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

time, they thought to themselves, ‘What if it was me?’ And nothing was more calculated to keep cynicism at bay.
    ‘Radley was an Oxford graduate. Pretty high-powered, apparently.’
    ‘Enemies?’ Hall asked.
    ‘Sir?’ Toogood was a little wrong-footed.
    ‘Man was thirty-two,’ Hall reasoned, as much to himself as to his team. ‘He was a go-getter. What if somebody resented that? Where did he lecture? Wessex?’
    ‘Yes, guv.’
    ‘Right, Martin. Get on it. Get over to the campus at Petworth. Talk to Radley’s people. I want chapter and verse. Anything from the scene, Dave?’
    DC Dave Garstang was a walking shit-house of a man,but he’d made a pretty smooth transition from crowd control at football matches to SOCO liaison and most people admired him for it.
    ‘Body was found by a kid…er…Robert Wesson, in Year Eight at Leighford High.’
    ‘Anybody on that?’ Hall checked.
    ‘Jacquie Carpenter, guv,’ Toogood told him.
    Hall gave the man an old-fashioned look. Jacquie Carpenter and Leighford High. That meant Jacquie Carpenter and Peter Maxwell – a marriage made in hell if ever there was one in public relations terms. Henry Hall found himself, for that split second, grudgingly admitting that when it came to catching killers, it might just be a marriage made in Heaven.
    ‘What else, Dave?’ he asked.
    ‘We’ve got more tyre marks than the parson preached about, guv,’ Garstang said, sifting through his papers. ‘Archaeologists, farmers, metal detectors, nosey-parkers, site security people. Plus one school minibus.’
    ‘And footprints to match, I suppose?’
    ‘You got it,’ Garstang nodded. ‘I did find out one thing, though.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Archaeologists are addicted to chewing gum. SOCO found 68 wrappers around the site.’ A ripple of laughter ran round the room. Good. You really needed that at moments like these.
    ‘Well,’ Hall said softly, ‘I don’t suppose they get out much. Who’s got the site personnel list?’
    Silence.
    ‘Somebody?’
    Martin Toogood cleared his throat, wishing he’d already nipped out on his way to Petworth.
    Hall’s face said it all. ‘Alison.’
    ‘Sir?’ a fresh-faced DC with freckles and no neck looked at him like a rabbit in the headlights.
    ‘That’s one for you, I think.’
     
    ‘Well, I don’t know where to start, really.’ Sally Greenhow was passing an insipid cup of coffee to Jacquie Carpenter. ‘I don’t think it’s cause for alarm.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Jacquie sat in the Special Needs office at Leighford High. It had posters of David Beckham on the wall and assorted truculent-looking bands that Jacquie had never heard of. There were trailing spider plants to reinforce the fact that this was the Jungle Room. And there was patience and endless tolerance. And love, of a sort. ‘I know,’ Jacquie said. ‘It’s difficult to tell how people are going to react, isn’t it?’
    ‘To what?’ Sally asked.
    Jacquie looked at the woman, with her pencil figure and her frizzy, flaxen hair. In Peter Maxwell’s reckoning, this was one of the good guys, a beacon in a naughty world. But he’d never said she was bright . You don’t get to be SENCO by being bright.
    ‘To finding a body,’ the detective said, sensing wires crossing in all directions.
    ‘A body?’ Sally frowned, putting her mug down on the table between them. ‘I’m sorry, can we re-wind on this conversation ? I thought you were here about Annette Choker?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Oh, God. No, look,’ Sally Greenhow wasn’t usually fazed by anything, but today was not going well. ‘Why are you here?’
    Jacquie put her mug down on the table, along with hercards. Was nobody talking her language any more? ‘Robert Wesson found a body yesterday afternoon, at the archaeological dig above Leighford. I need to speak to him.’
    ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Sally rummaged in the rug-bag hanging on the arm of her chair. ‘Do you?’ she was pulling a cigarette out of a packet.
    Jacquie shook