Maxwell's Grave (27 page)

‘What this is, Terence – nice to see you again, by the way – is your old History teacher removing two under-age girls from the permissive and unhealthy influence of what your employers laughingly call a night club. Now you and I – and your employers – know that on the grounds of
underage
drinking, under-age sex and the dealing of dodgy
substances
, I could close you all down in half an hour. So, is that the road we go down? Or do I just walk away for a quiet little chat with the girlies here?’

The gum-chewer hesitated, blinking first at Maxwell, then his oppo, then the girls. ‘Oh, well, put it that way, Mr Maxwell – you have a nice night.’ And he let the man’s lapels drop.

‘You too, Terence,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Give my love to
your mum.’ He glanced across at the oppo. ‘Lewis,’ he
nodded
. ‘Got the old trouble sorted out now?’ Maxwell jerked his head in the direction of the lad’s genitals. It never failed.

The Head of Sixth Form had just reached the bottom of Dante’s steps when a car pulled up and a head appeared out of a window. ‘Can I give you a lift?’ it said.

‘Well, yes, Count,’ Maxwell said. ‘There were a lot of tears and there was a lot of screaming. And that was just Dave Garstang. I don’t believe he just happened to be passing, do you?’ The Great Man had slipped off his shoes and his socks and lay sprawled on his settee as Tuesday night ebbed away and Wednesday morning hovered on the Leighford horizon. ‘No,’ he sighed, sipping his Southern Comfort, ‘I think our DC Garstang was either casing Dante’s or he was following me – both perfectly legitimate pastimes, of course, if you’re a copper. But you’re quite right, he may well have saved my bacon.’ His eyes swivelled sideways to look at the cat. The bastard hadn’t moved. Maxwell had mentioned the ‘b’ word and the bastard hadn’t moved. Normally he’d have been up on his haunches, doing his meerkat impersonation and purring loudly as the smell of sizzling rashers hit his nostrils. Maxwell thought it safe to continue. ‘I can imagine the
Advertiser
headlines, lovingly assembled by my number one fan Reg James. Oh, he’d hate himself for doing it, but he’d do it all the same. “Pervy Teacher in Night Club Nymphet Rap” – “Three in a Bed at Leighford High”. Young Garstang saved me from a fate worse than death, not to mention the reputations of two luscious lovelies of Year Ten. Viz and to wit, Miss Annette Choker and Miss Michaela Reynolds. Yes, one of them has been AWOL for a couple of weeks and yes, the father of the other one rearranged my face recently – your point
being?’

Metternich rolled sideways, in that sudden and pointless way that cats do, and lay on the carpet as though dead.

‘It’s actually quite bizarre, Count, and more complicated than I realized. And the hell of it is, I was wrong. There; I’ve admitted it. Not my finest hour, I concede. The great Mad Max!’ He toyed for a moment with hurling the
crystal
at the wall, but such flamboyant gestures were, in the end, pointless and quite expensive, really. ‘Let me take you through it,’ he said, resting his glass on his chest and closing his eyes. ‘When Sylvia Matthews came to see me – yes, you do remember Sylv. She’s the school nurse, for God’s sake – stick with the plot. When she showed me John Fry’s note, I made a wrong deduction, Count. Yes, me. Max Almighty. I assumed – as did Sylv, I’ll grant you but remember, it’s never a lady’s fault – I assumed that Fry was knocking off young Annette of Ten Eff Ell. Oh, you wouldn’t understand, Count, in your physical condition – you, poor bugger, don’t get these urges. But some do, you see. The note talked about…’ and he switched on his total recall, ‘…it said “See you tomorrow night, usual place.” No, no, quite,’ Maxwell nodded, though the cat hadn’t moved. ‘Fair’s fair. So far, so innocuous. But then, you see, the damning line. “There’ll be enough room, we can all have some fun. No knickers.” Well, exactly. I had the two and two and I made them make four. In fact, of course, they should have made five.’

He glanced again at the cat. If the beast had been purring, he’d certainly stopped now. Maxwell
was
beginning to sound a little like Jonathan Creek. ‘What threw me, of course, and confirmed me in my own stupidity, was John Fry denying it like that. When I went to see him, if you remember, he denied the writing on the note was his. That
was because his wife, poor old Eleanor, was there. If only he’d run after me or taken me aside the next day and
explained
…well, we’re talking horses and stable doors, I know.’

Maxwell reached down to the bottle of Southern Comfort on the carpet. He freshened his glass. ‘Dave Garstang and I settled the girls down between us. I was Nasty Policeman; he was Nice. Gave them both a soothing ciggie, which I thought was going a bit far. I was all for crushing their knuckles in a Corby trouser-press. You see, what we’re talking about here, Count, is one very small coincidence and it led me, not to mention half the county’s police force, on a wild goose chase of epic proportions. John Fry wasn’t having a thing with Annette Choker; he was having a thing with Alison McCormick. That’s right – little dumpy copper out of Leighford nick. Annette came into the picture by earning herself a few bob. Turns out that Alison’s got a baby – whether it’s actually John Fry’s or not, I don’t know. But Annette was her babysitter. No one at the nick seems to know about this – Garstang was certainly flabbergasted when Annette broke the news tonight. So…poor Eleanor Fry may have killed herself for all the wrong reasons. If she thought hubbie was playing away with a schoolgirl, she
was
wrong. But he was playing away, and perhaps that, in itself, was too much for her, I don’t know.’ He sighed, resuming the position on the
settee
again, ‘I didn’t know the woman. My guess – and it’s really time I stopped doing that, isn’t it? – is that the Frys’ marriage had been on the rocks for some time. He was going under too – stress of the situation, hard time at work, the complication of Alison – whatever. It sent him over the edge and he wandered away. I wonder if we’ll ever know where he went and why.’

Metternich rolled upright, twitched an ear and played dead on the other side.

‘Annette on the other hand did an altogether more
prosaic
flit. She told Garstang and me she met this boy on the Front – Giuseppe. He’s from Walthamstow, by the way, before you ask. They eloped together – my word, not hers – and shacked up in a bedsit somewhere in Grotland. No doubt it was love’s young dream for a couple of days, away from tarty mum, moody sister, niffy-nappy sibling and yapping dog. But, as I’m sure you’re aware, Count, you can take the girl out of the Barlichway Estate, but you can’t take the Barlichway…yes, well; complete the missing words. She dumped Giuseppe – although, of course, he begged her to stay – and she seems to have been sleeping ever rougher until she came home last night. Good of her mother to let us all know, wasn’t it? The woman gave her daughter a belt in the gob – I’m quoting here, by the way – and grounded her. Which is why I’ll bet she wasn’t in school yesterday and why she was in an over-eighteen nightclub earlier tonight.’

Maxwell took a sip of the amber nectar. ‘Good bloke, Dave Garstang. He took the girls to the station, handed them over to a Woman Policeman and sent a couple of
uniforms
around to the Choker and Reynolds establishments. I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall in either place really. So, there you have it. A mystery, certainly, but not the one I imagined.’

He sat up suddenly. ‘The thing of it is, Count,’ he said, ‘is threefold. I was wrong – and that mistake, I am acutely aware, may have contributed to a woman taking her own life. We still have absolutely no idea where Alison McCormick is…’ He looked the standoffish animal in the smouldering, green eyes, ‘And worse,’ he heard the break in
his own voice, ‘I don’t know what’s happened to my Jacquie.’

By now, he realized, he didn’t need her any longer. He’d spent time with her, asking questions, going over and over the same points. She clearly knew nothing. And she was wasting his food, his water, even his air. It was time for her to go. He checked his watch in the half light on the spiral stairs. Half-past one. It might as well be now. He’d go to work on the other one tomorrow, when it was daylight. The other one was cleverer, more experienced. She’d been the real danger all along – why hadn’t he seen that? He took the spade from the corner, unhooked the iron door and slid it back. He saw her eyes widen above the tape stretched taut across her mouth, saw the tears glisten wet on the cheeks. Then he swung the spade sideways,
thudding
dully against her skull. He kicked her legs out of the way and locked the door again. He didn’t have time for
disposal
now. This one was complicated. And there were things he needed. Firewood. Matches. A little petrol.

Year Thirteen were sitting their European History exam that morning as Peter Maxwell pedalled like a thing
possessed
over the flyover, making for the dig. Last night was like a dream, yet he knew he hadn’t slept. He saw Jacquie Carpenter’s face wherever he looked – in the clocktower as he cycled past it, bobbing with the dinghies in the marina, swaying with the hanging baskets along the Front. She was crying, silently as in an old black and white. And his heart, as always, went out to her. But his heart would not be enough.

He’d been on his way to the Quinton when he’d caught sight of Michaela and Annette. And by the time he’d
extricated
them from Dante’s and he and Garstang had got the
truth out of them, it was too late to go anywhere. But now, he was on the road, burning up the miles and the rubber, putting things to rights. Surrey sprayed gravel as he swung into the elegant curved drive of Messrs Cahill and Lieberman, Property Developers. He threw the bike to the ground and dashed up the front steps, two at a time, and Anthony Cahill’s secretary was in the act of asking who he was, when Peter Maxwell kicked open the door marked Managing Director and stood there, a piece of paper in his hand.

Cahill was sitting behind his desk, mouth open, hand poised over the intercom. Maxwell slammed the door behind him as a terrified secretary began dialling frantically for Security.

‘Mr Maxwell,’ Cahill slimed. ‘You seem a little hot and bothered.’

The Head of Sixth Form threw the paper down in front of his man.

‘What’s this?’

‘You tell me,’ he said.

Cahill clasped his hands quietly. He’d dealt with madmen before. You just had to stay calm. ‘It’s a drawing,’ he said.

‘And not a very good one.’

‘Like Herr Hitler,’ Maxwell growled, ‘I wasn’t quite good enough to get into the Vienna Academy of Fine Art. Of what is it a drawing?’ Maxwell was standing in front of him now.

‘Er…there you have me.’

Red mist. Peter Maxwell was not a violent man. He was actually a very gentle one. But the woman he loved had been taken, abducted in broad daylight by a psychopath. The gloves were off. He launched himself at Cahill,
grabbing
both lapels and hauling him upright.

‘You know what this is, you money-grabbing creep,’ he snarled. ‘And I want the original. Now.’

Cahill’s eyelids flickered. The colour had drained from his face. To his horror, he realised that Maxwell’s kick of the door had locked it and all Security could do was
hammer
ineffectually on the outside.

‘What’s the matter, Mr Cahill?’ Maxwell growled. ‘No goons today? No heavies to beat up harmless metal
detectives
in anoraks?’

‘My heart…’ Cahill had gone a very funny colour.

‘My arse!’ Maxwell snapped and slapped the man around the face. ‘Where is it?’

‘In…in the safe.’

Maxwell relented, then pulled the man from behind his desk. ‘Open it.’ Cahill needed no second bidding. He crouched, fumbling and shaking until the safe door swung back. The knocking on the office woodwork was
thunderous
. ‘Take it out,’ Maxwell ordered.

The Managing Director of Cahill and Lieberman, Property Developers slid out a slim, rectangular block of marble, perhaps two feet long. Maxwell looked at it on Cahill’s opulent Axminster.

‘
Hic jacet Alfredus Rex
,’ he read before the marble sheared off and the inscription ran out. He squatted on his haunches, his face inches from Cahill’s. ‘Now, you tell those rather loud gentlemen in Security to go away,’ he said. ‘And leave you and me to have a nice little chat.’

‘They’ll have called the police by now,’ Cahill warned.

‘Good,’ Maxwell sat back on Cahill’s opulent leather sofa. ‘That’s good, Anthony. It will save me having to tell Henry Hall all about it.’

Chapter Nineteen

Derek Latymer was in his trench when they came for him. He was furious that there was still no sign of that old idiot Fraser. Today was the day the were supposed to go, at last, into the ash grove, to look for the church. The professor had cleared it with the police and the yellow, fluttering tape had come down. The chain saws were lying idle near the dumper trucks ready to roar into life.

‘Oh no,’ Helen Reader’s shoulders sagged at the sight. ‘Not again.’ A large white patrol car prowled along the site fence before rolling to a halt by the gate. Two suits got out. One was a man she’d seen before, talked to, had been
interrogated
by. That one was DCI Henry Hall. Tall, square, bland, unknowable. The other she didn’t know either, but in the literal sense. They both flashed their warrant cards at all and sundry.

‘Mr Latymer,’ Henry Hall ignored the others. ‘This is DC Campbell. Can we have a word?’

Secretly, they all longed to creep nearer to the main tent, to use their softest brushes rather than their loudest
trowels
and to rest their tired, sweating heads against the rough canvas. But nobody wanted to be first and so they kept away, trowelling, measuring, recording: Douglas Russell, Robin Edwards, Helen Reader, looking for still more
bodies
in the noon-day heat. Extreme archaeology.

Tony Campbell dropped the marble slab heavily down on the dusty table in front of him, the one he and the DCI had taken from Anthony Cahill’s office not an hour ago. The policemen were still standing, the archaeologist sitting down.

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us all about this, Mr Latymer,’ Hall said softly.

Latymer looked up at him, the square, silent,
sanctimonious
bastard. What did he know about archaeology? About anything, really? He was just a thick copper. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

Hall pulled back the canvas-backed chair and sat down opposite his man. ‘The grave of Alfred the Great,’ he said. ‘Let’s start with that, shall we?’

Latymer smiled. ‘A scam, of course.’ He raised his knee and cradled it with both hands, rocking back in his chair. ‘And it almost worked, didn’t it? And on more levels than one – that was something of a bonus.’

‘From the beginning?’ Hall was patience itself.

‘The beginning was David Radley,’ Latymer scowled. ‘The Alpha and Omega of archaeology. Everything the man touched turned to pure gold. Did you know he was the youngest Professor of Archaeology in the world? Broke record after record. He couldn’t fail. Or could he?’

‘You were jealous of him?’ Hall said.

‘Oh, please, Inspector,’ Latymer said. ‘Don’t belittle it with such a petty, demeaning motive. Radley was so smug, so holier-than-thou. I wasn’t fit to walk in the shadow of the patronising bastard. So…I thought – right. Let’s see, shall we? Let’s test this paragon of brilliance. Let’s see what he knows.’

‘You planted the evidence?’ Hall nodded at the marble.

‘It was so ludicrously simple,’ Latymer laughed. ‘It worked like a bloody dream. Some local had found some bones, so they set up the site. I was supposed to
co-ordinate
the dig and then I thought…why not go for it? All my academic life I’ve had David Fucking Radley rammed down my throat. “When you grow up, you’ll realize how good he is”, “It’s such a privilege to work with a man like this”, “He is, of course, a genius.” Christ, it makes you want to puke.
So I hit upon a cunning plan,’ – it wasn’t a very good Baldrick, but it had to be said – ‘Let’s test him, I thought. Let’s see how good this genius really is. I got some period marble from my own university and got a local stonemason to inscribe what you see there. It was silly, really. Bit like a typed edition of the Domesday Book or the watch of William the Conqueror. Nobody’d fall for it in a million years. The idea was to discredit Radley, of course. If just one of his minions on the dig – any of those no-hopers
outside
– found it and got on to the Press, Radley would become a laughing stock. It would be Piltdown all over again.’

‘But something went wrong,’ Hall said.

Latymer nodded. ‘Some Anorak found it.’

‘Arthur Wimble,’ Campbell chipped in.

‘Whatever,’ Latymer said. ‘And that’s where Cahill got involved.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Hall said. ‘Is that what you meant by
succeeding
on several levels?’

‘Exactly,’ Latymer told him. Maybe this copper wasn’t as thick as he had assumed. ‘I was just amazed. Cahill came to the site one day and I overheard him and Radley talking, here, in this very tent. Not only was Radley himself buying the authenticity of that fake, but you could almost see the pound signs in Cahill’s eyes.
That
was why the genius wouldn’t let us dig in the ash grove. He was psyching
himself
up to find the grave of Alfred the Great there. It just goes to show – want something hard enough and you start to believe any old rubbish, even someone with a reputation like his.’

‘So what happened?’ Campbell asked. ‘Radley rumbled you and you killed him?’

Latymer looked horrified. ‘I didn’t kill him, you moron,’
he growled. ‘It was the man’s reputation I wanted, not his head. What do you take me for?’

Henry Hall leaned to his man until his nose was inches from Latymer’s.

‘I’m trying to find the words,’ he said.

He rang the doorbell a little after four that afternoon, watching the cab purr away on the gravel. There was a
rattle
of bolts behind him and a rather dishevelled Tam Fraser stood there.

‘Gardening, Professor?’ Maxwell asked.

The Scotsman had a spade in his hand and mud on his green wellies. His lion’s mane of silver hair was speckled with what looked like ash. ‘Maxwell?’ he said. ‘Good God, man. What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, Professor,’ the Head of Sixth Form said. ‘Such a cliché. I’d expected more. Don’t mind if I come in?’ and he barged his way into the hall.

Fraser’s house was, in its own way, as impressive as Sam Welland’s. It was what estate agents used to call a Gothic pile, before ‘pile’ acquired an altogether different
connotation
. An olive-brown Drizabone hung on a hook in the hall and a broad-brimmed leather hat just above it.

‘Van Helsing,’ Maxwell flicked its brim.

‘I’m sorry?’ Fraser was confused.

‘Oh, association of ideas,’ Maxwell said. ‘I was talking to that nice Mr Cahill today; you know, of Cahill and Lieberman, Property Developers.’

‘Oh, him,’ Fraser was full of disdain. ‘Met him once. Didn’t like him.’

‘No, well, I’m with you there. Oh, I say.’ Maxwell had wandered into Fraser’s study, heavy with velvet-flocked wallpaper and piled high with leather-backed tomes and
sheaves of paper. ‘Wiggins,’ Maxwell said, holding a single sheet of paper up to the light of Fraser’s tapering, leaded windows. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘ninety gram, I’d say.’

‘Look…er…Maxwell…’

‘Sorry,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I do ramble, don’t I? It’s my age, I suppose. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Age? Where was I?’ Maxwell threw himself down in a huge
armchair
. ‘Oh, yes. Mr Cahill. Well, you’re obviously aware that Mr Cahill has two vegetables working for him as Site Security – Dumb and Dumber, better known as George and Julian.’

‘So?’ Fraser was still standing, still holding the spade.

‘So, in their nightly perambulations recently, George and Julian saw a rather weird character flitting about,
phantom-like
, from grave to grave. Now, they’re both your
down-to-earth,
level-headed sort of idiots, not much imagination. But this figure, well, he put the wind up them both,
according
to Mr Cahill.’

‘I don’t see…’

‘The figure was wearing a duster coat and a hat not unlike the gear worn by Hugh Jackman in the latest piece of Undead tosh,
Van Helsing
. Not unlike your hat and coat in the hall out there, Professor.’

‘What are you getting at?’ Fraser asked.

Maxwell looked at him. ‘Does the name Hugo Prentiss mean anything to you, Professor Fraser?’

‘Sir Hugo Prentiss,’ the archaeologist nodded. ‘Emeritus Professor of History at Cambridge. Yes, indeed. A very great scholar. Dead, isn’t he?’

‘Well, he wasn’t an hour ago,’ Maxwell said. ‘When I spoke to him on the phone. Detective Chief Inspector Hall actually let me use his carphone. That was kind of him,
wasn’t it? It’s funny, I wasn’t very impressed by Prentiss when I was at Cambridge. You know how it is…’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘Of course you do…the folly of youth. I was a young Turk. He was an old fart. Even then, I supposed he was a hundred. And Saxon England, well, it wasn’t my period. I stood it for a term and then got on to something infinitely more interesting.’

‘Maxwell, I’d love to reminisce with you, but I…’

‘But, you know,’ Maxwell ignored him. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, how the strangest things stay with you. Take, for instance, the affairs of men.’

‘The what?’

‘Well, it’s a quotation, of course, from a sport called Shakespeare –
Julius Caesar
.’

Fraser laughed. ‘I really think…’

‘But a very good friend of mine found it somewhere else. She found it on a colleague’s computer screen…talking of which, that’s a Canon, isn’t it?’ Maxwell pointed to the silent, grey monster on the archaeologist’s desk. ‘I don’t know one from the other, but it says “Canon” on the side. Anyway, this friend of mine’s colleague was a sweet boy. I say “was” because he’s dead now. Somebody cut through his brake cables.’

‘That’s dreadful.’ Fraser shook his head.

‘Yes,’ Maxwell looked up at the man, grim-faced. ‘Yes, it is. Where was I? Ah, this damned age thing, eh? Oh, yes. You see, this boy, this dead colleague, he was a Medieval English buff. And that “affairs of men”…well, it didn’t quite make sense.’

‘So?’ Fraser was bored already.

‘So, I said to myself – who’ll know? Whose eminence is so great that I’ll be able to source that quotation once and for all? And it came to me; the Michelmas Term in the
Granta days and hopeless old Hugo Prentiss. Like you, I thought he was dead. Oh, he’s long retired, of course – now there’s a lesson for us all. I don’t think he could remember who I was, but I soon got over the hurt of that. We got talking, Sir Hugo and I and he, bless him, put it all in context. Just like he did that Michelmas Term all those years ago. You see Martin – that’s the dead boy’s name, by the way, Martin Toogood – he got it just slightly wrong. And that’s what threw me off the scent. He didn’t mean the
affairs
of men. He meant the
fortunes
of men. And that’s a whole new ball game.’

‘It is?’ Fraser was willing to play along.

‘Oh, yes,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘You once accused me of talking like a bloody Saxon riddle and I bet you could have kicked yourself for that, couldn’t you? David Radley knew it vaguely and even quoted from it on occasions. Poor Susan remembered one line – “the wolf, the grey
heath-stalker
”. Van Helsing, the wolf-coat, prowling around the yawning graves.’

‘This…er…the
Fortunes of Men
thing?’ Fraser began.

‘An anonymous Saxon poem, probably written by a cleric with a romantic inclination. But then, you knew that, didn’t you, Professor? You being the author of
Saxon Identities
and all. It’s really quite good, describing the chance destinies of the sons of mothers. Having talked to Sir Hugo again, I realized I knew it. I’d just forgotten it, that’s all – an age thing, again, I suppose. Let’s see,’ Maxwell risked closing his eyes. ‘“One will drop, wingless, from the high tree in the wood… Then sadly he slumps by the trunk, robbed of life; he falls to earth and his soul flies from him.”’ Maxwell opened his eyes again. ‘That’s David Radley. His body at the foot of the ash trees on Staple Hill. You couldn’t kill him there, Professor, not in the way the
poem described, because the ash branches wouldn’t bear his weight. Anyway, how would you have hoisted him up there? Instead, you rang him on that lazy, hazy, crazy
afternoon
and invited him here. I’ll just bet the fibres Henry Hall’s people found on the dead man’s shoes match your rather frightful carpet in the vestibule.’

‘Are you insane?’ Fraser hissed, horror on his face.

‘Pots and kettles, I’m afraid,’ Maxwell said. ‘But you were clever, I’ll give you that. Re-dressing the man was pure genius.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, it’s in the poem, in a way – “Often and again, through God’s grace, man and woman usher a child into the world and clothe him in gay colours.” You knew about Douglas Russell and his crush on David Radley, didn’t you? I’d guess because David told you; trusting, naïve soul that he was. And there was a perfect red herring for you. For a few quid and a deliberately careless re-dressing, you could point the finger at a sexual motive, which would keep the police away from you.’

‘You know this is nonsense, don’t you?’

‘Then, there was Sam Welland. How does the poem have it? “One will swing from the tall gallows, sway in death.” You made a gallows for her, all right. I expect if I scout around here for a bit, I’ll find some of the rope you did it with. She invited herself along to Staple Hill, didn’t she? Expecting to take over the dig, using all Radley’s scientific techniques. And that would never do. The problem, of course, was Toogood. And that very problem meant that you very nearly got away with it. He’d sussed you, hadn’t he? The old English scholar remembered the
Fortunes of Men
– the fall from a tree, so pat, so poetic. Only he didn’t remember it well enough. But you didn’t know that, did
you? How could you? Couldn’t take the chance. Just your luck that the only copper in the county with a degree in Saxon was on your case. Life’s a bummer, isn’t it? Took a lot of nerve, I’ll admit, to fix Toogood’s brakes on police property. Oh, it broke the pattern, of course – nothing about cars and their brakes in the
Fortunes of Men
. You dressed up as Van Helsing again. Mr Hall has your picture on his CCTV screens. And poor old Sergeant Wilson at the nick. Popped out for a pee, had he, while you doubled back through the nick? Is that why he didn’t see you fleeing the scene of the crime?’