by J M Gregson
He looked up. Lambert was still studying his every tiny reaction with that steady, unembarrassed stare. ‘Have you any idea who killed Peter Logan, Mr Fenton?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘Do you know anyone who had a reason to dislike him?’
‘No. I told you. He was highly successful in what he did.’
‘Indeed you did tell us that. More than once. But success does not always make people likeable, does it?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Did you ever hear that Mr Logan was something of a philanderer?’
What an old-fashioned word, thought Steve. He’d heard Logan called several things, had used some of the words himself, but never that one. He said stiffly, ‘I didn’t listen to gossip.’
‘An admirable policy. But you can’t help hearing things, sometimes. And, unlike you, he wasn’t a free agent in these things.’
Steve almost blurted out a response he would immediately have regretted. This man was baiting him: he realized that now. No doubt they used anger to make people reveal things. Well, it wouldn’t work with him. ‘No. He was on the surface a happily married man. He’d a lot to lose. People expect a headmaster to be a pillar of respectability.’
‘So he would have wanted to be secretive about any affair he conducted. But you don’t know of any such clandestine association?’
‘No. Well, I heard the odd rumour. But I told you, I didn’t listen to gossip.’
‘A pity, that, from our point of view. It means you probably have no idea whom he might have been planning to meet on the night he died.’
‘No. I can’t help you there.’
‘Do you know where Mrs Logan was on that night?’
Steve seemed suddenly to have lost all his breath, like a boxer struck without warning below the belt. He wondered if his face showed how shaken he was. He tried to keep his voice steady as he said, ‘No, of course I don’t. Why do you want to know?’
The long, lined face on the other side of the table smiled for the first time in many minutes, amused by his naivety. ‘Routine, Mr Fenton. The spouse is always a leading suspect in a murder case, until she’s cleared. So far we haven’t been able to establish exactly where Mrs Logan was on Monday night. It would have been useful if you could have helped us and her. But it was a foolish question really. Because as you say, you hardly know the lady.’
‘No. My gut feeling is that she had nothing to do with her husband’s death.’
‘I see. Well, Sergeant Hook can hardly record gut feelings in his notes. He has to stick to facts, you see. And I’ve no doubt he’s recorded that you didn’t know Mr Logan very well, that you know his wife even less well, that you’ve no idea whom he might have been sleeping with at the time of his death. All negatives, but all no doubt very useful in their own way. All contributing to a fuller picture, when we put them together with what other people have to tell us.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be more helpful.’
‘Oh, it may be that you’ve been more helpful than you think at this moment, when we review the whole of our knowledge rather than the parts. I should remind you before we leave that if anything occurs to you which you think might be significant in the investigation, it is your duty to get in touch with us immediately. But no doubt you would wish to do that anyway!’
Almost before he had realized it, they had gone. It was a bright, pleasant autumn day outside, but Steve found his torso clammy with perspiration beneath his shirt.
It was a good five minutes before he recovered enough to go to the phone.
Mark Lindsay’s mother wanted to know why he was going out. It seemed to him that he had to lie to everyone these days.
Saturday the third of October was one of those still, perfect autumn mornings, when the sun warmed the green land around Cheltenham after a cool start to the day, but Mark scarcely noticed the weather. His mind was teeming with too many other things and it even seemed hard work to turn the pedals of his bike.
Drugs trading wasn’t proving the straightforward money-winner he had anticipated. And so far he didn’t seem to be collecting the girls, which had been the object of the exercise. Indeed, one of the nicer girls from school, a fresh-faced blonde about whom he’d had some steamy erotic fantasies, had actually gone out of her way to come and talk to him in the club on the previous night, and he’d had to snub her. He hadn’t meant to, but his social skills weren’t up to turning a girl away without giving offence.
He’d had to get rid of her, because his supplier’s ultimatum that he must shift more drugs was still strong in his mind, and he hadn’t dared to forsake the opportunities of selling to talk to this friendly and delectable girl. Teething troubles, he told himself unconvincingly, as he rode his bike away from the town centre. In a few months, he’d have all the girls he could handle.
The man he now thought of as ‘the man in black’ was there before him. In fact, he wore Levi denims and a roll-neck blue sweater this morning. It was the first time Mark had seen him during daylight hours, but within the walls of this derelict filling station there seemed only dimness, after the brilliance of the sun outside.
The man handed over the supplies they had agreed without a word. Even in this dingy setting, he wore sunglasses with small, very black lenses, so that you could not see his eyes. His hands were surprisingly small and his movements very swift. Mark realized for the first time that his supplier could be nervous, too. This drugs business might be lucrative, but it was less straightforward and more dangerous than Mark had thought it would be.
There was more cannabis than Mark wanted, more than he had been able to shift in the school and on the previous night at the club. There were also small quantities, no more than a couple of grams, of the white and brown powders Mark knew were cocaine and heroin, and also some small squares of what looked like blotting paper, which puzzled him.
‘LSD. Don’t you even bloody recognize it?’ said the man tersely. ‘You don’t need to pay now. But I’ll want the money next time.’
‘Sale or return?’ said Mark. He tried to laugh and couldn’t manage it.
‘You’ll shift them and deliver the money for future supplies at our next meeting. That’s the way my system works, son.’
They were almost the only words they exchanged. The man left first, easing his BMW from behind the ruined building with scarcely a sound, then roaring away swiftly into the distance.
Mark Lindsay left two minutes later, pedalling his bicycle in the opposite direction, back towards the centre of the town and his home. He tried to ride swiftly, but the tiny packages in the pockets of his anorak seemed to weigh him down.
Martin Sheene had been expecting the call for days, but it was still a shock when it came.
He had given his statement to the detective constable at the school, waiting his turn on the list with the other teachers. He’d said no more than he had to say, been non-committal, even bored, as he sought to emphasize that this was no more than a fulfilment of police routine.
The voice on the phone was curiously unthreatening. It had a thick local accent, Herefordshire or Gloucestershire. Not being a native of the area, Martin couldn’t be sure which. It said, ‘We need to ask you a few questions about the death of your headmaster, Mr Sheene.’
‘You spoke to me at Greenwood School. Earlier in the week.’
‘You made a statement to one of our officers, yes. This is a follow-up interview.’
‘I can’t think why you would need that. Is this happening to all the teachers who—’
‘We’re within a couple of hundred yards of you now. We’ll be there within two minutes.’
They hadn’t asked whether it would be convenient. He said desperately, ‘Wouldn’t this be better at the school? I could be there in half an hour. It would really suit me better to—’
‘We’ll be with you almost immediately, sir. We’ll provide evidence of identity, if you require it.’
There wasn’t time to ditch
anything. Martin snatched up a couple of videos and put them away in the rather shabby cupboard beside his bookshelves. Then the doorbell rang and his inquisitors were in the house, almost before he realized that they were over the threshold: the Superintendent Lambert who had addressed them at Greenwood on Wednesday evening and his sidekick, the detective sergeant with the weather-beaten face who had just spoken to him on the phone.
They looked around the room, with its shabby furniture which he had bought with the house and never bothered to replace, its window which stubbornly refused to open, even though the sun was pouring through it now. They didn’t miss much, these two: probably part of their training to assess the important things about a place at a glance. But there surely wasn’t much visible here that could damage him? Martin had to resist the sensation that they knew all about him already, that they could see through wooden facings and into cupboards and drawers.
Only when they had taken in his surroundings did they turn their attention to Martin. It was the sergeant, Hook, who said to him, ‘I think you’d better sit down, Mr Sheene.’ Fancy telling him what to do in his own house. He should have challenged such discourtesy. Instead he sat down meekly on an upright chair beside the table, his arm falling clumsily across its surface as he did so.
Hook flicked open a notebook as he sat down in Martin’s favourite armchair. ‘We’ll just check a few facts first. You are Martin Algernon Sheene?’
That silly second name thrown in his face at the outset: he half-expected them to sneer at it, as boys had done long ago in the playground. ‘Yes. My mum called me Algy, you see, when I was young. I changed to Martin as soon as I got away from home.’
‘You went to university.’
‘Yes, and then I did a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, so that I could teach.’
‘And you’re now thirty-two.’
‘Yes. I’ve been teaching for ten years. Ever since I got my qualification. Geography principally, and a little basic science for the juniors.’ He didn’t want to volunteer information, but he didn’t seem able to stop his tongue running.
‘You’re a single man. And you’ve never been married.’
‘No.’ He ran a hand through his lank hair, forced a smile. ‘The right girl hasn’t come along, yet!’ Might as well assert his heterosexual credentials. They didn’t like gays, the police.
‘You’ve had a variety of posts.’
‘Yes.’ He tried again to keep silent, but when they didn’t help him out, he said with a nervous giggle, ‘One has a career to build, you know. One has to move around, gather experience.’
‘I see. Your application for the post at Greenwood indicates that you’ve been in five posts in ten years, including your present one.’
They’d been into the staff files at the school! It set his mind racing, that thought. He made himself ask the question he did not want to voice. ‘Been checking everyone’s background, have you?’
Hook looked at his superintendent, who said lightly, ‘Not everyone’s, Mr Sheene. There hasn’t really been time for that, as yet. We’ve only called for the ones which seemed of particular interest.’
This Lambert fellow seemed to be leading him towards a particular query, and Martin, as his mother had always claimed when he was in trouble, was easily led. He said, ‘And why would my file be of particular interest to you?’
Lambert ignored the query. ‘Would you say that five posts in ten years is usual, Mr Sheene?’
‘Well, you have to gather experience, as I said.’
‘You’re well-qualified, Mr Sheene. You have a good degree from a good university.’
Martin forced a small smile. ‘I like to think so.’ They’d really been studying his background, by the sound of it.
‘But you’re still on the basic teaching scale at Greenwood. No special allowances. Not a head of department.’
‘Some of us are more concerned with job satisfaction than with advancement in the profession.’
‘I see. That hardly tallies with what you said about moving to advance your career, does it?’
The man’s quiet manner belied his words: he was like a dog with a bone. And Martin knew now that he wasn’t going to give up the bone. ‘I think that’s my business, isn’t it?’
For the second time in two minutes, Lambert ignored his question and pressed on. ‘Were you asked to leave any of your previous teaching posts, rather than choosing to move on of your own accord, Mr Sheene?’
It was inexorable. But Martin couldn’t think what to do, other than struggle on like a fish floundering helplessly in a net at the water’s edge. ‘I want to do all I can to help you, of course I do, but this really is an unwarrantable intrusion into my private life, you know. I don’t see why—’
‘Are you refusing to answer?’
‘Well, not exactly, but—’
‘Perhaps it would be useful for you to know that I spoke to two of your former head teachers on the phone last night.’
The fish was on the bank now, flapping its last, helpless movements, fighting hopelessly for life. ‘Nothing was ever proved. I moved on of my own accord.’
‘Whilst you were still able to move, I presume. If anything had been proved against you, you would have gone on official blacklists, been unable to work again with children.’
Martin stared sullenly down at his forearm, still lying awkwardly on the table. ‘Nothing was ever proved. I could sue anyone who says otherwise.’
‘Which is why no one could put down anything against you in writing. Which is what allowed you to get the post at Greenwood Comprehensive.’
Martin dared not look up. His limbs desperately wanted to move, to leap into any form of action, but he held them stiff and rigid, as if rapid movement of his arms or legs would itself be a confession. He said, ‘They were glad to get someone of my qualifications and experience to take a job on the basic scales. And I’m not a bad teacher; the children mostly like me. You ask—’
‘That unfortunately is not the point at issue this morning, is it, Mr Sheene?’
‘Isn’t it? Well you’d better tell me what the point is, because frankly I don’t see why I should take any—’
‘The point at issue is how Peter Logan died. I think you should know that he made a phone call three days before he was killed, Mr Sheene. To the National Paedophile Unit at New Scotland Yard.’
Lambert waited for him to deny that he was the man concerned. But Martin Sheene was past that point. He said in scarcely more than a whisper, ‘I haven’t hurt any of the children at Greenwood Comprehensive. I wouldn’t do that.’
‘So you admit that you were the subject of Mr Logan’s phone call?’
Dimly and too late, he realized that he had been tricked into an admission. ‘I thought you just said that Logan had phoned this Paedophile Unit about me.’
‘No. All I said was that he had phoned the National Paedophile Unit. He said he was concerned about a member of his teaching staff. He wished to discuss the matter in confidence with someone from the Unit.’
‘So he didn’t mention me.’
‘No. Are you now denying that you were the member of staff concerned?’
It was familiar ground to Martin. He had been over it before, in other schools. He had always managed to get out before it got really nasty. They had to have solid evidence against you to take you to court, because the law was as tricky as a snake. Most people were happy to avoid the embarrassment of having employed you, if you moved out of their area, and his legal friends in the group had always advised him when to go.
But this was different. He had never got as far as being questioned by policemen before, let alone this quiet Torquemada of a superintendent. He was suddenly tired of running, weary of the whole pretence of being something he was not. He said exhaustedly, ‘No. There doesn’t seem any point in denying anything now, does there? Peter Logan found that I had taken children into the junior science laboratory with me during the lunch hour. He must have been ringing because o
f that.’
There was a long pause. They made a strange trio, the two experienced CID men sitting in easy chairs and the hopeless figure with the slumped shoulders at the table. Eventually Martin Sheene said, ‘I haven’t damaged any children. I – I’m fond of them, that’s all. Perhaps too fond.’ When there was no reaction to this, he slowly lifted his head to look at them. ‘What happens now?’
Lambert nodded to Hook, who said quietly, ‘Other people will have to take this matter up with you, in due course. I think you will be suspended on full pay, pending further inquiries into your conduct, but that of course will not be our decision. Superintendent Lambert and I are concerned solely with finding out who killed Peter Logan.’
‘But you surely can’t think I did that?’ He said it limply, when there should have been outrage at the suggestion; he should have been on his feet in anger. But he could raise no energy for that. The time for simulating indignation was past.
Hook said, ‘You must surely see that the situation you have now admitted gives you a strong motive to remove Mr Logan. He suspected he had a paedophile in his school, but he had not named you to anyone. Your whole career was at stake, your whole lifestyle. It’s a strong motive for murder, Mr Sheene. Stronger than any other motive we have so far discovered, in fact.’
‘I didn’t kill him.’ The words had the ring of a hopeless ritual.
Lambert took up the questioning again. ‘Where were you on Monday night, Mr Sheene?’
‘Here. On my own. I watched a little television, if I remember right.’ He’d watched some of his videos acquired from the group, not the television; for a horrid moment, he expected them to ask him to give a rundown of the television programmes on Monday night.
Instead, Lambert said, ‘I think we’ve established that you are a paedophile, Mr Sheene. Other people, more specialist officers in that field, will wish to discuss the details with you. What I have to ask you is whether you are a member of a paedophile ring.’