Maxwell’s Movie Read Online Free PDF

his mouth to say something, but whatever it was, it wasn’t quick enough or relevant enough for Peter Maxwell.
    ‘Yes,’ said the Head of Sixth Form. ‘Two hundred and thirty-eight of them, at the last count,’ and he regretted that slightly, because now, without Ronnie, it was two hundred and thirty-seven. ‘I’m father to all my sixth form, Mr Parsons; they’re all my kids.’
    ‘No.’ Such a notion made no sense to Ron Parsons. Bricks, mortar; these were the things he understood. A teacher’s relationship with his charges? That was beyond him. ‘No, I mean kids of your own.’
    For a moment, there was a silence. Jim Diamond squirmed a little. To him, Peter Maxwell was a bachelor, too wound up in whatever it was that bachelors did to have much of a life. But he didn’t know Peter Maxwell. He didn’t know about the little girl who had died, all those years ago, as a police car, hurtling out of control around a deadly bend on a wet road, had ploughed into her, killing her and her mother instantly. At least, Maxwell hoped it was instantly. For twenty-four years he had hoped his wife and daughter never knew what hit them. It was all that had kept him sane.
    ‘No,’ Maxwell said softly. ‘No kids of my own.’
    ‘Well, there you are.’ Ron wouldn’t leave it alone. ‘How can you know, how can you possibly know what it’s all about, then? Coming in here telling us it’s our fault.’
    ‘That’s not what he said, Ron.’ Mrs Parsons made a pretty decent 7th Cavalry herself when she put her mind to it, thundering to Maxwell’s aid. ‘Mr Maxwell is only trying to help.’
    Ron Parsons sat there for a moment, on the Headmaster’s plastic chair. Then he folded. His shoulders relaxed and he relented before his wife’s cajoling and the steady gaze of Mad Max. ‘Yeah, well … all right, then,’ he said.
    ‘No, Mr Maxwell, there was no row,’ Mrs Parsons told him. ‘We didn’t see much of Ronnie the night before he went, to be honest. He went out to see his mates for a drink, but he was in by ten. You was watching the football with him, wasn’t you, Ron?’
    ‘That’s right,’ Ron corroborated.
    ‘And he seemed his usual self?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary?’
    Ron Parsons couldn’t really say what was out of the ordinary for his eldest boy. Ronnie was clever and lots of dads would be proud, but Ron Senior didn’t really understand the boy. He was doing Business Studies and History and Geography. It was all Greek to Ron. In the absence of an opinion, the boy’s father shrugged.
    ‘Have the police been in touch?’ Diamond asked.
    ‘The police?’ Mrs Parsons flashed a glance at her husband. This was a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake up. And she’d just entered some new and terrible depth in it. The Headmaster’s pastel walls stretched up like the slabs of some dungeon. And the light at the top got smaller and smaller. ‘Oh.’
    ‘Just routine,’ Maxwell said, sensing the rising tide of the woman’s panic. ‘They’ve got to ask some questions, that’s all.’
    ‘Yes,’ Mrs Parsons said. ‘Yes, of course.’
    Maxwell was on his feet. ‘Look,’ he said to them both, ‘please don’t worry. I have to be somewhere else now, but Ronnie will turn up. I’m sure of it. We’ll make some enquiries of our own. Headmaster,’ and Maxwell nodded briskly to the man before shaking the Parsons’ hands and making his exit.
    He flicked open the file on Ronnie Parsons. Seven very average GCSEs, played soccer for the school in Years Seven and Eight. A dog-eared Incident Form bore witness to the fact that Mr Diamond, no less, had caught him smoking beyond the tennis courts in Year Ten. A copy of his Centigrade Form gave evidence that his leanings were towards business or administration. He’d had measles, all the relevant jabs and his doctor was old Edgarson, in the sea-front practice. Maxwell shook his head as he’d done countless times over the inadequacy of the