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

about to let the old duffer know that. He rolled over and licked his forearm intently.
    ‘Anyway, it worked and I got a shufti. Of course, Mr Hall’s ladies and gentlemen had been all over it anyway, but it never hurts to have a second opinion. Well, it’s not really impersonating a police officer. I mean, I didn’t show anybody a warrant card or anything. And I’m not sure I used the d-word at all. The floozy behind the bar just assumed I was CID. I can’t be responsible.’
    Metternich was aware of that after all these years.
    ‘But I have to concede the local boys had done a good job. Place was empty. No suitcase. No briefcase. No official secrets, no love letters, no compromising photos. All in all, it’s like David Radley never existed. Right!’ Maxwell sat upright and replenished his glass. ‘Just for your benefit, I’ll go over it again, because somewhere, I’m missing something . Now, listen carefully, because I just might be asking questions later. David Radley is a bright young thing, mentioned in archaeological despatches from here to Vladivostok. Monographs and papers up to his armpits. Simon Schama calls him “Sir” – you know the sort of thing. He’s a nice bloke with no known hang-ups who’s keen to show the world what archaeology is all about. Hence the invitation to me and my people to the dig. He gets a phone call on Wednesday from person unknown and goes off to see him/her. He doesn’t come back. So,’ Maxwell was on his feet now, prowling the room in a passable pastiche of the feline draped currently on his furniture, ‘between fourish , when Russell said he left the site on Wednesday and four-ish Thursday when little Robbie Wesson stumbled over him, he was done to death. Cause, I hear you ask? Broken neck. Oh, and broken ankle, but that’s a minor consideration. Where? Don’t know. When? Don’t know that either. By whom? Ah, the 64,000 dollar question. What I need, Count, is a time of death.’
    ‘One day,’ mused Metternich. ‘One day,’ and he turned over again and licked his bum. It’s a messy job, but somebody’s got to do it.
     
    By the end of that Saturday, Martin Toogood wasn’t sure he wanted to be a copper any more. All day, he’d been driving east, talking to a dead man’s colleagues. Now, as the sunflushed before setting, one ironic burst of gold after a long, grey day, he’d talked to a dead man’s wife.
    Susan Radley was a beautiful girl with coal black hair cut short at her cheek and shaved behind. Her eyes were dark circles of loss and bewilderment and despair. She’d sat, with her mother on one side and her father on the other, trying to make some sense of it all. She’d known David Radley since they were kids. To her, he’d been ‘Boo’ after the sinister , sad and, in the end, sweet character in To Kill A Mockingbird . And Boo Radley had come out, with her, while they were in the sixth form. University had been tough, because he’d gone to Oxford and she was at Reading, but they’d kept together through hideous phone bills and frantic car dashes and keeping focused on each other. Their wedding, six years ago, was all lace and froth and flowers – Toogood had been shown the photographs. They’d planned…oh, they had such plans. He was 32, a professor already. There were books, a television series in the offing. It was a fairytale.
    Now, the fairytale was a nightmare, and a darkly handsome young policeman coming to invite her to look at her husband’s corpse on a mortuary slab. Somewhere, somehow , there had to be a reason.
    Martin Toogood shoved his car into reverse and his wheels spun on the gravel. Saturday night and he had a body.

Chapter Five
    Monday’s child wasn’t fair of face or anything else as Peter Maxwell wheeled into Leighford High. A soggy Saturday had given way to a sunny Sunday and the weather men had promised faithfully, running their seaweed worry beads through their hands, and in the name of Michael Fish, that things