Maxwell's Revenge (21 page)

He folded up his paper and put it in his pocket. So intent had he been on his sketch map
that he had been unaware of Mad Artie creeping nearer. So his sudden cry of ‘Bugger,’ only inches from his ear, was bound to make the last swig of Southern Comfort go down the wrong way. Who needs a poisoner, thought Maxwell as he staggered coughing and wheezing from the Vine, when you had local colour like that to contend with? Maxwell had crossed words with Mad Artie before. Both of them called Mad and for good reason, but one of them only nor’ by nor’west. Artie was barking in all directions.

Closing time was just past and the town centre was almost empty. A pair of pretend coppers were strolling along Della Street, giving a certain comfort to the populace. Those intent on drinking the night away had already moved on to the clubs on the Sea Front that stayed open virtually round the clock. The thump of an
all-night
bass reverberated across the square. Late eaters from the few restaurants in the centre were wandering back to their cars or throwing up into waste bins, depending on which establishment they had frequented. Gordon Ramsay would have had a field day.

Maxwell took a seat along the edge of the Councillor MacIllwain Memorial Garden, cool in the moonlight, which made much of the single remaining chrysanthemum not destroyed by the youth of Leighford. The noise from the Sea Front, only a few roads away to the south,
filtered through to him as he sat there, taking the night air. The seat was hard and unforgiving, but as the human sounds died away, all he was left with was the sibilance of the sea.

Finally, he was alone. He got to his feet and made his way to the first shop indicated on his map. It was a small satellite of a large chain and, as a consequence, stocked largely items which the average town centre worker might need to stock up on on the way home: drink, mainly. Bread, butter or the many easy-spread equivalents. Cheese. Crisps and cake. Soap powder took up a large section of the retail space and that was good, thought Maxwell. A few more aisles he didn’t have to keep an eye on. He chose a dark corner of the frontage, between the chained-up trolleys and the window. He could see quite a large section of the shop from there and, more importantly, both the front door and the double flaps which led into the storage section. His eyes soon became accustomed to the dark and he felt a distant empathy with Metternich, who spent large portions of any night in question patiently stalking small rodents for fun and profit.

He leant there, feeling the chill of the glass on his forehead. He tuned his ears in so that he could dimly hear the judder of freezers in the shop, switching on and off as their thermostats commanded. But there wasn’t a single moving thing in there, except the slowly swinging signs
exhorting him and everyone else to buy one, get one free. Whoever, he asked himself, in the strange planet of marketing, thought that BOGOF was at all inviting? He was vaguely surprised that Mr Bevell hadn’t already sued for distress.

He felt an incipient cramp begin its climb up his left leg and soon could maintain the position no longer. He crept out from his hiding place and, trying to look at once casual and furtive, made his way to the other establishment on his map. This was much smaller, a family-run place not unlike the Barlows’. It was a bit of a long shot, really, but he had worked it all out. The big stores would obviously cause much more widespread panic if Chummy peppered them with his lethal droppings. But they had security, CCTV cameras and even dog patrols. The smaller stores would be less exciting for him, but much easier to break into, and Maxwell had more or less decided that this man, although ruthless and determined, was not actually very good at this crime lark. He was still thinking small.

He was at the side of the shop and pressed in to the window, inches away from the cards advertising everything from a house to a gerbil. He recognised Mrs B’s semi-literate scrawl, leaping out at him from a card around halfway down. ‘Cleener. Reasonabel raits. Good relaible work. Refs avialabel. Phone Leighford 626987.’
Good luck to her, he thought. At least if she wrote in your dust, you’d know who had done it.

He edged round to the door, his feet sticking briefly, at every step, to the pebble-dash of old chewing gum, trodden there by generations of shoplifting children. He was sure he could hear noises from inside, but he had been listening so intently for so long he could hear the small hairs moving inside his ears, he could hear his hair growing. As he reached the angle of the building he saw, but only out of the corner of his eye, a light flash inside. He crouched down so that the National Lottery poster shielded him from anyone inside the shop. He froze as the door opened slowly and a dark-clad figure stepped out and pulled the door very quietly to, behind itself. Maxwell’s breath caught in his throat. In his planning of the night’s campaign, he had not really factored in the fact that he might well catch Chummy in the act. And now, here he was, just inches from him, tucking something small into the pocket of his black jacket with one hand.

Maxwell stepped forward. He brought his hand down firmly on the black-clad shoulder. ‘What’s going on here, then?’ he boomed, sounding, even to himself, like Dixon of Dock Green on a bad day.

The ninja-like figure reacted instantly. In the hand not in his pocket, he held a large
torch. The last thing that Maxwell thought as it crashed into his left temple was that he really should have taken that into account. Then the whole world went black, with wheeling stars and exploding fireworks in the far, far distance. The gum-encrusted pavement came up to meet him and was surprisingly soft, he found. He was quite comfortable as he lay there and was rather ungrateful when he felt a gentle kick in the ribs and a distant Dock Green voice boomed in his head.

‘What’s going on here, then?’ it asked.

‘Surely,’ said Maxwell into the pavement, ‘I just said that.’ Far away on a distant planet he heard a policeman talking into his radio. He seemed to be talking about a drunk and disorderly passed out on the pavement by the paper shop. He just had time to feel smug; he must tell Henry Hall that coincidences did happen. There were
two
people passed out on the pavement by the paper shop, and he was one of them. Time did the strange thing it saves for moments – or hours – when folk are asleep, and a mere two seconds went past before he was unceremoniously hoisted to his feet by strong hands beneath his armpits.

‘Hello,’ said a dubious voice in his ear. ‘This is Jacquie Carpenter’s bloke. The old one, from up at the school.’

It would have been nice to respond to that,
thought Maxwell, but his tongue seemed to have detached itself from his brain.

Then another voice chipped in. ‘He doesn’t really smell of drink,’ it said. Then, following some sniffing noises, ‘Oh, wait a minute, though. He’s been in the Vine. I can smell it. Spliff alley.’

‘There you are, then,’ rejoined the first voice. ‘You can never tell. I never had him down for a drinker. Let’s get him over to that seat. He’s heavier than he looks.’

Maxwell was dragged over to a handy park bench, placed there in loving memory of Jock is a Knob, if the painted legend on the back was to be believed. And it was to be believed; Maxwell had taught the boy – it was a fair characterisation. He managed a groan and put a hand to his temple. One of the policemen brushed his hair back and looked more closely.

‘Hello, look at this. He’s had a hell of a whack here.’

‘Got it when he fell over, I expect,’ his oppo said.

‘No, I don’t think so. Look,’ and he tilted Maxwell’s head to the light, still holding back his hair. ‘Look, there’s an imprint there. He’s been hit by something.’

‘A torch,’ said Maxwell’s brain. ‘Tch,’ agreed his mouth.

‘It looks like a torch or something. One of those heavy-duty rubber ones.’

‘As’ri,’ Maxwell said, trying to nod, but really,
really
gently.

The more sympathetic policeman bent down low so that he could make eye contact without Maxwell having to move his head. ‘We’ll take you to A&E,’ he said, slowly and carefully.

Maxwell took a deep breath and concentrated as hard as he could. ‘No,’ he said, much more loudly than he had intended. ‘P’lice station. Swab for DNA.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr … um, sorry, I can’t remember your name.’

Maxwell was delighted that there was at least one policeman in Leighford who hadn’t marked his card. ‘Maxwell.’

‘Yes, of course. Mr Maxwell, I’m afraid we don’t do DNA on muggings. We don’t have the resources.’

‘Not mugging. Poisoner.’

‘No, Mr Maxwell. You’ve been hit. With a torch. You haven’t been poisoned.’

Ye Gods. Where did they get these people? He got the definite impression he was not in the presence of a fast tracker. Again, he tried to marshal thoughts and tongue simultaneously. ‘I was
hit
by the poisoner. He was in the shop. I got him and he hit me.’ He pointed wildly in the direction he hoped the shop lay. ‘You must check that shop. He’s been in there.’

He heard more radio conversation crackling
nearby and then he was being addressed again. ‘Mr Maxwell, we’re taking you to the station. We’ve told DS Carpenter we’re on our way.’

‘Lovely,’ Maxwell muttered. A welcoming committee – what could be nicer? They hefted him to his feet and propelled him to the squad car parked at the side of the road at the end of the pedestrian precinct. Pausing only for him to be sick in a flowerbed, they put him in the back and, siren wailing, they set off for the nick, which was approximately two hundred yards on foot, a mile and a half by road, courtesy of the Leighford Town Planners circa 1976.

The Nice Policeman turned round in his seat and spoke kindly to Maxwell. ‘DS Carpenter said to tell you she was really looking forward to you getting to the nick,’ he said.

Maxwell gave a brave-little-soldier smile. ‘I’m sure she is,’ he whispered and let his head loll back on the headrest. ‘I’m sure she is.’

Jacquie was pacing the reception area, uncertain whether to give Maxwell a clip round the ear or smother him with kisses. She little realised that Nolan would present her with this dilemma on an almost daily basis, from the day he could work out how to open the front door on his own until the day she died.

After what seemed like years, she heard the squad car pull up outside and then another day passed before the little group edged their way through the doors, the policemen shouldering them open to protect their precious cargo. The scream of the door buzzer clearly went through Maxwell’s addled brain like a knife.

‘Hello, Jacquie,’ the Nice Policeman grinned. ‘This is yours, I believe.’

She stood there, shocked. He clearly had had a nasty knock and was at least semi-concussed. A clip round the ear was clearly out of the question
– he had had one of those already. And perhaps the kisses could wait until later. There was blood matted in his hair and a dark trickle had run down on to his collar.

He straightened his head to the best of his ability. ‘Hello,’ he said, with a lopsided grin. ‘I got hit with a torch, you know.’

‘So I heard,’ Jacquie said, then, to his escort, ‘I’ll take it from here, boys.’

‘Are you sure? He’s really heavy.’

‘I know how heavy he is,’ she said. ‘He ain’t my brother and I know where to lift,’ and she slipped under his armpit and led him to a chair, where she propped him. He was glad to be sitting down again, his legs didn’t really want to do stuff like standing and walking about. He slid sideways but she had thought it all through; he was wedged happily in a corner and made his own entertainment looking at the pattern in the carpet. It was all vaguely seaside, with scallop shells of quiet and blue days at sea, interspersed with the West Sussex Unit’s logo.

She went over to the desk. ‘Bill, who is the duty police surgeon tonight?’ she asked.

Bill ran a finger down a list and checked the date. ‘Astley,’ he said.

Jacquie frowned and chewed her lip. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said. ‘Max will think he’s dead if Astley examines him. Never mind, I don’t have time to
take him to A&E and, frankly, I just want to get him horizontal. Do we have a cell empty?’

Again, Bill consulted a list. ‘There’s a cell that’s clean, but it’s the high-security one. You know, CCTV, all that. I might have to chuck him out if we get a live one in.’

‘Thanks, Bill. Oh, can you ring Astley for me? And don’t tell him who it is. They haven’t always seen eye to eye.’

‘No problem.’ The desk man glanced across at Maxwell, sensing that he wouldn’t be seeing eye to eye with anybody for an hour or two. He reached to the board behind him. ‘Here’s the key. Don’t worry, I’ll sign it out for you.’

‘Bill, you are wonderful.’ Jacquie confirmed what he knew already. ‘All I need now is someone to hold open the door and we’ll be set.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said a voice behind her. It was familiar and strangely unwelcome. She turned her head, balancing Maxwell against the wall again.

‘Oh,’ she said, unevenly. ‘Bob. Umm … are you back?’

‘No, don’t worry,’ he sneered. ‘I’ve just come to get some things.’ He held up a carrier bag. ‘Apparently, they need my desk.’

‘Thanks for holding the door,’ she said. There seemed nothing else
to
say.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘What happened?’ he asked, gesturing with his head towards Maxwell, who was desperately trying to focus
on him, peering like a short-sighted bird of prey, first with one eye, then another.

Jacquie sighed. ‘He was knocked out with a blunt instrument – a torch, we think. I’m getting the duty surgeon to have a look at him.’

Davies looked closer. ‘A Maglite, I reckon,’ he said.

‘How on earth do you know that?’ Jacquie was impressed in spite of herself.

He pointed. ‘There, look. A “g” and an “l” printed backwards in the bruise. It must have been rubber cased, with raised letters. He’d look a damned sight worse if it was metal. It’s broken the skin as it is.’ He looked at her with feigned regret. ‘Ah, Jacquie, wouldn’t we have made a good team, eh? Your looks and my brains?’ And with that he let the door go, knocking Maxwell out of Jacquie’s grasp and trapping her hand painfully in the hinge. ‘Oh, sorry,’ and he went out into the night, swinging his carrier bag.

‘What a wanker.’ Bill was out from behind his desk and helping restore Maxwell to Jacquie. The pain in her hand was so bad it had travelled right up her arm and seemed to be lodged in her head, like a migraine with no pretty lights to make it bearable. ‘Are you all right? Let me see?’

She held out her hand; there was a sharply defined bruise where the edge of the door had caught it but she could move all of her fingers,
though painfully. ‘It’s OK, Bill. Let’s hope that’s the last of him.’

The desk sergeant sighed. ‘That would be nice. But the Federation are on to it, apparently. He might be reinstated.’

‘Surely not here?’ Jacquie’s eyes were big with pain, tiredness and disbelief.

‘They say so,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Most people choose to move on, but he is saying reinstatement here or nowhere. Let’s hope it’s nowhere, eh?’ And he held open the door until they were safely through. He didn’t think that he would tell Jacquie what else Bob Davies had said. She didn’t need to hear that it was, in the gospel according to Davies, either her or him.

As they lurched down the corridor, Jacquie was filled with a sudden terrible exhaustion. It wasn’t just the fact that she had been up and working more hours in one day than many people did in seven. It wasn’t even that she was supporting, with one arm, a fully grown man who was starting to have ideas of his own where he wanted to go. It was just that this whole thing, ever since she had seen Maxwell’s jacket across the legs of a dead body, had taken less than seventy-two hours and she was in overload. Was there such a thing, she wondered, as DTS syndrome – During Traumatic Stress?

‘Where am I?’ Maxwell suddenly asked, rather too loudly, in her ear.

‘We’re in Leighford nick, Max,’ she said briskly, trying to avoid the ‘does-he-take-sugar’ tone which was trying to insinuate itself into her voice. Mad Max didn’t usually do the cliché thing.

‘Why?’ he asked plaintively. ‘What have we done?’

‘What’s this “we”, white man?’ She muttered his ancient Lone Ranger joke instinctively. ‘Nothing,’ she said, wanting to kiss him on the forehead and ruffle his hair, he sounded so like Nolan. ‘Nothing. It’s just that you bumped your head and this was a place where you could lie down.’

‘I’m not lying down,’ he declared. ‘I’m walking along.’

‘That’s right.’ Please, God, let him not stick like this, she thought. Let him snap out of it soon, before I deck him with sheer frustration. ‘We’re going to put you to bed. Look, here we are,’ and she opened the door to the cell she had been allocated. ‘Oh, pooh. If this is a clean cell, I wouldn’t want to smell a dirty one.’

Smelly or not, Maxwell subsided gratefully onto the bed, rolled over onto his side and began to snore almost the moment his head hit the pillow. She looked at him anxiously. She knew from her first aid that sleepiness was a bad sign.
On the other hand, it was well past midnight and so he had as much right as anyone else to be tired. She was tired herself; if there had been room on the narrow bed, she would have been well away alongside him. She pushed his feet over to one side and perched on the edge. If she braced her elbows on her knees, and could just relax enough, she might just possibly manage a few minutes zizz of her own. Metternich seemed to do it with no effort required. Perhaps, she thought with a sleepy smile, if she could push her nose up her own bum, she could rest for a while.

A voice, familiar, annoying, annoyed, woke her up with a start.

‘I don’t understand why you people can’t understand the difference between an emergency and some poxy drunk who just wants to sleep it off.’ The voice paused in mid-rant. ‘DS Carpenter. What’s all this?’

Jacquie looked up, blearily. ‘Oh, Dr Astley. Good of you to come out.’

There wasn’t much chance of that. Jim Astley was as heterosexual as a die although, these days, a single malt and a round of golf had rather more appeal than creaking old, drying-out Marjorie, his better half.

He went down to the business end of the bed and stared in disbelief at Maxwell, fast asleep and snoring gently. He turned to the desk sergeant who had accompanied him down to the
cells. ‘Two things,’ he snapped. ‘First of all, why didn’t you tell me it was for this man that you called me out of my bed? And secondly, what’s he in for? Have you got him bang to rights this time?’

Bill opened his mouth to speak, but Astley got there first.

‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘Off you go, back upstairs to your logic puzzles or whatever it is you do to while away the time. I’ll deal with this.’

Bill turned on his heel and walked away, stiff legged with annoyance. All he said, when almost out of earshot, was, ‘Sudoku, actually.’ A door banged shut and the three of them were alone.

‘Can I just explain …?’ said Jacquie.

‘No,’ Astley said shortly. ‘I’m annoyed and bound to take it the wrong way. It’s a Saturday night thing.’ He leant closer and brushed Maxwell’s hair from his temple, carefully wiping away the dried blood. ‘That’s nasty. What was it?’

‘He told the officers who found him it was a torch.’

‘So he’s been speaking then. Good. And I must admit I never thought I’d hear myself say that. Do we know when it happened?’

‘Not precisely, no,’ said Jacquie. ‘But not more than three hours ago. Could be considerably less.’

‘Has he been sick?’

‘Yes, just once. As they were getting him into the squad car.’

‘Well,’ Astley said, standing up and looking down at the Head of Sixth Form turned Acting Headteacher thoughtfully. ‘I think he has a concussion. How serious we can’t really tell without an X-ray, but to be quite honest, by the time he reaches the front of the queue at A&E on a Saturday night, he could have recovered spontaneously from beriberi and Ebola. If I were you, I’d just cover him up and leave him to sleep. Get a chair in here and stay with him if you like, although you’ve got a little nipper at home, haven’t you? Donald likes to keep abreast.’

For the most appalling of fleeting moments, Jacquie envisioned Astley’s assistant, the Igor of Leighford, like some West Sussex Ed Gein, with body parts in his fridge. The finest breast collection in the south. She shook herself free of it.

‘My mother is staying with us. She is babysitting.’

‘Well, in that case, it’s up to you.’ He unexpectedly put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s been a shock. I expect you’ve been working on all this poison lark as well, haven’t you?’

‘You know about that?’

He looked hurt. ‘I am the Police Pathologist,’ he said. ‘I get to find these things out, you know. Donald is mates with Angus at Chichester. Now there’s a marriage made in heaven. It makes them sound as though they should be starring in some
Hogmanay extravaganza I know, something out of
Brigadoon
, but neither of them have ever been north of Hadrian’s Wall to my certain knowledge. No, Donald had a call from Angus, warning him that we’re likely to be busy. Apparently, they’re saving up to go on holiday to Tenerife later in the year and the overtime will come in handy. Ghoulish bastards.’

Jacquie shuddered. She wasn’t surprised, but it was still a little unpleasant to hear death and disaster expressed so clearly as pounds sterling. She hardly dared ask. ‘Have you been busy?’

‘No. Except for that poor woman from Leighford High who, by the way, was incredibly healthy apart from being dead, we’ve had nothing. Chichester do all the toxicology, of course.’

‘Do they have any results yet?’

‘Again, no. Apart from the original poison, the aconite, they are having huge difficulty in pinning anything down. All they can say is that there seems to be a liking on the part of the poisoner for the plant-based toxins. So we’ll be looking at laurel, which as you know is deadly, probably oleander, peace lily, that sort of thing.’

‘My mother mentioned oleander.’

‘It’s not her, is it?’ said Astley. He’d never had a mother to speak of and even a pathologist likes to try a joke when standing with a pretty woman, at dead of night, over the unconscious body of her husband-to-be.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said a groggy voice from the bed.

Jacquie looked down, relief written all over her face. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, reaching down to take his hand. ‘Don’t get up,’ as she felt him starting to struggle to his feet.

‘But I went to a good school,’ he mumbled. ‘On second thoughts, don’t worry,’ he muttered. ‘I think I’ll stay here.’ He looked across and saw Astley standing over him. ‘Oh, wait a minute, though. I appear to be dead. It is the Other Place after all.’

‘No,’ Astley said, ‘Not really. No need to fear the Reaper just yet. I was just checking.’ He looked up and spoke to Jacquie. ‘Don’t let him get up too quickly. Give him something to drink if he wants it. He’ll be after a painkiller any time, I should think. Give him one of these.’ He fumbled in his pocket. ‘I’m sure he’s had them before, with his habit of falling on fists and other people’s feet. Don’t let him drive or operate heavy machinery.’

‘But I was going to do the ironing,’ came the plaintive cry from the bed.

‘If this were anyone else,’ said Astley, ‘I would recommend you had him checked for brain damage. As it is, I think I can give him a clean bill of health.’ Astley doffed a metaphorical cap. ‘DS Carpenter. Mr Maxwell. I’ll bid you goodnight. Don’t walk into any more torches, Mr Maxwell, will you?’ And he went off down the corridor
and knocked in a peremptory fashion on the double-locked door. ‘Come on,’ they heard him call. ‘Let me out. I’ve got a home to go to, even if you lot haven’t.’ Then he was gone, in a jangle of keys and a blast of bacon-scented air from Bill’s equivalent of afternoon tea.

Maxwell sniffed. ‘Bacon?’ he asked. ‘I am rather peckish.’

‘Dr Astley said you weren’t to eat, just have a drink. He also left you these.’ She held out her hand with the painkillers on.