Maxwell’s Ride Read Online Free

‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right.’ And he led them away, glancing backwards over his shoulder. Staff were shepherding away the underprivileged children, away from the car. Away from the corpse. Dead man floating.

3
    Credit cards. AA membership. A cheque book. A set of keys to the dark green Peugeot left in Car Zone C at the end of another day at Magicworld. The contents of a dead man’s pockets. The contents of a dead man’s life. DC Jacquie Carpenter catalogued them before popping them back into the polythene bag. Around her, the incident room was coming to life, officers carrying files, VDUs, rainforests of paper, display boards. In deference to the proprietors of Magicworld, Leighford CID had set up its Incident Room off site, in the community centre at West Meon. The Chief Constable himself had been contacted. No fuss, please. No bother. Magicworld was a family institution. Uniforms all over the place would do it no good at all. Besides, the owner of the park played golf with the Chief Constable.
    The community centre had been the village school in the days when Thomas Lord, he of the cricket ground, had lived there. Jacquie had come in that morning under the lintel that still bore the carefully chiselled ‘Boys’ to remind the world of the days of Political Incorrectness and sexual segregation. Well, why not? Jacquie had the vote, for God’s sake. She even smoked on and off, from time to time. And sure as Hell, she was doing a man’s job.
    She felt his eyes boring into her back; metaphorically, he was twanging her bra straps. She turned to face him. DS Frank Bartholomew, who thought he looked like Laurence Dallaglio, stood there, smirking.
    ‘What’ve we got, then, Jacquie?’ he sat on the chair across the desk from her, letting his eyes rove over the cleavage under the pale peach blouse. Jacquie Carpenter was probably twenty-eight. Her eyes were pale and grey and they sparkled as she spoke. Her chestnut hair was swept up on each side and there, Bartholomew pondered, was a mouth he’d like to get closer to.
    ‘Larry Warner,’ she told him, her eyes as cold as her voice. ‘He was forty-eight. A chartered accountant. Lived in Portsmouth.’
    ‘Well, I suppose somebody has to. Have we got an address?’
    ‘Twenty-four Cadbury House. On the way out to Southsea.’
    ‘Governor got somebody on that?’
    ‘I don’t know, Mr Bartholomew, as I’ve only just come on duty.’
    ‘Frank.’ He leaned towards her as though over a candlelit dinner for two. ‘I’ve told you to call me Frank.’
    She managed a smile that would freeze Hell over. ‘I’d rather keep it professional, if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Suit yourself,’ Bartholomew winked, leaning back in his chair. ‘Where is the guv’nor?’
    ‘Morgue.’
    ‘What’s this?’ Bartholomew’s roving eye had found the computer print-out on Jacquie’s desk.
    ‘It’s a witness list,’ she told him. ‘Everybody on or near the ride at the time of Warner’s death.’
    He flicked down the dot matrix. ‘Right, then. That’s our morning mapped out. You ready?’
    She nodded. When it came to working with Frank Bartholomew, short straws were the order of the day. And she always drew them.
    Who’s first, then?’ he frowned at the list. ‘Peter Maxwell, thirty eight, Columbine. Right.’
    She paused by the coffee machine. ‘I think we should start with the park staff,’ she said. ‘They’re the ones in the know.’
    Bartholomew gave her an odd look. ‘I’m sure they are,’ he said. ‘But you see, Jacquie, this list is not as new to me as I made out. I had sight of it last night and I did a little cross checking. This Mr Maxwell is on file. At the station. Not form, exactly. But I found his name under ‘P’. That stands for Pain in the Arse. I’ll drive.’
    Like West Meon village school, they’d built Leighford Mortuary in the nineteenth century too. It was dwarfed now by Leighford General, a monolith of concrete and steel built