An Academic Death (Lambert and Hook Mysteries Book 14)

by J M Gregson

  He took down the details of Mrs Elizabeth Upson and her relationship to the deceased in a studiously controlled and neutral way. You mustn’t upset a wife who had come here to conduct the grim ritual of identification. But the mortuary attendant was only human, with human curiosity like anyone else. He had seen the corpse himself, knew that this was no death from natural causes. There was an excitement for him about this body. Murder. The word brought its hint of melodrama even to those who dealt every day with death and its consequences.

  As he completed the details of the official form, Binns looked up into the pale, studiously unrevealing face of the woman on the other side of his desk. ‘All we shall need from you after the identification is a signature to confirm that the body you are about to see is in fact that of your husband. If indeed you are certain that it is, of course.’ Despite himself, what he had intended as a reassuring smile emerged as something very near a nervous giggle. Binns was better at dealing with bodies than with living people.

  It didn’t appear to disturb Liz Upson. She nodded curtly. ‘I understand.’ She had looked neither man in the face throughout the proceedings. Beneath the skilfully applied make-up her face had an abstracted air. like one concentrating on a job which must be done and fearful that if that concentration lapsed she might give away more of herself than she thought was politic.

  Or was this too fanciful? wondered Hook. Was she merely a wife about to face a moment of immense strain, determined to get through it without an emotional collapse?

  Binns led them to the door of the identification room, then paused awkwardly. He had done it many times before, but it didn’t make the moment when he had to warn people to be prepared for a damaged corpse any easier to handle. He said awkwardly, ‘You must be prepared for something of a shock, Mrs Upson. Your husband — if indeed it is he — will not be as you remember him. The body was outside for some days before it was discovered and there has been — well, certain damage to the face.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve already been warned about that.’

  ‘Would you like a moment or two to prepare yourself?’

  ‘No. I’d like to get this over. As quickly as possible, and with a minimum of fuss.’

  Binns nodded, led her inside with Hook a discreet distance behind her, and drew the sheet back carefully to reveal the damaged head.

  From behind, Hook saw the shoulders lift beneath the navy blue blouse, heard the sharp intake of breath which had lifted them. They had cleaned up the mortal remains of Matthew Upson as well as they could for inspection. The eyes were shut upon the vacant sockets beneath; only the ragged, bloodless scratches on those lids hinted at the ravages the crows had wrought here. The gun-shot wound at the temple was on the far side of the head as the bereaved wife looked down upon it, but visible enough.

  After her initial gasp, she gave no other sign of weakness. Instead, she stood very still for a moment, staring down at what she had been brought here to see. Then she said quietly, ‘That’s him. That’s Matt.’

  Binns got her sitting down as quickly as possible when she left the chill of the identification chamber. They were likely to faint on you without warning, these wives. This one didn’t. She reached for the official form, signed her name in the space waiting for it at the bottom, and refused a cup of tea. ‘I’ll be on my way now. I’m sure Sergeant Hook has more pressing matters to attend to.’

  Liz Upson was almost as silent in the car on the homeward journey as she had been on her way to the identification, answering Hook’s attempts to prompt her into revealing her thoughts only with a series of monosyllables. She was at the door of her detached suburban house before she said, ‘I won’t pretend I’m going to grieve too long over Matt, after what I said to you about him last week. But it’s still a shock seeing him like that, even when you’re prepared for it.’

  It was the first conventional thought Bert Hook had heard from her in two lengthy encounters.

  *

  Superintendent John Lambert sat in his office and pondered on where to start his probing into the life of the man who had just been translated from missing person into suspicious death.

  That neat wound in the temple had been from a bullet fired at close quarters; that much was already clear. They would have to wait for the post-mortem report for a more accurate assessment of exactly how close the gun had been held to that damaged head. He was already guessing from the absence of a weapon at the scene where the body had been found that this man had not died by his own hand.

  It was safer to assume that, from his point of view. From the looks of the body, this man had been dead for some time before his corpse was found. The statistics hammering in his head told him that most of the murders which were not solved in the first week of an investigation remained permanently unsolved; the clock was already running.

  The routine machinery had already clicked automatically into action. The house-to-house enquiries around the base of the Malvern Hills were already being conducted with painstaking thoroughness. The team appropriate to a murder hunt was already in place.

  It was time to start an urgent reconstruction of the life of Matthew John Upson, with particular attention to the last months of it, and minute attention to the final days and hours. Lambert had discovered the man so far only through the inevitably biased eyes of his remarkable mother. Normally the first step after the death would have been to interview that enigmatic wife, who had reported him missing a week ago and been so remarkably frank in conveying her dislike of her spouse to the phlegmatic Hook. She had already been with Hook to identify the remains and would no doubt be expecting a CID visit at any moment.

  Lambert, who hated confinement within the four walls of his office even more than the paperwork which steadily accrued for him there, decided to let the amazingly candid Liz Upson stew in her own juice for a little while. If she had anything she wished to hide from him, her nervousness could only increase with the waiting. He decided to take Bert Hook with him to the place where the late Matthew Upson had worked for the last six years of his life.

  Gloucestershire University was not an ancient foundation with ivy-clad elevations and obscure traditions. It bore as little relation to the dreaming spires of Oxford, fifty miles to the east, as its local football team, Cheltenham Town, did to Manchester United. Its status dated only from that curious period towards the end of the millennium when a Conservative government decided that almost any further education institution could call itself a university and a Socialist government had decided that the country should no longer provide grants for the vastly increased number of students.

  The head of the department where Matthew Upson had worked seemed uneasy with his recent translation to Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. George Davies was a worried-looking man of fifty-six, with watery blue eyes and grey hair that had almost completed the process of recession from his domed forehead. Within a minute of opening a conversation with him, Lambert was wondering how much this bumbling man knew about his own staff.

  ‘It’s the administration, you see,’ Davies said apologetically. ‘It doesn’t leave you time for much else. You always mean to get around the place and see what’s going on, of course, but there’s more stuff coming across your desk the whole time.’

  ‘But you found Mr Upson an efficient member of your staff?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I think so.’ Dr Davies looked as if it was the first time he had given the matter much thought. His face brightened. ‘Matthew had quite a good degree — Manchester, I think. One of the older-established universities in the north, anyway.’ He smiled, then added nervously, ‘Not that what we have to offer here isn’t a perfectly acceptable product, of course. Definitely of degree standard, you know — whatever that is nowadays!’ He laughed again, then looked embarrassed when he got no reaction from this senior policeman.

  ‘So Mr Upson was a valued member of your team?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I think I could say that. Never had a single complaint from a student about him, as far as I can r
emember.’

  Lambert mused for a moment on this method of estimating staff. ‘Did he have any enemies here that you are aware of?’

  Davies was suddenly defensive. ‘No. None at all. Superintendent, this isn’t the kind of environment where people conduct feuds.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we have a member of your staff lying dead in the mortuary with a bullet through his head,’ said Lambert drily. He decided he had no more time to waste on this wooden figurehead. ‘Dr Davies, I wonder if you could put us in touch with someone who worked closely with Matthew Upson on a daily basis.’

  The hunted look left the ageing face. ‘Yes, I’m sure I could. Let me see, Mr Upson taught Modern History — which means anything from 1485 onwards, you know!’ He cackled at the thought; this was plainly a witty observation he had proffered on many previous occasions. He opened a prospectus on his desk and ran a finger down a list of staff. ‘I think Charles Taggart might be your man. If he’s around today, that is.’ He pressed a button on his desk with every appearance of relief at the prospect of getting rid of his CID visitors.

  His secretary took the CID men to the staff room, which had been relabelled the Senior Common Room when the institution had been designated a university. She explained on the way that not many of the teaching staff were around because the year-end examinations were in full spate. There was indeed only one person in the large room, whose oak panelling denoted the vanished elegance of an earlier era; this Georgian mansion, the administrative centre of the new university, was the one building of any age on the campus.

  The figure gave no sign of registering their arrival in the room. Sandaled feet rested on an upright chair at the nearest point to them; then the eye was led over long legs in tight blue jeans, over a recumbent trunk and T-shirted torso, to a leather jacket draped over the shoulders and a floppy white sunhat, which was set upon the face so as to cover its every feature from the world around it.

  The middle-aged secretary who had been their guide cast her eyes briefly to the stuccoed ceiling in silent disapproval, then indicated with a nod towards the supine figure at the other end of the room that this was indeed the man they had come here to consult. She made as if to depart, then looked approvingly at the well-pressed trousers and neat ties and shirts of the visitors. ‘I can rustle you up a pot of tea when you’ve finished here, if you like,’ she whispered.

  Bert Hook thanked her, then shut the door carefully behind her as Lambert wandered down the long room with its pigeonholes and comfortable chairs to the recumbent occupant, who still gave no signs of registering their presence. He was standing very close to the invisible face as he said loudly. ‘Charles Taggart, I presume?’

  For a moment there was no reaction. Then a shudder ran through the long limbs and the hat was snatched away from what was revealed as a pale face with startlingly black and undisciplined eyebrows. Taggart sat up quickly, then held his head with a quiet groan. Then he scrambled to his feet and held out a large, strong hand. ‘That’s me. Except it’s Charlie. Sorry, I had a heavy night last night. I was dozing it off, I’m afraid. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You can tell us everything you know about a colleague of yours. Matthew Upson.’

  The pale face fell. Taggart ran a quick hand over his heavy features, as if attempting to wipe away the after-effects of the previous night’s debauch. ‘In trouble, is he, Matt?’

  ‘In the worst trouble of all, Mr Taggart. He’s dead.’

  Taggart’s brown eyes widened. He looked from one to the other of his visitors, as if registering their appearance for the first time. ‘You CID?’ he said.

  Lambert introduced himself and Hook. Then he asked, ‘When did you last see Matthew Upson, Mr Taggart?’

  Taggart frowned in concentration, then winced as his head hurt. ‘A while ago. Sorry to be so vague. You lose track of people you see, once the examinations start and there’s no teaching going on. A week? Ten days? I couldn’t be sure. I saw him in here one morning at coffee time — spoke to him, in fact — but I’m damned if I can remember exactly when it was.’

  ‘Did he seem agitated in any way?’

  ‘No. No, not that I can remember. Look, if you’re here investigating Matt’s death, there must be — what do you call it. suspicious circumstances, mustn’t there?’

  Lambert gave him a mirthless smile. ‘Highly suspicious. Matthew Upson was found with a bullet through his head.’

  Taggart sat down suddenly, involuntarily. ‘Bloody hell! Are you telling me that Matt blew his brains out? No wonder you wanted to know if he was — what did you say? — “agitated”!’

  ‘I said that Mr Upson was found with a bullet through his head. I didn’t say that he put it there himself. Mr Taggart. That’s one of the things we’re investigating. His body was only found last night.’ Lambert and Hook sat down as though moved by the same strings. Four eyes studied the mobile features of the pale countenance that was no more than four feet away from them.

  Charlie Taggart looked thoroughly shaken now. ‘Sod me! Excuse me. Superintendent, but this has come as a hell of a shock, you see.’ He ran a hand quickly through his mane of dark hair. ‘Look. I think I can pinpoint the time I last saw him. It was immediately after I’d seen a problem student, a guy who hasn’t put any course work in since Christmas, and I was sounding off to Matt about him. And it wasn’t at coffee time. It was over a cup of tea on the Friday afternoon — about half-past three, it would be. I remember, because I asked him to go for a drink when we’d finished work for the week, but he said he couldn’t.’ He looked at the notebook which had mysteriously appeared in Hook’s large hands. ‘That’s not last Friday, but the Friday before that.’

  ‘Friday June the eleventh.’ Hook entered the date and the time in his careful round hand as Taggart nodded. He looked up into the dark, deep-set eyes and said weightily, ‘So far, you appear to be the person who last saw Matthew Upson alive, Mr Taggart.’

  The statement had its effect. In these days of numerous real and fictional crime programmes on television, there are few people who are not aware that the last person known to have seen a murder victim alive is a source of lively interest, even suspicion, to police investigators. Charlie Taggart recoiled six inches on his seat, as if avoiding a physical blow. It was like softening a batsman up with a short-pitched ball, thought Bert, happily recalling his seam-bowling days.

  But it was Lambert who followed up the tactic. ‘You will appreciate that anything you can recall about Mr Upson on that afternoon may be vitally important. It is possible that he was dead within hours of leaving you.’

  ‘Especially if it was me who killed him, you mean?’ Taggart essayed a grim little laugh to underline how ridiculous that thought was. It was a mistake. Lambert’s long, lined face did not crack into a smile: it merely studied him. Charlie ran his hand through his hair again in the short silence which followed.

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t!’

  ‘Then don’t waste our time with the suggestion, please. We’ve a lot of lost time to make up on this case. Did Matthew Upson appear distressed in any way on that Friday afternoon?’

  ‘No. No, I can’t say that he seemed any different from his normal self.’

  ‘Which was what? Open? Reserved? Talkative? Morose? You’ll appreciate we have to build up a picture of someone we never knew. We can only do that through the eyes of those who knew him and met him often.’

  Charlie Taggart licked his lips. ‘I’m beginning to appreciate it, yes. This is a new experience for me. Well, I’d say he was friendly and open at work. Popular with his colleagues — most of them, anyway. There is a certain amount of professional jealousy and rivalry in a place like this, you know.’

  ‘Yes. I understand that academics are noted for it,’ said Lambert drily. He didn’t doubt that academics could be as petty as other people — intelligence is no defence against the foolishness of human nature — but he doubted if lecturers round a professor could be as unctu
ous and obvious as a gathering of inspectors round a chief constable. ‘Do you know of any of his colleagues who had a particular dislike for Mr Upson?’

  ‘No.’ His negative was as firm as if he was shutting a book. ‘I’m not a historian as Matt was, so I don’t know of any immediate rivalries, you see. I’m a social scientist, myself.’

  He said it without a trace of embarrassment, thought Hook. Bert, who had almost completed an Open University degree himself, had heard a lot of jokes about sociologists in his years of part-time study. But perhaps with so many new and even more dubious disciplines proliferating in these new universities, the pressure was off the social scientists now.

  Lambert said, ‘So as far as you know, he had no serious enemies among his colleagues; he was in fact quite popular. What about students?’

  A swift grin, equally swiftly removed. ‘Matt didn’t have any problems there. He was a good lecturer and a popular tutor.’

  He recited the bland phrases almost as if he was writing them in a reference, thought Lambert. Perhaps they were just as meaningless. ‘Equally popular with males and females, was he?’

  Charlie Taggart glanced at him sharply, made as if to declare a diplomatic ignorance, then thought better of it. He smiled a conspiratorial male smile. ‘He was a lively lad, was Matt. Quite a man for the ladies, you know. Went down very well with the girls, his tutorials did. He was never short of a bit of highly desirable totty, wasn’t Matt!’

  Lambert’s heart sank, not at the chauvinism, nor even at the out-of-date slang, but at the thought of trawling through a mass of highly charged adolescent passions in search of a murder motive. ‘Do you know of any particular girl who was close to him at the time of his death?’