Maxwell's Chain (23 page)

‘Hello?’ Jacquie sounded far away.

‘It’s me. I know who’s next.’

‘What?’ Jacquie stopped scrolling and flapped a hand at Kavanagh to stop tapping his keys. She wanted to be sure she heard this. ‘Who?’

‘Emma Lunt. Or Greg Adair. Or Alan Kavanagh.’

‘Oh.’ Jacquie couldn’t help but look up at the
unknowing colleague trying to look helpful across the room. ‘So, anyone involved with the case, in other words.’

‘No. Just them at the moment. I’m working out the ambigrams.’

‘Pardon, Max. The ambiwhats?’

‘Ambigrams. They can be used as a sort of code, but I think here they have been used almost as a… well, a sort of divining rod, to choose who goes next. Look, Jacquie, just come home. Perhaps you could warn Alan Kavanagh if you have his number.’

‘Oh, I do have his number. But wait.’ She raised her head and looked at Kavanagh. ‘Alan. You may be the next victim.’

‘What?’

‘Alan says “what?”,’ she said into the phone.

‘He’s there?’

‘Yes. He’s helping me look for previous. He’s actually being quite useful.’ It was hard to tell who was the most amazed to hear that, but only Kavanagh blushed.

‘Well, bring him home with you, then. At least we’ll know where one of the potential victims is if he is in our spare room.’

‘Max, first Bill Lunt, now Alan Kavanagh.
Thirty-eight
is turning into a protection unit Safe House as we speak. Are you serious?’

‘Deadly. Both of you, come home now. I know who might be next and I also know who did it. Well, I know who it might be. I’ve got to tie it down a bit more first. I certainly know the general area where we ought to look.’

‘Max, I…’

‘Just get home, Jacquie. The Count and I will have it all sorted by the time you get here.’ And he rang off.

Jacquie sat opposite Alan Kavanagh silently digesting what she had just been told. Which was, she had to admit, rather little and rather garbled. Even so, she came to a decision and stood up, reaching behind her for her coat, thrown over the back of her chair. She’d heard Maxwell’s rendition of Charlton Heston’s Major Dundee often enough to know when the man meant business – “I have but three orders of march – when I say come, you come; when I say go, you go. And when I say run, you follow me and run like hell.”

‘Come on, Alan. Log off, there’s a good constable, and let’s get out of here.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Back to mine. When Max says I am sitting opposite a possible future murder victim, I don’t leave that person sitting like a duck.’

‘Me?’ In a strange way, Kavanagh was quite
elated. Someone cared enough to want to kill him. If only he had known how many minds that thought had been through, he would perhaps have been less pleased. It had begun with his childminder all those years ago. He tapped a few keys and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

They clattered down the back stairs and out into the cold night. Frost ringed the windscreens of their cars and the waning moon shone through a halo.

‘Shall I follow you?’ Kavanagh asked, through chattering teeth.

‘Keep close,’ Jacquie said. She was keen to help Kavanagh avoid being murdered, but his choice of sandwich, on the most recent occasion clearly cheese and onion, made sharing an impossible option. ‘It gets complicated after the Flyover.’ The Ka purred out of the car park, watched by Ken Wertham, the desk sergeant in his glass boothed eyrie inside the front door. Kavanagh’s Peugeot was in hot pursuit.

‘Lucky bastard,’ he muttered under his breath. Ken Wertham could jump to conclusions for England. Then he chuckled. Nice to see that bloody smartarse Maxwell getting one in the eye. Wait till the lads heard this!

While he waited for Jacquie to get back, Maxwell did what any amateur detective would do, with a few minutes spare at their disposal. He got sheets of paper and headed each one with the name of victims, both actual and potential. He then threw them away as being far too anal, much too similar to writing frames for the less able and Bernard Ryan.

He picked up the phone and then sat there with it in his hand, uncertain of who to ring. He knew that Henry Hall would have been in touch with Leighford High. And anyway, despite all his years there, he had never been copied in to any of the really important phone numbers. Legs Diamond was so dogged by prank callers that he was so
ex-directory
he didn’t even know his own number any more. The others, Year Heads and their Assistants, were ex-men. In fact, in a supreme irony, the only
SLT member’s number Maxwell knew had been Dierdre Lessing’s, and he knew she wouldn’t be there. He decided to ring Sylvia Matthews and dialled her number, which he had known off by heart since Adam was in the militia.

‘Hello. You’ve reached the number of…’

Bugger and poo. But wait! He could progress along the ‘find-the-victim’ path by a rather circuitous route. He dialled Paul Moss’s number and waited through what seemed a hundred rings. Finally, he answered.

‘Moss.’

No matter how often Maxwell heard him say that, he always wanted to snap another member of the vegetable kingdom back at him. ‘Lichen. Dandelion’. He restrained himself and simply said, ‘Paul? It’s Max.’

‘Oh, hello, Max. Are you one of the stricken?’

‘No, no, I’m fine. How are you?’

‘I’m coming down with it, I think. Sod’s law that I would, now it’s half term.’

‘Oh, that’s too bad. Look, Paul, do you have Greg Adair’s number?’

‘Is this a wind-up, Max?’

‘No. Should it be?’

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t really be your style. But…don’t you know?’

‘Come on, Paul. This isn’t a game, you know. Have you heard about Dierdre?’

‘No. What about her?’

‘She’s dead.’ There seemed no other way to put it.

There was a long pause. ‘Dead? An accident?’

‘Murder. And I think Greg may be next. Or at least, nextish.’

‘Max, you’re not making any sense. How can Greg be next?’

‘Why shouldn’t he be?’

‘Well, he could be, I suppose. But he’s in the high dependency unit at the hospital. He’s got pneumonia. You can’t murder somebody that way, can you? It started with the same virus that’s going round, but it went a bit haywire. He called the doctor several times and just got given the whole “take paracetamol” routine from some paramedic Level Two type. By the time he was found, he was in a really bad way. It’s touch and go, apparently.’

‘My God.’ Maxwell was genuinely gobsmacked. ‘When was this?’

‘Hmm. Must have been…what’s today? It puts me out when we’re not at school.’

‘Friday.’

‘Right. Well, it must have been Wednesday evening he was found, then. But he’d been a bit off colour all week.’

‘He was certainly very snappy when I spoke to him. He stormed off. He bumped into you, I seem to remember.’

‘Well, I would imagine he already felt grotty, then. I know he went to the cinema on Monday and had to leave because he felt so unwell.’

That answered one question and asked another. It confirmed he was at the cinema, but raised the point that, unless Dierdre Lessing was totally mesmerised by the screen, she would have seen him, yet again, with his unsuitable other, giving him more reason to kill her. But, if he was already ill on Wednesday, he couldn’t have killed her. He sighed. ‘Thanks, Paul. Well, at least we know he’s in safe hands.’

‘Max, he’s in an NHS hospital. How can you say that?’

‘True. Well, safe as opposed to the hands of a murderer, anyway. Have a good break, now, and don’t answer the phone to any strange men’ and he rang off, feeling more certain than ever that his sneaking suspicion might be the right one.

He had one more call to make. He was halfway through dialling when he heard Jacquie come in, talking in the hall in her usual way when she was not alone.

He stuck his head out of the door and called, ‘Up here,’ and carried on dialling. Again, the phone
rang on and on. But this time, no one replied and the answerphone clicked in. He listened to the message, right through, but, after a breathy pause, rang off. As he did so, he realised he had just left an anonymous heavy breathing phone call. But, at this stage of the game, what could it matter?

He turned as Jacquie and Alan Kavanagh came in, rubbing their hands together and heading for the gas fire.

‘It’s really cold out there,’ Jacquie said. ‘But, before you say it, we are not going to have snow.’

‘We’ll see,’ Maxwell said, smugly. He held out his hand and Kavanagh shook it. ‘Glad to see you, DC Kavanagh. May I call you Alan?’

‘Yes.’ Kavanagh was pleased to see that Maxwell seemed quite normal. The house was not a Black Museum of all the cases he had worked on illicitly, with death masks of those Mad Max had sent down. There were no displays of weapons or poisons; not a chainsaw or six pack of strychnine in sight. In fact, the house was quite ordinary. He was suddenly aware that he had sounded perhaps a tad abrupt. ‘Please do.’

‘Any further forward?’ Jacquie asked Maxwell. She lifted a bottle towards Kavanagh. ‘Drink?’

‘No, thank you.’ Kavanagh was in best Sunday school tea mode, only speaking when spoken to and
politely declining all offers of food and drink, for fear he should seem greedy. He was not nine stone wringing wet for nothing.

‘I have discovered that Greg Adair is in hospital,’ he remarked.

‘What?’ the policepersons chorused.

Maxwell raised his hands. ‘It’s all right; he’s in Community General in the safe hands of Dick van Dyke. It’s pneumonia. Since Wednesday. So, not only is he not in the frame any more, he is also, I should have thought, safe from any murder attempts. Although, come to think of it, it doesn’t stop people in
Diagnosis Murder
.’

‘So that leaves…who?’ Jacquie asked, daytime television not being part of her regular experience.

‘Just Emma Lunt, by my reckoning. Although I suppose there may be some we don’t know of yet.’

‘Explain how you came by the list,’ Jacquie said. ‘That will be a start.’

So Maxwell gathered them round and, using two colours for simplicity, carefully drew out the chain ambigrams using the names of the previous victims and those he saw as potential ones. Alan Kavanagh had all the hallmarks of a Grade E GCSE; colour coding would help him enormously.

When he had finished, Jacquie pushed herself away from the table and blew outwards. Kavanagh
was just silent. This was Jacquie’s call. The old geezer was obviously barking mad.

‘Well, Max,’ she began. Here it comes, Kavanagh thought. She’s thinking of a way to divert his attention while they waited for the men in white coats. ‘It would take someone like you to spot that.’

Nice one, thought Kavanagh. Lull him into a false sense of security before tying him up with a spare clothesline.

‘We didn’t look at the names. We looked at the lifestyles for a link.’

‘Uh?’ Kavanagh was puzzled. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She seemed to think the mad old bugger was right. Perhaps she was still humouring him.

‘Do try to keep up, Alan.’

Why did everyone keep saying that to him? He wasn’t slow. He had an A level in Philosophy and Ethics to prove he could think. And critically at that.

‘Did you not understand the ambigrams?’ she said kindly. ‘Would you like another explanation?’

‘No! No, of course I don’t. How can a fancy way of writing someone’s name make them a murder victim?’

‘Well, it doesn’t,’ Maxwell said kindly. ‘It’s just that, in a random population, where everyone
bumps into everyone else all the time – crowded buses, supermarkets, pubs, clubs – if you, the murderer that is, if you just decide to kill people who have briefly met each other, you’d never be able to track who you were going to bump off next. But if you had some other criterion to go by…’

‘…such as their name fitting a chain ambigram…’ put in Jacquie, getting excited.

‘…then that makes your choice easier.’ Maxwell smiled at him and held out his hand, inviting comments on his theory.

Kavanagh was struck dumb. Finally, he found his voice. ‘But…why should you…’

‘…the murderer…’ Jacquie helpfully interposed.

‘Yes, the murderer, why should you
want
to kill people who had met randomly in shops and places? Why would you choose them at all?’

Maxwell and Jacquie looked at each other and then at Kavanagh. It was Maxwell who answered him.

‘Well, because you’re mad, of course. We didn’t want to think like that, because that makes the potential list of killers so wide. The whole population, allowing for age, sex etcetera. I think we’re talking about someone who is playing a game. Murder is a sort of intellectual exercise, like timing yourself on
The Times
crossword or working out
a cryptic code. You know better than I do, Alan,’ Maxwell condescended, ‘most people are killed by people they know. That’s
why
they’re killed. And that’s what leads you guys to a solution. Now, a
random
series of killings, based on something general like an ambigram, well, that’s a bit of a bitch, isn’t it? But, because of the victims, it is possible to narrow it down.’

‘How?’ Kavanagh could feel himself being sucked in to this morass of insanity.

‘There are various clues that link them together,’ Jacquie said, ‘but only when you have everything laid out. Lara Kent had Darren Blackwell’s brother’s phone number on her mobile, along with others, from anonymous pay-as-you-go handsets. But when Henry checked with him, he hadn’t taken her number and had no recollection of having met her. So, we worked out, she had actually met Darren, who had no mobile and so had given her his brother’s number.’

‘She must have met loads of people, though. She was a pretty girl, she’d have been swapping numbers all the time,’ Kavanagh reasoned.

‘Agreed. This is where the names come in. You can make a chain ambigram out of Darren, but not of, say, Shaun. So, he was chosen.’

‘I think I see. But the murderer would have had
to know his name, then, to choose him.’

‘Precisely. So, then, the murderer would have seen Darren speak to Dierdre Lessing. Which he would do, if they bumped into her. Highenas always talk to staff. It’s a kind of invisible club we all belong to.’

‘Hyenas?’ Kavanagh’s head was beginning to hurt.

‘Ex Leighford High pupils,’ Jacquie filled in the details.

‘Yes, Highenas. Where was I?’ Maxwell appealed to Jacquie.

‘Darren. Dierdre. Highena.’

‘Yes. So, again, we have a hint as to who the murderer could be, or at least, which group in the population they belong to.’

‘And it is…?’

Maxwell looked sympathetically at Kavanagh, but even more sympathetically at Jacquie; she had to work with the idiot.

‘I’m sorry to have to say it, but I think that the murderer is either an ex Leighford High pupil, or a member of its staff.’

Kavanagh couldn’t help it. ‘Like you, for example.’

Maxwell admired his cheek, if not his intellect. He smiled and turned to Jacquie. ‘Is this the time?’
he asked her. ‘Am I, after all, the guy?’

She stroked his cheek and Kavanagh had that feeling of having a door closed gently in his face. ‘No, Max. You’re not the guy.’ She turned away and then paused. ‘Not this time.’

‘So,’ Maxwell continued. ‘I’ve looked at the names in the frame so far, although of course it might be someone completely different. But I think our murderer is coming to the end of the game and knows it. Even so, the compulsion to complete the pattern may still drive him to murder someone who fulfils the criteria. There weren’t many names that did – yours, Alan, and Greg Adair. And Emma Lunt. But I can’t get an answer from her. I’ve tried.’

Alan Kavanagh surprised himself by saying, ‘I’ll go and see if she’s all right.’

Jacquie laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘But, Alan. What if it isn’t her. What if it’s you?’

‘It isn’t,’ he said, with finality.

‘Why so certain?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Because my name isn’t an ambithingy. It doesn’t work.’

‘Well,’ Maxwell began. ‘It’s not perfect, I grant you. You have to tweak the ‘l’ and the ‘n’ a bit, but in general…’

‘My name’s not Alan.’

‘It’s not?’ Jacquie said. ‘You mean you use an alias?’

‘No, of course not.’ He grinned. ‘I use my middle name.’

‘So, your name is…?’

‘Horace.’

Maxwell and Jacquie guffawed and instantly silenced themselves. Kavanagh laughed too. ‘What were your parents thinking?’ Jacquie asked.

‘They named me after my grandfather,’ he said. ‘It was only after I was registered it turned out that he hated the name as well. So anyone looking me up, on a staff list or something, would think my name was Horace.’

‘The murderer might have overheard someone call you Alan,’ suggested Maxwell.

‘I don’t get out much,’ Kavanagh replied sadly. ‘I don’t really seem to fit in Leighford. Or anywhere, much.’

Maxwell and Jacquie both mulled this statement over. There seemed little to add.

‘Well, now,’ Maxwell said, a little too heartily. ‘In that case, Alan, old chap, perhaps we will take you up on your offer. Meanwhile, Jacquie and I will see if we can break down the list of possibles. It is still pretty huge. Now, do you know where the Lunts live?’

‘I think so. I’ve got the address in my phone, from when I thought I might have to go and arrest him.’

‘Ah,’ beamed Maxwell. ‘Technology, eh? Let us know when you get there. Let us know if she’s all right.’

‘It’s nice of you to be so concerned,’ said Kavanagh, shrugging on his coat.

‘She’s a Highena,’ Jacquie said. All three of them stopped in their tracks. Did that make her a potential victim or more likely a potential murderer?

Too late now, thought Kavanagh. He had cast himself in the role of chivalrous defender and so off he had to go. ‘Bye, then,’ he said as he went down the stairs. ‘Speak later.’ Jacquie and Maxwell stood at the top of the stairs and watched him go.