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when I conducted private, personal interviews with her. Oh, and every time I got some file paper from the History stock cupboard.’
    ‘You’re just an old pervert, Peter Maxwell.’ She clicked her tongue.
    ‘One of the few – the very few – perks of the job, Nursie,’ he smiled at her. Then he grimaced. ‘Did you put any sugar in this coffee?’
    Detective Constable Jacquie Carpenter knew Peter ‘Mad Max’ Maxwell. A girl from Leighford had been murdered a few years back – one of Maxwell’s Own, one of his sixth form. So she knew the face and she knew the style. She knew Jim Diamond too and what a waste of time it was talking to him. She flashed her warrant card and got herself conducted as soon as possible to Maxwell’s office at Leighford High.
    The Great Man wasn’t there. He was, at that moment, attempting to guide a pretty comatose Year Ten class through the intricacies of the Schools History Project. They still, all these years on, had no real notion of primary and secondary sources or how binding bias could be. The office junior in the tight skirt had led Jacquie into the Inner Sanctum, that bourne from which few sixth formers returned. And in a dither, she’d hoped she’d done the right thing by leaving her there. After all, if you couldn’t trust the police not to pinch County Council property, who could you trust?
    Jacquie Carpenter didn’t sit down. She took in the film posters that lined the walls: Gregory Peck glaring at loony Robert Mitchum in
Cape Fear
; Charlton Heston apparently rubbing noses with Laurence Olivier in
Khartoum
; Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn scratching each other’s eyes out in
The Lion in Winter
.
    ‘Of all the sixth form offices in all the world, you had to walk into mine,” Humphrey Bogart lisped behind her.
    ‘Mr Maxwell.’ She was flustered, but tried not to show it.
    ‘Woman Policeman Carpenter,’ he bowed and threw a pile of exercise books onto the coffee table.
    Jacquie looked older. Her hair was scraped back into a single plait and she wore less makeup than he remembered. Was her mouth harder? Her eyes less kind? Maxwell decided that was what working with the girls in blue did for you.
    ‘Why didn’t you go into the film business?’ she asked him.
    He chuckled. ‘You see this?’ He patted the Acorn on the desk. ‘Apparently, it’s a computer. My colleagues tell me it’s linked up to every University in the country. At a touch of a key, my sixth formers can find out what courses are on offer anywhere in this great country of ours. If they want Nuclear Physics with Basketry, then I’m sure there’s somewhere – probably Scunthorpe – that does it. Whereas in my day …’ He waved her to a seat. ‘Roughly speaking, when Julia Margaret Cameron got her first box Brownie for Christmas, my old careers master said to me, “History, eh, Maxwell?” He had this dribble problem. Shrapnel in the Great War, we thought. “History, eh?” he said. “Right, that’s teaching or the Civil Service for you, my lad.” Well, I vaguely knew, even at seventeen, that the Civil Service didn’t give much of a service and they certainly weren’t civil, so here I am. What can I do for you, Woman Policeman?’
    ‘Ronnie Parsons,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ he passed her the cardboard file, ‘that won’t take you long to sift through. In the meantime, can I make you a coffee? Tea?’
    ‘No, thanks.’ She read the file as she spoke. ‘I should explain that we are liaising with our colleagues in the Met on this one.’
    ‘No luck their end?’
    ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But these things take time.’ ‘You’ve talked to the parents?’ Maxwell sat down in his county chair, worn after all these years to the contours of his bum.
    ‘Yes. Have you?’
    ‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’
    She thought for a moment before speaking. ‘Let’s say you have something of a reputation, Mr Maxwell.’
    ‘Really?’ He