Maxwell’s Ride Read Online Free Page B

a marksman on your hands.’ Hall followed Astley into his office as the doctor busied himself hauling off lie. mask and cap and scrubbing down, instinctively using his elbows on the specially adapted taps. ‘What’s the score?’
    ‘I’ve got a Press Conference later this morning. Chief Constable insisted on it. I don’t remember a killing as public as this.’
    ‘Who was he?’
    ‘Larry Warner. A chartered accountant.’
    ‘Ah, well, there you are.’
    ‘Sorry?’ Hall lowered himself into Astley’s spare chair, leaning his head against the wall.
    ‘Chartered accountants. Parasites, all of ’em. They’re in the Bible, you know.’
    ‘Are they?’ It had been a long time since Henry Hall had dipped into the gospels. He was a different generation from Jim Astley. Hall had got comparative religions at O level, Islam and Buddhism, with a hint of Ba’hai. Astley was of the Old School and the New Testament; he could have retraced Si Paul’s missionary journeys in his sleep.
    ‘“Tax gatherers and others”,’ Astley quoted smugly, wrenching paper towels from the dispenser.
    ‘I thought that meant prostitutes,’ Hall frowned.
    ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Astley shook his head. ‘Nothing wrong with a little healthy prostitution. Madame Sin of Golden Calf Road, Damascus. No, no, the unmentionable in society. The lot the Jews cleared out of the Temple. The profession – and I use the word guardedly – that dare not speak its name. You mark my words, Henry, for this one you’ll have a list of suspects as long as your arm. It’s the root of all evil, it makes the world go around. And I’d be prepared to bet it put a bullet through Mr Larry Warner, who probably had it coming.’
    ‘What kind of bullet?’ Hall wanted to know.
    ‘Oh, now you’re being picky!’ Astley scolded. ‘Robert Churchill the gun expert I’m not. Still, you buy me a cup of coffee upstairs in what we still laughingly call a hospital and I’ll give you the benefit of my years of speculatory wisdom.’
    The rain set in mid-morning, sending those who thought spring had sprung scurrying for cover, forcing them to spend a few minutes extra in the Leighford Asda or, God forbid, the Leighford library.
    Peter Maxwell was lolling back in his modeller’s chair at the top of his town house, his gold-laced Crimean forage cap at a jaunty angle on his head, a paintbrush at a jaunty angle between his teeth. Before him on his desk, under the glare of the lamp, was scattered plastic arms and legs, 54 millimetres of careful reconstruction. Bored with watching the rain, the Master Modeller leaned forward again and took up the white head.
    ‘What did you really look like, Albert Mitchell, Private, 13th Light Dragoons?’ he asked it, focusing on the standard plastic features under the magnifying glass. ‘Any ideas, Count?’
    The menfolk at 38 Columbine had, it must be admitted, retreated upstairs to Maxwell’s Inner Sanctum. The people he allowed this far into his private world were few indeed. And every one of them had gazed in awe at the plastic horses and their riders on the huge diorama under the skylight and the triangular roof. Three hundred and forty-eight Light Cavalrymen ready to ride into the Jaws of Death, the Mouth of Hell. Albert Mitchell would be the three hundred and forty-ninth.
    ‘Count?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’
    The cat called Metternich flicked an ear. It was the nearest in acknowledgement that Maxwell was likely to get. ‘Ginger, you think? Well, it is possible, I suppose. Bit of a bugger, though, paint-mixing wise. But no, you’re right. I’ve done too many with saddle-brown hair. It is a bit of a cop-out.’
    Downstairs, Maxwell’s nieces were working their way through his vast video collection. It was just as well for Will Smith that Independence Day ’s president of the United States just happened to be an ex-USAAF pilot, or the world would already have come to an end. Maxwell