Authors: M. J. Trow
‘Ah, Matron mine,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘Care to go for a drive this afternoon?’
Emma Dollery’s eyes widened. Wait till the girls back in 9S heard this.
‘Er…’ Matron flashed an old-fashioned look in her direction.
‘The History Department are taking a drive up to that archaeological dig on the Rimble. Care to come along? Apparently the pot-sherds are exquisitely interesting. Samian ware to die for.’
‘Of course.’ Sylvia was quicker on the uptake, hopefully, than was Emma. ‘What time?’
‘Well,’ Maxwell checked his watch, ‘we were hoping for four-thirtyish. I’ve just some sixth-form heads to crack together first. Car park?’
‘Er … yes,’ Sylvia said. ‘Car park it is.’
And Maxwell beamed at Emma. She scowled at him. That bloke was barmy. He’d never taught her, but that didn’t matter. Why let a thing like personal experience stand in the way of a pupil’s misconception of a teacher?
‘It was actually Mrs B’s idea,’ Maxwell said to Sylvia as she rattled her way up through the gears.
‘Oh?’ Sylvia wasn’t buying it. Mrs B. ‘did’ for Maxwell as well as cleaning at the school. Salt of the earth was Mrs B., but ideas were not exactly her stock in trade.
‘Well … now, Sylv, don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ she chuckled, checking the main road as she pulled out of the school gates.
‘As if I’ve done a murder. Somebody has and it isn’t me.’
‘Max – look, I don’t mind in the slightest driving you a few miles, but where are we going?’
‘Did you see the news last night; local?’
‘Er … yes, I think so,’ she said.
‘What was the first item? It got a small mention on the national too, sandwiched between All-Party talks for Northern Ireland and the Rhode Island Red in Garboldisham that can dance the rhumba.’
‘Oh, God,’ she covered her mouth, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember.’
‘Quite,’ Maxwell clasped his hands across his seat belt, ‘which is precisely why the media revolution has failed. The bastards bring us so much news into our own living rooms, every half-hour, on the half-hour, that we don’t remember a word of it. They’ve found the body of a woman.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Sylvia remembered now.
‘Alice Goode. Left here.’
The Subaru left the road for a moment and careered along the verge, until Sylvia wrestled the wheel back and slammed on the brakes.
‘What?’ She sat looking at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
‘Oh, Sylv.’ He put his arm around her, steadying her, lifting her chin as it dropped. ‘What kind of fool am I?’ It wasn’t the best Norman Wisdom she’d ever heard. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve known for nearly forty-eight hours now. Familiarity breeds contempt.’
‘Alice?’ she repeated.
‘Yes. Look, I’m so sorry, that was dreadful. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. The news didn’t give the name, did it? I wanted to choose my time. I … oh, shit!’ and he thumped the dashboard.
‘No,’ she said, her knuckles still white on the wheel, the engine idling. ‘No, it’s all right. It’s just … well, I didn’t know’
‘I know’ He took her in his arms, seat-belt allowing, and kissed her forehead. For a moment her face came up to his and their eyes locked. Then there was a blast from a passing motorist and a car screamed past, yobboes hanging out, thrusting fingers skywards.
‘That’ll be the Scholarship Sixth,’ mused Maxwell, ‘on their way to debating society. Sylv, I’m a complete arsehole. I’ve got you here under false pretences.’
The beginnings of a smile played around her lips. ‘I don’t think even Emma believed your archaeological dig story, Max.’
‘No,’ he sighed. ‘Not one of my most inspired. However, here we are.’
‘We’re going there, aren’t we?’ she asked him. ‘Where they found her?’
‘No, Sylv,’ he said softly. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’
She slammed the car into gear, straightening her rearview mirror,
‘You know,’ she said, sniffing back what might have been hayfever, might have been tears, ‘you’re right, you are an arsehole,’ and she drove off the kerb and went north.
‘What do you mean, by the way,’ she said, after a while. ‘Mrs B.’s idea?’
‘Well, you know Tuesday is the night she does for me?’
Sylvia nodded. Mrs B., full name unknown, a tall, angular woman, who may have been ITMA’s original Mrs Mopp were she not too old, may have had a heart of gold, but her mouth was pure sewer.
‘Well, she’d seen the item at six. “What abaht that woman, then, Mr Maxwell?” she said to me, “The one they found in that lino? Me and Mr B.’s got some just like it.
And
I’ve eaten at that restaurant too, that Devil’s Label. They do a bleedin’ beautiful plaice and chips there, they do. Fancy, having been to the scene of a murder.” Well,’ Maxwell was himself again, ‘perhaps “fancy” is the wrong word, but I had a feeling, a sense I ought to be there.’
‘But how do you know, Max?’ Sylvia asked him. ‘There was no mention of a name on the telly last night. How do you know it’s Alice?’
‘I can’t tell you that, Sylv,’ he said. ‘Let’s just let it be our little secret for a while, hmm?’
Maxwell was buying. It wasn’t quite the weather for eating on the patio and Sylvia was grateful for that. She wasn’t sure she could eat much anyway, knowing what she now knew; but to eat at all overlooking the spot where the dead woman had been found would require all her sangfroid. Piers Stewart, all DJ and prosperity, had put them in Nookie Corner, as he pleased to call it, irrespective of any embarrassment he might cause his customers by seating them there.
‘Mr Stewart.’ Maxwell hailed him as he tackled his coffee. The place was fairly empty as yet and the restaurateur seemed to be free enough.
‘Sir?’ The word stuck in Piers Stewart’s throat every time he heard himself saying it. He had yet to meet any one of his customers who was on the same intellectual and social level as he himself.
‘I’m making enquiries into the death of Alice Goode. Can we talk?’
The restaurateur looked about him, then he leaned over Maxwell’s table. ‘Are you the police?’ he asked.
‘No, I was a colleague of the dead woman.’
‘A colleague?’ Stewart’s face had contempt written all over it. ‘You mean you’re a pimp?’
Sylvia looked as startled as Maxwell. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Stewart looked around him before scraping a chair back and sitting down with them. ‘Look, I’ve had the law swarming over this place for the last three days. This Alice Goode was some sort of tart. God knows what riff-raff she knew. Now I’d be very grateful if you’d finish up your meal and go.’
‘She was an English teacher,’ Maxwell said steadily, ‘with a subsidiary in French. I think you’ve been misinformed, Mr … er … Stewart.’ Maxwell had read the sign over the door.
The restaurateur looked at the couple before him. Clients, he guessed, of Alice Goode. Middle-aged swingers still trying to pull the birds. He could just imagine the ads they placed in the Contact mags – ‘She, forty-something, good body. Likes adventure. He, hung like a mule. Travel anywhere’. Stewart stood up. ‘I have a choice who I serve,’ he said loudly and, as if from nowhere, two heavies stood at his elbow. ‘This gentleman and his wife were just leaving,’ he said.
Maxwell didn’t like the look of either of the waiters, so he lifted Sylvia gently by the arm. ‘You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if under the circumstances I don’t leave a tip.’ And he led her to the door. ‘Just as well he doesn’t recognize me, isn’t it, Mrs Ronay?’ he said loudly as dining couples turned to stare. They saw themselves out.
Maxwell broke into the Headmaster’s study the next day. Well, no, that phrase needs qualification. Legs Diamond wasn’t a headmaster; he was a headteacher and there was a world of difference. And he didn’t have a study; he had an office. And breaking in? Well, not really. Maxwell merely waited until the man had gone to some out-of-school management meeting, then he’d knocked boldly and gone in. The key was in the Head’s top drawer, unlike the Head himself. Maxwell lifted it with the ease of the Artful Dodger and rummaged in the filing cabinet that he knew contained the confidential staff files.
Jacquie Carpenter had had an attack of professionals or the consciences – he couldn’t be sure which. So he was on his own now, Maxwell PI, a gumshoe down on his luck, a dick in several senses of the word. He found her file, the one marked Alice Goode. First post, bla, bla. Goldsmith’s. Oh dear. Second-class degree. Specialized in Philip Larkin. Jesus! It just got worse. PGCE from the London Institute. Glowing references from a school in Essex, another in Kent. They farmed them far and wide did the London Institute. No home address. No next of kin.
‘Who mourns for Adonäis?’ Maxwell murmured to himself. Then he heard the door click. But the Head of Sixth Form was faster. Years of turning tight corners to catch smokers had given him the edge. The file was away, the cabinet locked and the key returned before Margaret, Legs’ secretary, stood there staring at him.
‘Maggie, thank God!’ Maxwell rushed to her side, gripping her shoulders warmly. ‘A beacon in the darkness as always. You haven’t seen the Head’s copy of the Deering report, have you? I seem to have misplaced mine.’
It was on Thursday that DCI Henry Hall decided to unburden himself to the world. A quick phone call to Jim Diamond and a press conference hard on the heels of that did the job effectively. The body in the lino on the car park had a name at last. The paparazzi gathered at the gates of Leighford High and laid siege to Alice Goode’s flat where a distraught Jean Hagger came home from junior school to be hit with the news right between the eyes.
At Leighford High, there was a whole school assembly. Only the Sports Hall was big enough to hold the huddled masses of a big comprehensive and Peter Maxwell stood at the back while Bernard Ryan attempted to assert what authority he felt he had to bring the multitude to order. They paid about as much attention to him as to a woodlouse and in the end, Maxwell took pity on him and took up Ryan’s position at the front of the Hall where the PA system had been hastily set up by the Drama Department.
‘Allrighteethen.’ He gave the entire school his best Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura and the chattering stopped. ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ – the Head of Sixth Form was giving them his best Peter Maxwell now – ‘we have some rather sad and some rather serious news. Mr Diamond?’
Maxwell had never seen Diamond perform better. He told the school that Miss Goode was dead. He told them the police were treating her death as suspicious. He told them all to talk to no one except the police. And if the police asked to talk to them, they must have their parents present at the interview. There was silence in that Hall where the trampolines bounced and the shuttlecocks flew. Diamond saw the odd lips quiver on the faces of some Year Seven girls sitting cross-legged in front of him.
‘Mr Ryan, please dismiss the school row by row. The buses will be waiting. Duty staff to accompany them, please. Mr Maxwell,’ he turned to his Head of Sixth Form and waited until they’d both slipped out of the side door. ‘Is it me or is the Leighford grapevine working extra well today?’
‘Headmaster?’ Maxwell was a genius at the evasive line, the hurt look. It wasn’t like Diamond to be so on the ball.
‘“Some rather sad and some rather serious news” I think you said. You knew, Max. You knew about Alice before I told you. Only Roger and Bernard knew. How did you know?’
Maxwell folded his arms languidly. The day he’d be fazed by anything Legs Diamond did, hell would freeze over. ‘I have a degree, Headmaster,’ he said. ‘First Class Honours from Cambridge University. That gives me an MA which is, in effect, a licence to think. One of my colleagues, a pretty young girl, goes missing on a school trip and no one hears from her for nearly a week. Then the police find a body not many miles to the north. The body of a young girl. You call a whole school assembly at the wrong end of a routine day. Now pardon me all to hell if I make the odd deduction.’
Diamond looked a little shamefaced. ‘I see.’ He shifted a little, clearing his throat under Maxwell’s steady barrage and Maxwell’s steady gaze. ‘Right. Well, thanks, Max.’
‘What did the police say?’ the Head of Sixth Form asked.
Diamond shrugged. ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘They’re coming over shortly. Chief Inspector Hall.’
He nodded at Maxwell as the clatter of doors announced that the kids had gone. Why my school? he thought to himself. Why me? Maxwell went back into the Sports Hall where knots of his colleagues still stood in stunned tableaux around the room. He picked up a stray piece of chewing-gum wrapper on his way out.
That Friday, Peter Maxwell played hookey for the first time in his life. He rather enjoyed it, in fact, pedalling past the science labs where rows of children were dying of terminal boredom, wrestling with the complexities of the latent heat of fusion of ice or grappling with the various coefficients of linear expansion. God, what a waste of precious time when there was so much they didn’t know about that magic land, the past.
At home, he swapped his cycle clips for a pair of corduroys, threw a few things together and popped a note through old Mrs Troubridge’s door next to his, asking the old trout to feed Metternich for the weekend as he’d been called away. By just after four, he was standing in the rather tatty foyer of the London Institute, looking for someone, anyone, who might be able to help. Knots of education students, some shell-shocked and shaking after a week’s teaching practice, hurried past him to the nearest pub. A whistling cleaner directed him to the Students’ Union on the first floor.
Grubby posters about Saving the Unborn Gay Whale flapped in the breeze of an open window. Above the hum of a photocopier, Maxwell called to its operator, a black girl who must have spent days braiding her hair into tight little curls.
‘Miss … er …?’ Maxwell raised his hat.
‘Ms,’ she told him dispassionately.
‘Of course,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m trying to trace a former student of yours. A Miss Alice Goode.’
‘You a relative?’
‘Uncle,’ Maxwell lied.
‘Name?’
‘Peter Maxwell,’ he didn’t intend to compound the felony.
‘How long ago did she leave?’
‘Last year. Last July.’
The girl had crossed to a computer and was fiddling with that plastic thing that IT people for some reason best known to themselves call a mouse and slid back her swivel chair. She crossed to a filing cabinet. ‘Is that G-o-o-d?’
‘E,’ said Maxwell. ‘There’s an ‘e’ on the end.’
‘Right. What did you say? Alice?’
‘Yes.’
She flicked her way through the index cards. ‘No. Oh, hang on. Yeah. Here we go. Alice Goode. Date of birth 6.8.73.’ Maxwell’s heart sank. He was on his third plastic hip by the time this girl was born. ‘Got a job at Leighford High School, West Sussex.’
‘That’s right,’ Maxwell said.
‘There’s no address,’ the girl told him.
‘No, I don’t want a current address,’ he explained. ‘I want to find out where she lived when she was here.’
‘I thought you said you wanted to find her.’
‘Find her?’ Maxwell grinned. ‘No, no, you misunderstand. I’m trying to locate her former landlady. They were very close and Alice has lost touch with her.’
‘Landlady?’ The girl frowned. ‘Christ, mate, she lived at Twenty-seven Napier Road, Balham. If she had a landlady there, it was bloody Lizzie Borden.’
‘That’s it,’ Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Miss Borden. Alice speaks so warmly of her. Good afternoon.’
The girl watched the silly old fart trundle out through the doors. Obviously a poof, she assumed. Just as well he hadn’t committed the cardinal sin of middle-aged honky poofs everywhere and called her ‘my dear’ or she’d have been forced to fell him.
It wasn’t Lizzie Borden who opened the front door at Twenty-seven Napier Road an hour later, but a thin West Indian who might have been Huggy Bear from
Starsky and Hutch
, except that he was about twenty years too young to remember
Starsky and Hutch
. ‘Miss Borden?’ Maxwell raised his hat.
‘You what?’ for all his Dreadlocks and Rasta shirt, the man was pure Balham.
‘I was looking for the owner,’ Maxwell said.
‘Oh yeah? Why’s that then?’
‘Alice Goode,’ Maxwell said and watched the Rasta’s face fall.
‘You filth?’ He scanned the road, looking for the dubious unmarked car.
‘Teacher,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘Yeah,’ the Rasta grinned, ‘that’s what I said. Alice don’t live here any more.’
‘Yes,’ said Maxwell, ‘I know that line. What I want to know is something about when she did. You knew her?’
‘Look, man,’ Huggy Bear leaned menacingly on the doorframe, ‘what’s your angle?’
‘Obtuse, as always,’ beamed Maxwell. ‘You know Alice is dead?’
The Rasta nodded. ‘I watch the fuckin’ telly,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said Maxwell, ‘so do I.’ And he pushed past his man into the scruffy hall.
‘’Ere.’
‘If the “filth” haven’t been yet, Mr … er …?’
‘William Shakespeare.’
Maxwell looked oddly at him. ‘Mr Shakespeare, then rest assured they will. If I can find Alice’s old address, it’s only a matter of time before they do.’
The Rasta hesitated. ‘They’ve been ’ere, all right,’ he said. ‘You’d better come in.’
‘In’ was a dingy room strewn with old copies of
Viz
and
Time Out
. Here and there, the odd empty beer bottle lay among the dust.
‘It’s the cleanin’ lady’s day off,’ Shakespeare told him. ‘If you can find the sofa, you’re welcome to park your arse.’
Maxwell could and did. It was the big, grey piece of furniture under the remains of the KFC wrappers.
‘Difficult to beat a good Zinger, isn’t it?’ He tweezered the crushed carton from under his bum.
‘What’s your thing with Alice?’ Shakespeare leaned back against the door, his arms folded, his jaw flexed.
‘I am … was … a colleague of hers.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Want to see my NUT card? My piece of chalk?’
‘How’d you find this place?’
‘Same way the police did I imagine. Student records at the London Institute. Most places keep files for two years at least, five in some cases. Her Majesty’s Government keep them for up to a hundred years and then snigger “No, you can’t see them, you nosy piece of shit”.’
The Rasta’s lips broke into an uneasy smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Right on.’
‘What did the police want to know?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Dunno. I wasn’t ’ere. My oppo gave ’em the brush-off. When “Tight-Lips” Henderson don’t want to talk to you, man, you stay not talked to.’
Maxwell took off his hat and plopped it down beside him, careful it didn’t land in anything too gruesome. He looked at Shakespeare. ‘Somebody strangled Alice Goode and dumped her body in a car park,’ he said. ‘Now, I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to do, do you, Mr Shakespeare?’
‘No,’ The Rasta shook his head. ‘No, I don’t, man.’
‘And I intend to find out who did that. And to put the bastard away. With or without your help.’
‘You sure you ain’t the filth?’
‘Positive.’
For a moment, Shakespeare tried to weigh his man in the balance. He’d heard nothing of Alice Goode for nearly a year and now, four times in two days. First, he’d seen the car park where they’d found her, then a photo of the girl herself. Then the filth come calling. And now this old honky was sniffing around.
‘Teachers!’ Shakespeare spat into the corner. ‘I spent the best years of my life getting shat on by fuckin’ teachers.’
Maxwell sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I suppose I owe you the truth.’
‘Yeah,’ said Shakespeare, nodding slowly, ‘right.’
‘MI5,’ Maxwell said.
‘You what, Grandad?’ Shakespeare sniggered. ‘You’re winding me up.’
‘What do you think we look like, Mr Shakespeare? Pierce Brosnan by way of Sean Connery? I’m a civil servant, concerned with the defence of the realm. I can give you my Whitehall office number, if you like.’
‘Yeah,’ Shakespeare’s smile had gone, ‘right.’
‘We have reason to believe that Alice had got in with the wrong crowd.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘We know from her time at Goldsmith’s College that she had … shall we say, Leftist tendencies?’
‘Come off it, man’ – Shakespeare spread his arms – ‘that cold war guff’s all over now. All that George Smiley bollocks.’
Maxwell chuckled. ‘George Smiley, yes. George Blake, no.’
‘Who?’
Maxwell’s face straightened. ‘No, I’ve said too much.’
‘No.’ Shakespeare sat down opposite him. ‘No. Who’s this George Blake, man?’
Maxwell leaned towards him. ‘Burgess? Maclean?’ He might just as well have said Burgess Meredith.
‘Er …’
‘Spymasters,’ Maxwell whispered. ‘Recruited at Cambridge.’
‘And Alice …’
‘Working for them.’
‘Never.’ The Rasta pulled a flat ciggie out of his shirt pocket.
‘That’s what they said about the Krogers.’ Maxwell leaned back as bravely as he dared.
‘Who?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Shakespeare,’ Maxwell said. ‘I thought you watched the news. The Krogers were your average, everyday couple. Folks next door types. Except that they were selling secrets to the other side.’
‘Yeah, but …’ Shakespeare was beginning to wish he hadn’t spent the best years of his life being shat on by teachers now. ‘What other side? I mean it’s all gone, innit? The Evil Empire.’
‘Oh, Lord, yes’ – Maxwell smiled, crossing his legs and cradling his knee – ‘the USSR has gone, Mr Shakespeare, but there’s still the CIS. And of course, China.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Tiananmen Square.’
‘Right.’
‘I was there.’
‘Get away.’
Maxwell wished he could. The arch storyteller, the spinner of dreams, was getting in over his head. ‘Alice,’ he said, ‘tell me about Alice. You knew her.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Shakespeare said, ‘Yeah, she lived here for … oh, four, maybe five months. Had the room upstairs.’
‘She posed as a trainee teacher?’
‘Yeah. English.’
‘Are you the landlord here?’
‘Nah, I collect the rent, that’s all. The owner is Mr Villiers.’
‘Was she regular with the rent – Alice?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Shakespeare nodded. ‘Look, man, I need to see some sort of ID.’
Maxwell sighed again and rummaged in his inside pocket. ‘Here,’ he said.
Shakespeare looked at it. ‘Countdown,’ he read. ‘This is a credit card.’
‘I told you,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘I’m a teacher.’
‘But …’
Maxwell leaned forward again. ‘Mr Shakespeare, I have to have a cover, don’t I?’
The light of realization dawned in the Rasta’s eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. Right.’
‘Alice was on a grant.’ Maxwell got his man back to the point.
‘A grant?’ Shakespeare sniggered. ‘Look, man, this is John Major’s fuckin’ England, know what I mean? A grant don’t buy shit.’
‘Indeed,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So how did she pay her rent?’
Shakespeare winked. ‘Porn,’ he said.
‘Porn,’ Maxwell repeated.
‘And for that, you’ll need to see Mr Villiers. Frith Street. But look, man, ’mean – you’re not goin’ to mention my name, right? ’Cos it’s my fuckin’ kneecaps, know what I mean?’
‘A name like William Shakespeare?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘I’d find a name like that very difficult to remember.’
Soho is a circus within four circuses – Oxford, Piccadilly, Cambridge and St Giles. Its name, they say, comes from the hunting cries of the 18th century when bucks and blades raced each other over the watercourses that criss-crossed the edge of the parish of St-Martin-in-the-Fields. The film world had descended on Wardour Street in the wake of three centuries of arty-farty types who wrote poetry and music. But there were other elements in Soho, who catered for the London of the Night.
Maxwell left the tube in the twilight at Tottenham Court Road and turned right into Soho Square where the curious tower was all that was left of the Church of St Anne to remind the world of the lost gentility that had left for healthier places. Soho of a Friday evening was crawling with people who were of the superficial stamp of Peter Maxwell – middle-aged men wandering the lanes of love, the siren streets. The neon lights flashed before him – revue bars, girls, peep shows – jostling with the clash and clamour of China Town with its huge ornamental gate and the sleek, black cars of theatregoers. Maxwell was in the forbidden city.
He lingered a little longer than he should have looking for Gregory Villiers’ emporium and a gum-chewing piece of totty flagged him down. She lounged against the door-frame of a strip club that was all flashing light bulbs and floating plastic streamers.
‘’Ello, love,’ she winked at him, shifting her weight so that her hips swung provocatively and one powerful thigh showed even longer below the leather skirt.
‘Hello,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘What you looking for, then?’ she asked.
‘Gregory Villiers,’ he said.
The girl straightened, her hands on her belted hips. ‘You filth?’
That was twice in one day that Maxwell had been asked that. ‘No,’ he said, wiping his fingers on his jacket, ‘just mildly grubby. I need to talk to Mr Villiers about one of his girls.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ the girl chewed. ‘Who’s that, then? I might know her.’
Maxwell peered at the keeper of the gate. What was she under that purple eyeshadow, those blushered cheeks? Fifteen? Sixteen? ‘Have you finished your coursework?’ he asked.
She stopped chewing. ‘You what?’ Then a broad smile crossed her hard, insolent face. ‘Oh, I get it, Grandad. You’re into schoolgirls.’
Maxwell couldn’t resist a snigger. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Everyday’
‘Well,’ the girl took his arm, ‘come on in, then. Third booth on the right.’ She placed her small hand with its glittering rings and purple nails against his chest below the bow. Her smile had gone.
‘That’ll be five quid. Up front.’
Maxwell ferreted in his pocket and produced a crumpled note.
‘I’ll give you ten if you tell Mr Villiers that Mr Maxwell would like to see him.’
The girl hesitated, then snatched the note. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘third on the right.’ And she was gone, leaving Maxwell alone in the semi-darkness.
From nowhere a large coloured man in a white T-shirt was standing in front of him. ‘Get your change here, squire,’ he said, all teeth and attitude.
‘Change?’ Maxwell frowned.
‘Look, man, you’re not telling me you ain’t done this before. It’s a quid a peep, all right. You feed the machine. Now, how many d’you want? Ten? Twenty?’
‘What do I get for my quid?’ Maxwell asked.
The coloured man blinked at him, looked him quickly up and down. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, you ain’t done this before, have you?’ He jammed his fingers down on the till and the drawer slid open with a clash. ‘Let’s say five, shall we? We don’t want nobody havin’ a heart-attack on the premises.’ And he held out his hand for the note.