Maxwell's Grave by M.J. Trow Read Free Book Online Page A

rang the doorbell even though she had a key somewhere and an apparition appeared in the frosty glass of the front door.
    ‘Yes?’ she said to him, their favourite old joke from Messrs Kenny Everett and Billy Connolly.
    ‘Two pints please, milkman.’ He kissed her on the nose. ‘God, my mouth feels like a badger’s arse.’
    ‘Scrummy.’ She swept past him and dragged herself up the stairs, to his lounge. ‘I wouldn’t know. And stop looking at my bum.’
    ‘My dear,’ he informed her. ‘It’s half-past five in the morning. I can’t focus on anything as small as a bum until at least quarter to nine. And then,’ he gloated, rubbing his hands together, ‘I have a huge selection to choose from.’
    ‘You say the sweetest things,’ she laughed and hurled her handbag at the settee in the living room. Maxwell hadn’t opened the curtains yet and the place had that weird light that lamp-lit early morning brings. ‘Coffee in the usual place?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘Where you left it yesterday.’
    She walked through to the kitchen and busied herself with the kettle.
    ‘Fancy a full English?’ he asked, vaguely trying to tie up the cords of his dressing gown, and wondering what the hell he had in the fridge.
    ‘No thanks, Max,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long day.’
    ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, rummaging in the cupboard for cups.
    ‘Well, this is sort of official,’ she turned to him.
    ‘Ah,’ he slid his arms round her waist. The girl was just young enough to be his daughter. What was she doing in the wee small hours wasting time with this mad old bastard ? ‘That has all the hallmarks of dear Henry, if you’ll excuse the rather weak pun.’
    She wrinkled her nose. ‘You might have known,’ she said. ‘He saw you light-footing it off the dig site.’
    ‘I know he did. I even waved to him.’
    ‘Nothing like being subtle.’ She rubbed her nose against his.
    ‘It was only a matter of time,’ he said and his sentence died away as she kissed him.
    ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he laughed, hauling her off. ‘You can’t talk with your mouth full and you’ve got a lot of talking to do. If I’ve got the summons, as I assume I have, I need to be briefed.’
    ‘Max,’ she shouted. ‘You do this every time. You know I can’t…’
    ‘…divulge,’ he smiled. ‘Yes, I know. Now, let me pour you a coffee and drive these lighted matches under your fingernails.’
     
    Henry Hall would have liked to have set up his Incident Room on the slope of the Downs, on Staple Hill near to Dr Radley’s dig, but that would have involved Portakabins and major upheavals and permissions that would take weeks to get. The Chief Constable, no less, said no. So, that Friday morning saw Hall and his team back at Leighford nick, but with the new found purpose and urgency that always came with a murder enquiry. His team sat in front of him, ready and waiting.
    ‘Victim,’ Hall was standing in front of a screen with a blown-up image of the dead man. Radley’s eyes were halfopen, his neck purple with a wound. His lips were parted too, as though in mid-sentence. Nobody commented, but one or two of the younger coppers felt unnerved by it. It was Hall’s way of keeping them focused. ‘What do we know?’
    ‘I’ve got that, guv.’ Martin Toogood waved a notepad in the air as the coffee mugs clicked and the smoke wreathed the stacks of paper in the paperless office and the VDUs flickered with a life of their own. ‘David Radley was thirty-two . Married to…Susan.’
    ‘Has she been contacted?’ Hall asked.
    ‘Brighton CID.,’ Toogood confirmed. ‘She’s taken it badly, apparently.’
    No surprises there. This was a room of hard-bitten police people. There was not one who had not seen it all before – the tears, the hysterics, the stunned silence. And each time they’d been there, talking to distraught parents, comforting forlorn spouses, holding the hands of uncomprehending children; each