Read Maxwell’s Reunion for Free Online Page B

with the back of his finger and caught it in the same hand.
    She laughed. ‘How did you do that?’
    ‘Reflexes.’ Maxwell smiled for the first time that morning. ‘It was a party piece of ours, the Magnificent Seven. We could all do it. Used to bore everybody to death, girlfriends and barmen alike. But Quent could do it with both hands, simultaneously.’
    She looked at him. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said softly.
    ‘You’re right.’ He sighed, leaning back in his chair, and pushed the uneaten ploughman’s away from him.
    ‘Everything all right, sir?’ the child waitress asked, sweeping past buried in trays.
    ‘Delicious, thank you.’ Maxwell was still looking at Jacquie. Then his eyes swivelled to the girl, chancing, dancing, backing and advancing on her way to the kitchen. ‘Year Eleven,’ he said. ‘Mum doesn’t want her to have this Saturday job, because it might bugger up her GCSEs. She does, though – it’ll be a useful cop-out if she does. And anyway, she might pick up the makings of a GNVQ Retail Management qualification. By the way, her name is Jade, her favourite band is Westlife and her boyfriend’s called Lee.’
    ‘Max.’ Jacquie frowned. ‘Do you know all this?’
    ‘Of course not.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’s the educated guess of someone who’s been around kids for ever.’ Then he was serious again. ‘And I’ve been around corpses too, Jacquie. Remember how we met?’
    She did. When both of them were trying to find out who killed one of Maxwell’s Own, one of his sixth form at Leighford High. He’d been around nearly as many corpses as she had.
    ‘So, Quent was still alive when somebody put a rope around his neck?’
    She nodded. ‘It’s my guess he’d have been too weak to resist after the hammering he took.’
    ‘Why the rope?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Why the rope? Why not finish the job with whatever blunt instrument we’re talking about? What blunt instrument are we talking about, by the way?’
    Jacquie shrugged. ‘Sorry, Max. That’s forensic. You heard DI Thomas’s attitude. I won’t get a smell at that.’
    ‘Where’s dear old Jim Astley when you need him?’
    There was nothing dear about Jim Astley, except perhaps his hourly rate; although ‘old’ was fair enough. But he was the pathologist-cum-police surgeon on Maxwell’s own turf, far to the south. Not for him the Midlands, which were sodden and unkind.
    ‘This Thomas.’ Maxwell was running a finger round the rim of his lager glass. ‘Did he give you a hard time?’
    ‘Let’s say he didn’t appreciate outside help,’ she said.
    ‘So he’d appreciate mine even less.’
    She nodded. ‘When did the DS say he wanted a statement?’
    Maxwell checked his watch. ‘They’re coming to the hotel at six. I thought they might want us at the station.’
    ‘Not yet.’ Jacquie was shaking her head. ‘They’ll try you on friendly turf first. There’ll be two of them, plainclothes, discreet.’
    ‘Softly, softly, eh?’
    Her eyes flickered. ‘Something like that. What can you tell me about him, Max?’
    Maxwell sat back in his chair. ‘Quent?’ He shook his head, swilling what was left of the lager at the bottom of the glass. ‘Christ knows. When asked to decline the verb “to be” in a French lesson, he began “I be, you be, he be …”’
    Jacquie couldn’t help but laugh. Neither could Maxwell.
    ‘That’s when I first became aware of him. We called him “Hebe” for a while. That was the Lower Fourths. We were eleven, still wearing short trousers. Course, I had the knees for it.’ And he slapped them both, just to make sure they were still there. ‘That would have been around 1956. People were ripping up cinemas as they rocked around the clock and the Hungarians told the Russkies they were tired of being pushed around. Wars and rumours of wars, Jacquie; nothing changes.’
    ‘What kind of man was he?’
    Maxwell shook his head slowly. ‘That’s just the point,’ he said, throwing