by J M Gregson
Lambert said drily, ‘But by your own accounts, you didn’t see her much at weekends in the last year or so before she died. The period which most interests us. Now, bear with me just a little longer, because we’re coming to the end. We know Alison was murdered. We don’t know as yet whether there was any sexual aspect to her killing, but you’re not stupid, any of you. You know as well as I do that the overwhelming majority of killings of young women in circumstances like this are committed by men: probably more than ninety-five per cent. So I must ask you to treat this last question very seriously. We know about Jamie Allen: we shall be seeing him soon. There is no suggestion that Jamie had any personal connection with this death, but we hope that like you he may be able to suggest some avenues of enquiry to us. What I am asking you is whether you know of any other men who had a connection with Alison. You’ve already told us about the lad with the motor-bike, for instance. Are there any others?’
The girls looked collectively at the rug, as if its design was suddenly of overriding interest. Lambert said, as determinedly low-key as he could keep it, ‘Were there any older men with whom Alison had any kind of connection? Not necessarily a lasting relationship — some much looser connection may still turn out to be significant.’
Another long, agonising silence. Then the dark girl said in a clear, small voice, ‘No. Nothing serious. We all had schoolgirl crushes, when we were younger. They don’t count. I’m sure Allie didn’t have any affairs with older men in the months before she died. Nothing we know about, anyway.’
There was a low murmur of approval after her last phrase, which took the responsibility of knowledge away from them. There was something here, Lambert was sure. But he felt a collective closing of the ranks. If they were to tease out any more information, it would need to be with individuals, not in the atmosphere of febrile excitement and group loyalty which now prevailed in this room.
He sent the girls on their way, then sat for a few minutes with Hook. ‘Schoolgirl crushes,’ he quoted thoughtfully. ‘They’re usually harmless: I remember my own daughters going through the phase ten years and more ago. But they can become something more serious, sometimes, if the teacher allows himself or herself to get involved.’ He looked at the list of subjects that Alison Watts had been studying, and their teachers. ‘I wonder if metaphysical poetry is on the English syllabus this year,’ he mused.
Hook felt a quotation hanging over him, but his Open University arts courses hadn’t included the metaphysical poets. He looked appropriately puzzled: Superintendents had to be indulged.
Lambert said: ‘Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime… But at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near… Now therefore, while the youthful hue its on thy skin like morning dew, and while thy willing soul transpires at every pore with instant fires, now let us sport us while we may…’
‘It’s a good chat-up line,’ conceded Hook reluctantly.
‘Andrew Marvell,’ said Lambert dreamily. ‘He knew a thing or two, the old boy. Used to use that poem myself as a seduction technique, in the old days.’
‘Worked for you, did it? Left with their drawers in their handbags, did they?’
‘Don’t be coarse, Bert. It’s all a long time ago. What I’m saying is that the English master has the glories of literature at his disposal to persuade a girl into bed. Or for the girl to persuade herself.’
Hook said dubiously, ‘It’s worth a try, I suppose. Ingenious, anyway.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. Not as ingenious as you think, though; there are other indications. I’ve looked at the staff lists. The lady who teaches history is a Miss Haylett. She taught my own daughters years ago; she’s sixty-two and an archetypal spinster. The sociology is shared by two married women who job-share.’
The light dawned on Bert. ‘And the English teacher?’
‘Jason Bullimore. Twenty-nine. Single. Has a first in English Literature. Therefore probably randy.’ Lambert paraded his prejudice with an unashamed flourish.
Chapter Seven
THE large board near the gates carried the name of the school and beneath it in letters almost as large, the legend ‘Headmaster, Mr T H Murray, MA, FRSA’. They were admiring the gold lettering on the dark green background when a voice hailed them from behind. It was the head himself, rather breathless after chasing them across the playground of his school. ‘Hope you got the cooperation you wanted,’ he said.
Lambert smiled, ‘Yes, sir. Both Mrs Peplow and your sixth formers have been most helpful. It’s early days yet, of course, but one or two lines of enquiry have already suggested themselves.’ Keep the buggers guessing was always a sound principle, even when they were anxious headmasters. Especially then, he decided.
Murray looked dismayed for a moment. Then he said, with a brightness donned as obviously as a hat, ‘I’m glad to hear that. The sooner this matter is cleared up the better, for all concerned. I understand why you have to begin your work here with Alison’s friends, but I’m sure in my own mind that you’ll find the murderer has nothing to do with my school.’
‘Really, sir. Have you any reason for saying that?’
‘Oh, no! No, not at all. It’s just — just what I suppose you’d call a gut feeling. I suppose when you’ve laboured for years to build something up and you’re proud of it, you don’t believe that anything as awful as this could have any connection with it.’
‘Yes, sir, we understand that. Murder should take place on the sidewalk, someone once said. An American fiction-writer, I believe. Meaning it should confine itself to squalid city pavements, I suppose. We find increasingly that it doesn’t. Poor Alison found that out.’
‘Yes.’ It was bewildering to have policemen quoting Raymond Chandler at him: somehow he hadn’t expected such men to be literate. ‘Well, I have to respect your experience, of course. But Alison was an attractive girl. And — well, lively.’
‘Lively, sir?’ Lambert found he was quite enjoying himself.
The headmaster was not used to having his words weighed so carefully by others. He was beginning to wish he had left well alone instead of trying to find out how things were going. ‘Yes. If that’s the right word. She was an outgoing girl, Alison, as well as attractive. And she liked men.’ He blurted out the last phrase, abandoning his diversions, wishing fervently now that he had never embarked on this.
Lambert swung round to face him directly; the movement seemed to threaten that he might after all not leave the school premises. ‘Liked men more than most girls, did she, Mr Murray? Are you suggesting she was something of a nymphomaniac?’
‘Oh, no, nothing like that! Certainly not!’ Lurid headlines ran before the head’s wide, panic-filled eyes. ‘It’s just that she was an attractive girl, and conscious of it. She seemed to like men, and to be aware of her charms. Perhaps she didn’t always repel their advances, when she might have been better to do so.’ A prick-teaser, he wanted to say, but you couldn’t use a phrase like that. Not here. He waited for a reaction; the two large men merely looked at him steadily. He added hastily, ‘Of course, that’s just an impression I had. I may be quite wrong, But I thought you should know, that’s all. I’m sure there were men in her life whom none of us know about.’
‘That’s really most illuminating, sir. Thank you for being so frank. Though it doesn’t make our job any easier if you’re right, of course. The wider the circle of her acquaintances, the wider the net we shall have to cast.’
Suddenly, Tom Murray felt that he did not want the net to be cast too widely. ‘Yes. Well, I just thought it possible that she had been killed by some man after a random meeting or a first date. Someone she hardly knew, who thought he could go as far as he wanted, and didn’t like it when she tried to stop him.’
‘That’s always possible, of course, sir. Though killings by an assailant totally unknown to the victim are a tiny minority of the total.’
‘Really? Yes, I suppose that would be so. Well, I thought it would be worth
airing the thought, in case you hadn’t picked it up from anyone else.’ Having rushed to catch the CID men, Murray was now wondering desperately how he could end an exchange he wished he had never begun.
‘It’s most useful to have your thoughts, sir. And may I compliment you on your knowledge of your pupils. It can’t be easy to have observed one girl so closely, when you have nine hundred pupils in the school to worry about.’
That thought visibly discomforted Thomas Murray, MA, FRSA. They revolved it in their minds as they walked slowly to the car.
*
Superintendent and sergeant drove in silence for two miles. The road ran away past the school playing fields, with their hockey and rugby posts and shrill-voiced, bright-shirted children in pursuit of a soccer ball, on into the Gloucestershire countryside, which was still a luxuriant green despite the tints of orange and yellow on the leaf-laden trees. Like many CID men, they did not need small talk, and they had worked together now for far too long to feel that silences needed to be broken. Each was busy with his own thoughts, each digesting the teeming evidence of the day so far.
Eventually, as they crested a hill and ran towards a long white building in the valley below, Lambert said, ‘A basket of balls!’
‘Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,’ said Hook evenly. ‘We’re beginning to make progress. If we —’
‘Not the case, Bert. As you well know. We need to hit some golf balls. A basket of fifty each, at the range. Well worth a few quid, for the sheer release it gives. Clear the mind, it will. Blow away the cobwebs!’ He turned his old Vauxhall Senator between the high gateposts and drove over the gravel to park behind the pro’s shop.
‘Not golf, John. Anything but that!’ Hook buried his face in his hands in mock horror. ‘We haven’t time. This is our first full day on a murder enquiry.’
‘And we shall be at it until ten o’clock tonight, if I’m any judge,’ said Lambert firmly. ‘Twenty minutes with a 7-iron is just what you need. And I just happen to have that very club from your set in my boot. You left it beside the eighteenth green at the golf club when we finished your last learning experience.’
Bert slumped dismally in his seat. ‘It’s a conspiracy,’ he said glumly.
In two minutes, they were hitting golf balls from adjoining booths on the range. Lambert produced several satisfactory shots, as he often seemed to do when there was no audience to applaud his efforts. He listened with a widening smile to the rising tide of language from the normally placid Hook on the other side of the five foot high partition.
Bert was concentrating with increasing fury on the elusive golf balls around his feet. A 7-iron should be an easy club to use. The fact that Lambert had told him that added to his problems and his rage. He topped three attempts in succession, then was aghast to hear himself as he sent his next lurching contact away with the desperate injunction to ‘Get down there, you blasted, bloody, bleeding thing!’
Lambert put his elbows on top of the division between them, the better to study his sergeant’s swing. ‘Rhythm’s the thing, Bert. As in many other pleasurable things,’ he said quietly. He didn’t mind interrupting his practice to give the benefit of his long experience to a beginner, he decided.
Bert Hook, who had not realised that his efforts were being observed, started violently. He gave the super a withering look, then turned back to the mat and the cluster of grey-white balls with what dignity he could muster. ‘Building up the tension, this is, not getting rid of it,’ he grumbled darkly. He swung desperately at a ball, only half-topped it, achieved his best contact yet, watched it slice away to the right, and was appalled to hear his old friend tut-tutting behind him.
‘Slicing still, I see. And bending your left arm. And swaying. And letting your head move,’ said Lambert magisterially. It was really quite consoling to see such elementary mistakes. It made you realise how far you had progressed from your tentative early steps in the game. Sometimes you thought you had learned nothing, but when you saw a real beginner like Bert struggling to hit the ball, you had to accept that you had acquired a fair degree of proficiency over the years. And Bert was no stooge at sport: he had been an excellent cricketer, up to minor counties standard; had opened the bowling for Herefordshire in his palmy days, and taken many good wickets. Yet here he was struggling, even losing his rag with the game; it really was quite consoling.
‘You’re snatching from the top again,’ Lambert said helpfully, ‘and looping your swing so that you come across the ball. Adjust your stance a little and try to come at it from the inside.’
Bert said something which was fortunately indistinguishable. He shut his eyes as he tried to knock Lambert’s succession of comments into his raging brain. When he opened his eyes, the ball was still there, midway between his feet staring insolently up at him, defying him to direct the blow which would kill it at the back of its neck. He adjusted his stance a little, straightened his left arm rigidly towards the ball, dropped his head to look at the back of it like an inquisitive bird.
‘That’s better!’ said Lambert approvingly from behind him. ‘Now, remember to swing the clubhead back slowly, and we’re in business. In your own time, then!’ he said with breezy cheerfulness. It was important to be not just well-informed but encouraging when you gave instruction: his wife had told him that.
Hook felt like Quasimodo on a bad day. For a moment, he thought he could not move the club at all from this awful, contrived position. Then he turned his wide shoulders with a huge effort, twisting his body like an arthritic crab. At the top of his swing, he fixed the ball with a wide, malevolent left eye, feeling again like the legendary Charles Laughton; for an awful moment, the impulse to launch his downswing by shouting ‘The bells!’ hammered through his head. Instead, he threw himself at the ball with a huge grunt and a desperate unwinding of his tortured arms.
He hit the mat two inches behind the ball, with an impact that shuddered his own booth and the two on either side of it. The head of his 7-iron bounced upwards, brushing the very top of the ball. It trickled forward some two feet, seemingly in deference to the immense effort Hook had applied rather than from any definite contact. The unseen presence behind him tut-tutted again. ‘You need to relax to hit the ball properly,’ said Lambert helpfully.
Hook hated him with the unswerving, undiluted hate a child in darkness has for a witch. This man had taken advantage of his rank to bring him here against his will and torture him. ‘Blast the bastard, fucking thing!’ he said. ‘And you too! Blast and damn the whole fucking issue.’ He concentrated all of his fury on the ball which had so mocked him, imprinting Lambert’s features on the curved surface which faced him. Then he moved forward swiftly, as if he hoped to catch it by surprise, and launched himself at it with every ounce of his remaining energy.
He should have missed it altogether, allowing Lambert to counsel again the virtues of control and the steady head. Perhaps some merciful providence intervened to avoid needless bloodshed on this balmy autumn afternoon. For the face of the 7-iron contacted the ball at the bottom of its mighty swing and the ball flew away in a massive, impossible parabola, pitching near and running past the 150-yard marker post on the ball-littered grass before them. ‘Take that!’ yelled Hook. ‘Take that, you rotten bastard!’ He was not sure whether he was shouting at the distant ball or at his mentor. He found that the blood was pounding in his head and he was breathing very hard. There was the odd spot dancing before his vision and he needed to stand with feet well apart to recover himself, mentally and physically. He did not dare to turn round.
Lambert felt he should offer some sort of congratulation on this fortunate blow of his sergeant’s. But something warned him to be cautious. In ten years of working with Hook in a service noted for the vigour of its language, he had never heard him use the f-word before. Bert was a man almost unique in his placidity. Yet now, in a place of relaxation, with a tutor who could scarcely be more patient or understanding, he had completely lost control of himself. John L
ambert shook his head sadly. Some instinct of self-preservation made him say nothing and resume the hitting of his own remaining golf balls.
Neither of them looked at the other until both the baskets of balls were exhausted. Bert was breathing hard, but neither success nor failure brought any further verbal reaction from him. Lambert hit one or two excellent shots, but found it difficult to concentrate. They dropped the empty wire baskets back by the ball-dispensing machine and strode silently back to the car. Then the old Vauxhall made its stately way back over four miles of winding roads to the murder room which had been set up at Oldford CID. Not a word was exchanged in the fourteen minutes of the journey.
Golf, they say, is a wonderful game for cementing friendships.
*
Jamie Allen had seen the two men come into the school, had seen them enter the head’s room immediately after assembly. He had been the only person in the sixth form common room, hunched with a book in the corner, unnoticed by Mrs Peplow as she had led the two tall men through it and into her office. He had listened in trepidation to the low murmur of conversation in the long minutes which followed, unable to distinguish a single word. He had heard the excited talk at morning break; watched the girls assembled for the meeting with the CID men at midday — at ‘high noon’, as one of them had nervously called it. Munching his lunch-time sandwiches alone, he had watched from the library window as Mr Murray, the head teacher of the school, had run after the men to engage them in conversation at the school gates.
Being still seventeen, he had speculated about what all these people had said to the detectives about him, and about his relationship with Alison Watts. And all day he had waited for them to come for him, to take him away, to question him in the high-walled interview room at the station which he had seen in so many television police dramas. Yet all day no one had come to him, no message had arrived that he was to be questioned by those ominous, dark-suited men.