Read Maxwell's Grave for Free Online Page B

hand, to kiss her. ‘Your place or mine? Oh, and can I put my hand down your blouse, please?’
    The briefest of smiles flew across her face and her grey eyes flashed in the gold of the sun’s rays. ‘You,’ she closed to him, ‘are just a dirty old man.’
    ‘Tsk, tsk,’ he shook his head. ‘And I thought you bought all that guff about how much I loved you.’
    ‘I bet you say that to all the police officers who come to investigate a murder. Henry’s going to be furious – that you’re here, I mean – you know that, don’t you?’
    ‘Henry? How is the old sleuth?’
    ‘Same old, same old,’ she shrugged. ‘Infuriating.’
    They were talking about DS Carpenter’s boss, DCI Henry Hall, who had locked horns with Peter Maxwell on more than one occasion. Maxwell could picture him now, in his battleship grey suit, with his solid jaw and his impenetrable eyes, vacant behind dead lenses. Where did he buy those glasses? Mr Inscrutable.
    ‘What’s this all about, Max?’ Jacquie Carpenter may havebeen Maxwell’s lover, but now, today, on this hillside, she was a copper first.
    ‘The dead man, as you know, is David Radley. He’s professor of archaeology at Wessex. Paul Moss and I bought a few kids over, at his request, to see the dig. All part of Radley’s personal recruitment drive.’
    ‘Kids?’ She couldn’t see any.
    ‘I sent them home. Who’s this Toogood?’
    DS Carpenter smiled, glancing back to the main tent where her colleagues were congregating. ‘He’s quite cute, isn’t he? New kid on the block. From the West Country somewhere.’
    ‘Ah, Tottingleigh,’ Maxwell nodded, thinking no further than the next village along. ‘Says he’s an English specialist.’
    ‘Got a degree in it,’ the policewoman said. ‘Don’t ask me what a Medieval literature buff is doing in a blue suit. Takes all sorts, I suppose. What do you know about Radley?’
    ‘What do you know about how he died?’ he countered.
    ‘Uh-huh.’ It had started already, as she knew it would. She looked out from the headland to the sea beyond, gilded now in the dying sun. Vast purple bars of cloud were sliding into place along the horizon, closing down the day, bringing in the night. ‘You know the rules. I cannot divulge…’
    ‘Bollocks, heart of my heart.’ It was his turn to smile. ‘We go too far back, Woman Policeman Carpenter. Now, talk, kid.’ It was, as always, the best Bogart she’d ever heard. She looked at the man she loved under his pointless tweed hat, his curls iron grey under its rim. She wanted, as always, to reach out and smooth that cheek with its furrows, those lips with that smile. She wanted, as always, to feel his arms around her and to bury her face into the soft hair of his chest.
    ‘You’d better get out of here before Henry arrives,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk later. It’ll have to be official, of course – at the station, I mean.’
    ‘And unofficially?’ He fluttered his eyelashes at her, Svengali to her Trilby.
    She wrinkled her face. ‘Same old, same old,’ she muttered . ‘Your place. Tonight. But it’ll be late. You don’t want to know the paperwork this little lot’ll generate.’
    ‘I’ll be up,’ he winked at her. ‘And don’t talk to me about paperwork, Woman Policeman. I am a teacher.’
    ‘How’ll you get home?’ she asked, glancing round. ‘I don’t see Surrey.’
    ‘I came in the minibus, remember? No, the walk will do me good. Abyssinia, Woman Policeman.’ And he ducked under the tape and was gone.
     
    ‘Ah, Henry, nice of you to call.’ Dr Jim Astley was putting away his bag of tricks. In the confines of the main tent, he looked a strange, ancient, jaundiced creature, worn out by years of forensic medicine, golf and an alcoholic wife. Almost alone among the scattering of aliens in white coats, he was in civvies.
    ‘I thought I saw…’ DCI Henry Hall’s wife didn’t drink and he didn’t play golf. Even so, the eerie light in the tent and a