Maxwell’s Curse Read online

  ‘Stone,’ she said.

  Maxwell nodded. ‘It all fitted. Except that Hall, increasingly paranoid and at sea, misread incompetence for guilt. Stone’s mind just wasn’t sufficiently on the job.’

  ‘Max,’ Jacquie said. ‘I can’t believe Hall told you this.’

  Maxwell sighed and shrugged. ‘You’re right, Jacquie. He’s not well. But it’s not flu. It’s something else. Has he cracked?’ He tried to answer his own question. ‘Well, if he hasn’t, he’s that close.’

  ‘What happens now, Max?’ she asked him. ‘No more surprises, surely?’

  ‘Just one,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘But first, we’ve got a little tail to lose.’ He was looking in her wing mirror.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Jacquie murmured. Behind her the paparazzi were mounting up. They’d stayed back when the pair had come out of Stone’s house, but now they wanted answers. It was Diana and Dodi all over again. ‘Got your seat belt on, Max?’

  He nodded. ‘Be gentle with me.’

  And she slammed into gear, screaming away from the kerb and snarling down the road, rubber burning in her wake. At Tinker’s Rise, they left the ground and came to earth again with a thud that jarred Maxwell’s spine. It was Bullitt, it was Hell-Drivers, it was Speed all rolled into one. But then, he was Mad Max. He bit the bullet, shut his eyes, grabbed the dashboard and prayed.

  They lost them on the flyover, Jacquie breaking every rule in the book, undertaking whether it was safe or not, cutting up the sluggish evening traffic on the coast road. All the time the thought was roaring through her head with the snarl of the engine – this was how Maxwell’s family had died, all those years ago; his wife and child. She couldn’t look at him, knowing what he was going through. And she was praying too. Then she was out beyond Tottingleigh, swinging west on the slip roads of her mind. Suddenly she knew where she was going. She knew and it frightened her.

  She switched off the engine outside the gates of the large Victorian house. He unhooked his seat belt and saw her face. ‘You can sit this one out if you like.’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. I’ll be all right.’ And they crossed the gravel where the dark Peugeot was parked.

  ‘Maxwell? Jacquie? This is an unexpected pleasure.’ Crispin Foulkes was standing at the front door of his flat.

  ‘Crispin.’ Maxwell was looking furtively from side to side in the well-lit porch. ‘Can we come in? I think we’ve got him.’

  ‘Who?’ Foulkes asked.

  ‘The murderer,’ Maxwell said. ‘The mad bastard who’s been going round killing people. You see, Zarina was right.’

  ‘She was?’

  Maxwell closed to him. ‘Naughty policeman,’ he whispered.

  Foulkes looked at them both, his forehead frowning under the lion’s mane of hair. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said.

  He led them through a passageway and on up a half flight of stairs, past a study crammed with paper. Then, they were in his lounge under a large mirror over an even larger fireplace. It seemed an eternity since the two men had munched their way through a Chinese takeaway when Foulkes’s life was all plastic bags and packing cases.

  ‘This has come on no end,’ Maxwell nodded, looking around.

  ‘It was rather a tip when you came last. Max, do you mind if I say you look dreadful?’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell took the proffered seat next to Jacquie. ‘Fortunes of war. We needed to pick your brains, Crispin.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell settled himself down. ‘At first my money was on Willoughby and Ken.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m racing ahead again. The murders. You’ll agree they’re all about Satanic worship – ritual sacrifice?’

  ‘Very much so,’ Foulkes nodded.

  ‘Well, I thought we were all looking for a coven. Thirteen people with a secret.’

  ‘And a common faith.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘Prissy Crown put me on to it.’

  ‘Prissy?’ Foulkes looked at Jacquie. ‘How?’

  ‘She told me something was going on at Beauregard’s. “Something sinister”, she said.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And that Willoughby was involved. And Ken. And Sophie. Well, that was three. If you include the possibility of Prissy herself, that was four. I even began to tot up the people I’d seen at the Club – the spotty lad who takes your money; Dr Astley, the pathologist; those two huge blokes in the bar; the bar lad himself; whoever hit me over the head. But then I knew that was ridiculous.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Of course. I mean that only made ten. And it only made eleven if I included you. Preposterous!’

  ‘Exactly!’ laughed Foulkes.

  ‘Anyway, Prissy eventually explained the whole thing. Seems Willoughby and Ken take it in turns – or perhaps not, bearing in mind an old Crown family custom – to shaft a tart on the Barlichway. When I thought Willoughby was there administering strychnine to Albert Walters, he was just having a bit of rough – reprehensible of course, but human.’

  ‘Of course,’ Foulkes agreed.

  ‘Various descriptions of men on the Barlichway – solid build, dark wavy hair – they fitted Willoughby like a glove. Ken was obviously more elusive.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So the … and this is where it gets interesting, Crispin,’ Maxwell leaned towards him, ‘Zarina dropped her bombshell – about the naughty policeman, I mean.’

  ‘You know who it is?’ Foulkes asked, eyes wide.

  ‘I had DS Stone in the frame,’ Maxwell leaned back. ‘All very plausible, all very pat. But no.’

  ‘No?’

  Maxwell shook his head. ‘Not clever enough. It had to be someone quite brilliant to plan the way our man did and get away with it.’

  ‘So, who … ?’

  ‘Then,’ Maxwell was folding his fingers across his chest, ‘I thought Zarina.’

  ‘Zarina?’ Foulkes exploded. ‘Oh, come on, Max.’

  ‘You’re right. Without wishing to be ungallant, the good doctor is a tad on the gargantuan side, isn’t she? Even allowing for a certain dumbing down on the clothes front and a possible ability to sublimate her accent, she’s, and I’m quoting someone here, “pretty in your face”.’

  Jacquie smiled despite herself.

  ‘Someone would have seen her. In Wetherton church, on the Barlichway, outside Alison Thorn’s flat, somewhere. Nobody did. In any case, she was in California, the good ol’ sunshine state, when Liz Pride died, so it can’t have been her.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Foulkes said.

  ‘Unless, of course,’ Maxwell was wrestling with it, ‘she had an accomplice. And that brings me inexorably to you, Crispin.’

  ‘Me?’ Foulkes laughed. ‘Max, you never cease to amaze me. What are you going to do, run through all the inhabitants of Leighford until somebody confesses?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need for that, is there? You know old Bob Cameron?’

  ‘The educational psychologist? Of course.’

  ‘Good bloke, Bob. He and I go back a long way.’

  ‘Happy for you,’ said Foulkes.

  ‘Thank you. I got old Bob to call in a few favours earlier today. Make a few phone calls.’

  ‘Really? Look, Max, I don’t see …’

  ‘He made one to Erdington. It was Erdington where you said you worked, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I may have done,’ Foulkes said.

  ‘Well, you didn’t. Not in social services, anyway. So I got Bob to make a few more phone calls. And one came up trumps.’

  Foulkes said nothing. He was looking at Jacquie. And she was looking at Maxwell.

  ‘It was the one to the Marshgrove Clinic. You were a psychiatric patient there for three years.’

  ‘I had a nervous breakdown,’ Foulkes said.

  ‘Brought on by events at Broxtowe,’ Maxwell nodded. He’d seen Jacquie’s mouth open silently at Foulkes’s admission. ‘Now there, you wer
e in the social services. There the whole experience tipped you over the edge, didn’t it, Crispin? So that after Erdington, when you conned everybody, maybe even yourself, into thinking you were cured, you wanted revenge. Oh, not in Broxtowe; that was all played out. Psychotics and hysterics like you were exposed there, weren’t you? Discredited, shut down. But Leighford, now. Well, we’re all pretty green down here; never experienced this madness before. What would you call yourself, Crispin, some sort of agent provocateur?’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Foulkes growled.

  ‘No,’ Maxwell shook his head, ‘but I know a man who is. You found that delicious, malicious piece of nonsense about Liz Pride being a witch and you played on it. You used country lore, herbal magic, to kill her. Magic mushrooms they certainly were. But you wanted to advertise, didn’t you? Make it crystal clear that the devil was in this work. So you killed her on the Midwinter Solstice with all its connotations. But you weren’t ready, were you? Something wasn’t prepared, so you kept her in a deep-freeze – the one downstairs if I’m any judge. And you made her death public by dropping her on a doorstep. Anybody’s would do; but it happened to be mine. And that, Crispin, me ol’ fanatic, was the worst mistake you could possibly have made.’

  ‘Really?’ Foulkes was unimpressed.

  ‘Max … ?’ Jacquie tried to break in, but the Great Man’s hand was in the air, still looking, as he watched the social worker.

  ‘You drove a knife into the old girl’s neck to make the whole thing look like a ritual killing which is precisely what it was. And cashing in on the well known feud between the Prides and the Cruikshanks, you slipped a poppet into old Jane’s caravan, careful of course to make the neck wound for posterity. Darblay was next.’

  ‘Darblay was an accident,’ Foulkes blurted. ‘The old fool got in the way.’

  Jacquie blinked.

  Maxwell nodded. ‘So, no poison. Just a heavy object. Candlestick?’

  It was Foulkes’s turn to nod. ‘Don’t you see, Maxwell?’ he said. ‘Both of you? Don’t you see? They’re out there, these Satanic worshippers, on the Barlichway, in Wetherton, right here in the nice end of Leighford. They’re all around us.’

  Maxwell leaned forward again. ‘No, Crispin,’ he said softly. ‘They’re in there,’ he tapped the man’s forehead. ‘Only in there. But,’ he leaned back, ‘I’ve got to hand it to you. You blazed quite a trail. Quite the Matthew Hopkins, quite the Witchfinder General. You got hold of some strychnine – where from, I wonder? The pharmacy, at Marshalgrove? The burgled chemists at Littlehampton? And you killed Albert Walters. Knife through the neck again. It took some nerve, carrying a naked body through the Barlichway. With Pride, you could always pretend it was a pile of rubbish, a practical New Year’s Eve joke. But luck, I guess, was on your side.’

  ‘God,’ Foulkes shouted. ‘God is on my side,’ then quieter, ‘Elizabeth Pride was a virgin. Can you imagine that? A virgin and married all those years. She told me on the night I killed her – isn’t it odd what old people will tell you, once they trust you. Married and a virgin – it has magic significance.’

  Maxwell looked at Jacquie, sitting ever more uneasily on the settee.

  ‘You were getting into your stride, now. You’d brought it to the Barlichway, but you didn’t want the finger pointing in your direction as a social worker there, so you moved back to Wetherton for Alison Thorn. She was inspired, wasn’t she? Not some old nobody now, but a sexually active young woman. You went to town on the whole ritual bit. First you posed as a collector for Barnardo’s, then you killed her with hemlock. You stripped her naked and cut her throat. Black candles, sheep’s hearts, pentagrams and neo-virgins. And you brought in children – always the Satanist’s trump card.’

  ‘I’m no Satanist!’ Foulkes screamed, making Jacquie jump.

  ‘Aren’t you, Crispin?’ Maxwell asked him.

  ‘I had to expose them, don’t you see? Force them to show their hand. Well, we’ve got them now.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But first, Mrs Ruger. What was that all about?’

  ‘She was one of them, Max,’ Foulkes said. ‘I remembered her from Broxtowe. She was covering the situation there, pretending to be a journalist, but I knew better. She said she knew what was going on. Came to see me that weekend. I kept her here, then I took her back to the hotel and stabbed the bitch.’

  ‘Leaving your ritual knife, your athame, just in case there was anyone left who didn’t believe that all this Satanic mumbo-jumbo was real.’

  ‘It is real, Max,’ Foulkes shouted. ‘How can you, an intelligent man, doubt it?’

  ‘You printed the leaflets – in the study downstairs, I would think and you scattered them in the darkness at the Barlichway. I’ve got to hand it to you again, Crispin. Your timing was immaculate. I thought you’d kill again on February 2nd – Candlemas, another of your Wiccan dates. You put the calendar in Myrtle Cottage, didn’t you? As another pointer. You must have been shitting yourself when you realized I had it and not the police.’

  ‘It worked in my favour,’ Foulkes said. ‘I had Jacquie here believing you were the devil incarnate.’

  Maxwell looked at her. She shook her head, then looked away.

  ‘But on Candlemas, you went one better, didn’t you? Your sick leaflets stirred up the Barlichway.’

  ‘They all carried candles that night all right,’ Foulkes was triumphant. ‘We’ll root them out now.’

  ‘You see, it was your cleverness that spoiled it all,’ Maxwell shook his head.

  ‘How?’

  ‘On the headboard, above Janet Ruger’s hotel bed – the bed on which you killed her, you wrote “Maleficarum”.’

  ‘So?’ Foulkes sneered.

  ‘What does it mean, Jacquie?’ Maxwell asked her.

  ‘Er … witch?’ she said.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Maxwell was shaking his head. ‘“Malefica” is one witch. “Maleficae” is more than one witch. But “Maleficarum” means of the witches. And that got me thinking. As soon as dear old DCI Hall told me about it, bells began to ring. It was part of the title of a book written a long time ago by two Catholic monks who were probably as rabid as you are, Crispin. It was called Malleus Maleficarum – the hammer of the Witches. And that’s what you are, isn’t it? Witchfinder, avenging angel, servant of the Lord, psychopathic killer. You couldn’t, in the end, avoid advertising, not just your cause, but yourself.’

  Nobody was ready for the next move. Foulkes was across the floor, Jacquie gripped in his left arm, an ugly blade glittering at her throat, firm in his right hand.

  Maxwell was on his feet too. ‘Well, well,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve got quite a collection of these things, I see.’

  ‘The athame?’ Foulkes’s eyes danced with the knife’s blade in the half light. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘They come in handy.’

  ‘What now?’ Maxwell asked. Jacquie’s head was tilted back at a crazy angle, Foulkes’s forearm compressing her windpipe.

  ‘Another, regrettable, ritual killing,’ the social worker replied. ‘This time of one of the police officers involved in the case. A police officer who is having an affair with someone who is clearly … Beelzebub.’

  Foulkes was in mid-slash as Jacquie’s elbow hit him in the stomach and he dropped back. In a second, she was squirting her deadly can in his face and Foulkes staggered backwards, the knife gone, screaming in agony. The door crashed back and Henry Hall stood there, a sheet of yellow A5 paper in his hand.

  Foulkes was sobbing on the floor, his temporarily sightless eyes a wilderness of pain.

  ‘Timing could have been a threat better, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell felt obliged to tell him.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Maxwell,’ the DCI said. ‘But you were right. And for once it doesn’t pain me to admit it. I had quite a time rummaging around in your study, Mr Foulkes. I think this paper will match those distributed on the Barlichway estate. Forensics will have a field day with his computer and deep-freeze. Jacquie, are you all right?’

  Max
well held his arms out as the girl ran to him, the mace still in her hand, her eyes wet with tears.

  ‘I’m fine, guv,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  ‘By the way, in rummaging around downstairs – and before you ask, Mr Foulkes, I do have a search warrant – I found this.’

  He held up a poppet, a little doll in his own image, with a grey suit and wire glasses. Hall smiled at them both. ‘And do you know, I think I’m over the flu now. Mr Foulkes, my lads are on their way. You and I are going to take a little drive to Leighford police station. And I’m going to say some time-honoured words to you. After which,’ he looked at Jacquie and Maxwell, ‘I’m going to the Tottingleigh Incident Room, have a word with Geoff Knight.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’ He didn’t recognize the excited voice over I he phone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Nicole, Mr Maxwell. Nicole Green. I just wanted to tell you. Barney’s okay. He came to last night. Opens his eyes and says he wants a Chinese takeaway. Innit wonderful, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘It certainly is, Nicole.’ Maxwell said. ‘Thank you for telling me. Was he able to tell you what happened?’

  ‘Yeah, silly bugger slipped and fell, didn’t he?’

  ‘Trailing those men for me?’

  ‘Nah. Playing silly buggers for a bet. Trying to cheer up old Bull. D’you know old Bull? His wife left him. Well, ta ta, Mr Maxwell.’

  ‘Bye, Nicole. And give my love to Barney, will you? Tell him I owe him a pint.’

  And she hung up. Peter Maxwell sat in his attic, Trumpeter Hugh Crawford sitting astride his grey, patiently waiting with his old comrades for orders from the front. Maxwell pushed the chair back and looked up at the stars in their velvet sky.

  ‘There’s one thing, Count, I haven’t covered.’

  The cat snored obliviously in the far corner.

  ‘Who was it swiped me round the head at Beauregard’s?’

  On an impulse, he pulled a book from the bookcase to his right. Not just any book, one in particular. Alex Stone had come home that day, safe and well, if a little confused and a little sorry, with baby Samantha in her arms. Henry Hall was back in the saddle at Leighford nick, his flu gone, Geoff Knight glad to be out of it. The Barlichway would take longer. The Barlichways of this world always do. But people are tough, and people are resilient. And some of them are sensible. And most of them have the capacity to love. And to care. He looked at the photograph of the auburn girl on his modelling desk, and he lapsed into his Bogart again. ‘Here’s looking at you, Jacquie.’