No.
No, no, no, no. For better or worse, this is my life. The life I’ve even sacrificed my marriage to. The life that may even have been the root cause of my son becoming a murderer. But it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Ever since that day, when I was still at Harrison, when I decided, never thinking of it before, to go into the police.
For a single moment, stretching in his head to many more, he recalled the circumstances. Peter Watson’s nan. His stories about her cantankerous ways. They had entertained the whole class. Particularly that tale of the dyed-in-the-wool card player’s affronted reaction when, coming back from her whist drive, she had found she had been burgled. It had sent them all into stitches. He himself had wondered for a while if Peter, who had often suffered at her tongue’s end, had been the home-wrecking intruder, so graphic was his description. All the emptied drawers, the spattered contents of jars and pots, the dozens of long-kept hats pulled out of their boxes and stuck up here and there over the whole house. But a few days later Peter had said the old lady had been taken to hospital after a heart attack, and suddenly the intrusion into her privacy had become vivid in his mind. A flash of revelation. I won’t go into the tax office like Dad. I’ll go into the police.
And now it’s all in jeopardy. The Gill plainly thinks there’s a good case against Conor and that the father of a killer hasn’t got any sort of a police career. The bastard. Never a hint that there may be two sides to this, that what I told him - and, Jesus, I shouldn’t have done, Jumbo was right - is really purely circumstantial. But, no, already in his mind he’s got Conor questioned, charged, brought to court, found guilty. All with scarcely drawing a breath.
‘However, I suppose the points you’ve drawn to my attention are to some extent circumstantial. Not that what old Henry Thoreau said years ago hasn’t got a great deal of truth in it. “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk”. And I’m very much afraid, Mr Benholme, that your son’s been trying to sell you milk mixed with more than a little river water.’
‘I think there is a case to be made going the other way, sir. I mean you—’
‘Yes, well, no doubt anything that tends towards the boy not being guilty, if there is anything, will come out when he’s properly questioned. However, I think, taking everything into account, perhaps we’ll delay a decision about suspending you. I’m not sure I could justify it to our financial masters, for one thing. The work has to get done. But, understand, although you will be here on duty, you are not to speak to any other officer about any aspect of this investigation whatsoever. You are off the case.’
Well, bastard or no bastard, I can’t deny he’s seen there may be two sides to it. Even if with the greatest reluctance.
The Gill gave a sharp cough.
‘And for that reason,’ he added, ‘it’s perhaps a good thing that I’ve asked the Chief to have Mr Verney recalled from his course at Bramshill. He’ll be taking over the investigation from myself. I’ve got more than enough on my plate at Headquarters, as you can imagine.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The thing to say. And me not in a position to do anything but keep my head down and Yes, sir and No, sir him till this cloud is lifted. As, please God, it will be. As it must be. But, the crafty sod, back to HQ when it looks as if there isn’t going to be any instant triumph for whizz-kid Detective Chief Superintendent Fothergill. His Britforce angle looking plain silly as soon as Di March started telling her tale about that thuggish trooper’s backside.
Sitting at his desk in his reclaimed office - it had given him only a momentary satisfaction, to jerk into the waste bin the Gill’s pipe ashes - he was finding it now only too easy to imagine the scene taking place in the Custody Suite. The Custody officer, pompous, fussy, I-go-by-the-book Sergeant Spage, meticulously sorting out a Custody record sheet. The way he goes like a busy squirrel through a sheaf of identical blank forms to find the sole one he thinks right. And now, with each section of the selected sheet solemnly filled in - no one writes more carefully - he’ll first consult his watch, then the clock and finally his watch once more before inscribing the time on the sheet and, with even more care, signing it.
What will Conor make of all that ritual, standing in front of Spage’s table? Will he jab out some smart teenage crack? Probably not. Poor Conor, bound to be intimidated by the scrubbed-clean, bleak inhumanity of the Custody Suite, the faint ever-present odour of antiseptic seeping out from the cells beyond. Let alone, looming behind him, by the massive form of the arresting officer, Detective Superintendent Verney, broad-shouldered battle tank, heavy of jaw, jutting eyebrows touched with grey, a bit of a middle-age belly but one more like a battering ram than a place to stow fish and chips.
Soon Conor should, according to the laid-down procedure, be informed of his statutory rights. Or had he already been told them? Spage sing-songing out the prescribed words in that mechanical way. A solicitor? Will Conor, bemused as he must be, have asked for one when told he could? Would Spage, ploughing away at getting it right beyond any possible criticism, have arranged for a solicitor? And under the provisions of the Children and Young Persons Act, he must have already informed ‘a responsible person’ that Conor, ‘a juvenile’, had been arrested. A responsible person? And who’s the Number One person responsible for Conor? Me. Here. Sitting in my chair. Conor’s father. Strictly warned by Detective Chief Superintendent Fothergill to avoid speaking to any other officer about any aspect of the case.
So, failing me, who? Conor’s mother, of course. She wouldn’t - she would never dare send bloody sports-mad Mike in her place?
He almost jumped up and rushed down to the Custody Suite, despite all that the Gill had said about not speaking to anyone.
Instead, defying that order just a little, he picked up his phone, got on to the Incident Room. Things would be quiet there now. Quiet but atmospherically tense, as he remembered from other major inquiries when they believed they were on the brink of a result. In what he hoped was a lightly disguised voice, he asked for DS Hastings.
‘Jumbo, it’s me. Listen, tell me quickly one more thing. Just a yes or no. Who’s coming in as Appropriate Adult? Is it Vicky?’
‘Yes.’
And down went the phone. Jumbo, sensibly, keeping his nose clean.
So Conor would have been solemnly informed of the grounds for his detention. On suspicion of being involved in the murder of one Edul Unwala on Monday, 10 November last. Something like that.
But, when he heard those words, would they come to him like a knell? The final confirmation that his crime had come to light? But, no. No, they must not. He is innocent. The words would have frightened him. Of course they would. But they would do no more than frighten him. Surely an innocent suspect.
Yet wasn’t sheer fright sometimes enough to make someone innocent believe themselves guilty? Would fear, when it came to Verney’s questioning, make Conor believe he might have done what he had not? Youngsters had been brought to that state in the past. Probably more than once by Verney’s own no-quarter-given methods. Would Conor be able to stand up to the hours of bombardment? With only Vicky there to support him?
So, Vicky now on her way, or soon to be so, the procedures in the Custody Suite over at last. Spage requesting Conor’s signature stating he had been told the grounds for his detention. Spage making sure he signed in the correct place. Once, bringing in some collar himself, there had been a fearful spat when Spage had seen the confirmatory signature being applied not exactly to the correct line.
But Conor? Where will he be waiting? Not in a cell. Provisions of the Code of Practice for the Detention, Treatment and Questioning, they’ll mean that at his age he’ll be in some room down there with just a simple lock on the door.
And what will he be thinking as he sits there? Jesus, will they get it all out of me? And the flood of cold sweat? Heart suddenly thumping and thumping? Or, almost as bad - not as bad, not as bad - will it be My father, my own bleeding father,
getting me accused of murder? Murder? Me? How could he even think such a thing?
Then, eventually Vicky arriving. Spitting fire, no doubt. Fire directed at me? It will be at some time or another. And I can’t say I blame her. But for now poor old By-the-Book Spage will get it.
I’d almost like to be there, fly on the wall, to see. But I wouldn’t. I’d rather never know anything at all about it. I’d rather it all wasn’t happening. But it is. My Conor about to be interviewed by tank-crushing Detective Superintendent Verney.
The times I’ve sat beside him in interview rooms. Back even in the days when he was just a DI and I was at the beginning of my time in CID, some breaking-and-entering case or other. Me cast in the role of soft man against his hard man. In the days when there was no recording machine sitting there between Verney and his suspect. The hand opposite suddenly grasped, the fingers twisted back, the snarled insults. And finally, white-faced, the cough. Another one for the Crown Court, with evidence even the sharpest lawyer couldn’t upset.
And Verney not much more civilized now that his every word goes down on the twin-tape.
Conor facing that. And not over some routine breaking-and-entering affair. But a murder inquiry.
He sat there, lips compressed like a trap. In case he wept.
He found at last he could not stay staring at the window opposite, seeing nothing. There was work he ought to be doing. On his restored desk there had been a full in-tray. It was hardly touched so far. How could he sit reading, initialling, filling the out-tray when he would have absorbed nothing?
But I’ve got to do something. I can’t sit, going over and over what might be happening to Conor. What might be, and what might not. Verney may have left him to think things over. Or he may be pressing him like a roadroller squeezing and squeezing forward. Conor may be drinking a cup of tea, the statutory offered ‘refreshment’. Or he may already be slumped over the table, his racking sobs recorded in duplicate by the softly whirring machine beside him.
I just don’t know, and I’ve no way of finding out. Off the case. Understand, although you will be here on duty, you are not to speak to any other officer about any aspect of this investigation whatsoever. You are off the case. The Gill’s mouth shutting in a tight line above that little reddish brush of moustache.
But I must do something. And there’s only one thing I can possibly bring myself to do. Something to clear Conor. Or …
Or, face it, at worst to confirm my dread.
But what? I’m off the case. Off the case. And yet… Well, is there nothing I can do, not as a police officer, but as Conor’s father? Damn it, if I wasn’t in the police and they had come along and arrested my son, wouldn’t I be doing everything I could to clear him? A father’s right.
So what to do? Try and see it rationally. Assume Conor is innocent. As he is. As he is. So, then, ask: why did he tell that damning lie about not being in Sandymount on Monday around six o’clock? Answer, I’ve already told myself, and, come to that, told old Jumbo, who thought it a reasonable guess. Conor must be shielding someone.
But wait. Wait. I assumed if he was shielding someone it was a fellow treasure hunter he’d met on the dunes. But there are other activities Sandymount is well known for. Such as the selling of drugs. In particular, in fact, of Ecstasy, bought in small handfuls by stupid teenagers intending to have a high time at a weekend rave. Can it be that Conor, for all that I’m almost a hundred per cent sure he isn’t a user himself - Damn it, I do know the signs - has a friend who is? And, yes, he’d certainly want to cover for him. Not be a sneak.
And, if he does have such a mate, isn’t it most probably a boy from Harrison? Right then, go along to the school, go along now and see the head. What’s his name? Yes, Teploe. Question him about drug use in the school. There’s bound to be some. There is in every secondary school in the country, in quite a few primaries come to that. No. A better plan. Talk - I’ve been meaning to for weeks - about security at the school. And move on from there …
He was clattering down the stairs with his coat on, phone call made - ‘Yes, Mr Teploe is still here, as a matter of fact’ - almost before he had properly realized what he was doing.
Mr Teploe, long, lugubrious face, rimless glasses, sad greeny-black academic gown drooping down the length of his long body. A dusty raven.
‘Well, yes, security is a problem, Chief Inspector. A problem, I don’t deny it. All right, if we could put a tall electrified fence round the whole school and the playing fields, then we could perhaps tell ourselves there wouldn’t be much to worry about. But we can’t. Physically impossible. Out of the question on cost grounds. And even then, the evil man will find a way of sliding in.’
A sudden fixed expression on the long face revealing a fiercely moral outlook. The evil man. Not altogether pleasant? Someone like that in charge of four hundred adolescent boys and girls? But then shouldn’t a headmaster have a moral outlook?
Question to be looked at some other time. But at the present moment a way in.
‘Yes, I see what you mean. And I imagine on occasion you find evil, or wickedness at least, creeping in with some of your pupils themselves. That’s something else, in fact, that I’d like to take the opportunity of discussing with you. Drug use. How much of it do you think goes on in the school? I’m not criticizing, you understand. It’s something no one can altogether prevent. But I would like to know what you think the state of affairs is on that front here at Harrison.’
Mr Teploe’s long face took on an even gloomier look.
‘Well, I can’t deny, Chief Inspector, that there has been drug taking in the school. We even had - what is it you call them? - a pusher among the pupils.’
‘Oh, yes, sir. Was he - or was it a she - prosecuted? I don’t think I recall the case.’
A puff of disparagement.
‘No. No, Chief Inspector, we didn’t think the affair warranted anything like that. The governors and I. We felt expulsion would meet the case. The young man was, in any case, shortly due to leave King’s Hampton. Father in the Army, an overseas posting.’
Should be giving him a bit of stick, this headmaster. But better not. Not if I’m really here only to find out who Conor may be protecting.
‘But that was some time ago, yes? I’d be rather more interested in having an up-to-date picture. Do you in fact have any suspicions that anyone is pushing, say, cannabis, among the pupils now? Or is there activity outside the gates at the end of school that gives you any cause for concern?’
‘Well, outside school bounds, Mr Benholme, I can’t really be held responsible.’
‘Not even when something may be happening just outside the gates?’
Don’t let this sanctimonious bugger off too lightly. Was it a mistake to get Conor in to the old place? Father’s footsteps? Always a hassle finding the fees. But a lot going for the old alma mater too. Best facilities by far for miles around, pretty good teachers by all accounts and a tradition of academic success. So, as usual, much to be said on both sides.
But how much to be said about drugs? About Conor and his friends?
‘Yes, yes, of course, we do our best to keep our eyes open. But, you know, we can hardly go spying on our pupils.’
‘No, of course, I recognize that. But I must tell you I am somewhat concerned. As much as a parent as a policeman.’
Ah, well, there I can at least assure you that your son - Colum, isn’t it? - is not one of the boys I would think of as likely to be in what we must learn to call, I fear, the drugs scene. No, a good lad. Near the top of his class, I believe, and a fine figure on the sports field.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear that.’
However little reassuring that sort of blather is. Colum? I’d love to Colum him. Still, I suppose with four hundred pupils he can’t be expected to have full details at his fingertips about any one of them.
‘But I was asking about the drugs situation in general. I mean, with your knowledge of the boys in the school, and the girls too, c
ome to that, I expect you could, in strictest confidence, give me a name or two. They’ll go no further unless we find something definite.’
‘Yes.’
Mr Teploe came to a halt.
Is he going to name a name or two? Or is he going to stand there like a long black sodding raven and say nothing?
‘Yes. Well, I suppose it is my duty to assist the police in whatever way I can. And so, yes. Yes, I could give you some names.’
‘And they are …?’
‘Well, there was a boy by the name of Melton. He actually left us at the end of last academic year, and I understand he has obtained some sort of a job in London. But I dare say my secretary could give you an address, if that would be of any help.’
Dodging still. The good name of Harrison Academy. Doesn’t he realize Harrison Academy may be acquiring a bad name as well?
‘Perhaps it would be a help, sir. I’ll make a point of asking your secretary. But you spoke about some names. Can you give me more?’
Mr Teploe sighed. Heavily and long.
‘Well, I suppose— But please understand, I have nothing in the way of proof.’
Come on, come on.
‘Yes, of course, sir, I understand that, and I’ve already assured you there’s no question of any prosecution arising simply from the names you’ve given me. The names you’re just about to give me.’
Putting all his determination into face and body language, he waited.
‘Very well, Mr Benholme. At the end of last year, that is in July last, I had occasion to take disciplinary action against two boys, together with one of the girls, when a member of my staff observed them attempting to sell a small number of those tablets called, I understand, Ecstasy.’
Another silence.
‘And they were?’
‘Macaulay Stornier and Peter Vinberry. And the girl was Belinda Withrington, although I suspect she was more of an innocent involved rather than a full participant.’
‘I see, sir. And thank you.’
But Belinda Withrington. Conor’s Belinda. Even if she had been no more than that innocent accomplice to those two passers-on of E tablets, she was still a link, a possible link, between Conor and Sandymount drug dealing.
The Soft Detective Page 10