Maxwell's Point Page 16

  ‘’Appen not, our Doris.’

  And Maxwell remembered anew why he’d once taken a vow to lock himself securely in Columbine from May to September, just to let this particular breed of locusts past.

  ‘Mr Harris in?’ he asked the cow-faced girl on the counter, and silently shared the view of the Blue Rinse from Grimsby about the prices. ‘And is there somewhere I can park my bike?’

  He was and there wasn’t, so Maxwell locked Surrey to an abeliophyllum distichum in case one of the Grimsby trawlers was of the light-fingered persuasion. Then he crunched his way over the forest bark in search of his quarry.

  Chester Harris was a bearded man in his late forties. He was a botanist, horticulturalist, conservationist and all round pain in the arse, given to writing long and loud letters to the Advertiser on the perils of global warming and how we all ignore the unpredictable movements of plate tectonics at our peril. From time to time, Maxwell had considered writing an abuttal on the dangers of historical inevitability and the dire consequences of misjudging epistemic distance, but something more demanding always came along, like wiping Nolan’s bottom or watching paint dry. Now, here was the man himself, all golden tan from the great outdoors, with a bandana round his neck and fringed denim shorts around his thighs.

  ‘Mr Harris?’ Maxwell was crouching, looking intelligently at the alchemilla mollis.

  ‘That’s me.’ Chester Harris was always ready with an article for Groundsman’s Weekly or Mr Rotivator Magazine.

  ‘Peter Manton, West Sussex CID.’

  The constant gardener shook his hand, ‘Morning.’

  ‘Can we talk?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘What about?’ Chester Harris was less than fond of the police.

  Maxwell frowned. Was the man so totally caught up in his heliotropes that he’d missed stumbling over two bodies on his doorstep? ‘The murders,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Look…can I see some ID?’ Clearly Harris wasn’t quite the idiot savant his PR team had made him out to be. People from Grimsby wandering past were giving them both rather odd looks.

  Maxwell looked startled. He gently led the man away into a shady bower. The looks from Grimsby were even odder now. ‘You mean, no one’s been in touch?’ Maxwell asked him.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. Look, Mr Harris, I’m really sorry. There seems to have been some John Prescott-sized cock up on the communications front. Leighford were supposed to have briefed you. I can’t do this without your permission.’

  ‘Do what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Go undercover here at the Gardens.’

  ‘Undercover?’ Harris frowned. The man was hardly dressed for a day on the flower beds.

  ‘This really is the end. I’m from Hove, you see. Unknown face and all, but Leighford are supposed to have cleared it. Um…a DCI Hall?’

  Harris snorted. ‘Uh, that idiot!’

  ‘Really?’ Maxwell was enjoying this.

  ‘Not wishing to be disrespectful to your profession, Mr…’

  ‘Manton,’ Maxwell said. ‘DI Manton.’

  Harris thought policemen retired at fifty-five, but perhaps there were exceptions. After all, nobody seemed to be telling David Jason to move on. ‘No, the whole of the local constabulary is a joke, I’m afraid.’ He was wiping his soily hands on a rag. ‘I mean, take these murders…’

  That was exactly what Maxwell had done and, like the ice cream man earlier who wasn’t Luigi, the botanist was opening up nicely. ‘Mr Henderson.’

  ‘Was that the name? Chappie found here in the Gardens.’

  ‘That’s him. Local builder, I understand.’

  ‘Is that all you understand?’ Harris asked, looking his man squarely in the face.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Look. Do you want to see the murder scene? I assume, in that you’re trying to work with Leighford, but are from outside, you haven’t seen it already? That kind of incompetence seems par for the course.’

  ‘Not a sausage.’ Maxwell shook his head. God, the rubbish he had to work with.

  The horticulturalist emerged from the nook with the undercover policeman in tow, brushing bits out of his hair. The people from Grimsby were rather more down to earth; they were looking for grass stains on his back. Harris passed a trowel to a spotty youth all but passing out in a green boiler suit. Maxwell breathed a sigh of relief – he didn’t recognise the lad, so he should be all ri—

  ‘’Ello, Mr Maxwell.’ The lad’s face broke into a broad grin.

  ‘Maxwell?’ Harris half-turned as he strode towards the Australian Garden.

  The undercover teacher tapped the side of his nose. ‘I didn’t say I hadn’t worked in Leighford before,’ he said.

  Harris was not convinced. ‘But Tommy’s only seventeen,’ he argued. ‘Only been here a few weeks.’

  ‘Look, er… Mr Harris. I can’t discuss cases, all right?’

  ‘Oh, no, no, of course not.’

  ‘Let’s just say “chasing the dragon”. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Chasing…? Oh, drugs.’

  Maxwell started, looking furtively around.

  ‘Sorry,’ Harris hissed. ‘None of my business.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Maxwell muttered. ‘Maxwell was a long time ago now.’

  They’d taken the tape away from the rhododendron bushes at Harris’s insistence. He’d spent all the previous day closeted away with the éminences grises who ran Leighford Trust, who owned the gardens. Mayor Ledbetter was all for putting up signs saying ‘Roll Up! Roll Up! See the ’Orrible Murder Site. Get your choc ices here.’ He was even prepared to put on the fishnet stockings himself, but that was a side of his nature that the voters of Leighford had yet to be introduced to, so the matter was dropped.

  ‘You’ve seen the photographs, I suppose?’ Harris checked. He’d caught the milder ones at the Press Conference.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Maxwell bluffed. ‘But there’s no substitute for the real thing.’

  ‘Here we are.’ Harris squatted at the base of a huge rhododendron cluster, whose dark leaves and dying flowers rose to the cloudless south coast blue. ‘Head under the bush. Feet out to…’ he paced it, ‘…here.’

  ‘You didn’t find him?’ Maxwell checked.

  ‘No, a couple of kids did. And that’s another thing. Courting bloody couples at it all over the park. What are these bloody parents doing, eh? I tell you, I wouldn’t let a daughter of mine go out dressed like that.’

  ‘Like what, Mr Harris?’

  ‘Like these girls do.’

  ‘There are girls in your garden?’

  ‘Look there.’ He pointed to a flimsy gate, complete with stile. ‘That’s all the security we have. A blind cripple in a wheelchair can get over that.’

  ‘Any trouble here before?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Violence, I mean?’

  ‘Few drunks from time to time,’ Harris shrugged. ‘Bit of glue-sniffing when it was all the rage a few years back. Needless to say, I’ve been on to the local nick. Nothing ever gets done. Plants are sensitive creatures, Inspector. They need warmth and light and water, sure, but they need quiet and a safe environment too. Young tearaways from the local sink estate won’t give them that. And as for the schools…’

  ‘Bad?’ Maxwell checked.

  ‘Appalling!’ Harris groaned. ‘Leighford, The Hampton; there’s not much to choose between them to be honest. Even the junior schools suck.’

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ Maxwell muttered. ‘Tell me, did you know the dead man?’

  ‘Henderson? No.’ Harris shook his head. ‘Oh, I’ve seen him around, here and there. The odd council bash, you know. And of course, his company’s signs are all over the place.’

  ‘He never did any work for you, either at home or here at the Gardens?’

  ‘No. He’s a bit small fry, I think, for a project this size. We only deal with the big boys. Henderson specialised in executive homes, I understand.’

  ‘And he wasn’t a regular here?�
�

  ‘Here?’ Harris chuckled. ‘No, no. I don’t think there’d be much to interest his sort here. I have, of course, already told your Leighford people all this.’

  ‘I knew you would have,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘Like we used to say when we had a rail service, you’re only as good as your station master. And if you’re right about this bloke Hall…’

  ‘Oh, trust me,’ Harris said. ‘I am.’

  ‘So…’ Maxwell was looking backwards and forwards, trying to get his bearings. ‘If the body was dragged from the car park back there…’

  ‘It would have been too bloody obvious, surely?’ Harris had had time, as had Leighford CID, to ponder these things. ‘It’s nearly half a mile to the car park, down some pretty steep steps or very much in the open down the disabled ramp. No, if he didn’t die in situ, he had to be brought that way.’

  ‘From the coastal path?’

  Harris nodded.

  ‘Look, Mr Harris. Something’s gone horribly wrong this morning. I’m going to have to go back to Leighford CID and sort it all out. You up for me starting work here, say…Monday? Even Leighford clearance can’t take longer than that. I promise I won’t dig up any allium sphaerocephalon. Not unless you tell me to.’

  ‘I don’t understand this.’ Harris was frowning. ‘I was at the Press Conference the other night. Nobody from the Force approached me at all. All I got was the usual verbals from the paparazzi.’

  ‘Huh,’ Maxwell snorted. ‘Don’t get me started on them. I’m going to take a wander along the path a little way. Where does it come out?’

  ‘The nearest landmark is Dead Man’s Point,’ Harris told him. ‘There’s a car park there and it links up with the road on Ringer’s Hill. Beyond that, you’ve got the Rare Breeds and Willow Bay. It’s about three, three and a half miles all told.’

  ‘Fine. Oh, Mr Harris,’ Maxwell closed to his man, confidential in the dappled sunlight. ‘The lad weeding the flowerbeds.’

  ‘Tommy?’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘Don’t mention me, all right? Could be a bit difficult. Know what I mean? If he raises the subject, he’ll probably tell you I’m a teacher. Just play along, all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Harris said. ‘Not a word. You take care now, for all it’s a lovely day, that path can be murder. You know they’ve found another body, down on the beach?’

  ‘Henry? Jim Astley.’

  The police surgeon-cum-pathologist was the last of his breed. Everywhere else, his job was being done by three people. It was killing him slowly, but like the alcoholic drowning himself in a vat of wine, he still had to get out three times to go to the loo. It was still Thursday, as it tended to be once a week for twenty-four hours or so, and they were open.

  Even so, Jim Astley took life at a more leisurely pace these days. He needn’t rush to the pub because the pub was open all day. Marjorie was lying gaga in the conservatory having ever deeper conversations with her geraniums and other imaginary friends like the widow Cliquot. And it was many a long year since he’d jumped when a senior policeman snapped his fingers. Come to think of it, he’d never done that. But, Henry Hall had a killer to catch. And, as far as Jim Astley had any friends, Henry Hall was one of them.

  ‘Jim. What news?’

  Astley shuffled the papers on the desk in front of him. Sunlight never reached this far and he was using borrowed light like Henry Hall was using borrowed time. Donald had excelled himself in typing this lot up so quickly. ‘Your boy is thirty-seven to forty years old, five feet ten inches tall, well built. Break to the left arm a long time ago – childhood, almost certainly. All his own teeth; so good there’s no dentistry – so checking his records may not be too helpful.’

  ‘Cause of death?’ Hall’s voice sounded strained over the phone. You couldn’t tell looking the man straight in the spectacles, but it was the little, off-guard moments that told you the whole story. He was tired. And getting nowhere fast.

  ‘As I surmised,’ Jim Astley did love to be right, ‘a fall from a great height. Perhaps fifty or sixty feet.’

  ‘Dead Man’s Point,’ Hall muttered.

  ‘Now, in the world of science, Chief Inspector,’ Astley reminded him, ‘nothing is one hundred per cent certain.’

  There was a pause. ‘But if you were asked to stick your neck out?’

  ‘If I were asked to do that,’ Astley smiled, ‘I’d have to consider it likely, yes. That woman found the body in question on the beach and that’s where he died. Your boys been up to the Point?’

  ‘They’re there now. Any other signs of violence?’

  ‘None. Broken shoulder, smashed sternum, skull all but demolished – all consistent with hitting the rocks at x miles an hour. He had had sex shortly prior to death.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Semen stains on the underwear. This wasn’t ejaculation on impact. I’ve known that in my time, though it’s rare.’

  ‘So how “shortly” would you say?’

  ‘How “shortly” is a piece of string,’ Astley, rather bizarrely, wanted to know. ‘Depends on his relationships, how often he changed his underwear. Even I have to concede that forensic science is not the answer to everything, Henry. Maybe your boys up at the Point will find something.’

  The sun dazzled on the water below him and the clouded yellows fluttered in the dry, brittle gold of the corn. Maxwell swept off his porkpie hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The bow tie had long since come off and the collar was open. The cycle clips were in his pocket and his trouser-bottoms flapped free to let the air get to his legs. Dear old Robert Owen, the crypto-sociologist of the 1820s, had known how important this was. Men became infertile if their unmentionables were encased in corduroy all day, so he’d tried to insist that his workers wore skirts; they wouldn’t. And somehow, that golden opportunity was missed, never to come again. So Peter Maxwell, an Englishman in the midday sun, suffered in silence for the sartorial narrow-mindedness of his ancestors. His trousers clung to his legs like they did whenever he visited the Hothouse at Kew or that time that Jacquie had taken him, kicking and screaming, to the Eden Project.

  He could hear the squeal of excited children from the beach below and could see the ripples of white edging the silver-blue where the sea temporarily lost its battle with the land. The smoke of barbecues wafted up this high, but not the cloying thickness of Ambre Solaire nor the gritty burntness of quarter pounders; and Peter Maxwell was secretly glad for that.

  He barely noticed the lad coming towards him, sweltering in the incongruous hoodie. When he did catch his eye. Maxwell didn’t recognise him. Someone with a stare as concentrated as that would stick in the memory. He heard the lad’s footsteps thud away as he passed.

  He’d paid careful attention to the path all the way from Chester Harris’s Gardens. It was mostly sand, with sudden divots and dips where the rabbits had decided to play house or old Mr Erosion had cracked a joke, leaving a gap just wide enough for the unwary tourist to catch their toes and sue the arse off the local council; there was so much bodily metaphor on that headland. If chummy had killed Gerald Henderson elsewhere and brought him this way, from the Point’s car park perhaps, he would have had to negotiate some tricky bits. And he’d be carrying a dead weight. Difficult…not impossible. Two people carrying Gerald Henderson? It was evening, he knew, when the dastardly deed was done, still light according to Jacquie. They must have looked like Resurrection Men, like good old Burke and Hare in the Netherbow, watching graveyards for a funeral and sneaking back to dig the poor bastard up again. But even Burke and Hare had the decency to wait until after dark. Then again, Burke and Hare eventually cut out the middle man and simply descended to murder; so much less hassle than digging up a corpse. Two hundred years ago, of course, on this very headland, the blokes carrying Gerald Henderson would have been smugglers. And everyone, the parson, the squire, they would have all turned respective blind eyes. Even the Preventive Officers.

  ‘Well, well.’ Maxwell smiled at the sight tha
t met him. ‘Preventive officers.’

  A knot of people stood ahead of him, off to his left and to the left of the path. The path had wound its way out of the fenceless corn field now and back onto the short-cropped grass of the rabbits and the sand holes of the swallows. They were standing behind a yellow, flapping ribbon and one of them was kneeling down, perilously close to the edge, examining the grass. Another was wearing a dress.

  ‘Policewoman Carpenter!’ He hailed her.

  Jacquie looked alarmed. She’d trodden many a murder scene with her man, but always clandestinely, well after the event and never with her trained-to-be-nosy colleagues looking on. ‘Mr Maxwell.’ She crossed the picket-line and stood facing him, careful in the timbre of her voice that her colleagues were upwind. ‘Max, what the fuck…?’

  ‘My favourite Saxon hero,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘Along with Dish the Dirt, of course.’

  ‘If it isn’t too much of a cliché,’ she hissed, ‘why are you here?’

  ‘Now,’ Maxwell peered over her shoulder. ‘I could ask the same of you.’

  ‘I’m working.’ She was emphatic.

  ‘Damn!’ and he slapped his forehead. ‘I’m supposed to be up at the school, aren’t I? Now, where did I leave my bike?’

  ‘Bugger off, Max,’ she warned. ‘That’s DI Bronson behind me and he doesn’t approve.’

  Maxwell smiled at the man and tilted his hat. The DI certainly looked like Martin Bormann. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything in Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights that says I can’t walk a coastal path, Woman Policeman.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Max,’ Jacquie insisted quietly. ‘There’s been another one.’

  ‘So I understand,’ he said, looking squarely at her again. ‘But I had to hear it from Leighford’s own Alan Titchmarsh back there. He said there’d been three. I thought perhaps he was mildly dyscalculic.’

  ‘I didn’t know myself until I came on duty this morning,’ she told him. ‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t break off to say “Excuse me, boys, while I fill in my better half on this one.”’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘No time like the present.’