Maxwell's Inspection Page 8

  ‘In a way. Could they have known we’d be there, in the Vine, I mean, at that time?’

  ‘Don’t see how,’ Holton shrugged. ‘Unless they followed us, of course. This is all getting pretty weird, Max.’

  The Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘And I suspect it will get weirder still before the whole thing’s over.’

  The door swung wide and a dishevelled woman stood there, a fag dangling out of her mouth and a length of hoover hose in her hand. ‘I didn’t know you had a meeting. Surprised you’re here at all with a bloody madman about. Still, that’s them for you, innit? That Mr Diamond. Needs takin’ in, ‘e does. I’ll do you later. Tra.’

  ‘No need to apologize Mrs B. It was a spur of the moment thing. So am I, if truth be told. Yes, it is. I couldn’t agree more. Personally I can’t wait. ‘Bye.’ Maxwell was a past master at swimming in Mrs B’s stream of consciousness He even had a badge for it. She was a good old sort, a good stick, a brick, all those inanimate objects people used to use as metaphors in the days when they knew what a metaphor was. And, like Arnie Schwartzenegger, she’d be back – Maxwell could count on it.

  The Vine was noisier at eleven that night than it had been on Monday. Maxwell jostled his way to the bar past the idiot with the air guitar taking up most of the central floor space and bought himself a drink off of the old tart who served him.

  ‘Have one yourself,’ he shouted over the combined roar of the Leighford Bikers’ Association’ Annual Do and the crashing chords of The Yawning Hippos. Only two of the Band were under thirty and only Maxwell knew what soap was.

  ‘Ta,’ and she tucked his fiver down her cleavage. He’d never see that again.

  ‘Tell me … er … Doris, is it?’ Maxwell judged the name to be about right. The woman was fifty if she was a day, bottle-blonde, make up by Grimaldi. Wrong side of the tracks.

  ‘Philomena,’ she corrected him.

  ‘Right,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Tell me, Philomena, were you here on Monday?’

  ‘I’m here every bloody night, ducks.’ She put his Southern Comfort down in front of him.

  ‘I was here on Monday, with some friends.’

  ‘Lovely.’ She took a drag on her ciggie.

  ‘Do you remember a couple here at the bar? She was dark-haired, attractive, middle-aged.’

  ‘I’m not a dating agency, darlin’,’ she informed him. ‘This is a respectable place, you know. We haven’t been closed down in six months.’

  The Bikers whooped and clapped as the Hippos got stuck into their finale, grande though it wasn’t. Gerry Cosgrove rang the bell, bellowing in Maxwell’s ear, ‘Time, gentlemen, please.’ Maxwell was probably the only gentleman in the building, but he’d never been a snob about these things and let it pass. ‘Er … last Monday,’ he grabbed Cosgrove’s attention.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘There was a man and a woman, here, at the bar. All over each other.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Cosgrove was collecting glasses, wiping surfaces. It was nearing the end of another long day. ‘Joke, is it?’

  ‘Do you remember them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  It was like pulling teeth. To be honest, Maxwell hadn’t expected much else. Bar staff must have seen it all in their time, all human life, the flotsam and jetsam of a decaying seaside town, spiralling downwards in the social maelstrom of Tony Blair’s England. If they were still surprised or shocked by anything they saw, they kept it to themselves. And the more they kept it to themselves, the less surprised or shocked they were.

  Maxwell was about to down his drink and stumble to the door when he found himself face to face with a huge, long-haired Biker with attitude and, apparently, no GCSEs.

  ‘What you looking at?’ he grunted.

  Maxwell took in the leather waistcoat, the gritty, stained vest and the giant cow skull buckle. The tattoos would have looked good on Caratacus and their owner swayed unsteadily, breathing Boddington’s over Maxwell. Maxwell shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve no idea. Give me a clue.’

  ‘Do you want a fucking kicking?’ the Biker roared, his muscles flexing and the veins throbbing in his neck.

  ‘Neither, thanks,’ Maxwell smiled and raised his hat.

  The Biker darted sideways to block his path. He was altogether nimbler than Maxwell expected. ‘You a poof?’ the Biker asked.

  ‘No,’ Maxwell told him calmly. ‘But it’s nice of you to think of me.’

  He was ready for the right cross and ducked it, but not for the left hook and it sent him reeling backwards against the crowd. The idiot with the air guitar looked up in surprise as the Biker batted him aside and went for Maxwell again. The Head of Sixth Form steadied himself as Gerry Cosgrove hauled up his counter-ledge to step in. Jostling Bikers grouped themselves to watch the proceedings, clapping and whistling.

  The Hippos had stopped playing now and the only noise was the roar of the Bikers’ thousands and the thump of Maxwell’s heart. In for a penny in for a pounding at this stage, he spun round catching Death a nasty one in the shin and driving two fingers into the man’s eyes. The Biker doubled up on the bar, grunting in agony as Gerry Cosgrove slammed his head down on the counter and blew a loud whistle.

  ‘The law are on their way,’ he shouted in the sudden silence that followed. ‘Now unless you bastards want to spend the night in the slammer, I suggest you bugger off.’

  No one moved.

  Maxwell didn’t quite see what happened next, but a Biker flew less than gracefully through the air, courtesy of Iron Man who never liked his drum solos ruined by unsavoury elements. The Biker lay pole-axed at the feet of air-guitar man, already carefully packing his instrument away.

  ‘Now!’ Cosgrove roared.

  One by one the Bikers finished their drinks and swaggered to the Vine’s doors. A couple of them dragged Death off the bar and helped him out. A couple more picked up Iron Man’s victim.

  ‘Great fucking night, Gerry,’ they called to the barman who Maxwell noticed was cradling a baseball bat in his arms.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Cosgrove waved at them.

  ‘Next year, then, Gez,’ somebody else shouted, patting him affectionately on the shoulder.

  ‘Fuckin’ right on, fellas!’ yet another called to the Band. ‘Great fuckin’ gig! But you,’ his mood suddenly changed as he jabbed a finger at the drummer. ‘You better watch your back.’

  When the bat-wing doors had stopped swinging and the sound of Harley-Davidsons roared away into the night, Gerry Cosgrove turned to Peter Maxwell. ‘You,’ he wagged a finger at him. ‘You’re banned, mate. I don’t need troublemakers like you.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ Maxwell nodded, quite glad to have his knee caps still. He turned to the fellas, ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I fear I have to leave this establishment post-haste,’ he grinned at Cosgrove, ‘and more or less right away. Can we have a word outside?’

  ‘Well,’ Duggsy was doing something unbelievable with yards of cable, ‘we would, Mr Maxwell, but … well, after that little incident, there might be a few people sort of … lying in wait for us … er … you. Perhaps another time, eh? Want a gig up at the school? Something like that?’

  The drummer shuffled back to his high hat, throwing his sticks in the air and catching them expertly. ‘What are you babies afraid of?’ he asked. ‘Man just wants a word, don’t he?’

  Chapter Five

  Starry, starry night. The Hippos stood with Maxwell in the car park of the Vine, having carefully negotiated the vomit as they went. The indefinable smell of KFC and chip shops wafted on the night air and in the stillness you could hear the slapping of the lanyards against the masts in the new marina.

  ‘Lads,’ Maxwell turned to the Band, Wal still carrying his glass of Grolsch. ‘You were playing here on Monday.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Maxwell,’ Duggsy assured him. ‘Cool of you to come see us again tonight.’

  ‘I’m one of your most loyal fans,’ Maxwell b
eamed. ‘On Monday – bit of a quiet night, right?’

  ‘Monday, Monday,’ grunted the drummer. ‘Hate that day.’

  Maxwell looked at him. He was older than the others, a sad old rocker on his way down. He was the only one of the unholy trio to remember the Mamas and the Papas, though he’d cut his own throat rather than admit to having bought any of their records. ‘I’m Iron Man, by the way.’ He extended a hand. He had drummer’s fingers that could crush tarsals and Maxwell got the feeling he was holding back.

  ‘Delighted,’ said Maxwell. ‘And I want to thank you most sincerely for your help back there.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Iron Man nodded. ‘I just don’t like blokes who sneak up on blokes from behind.’

  Maxwell got back to the point. ‘Monday,’ he said. ‘Any of you remember a couple at the bar, bloke and a woman in their forties?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Duggsy as the only one whose eyes, by definition, were looking straight ahead while performing. ‘Cosy, weren’t they?’

  At last, somebody with a memory. ‘They were,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Well, one of ‘em’s dead.’

  Wal swallowed hard. ‘Never! Which one?’

  ‘The bloke. Name of Alan Whiting. It’ll be in the Advertiser tomorrow. I believe it was in the nationals today.’

  The term ‘nationals’ was clearly lost on the Hippos so Maxwell let it go.

  ‘What? Snuffed out, you mean?’ Duggsy wanted clarification. ‘Murdered?’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘At your old alma mater, Matthew, to be precise Room Aitch One at Leighford High.’

  ‘Fuck me sideways!’ Wal nearly dropped his Grolsch.

  ‘It’s been a long day, William,’ Maxwell said. ‘But thanks for the offer. Think back, people,’ he became conspiratorial. ‘What do you remember about the pair?’

  ‘Well,’ said Duggsy. ‘We were playing, of course.’

  ‘Well, I was,’ said Wal.

  ‘We’d just started our second set,’ Duggsy said. ‘You’d just come in, Mr Maxwell. And that bastard Mr Holton.’

  ‘Yes, he is, isn’t he? Maxwell agreed. ‘Still, we can’t always choose our colleagues, William. After they were cosy at the bar, what then?’

  ‘They buggered off for a bit,’ Iron Man remembered, Maxwell hoping he wasn’t being too literal. ‘Could have gone round to the Snug, I guess.’

  ‘Could have gone anywhere,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘She came back on her own later,’ Duggsy remembered. ‘Looked a bit pissed off if I read it right.’

  ‘She was pissed, certainly.’ It was all flooding back to Wal now. ‘’Ere, Iron, didn’t you see her later having an up and a downer with some bloke?’

  Iron Man’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I was out checking the van during one of Duggsy’s quiet numbers. Going at it hammer and tongs, they was.’

  ‘Rowing?’ Maxwell thought he’d better check that Iron Man’s colloquialisms were on a par with his own.

  ‘She was screaming at him,’ Iron Man confirmed. ‘Slapped him round the head a couple of times.’

  ‘Really? Was this the man she was with?’ Maxwell was confused. ‘The man at the bar? Alan Whiting?’

  ‘Nah,’ Iron Man shook his head. ‘Nah, this was a different bloke, bit younger, I’d say.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about him – or what they were talking about?’

  ‘Hey, man,’ the drummer moaned. ‘It was a long time ago, know what I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Maxwell fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a battered twenty from his wallet.

  ‘Nah, man,’ the drummer smiled. ‘I don’t want your money. I mean it was a long time ago, right.’

  ‘Forty-eight hours,’ grinned Duggsy. ‘That’s a long time for Iron Man, ain’t it, Iron?’

  ‘My head hurts sometimes,’ Iron Man said. ‘I don’t remember like I used to.’

  ‘Come on, Iron,’ Maxwell urged. ‘Was he tall? Short? Black? White? What?’

  Iron Man pulled a tin from his hip pocket and proceeded to roll a joint. ‘Man?’ he offered the tin to Maxwell, who shook his head. If he was going to solve a murder, it was necessary for at least one of them not to be off his face. ‘He was white,’ Iron Man inhaled deeply. ‘’Bout thirty, thirty-five maybe. Carried a black bag.’

  ‘A bag?’ Maxwell looked at him. ‘What sort of bag?’

  ‘Black,’ Iron Man shrugged.

  ‘Was it a leads bag, Iron?’ Duggsy prompted him. ‘Like ours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Iron Man nodded. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Hold-all, Mr Maxwell,’ Duggsy confirmed.

  ‘Joe Public,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Never mind. Iron, this is very important. Did you hear her say anything? Or him, the bloke with the bag?’

  ‘Nah,’ Iron Man was looking glazed already. ‘Oh, wait a minute, yeah. She said he was fucking late and what was the point.’

  ‘Late and what was the point,’ Maxwell repeated, trying to make sense of it.

  ‘Fucking late and what was the point,’ Wal thought he ought to be as correct as possible.

  ‘Thereby confirming,’ Duggsy took it up, ‘that this Mrs Whatsername is not a very nice person, Mr Maxwell.’

  ‘Yes,’ their erstwhile Head of Sixth Form sighed. ‘Thank you all, gentlemen. I fear you’re absolutely right. Y’all take care, now, y’hear.’ And he was gone, swinging into the saddle of White Surrey and pedalling away into the darkness, only the hum of his dynamo for company.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Duggsy asked his oppos before turning back to the pub to collect their gear and their night’s money. ‘Still as mad as a bloody tree.’

  The Kelly’s Street Directory for 1861 referred to it as Cunliffe’s Temperance Hotel. They’d built it in Sea Street, where the Channel breezes threatened to invert parasols and send toupees scampering off down the pavement with lives of their own. But Temperance was no more, as each successive government sought to win votes by extending the licensing hours and even the Bishop of Peterborough, an old piss-head if ever there was one, had stated his preference long ago for ‘better England free than England sober.’ So generations of Englishmen had happily reeled home around the streets of sunny Leighford, rejoicing in their freedom and inebriated as ever. Thank God the church was on the right track.

  The Cunliffe, then, served ales and spirits with the best of them. Now a two-star hotel with a part-time night staff, its car park was only partially full as Peter Maxwell wheeled Surrey across its painted tarmac and hitched the rattling monster to its railings. He noticed the clean cut young man dozing in the corner of the lobby and knew him at once for a Boy in Blue, not so much a subject of the late Mr Gainsborough, but more a colleague of Jacquie Carpenter. This one he’d have to do quietly and timing was of the essence.

  ‘Mr Maxwell!’

  Shit. Plan B.

  ‘Ah, George, isn’t it?’

  ‘What a memory you’ve got, Mr Maxwell.’ George was incredibly full of bonhomie considering it was nearly midnight. ‘You still up at the school?’

  ‘Yes, George, yes. I’ll die there, you know that. Been here long?’ Maxwell was mumbling, attempting to avert attention from the not quite sleeping policeman by the door. It was just his bad luck that George Wheelton had won, for three years running, the award for the Loudest Boy in the School.

  ‘Ever since I left, Mr Maxwell. Five years now.’

  ‘Good Lord. Well, George, got any vacancies?’

  ‘Vacancies?’ the young man looked a little nonplussed. Perhaps, in the hotel trade though he clearly was, this was a new word for him.

  ‘Yes, you know, rooms?’

  ‘But … you live here, Mr Maxwell. Don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ Maxwell still had his back to the door, leaning forward and trying to cushion the sound. ‘But a slight disaster has befallen me. Would you believe it, my roof’s caved in.’

  Now, five years on,
Maxwell couldn’t remember what George Wheelton would believe. Not that there was any law against a man staying in a hotel in his home town if such was his wish. And after all, he was Mad Max and had a certain reputation.

  ‘Well, that’s unusual these days, isn’t it?’

  Great. George wasn’t only loud, he had a degree in Stress Engineering.

  ‘My own fault, I suppose.’ Maxwell was in too deep now to beat an embarrassed retreat to the door. ‘Spot of DIY that went wrong. Serves me right, of course. Now I’ll have to get a man in.’

  ‘Couldn’t you sleep in the lounge?’ George was trying to be helpful.

  What was the matter with this lunatic? Maxwell wondered. Didn’t he want to let a room?

  ‘What, and miss the comforts of the Cunliffe?’ he beamed. ‘Got anything west-facing?’

  ‘Ooh, now you’ve asked me,’ George gurgled. Maxwell had forgotten that along with everything else, George Wheelton could gurgle for England.

  ‘Just a joke,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Anything will do. What time’s breakfast?’

  ‘Seven thirty to nine,’ George told him. ‘Could you just sign the book, Mr Maxwell?’

  Mr Maxwell could and did.

  ‘Could I have sight of a credit card?’ George asked.

  ‘Cash?’ Maxwell hadn’t brought his credit card. For fear.

  ‘Well, that’s unusual these days, too,’ George was gurgling again. ‘Would you mind writing your address there, please, Mr M? Thanking you. Got any luggage? Only, it’s just me on tonight and I can’t really leave the desk.’

  ‘No, that’s fine.’ Maxwell took the key. ‘I’ll sort it later. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Maxwell.’

  The boy’s former Head of Sixth Form padded up the hideously carpeted stairs to his right, without so much as a toothbrush to his name, not before however he had noticed the Boy Detective making a little entry in his notebook. Bugger and poo.

  Maxwell didn’t sleep very much that night. The July darkness was oppressive under the duvet and his ribs were giving him gyp where Mr Intellectual had laid one on him earlier. Above all, what the Yawning Hippos had told him preyed on his mind. Why was Joe Public, that random bloke that Maxwell assumed just happened to be in the Gents in the Vine, rowing with Sally Meninger in the pub car park? And what did she mean, he was late? Late for what? All, no doubt, would be revealed come morning.