ She didn’t like conjuring images of rotting corpses but it brought home the bacon. It
solved killings from time to time as well. ‘What appeared to be dark hair, but it was a bit difficult to tell. He was wearing a black leather jacket and white shirt. Had a crucifix round his neck. May have been used as a ligature to kill him.’

‘Strangulation, eh? Well set-up chap?’ Maxwell was pondering the options.

‘Hard to say. The gases had blown the body up a bit. Looked like the Michelin Man when I saw him.’

‘Chummy’s pretty powerful, then?’ Maxwell was stirring his cocoa.

‘Could be,’ Jacquie nodded. ‘Or, if the man at the Point was drugged or pissed or just plain asleep, Mrs Troubridge could have done it.’

Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Of course!’ he crowed. ‘Got her at last! Do you want me to make some enquiries?’

‘Max…’ she growled.

‘At school, I mean,’ he said, all innocence and ingénue. ‘About those two kids?’

‘No, Max, I don’t,’ she told him. ‘No enquiries at all, thank you. Of any kind. Now, let’s change the subject. How was Juanita today?’

‘Conspicuous by her absence,’ he told her.

‘What?’ Jacquie frowned.

‘Gone.’

Jacquie was sitting upright. She hadn’t been in long and ever since she’d stumbled in through the door the talk had turned to murder, as it often did along Columbine. There hadn’t been time for other niceties. ‘Max, what are you talking about?’

‘Well, it was the damnedest thing. I got home about half four after toiling up the sheer side of the chalkface and there was no sign of Juanita. Her car had gone, but sonny Jim hadn’t.’

Jacquie was incredulous. ‘Are you telling me that Nolan was here on his own?’

‘Now, don’t get all she-wolfie about it,’ he said, patting the air around her with both hands. ‘No harm done.’

‘No…’ She lowered her voice. ‘No harm done? Anything could have happened, Max. What did she say about it?’

‘Don’t know,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen her.’

Jacquie stared at him in disbelief. ‘Max, why didn’t you tell me about this?’

‘I tried to,’ he told her. ‘Rang the nick. They said you were out. What’s his name? Got a chip on his shoulder.’

‘Oh, Den Morrisey.’

‘The same. I guessed your situation was probably more fraught than mine. All the same, it’s odd she hasn’t called round. Must be back by now.’