But then I heard a sort of squeal, and a protracted thud. I tiptoed into the hall and looked down. A middle-aged woman was lying inside the door. Maxwell’s cleaning lady. I’d never set eyes on her before, but I knew he had a ‘Mrs Mop’: he never tired of repeating the fact. I crept quickly downstairs and out of the door, and kept my eyes on the rearview mirror all the way back along the mews.
It all moved surprisingly slowly, I thought. In the movies they wrap up these sorts of cases within a good ninety minutes (or occasionally a supremely lousy ninety minutes), but even after we buried Maxwell no one had been asking the obvious questions. Then one evening Mark and Jimmy phoned, one after the other. Both had the same story to tell. They’d been asked to go along to the police station, and there had been shown a video recording. Both said the same thing.
‘They told me not to mention anything to you, but I thought… you know. You being a mate and all.’
And then there was a ring at the doorbell. Alice answered, and after a few moments came back into the living-room. She didn’t look well.
‘It’s the police,’ she said. ‘They want to talk to me about Maxwell. Down at the station.’
And indeed there were two grim-faced constables loitering on the stairwell.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked them.
‘Nothing to worry about, sir,’ said the more loquacious of the pair.
Well, I thought, thank God for that.
I didn’t go with Alice. I lay along the sofa, finding it curiously comfortable. The TV wasn’t on. I stared at the blank screen until, hours later, there was the sound of a key shivering in the lock. Alice looked exhausted and numb. Without demur she flopped on to the beanbag.
‘You won’t believe this,’ she said. ‘They think I had something to do with it.’
I sat up. ‘What?’
‘They think there was something going on. Between Maxwell and me.’
‘What?’ This time I stood up. Alice eyed the empty sofa, so I sat back down again. ‘They think what?’
So she told me about the interrogation. She called it that, not an interview but an interrogation. A nice WPC who didn’t say anything except when the two fat male detectives left the room.
‘She asked me if I wanted a cup of tea.’
The whole thing had been tape-recorded. ‘They kept on at me about Maxwell, how well I knew him, what he was like, did we ever see one another alone. Christ, he was your friend, not mine. Besides, I told them he was gay. One of them smiled. He didn’t say anything, but he grinned and shook his head at me.’ She looked like she might cry, but only for a moment. Soon enough she was all anger and retribution. She’d talk to our solicitor.
‘Solicitor?’
‘The one we used to buy this place. I told them, I said I was going to talk to my solicitor.’
‘What did they say?’
She swallowed drily. ‘They said that might be a good idea.’
The following morning, they came for me.
Not constables this time, but a detective sergeant and another man. The other man drove, while we sat together in the back. The detective sergeant had bloodshot eyes and was overweight. He took me to an interview room where Detective Inspector Claverhouse was waiting. There was a tape recorder on the table between us. On another table sat a TV monitor with a video player built into its base. We had something similar at the school.
It took a lot of questions, some of them about parties I’d attended at Maxwell’s flat. Then Inspector Claverhouse rose from his chair.
‘There’s something we’d like to show you, sir. Just so you can give us an opinion.’
Although they must have watched the video a dozen times, they still drank it in, especially the latter sections. Then they turned to me.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘the first bit… with my wife…’
‘You recognise your wife then?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘That was her. At a party of Maxwell’s. I didn’t realise he’d taken so much film of her.’ He hadn’t, of course. After a while he’d handed the camera to me, and I’d concentrated for a few minutes on Alice, trying to work out if she looked better or worse through a lens. Better was the answer. The distance helped, and she did possess a camera-ready figure.
‘And the, er, material after that?’ said Inspector Claverhouse.
I raised my eyebrows and exhaled. ‘Looks like something home-made,’ I replied. ‘I know it’s said that couples will rent video cameras for a weekend so they can record… you know.’
‘But they don’t need to rent the camera if they already own one,’ said Claverhouse.
‘True.’
Claverhouse ejected the tape and examined it. ‘You couldn’t identify the participants?’
I smiled bleakly. ‘You didn’t exactly see their faces.’ Of course you didn’t, I’d made sure of that. But I’d also chosen models whose physical shape was at least similar to Maxwell and Alice. I didn’t think anyone would notice that part of the way through the male model actually changed identity. By that stage, all you could see was skin and hair. Claverhouse was looking at the spine of the videotape.
‘True enough, I just wondered. There’s some writing on here, just initials. MG and AB. What do you make of that?’
I stared at him, then at the detective sergeant, and laughed uneasily. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘You know damned fine MG is Maxwell, and you’re implying AB is my wife.’
‘Your wife is on the tape, sir.’
‘Yes, but not…’ I nodded towards the machine. ‘I mean, it’s not them doing…’ My voice died away again. ‘It’s not,’ I said quietly. I did not tell a lie. The two detectives understood. Inspector Claverhouse sat down again.
‘There’s also a letter, sir,’ he said sympathetically. ‘It appears to be from Maxwell Gray to someone called Alice. Perhaps you’d care to take a look.’ He produced a photocopy of the crumpled sheet for me to read. I read through it twice.
‘Alice, there’s no easy way to put this. I want out, pure and simple. It’s not your fault, it’s mine; or maybe it’s neither’s fault. I don’t know any more. It would break Kenny’s heart if he found out, you know that. Not that he would find out, he’s too stupid, too guileless. But that just makes me feel all the more guilty. I hope you can understand. I hope we can still be friends. Maxie.’
Two notes jarred. He wouldn’t have called himself Maxie, but then the police weren’t to know that. It had just been devilment on my part. But neither would he have used a semicolon. Only people like me use semicolons in this day and age. I doubted CID would notice this either. I looked up at Inspector Claverhouse. There were tears in my eyes. Then I broke down altogether.
And still it dragged on.
With Alice under suspicion, I became her champion, protecting her from police and media alike. She didn’t understand any of it. How could there be a letter? How could there be a video? It wasn’t her on the video, she told Claverhouse. It wasn’t. I backed her up. I was sweating about that video. If the police watched it often enough – and I didn’t doubt it was required viewing between shifts at the station – maybe they’d begin to see discrepancies. Then again, all they’d want to watch were the dirty bits, and they would be watching for all the wrong reasons. I’d chosen the seediest, most amateurish tapes in Maxwell’s collection. They really did look home-made. The police meantime were interviewing more friends of Maxwell’s, and his colleagues. Again and again they called us to interview. It was a wearing process.
They knew they were dealing with manslaughter at least. The pathologist had been able to say that Maxwell had fallen with some force, almost certainly not of his own volition. What’s more, the body had been moved, then placed back at the foot of the stairs, as if someone had thought to dispose of it, but been unable to. A woman, for example, might not have the weight and power necessary to shift such a load very far.