Maxwell’s Match Page 17

  The boy stopped, his back to Maxwell. The History Department, Mr Gallow’s lesson, Jethro Tull and his bloody seed drill – it had never looked so appealing. The man behind him and the questions he was asking were the lad’s waking nightmare.

  ‘I thought you could help,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you could end it.’ He turned sharply, the tears streaming now down his cheeks. ‘I thought wrong,’ he shouted and dashed away.

  They’d never had counsellors at Grimond’s before. But then, they’d never had murder either. Peter Maxwell watched them arrive from the back of David Gallow’s Lower Sixth History lesson on the second floor. Four lefty-looking types in anoraks and trainers. Neither of the men clearly knew what a tie was and the women looked like bag ladies, all no doubt designer-chic to put the children at their ease. The Head of History was talking about British Foreign Policy in the early nineteenth century to a less-than-gripped Lower Sixth set; Shelley’s poem kept thumping through Maxwell’s head – ‘I met murder in the way; he wore a mask like Castlereagh.’ Masks was what all this was about, whatever was happening at Grimond’s. Everyone wore a mask, every day, but behind one of them lay evil, more sinister than even poor deluded Shelley imagined Castlereagh to be.

  The counsellors were emptying from two unmarked cars; even the vehicles had Social Services written all over them. George Sheffield greeted them at Jedediah Grimond’s Greek portico with the briefest of handshakes and led the way inside. They would start with Tennyson House, the boys who knew Bill Pardoe best, then attempt to identify those who had not been shooed away in time from the lake’s edge when they found Tim Robinson white and swollen in the water. In the meantime, another Range Rover was taking another child away in search of a school where the staff weren’t dying.

  Henry Hall had the tape. Henry Hall had the porn mag. But he had no access to forensics on his own. He’d dutifully passed both, via Jacquie, to DCI West at Selborne and the Hampshire boffins were working on it. Maxwell could have guessed the outcome on the tape. There would be four sets of prints – his, in that he was the last to play it before he gave it to the suitably-gloved police; Jenkins’, in that the lad had retrieved it from the skip; Pardoe’s, in that he had, presumably, played it, if only out of curiosity and A.N.Other’s. And it was A.N. Other who was stringing them all along; Maxwell, Hall, Jacquie, West and everybody else touched by the death of Bill Pardoe. The forensic result of the porn mag was something else. Here the evidential chain of custody would be shadowier, more vague. Maxwell had handled it, Parker and some anonymous postmen. But again, it was A.N.Other who had put it in the envelope. And again, he was will o’ the wisp.

  ‘It’s a Swedish import, guv,’ DS Walters informed the Incident Room. ‘The lads from the Dirty Squad say it’s published in Oslo, usually distributed via Holland and is not available over the counter here.’

  ‘Yet,’ somebody grunted from the back, to murmurs of agreement round the room. Policemen, like teachers, were forever at the retreating edge of civilization, forced to pick up the pieces of its collapse.

  ‘Pardoe on their mailing list, was he?’ West asked, still leafing idly through the mag’s contents.

  ‘Tricky one, that, guv,’ Walters went on. ‘We’d have to work with Interpol and even then, I don’t think we’d be sure of a result.’

  ‘You’re right,’ West closed the book. ‘Forget that angle. We’ve got other fish to fry and time isn’t exactly on our side.’

  ‘But isn’t that what all this is all about, guv?’ Denise McGovern wanted to know. ‘Why Pardoe went off the roof?’

  West sighed. The case was already only seven days old and he was ready to go through the roof. ‘With respect, Denise,’ he grunted, ‘we still haven’t the first fucking idea why Pardoe went off the roof.’

  ‘What about the tape, Mark?’ Sandy Berman chipped in.

  ‘Ah,’ West nodded, reaching for his packet of ciggies. ‘Voice recognition. Steve, what’ve we got on that?’

  DS Chapell riffled through his notes. ‘Not a lot yet, guv,’ he admitted. ‘Forensic reckon it’s a male voice, age unknown, worked through some sort of modifier.’

  ‘How specialist would that have to be?’ West asked.

  Chapell shrugged. ‘Any sound studio would have that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Right. Let’s see what they’ve got at Grimond’s in their Music Department or maybe Physics lab.’

  ‘I’m on it, guv.’ Chapell was on his feet.

  ‘No, Steve, I need you out here. Denise, you go. The Chief Super in his wisdom has left the school end of things to DCI Hall, so I’m definitely persona non grata. Maybe the surly bastard’ll be more accommodating with a woman – Hall that is, not the Chief Super. If not,’ he winked, ‘you can always do the all-girls-together bit with DS Carpenter.’

  The Luftwaffe had done their best to level Portsmouth several years ago. In place of the narrow cobbled lanes and the stout medieval walls, the City Council had built high-rise flats, car parks and the appalling Tricorn Centre, ashes rising from the phoenix. It was here, in the ring of flats that circled the old city that Jeremy Tubbs lived. He’d always promised himself and his colleagues that he’d move closer to Grimond’s, but that meant the obscene property prices of Petersfield, Haslemere, Midhurst and the sleepy commuter villages in between. For the moment, he’d stay in Pompey. George Sheffield, or more accurately, Sir Arthur Wilkins, was not a generous man.

  Jacquie Carpenter rang the bell on the third floor. Nothing. Just a dead-looking corridor with slightly peeling paint and a window lashed by muddy rain at its end. She’d already flashed her warrant card at the concierge who’d grumblingly given her the key and she was inside. True, she had no search warrant, but the concierge hadn’t considered that and Jacquie wanted answers. Whatever else he was, Jeremy Tubbs wasn’t there and he wasn’t tidy. The mail lay scattered on the hall floor, unsorted, unopened. Breakfast dishes still lay unwashed on the kitchen-diner table, the relics of coffee and toast.

  In the lounge she clicked on the answerphone.

  ‘Jeremy, it’s Mervyn. Are you in today? We’ve had no work set. Can you let me know?’

  She recognized the stentorian tones of Grimond’s Deputy Head. A second bleep. ‘Jeremy, darling, it’s Mummy. I hoped I’d catch you before you left. You won’t forget Daddy’s birthday, will you? A tie or something would be lovely.’

  Jacquie took in the scattered clues. Jeremy Tubbs read the Telegraph and What PC?. He didn’t smoke and there didn’t appear to be a Mrs Tubbs. The drinks cabinet was well stocked – Gordon’s, London, a few mixers. She went into the bedroom; another tip. And somebody had left here in a hurry. Ties and jumpers were strewn over the bed and the bed was unmade. She felt the sheet. Cold. There was no razor in the bathroom, no toothpaste or brush. A pile of exercise books lay unmarked on a bedside table, next to a dog-eared copy of Men Only, the single man’s companion.

  She punched out the numbers on her mobile and waited, flicking aside the nets to watch the lunchtime traffic moving noisily three floors below. ‘Sir?’

  DCI Henry Hall was sitting at the other end, otherwise engaged. ‘Jacquie. Anything?’

  ‘My guess is he’s done a runner. Do you want …’

  ‘Not now,’ Hall cut in. ‘Follow your nose. I’m a little tied up at the moment.’ And he hung up.

  DS Denise McGovern was sitting opposite him in George Sheffield’s ante-room. She wasn’t the type to flirt, to hitch up her skirt or unbutton her blouse. She was a woman who worked in what was still a man’s world and there was a job to be done. ‘Tell me again,’ Hall said.

  ‘The Music Room,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve just come from there.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I have reason to believe that the tape left outside Maxwell’s room referring to Pardoe was recorded there.’

  ‘Really?’ Hall remained impassive behind his glasses. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I tried it out. Allowing for the fact that my voice is rather hi
gher than the original, the distortion is the same. I won’t bore you with woofer and tweeter details.’

  ‘Thank you for that,’ Hall said. ‘Whose permission did you obtain to carry out this little experiment?’

  ‘Dr Sheffield,’ the DS told him. ‘Was that out of line?’

  ‘No,’ Hall told her. ‘But it would have been … politic to talk to me, as well.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Denise said. ‘I was told that you and DS Carpenter were busy interviewing sixth-formers. Looks like I was told wrong.’

  ‘We’re between interviews,’ he told her. ‘Social services have sent counsellors in. What with that and the school’s timetable, it’s slowed us down a bit.’

  ‘And what with DS Carpenter not being here.’

  Hall paused. He wasn’t used to Detective Sergeants with opprobrium in their voices, but he took it in his stride for the moment. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Jacquie’s following up leads elsewhere.’

  ‘Would you care to let me in on that one, sir? I understand we were supposed to be co-operating.

  ‘And who told you that?’ Hall leaned back pushing the latest statement away from him.

  ‘My DCI,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ Hall nodded. ‘Yes. Of course. Your DCI.’

  ‘Sir,’ Denise twisted in her chair. ‘Can I talk to you, off the record, as it were?’

  Hall threw his hands out, shrugging. Where was the woman going with this?

  ‘He’s not my DCI in any but a figurative sense. In actual fact,’ she looked steadily into the im mobile face, ‘he’s a bit of a bastard. My interest is to solve this thing. I’m not concerned in inter-force politics, whose patch it’s on or the colour of the scrambled egg on some bloke’s peaked cap. I just want results.’

  ‘You’re ambitious, Sergeant.’ Hall was paying Denise McGovern a huge compliment, had she but known it; he was smiling at her.

  ‘Too right I am,’ she acknowledged, pointing upwards. ‘See that glass ceiling? Well, I’m going to push my way right through it – with your help of course.’ She smiled back.

  ‘My help?’ Hall frowned.

  ‘What we’ve got here, sir,’ she leaned towards him, ‘is a lockout, a siege situation of our own invention. Or, at least, yours and DCI West’s.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Only Jacquie Carpenter talked to Henry Hall like that.

  She ferreted in the copious bag by her chair leg and slapped a form down on Hall’s desk.

  ‘And this would be … ?’

  ‘A complete breakdown of the Incident Room’s status as of midnight last night.’

  ‘Complete?’ Hall leafed through it.

  ‘Forensics. Post mortems. You name it, it’s there.’

  ‘Simplify it for me,’ Hall said, closing the file. ‘Cut out the middle man.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ve traced Robinson’s bike.’

  ‘So have I,’ Hall said. ‘It’s in the bike shed.’

  ‘Yes, but I mean its provenance. Page eight,’ Denise nodded, pointing to the file. ‘It was bought in Southampton at the end of December, three weeks before Robinson started at Grimond’s; but not by him.’

  ‘Not?’

  Denise shook her head. ‘The retailer had never seen Robinson before. Didn’t recognize the morgue photo, and as dead men go, it’s not bad. He wasn’t sure, but he thought two men came in to buy it.’

  ‘Two men?’

  Denise nodded. ‘Weird, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you say?’ Denise McGovern was used to a rather quicker uptake from her superiors.

  ‘Two men go to buy a bike that is subsequently ridden by somebody else.’

  ‘It happens,’ Hall shrugged. ‘My parents used to buy my Christmas presents like that, allowing for the gender difference of one of them.’

  Denise thought this the moment to change the subject. ‘Then, there’s Robinson’s clothes.’

  ‘Bought by two strange men?’ Hall was teasing the woman.

  ‘We don’t know who bought them, but they’re new, all of them.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Everything in his PE locker at Grimond’s gym, everything at his home. Nothing’s used, lived in. Even his underwear, all of it brand new. Of course, his CV doesn’t pan out.’

  ‘He wasn’t at Haileybury?’

  She shook her head. ‘And he didn’t go to Loughborough. And he wasn’t in the army. Tim Robinson didn’t exist before January 7th of this year, the day he started work at Grimond’s.’

  ‘I take it DCI West’s gone house to house?’ Hall asked.

  Denise nodded. ‘Except for his neighbours and couple of shopkeepers in Petersfield who do remember him, nothing. We’ve even drawn a blank on his dental work. But somebody knew him.’

  ‘His killer,’ Hall nodded.

  ‘Exactly, sir.’

  ‘What about Pardoe?’ It was Hall’s turn t change the subject.

  ‘We know he was married. We’re trying to trace the family. Divorce apparently – back in … ’eightv-one.’

  ‘I’m impressed, Sergeant,’ Hall was smiling again.

  ‘I told you, sir,’ she smiled back. ‘The glass ceiling. You don’t get through it by being a daffy cow. I’ve got to know my stuff.’

  ‘So what do you want from me?’

  ‘Whatever you find out here,’ she told him.

  ‘That won’t take long,’ Hall sniffed. ‘There’s no dossier like this one I can hand over, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’ve interviewed a lot of people. All the staff?’

  Hall nodded. ‘And some of the sixth form. I’ve got more views on Pardoe than the parson preached about.’

  ‘Such as?’ Denise leaned forward.

  Hall hesitated.

  ‘Sir,’ she sensed it. ‘I’m not going to be rushing out of here back to Mark West. Whatever you’ve got is yours, but I’ve got a game plan here. I need some support.’

  ‘Very well,’ Hall slid back his chair and wandered to the window where the early afternoon sun kissed Jedediah Grimond’s pale portico with its Cotswold columns. ‘Two-thirds of the staff thought the world of Bill Pardoe. He was Mr Chips, everybody’s Favourite Teacher.’

  ‘And the other third?’

  ‘The other third are prepared to believe the scuttlebutt.’

  ‘Scuttlebutt?’ Denise frowned. ‘What scuttlebutt?’

  ‘Drugs.’

  ‘Drugs?’ Denise’s frown deepened.

  ‘Part of a big operation. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look … er … Denise, isn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but right now, I’m getting nowhere and I could use a link to the outside. There’s something claustrophobic about this school. It creeps into your pores, under your skin, like an infection. Jacquie and I, we’re too close to it all. I need a fresh perspective.’

  ‘You said “a big operation”.’

  Hall nodded. ‘Officially, it’s secondment, inter-force co-operation, good practice, all that sort of thing that gladdens the Home Secretary’s heart. In reality, there’s a major drugs problem here at Grimond’s. Bill Pardoe was at the heart of it.’

  ‘My God, I had no idea.’

  ‘Quite. A clever man was our Mr Pardoe. But somebody outside was even cleverer.’

  ‘Who?’

  Hall looked at her, shaking his head. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘What about Robinson?’ she asked him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What have you learned about Robinson?’

  ‘Less than you have,’ Hall said. ‘Baseless rumours. He wasn’t much of a teacher, forged his CV, that’s about it. He’d only been here a few weeks, no one knew him.’

  ‘Who was Pardoe’s outside link?’ Denise was on her feet now, her eyes burning into Hall’s.

  ‘Denise … No one knows this. Not Mark West not even Jacquie Carpenter …’r />
  She joined him by the window. ‘Go on,’ she said, willing him to talk.

  ‘Mason’ whispered.

  ‘The Chief Super?’ Denise gasped. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ Hall turned to her. ‘That’s what he’s relying on and that’s precisely why I’m here. I told you it was a big operation. It comes right down from the top. Am I making myself clear here?’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Denise licked her lips. They were bricky dry.

  ‘Denise,’ the sound of his voice pulled her up sharply and she felt Hall’s hands on her shoulders, saw his eyes bright behind those blank lenses. ‘This must, repeat, must, remain our secret. Do I have your word?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course, Mr Hall,’ she said. ‘My word.’

  She punched out the numbers on her mobile, waiting for the ring to connect.

  ‘Guv? Denise.’

  ‘Yes, Denise.’ She heard DCI West’s voice crackle at the Selborne end. ‘What’d you get?’

  ‘It’s drugs.’

  ‘Drugs?’ he repeated. ‘At Grimond’s?’

  ‘Yep. And there’s more. Hall’s working undercover. We’ve got a bad ’un.’

  ‘On the force, you mean?’

  Denise could feel her heart thumping as she spoke. ‘You’d better sit down, guv. It’s the Chief Super.’

  13

  There was a knock on Peter Maxwell’s door a little after lights out in Tennyson House. John Selwyn’s call to sleep echoed dying through old corridors, like some Western muezzin summoning the faithful to prayer. But Maxwell was facing south-west as he opened the door and he was facing an anxious-looking George Sheffield sans gown and past caring.

  ‘Headmaster,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘Mr Maxwell, may I have a word? I know it’s late.’

  ‘Please,’ Maxwell invited him in.

  ‘Are you … comfortable here?’ the Head ask him, looking around at the dingy room.

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Won’t you have a seat?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  George Sheffield had aged a hundred years in the last week. And it was exactly a week ago that Maxwell had heard a scratching on the outer staircase; seven days since he’d seen a gowned figure flitting furtively in and out of the shadow with a lovely girl with long, dark hair.