If he did, then the man was wasted as a headmaster. The London stage was crying out for people with that sort of acting talent. When Kingsley said, ‘I gather there were some problems with him?’ Morton’s only reaction was a rueful smile.
‘Oh dear. Yes, I’m afraid he was having difficulty with discipline. Such a shame – he was so enthusiastic about his subject, so ready to help with extra-curricular activities, but I’m afraid kids today don’t have much respect for these virtues. We were doing all we could to help him, of course, but—’
‘Did you have any complaints about him?’
The man’s untroubled eyes met his squarely. ‘Not that many. A couple of conscientious parents were worried about how much their children were being allowed to learn in his class, but that was all. No, quite honestly the main problem was what the kids were doing to him. He was getting a pretty hard time from some of them. To tell you the truth, we were beginning to wonder if he was in the wrong profession.’
You had to go for it. ‘Were there any allegations of child abuse?’ Kingsley asked baldly.
The transformation was remarkable. Morton jumped as if someone had jabbed him with a needle. ‘Child abuse! No, never! Have you had a complaint?’ He certainly wasn’t untroubled now.
‘We have information that yesterday a child made a complaint that she had been abused by Mr Smith.’
‘Good God! Well, if so it never reached me.’ He was pressing numbers on his phone as he spoke. ‘Sarah? Would you find Mrs Walker for me – ask her to come to my office as a matter of urgency? Thanks.’
He replaced the receiver. ‘She’s the Child Protection Officer, but I can’t imagine that if there had been a complaint like that she wouldn’t have come straight to me. There’s a strict protocol – Luke would have had to be suspended immediately.’
The pause, as they waited for Mrs Walker to appear, was going to be awkward. The other question on Kingsley’s list – the whereabouts of Nat Rettie – seemed a good way of filling it.
Morton turned to his computer, scanning through files. ‘The absent list should be here, unless Sarah hasn’t had a chance to compile it yet. Oh yes, here we are. Nat Rettie isn’t in today – natural enough, I suppose, in the circumstances.’ He closed the file, then looked up sharply, his face suddenly alive with suspicion.
‘Oh, hang about! These allegations wouldn’t have anything to do with Nat Rettie, would they?’
Kingsley didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it, either.
‘Rettie,’ the headmaster went on, ‘was conducting a vendetta against Smith. I suspended him once on the basis of a report from Luke and ever since he’s been out for revenge. Ah, here’s Fiona.’
The woman who came in was middle-aged and slightly overweight, with a kind, motherly face. She had obviously been crying; she looked enquiringly at Kingsley as Morton performed the introductions and explained.
‘The officer has heard that a girl made a complaint of abuse yesterday against Luke Smith. Did it reach you?’
A look of unfeigned horror crossed Fiona Walker’s face. ‘Luke? No, no, of course not! I’d have come to you straight away, and so would any other member of staff. But who—’
‘The detective won’t confirm it, but I suspect that Nat Rettie’s behind this. So the girl, no doubt, will be—’
‘Kylie MacEwan,’ Fiona supplied grimly. ‘Of course we have to deal with this totally professionally, but if it’s anything other than another stage in Rettie’s war of attrition, I’ll be astounded. Probably the only person abusing Kylie is Nat himself.’ Then, with tears in her eyes, she went on, ‘And you know what they’re saying, Peter? They’re saying that it happened partly because Luke was trying to throw himself overboard and they were distracted, trying to stop him.’
It crossed the detective’s mind uneasily that perhaps this new kind of Head wasn’t as different from the old kind as you might imagine when Morton turned a gimlet eye on him. ‘Is this true?’
It would be on the news today anyway. ‘Yes, that he was trying to commit suicide. There would have been other factors, of course.’
‘And about Kylie and Nat?’ Fiona pressed him.
‘I can’t discuss that, but what I can say is that I shall be wanting to talk to Kylie.’
‘You and me both,’ Morton said with feeling. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Constable. We’ll play it by the book.’
‘I’m sure you will, sir,’ Kingsley got up. ‘I’ve got another preliminary interview to do, but I’ll come back later with a woman officer and talk to the girl formally then. And if Nat Rettie turns up, you will let us know?’
That had all shed an interesting light on the information received. The teachers were an impressive pair, and if Kingsley had to put money on it, he’d back their analysis of the situation. Still, you couldn’t be too careful with Child Protection issues; he took the precaution of contacting the Social Work Department, though by the time he found the number and tracked down the appropriate person, he discovered she had been informed already. Yes, Morton and Walker were definitely a class act.
It was a heartbreakingly beautiful day now as Fleming drove the short distance along the coast road between Knockhaven and Fuill’s Inlat, high above the shore. A periwinkle sky had clouds like lace doilies and the gannets, wings folded, were performing their arrow dives into a sea that was Prussian blue, artistically edged with a few white-crested waves. Yesterday’s storm had subsided to a comfortable swell, like some monster sated by its swallowed prey.
The scene at Fuill’s Inlat was in stark contrast to this benign innocence. The tide was out and the deadly rocks were now no more than picturesque boulders, lapped by waves which sparkled in the sunshine, but all around them and strewn on the shore was the detritus of last night’s disaster: ropes, engine parts, white plastic buoys, shreds of orange nylon. There were black slicks of oil in the pools left by the retreating tide and as Fleming stepped down to the water’s edge on the pebble beach a bedraggled RNLI pennant was washed up at her feet. Her mouth twisted; she felt nauseated by the wickedness, the waste, the awful injustice that a mission to save the lives of others should end like this. The sick mind of the perpetrator seemed to have tainted with evil even the salty freshness of the air.
There were half a dozen SOCOs in their white overalls here, painstakingly gathering up and bagging whatever might be considered evidence, and lifeboat officials were present too, sombrely watching the operation. Normally this would have waited until the investigating officer had viewed the scene, but in these circumstances Fleming had instructed that they should go ahead.
As Fleming and MacNee went towards them, the crime scene manager who had been directing the activities of a photographer came over, with an enquiring look. When Fleming had identified herself, he said, ‘Ah! We’ve got something here that might interest you.’ He turned to pick up two large plastic evidence bags which had been tagged and parked on the ridge of springy grass behind the beach.
‘We found these on either side of the bay, one on the higher rocks to the south there, the other in a niche at the side of that tumbledown shed. Facing out to sea, green one set to flash, red one a steady beam. Not working now – battery run down, I’d guess.’
They looked at the exhibits. They were beacon-shaped lanterns on a sturdy plastic base, one with green glass, the other red.
‘Where would you get lights like that?’ Fleming wondered. ‘Ship’s chandler’s, perhaps? We might get a lead out of that.’
The SOCO shook his head. ‘The colour’s just glass paint. Sort of thing my wife gets at the craft shop – she’s into Tiffany lamps. Otherwise they’re just the standard sort of light you might use for camping – look, there’s a searchlight in the base too. Very practical.’
‘Not any sort of specialist store then?’ MacNee asked gloomily.
‘Could be Halfords, Milletts, Argos catalogue, even—’
MacNee pounced. ‘If it was a catalogue purchase they’d have records, wouldn’t they? We
might get at it that way.’
Fleming, with a housewife’s more specialist knowledge, looked doubtful. ‘I hate to be a wet blanket, but there’s definitely an Argos store in Dumfries. One in Ayr as well, probably, and a Halfords. It would be easy enough to get them from there without leaving a purchase record. Have you picked up anything from the sites where the lights were set up?’
‘Not a lot. Nothing from the rocks, right down to the shoreline, but they’re checking the side of the shed now. It’s not hopeful, though – no smooth surfaces.’
‘What about the lights themselves?’
‘We’ve dusted them, but nothing’s come up. The lab boys’ll maybe be able to turn up something more for you.’
‘We can always hope,’ Fleming said, then as the man went back to his work she and MacNee slowly climbed the track together.
‘That’s it, then, isn’t it?’ she said heavily. ‘It’s definitely murder. Someone planned all that, carefully and cleverly. They put these in place when they knew the lifeboat had gone out in poor visibility—’
‘So someone with links to the crew, like Rettie?’
Fleming frowned. ‘I think I remember they went back to firing maroons, like in the old days – publicity stunt, basically. So anyone within earshot would know there was a call-out.
‘These things would only have a limited battery life, so you’d have to be there to set them going. You’d know the battery would run down a few hours later and if everything went according to plan and you managed to wreck the boat, the chances are no one would even notice before you managed to remove them. And if it hadn’t been for you spotting them the chances are we’d just have put it down to human error.’
‘They couldn’t have known Willie was stoned and Luke was suicidal, mind. Or even that the boat would be coming back from the north not the south,’ MacNee pointed out.
‘That’s true. But on a night like last night, close enough to home for them not to be running on instruments, it had at least a chance of success. And supposing the attempt failed, what were the risks? If the boat didn’t come round that way, you could try again. If it did, but survived to report fake lights, what’s the most that would happen? There’d be a lot of shocked comment about vandals, we’d try to trace the lights and probably fail, then because no one had come to harm we’d drop it. Not worth the manpower.’
‘Right enough. And if you were watching, and saw the boat come back, you could even recover the evidence long before anyone else could get there. But is it not all kinda subtle for the likes of Rettie, though?’
‘I’m probably over-refining. He may not have thought anything, except that he’d a chance to get two people he hated in one go.’
‘Mmm.’ She noticed Tam was frowning but before she could ask him why, PC Langlands appeared, heading towards them. He had been detailed to question staff at the on-site office of Elder’s Executive Homes to find out if they’d noticed anything the night before, and establish a list of visitors to the houses.
‘Any luck, Sandy?’
He pulled a face. ‘No, boss, except I’ve a list of people who came to see the houses last night to follow up – eleven couples, plus the staff here. But the two girls in the office didn’t see anything at all. With it being such a horrible night they’d the curtains drawn and the lights on to make the showhouse look cosy, and the lights were on in all the empty houses too. And if you were getting out of a car with that gale blowing, you wouldn’t stop to admire the view, would you?’ He was looking crestfallen; he was still young enough, Fleming reflected, to cherish high hopes of a breakthrough even when conducting the most routine questioning.
‘That’s fine, Sandy,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You may find when you work through your list that one of the visitors spotted something useful. Whoever put those lights there had to get from here down to the shore during the time the houses were being shown and you might well have been peering out at the view from one of the empty houses if you were planning to buy it.’ She took the list from him and scanned it. ‘Oh – Ritchie Elder was here, was he?’
‘The girls didn’t see him until he was just going. He came into the office to say he’d to go to the lifeboat shed, but apparently he’d been going round the houses earlier chatting up the punters.’
‘Right. OK, Sandy – good luck.’ As they walked back to the car, Fleming said, ‘So Elder was here, at the scene? I’ve got an odd feeling about that man. Something doesn’t quite fit.’
‘I’ll tell you the other thing that doesn’t fit. If Rettie did this to get his old man and his teacher, how could he know Smith would be going out? This was all set up well in advance.’
Fleming stopped. ‘Of course he couldn’t. If he knew at all, it could only have been at the very last minute. I should have focused on that myself – I’ve just had about twenty-three different things on my mind.’ Then, walking on, she added, ‘But again, we could be making too much of this. The object may have been to get Anderson, and Smith was just a bonus, as he would see it. Still, the sooner we get our hands on him the better.’
Kylie MacEwan’s pert little face was a study in sullenness as she came into the headmaster’s office. Her regulation school skirt had been abbreviated to well above the knee; her shirt, worn outside it, was only just long enough to cover her midriff and open at the neck with a loosely knotted tie draped round it. She looked distrustfully at the two people she did know, and more distrustfully at the one she didn’t, a tired-looking woman in her forties with long, straggling grey hair escaping from a clasp at the back and thick glasses which magnified anxious-looking brown eyes. They were sitting round a small coffee table in one corner of the room, at the social worker’s request – ‘So much less confrontational than sitting behind a desk!’
‘Sit down, Kylie.’ Peter Morton gestured to the one vacant chair. ‘This is Mrs Barnett. She’s from the Social Work Department and—’
‘We just want to have a little chat with you, Kylie dear,’ she interrupted. ‘Nothing to make you at all uncomfortable – just a chat.’
Kylie dear favoured her with a contemptuous look which spoke volumes about her opinion of social workers in general and this one in particular. She sat down with arms folded and legs crossed, her body language a study in resistance.
‘Has something – happened to you recently? Something which upset you?’
The guarded eyes, fringed by lashes thick with blue mascara, flicked across the adults’ faces. ‘Nuh.’
‘I know that you may not want to talk about it, that you may feel guilty it happened, that people will blame you instead of him. But it’s not like that!’ The woman was leaning forward earnestly, as if she would have liked to take one of the hands so firmly tucked into Kylie’s armpits.
Morton and Fiona Walker both thought they could read alarm in the girl’s eyes but she only muttered, ‘Don’t know what you’re on about.’ Her jaws began to move rhythmically.
The headmaster stepped in. ‘Kylie, gum out, please.’ He took a tissue from a box on the table and handed it to her; she grudgingly removed the offending substance. ‘Right,’ he continued, ‘I can see you’re wondering what we’re talking about, so I think we should be a bit more direct. Did you ever have any problems with Mr Smith?’
There was no mistaking the child’s surprise. ‘Him? Nuh.’
‘Kylie, are you sure, dear?’ Mrs Barnett broke in. ‘Was his behaviour to you ever – inappropriate?’
She sniggered. ‘Like to see him try! He’s a right tosser.’
‘Was, Kylie.’ Morton spoke quietly. ‘I expect you have heard he died in the lifeboat disaster?’
He succeeded in shaming her. There was a flush under the pale make-up as she said defensively, ‘Yeah, well – whatever.’
Fiona Walker, silent thus far, leaned forward. Her kindly face was stern as she said, ‘Kylie, I’ve been speaking to some of the older girls. Nat Rettie said in class yesterday that you were coming to me to accuse Mr Smith of child abuse—’
‘We don’t use that word, accuse,’ the social worker protested, but was ignored.
‘Is that true?’ Fiona persisted.
At the mention of his name, Kylie became visibly agitated. ‘I dunno,’ she mumbled, her head bent.
‘Is – it – true?’
Mrs Barnett fluttered, ‘Well, really—’ but before she could say more, Kylie looked up.
‘Nuh! ’Course it wasn’t. Nat would just be, like, mucking about.’
‘Mucking about!’ Fiona’s eyes flashed anger, but before she could say anything more, Morton’s cool, authoritative voice overruled her.
‘Thank you, Kylie. I think that’s all we need to know at the moment.’ He looked enquiringly at Mrs Barnett, who shook her head. Kylie needed no second bidding; she was through the door faster than a weasel into a hole in a dyke.
Morton turned to the social worker. ‘Are you satisfied that no abuse has occurred?’
‘I suppose so.’ It was a grudging admission; reluctant to accept total defeat, she went on, ‘But she looks to me like a child who has problems. What’s the background like?’
Morton and Walker exchanged glances. ‘How interesting you should ask,’ he said smoothly. ‘We’ve been rather worried about her relationship with Nat Rettie – he’s over sixteen, and you probably noticed her reaction when you asked her if anything had happened to her recently. Shall I ask my secretary to find us some coffee?’
When the door eventually shut behind Mrs Barnett, Morton said with reprehensible satisfaction, ‘The MacEwans aren’t going to be pleased. They’ve got enough problems to have that woman wished on them for a month. I don’t know – it would be good to think she might manage to achieve something useful, but what I certainly do know is that this won’t have made Kylie a happy bunny.’
‘Yes,’ Fiona agreed, then her eyes filled. ‘But Luke’s still dead, isn’t he?’
The woman who answered the door of 8 Mayfield Grove in response to DC Kingsley’s knock was in her mid-sixties, he judged, a fit-looking woman and what one might unkindly describe as well-preserved. Her well-cut hair was tinted a tasteful pale gold, her face was discreetly made-up and she was smartly dressed in a pink sweater with a pink-checked tweed skirt, the matching scarf round her neck held in place with a heavy gold cameo. She looked at him as if he were a double-glazing salesman even after he had shown his card and given her the boyish smile which usually got a favourable response from mature ladies.
The Darkness and the Deep Page 12