Maxwell's Chain Read Online Free PDF

demanded to be taken home. They were, after all, about to tramp across a rather chilly dunescape towards the incoming tide, looking for something that probably wasn’t there. And the old, haunting refrain crept unbidden into Maxwell’s mind. ‘Last night I dreamt a dreary dream, beyond the isle of Skye. I saw a dead man win a fight. And I think that man was I.’ Having found, or not found, that something, Maxwell was in for a right bollocking when he got home. He mulled over his options as they tramped silently, in Indian file, towards the edge of the sea, the rush in their ears becoming a roar that blotted out all else. The conversation at home was not going to be easy, he decided. If they found a body, Henry Hall was going to go ballistic. The crime scene would be hopelesslycompromised and he would at least threaten to bang Maxwell up for ever and throw away the key. He had threatened it often enough, after all. As a teacher, Maxwell knew that eventually you had to do what you threatened or you lost all power, all credence. This time it would be the Oubliette, the Chateau d’If, Devil’s Island. If they didn’t find a body, Jacquie was going to go ballistic. She could read him like a book; something really simple, like a Mr Men book. Mr Nosy. Mr Silly. Mr I-Can’t- Help-Looking -For-Bodies. She would know he was out sleuthing. And he had promised he wouldn’t. Had promised loads of times he wouldn’t…
    His reverie was broken by cannoning into the back of Bill Lunt. The photographer was rooted to the spot, stock still up to his ankles in soft sand. Maxwell sighed.
    ‘What is it, Bill? Litter? A dead seagull?’
    Bill’s voice came from deep inside, a tiny, strangled thing that could hardly make it past his chattering teeth, his suddenly dry lips.
    ‘No, not really,’ he tried to whisper above the boom of the surf. ‘It’s a hand, actually.’
    Maxwell looked around their feet, fitfully lit by the wavering torch beam. ‘Where? Where’s a hand?’
    Lunt swallowed hard and moved to one side. ‘Here,’ he said, trying to sound like a grown-up, agrown-up photographer who had cleverly detected a crime. ‘Here it is,’ he said bravely. ‘Just by my foot.’ And he fainted dead away, gracefully to one side. Thoughtful, even in sudden unconsciousness.

    ‘And so,’ Maxwell said to Henry Hall, ‘I looked down and, damn me, but if he wasn’t right. It was a hand, sticking out of the sand, as if it was waving, rather than drowning. Poor old Bill.’ It was nearly eleven now, way past everybody’s bedtime. Peter Maxwell had left his mobile at home, because he always left his mobile at home. He’d done the joke about mobile homes so often Jacquie wasn’t listening any more. Peter Maxwell had tried to revive Bill Lunt, but on second thoughts let him sleep rather than leave him next to human remains or have the indignity of having to carry him back to the car. So he’d hot-footed it back along the sand, through the deserted car park and up onto The Shingle Road. A bit like Vinnie Jones looking for the RAC.
    The old girl in Bide-A-Wee was suitably alarmed by the red-faced, out-of-breath apparition hanging on her door frame, but she’d duly called the police and the ambulance service and was eternally grateful to see the apparition vanish. And she slid the bolts shut behind him. You couldn’t be too careful. Hecould have been a Global Terrorist.
    That was then. Now, Maxwell looked back over his shoulder to where the fainting photographer was sitting on the ground, someone else’s metal-lined blanket round his shoulders, sipping water from a plastic bottle. ‘It’s not the same actually finding a body as reading about it or seeing John Nettles finding one on the telly.’
    ‘And you should know,’ grunted Henry Hall.
    ‘To hear you talk, Chief Inspector,’ Maxwell said, ‘you’d think I found them all the time. In fact, I have personally discovered surprisingly few.’
    ‘Surprisingly few?’ Henry