Maxwell’s Movie Page 13

‘That’ll keep. Georgianna first.’

  There was a silence. Or rather the sound of a policewoman in way over her head, wrestling with her conscience. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. Maxwell poised himself to climb the walls, but what she said next dissuaded him. ‘The Evening Standard,’’ she said, ‘June or July of last year. An indiscreet journalist, a careless editor, I don’t know which. It gives you Georgianna’s work place. As far as I know she’s still there.’

  But she wasn’t. Maxwell played investigative journalist to the hilt. That Saturday, while millions went to Tesco’s or mowed the lawn or watched the Grand Prix, he travelled to Colindale, to the National Newspaper Library there and signed the forms and filled in the requests and fiddled with the overhead whatsits.

  Even through the blurred screen, his eyes still wobbling with the speed of the newsprint racing across it, the face of Georgianna Morris stood out. A pretty girl with short, bobbed hair. In that funny light, she could have passed for Alice Goode. And there it was: Marples Estate Agents, Streatham.

  In John Major’s England, Estate Agents worked seven days a week, desperate to prove to a disbelieving public that the recession was indeed over and all was becoming right with the world. The kid behind the desk, trained to sell snow to Eskimos, had pound signs in his eyes. Maxwell gave him the soft sell. Something in the £250K range, near a golf course if possible. Double garage de rigeur. That charming girl who was here last year, on his last homecoming from Juan les Pins – what was her name? Georgina? No, Georgianna. She’d been so helpful. Was she still with Marples? He shuffled the specifications of the property information the kid had placed before him and waited for the answer. He was about to try another tack when the lad blurted it all out. Georgianna had been attacked by a madman. It was like Suzie Lamplugh all over again. Another Mr Kipper. But the kid was at pains to point out that the whole tragic affair had nothing to do with Marples. Their employees were the soul of discretion and their clients carefully vetted. No, Georgianna had been lucky to survive, but it had changed her utterly. She’d severed all connection with the past. Worked in the public library now. Now, Mr Fortescue, when could Marples show him round the property on Sydenham Hill he rather liked the sound of?

  Monday of course was a problem. However much it was John Major’s England, public libraries didn’t open on a Sunday. There was less call for books than for property. And for Maxwell, Monday was Sixth Form Assembly followed by Double Year Eight and after that his mind normally went blank. The solution, however, lay in the afternoon. Ben Horton, the longsuffering Head of Science, owed him one ever since Maxwell had covered up that appalling gaffe the man had made over the Year Twelve summer exams last year – and a gaffe like that could never be cancelled out by merely letting Mad Max pinch his Year 9 SAT day. So Ben Horton covered Maxwell’s last class and the Head of Sixth Form was soon rattling north to Streatham, courtesy of the Southern Line.

  He started in the History section. It came as no surprise to him that no one had taken out A. J. P. Taylor for at least five years. The only real surprise was that the old fogey had not been consigned to the stack ages ago. Nothing there he hadn’t read, except something pretentious by an American. Deprived of any history of their own, the colonial buggers had come over here and pinched ours. He ducked into Romance, but the funny looks from the old ladies drove him out and he found himself wandering through Children’s. Was there, he wondered, any escape from people under eighteen?

  Suddenly, like a character in the Mills and Boons he’d just left, there she was, up to her elbows in newspaper clippings, at her desk in the Reference section. Or was it? The Colindale screen was blue. The Colindale screen was blurred. Perhaps, if he watched for a while. And waited. He placed his hat on the table and sat among the old gentlemen, the retired generals and winos who congregate in reference libraries to shuffle through The Times or the Sun, break wind and clear their throats with irritating regularity. It was ten to five, but Streatham was a civilized place. Its library stayed open until six thirty. In sleepy Leighford, it was different. At five o’clock, the town’s librarian, Mrs Quinn, known, and with good reason, as ‘Mighty’, came along and chucked you out. Only Maxwell had been brave enough to dub her, to her face, Conan the Librarian.

  ‘That’s a very old joke,’ Mrs Quinn had bellowed.

  ‘I’m a very old comedian,’ Maxwell had admitted with a twinkle.

  There was a rumour that she’d once killed a man for coughing.

  At closing time a bell sounded. Fighting down his Pavlovian urge to go and teach, Maxwell watched as Georgianna began to put away her clippings, switch off her computer and glance at the old men. One by one, they scattered the dailies so that the place looked like a bomb site, and shuffled out, Maxwell the last to go. How could he play this? A discreet word here in the library where she could summon help with a deft flick of an alarm switch? Or should he tackle her outside in an alleyway, where the reminiscent shock might kill her? He took his chance.

  ‘Miss Morris?’ He stood at her desk.

  The dark eyes flickered up to his and then away. ‘The library’s closing,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes, I know. I just wanted a word.’

  ‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow’ She was busy herself with something, anything, and the seconds crawled by like years.

  ‘Tomorrow may be too late.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Peter Maxwell,’ he said. ‘I’m a teacher from Leighford on the South Coast.’

  The dark eyes flickered. She took him in. Middle aged, well spoken. Eyes. He had kind eyes. But his face was battered, yellow. He’d been in an accident. ‘Well,’ she sat down, ‘what do you want?’

  ‘Alice Goode,’ he said. ‘The woman who was found murdered at the Devil’s Punchbowl; she was a colleague.’

  For a moment, her mouth hung slack, as though in a silent scream. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Miss Morris’ – Maxwell had the good sense not to move. One wrong word in his body language now and he’d blow it – ‘I have reason to believe that whoever attacked you also attacked Alice.’

  That was it. The thunderbolt. The shattering. He waited for the scream, for the hysterics. At least the flexing of her shoulder as she pushed the panic button under her desk rim. Nothing. No sound. No movement. Georgianna Morris just sat there as if she was watching something, something in the middle distance.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she said, but it didn’t sound like her voice. ‘They asked me, all of them, the police, the psychiatrists. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the voice was an intrusion on the moment. Maxwell swung around to face a pot-bellied man with unlikely side-whiskers, ‘Excuse me, the library is closing now’

  ‘You are …?’

  ‘The Chief Librarian.’ The little man extended his neck so that his eyes were level with Maxwell’s bow tie. ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.’ He looked like ET.

  ‘I was just having a word with Miss Morris,’ Maxwell explained, catching the heat that was thrown at him.

  ‘In your own time, please.’ The Chief Librarian’s face began to change colour as he squared up to his man. That was the trouble with the Reference Library – all sorts of riff-raff drifted in. Half of them couldn’t even read.

  ‘Miss Morris …’ Maxwell began, ignoring the pompous idiot under his nose.

  ‘I don’t really like popcorn,’ she said, ‘thanks all the same.’

  And the nothingness behind those dark eyes told Peter Maxwell he was wasting his time.

  ‘So, what have we got, Count?’ Maxwell set aside the shabraque of the officer’s charger to dry and leaned back in his hard camp stool. Before him lay the debris of another character of the Light Brigade, shattered pieces of white plastic as though man and horse had already ridden into the Jaws of Death and not come out of it too well. ‘This,’ he held up the Hussar officer’s torso, legs and head to the light, ‘is, or will be when he’s finished, Colonel Shewell of the


  Eighth. His men called him “The Old Woman”. A teetotaller and a fussy martinet. Say hello to Count Metternich, Colonel; Count, say miaow to the Colonel.’

  The cat failed to oblige and Colonel Shewell was oddly reticent as well.

  ‘His was one of only two horses unhurt in the entire Brigade. Poor bastard died on leave two years later – er, Shewell, that is, not the horse. Where was I?’ He put the figure down. ‘Oh, yes, I do wish you’d stop distracting me, Count. What have we got?’ He reached for the Southern Comfort and freshened his glass, then leaned back again, staring up at his own reflection in the dark of the skylight where the rain bounced on the glass and put out the stars. ‘We’ve got a dead woman, who may or may not be one in a series. Snatched at random by a madman? Or is there a pattern here? Georgianna Morris, abducted from a cinema by person unknown – I hope you’re listening, Count, I shall be asking questions later. Carly Drinkwater likewise – except she, poor soul, didn’t survive. So why did chummie change his pattern? Why grab Alice Goode from the Museum of the Moving Image? Moving Image. Movie. Is that it, Count? The click-click of the film in the machine? The staccato of the sprockets. Celluloid. The ultimate fantasy. Then, of course, there’s Alice’s chequered past. I doubt our Mr Diamond would have been as quick to employ her had he seen the dark side of her CV “Immoral earnings” doesn’t look too good, does it? “Deep throat a speciality”. God!’ He hauled his hands down his tired face, looking for a moment like Lon Chaney in the first Phantom before they killed it stone dead by making it into a musical. ‘That’s what I love about you, Count, your words of encouragement.’

  Maxwell was in bed when the doorbell rang. He’d had a few minutes with Schama and with all due respect to a rattling good historian, had dropped back on his pillows like something out of the death of Chatterton. He fumbled for the clock. Half past twelve. Who the bloody Hell was this? Some stupid kid staggering home with his mates from a drunken revel, thinking it a great wheeze to get old Mad Max out of bed and then leg it? Or perhaps Deirdre Lessing’s broomstick had run out of fuel and she’d come to use his phone.

  His feet found his slippers unerringly and he grappled with his dressing gown as the bell rang again, ‘All right,’ Maxwell yawned, ‘I’m doing my best. Keep your hair on.’ And he was still muttering as he reached the front door.

  He swung it wide. There was no one there. He peered out. If this was some herbert’s idea of a laugh … Then he saw him, huddled in the driving rain, against the laurel hedge that was Maxwell’s sole barrier between him and Mrs Troubridge, the Neighbour from Hell. And he looked ill. And he looked scared. But it was him all right. It was Ronnie. Ronnie Parsons. Back from the dead.

  Maxwell had hung the boy’s things in the kitchen. He’d offered him a bath or a shower, but the lad was already soaked. So Maxwell threw him a towel and the only spare bath robe he possessed and sat him down to a bacon sandwich and a cup of cocoa. Ronnie Parsons didn’t like bacon. And he didn’t like cocoa. But he’d been given these things by Mad Max. You just swallowed. That was it.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Ronnie?’ Maxwell held off the inevitable as long as he could. ‘Your mum and dad have been frantic’

  ‘Have they?’ the boy asked, his pale eyes blinking.

  It suddenly reminded Maxwell of the Harrison Ford film of the same name, the one where Ford’s wife disappears in Paris. He thought at the time the title should have read ‘Mildly Worried’. Mr and Mrs Parsons had been a bit like that.

  ‘Of course.’ Maxwell was still part of the Establishment. Hell, he was the Establishment. There could be no breaking ranks now. He leaned towards the boy. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Brighton University.’

  Maxwell smiled. ‘When I suggested you should visit some higher ed. places, I didn’t mean stay for a fortnight. There’s what the American cops would call an APB out for you.’ He gave Ronnie his best Kojak, except that Ronnie was too young to appreciate it.

  ‘I know,’ Ronnie nodded.

  ‘How is she?’ Maxwell was smiling again.

  ‘Who?’

  Maxwell raised an eyebrow; the same one he’d raised back in Year Nine when young Ronnie had tried his ‘the dog ate my homework’ routine. It hadn’t worked then. It wasn’t working now.

  ‘Dannie’s all right,’ the lad grinned. He didn’t feel he’d done that in a long time. ‘She sends you hers.’

  Maxwell laughed. ‘Does she now? I’m not sure I want it.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell …’ Ronnie frowned.

  His Head of Sixth Form held up his hand. ‘Nothing personal against your light o’ love,’ he said, ‘but the Dannie Roth you know and the one I remember are two vastly different people.’

  ‘She’s not.’ Ronnie was staring at the carpet.

  ‘Not what?’ Maxwell was losing the thread.

  ‘Not my “light o’ love” as you put it. I found that out the hard way’

  ‘Ah, seduced by the hard men of Finals Year, eh?’ Maxwell remembered his own days. Then a woman at Cambridge was as rare as anything that made sense by Rainer Fassbinder.

  Ronnie shook his head. ‘Some fuckin’ poncy lecturer!’ he snarled. ‘Oh, sorry, Mr Maxwell.’

  The Head of Sixth Form reached across to his drinks cabinet. ‘That’s all right, Ronnie. Some of the lecturers I’ve known, you couldn’t have found better adjectives for them. Tell me, are you a Southern Comfort man?’

  The boy frowned. ‘Got any lager?’

  Maxwell chuckled, his hopes for the youth of today shattered again. ‘I think so.’ He hauled out a can. ‘It’s not chilled, I’m afraid.’

  After the bacon sandwich and the hot cocoa, Ronnie didn’t give a damn about that.

  ‘Ronnie, why have you come here? To me, I mean?’

  The boy thought for a moment. ‘Is it awkward, Mr Maxwell? Difficult for you, I mean? Look, I can go …’

  Maxwell held his arm. ‘You stay and finish your drink,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll see about getting you home.’

  Ronnie was sitting on the floor, his arms folded across his knees, shaking his head violently. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No, that’s one place I’m never going back to.’

  ‘Your mum and dad, Ronnie …’

  ‘My dad …’ the boy was staring at Maxwell now, his eyes wild and big with tears, ‘… my dad doesn’t give a shit about me. He never has. You wouldn’t remember this, Mr Maxwell; it was before I was in the Sixth Form, but I never wanted to do games. It wasn’t that I was no good. I can run with the best and my ball skills ain’t bad. You wanna know why I never did games?’ He suddenly hauled the towelling robe over his head and showed Maxwell his ribs. There were parallel rows of white scars, wealed and jagged here and there. ‘That’s how frantic Dad is.’ Ronnie was choking back the tears. ‘If I was late for a meal, if I didn’t make my bed right, if I stayed out after a certain time. He did that. Him and his studded belt. And Mum …’ He lowered the bath robe, ‘Well, Mum just stood there, saying nothing, doing nothing. I used to cry, to scream and run to her, trying to hide in her arms. Know what she’d say, Mr Maxwell? She’d say, “You know what your father’s like, Ronnie. Don’t upset him. You’ll be all right.” For the last three years my Dad hasn’t spoken a word to me. As long as he’s got his smutty videos and me out of the way, he’s as happy as a pig in shit. So, please, Mr Maxwell, spare me the trauma about what my mum and dad have gone through. If he’s bothered at all, it’s because of what I might tell Social Services or the police. Anyway,’ the boy subsided a little. ‘I can’t go anywhere near the police now, can I?’

  ‘Why not?’ Maxwell asked him. ‘Ronnie, why not?’

  The lad looked bewildered. For all he was nearly eighteen, tall and spare, he was a child again, lost, confused. ‘Ain’t you seen the news? I thought when you said there was an APB out for me, you knew’

  ‘Knew what? For God’s sake, Ronnie, what are you talking about?’

  ‘There’s a woman, right, Jean Hagger. Lived with M
iss Goode.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, she’s dead, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Dead?’ Maxwell was on his feet. ‘When?’

  ‘I dunno. It said on the news at lunchtime. I caught it in Currys. I was on my way to the law. To tell them what I knew about Miss Goode. I was trying to get up the bottle, I suppose, killing time until I’d found the nerve. They showed it on the news, Mr Maxwell. They found a grey bag in her flat. It’s my bag, Mr Maxwell. It’s got my bloody name in it. They think I did it. They think I killed her.’ His eyes widened as the cold light of it hit him. ‘They think I killed them both. Her and Miss Goode.’

  Peter Maxwell turned to the window where the last lights along the shore twinkled through the storm and the house lights flickered in sympathy.

  ‘Help me, Mr Maxwell.’ The boy was crying now, his nose red, his forehead creased in a frown. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  And Peter Maxwell, who had had so many sons, found himself hugging this one. ‘Don’t worry, Ronnie,’ he whispered, ‘we’ll think of something.’

  10

  Jean Hagger had been battered to death with a fossil she kept in the corner. ‘A Jurassic ammonite, to be precise.’ Jim Astley was weighing part of it in his hand. ‘Funny to think a cephalopod from a hundred and thirty million years ago can kill people today, isn’t it? Especially as it was harmless when it was alive.’

  ‘That’s unusually poetic of you, Jim,’ DCI Henry Hall said, ‘if I may make the observation.’

  Astley looked at the copper over his rimless specs. They didn’t exactly go back a long way, these two, yet there was something there, some spark of mutual respect. ‘I’m a funny age,’ the police surgeon muttered. ‘Are these the photographs?’

  Hall slid them across Astley’s desk. In the harsh, unflattering flash of the police photographer, Astley saw again what he had seen the previous day. Jean Hagger lay on the hearth rug with one leg up on the artificial gas fire, the other sprawled on the carpet, its vicious blue now black with the appalling amount of blood from her head. Her sightless eyes stared out of their sockets through a mask of crimson, as though she was furious with the photographer for catching her at a bad moment, the worst moment of her life.