Maxwell's Grave (16 page)

He had lifted her down the stairs from the utility room and laid her down near her car. That meant bodily strength. Sam Welland was muscular and powerful herself. Two tiny blood droplets from her mouth marked the place and one of her earrings had bounced off under the Volvo where her head had hit the concrete. As the pathologist sheared off her thick, blonde hair, he found the bruising, puffy and soft over the parietal bone. The Saturday visitor had strung up the rope from the hook on the wall and passed it, using the chair, across the beams. The height didn’t help Jacquie at all. Only a particularly impressive member of the Harlem Globetrotters could have achieved that by standing on the floor. The noose was good and strong. Then he hoisted the unconscious woman’s body onto the chair and hauled her upright, securing the loose end of the rope onto its
housing
, watching her squirm as the pressure on her neck brought her to; and the cold and the terror of imminent death would have made every nerve jangle.

Someone strong, Jacquie doodled on her note pad. Two people? What was it Maxwell had said about Martin Toogood’s on-screen doodling? A quote from
Julius Caesar
. That play was all about conspiracy, wasn’t it? Not one man, but several, had murdered the dictator. Was that what she was looking at here? Had two or more people conspired to break the neck of David Radley and drop him off at Leighford, among the already long dead? Had one or
more of them hoisted Sam Welland to eternity? And how many murderers does it take to fix the brake-lines of a nice guy’s car? That wasn’t a joke and Jacquie Carpenter wasn’t laughing.

Peter Maxwell was a fast learner. By four o’clock, when the sun was still a demon, he’d graduated from making tea to washing pots, well, bones, actually. His
de rigueur
archaeologist’s
straw hat was tilted back on his hair and he tried not to keep his head down too much for fear it would start the bleeding again. His back ached and he felt such a prat in the pink washing-up gloves Tam Fraser insisted he wore.

‘My body is a temple,’ he groaned as Derek Latymer brought him another sieve of goodies.

‘Long day, Mr Maxwell?’

‘Is it always like this, in archaeology, I mean?’

‘Ooh, no,’ Latymer grinned, wiping the sweat from his forehead and parking his Indiana Jones hat on the corner of a chair. ‘Sometimes you get to squat for hours under the blazing sun, getting blisters all over your back and
shoulders
. That’s when you’re not knee deep in freezing water, of course, with the rain coming onto your anorak like a fucking waterfall. You’re new at this, aren’t you?’

‘Ssh!’ Maxwell winked, putting his finger somewhere where he thought his lips ought to be. ‘Don’t tell the boss. He thinks I’m a whizzo-wheeze at Saxon cemeteries.’

‘I try not to tell him anything,’ Latymer said, flopping down into a canvas chair and crossing his booted legs on the table. He whipped out a hip flask from his shorts. ‘Hair of the dog?’

Maxwell shook his head. ‘I thought you people were all Friends of the Earth,’ he said, ‘not spraying your armpits and so on, so that the world can be saved.’

Latymer snorted. ‘You’re mixing me up with the sort of enviro-archaeologist who gives a fuck.’ He took a swig.

‘Did you know David Radley well?’ Maxwell asked.

‘I wouldn’t say I knew him,’ Latymer said, brushing caked mud off his forearms. ‘He was a bloody good
archaeologist
. I was privileged, briefly, to work with him.’

‘How did you get the job?’

‘Oh, I asked for it,’ Latymer said. ‘Radley was a legend in archaeology – in the same way old Fraser used to be 200 years ago. I suppose I saw it as a step on the ladder. Still is, in fact. But there’s something odd about this site.’

‘Odd?’

‘Yes. Oh, Saxon cemeteries aren’t my field, but, I mean, what’s it doing here? You’re a local man, aren’t you? Historian and all that?’

‘Of sorts,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well,’ Latymer leaned forward, resting his trowelling arm on his knee. ‘I know the Romans came to Fishbourne, but did the Saxons come to Leighford?’

‘Funny you should ask that,’ Maxwell said. ‘It’s not at all documented.’ Maxwell had, in his weaker moments,
dabbled
in the local museum, smiling at the unsavoury chaps and brash, ancestor-seeking Americans who clogged the microfiche in the Leighford Records Office every summer.

‘And there’s something else.’ Latymer was into his stride now, as the Scotch warmed his cockles. ‘The ash grove.’

Maxwell peered out through the open tent flap. He could see it in the sharp shadows against the sunlit spoil heaps, the stand of grey-barked trees where they’d found David Radley. ‘What about it?’

‘We dug a slit trench there on the first day. Geophys were going shit-nuts about it. But David wouldn’t let us do any follow up. Said that could wait. Seemed to me that’s where
we should have started. If this is a church site, that’s where the building was likely to be.’

‘Have you talked to Fraser about it?’

‘The mad professor? He won’t have his precious wee David questioned for a moment. Says we’ll get to it
eventually
. But as I understand it, we’ve only got a week before the bulldozers move in for the golf course and that’ll
effectively
shut us down.’

‘Archaeological differences, eh?’ Maxwell clicked his tongue.

Latymer got to his feet, pocketing the flask and plonking his hat back on his head. ‘Take my advice,’ he said. ‘You stick to washing bones, mate. At least the buggers can’t bite back.’

‘Tea?’ Peter Maxwell handed a mug that cheered to Helen Reader.

‘Oh, you darling man.’ She was rubbing her heels, sitting on the tail gate of her estate, trying to get some feeling back into her feet.

‘Hometime, eh?’ he smiled at her.

‘Thank God. I thought David Radley was a hard
taskmaster
, but Scotland’s Gauleiter over there…’

Tam Fraser was ordering people about in all directions, hands on hips, silver-haired chest sprouting out from the crisp white shirt he wore. All he needed was the whip and the boots and he’d have been D.W. Griffith on the
Intolerance
set.

‘What are your thoughts, Helen?’ Maxwell asked. ‘The murders, I mean?’

She sighed. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Aren’t you…afraid?’

‘Afraid? Good God, no. Why should I be afraid?’

Why indeed? Maxwell looked at the woman. She had biceps that would put many a man to shame and her thighs looked as though they could crack walnuts. ‘Two of the team are dead,’ Maxwell reminded her.

‘Mr Maxwell, I’m what you might call an archaeological groupie. I don’t have an official qualification to my name. Ooh, you make a decent drop of tea.’

He bowed low.

‘But I’ve been on more digs than you’ve written school reports.’

Maxwell doubted that particular piece of hyperbole.

‘And when you’ve been around dead bodies for so long, this sort of thing doesn’t faze you. I don’t flatter myself that I’m much of a target. Who’d want to kill me?’

‘I suspect that David Radley and Samantha Welland would have said something similar,’ he said.

‘Sam’s lifestyle,’ the Groupie said, ‘not healthy.’ She tucked an errant lock of hair back under her headscarf. ‘I don’t want to sound too forty years ago,’ she said, ‘but not everyone is as tolerant of these things as we would like.’

‘Are you talking about the fact that Ms Welland was a
lesbian
?’

Helen Reader bridled at the word, looking rapidly about her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I ought to be comfortable with it and I’m not. Not terribly PC at the moment, I know, to be homophobic, but there it is. We can’t help the way we’re made.’

‘Surely,’ Maxwell reasoned, ‘that goes for Sam too.’

‘It’s not for me to say.’ She finished her tea with a giant swig for mankind. ‘As you said, Mr Maxwell. Hometime.’

‘Maxwell!’ It was Tam Fraser. ‘You got a minute?’

The two Great Men sat in the snug of the Kettle that night, Maxwell getting outside a large Southern Comfort, Fraser tackling a double Scotch. The Englishman was paying.

‘How well do you know Detective Chief Inspector Hall?’ Fraser had shed his director’s gear of the day and was back in a tweed jacket again, his lion’s mane of silver hair back-combed, his cravat crisp against his white shirt.

‘Not as well as I’d like and better than I need to,’ came the answer.

Fraser sat upright, frowning. ‘Sounds like a bloody Saxon riddle, man,’ he laughed. ‘Pass it by me again.’

‘I’ve had some dealings with the chief inspector,’ he explained. ‘The girl I love works for him.

‘Does she now? Well, that’s handy.’

‘It can be,’ Maxwell said.

A roar went up from the domino crowd in the corner. ‘This the place to be, is it?’ Fraser asked. ‘In downtown Leighford?’

‘You wanted somewhere where we wouldn’t be
disturbed
,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘This is the only pub the grocks don’t know about.’

‘Grocks?’

‘Grockles,’ he explained. ‘Tourists. It’s a rather charming, onomatopoeic South Coast term for the chattering noise the annoying bastards make. As one of the few people in Leighford who doesn’t make my living off them, I can afford a little contempt. Of course, Leighford Cemetery’s quieter – mine, that is, not yours. Why do you want to know about Hall?’

‘I think the man’s grossly incompetent.’

‘Ah, now, I fear I’d have to disagree with you there. Henry and I have had our minor run-ins over the years, but he knows his job.’

‘So how come he’s not taking me seriously?’

‘I don’t follow.’

Fraser looked around him. The domino gang were engrossed in their game in one corner, two old bags were putting the world to rights in another, probably comparing that nice Mr Chamberlain with that unpleasant, war-
mongering
bastard, Churchill. The barman looked as if he’d died years ago. ‘The Sepulchre Society of Sussex,’ he said.

‘Come again?’ Maxwell winced as a slug of the amber nectar hit his lips. Perhaps alcohol wasn’t the wisest choice with a face like his.

‘Douglas Russell received a letter four days ago. It came from an organisation called The Sepulchre Society of Sussex and it warned him – all of us really – off the dig.’

‘Did it, now?’ Maxwell was all ears. ‘What did it say?’

‘That’s just it,’ Fraser sighed. ‘I’m buggered if I can remember. I gave it to DCI Hall.’

‘Who didn’t take it seriously?’ Maxwell was not
that
surprised
. He’d had a similar bum’s rush from Woman Policeman McCormick.

‘Looked at it like it was my bloody shopping list,’ Fraser said. ‘I thought it was a pretty important clue, in the scheme of things. David, I mean. Now Samantha.’

‘Doesn’t explain Martin Toogood, does it?’ Maxwell was talking to himself, really.

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind,’ Maxwell shook his head. The waters were muddy enough already. ‘What did Douglas make of the
letter
?’

‘Well, I think he was pretty shaken. You’d have to ask him. What’s disturbing is the way these people can reach us. How, for instance, did they know Douglas was staying at the Quinton Hotel? How did they know where to find
David? Samantha? I’m not easily rattled, Maxwell, but I have to admit, these people have got me peering round
corners
.’

‘What’s their beef, then?’ the Head of Sixth Form asked, ‘the Sepulchre Society?’

Fraser shrugged. ‘God knows. Politically correct
claptrap
. Leave our dead alone, that sort of hogwash. You’d think, wouldn’t you, in our spectacularly secular country, that sort of bigotry would be dead and gone.’

‘And you haven’t come across this group before?’

‘Never. As a local man, I thought perhaps you’d know something… You know, petitions, loonies stoning the Town Hall, that sort of thing.’

‘Might pay a visit to our local friendly crime
correspondent
,’ Maxwell pondered.

‘Could you do that?’ Fraser asked. ‘As a personal favour, I mean? I’m responsible for my people, Maxwell. And since the local
gendarmerie
are doing fuck all – oh, begging your fiancée’s pardon, of course.’

Maxwell gave a smile his best shot. ‘I know what this is all about,’ he said. ‘It’s because my bone-washing is such crap, isn’t it? You want me off the site.’

‘Man, man,’ Fraser smiled. ‘If I wanted you off the site, believe me, laddie, your feet wouldn’t touch the gravel. Is it your shout?’

Chapter Eleven

This was something Alison McCormick wasn’t looking forward to. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d been a confused kid herself, hating her school, her parents, herself. Somebody had been around to sort her out, hold her hand, put her straight. Had been, in the time-honoured American phrase, there for her. So here she was, this Tuesday
morning
, sitting in the dark, dismal lounge of the little railway cottage in downtown Leighford, being there for somebody else. Opposite her sat a sulky Michaela Reynolds, pouting under her studded nose. She was still wearing a skimpy top that showed her studded navel. At least, the girl had a sense of symmetry. To her left, equally petulant and with a
bandaged
left hand, her old man, Shaun, complete with crucifix earring and cropped head. At least he had had the sense of dignity to put on a shirt. Of Mrs Reynolds, there was no sign. She was, to quote both members of her family, ‘down the pub’, although they both stressed she was working. Pulling pints or pulling customers was not discussed.

‘We know you know where Annette is, Michaela,’ Alison McCormick was saying. ‘You owe it to her to tell us.’ The Leighford CID machine had growled into action. Maxwell had told Jacquie; Jacquie had told Alison. All they needed now was for the cow to tell the dairymaid.

‘It’s no good talking to her,’ her dad grunted. ‘She’s always been the same. Stubborn as all get out. Why don’t you tell ‘em, you stupid little…’

DC Dave Garstang had met men like Shaun Reynolds before. They beat their wives, their sons, their daughters. They worked if they had to and spent most of their wages on themselves. Saturday night it was down the Sports and Social with the lads, get trolleyed, then home to give the
wife one, either a shag or a good kicking, depending on the mood he was in. He was one of those blokes, an old
sergeant
had once told him, who ought to report to the nick every Thursday for a bit of a smacking. Dave Garstang had never known those days, but he couldn’t help basking in a certain glow of their nostalgia.

‘Why don’t we pop into the kitchen, Mr Reynolds?’ he said. ‘Let the ladies talk? You can tell me all about your hand.’

‘My…? Oh, yeah. Yeah, all right, then.’ Shaun Reynolds wasn’t a snitch. But that poncey bastard with the stupid bow tie and even stupider hat had got right up his nose. Or was it vice versa? Yeah, he’d tell this copper all about that. He pointed to Alison. ‘I’m only next door, all right? You lay a finger on my girl…’

Alison watched him go, Garstang’s hand firmly on his shoulder. She waited for the door to close. ‘Michaela,’ the policewoman leaned forward. ‘Did Annette go off with Mr Fry, from school?’

The girl looked at her under sullen lids. This one could go either way. ‘Might of,’ she said.

‘When was this?’ Alison saw her way in.

‘Dunno. Last week. Week before. Whenever.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Look,’ Alison found this difficult. ‘If Annette has gone off with Mr Fry, she’s in trouble.’

‘Why?’

‘Have I got to spell it out?’ the policewoman asked. ‘She could get pregnant. Or worse.’

‘How do you mean, worse?’

‘What if she annoyed him,’ Alison asked. ‘Said the wrong thing? Did the wrong thing? He’s got a bit of a short fuse.
What if he lashed out?’ Alison chose her moment. ‘You know what that’s like, don’t you?’

Michaela didn’t answer. She just stared dead ahead at the flickering, silent TV screen.

‘Michaela, you know Mr Fry’s wife is dead, don’t you?’

‘That’s got nothing to do with Annette,’ the girl said defiantly, her face twisted, her eyes flashing.

‘Maybe not,’ Alison leaned back, giving the girl space. ‘But he doesn’t even know yet. He doesn’t know she’s dead.’

‘You’d better find him, then,’ Michaela flounced.

‘We’re trying,’ Alison told her, trying to keep her own cool. ‘But you’re not helping.’

‘All right,’ the girl shouted. ‘All right. I dunno where he is, all right? She like texted me last Monday. She said she was in London. In a bed and breakfast. I spoke to her on the phone the next day.’

Breakthrough. ‘And how did she sound?’ Alison wanted to know.

‘Okay, I guess,’ Michaela shrugged. ‘She said it wasn’t like she expected.’

‘What wasn’t?’

‘Going away. Getting away from the Barlichway.’

‘That’s why she went?’

Michaela nodded. ‘You been to her place?’

Alison shook her head. ‘No. But I know the estate.’

‘Well, her mum’s a right cow. You’ve seen my dad – he’s got a temper on him, sure, but he loves us; me and my
little
bruvver. But Mrs Choker, she’s just a scrubber. Annette don’t know who her dad is to this day. Different dad every weekend. And more than one of ’em’s tried it on with her.’

‘Had sex, you mean?’

Michaela nodded. ‘She told me about it once,’ she said.

‘She doesn’t have to go back there, Michaela,’ Alison told her. ‘We’ve got hostels, places where she’ll be safe. She didn’t have to run away with Mr Fry.’

‘Mr Fry?’ Michaela frowned. ‘Who said she was with him?’

The people of the
Advertiser
had seen it all, of course. Prize peas the size of a goat’s testicles, a kid with a saucepan stuck on his head and, a long time before the local paper was even called the
Advertiser
, a fleeting visit from Karl Marx. Even so, the sight before them that Tuesday lunchtime was odd. A man in a tweed hat pushed on top of a thatch of barbed wire hair, with a face that looked as though it had gone through a mangle, sitting with his head on sideways. Had they been, like Peter Maxwell, film buffs, they might have been reminded of Vanessa Redgrave, the very un-nunlike Mother Superior in
The Devils
. As it was, they were simply reminded of a non-technical person.

‘Er…you
can
tilt it, you know.’ One of the ladies of the front office hovered by his elbow. ‘Just turn this knob.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, raising his hat. ‘Always been a bit of a mystery to me, microfiche.’

Newsprint scudded past him on the screen in the
Advertiser
’s front office, with its smell of coffee and its appalling spider plants.

‘What is it you’re looking for, exactly?’ the busybody woman wondered.

‘Damned if I know,’ he sighed. ‘Ah. Mr James?’

‘I’m Reg James.’ The man before him was a shambles. He had just crashed his way from the inner office, through a pair of disreputable double doors. He had a piece of
newspaper
, aptly enough, stuck to a shaving wound on his chin.

‘Peter Maxwell.’ The Head of Sixth Form stood up to
shake his hand. ‘Can I have a word?’

‘Jesus,’ the journalist said, staring at Maxwell’s face. ‘I’m due in court at two. Come on up. You can watch me eat my sandwich.’

‘Thanks,’ and the two of them disappeared through the double doors to ascend the spiral twist to the offices on the first floor. More smells of coffee, more spider plants, but this time, the carpet was buried under piles of papers,
documents
and boxes. Phones rang incessantly and computer screens flickered.

‘Want a coffee?’ James asked.

‘Love one,’ Maxwell told him. ‘Milk and two, please.’

‘Ah. Black, I’m afraid. Janice, have you seen my
sweeteners
?’

A girl with long blonde hair shook her head without looking up from her computer.

‘Thank you, Janice,’ James said, rolling his eyes
heavenward
. He leaned forward to Maxwell. ‘Came as a YTS girl eleven years ago. Can’t get rid of her.’ He was an unmade bed kind of a man, with sparse, straw-coloured hair and incisors that threatened to cross each other – or anybody looking at them funny. Maxwell remembered that William Bonney aka Billy the Kid looked not unlike Reginald James and he killed three of his four men because they laughed at his teeth. Did the infamous outlaw, Maxwell wondered briefly, have a piece of newspaper stuck to his chin, too?

He rummaged in a stash of less-than-savoury mugs and found one for Peter Maxwell. It was probably green. He poured something dark from the percolator on the desk. ‘Right,’ he passed the coffee to the Head of Sixth Form. ‘What can I…oh, hang on. Sardine paste?’ he proffered a limp sandwich, from a polythene bag. The thing sagged even further in the stale air of the newspaper office

‘Thanks, no.’ Maxwell did his best to smile.

‘You’re right,’ James hurled the effort into the nearest bin. ‘No imagination, Mrs James. Pleasant woman, up to a point, but no imagination. Of all the unspeakably erotic delights of Mainly Buns in the High Street, she has to pick sardines. So, we’ll skip lunch…again. Mr…Maxwell, is it? Your phone call said you needed help. Though I should point out,’ he peered more closely at the man’s face, ‘we don’t do unsubstantiated assault stories. Whoever put one on you will have to be contacted too. And if it’s not really a police matter…oh, mother of God!’ He suddenly
grimaced
. ‘Janice? When did you make this?’

‘Ascension Day.’ Janice still didn’t look up, but she was clearly not the dumb blonde she appeared to be.

‘Great. So, the face…’

‘No, no,’ Maxwell thought it best to forego the coffee and he put the mug down. ‘The face is by-the-bye. Have you, in all your long years at the Print-Face, Mr James, come across The Sepulchre Society of Sussex?’

James frowned. ‘Sepulchre Society of Sussex? It’s an
alliterateur’s
wet dream, certainly, but I can’t say… Hang on.’ And he wheeled his swivel chair across to a filing cabinet with a series of squeaks and clicks. ‘Sepulchre, sepulchre…’ he muttered as his fingers dabbled through files without number. ‘Look at that,’ he tutted. ‘The paperless office. Bloody marvellous, isn’t it? Seb Coe. Whoops, that should be in the aristocracy file now, of course. Selbourne. Jesus, that boring crap by Gilbert White. Why
did
we print that? Semen. Ah, quite a bit on that, unpleasantly enough. Serial killers. Oh, I remember this. Pretty good, even if I say it myself. No, sorry.’ He slammed the drawer shut. ‘Nothing on Sepulchre. It’s probably some rather downbeat antiquarian group. Having a reunion, are they? Sort of
cremation barbecue?’

Only Reg James was laughing.

‘I think it’s a little more serious than that. What do you know of the dig at Leighford? On Staple Hill?’

‘Aha!’ James’ face lit up. ‘Now you’re talking my kind of language.’ He whipped out a notepad from nowhere. ‘Mind if I make a few notes?’

Maxwell quietly took the pencil out of the man’s hand. ‘I’d much rather you didn’t,’ he smiled.

‘All right.’ James leaned back, the pad discarded, and
cradled
his knee. ‘Off the record, is it?’

‘Two people connected with the dig are dead.’

‘Indeed they are,’ James said. ‘I attended DCI Hall’s Press Conference, of course. Didn’t exactly spill the beans, did he?’

‘I don’t know,’ Maxwell said. ‘I wasn’t there.’

‘Wait a minute. Two bodies.’ James was leaning forward now. ‘Just so we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet – you’re talking Dr David Radley and DS Martin Toogood.’

And Dr Samantha Welland makes three, Maxwell thought, but no one had gone public on that one yet and he kept it to himself. ‘I thought the
Advertiser
might have gone for a scoop on this,’ he said. ‘Juicy stuff for you boys, isn’t it?’

‘I hope that’s not a criticism,’ the journalist chortled.

‘Not at all,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m sure the police are delighted. They’re always telling me how the members of the Fourth Estate are under their feet and up their arses at the same time.’

James narrowed his piggy eyes and clicked his fingers. ‘I know who you are now,’ he said. ‘You’re Peter Maxwell!’

‘Very good,’ the Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘I think I told you that in the outer office and on the phone.’

‘No, no,’ James was chuckling, ‘You’re
the
Peter Maxwell. Head of Sixth Form at that venerable centre of excellence Leighford High by day, supersleuth by night. You’re the Jane Marple of the South Coast.’

‘Dear me,’ sighed Maxwell, Joan Hickson to a tee. ‘How preternaturally stupid of me.’

‘That’s bloody great!’ James laughed.

‘Personally,’ Maxwell wobbled his chin as well as he could, only having the one and given the extent of his bruising. ‘I preferred Margaret Rutherford.’

‘So did I!’ agreed James. ‘No, you’re a legend at my local,’ he said. ‘Ever since I saw you in the Grimond’s School case. The way you demolished that QC wanker in court. I’m surprised he didn’t hang up his wig after that. Most fun Winchester’s had in a very long time.’

‘Flattering, Mr James,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘but that was then.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, this is a turn up,’ the journalist sat,
grinning
broadly at his man. ‘DCI Hall know you’re on this one?’ His demeanour suddenly changed.

‘He might have an inkling.’ The Head of Sixth Form said. ‘What headway have the Fourth Estate made?’

‘Well, to put it in a nutshell, fuck all.’ He glanced up, hoping to have rattled Janice’s cage. She hadn’t moved. ‘No, at the press call Hall might as well have told us it was a sunny day in June and all the pixies had come out to play. Puts a whole new slant on “No comment” that bloke.’