Maxwell's Revenge (18 page)

She trotted down the stairs and opened the door a crack. ‘Mrs T, do you fancy an evening in with my mother? We’re going out.’

‘Your mother, dear? I didn’t know your mother was here.’

‘Gosh, didn’t you? Well, I did tell you this afternoon.’ Jacquie’s heart dropped. Perhaps this wasn’t one of Max’s better ideas. ‘You know,’ she added. ‘Boot-faced?’

Mrs Troubridge laughed the girlish trill which had won her Mr Troubridge all those years ago from under her sister’s nose. ‘My dear, I will have my little joke, you know. I’ll just pop back indoors and powder my nose and I’ll be right along.’

Jacquie climbed the stairs and stuck her head round the sitting room door. ‘She’s on her way. Have fun now, Mum. Open a bottle. Let down your hair. Oh, and, can we borrow your car? Henry was supposed to get mine sent back but
I suppose, what with one thing and another, he forgot.’

‘Of course, dear. The keys are in my bag on the landing.’

Maxwell sketched a wave as he went out to join her on said landing. ‘Just remember Thelma and Louise and make sure you behave.’ He closed the door.

‘Which one is which?’ Jacquie giggled.

‘Hard to say,’ he said and handed her a jacket. Although the nights were still warm, there was a slight Septembral dampness in the air. ‘Let’s go and see Nole, and I suppose we’d better move the Count.’

They crept up the stairs and peeped round the door. They had no chance of moving the cat, who was stretched out alongside his Boy, who had an arm firmly round his neck. The great beast had one paw protectively on the child’s chest and, old warrior that he was, one eye permanently and disconcertingly half open.

‘Let’s hope that neither of them checks on the chaps,’ whispered Maxwell as they crept back down the stairs. ‘They’ll freak out.’

Jacquie did a very creditable impression of her mother, ‘Darling, that animal will sleep on his face. He’ll get fleas.’

Maxwell was outraged, but his Mrs Troubridge was immaculate. ‘As if my boy would give anyone fleas. The idea!’ And he almost
threw out a ‘tcha’ again, but thought better of it. They crept right on past the sitting room door and down the stairs. The real Mrs Troubridge was waiting on the step, about to ring the bell.

‘Just go on up, Mrs Troubridge,’ Maxwell bowed low and ushered her in. ‘Mrs Carpenter is all set to open a bottle.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Troubridge pitched her voice low. ‘Is she a drinker, my dear? What a worry for you. It probably explains the …’ she waved a hand vaguely in front of her face, ‘… expression.’ She patted Jacquie’s hand. ‘Off you go, you youngsters. Well, Mr Maxwell, I know you won’t mind me saying, youngster and Mr Maxwell. I’ll look after her. Have a nice time, now.’

Wearing the usual expressions of those who had tangled with the weird and wonderful world of Troubridge, they got in the car and drove away.

‘Where are we going, Max?’ Jacquie asked, at her first T-junction. Her mother’s Peugeot was a bit of a bitch until you knew how to handle it; bit like its owner, really. ‘Left or right would be enough information right now, if you are still undecided. But be quick, because I have a bus on my tail.’

‘Hmm?’ Maxwell looked up and glanced behind him. ‘Oh, sorry. Miles away. Make it left. That will do as well as any other direction.’

‘You don’t mind me saying that this seems a little random, do you? Am I right in assuming we’re not just out for a drive to get away from the wedding planning? To watch the branches stir across the moon at Grantchester?’

Maxwell smiled. So she
had
been taking in the snatches of his favourite poem that he lobbed into the conversation from time to time. He made no comment, of course; he’d rather die than let her know he was impressed.

‘Well, that was part of it, of course. But, no, I had a bit of a think in the bath. Like you do. There was Nole, blowing bubbles as if nothing had happened, and it struck me that – and I restrained myself from shouting “Eureka Stockade” – with the exception of the Barlows, this hasn’t been as random as it at first might seem. So I gave some thought to the Barlows and where their shop is, and the answer to that one is obvious.’

Jacquie changed gear for the next junction, cursing under her breath as it crunched ever so slightly. ‘Well?’

‘Left again.’

‘Max, this is heading for Leighford High.’

‘In a way. All roads lead there, don’t they? In fact, we’re heading for the Barlows’ corner shop. The shop where I, and I have to admit this, dear heart, drop in on the occasional morning for a bag of sticky buns or some other comestible
to keep the troops sweet in tutor meetings, or chocolate to schmooze Helen or even a nice bar of something for my good self. As the song goes, chocolate makes the world go around, the world go around, the …’

‘You go to the poisoned shop?’

‘You’ve caught the media idiom pretty well, you adman’s dream. Yes, I do, or perhaps that should be did, sadly enough, go to the poisoned shop. Which leaves us with several options. Either, it is a coincidence and, as Henry would say,’ and they broke into choral speaking, ‘there are no such things as coincidences. Or,’ he continued, solo, ‘someone has a preternaturally detailed knowledge of my lifestyle.’

‘Assuming you’re the target?’

‘For the moment, yes.’ He reached across and patted her knee. ‘It’s not always about you, you know,’ he teased.

‘So, they targeted a shop you use.’ She played along, a raised eyebrow to mark the moment.

‘Correct. The odd thing is that they chose to do it on a Friday night, when I wouldn’t be using it for another two days.’

‘It might have been done before, hoping to catch you on your way back from school. No, wait, that doesn’t work. The cakes had only been delivered that afternoon; well, call it early evening, really. So much for bakery fresh.’

‘Well, I suppose they were, once. Unless of
course, your boys in blue should be out looking for that well-known Napoleon of crime Le Crust or that pair of criminal masterminds, the Brake Brothers. Um, next left, talking of brakes, and we’re there. I wonder, and of course, Juliet Bravo, I bow to your superior judgement here as in all things,’ he paused to wait for the light punch on the arm, ‘but I wonder if Chummy is dragging it out on purpose. For his own amusement, as it were.’

‘You mean he’s enjoying it, like you said?’

‘Yes. But also, if he makes it too obvious, we will fine down the search too quickly and we’ll catch him too soon.’

Jacquie pulled up outside the dark shop and pulled on the handbrake. She turned to him. ‘But surely, he doesn’t want to be caught at all. He’s killed someone, Max, and may well kill again. He’ll be looking at a life sentence for that. No one wants one of those just to piss you off.’

‘Point taken, but I think that this is some kind of game and he doesn’t care what the consequences are. I think I am the ultimate target, Jacquie, because the first outbreak hit the school. Nolan came later. A sort of homing in, narrowing down, call it what you will. But if he takes out others on the way, that’s fine by him. The thing is, he targeted Nolan too soon in the game. I’m already mad. Now I want to get even.’

‘But what about Margaret? You hardly know
her, so it can’t be an attempt to get at you, well, not just you.’ She didn’t want the target to be Hall any more than she wanted it to be Maxwell, but straws were there to be clutched at.

He looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, I know. That’s the fly in my ointment. We’ll have to find out where she got the cake.’

‘Locally, I assume. You don’t drive for miles to get a cake for your tea.’

‘True, but she might have bought it when she did a bigger shop, so we might be looking at closing supermarkets, now. Can you imagine the publicity that will bring? Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury, all like ghost towns. The press will have a field day. Stock markets will crash. Farmers will go bust. Governments will fall …’ He was on a roll.

‘Earth to Maxwell, Earth to Maxwell. Come in. Over.’

He gave himself a mental shake. ‘Possibly I exaggerate. I’m pretty sure she bought it up the road. So, bearing in mind that the Halls live nowhere near school and nowhere near us, that means that Henry was also a specific target, since, as you say, I barely know Margaret and so her poisoning wouldn’t be an attack on me personally.’

Jacquie pointed at the shop. ‘Are we going in?’

‘No, no. No need. I just need to get a map of some sort in my head. I’m an historian, my dear, not a …’ and he shuddered gently,
‘… geographer. No, drive on, James, and don’t spare the horses.’

‘Where to?’

‘To where?’ he corrected automatically. ‘The Halls’ house.’

‘Max! We can’t. For a start they are probably all round at the hospital.’

‘I know, that’s why we’re going there after the house. I just want to get the lie of the land and see where they are in relation to shops.’

‘I’m sure Henry has already thought of that, Max.’

‘Lie of the land, dear heart. Lie of the land. Henry may be a copper of above average intelligence, saving your presence, but he’s no military historian. You’ve got to have a feel for these things. Come on, now. Don’t shilly-shally. Unless you’d rather go home and discuss the Troubridges’ bridesmaidal requirements?’ He glanced at her stricken expression. ‘No, I thought not. Drive on.’ He waved a hand towards the windscreen as a teaching aid. ‘Off we go.’

And they left the sad, deserted corner shop, empty of customers for the first time in years, its stock quietly passing its sell-by date and the dust motes spiralling slowly down on newspaper and chocolate bar, on biscuits and instant coffee. The murderer had killed Mel Forman and he had also killed Barlow’s Eight Till Late Corner Shop.

The lights were going out all over Leighford.

Henry Hall sat quietly by his wife’s bedside, holding her hand. He had seen so many people, sitting just like this, victims of crime and circumstance. He had never actually put himself in their position, had never wondered what it felt like to be sitting next to the most beloved person in your life, feeling the faint flutter of a pulse in your fingers, not knowing whether it came from them or you, willing them to open their eyes. That wasn’t his job. His job was to be cool, detached, professional. He couldn’t help people otherwise. But he found, as all those people had found before him, that you don’t need instructions for moments like these. Hope, he was finding, really does spring eternal. It wasn’t in his nature to talk to her. Where some might have chatted about things, plans they would make, how things would be different if only they would turn their head, open their eyes, he found
he had no regrets but one. And he didn’t want to waste this moment talking about the past. All the things he hadn’t done. All the times he hadn’t been there. And, as an honest man, he couldn’t promise things would change when she opened her eyes, when she turned her head. So he settled for squeezing her fingers every now and then and willing her to fight the poison inside her.

He was glad he had found her. It had not been a sight he would have wanted his boys to see. She had obviously been taken ill very suddenly but had managed to make it to the bathroom. Being a policeman’s wife, and knowing something was very wrong, she hadn’t flushed, and he was proud of her for that. Unfortunately, the presence of umpteen different things to prevent limescale, smells and, for all he knew, infestation by termites, had made her gesture meaningless. So they were waiting for the blood toxicology and that could take too long. They were just rehydrating her and giving her various antidotes, to be sure. The problem they had was that they had to make sure that the antidotes without the antigens would do no harm.

He forced his mind back to the finding; there may yet be a clue there that he had missed. So, diarrhoea had been, as the doctors had it, present. But he had found her in her chair, in a coma from which she had shown no signs of emerging. The phone was in her hand, her hand was in her lap. It looked as though
she had intended to ring, then just gave up. He had written all of these things down and now all he could do was sit here. He dropped his head onto their joined hands and muttered the nearest thing he could to a prayer. He was sure that God wouldn’t mind that it included threats to dismember whoever had done this, limb from limb and slowly. An eye for an eye, after all, he thought grimly. That was God’s spell too, wasn’t it?

A hand came down gently on his shoulder and a voice breathed in his ear.

‘Mr Hall, your sons are here. Would you like them to come in?’

He looked up into the nurse’s face. ‘I don’t know. Is that a good idea?’

She straightened up and said, ‘Well, sometimes it helps if the patient’s children come in. With no offence to you, Mr Hall, it is often their voices which bring a person round, especially a mother. And … well, you haven’t been saying much and we really do recommend …’ Her voice tailed away.

Hall stood up and pushed his chair tidily away. ‘Yes, nurse. Let the boys in. I’m sure she’d be pleased to see them.’ He brushed past her through the curtain round his wife’s bed and stalked down the ward. His sons were waiting outside the doors, brought home from their vacations by every means the police could conjure from squad car to helicopter. Even in his
extremis, Hall was thinking of the paperwork it would entail.

‘Dad!’ His youngest put his arms round him and he patted him on the back.

‘How is she?’ asked his brother, ashen-faced.

Hall shrugged his shoulders and set his mouth. ‘She’s in the fourth bed along,’ he said, gruffly. ‘I’m off to the station, boys. Ring if … if there’s any change.’

The boys, as the parents still called them, big as they were, stared at him, the younger in disbelief. So, he was off to the station, was he, while their mother lay in a coma. He pre-empted them.

‘It’s your mother lying there. My wife. And if I
don’t
go back to the station, it might be someone else’s. A woman is already dead. Jacquie Carpenter’s little boy had a close call this afternoon.’ God, was it only this afternoon, he thought to himself? ‘I want to stop it before the wards and morgues are full.’ He clapped them both on the shoulder and held them tightly. ‘Let me go, lads. You’ll rally her round if anyone can. I can catch the bastard who did this, if anyone can. And don’t eat anything, whoever offers it. Only drink from cans you buy and open yourselves. Trust me on this; I mean it.’

They nodded and turned silently towards where their mother lay. It was turning out to be a bit of a day. First, the shock news about their
mother’s collapse, resulting in their desperate race to get back home. Then their father showing more emotion in one minute than they had ever seen before in their whole lives. They couldn’t decide on which event had surprised them more.

Hall reached the foyer of the hospital and drew a deep breath. He straightened his tie and peered round the door. The press and media had gone; his way to his car was free and clear. He stepped outside into the darkening evening and reached into his pocket for his mobile and switched it on. He would phone Jacquie first and then the nick. His phone was going through its interminable wheebling noises as it searched for a signal. He stepped further into the darkness of the car park, turning it this way and that, searching for a position, no matter how uncomfortable, that would give him more than the ‘emergency calls only’ message on the screen. If he had not been Henry Hall he would have thrown the thing into the bushes in frustration.

A car approaching from his left piqued his policeman’s instinct. This wasn’t a road, only a car park, and so the traffic was one-way; it should have been coming from his right. He turned and saw that, not only was the car coming from the wrong direction, but it had no lights on and the driver was either very small or
was crouching down behind the wheel, in what looked like a deliberate attempt to avoid being recognised. In the seconds that he had he ticked things off on the checklist in his mind. The car was a mid-range saloon or hatchback, with the maker’s logo removed. It was dark, but whether blue or black or even a really dark green it was impossible to say. In the dark, it isn’t only all cats which are grey, but all cars as well. The number plate had been removed. There was a screech of tyres and the machine lurched forward, the single street light flashing just once in the windscreen reflection. Time up; he leapt backwards into what he soon discovered was an extremely thorny bush, his mobile flying into the air. The car swerved up the kerb but missed him by inches as he lay there with long thorns sticking in where no long thorn should ever go. As he lay there, trying to regain his feet without moving too much, a difficult task at the best of times, let alone in the dark, he heard a scream of brakes and the sound of metal on metal.

Excellent, he thought. The bastard’s hit something. Now I’ve got him. Spurred on, he struggled out of his bush with nothing like the aplomb of Br’er Rabbit and ran gingerly to the scene of the crash, trying to ignore the sudden pain in his ankle.

Another mid-range saloon was slewed up onto the kerb. It had a gash down one side and a
large piece of bumper was trailing on the ground. Glass was glittering on the ground all around and there was a faint hiss as the punctured tyre on the front nearside let go of the last of its air. Of the other car, there was no sign.

The passenger door opened and an irate head emerged, a shock of wiry hair outlined against the light. ‘Bugger that, Jacquie. That had to be deliberate. See what I mean about someone with a grudge against me?’ The figure turned. ‘Oh, hello, Henry. What are you doing there? How’s Margaret?’

Henry straightened up as well as he was able. ‘Max. Jacquie. New car?’

Jacquie was out of her seat now and was looking ruefully at the damage. ‘Yes, it was. But sadly, not mine. It’s my mother’s. Did you get a number, Henry? It must have come straight past you. Oh, sorry, how’s Margaret?’

He dealt with the most important question first. ‘Still unconscious, but the boys are there and they’ll let me know if there’s any change. Oh, damn.’ The curse sounded odd in Henry’s mouth, but they understood. ‘My phone went flying. They won’t be able to reach me.’ He started to hunt around aimlessly, hobbling over the tarmac. ‘It went over here somewhere.’

Jacquie looked closer. ‘Guv, you’re bleeding. Did it hit you, the car?’

‘No, though not for want of trying. I jumped
into that bush over there. It’s got really sharp thorns.’

Maxwell went over to the hedge and peered into its branches. ‘Pyracantha,’ he announced.

‘Ouch,’ Jacquie said. ‘Those thorns are nasty, Henry. The tips break off and can set up an infection. And you’re not walking any too chipperly. Come on, you couldn’t
be
any closer to A&E than this. You need to be checked over, at the least.’

‘I must find my phone, first,’ the DCI said. The pain was taking over from the shock now and he knew, from careful testing, that a lot of the thorns were either still in his clothing or, rather more importantly, actually in
him
.

‘I’ll phone you, guv,’ Jacquie said. ‘Then we can track it down.’

‘I’ll phone,’ said Maxwell. ‘You move the car.’

‘You? Phone?’ Jacquie and Hall chorused, although it
was
more plausible than Maxwell moving the car.

‘No need for sarcasm,’ Maxwell said, taking Jacquie’s proffered mobile. ‘I
can
. I just
don’t
.’ He gave them a withering look. ‘I usually have people.’ He turned the phone to the light and then reached into his jacket pocket and took out his reading glasses. The phone in his hand made small beeping noises and he occasionally made small tutting noises. But, eventually, over in an adjacent hedge, came the sound of Henry’s
phone ringing. Not for Henry Hall the ‘Ride of the Valkyrie’, the ‘William Tell Overture’ or even ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ No, Henry Hall’s phone rang. Brinng brinng, Brinng, brinng. Like the man himself, boring, predictable, doing exactly what it said on the tin. Hall and Maxwell triangulated on the noise until they ran it to earth, cushioned in the topmost branches of a mercifully
thorn-free
shrub. Hall grabbed it, refused the call and put it in his pocket.

While some of the men in her life played hunt the mobile, Jacquie reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the can of instant puncture repair and inflator that her aunt had bought everyone in the family for Christmas. Having an unimaginative aunt was sometimes very helpful; Jacquie knew it would be there and she wasn’t disappointed. It worked, as well, which was a bit more of a surprise. She got into the battered vehicle and gingerly turned over the engine.

Hall watched and listened carefully to make sure everything was working and then turned back to Maxwell. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘While Jacquie moves the car, I will very, very slowly and even more carefully, make my way to A&E. No need for you to come. I’m sure you have places to be. But, hold on, why are you here at all?’

‘We came to see you, Henry,’ Maxwell told him. ‘I think the poisoner is after me. We wanted
to see what you thought of that theory and also, of course, to find out how Margaret is doing.’

Hall turned to his man, but rather more slowly than he would have liked, due to a particularly sharp thorn which seemed to have lodged itself where the sun don’t shine. And the ache was starting to climb all the way up his leg. ‘Mr Maxwell, if I may be formal for a moment. I admit that Nolan had an unpleasant experience this afternoon. But if you don’t mind my saying so, my wife is on drips and various medical interventions in the hospital over there. I was almost mown down by a murderous car and even as we speak am in agony from thorns stuck in places only my flannel knows as a rule. And for some reason, you think the poisoner is after
you
. Why is this, if you don’t mind telling me?’

Maxwell had the grace to look sheepish, but quickly rallied. ‘I can see that you’ve had a bad run, but the car could be an accident, surely? He certainly didn’t seem to be much of a driver, the way he ploughed into Jacquie.’

‘I expect you are already aware of my views on coincidence?’

Maxwell nodded.

‘Then you will realise what I have assumed from the following: logo removed from front of car; number plate, ditto, and finally, driver crouching down so as not to be seen clearly. Oh, and I forgot, going the wrong way round a car
park and with his lights off. And, yes, add this in, he mounted the pavement to have a proper go at me.’

Maxwell looked into the air and mulled. ‘I assume that you assume that the car driver was after you.’ He knew all about ‘asses’ and ‘you’ and ‘me’, but this was not the time to resurrect great team-building nonsenses of our time.

‘Correct. Go to the top of the class.’

Jacquie, approaching from where she had parked her mother’s damaged car, heard a chill in the air. ‘Is everything all right, guv? Max?’

The silence was the silence of the playground; neither one would give an inch and it was pointless waiting for a reply.

‘Right then,’ she said, brightly. ‘Let’s get you off to A&E, guv. Darling,’ she looked over her shoulder at Maxwell, ‘while we do this, why don’t you pop on to the ward and visit your colleagues and colleague-to-be? You’ve probably got a few minutes of visiting time left, and if not, I rely on you to get yourself in some other way. See you in …’ she glanced at her watch, ‘… shall we say an hour?’

Hall, standing there in agony, thought that that wouldn’t be half long enough. ‘Can you pop in on Margaret, please?’ he asked. ‘Tell the boys where I am. I’m going to have to switch my mobile off while I’m having treatment.’

‘Will do,’ said Maxwell, trotting off towards
the main entrance. He was trying to decide whether to go for the Prince of Wales or the David Beckham approach when doing his round. This was serious stuff, but where Legs Diamond was concerned, it was hard to stop oneself having just a bit of fun.