Maxwell’s Curse

Maxwell’s Curse Read Free Page B

Book: Maxwell’s Curse Read Free
Author: M. J. Trow
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‘It’s not likely at her age, but then, Albert de Salvo …’
    ‘And she wasn’t strangled … Oh, bloody hell!’
    Maxwell chuckled. ‘Tell me, Jacquie, what was your new year resolution? Tell Old Maxie everything he wants to know? That’s very generous of you.’
    ‘What have you told them?’ She was suddenly on her feet, changing the subject, nodding towards the window, covering her back.
    ‘Well,’ Maxwell joined her at the window to wave at the increasingly bedraggled newsmen huddled in the rain, ‘the bloke from the Grauniad and I had a discussion on the role of murder in New Labour’s philosophy. I told the bloke from the Telegraph this would never have happened if William Hague was PM, which seemed to please him. I gave the Mail man a load of bollocks and the Express the total opposite – still bollocks, but different. Oh, and when the News of the World turned up I just got my chopper out – oh, saving your presence, Woman Policeman!’
    She shook her head, smiling. ‘Max, you’re the end,’ she said.
    ‘Omega and Alpha, me,’ sang Maxwell, still vaguely in the Christmas spirit. ‘How long do you think they’ll be out there?’
    She checked her watch. Time to be elsewhere. ‘The DCI’s calling a press conference at six this evening,’ she told him. ‘That’ll satisfy them for a while. Unfortunately, Max, they’re a bit like that film. What is it? Sometimes They Come Back ?’
    Maxwell nodded. He knew it.
    She put down her coffee mug and held him by the shoulders, out of sight of the paparazzi’s prying lenses. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.
    ‘Awright.’ He slid into his Barrymore with ease.
    She screwed up her face, never sure of Peter Maxwell. He was Mad Max, not just nor-by-nor’west, but in all directions, to every point of the compass. He’d worn that mask for so long, even she couldn’t see beyond it. She who loved him. She reached out and kissed him. It was enough. For now, it was enough.
    Thanks to the miracle of reprographic technology, photographs of the dead woman were on the streets of Leighford by that afternoon. The house to house had begun. As many uniforms as Henry Hall could spare knocked on doors or rang bells or pushed paper through letterboxes. Everywhere the same story; the same shake of the head. ‘Difficult to say, innit?’ ‘I mean, they all look alike.’ ‘Blimey, is she dead?’ ‘I wouldn’t know my own grannie, mate, never mind somebody else’s.’
    A detective had visited Leighford General, next door to where the dead woman lay, checking records. But this was the National Health Service, the one run by Alan Milburn, not the one created by Nye Bevan and the inquiries drew blank. ‘Ah, no, you see, all the ENT records were lost in the fire. You know, in ’95. If she’d had the operation before that, we’d have no record of it. And I wouldn’t bother asking Mr McGuigan if I were you. Patients to him are just numbers to feed his wife’s Gucci habit – not that you heard that from here, of course.’ Hospitals, especially junior registrars, were helpfulness itself.
    So it was that they set up an Incident Room in the old Tottingleigh library, complete with VDUs and databases, those banks of information that could stem the tide of ignorance. And the Leighford force once again became eagle-eyed, adept under the diced headband at finding needles in the haystacks of unknowing.
    So it was too that DCI Henry Hall held his press conference, giving the gentlemen of the press, the doyens of the fourth estate, just enough to keep them off his back for the couple of days he desperately needed. On his way in, towards the powerful lights to each side of the poking lenses and grey fur of the sound booms, he caught Jacquie Carpenter’s arm.
    ‘A word,’ he said.
    She slipped into the corridor. ‘Sir?’
    ‘Your friend,’ Hall murmured.
    ‘Sir?’
    Hall shifted his feet. ‘Don’t get coy with me, Jacquie. Listen to those bastards in there.

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