by JD Kirk
Sinead couldn’t believe the coldness of the old cow. She remembered now why nobody had ever had a good word to say about her during Sinead’s six years at the school.
“We were also hoping you’d be able to give us details of his next of kin,” Hamza said. “Maybe former employers. Past addresses. Anything that would help us build up a clearer picture of who Mr Forsyth was.”
The depute head tutted. “The office staff could have helped with that. There was no need to call me in and waste my time.”
“We didn’t call you in,” Sinead said, unable to hold her tongue any longer. Her tone was sharp and abrupt, and made Hamza turn to look at her in surprise. “Your boss did. He told you to help us. Not the office staff, you. So, forget your next class. They’re having a free period. You, Mrs Robertson, are personally going to get us the information we need to help us find out who killed one of your teachers.”
Copsand sucked in her cheeks, but said nothing. Not for a while. Instead, she studied Sinead with a sort of detached fascination. It was the sort of look that the weird kid in class might give a fly whose wings he’d just pulled off, as he watches it explore its new flightless, agonising reality.
“What did you say your name was?” she finally asked.
“Detective Constable Bell.”
Copsand clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth and gave a nod. “Sinead Bell? The one whose parents died a few years back? That’s you, isn’t it?”
Sinead swallowed. Her hands gripped the arms of the rickety old chair she sat in. “Yes. That’s me.”
“You used to go here. I remember you in Advanced Higher English. Bright girl, if I recall,” the depute head remarked. She flicked her gaze from Sinead to Hamza and back again. “And yet, here you are.”
She hadn’t once moved her hands from their spot on the table, but slapped out a quick drumbeat now. Thump. Thump-thump.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Sinead,” she announced, smiling for the first time since she’d introduced herself. It was a rough draft of a smile at best, though. A hurried, scribbled attempt that needed a lot of work before it would convince anyone. “I’m going to personally ensure you get the information you need from the office staff. I’ll make certain it’s their number-one priority, despite the hundred and one other things going on that are fundamental to both the running of this school, and the safety and well-being of our pupils.” She hitched the smile wider. This only made the whole awful arrangement of her features look worse. “How does that sound?”
“We appreciate that,” Hamza said, getting in there before Sinead could say anything they both might regret. “I’m sure we all want the same thing—to make sure Mr Forsyth’s killer is brought to justice.”
“Yes. Quite. Of course,” agreed Copsand with a dismissive wave of a hand that made it very clear that this was way down near the bottom of her list of priorities.
Breaking contact with the table seemed to free her to stand up, and she did so with a series of rigid bending motions that made her look like she was powered by pistons.
“Do you want my advice?” she asked, once she’d pushed the chair back under the desk. She didn’t wait for either of them to reply before continuing. “Talk to Lana Lennon.”
“Mrs Lennon?” Sinead asked. “As in the English teacher? That Mrs Lennon?”
“Yes. Her,” Copsand confirmed. “I don’t share gossip, so please don’t say you heard this from me, but I have it on very good authority that she and Mr Forsyth were close. Extremely close. If you know what I mean?”
“They were in a relationship?” Hamza asked.
“Mrs Lennon’s married, isn’t she?”
The depute head raised both hands like she was stopping traffic. “Like I say, I don’t share gossip. But, if you want an insight into the coming and goings of Mr Forsyth’s life, I can think of no one better to talk to.” One of the raised hands became a pointing finger, which she waved at them both in warning. “But after school. PE. might not be important, but English is, and those children are preparing for the most important exams of their school career. You can have her home address. I suggest you talk to her there.”
“Thank you. We’ll do that,” Hamza said.
“Good. I appreciate it,” Mrs Robertson said. “And now, I wonder if you’d be so good as to do me one other small favour…?”
Chapter Twenty
The Chief Inspector was all handshakes and smiles when Logan eventually made his way to the office. He sprang from his chair like a sprinter off the blocks, and for a brief, terrible moment Logan was convinced the bugger was going to try to hug him.
Instead, he settled for one of those two-handed grasping handshakes, and the sort of joy-filled look that Logan usually only saw on the faces of parents whose kidnapped child he’d just dropped off back home.
While the name on his warrant card may have been Alisdair Lyle, Logan and most of the rest of the force knew him by something very different.
He’d come from a deeply religious background and used to hum hymns most of the year-round, except at Christmas, when he’d segue into carols for a few weeks.
As a sergeant, and later as an inspector in the drug squad, he’d paused many an operation to have, “A quick word with God,” where he asked the Lord to watch over him and the other officers as they smashed in the doors of a suspected dealer’s house, and kicked the living shit out of all those inside.
And so, one element of his nickname had been secured. It was his struggles with his weight—and one part of his physique, in particular—that had contributed the second part.
Praying Mantits was a particularly harsh name to be saddled with, Logan had always thought, even for the polis. It was often shortened to just ‘Mantits,’ for the sake of brevity. So much so, in fact, that the ‘Praying’ part fell mostly into obscurity.
This felt particularly unfair, considering that the Chief Inspector had managed to get his fluctuating weight under control in recent years, but still remained a devout follower of the Christian faith.
Still, they couldn’t exactly call him, ‘Praying.’ It just didn’t stand up on its own. And so, ‘Mantits’ he was, and forever would be—an everlasting reminder that he was once twice the man he now was.
“Great to see you, Jack! Great to see you! You’re looking well!”
“Cheers,” Logan said. “Eh… You, too.”
“Och, away with you,” Mantits laughed. “I am not! Do you think so? The wife’s had me trying moisturiser, would you believe? On my face. Feel that. ‘Lot of old bollocks,’ I told her, but it works.” He presented a cheek to Logan, and nodded encouragingly. “Feel that.”
“Sorry?”
“Go on. Have a feel.”
Logan got the sense that this would not end until he did as requested. He prodded the tip of a finger against the Chief Inspector’s offered cheek, more forcefully than Mantits had likely been expecting.
“Aye. Very good,” he remarked.
“It’s made with cucumber,” Mantits said, dropping his voice like he didn’t want anyone else hearing of such lavish extravagance.
“Right,” said Logan, because he had absolutely no idea what else to say.
“I can get you some, if you like. I’m sure I’ve got a sample pot you can have.”
Logan shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“No?” Mantits took a long appraising look at Logan’s face. “Not even around the eyes?”
“I’m fine, Alisdair,” Logan said. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes! I did! And here you are!” Mantits laughed. “God. It’s just like old times, isn’t it? Me and you. Side by side. Like Cagney and Lacey, or Starsky and Hutch.”
Logan became aware that his brow was furrowing, and course-corrected before Mantits broke out the moisturising cream.
“Did we ever work—?”
“Dempsey and Makepeace. That’s another one,” Mantits said, beaming from ear to ear. “Remember them? Michael Brandon and Glynis
Barber? He was from New York. She was… Well, I don’t know where she was from. Good show, though. Great chemistry.”
Logan waited until he was sure the Chief Inspector was done, then continued with his question. “Did we ever work together?”
“Not directly. No. Obviously. But I don’t know about you, but I always felt there was a sort of spiritual connection. Two rough-and-tumble Glasgow boys from the wrong side of the tracks, making it good in an unfamiliar world.”
This time, Logan couldn’t prevent the frown from taking over his forehead. “You’re from Glasgow?”
“Of course! Can’t you tell by the accent?” laughed Mantits. He adopted a style of intonation that was both guttural and nasal at the same time, and nothing whatsoever like his real voice. “Watch oot! The weans are in the water.” He held his arms out at his sides, his point apparently proven. “See?”
“Oh aye. I hear it now, right enough,” Logan said.
The accent had not been from Glasgow. It had barely been from Scotland, in fact. It was Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Worse than that, even. It was Russ Abbot as CU Jimmy, all ginger hair and gibberish.
Still, the last thing Logan wanted was to get into a conversation with the man about it. Or about anything else, for that matter.
“What was it you wanted to see me about, Alisdair?” he asked. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation.”
This only made Mantits smile wider. He sat on the edge of the desk, gripping the top with both hands, and gave a wry shake of his head. “Jack Logan,” he said, almost wistfully. “Do me a favour, will you?”
“What’s that?”
“Never change.”
“Eh… Aye. Fine.”
“Oh, and one other thing,” Mantits continued. “We’re doing things very much by the book here now. Crossing the Is and dotting the Ts.” He laughed at that and gave another shake of his head, like he couldn’t believe the stuff he came up with sometimes. “If there’s a form to be filled, I expect you to fill it. If there’s a report to be filed, or a resource request to be made, or an interview room to be booked, we’d all very much appreciate it being done. We’re all skinny sailors here, Jack. Do you know why?”
Logan blinked slowly, steeling himself for the inevitable punchline.
“Because I run a tight ship,” Mantits declared, then he followed up with a, “Badum-tish,” because it was evident that no other bugger was going to. “You and your team tick the boxes and file the paperwork, and we’ll be skinny sailors sailing smooth seas. I bet you can’t say that five times fast, can you?”
“No,” Logan immediately replied, brushing right past it. “Is that us, then?”
“That’s us. Back to it, we go!” Mantits chuckled. He jumped up and pumped Logan’s hand again. “Great to see you, Jack! Really great to see you!”
“Aye. You, too, Alisdair,” Logan said, taking his hand back.
“And I’m going to bring you in that sample pot of cream,” Mantits insisted. “And I’m not taking no for an answer!”
Logan returned to the Incident Room to find the whole team assembled around Ben’s desk. Hamza and Sinead still had their jackets on and stood with their backs to him as he entered. Tyler loomed behind DI Forde’s chair, more or less bouncing from foot to foot as if warming up for a run.
The smell of hot, buttery bacon rolls had entangled with the air in the room, making Logan’s mouth water and his stomach rumble. He’d hate to be Sinead and Hamza, who had both been stiffed on the JJ’s run, and would have to sit and watch while the other three got stuck in.
“That our rolls here, then, is it?” Logan asked, making it very clear to everyone within earshot that his name was on one of them.
“No. I mean, aye, boss. They are,” Tyler confirmed. “But there’s a bit of exciting news.”
“Oh aye?” Logan asked, suspecting there would be very little in that moment that could excite him more than floury bread and crispy bacon. “And what’s that?”
“There’s a cake shop!” Ben announced, with near-childlike glee.
“A cake shop?”
“Next to JJ’s, boss. Right next door, in fact,” Tyler said. “They do all sorts. Brownies. Blondies. Cookies. Cakes, obviously.”
“Oh. Right,” Logan said, doing his best to sound disinterested. He sniffed. He shrugged. He made the vaguest of waving motions with a hand. “Did you get any?”
Sinead and Hamza both stepped aside. There, on the table, sat a large white box with a clear plastic window in the top, and a selection of colourful goodies inside.
“Aye, boss,” Tyler said with a grin. “You can say that again!”
Once the rolls were eaten, the cakes all squared away, and all but a few dregs of tea and coffee drunk, the focus finally turned back to the murder of Fergus Forsyth.
As she didn’t have a roll—something she made clear she was going to have words with Tyler about at a later date—Sinead had spent some of the time collating the latest findings on the Big Board.
Mostly, these were focused around the victim, and the new information she and Hamza had brought back from Lochaber High School. The school office still had his CV and original application on file, along with a scanned copy of his teaching qualifications, and a note of his emergency contact.
Unfortunately, the emergency contact was Ross Lynsday, so that wasn’t particularly helpful. He had just one named reference—the head of PE at the school in Dumfries where he’d done his probationary years after leaving university—and the only address the school had for him was the house he shared in Invergarry.
“Doesn’t exactly paint a vivid picture of a young man’s life, does it?” Logan said, picking crumbs of Maltesers rocky road cake from where they’d landed on his shirt, and tossing them into his mouth. “This can’t be all we’ve got.”
“It’s most of what we’ve got from the school, sir,” Hamza confirmed. “But we’re waiting for a dump to come through from his bank and mobile provider. The school did have a note of his doctor’s details, so we’ll get onto there, too. Medical records should hopefully date back, so we can see where he used to be enrolled, and we’ll check with his old uni, too. They’re bound to have something.”
That sounded more promising.
Marginally.
“We did hear something interesting from the depute head,” Sinead said. “There are rumours among the staff that Fergus was in a relationship with an English teacher at the school. A married English teacher.”
“Really?” said Logan, pausing his de-crumbing for a moment while he gave this some thought. “You’re right, that is interesting. Did you speak to her?”
“No. Thought it might be better if you did it, sir,” Sinead said. “She used to be my teacher, so I thought maybe best if I wasn’t involved.”
“Also, the scary depute head lady told us to wait,” Hamza added.
“And that, yes,” Sinead said. “That also.”
“What’s she like?”
“Terrifying,” Hamza replied. “I think she’s a robot of some kind.”
Logan shook his head. “The English teacher.”
“Oh. Right. Aye,” said Hamza, before handing over to Sinead.
“I only had her for a couple of years. Third and fourth year,” Sinead said. “She was… fine. Friendly enough. Got a bit stressed out sometimes. Lost it once or twice with some of the noisier lads, but it was a good class, by and large.”
“Did she like you?” Logan asked.
“I mean… I think so. I don’t think she disliked me.”
“I can’t imagine anything worse than being a teacher,” Tyler remarked. “I couldn’t do it. I’d be screaming my head off all the time. Some kids are just bastards. There was this right mouthy wee arsehole in my year. All the teachers hated him.”
“No need to be so hard on yourself, son. I’m sure you weren’t all that bad,” Logan told him, beating Ben to the punch by mere fractions of a second. “Did we get an address for your English teacher?”
>
“We did. She’s out at Spean Bridge,” Sinead said.
“Good. I’ll go round and see her this evening. But I want you there, too,” Logan told her. “Familiar face might get her talking.”
Sinead nodded. “If you think it’ll help, sir.”
“Christ knows. Worth a try, though,” Logan said.
“We checked the car park for any sign of the victim’s motorbike, too,” Hamza said. “Nothing there. Looks like he definitely left the premises on Monday and never came back. We’ve got Uniform trying to track it down. It’s bright yellow, so pretty distinctive. We’re hoping that it’ll maybe help us piece together his movements after he left the school on Monday.”
“Right. Good. Keep me posted,” Logan instructed. “Tyler, any joy with that key?”
“Nah, nothing, boss. Not yet. Dave’s still working on it up the road, but we’re not making a lot of progress so far.”
“What’s your current theory?” Ben asked.
Tyler’s expression became immobile, like he’d pulled on a mask of his own when no one was looking, and was now hiding behind it.
“My current theory, boss? Well, eh… I think it, like—the key, I mean—I think it probably unlocks, like… something… that’s, you know, previously been locked. Like, it’ll open a box, or a safe, or a… thing.” He looked at the senior detectives, swallowed, then added, “Or maybe a drawer. That’s the current theory, at least.”
“Well,” said Ben, after a lengthy uncomfortable silence. “I’m glad to hear you’ve got it well in hand.”
“Have you tried a locksmith?” Sinead asked.
The reaction from Tyler suggested this word was new to him. “A locksmith?”
“Aye. They tend to know about keys,” Sinead pointed out.
Tyler turned his gaze to the window. The light from it pushed the shadows from his face like the rising sun sweeping across the surface of the earth.