Maxwell's Grave (10 page)

If truth be told, Henry Hall had a thing about morgues. It wasn’t a cliché, like dear old Christopher Timothy in the long-forgotten Flaxborough series on the telly. It wasn’t
bodies
he objected to; it was the buildings they put them in. Cold, green, with that scrubbed and rescrubbed steel, that sense of the slaughter-house.

Martin Toogood’s chest was crushed beyond hope, his ribs driven into his lungs. Both arms were broken and his pelvis smashed. Only his face remained unmarked and the boy lay on the slab as though he were asleep.

‘It’s a death trap, Gravel Hill,’ Jim Astley was scrubbing up, ready to go to work. ‘Time you people did something about it. And it’s my day off.’

‘Sorry, Jim,’ Henry Hall was looking down at his DS, at the wreck of a life.

He felt the doctor’s hand on his elbow, still wet from the ritual. He’d have to scrub again now. ‘One of your own, wasn’t he?’ he said softly. ‘It’s no trouble.’ Jim Astley could be a bit of a bastard. In fact, he was most of the time. But just occasionally he cracked and proved he was human after all. It wrong-footed Henry Hall every time.

In the brightly lit neon corridor outside, in those areas of Leighford General where members of the public were
permitted
to see their loved ones for the last time, an elderly couple sat on upright NHS chairs. They’d both been
crying
, both trying in their own ways to come to terms with the news a uniformed copper had given them.

‘Mr and Mrs Toogood?’ They both stood up, she
clutching
her handbag, he holding tightly onto her. ‘I’m DCI Henry Hall…’ and it didn’t happen very often, but he found himself holding a frail old lady as she sobbed into his neck.

‘Mr Maxwell, is it?’ The questioner was a corporate type, all suit and attitude, with what appeared to be a very expensive squirrel sitting on his head.

‘It is,’ the Head of Sixth Form answered, smug in the knowledge that
he
would never need the services of a rug.

‘Do you mind telling me what you were doing at the dig tonight? Other than trespassing, I mean.’

‘Do you mind telling me why you’re asking?’ Maxwell countered. All in all, it had been an unpleasant hour or two. He’d had a shotgun jabbed into his neck, then his back, and had been unceremoniously bundled into a four-by-four by two fully paid up members of Rent-a-Yob. Now he was in somebody’s office, facing a large, well-suited man in a huge leather chair. The place was opulent, with designer glass smouldering against a giant single-pane window and
tasteful coffee tables with suede tops. The carpet alone was worth Peter Maxwell’s lump sum, should he ever live to collect it.

‘Because I own the land on which you were trespassing.’

‘Fair enough,’ Maxwell nodded, quietly impressed by anyone who handled a sentence’s syntax like that. ‘I’ll be apologizing, then.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ the suit said. ‘Quite the in-thing, these days, isn’t it, for criminals to have to apologize to their victims. All part of our blame culture society, I believe.’

‘Victims?’ Maxwell chuckled, looking at the heavies in the black suits, their knuckles trailing the skirting boards, still waiting in the darkened office corner. ‘Is that how you see yourself? As a victim, Mr…er..?’

‘Anthony Cahill. Of Cahill and Lieberman.’

‘Ah, I see. You’re the golfing people.’ Maxwell was
nearly
up to putting two and two together.

‘No, Mr Maxwell, we’re the property people,’ Cahill
corrected
him. ‘This particular site is a golfing enterprise, yes. But we could just as easily be talking condominium, retail outlets, marinas. We specialize in diversity.’

‘And soundbites,’ Maxwell nodded. Teaching has a jargon all its own, with its visions, its inclusion policies, its
differentiated
outcomes. But the world of business could leave it standing every time.

‘This could be a police matter.’ Cahill’s smile was
wearing
a little thin.

‘Oh, it already is,’ Maxwell told him. ‘What with the body and all.’

‘Yes,’ Cahill’s face darkened a little, as he looked at his heavies. ‘That was unfortunate.’

‘Then, there’s the matter of the shotgun and the
abduction by your two rottweilers here.’

The heavies moved forward like automata, fists flexing, lips curling – signs of aggression they’d learned long ago from the football terraces and British Party
get-to-maim-you
conferences.

Cahill clicked his fingers and the rottweilers stayed to heel. ‘George and Julian were only carrying out my
instructions
, Mr Maxwell. George
does
have a permit for the Purdey and as for abduction…well, that’s putting it a little strongly, don’t you think? No, I thought you might
appreciate
a lift back. Your bicycle
is
strapped to the roof and I know you’ll take it in the right spirit when I say you are a
tad
on the elderly side for physical rigour of this type.’

‘Thoughtful, I’m sure. Are you always so zealous in guarding your investments?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Cahill was deadly earnest. ‘Make no mistake, Mr Maxwell, property is a dangerous business. No one is in it for what I believe the working class call “laffs”. Now,’ he leaned forward across his large, expensive desk, ‘what assurances do I have that you will not again stray onto the dig?’

‘None,’ Maxwell said flatly. ‘Mr Cahill, let me try to explain something to you. Six – nearly seven – days ago now, a boy I know found the body of a man I knew – right up there, on your little patch of land.’

‘And that’s your business?’ Cahill asked.

‘My boy,’ Maxwell held out his left hand. ‘My man,’ he held out his right. ‘There’s a certain ghastly symmetry to it, don’t you think?’

‘It’s a police problem,’ Cahill said.

‘So I’ve been told,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘I don’t know if you’ve been following the case on the telly, the radio, the papers? Well, I have and you know what’s missing? An
arrest. Or even, in fact, a suspect.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Cahill smiled, cradling his hands and leaning backwards. ‘So you’re some sort of Hercule Poirot meets Jane Marple, are you? I thought people like you only existed in fiction.’

‘No, no,’ Maxwell assured him. ‘We’re real enough. Helping police with their enquiries. You know, like Leerdammer does.’

‘You mean, you work with the police?’ Cahill frowned.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Not a flicker betrayed the nonsense Maxwell was spouting. ‘Tell me, in that context, George…Julian – who else have you boys shooed off the site? Who else’s neck have you jabbed a shotgun into? Who else’s bike have you manhandled onto your roof?’

Cahill snapped his fingers again and whatever George was about to say never reached his vocal cords. Synaptic reactions like his took longer. ‘My operatives and I are quite prepared to answer
police
questions,’ Cahill said. ‘Indeed, we have already. But until then, Mr Maxwell, let me give you a piece of advice. If you persist in straying onto any property of mine in the future, then, rest assured, it won’t be a cosy little chat we’ll be having.’

‘That sounds a
little
like a threat,’ Maxwell observed, wrinkling his nose at the man.

‘Got it in one,’ Cahill smiled, ‘as our golfing clients might say. Now you can play cops and robbers all you like, but if my lads catch you at the site again, they’ll be playing castanets with your knee-caps. Julian, unship Mr Maxwell’s bicycle, will you? I’m sure he can find his own way from here.’

It was early Wednesday morning by the time Peter Maxwell got home. Oddly, both his tyres had punctures and he’d
had to wheel Surrey noisily from the flyover, clanking and squeaking as he went. As he reached the dark of the privet hedge outside 38 Columbine, a figure hurtled from a parked car and threw itself at Maxwell. Surrey clattered to the tarmac as Maxwell caught her in his arms and held her tight.

‘Jacquie,’ he tried to say through the muffle of her sleeve. He held her at arm’s length. ‘Jacquie, what’s the matter?’

By the street light he could see the crumpled lip and runny nose and the silver-streaked cheeks.

‘It’s Martin,’ she gulped, letting the tears fall now that she’d held in all day. ‘Martin Toogood. He’s dead.’

It was nearly half-past two before Jacquie Carpenter had calmed down sufficiently to talk rationally about things. She’d been talking rationally all day, to her colleagues at the nick, to nurses and doctors at the hospital, to Martin’s sweet, heartbroken parents, all of them trying to
understand
what had happened and why.

Jacquie and Maxwell had got outside a few Southern Comforts by now and they lay snuggled on his settee in the warm lamp glow of his lounge, his arms wrapped around her as he breathed in the scent of her hair.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Once more from the top.’

She took a deep breath. How well he played the game, the old police ploy. Make them go over it again – and again – until the whole thing emerged. People in shock
remember
titbits, fragments, snatches, at random and in the wrong order. No way to solve a case; no way to get at the truth. He was her Nice Policeman and she loved him for it.

‘Martin left the nick shortly before twelve. Tom Wilson signed him out at eleven fifty-six.’

‘That’s usual practice?’ Maxwell checked.

‘Technically, no. Martin should have done it himself, but we all do it. The desk man’s vital in any nick in the
country
; knows all our comings and goings – he clocks us all in and out, man and boy.’

‘Chauvinistically said,’ he smiled and squeezed her.

‘He drove out almost immediately.’

‘Almost?’ Maxwell was right – leave no stone unturned, no second unaccounted for.

‘Long enough, Wilson said, for him to get into the car and get to the gate.’

‘All right. What’s that? Two minutes? One? Then what?’

‘He turned right out of the station.’

‘Along the High Street?’

‘Yes. Nothing then until he…until Gravel Hill.’

‘What was he driving?’

‘Mondeo.’

‘You’re the expert, Jacquie. How long would it take him to get to Gravel Hill?’

‘That time of night, there’d be virtually no traffic, not once he’d left the town centre; twelve, fifteen minutes, tops.’

‘So the accident happened at…twelve fifteen?’

‘Close enough. Henry said Astley’s time of death was between twelve and one.’

‘From what I know of Jim Astley, he seems to be pulling out all the stops on this one.’ Maxwell and Astley went nearly as far back as Maxwell and Hall. They sounded like a Vaudeville act and just as jolly!

She half-turned to him. ‘He was doing it for Henry, he said – a personal favour.’

Maxwell nodded. Perhaps he’d misjudged the old
pathologist
. ‘Tell me about Toogood. Drink? Drugs?’

Jacquie was already shaking her head. ‘Astley found
nothing in his system at all. I worked with the man for over a year, Max. In a profession notorious for driving you to one or the other, I never saw him hit more than a Stella. And nobody does drugs in our line – we see too much of what they can do.’

‘So he was sober as a judge?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Obviously, it was the first thing Astley looked for.’

‘Road conditions?’ Maxwell was covering all the angles. ‘Weather?’ He knew all there was to know about people he loved dying on roads. None of it made any sense.

‘The road was dry. It had been a fine day and there was no sign of any grease or obstacle at the point where the car left the road.’

‘So,’ Maxwell brushed Jacquie’s hair back from her face and planted tender little kisses on her temple. ‘Tell me about the car.’

Jacquie took a deep breath again. ‘That news came through only this evening,’ she said and caught the time of Maxwell’s digital clock. ‘Sorry,
last
evening. The police lab had been all over Martin’s Mondeo. There was no doubt about it. Somebody had cut through his brake cables.’

‘Are you quite sure about this, Sylvia?’ James Diamond BSc, MEd was wiping his glasses already and it was only nine thirty-two.

‘I still have friends at Leighford General,’ the school nurse said, looking down at Diamond in his office and
realizing
again what a
small
man he was. ‘Eleanor Fry was brought in by the police at 11.30 yesterday morning. She was pronounced dead. The post mortem has been delayed until tomorrow, but my contacts tell me we’re talking about suicide.’

‘Dear God,’ Diamond threw his glasses onto the pile of reports on his desk. At moments like these, the target
levels
of Nine See Eight seemed particularly irrelevant. ‘Thank you, Sylvia. I know I can rely on you to be discreet about this.’

She looked at the man with contempt. County Hall’s poodle, the Secretary of State’s lapdog, the whipping boy of the Chairman of Governors; why didn’t he
stand up
to people?

‘Yes, of course, Mr Diamond,’ she said and made her exit.

Diamond flicked an intercom switch. ‘Bernard, get in here, will you? We’ve got to find John Fry before the Press get hold of things. No. No. I’m not talking about the Choker girl, dammit. I’m talking about Fry’s wife. She’s killed herself.’

Chapter Seven

Tam Fraser’s nose was buried in a sheaf of geophys reports. Around him stood his team, Douglas Russell to the fore. He looked up in the weird, distorted sunlight of the main tent.

‘People.’ The man with the lion’s mane of snow white hair cleared his throat and expected the world to grind to a halt. ‘I’m Professor Fraser of the University of Wessex. I’d like you to have my condolences over poor David. He may have been your boss, but he was my friend. The university thought the simplest solution to this situation was for me to fill the breach, however temporarily. What’s this?’ He pointed to a page.

‘Er…findings of the resistivity gauge, professor,’ the lanky geophysicist behind him thought it rather an odd question.

‘Mr…Russell, is it?’

The man nodded.

‘You’re in charge of geophys?’

‘That’s right,’ Russell wasn’t on. ‘As you see, we’ve got clear activity down here, near the old riverbed. I was
wondering
whether now wouldn’t be the time to start…’

‘The thing about geophysics,’ Fraser smiled at them all, cutting his man dead, ‘is that it highlights anomalies, but doesn’t actually tell you a damn thing. Have you tried bosing?’

‘Bosing?’ Russell didn’t believe what he was hearing. Some sort of echo-sounding from the Dark Ages?

Fraser looked at him. ‘The old ways are best, Mr Russell,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Believe me, I know. Who are you?’

‘Helen Reader.’ Charlie Buttock was owning up to her
real name at last.

‘Are you a professional or are you just along for the ride?’ Fraser could smell an amateur a mile away.

‘Well, I…I worked on the Seahenge project. Last year I was at Silbury…’

‘Yes,’ Fraser nodded. ‘Rather like the young people being at Glastonbury, isn’t it? Do we have any other trained archaeologists here?’

Two hands went up.

‘You are…?’ the great man moved to face the first.

‘Derek Latymer. Southampton. Class of ’98.’

The man was young, certainly, scrawny, but with the muscle that comes from eight years at the trench-face. He hauled the broad-brimmed hat from his head.

‘More importantly,’ Fraser said, ‘class of degree?’

‘First.’

The professor nodded. ‘Masters?’

‘Ethnoarchaeology. The Pacific Rim.’

‘Hmm,’ Fraser commented. ‘Useful here, then. You?’

‘Robin Edwards,’ the second hand stepped forward. The man was the heavier of the two, stolid even, with a thatch of blonde hair and a complexion made all the ruddier by his days under the sun on the slope of Staple Hill. ‘University of Lancaster. I have a Two One in…’

Fraser’s hand was in the air, stopping him right there. ‘Right, laddie,’ he winked at him, ‘You make the tea, will you? Mr Russell and I have a little re-grouping to do.’

‘Jesus,’ whistled Helen Reader as she trooped out into the sun for another gruelling day at the clay face, clapping the wide hat over her headscarf. A great believer in
protection
, was Helen Reader. ‘What a bastard!’

Latymer chuckled. ‘That he may be,’ he said, ‘but in his day, there was no one to touch him.’

‘In his day?’ she hauled on her gloves and collected her bucket. She pointed to the yawning graves. ‘He must have known some of these people personally. And what is bosing exactly?’

‘Bosing,’ Latymer told her, ‘is a technique Heinrich Schliemann probably used at Troy. You bash the ground with a wooden mallet or a lead-filled canister and listen for the pitch of the echo.’

The woman rocked on her heels in the little pit she’d made her own over the last fortnight. ‘You’ll forgive me for saying this, Derek,’ she said, ‘but you might as well piss into the wind.’

He leaned over her. ‘Don’t knock it, Helen, until you’ve tried it. At least he didn’t ask
you
to make the tea! Now, that’s progress!’

Reports came in sporadically throughout Wednesday. A man matching the description of John Fry had been seen getting on a plane at Heathrow. Almost simultaneously, he was serving himself petrol at services on the M6. An hour later, he was getting off a bus at Heanton Punchardon in Devon. There was no doubt about it, the mobile phone was a godsend to the serial nosy person and the weirdo who wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. Manning it all, with arms flailing like a demented windmill, Alison McCormick was at breaking point by lunchtime.

There is no time in a busy nick for pity, for dwelling on what might have been, for analysing the what ifs. Henry Hall’s team had a murder enquiry in their laps, trying to piece together the shattered life of David Radley. They had a schoolgirl somewhere out there in a naughty world, with or without the sicko who may have abducted her. Now, in the cold, dead form of Eleanor Fry, they had a suicide too.
But looming over it all, the smiling face of Martin Toogood – a colleague, a mate. That got under all their skins, the members of Hall’s team, as they made endless phone calls, cross-referenced hundreds of facts, fought off the press.

At lunchtime, the DCI held his first conference with the ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate. It was the usual circus. Thirty or so of the guardians of the peoples’ morals, defenders of the right to know, champions of the morbidly curious, were crowded into Hall’s police station, trying to read reports upside down, craning their necks to catch computer screens. All babbling together in a cacophony of noisiness. Hall was calm, unflappable, an enigma behind his blank glasses, sitting square and ready behind his blank desk. Jacquie Carpenter was the acceptable face of policing, sitting, appropriately, on the man’s right hand, her lower half tucked well out of sight of the
Daily Sport
man who might be able to snap her getting out of her chair and superimpose somebody else’s bum on the photo. ‘Copper in naked love-romp.’ Brilliant.

‘Now it’s one of your own, Chief Inspector,’ the
Guardian
called, ‘I expect everything else is on hold, is it?’ The political envy of the left was apparent in every syllable.

‘Not at all,’ Hall told him, knowing perfectly well that every other copper in the room wanted to punch the man on the nose. ‘Can I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that this meeting has been called in connection with the death of Dr David Radley.’ It wasn’t a question; it was a
statement
.

‘Are you saying there’s no connection with DS Toogood?’ the
Telegraph
wanted to know, believing in its heart of hearts that there was some ghastly underground conspiracy to decimate the country’s police force.

‘We have no reason to make such a connection at this
stage,’ Hall said. He’d done conferences like this without number. The ladies and gentlemen of the Press were today’s sounding board, the nation’s social conscience, the judge, the jury, and even, half of them wished, the
executioner
.

There were moans and whistles all round. ‘We already know somebody tampered with your boy’s brakes,’ the
Leighford Advertiser
cut to the chase. This man was either a kid on the make, anxious to prove to the big boys of Fleet Street that he was a rising star, or else he was an old hack on his way down, out to prove he still had what it took to be a thoroughly obnoxious bastard. He could have been any age, really. ‘Do you believe in the laws of coincidence, Chief Inspector?’

‘I believe in being given time to get on with my job,’ Hall silenced the hubbub with a harsher line than usual. Jacquie was impressed with that. But then Jacquie was usually impressed by Henry Hall; he knew his job. Martin Toogood had been his colleague, his mate too. ‘That’s all for now.’

Slowly, as the minutes of the afternoon ticked away, they pieced together the last days of the life of Detective Sergeant Martin Jonathan Toogood. Henry Hall sat slumped in his shirt-sleeves, sticky in the suddenly fierce heat of late May. Jacquie Carpenter had the floor, pointing to the whiteboard behind her, directing operations. In front of her, burly coppers sat quietly, smoke curling up from half-smoked ciggies. Unusually, in a murder enquiry, there was no photo of the deceased on the wall. Everybody knew what Martin Toogood looked like – his face was etched in all their minds. And nobody in that tense, tired room wanted to see a photo of him dead.

‘According to Martin’s log, he went to Petworth on Saturday morning. Talked to a Professor Fraser at the
university
. That interview finished at…’ she checked her notes, ‘eleven forty. Then he went to Brighton, to the Camdens Leisure Centre, to talk to another of David Radley’s
colleagues
, a Dr Samantha Welland. He grabbed lunch in the town and made some phone calls. We’ve traced these. One to his mum and dad – apparently he rang them every Saturday. One here to the nick. One – and this is
interesting
– to his garage.’

‘Who’s been on to them?’ Hall asked.

‘I have, guv.’ A thick-set West Indian’s hand was in the air. ‘If he thought there was something wrong with the car, he didn’t tell the garage.’

‘Where is this, Jimmy?’

‘Braddocks in Westbridge Road.’

Hall nodded. He’d used them himself. Careful people. Good track record.

‘No,’ Jimmy went on. ‘He was just booking in an MOT for the end of the month. Routine stuff.’

‘All right. Jacquie?’

‘We don’t know exactly where he was in the afternoon of Saturday, but he’d already arranged to meet with Radley’s widow, Susan, in the evening. That interview lasted a little under an hour. He left her at…eight twenty-three.’

‘What about Sunday?’ Hall moved them all on, anxious to avoid silences. Keep them busy, keep them working. Everybody would feel better for that.

‘Day off,’ Jacquie said. There were some people in the room who vaguely remembered those. ‘As far as we know, Martin collected his papers from the shop at sometime
during
the middle of the morning. They had weekend staff on and the kid was a bit daffy, so he wasn’t quite sure
Remembered a man vaguely answering his description, but if it was Martin, he didn’t pay his outstanding paper bill – that’s still on their books. He had lunch at the Pilgrims, with Tony.’

Tony Campbell shifted in his seat. He was Toogood’s age, but without Toogood’s ambition. There was nothing remotely fast-track about Tony Campbell. He knew it and that was fine. Police forces needed Indians too. It was just an ordinary Sunday, the day before Toogood died, but one Tony Campbell would remember for the rest of his life.

‘Martin rang me about ten,’ he said. ‘Asked if I could come out to play.’

There were a few smiles in the semi-darkness of the room. No one could quite manage a laugh.

‘Anything relevant?’ Hall asked. ‘Over lunch, I mean?’

‘You know what it’s like, guv,’ Campbell said. ‘Trying to remember inconsequentials. Sure, we talked about the Radley case. Shop, you know.’

Everyone knew. It went with the job. They weren’t
supposed
to do it, of course, off duty and in public like that, but what the hey…

‘But we talked about other things too – you know,
putting
the world to rights. Martin had got this holiday planned…’

Everybody shifted uneasily. Unfinished business, plans that would never happen. A career ended. A life cut short. It was all so bloody painful; so bloody pointless.

‘Monday,’ Hall moved them on again.

‘Martin came on duty at nine sharp,’ Jacquie took up the narrative. ‘He worked on various leads all morning here at his desk, went over to the lab early afternoon.’

‘Anybody see him in the canteen?’

‘Said he’d grab something on the hoof, guv.’ Tony
Campbell had waved to the man the last time he’d seen him, on the last day of his life.

‘He was a Cornish pastie man,’ somebody said.

‘Ginsters. Loved them,’ somebody else echoed.

‘All right, people,’ Hall said softly, keeping them on track, away from the memories, the folk tales. He’d be St Martin by nightfall and they all had a job to do. ‘We know he left at eleven forty-eight. That’s too long.’ He was
tapping
a pencil on a notepad. ‘Too long a day.’

‘He was the best bloody driver I knew,’ Tony Campbell said, defending his friend to the last, looking wildly around with tears in his eyes, challenging anybody to say
otherwise
.

‘We know, Tony,’ Hall looked at the man. ‘We know.’

The silence they’d all been dreading fell at last. It felt like a dead weight, suffocating, choking. It made your skin crawl and your throat tighten.

‘Right,’ Hall broke it, bringing the
coup de grâce
; just one of the jobs you do when you’re in charge and everybody’s looking at you for results. Somehow, somehow, to make everything all right. ‘To cases. Tony, you knew Martin
better
than any of us.’

‘Best man at my wedding,’ Campbell confirmed, clearing his throat, welling down.

‘That’s what his wife’s always said,’ somebody shouted. Great. It broke the ice and people laughed for the first time that day, Tony Campbell among them. Hall reminded
himself
to find the joker and give the man a medal.