‘I’d have thought most men would have wanted to wring Dilly’s neck. Men with any sense. Me, for instance,’ he amended, with a grin and a squeeze of her hand. ‘Helpless women don’t do anything for me. I’d bet that’s why Tom’s so fond of you. And – Dilly’s good looks apart – I’d guess he sees looking after her as an additional way to your approval.’
‘My God, I’m not his mother! Nor his head teacher.’
‘In a sense, you’re both. And a good friend, too. And I suspect he wants not so much to wring Dilly’s neck as to shake her into independent action. She’s proved she can do it, after all. It must have taken guts to embark on a new career, especially one where she actually talks to millions of people unscripted, after that cloistered existence of hers.’
‘She’s better at talking to the masses than one to one, you know.’
‘How strange. Perhaps she doesn’t see them as people. Perhaps it’s the camera lens she talks to. My God, what would a Freudian psychologist make of that?’
‘She certainly goes in for unyielding and implacable men. So Tom may be on to a loser. Though of course, since he’s a policeman, albeit a plain clothes one, he could be an authority figure too. In which case the pattern will repeat itself and he won’t have an equal partner but a doormat.’
‘He might want that but I wouldn’t.’ Was that enough positive affirmation? Or should he go further? I want a woman like you, fierce in your independence but vulnerable, a woman I can talk to and take to bed with equal delight. It was true, but too effusive for a traffic jam at eight in the morning. ‘I’d rather have you,’ he said, with a handclasp he hoped would make up for the lack of fine words.
She returned it, with a lingering smile. Perhaps it had been enough. But one day he’d try harder and find the time and the place to spell everything out.
‘I’m going to have to phone Jill,’ she said, doubtfully, almost as if asking for his approval.
He shot an anxious look at her. Where was his feisty woman?
‘Rob’s just a kid,’ she continued. ‘And she needs to see the evidence, too. We’ve got to be grown up about everything. Damn it, we’ve been friends for nearly thirty years.’
‘And you’re a senior officer she unleashed the old verbals on. So don’t expect too much of a welcome. But you’ll always get one from me,’ he added, with another squeeze of the hand. Suddenly he found himself lifting hers to his lips and kissing it. His reward was a blush as pink as any Victorian miss’s.
She got no response at all from Jill, just an answerphone. She left what she hoped was a neutral message and rang off.
‘You’re good on those things,’ Mark observed. ‘I always give too much information or sound as polite as a machine gun.’
‘Wow! Look at you. Don’t tell me, you’ve found the right house?’ Tom greeted her, an hour later.
Why on earth should he think that? She shook her head. ‘Alas, several Hounds of the Baskervilles had got there first. Redecorate? You’d have to fumigate the place. No, another dud. But we shall find the right one sooner or later. Now, what have you been up to? Did you find Dilly’s stalker?’
‘Have I buggery. The bloody college has just moved premises, and can’t find the paper records for so long ago. Paper records? I gave them paper records. And I gave them not find, too. Let me have the material by noon today, I said, or I’ll do the management team for concealing evidence. What I did get, however, is the married name of that Mary Walker woman. Mary Wolford she is now.’
‘Address?’
‘No idea. But – big but – apparently she’s a writer. You know, those that can’t, teach. Well, seems she can well enough to be published so I shall get on to her publisher soon as they wake up, like.’ His tone implied total disbelief that not everyone in the world of work was at their desk by eight-thirty.
‘Do that. No arguments about confidentiality. I want contact details by ten. And let’s hope her memory’s less selective than Dilly’s. How did she react to the college news, by the way?’
‘It’s always hard to tell with her, isn’t it? I couldn’t persuade her to stay over at our place again, and didn’t dare say I’d take her sofa if she wanted. But I did take her out for a meal. Before I left I checked under the beds, in the wardrobes and anywhere else an intruder might have concealed himself and then I made sure she locked up after me. The intruder systems seem to be working. At least I hope so.’
‘You don’t sound sure.’
‘Funny how faulty devices seem to attach themselves to the world’s victims. If you had a system – you probably do? – every whistle would blow, every bell ring, absolutely to order, like. With someone like Dilly, you know her car’s going to break down the day after its warranty expires and that she’ll have completely forgotten to renew her AA cover.’
She laughed, but asked seriously, ‘How do you work that out?’
‘Look at that fiancé of hers. Any initiative, like, he’d be the one to take it. And if you don’t act on your own initiative, you get swamped.’
‘You’d still like it to be McDine that’s faking the stalking.’
‘Love it to be. But we’ve just had in a lab report on the paper you nicked from his waste bin.’
‘Nick? Me? I never! And it says?’
‘Different weight, different brand. Sorry.’
‘Bugger. OK. And – Tom – don’t forget to put that meal on expenses!’
‘Can’t, guv. She put it on hers. Honestly. You could have knocked me down with the proverbial.’
‘Me too.’
To Fran’s surprise he was back within minutes, just as she was dialling Jill’s number. She hung up without waiting for a reply.
‘You’ve located Mrs Wolford!’
His face fell, but only for an instant. ‘I’ll get on to that in half a tick. But before you bawl me out, we’ve managed to locate the webmaster of that obscene website! A kid called Field. Noel Field. It took Harbijan all of yesterday, and probably most of last night, and don’t ask me how he sorted it…’
‘I hope to God that brother of his knows the words “strictly confidential”.’
‘You don’t think…? Shit. Anyway, Harbi says Field’s a kid living near Ashford. Does that figure?’
‘It certainly does. Any more details?’
‘I got on to the council, and they gave me the name of his school. It’s the Thomas Bowdler, quite an old established co-ed grammar. Grammar schools, guv! Like something out of Billy Bunter! Why do Kent have them?’
‘Same reason they don’t have proper roads, I should imagine. Right. I think this is where I sally forth.’
His face fell so hard she almost laughed.
‘I’m sorry, Tom: I told you from the start that this was need to know only.’ It was like denying a favourite dog walkies.
He looked her full in the eye. ‘It’s young Rob Tanner, isn’t it, in some of those shots? Pictures of him on DCI Tanner’s desk, guv. Harbi noticed first, but I swore him to secrecy, and I know he likes the DCI too, so he won’t say anything.’
‘Of course he won’t, any more than you would. But I want this to be as low-key as possible, and even when you’re dressed for the allotment, Tom, as you are today, you still look like a police officer.’
He laughed. ‘You think you don’t! There was something in this A Level book I had to read once: “Every inch a king”. And I always think of you, like.’
Fran supposed she should be flattered by the comparison with a senile old monarch, but shook her head nonetheless. ‘To paraphrase another A Level text: to have one police officer on the premises may be regarded as a misfortune; to have two begins to look as if a crime has been committed. And that’s the last impression I want to give. I need you to organise surveillance of his home and make sure his computer stays where it is. And, come to think of it, he can’t even touch it when he comes home.’
‘Plain clothes?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Of course plain clothes. But you can take your mo
bile and make the calls to that novelist’s publisher while you lurk. OK?’
‘OK, ma’am!’ he said, saluting and exiting at the double. He popped his head back. ‘You do realise he doesn’t need to touch his own computer to change the website, don’t you, guv?’
‘Doesn’t he? Bloody hell. I suppose you’d be able to tell if someone had tampered with the site?’
‘Oh, yes, both the time and date of any changes. Possibly even the computer originating the changes.’
She shook her head. ‘Time I went to college again. OK. Maintain an unobtrusive presence, then. But if I say move, you bloody move.’
He gave a mock-salute. ‘Bloody move it is, guv.’
She had two swift visits to make before she left, the first to the Incident Room.
‘Jon, how did you get on with the people fitting the CCTV cameras?’
‘They promised to phone back last night with a list of employees. I thought I’d give them till nine this morning before I roasted them.’ His mouth turned up like a banana.
‘But it’s after ten, Jon.’
‘Sorry, ma’am.’ And he was reaching for the phone before she turned her back.
The second errand was to update the Chief Constable. His office door was open as she went past, so she popped her head into the room. When he nodded, she stepped inside, closing the door firmly. But she suspected neither would refer to the previous day.
‘I’m fairly certain I have a lead in the business of DCI Tanner and drugs,’ she announced. ‘But a stink may follow.’
‘Stink?’
‘At a good grammar school.’
‘Not the one where the animals that assaulted you come from? Any news of that, by the way?’
‘None yet, sir. I’ll make sure you have a full report—’
‘Fran, you were the victim.’ He made a note. ‘It’s your colleagues who should be presenting a full report to you! Anyway, if there’s going to be a stink about the other business, let there be.’
‘It’s the school where your son’s doing his A Levels,’ she said quietly.
Grammar school Thomas Bowdler might have been but Greyfriars it was not. There were probably some older elements lurking beneath the Sixties façade, but nothing to dilute the blue painted concrete and blank windows frontage identical to that of endless cheaply built education establishments. Was there some firm that had prided itself on producing blinds that drooped so despairingly?
She surveyed it as she got out of the car. Had she seen a single attractive public building during this case? Houses apart, of course – and goodness knew none of them was without imperfections. Why didn’t she take Mark off to Bruges when this case was over? Bruges or for that matter Bath – some decent civic and domestic architecture was definitely called for.
It was a long time since she’d had to visit a school in anger, as it were, and she was nonplussed by the security buzzer system. It seemed she wouldn’t be admitted till she’d given her name and title. ‘Doctor’ sounded altogether more convincing in this scrubland of Academe. But it got her nowhere.
‘We’re not aware that any of our pupils has medical needs,’ came the flat voice.
‘You mean, needs to see a doctor?’ she snapped back. ‘This is Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harman of the Kent Constabulary, and I need to speak to the headmaster now.’
‘I thought you said you’re a doctor.’
‘I happen to be both a doctor and a police officer. Kindly open the door.’
‘Put your ID through that flap.’
‘My ID card never leaves my person.’ She could feel her blood pressure shinning up the little silvery column, waving as it went. After such atrocities as Dunblane and Wolverhampton, tight security was admirable, but this was taking it to absurd and discourteous heights.
Having at last penetrated the sacred portal, she now faced what appeared to be a bullet-proof Perspex screen, through which she had to speak to what was presumably the uncooperative woman who’d admitted her with such reluctance. The smell of new wood and paint was overwhelming.
‘ID, please,’ the receptionist said unsmilingly through a circular grille.
Fran held it up. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Frances Harman,’ she repeated. ‘To see the headmaster.’
‘The Chief Master is busy,’ she responded, stressing the correct term with an emphasis Fran found patronising rather than helpful.
‘I think he’ll see me. Or one of his deputies will.’
The dragon pressed a button, but doubt dripped from her voice. ‘You have an appointment, Superintendent?’
‘Chief Superintendent. I come on urgent police business that overrides the necessity of an appointment.’ The Chief Constable himself would have been proud of her burst of polysyllabic pomposity. She looked ostentatiously at her watch and settled for a wait.
After some four minutes, an inner door was flung open by a man of her age, with a full head of blondish hair and a body regularly spending time in the gym. His eyes were a darker blue than Mark’s, and his teeth brilliantly white in a face that might just have acquired its tan outdoors. In any other location she’d have tipped him as a marketing executive. Did schools have such commercial posts? She responded to his effusive smile with a professional one of her own.
‘Dr Challenor. Giles. Welcome to what I’m afraid resembles Fort Knox, Chief Superintendent,’ he said, adding swiftly, ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to resort to this horrible security ever since a civil war erupted between our lads and the comp down the road. Little swine.’ He did not specify which lads he was describing. ‘And now that, on the advice of some of your junior colleagues, we’ve banned phones, we’ve had some very irate parents down here.’ He pointed to a series of wooden bins, labelled by form. ‘There’s a dump-bin for staff phones too, only we keep that locked in the staff room. What brings you out on such a miserable day?’
He’d walked her briskly to a set of doors that he opened with his swipe-card. Ushering her through, he caught up to walk alongside her. ‘A visit from someone your rank is very rare. We usually get smaller fry altogether.’
‘The matter is entirely confidential,’ she said, ‘so you’ll forgive me if we don’t discuss it till the privacy of your office.’
Suddenly they were into cod Tudor, with linenfold panelling on the dark oak dado, and a particularly impressive grained door, all completely at odds with the exterior of the building.
Chief Master
Knock and Wait
‘Study,’ he couldn’t resist correcting her. But he added, ‘We can shed the genial welcome but we can’t shed years of tradition.’ He produced a key, and unlocked his door.
‘I hope in the midst of all this history you’ll have technology to watch this.’ She produced the CD Harbijan had burnt for her.
‘Coffee first?’
She said flatly, ‘CD first.’
She observed his face as he watched the screen. She would have laid bets his shock and outrage were genuine.
‘My officers have prevented any further access to this particular site, but I’ve shown it to you because they believe it was created by one of your pupils. And features, as you saw, several others.’
‘Dear God, I’ve never seen anything like it, apart from adverts for hotel porn channels. Tell me, Chief Superintendent, how did you discover this – this outrage?’
‘You know I can’t reveal my sources. Especially when bullying of this order is involved.’
‘It puts happy-slapping into the shade. Which reminds me – I’ve at last placed your face. You’re the officer those young people assaulted, aren’t you? Are you completely recovered?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. Unlike the victims of that little adventure.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘We’ve traced it back to one young man: Noel Field. I could just take him out of school and charge him. But I suspect that such an enterprising youth may have other interests, too. Drugs, for instance. I’d like any rumours, any evidence, anything – I want to
nail this young man for as much as I can.’
‘He’s our Head Boy, Chief Superintendent. With a place at Cambridge.’
‘That sounded like more than a factual statement. It sounded like a plea, Dr Challenor.’
‘For more than our position in the results tables, I assure you. He’s a young man with a brilliant career ahead of him. His father’s a consultant at William Harvey; his mother’s the first solicitor to be called when there’s a problem over an asylum claim.’
‘So young Master Field is not to be treated as a criminal,’ she observed dryly.
‘He’s not— not a criminal. Surely not.’
‘Well, Dr Challenor, how would you describe him?’
‘Strictly sub rosa,’ Dr Challenor told his colleagues, hastily summoned to his room.
Fran wasn’t sure that all had had an education including Latin, so she said definitively, ‘Top secret. Absolutely confidential. Nothing must come out of this room that could lead to a possible criminal getting off the hook. Is that understood, gentlemen?’ Whatever had happened to co-education? And were there no teachers from ethnic minorities? Deputy Chief Master, Head of Upper Sixth, Head of Pastoral Care – all were white, male and middle class. The only thing in which they differed was their age. ‘What I want is any rumours about anything untoward in the school: bullying, sexual harassment, drug dealing.’
‘Theft? Cheating in coursework?’ An oyster-eyed man nearing retirement age suggested.
‘Everything. Especially computer-related. And – you can understand the need for your complete discretion – especially related to computers and to your sixth-form pupils.’
A very chipper young man, scarcely thirty, said with an irritating drawl, ‘Students. We call them students.’
‘Do you indeed?’ she asked with a calm interest that would have Tom running for cover. ‘So they’re in receipt of loans that leave them in debt till their thirties or forties? Gentlemen, we are not here to discuss nomenclature, but to investigate what may be a very serious crime indeed. Do me the courtesy of accepting that my professionalism is equal to yours. And that my status is somewhat senior,’ she added under her breath, but with her most steely smile.
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