‘Well, she’s not just a pretty face, is she? Holly’s a seasoned blackmailer, remember, making good use of an abused moment. Note that she didn’t report him. She found a more profitable way to punish him. Holly Hope-Walker is a ruthless girl, who’s been hanging the chaplain out to dry for a couple of years.’
Peter had smiled.
‘Quite a lethal cocktail, those two!’
But here in the interview, it was Cressida and not Holly who was the focus of Crispin’s admiration. She was declared ‘class!’
‘How is she class, exactly?’ asked Peter.
‘Oh well, you know,’ said Crispin, looking around for adult words. ‘Impressive woman, impressive career.’
‘You fancy her,’ said Tamsin, cutting to the chase – but leaving the chase there. She had no wish to explore the subterranean fantasies of a teenage boy towards an older and unobtainable woman. Crispin went red and said, ‘No way!’
‘And there’s nothing between you and Holly, of course – as you made clear in the meeting.’
It was somewhere between a statement and a question.
‘Have women got nothing better to do than invent love stories?’ said Crispin.
‘Pretty girl, though,’ said Tamsin. ‘And here you are, thrown together in the strangest of circumstances. You must be laughing as you watch the adults disgrace themselves in various ways. How the mighty are fallen!’
Crispin remained silent as did Tamsin and the abbot . . . until silence became uncomfortable for the former head boy.
‘There’s a story about Spanker.’
‘Mr Ogilvie?’
‘Yes.’
‘A true story?’ asked the abbot.
‘Apparently he asked a fifth-year boy what he was going to do when he grew up.’
Crispin had their attention and liked it. He’d never felt adult attention until recently, and not wishing to lose it now, he finished the story.
‘The boy said to him, “I don’t know, sir. How about you?”’
Peter smiled but Tamsin didn’t. She felt the tale was aimed at her, and she was right, for Crispin looked at her as he delivered the punchline.
‘No one here thinks the teachers are mighty,’ he said dismissively. ‘They haven’t got far to fall, no distance at all.’
Tamsin decided to attack back.
‘So if it isn’t Holly, then it suddenly gets much more complicated, Crispin . . . and a bit messier, really.’ The abbot watched the net closing. He did not wish Crispin hurt, he liked the boy. But they did need to capture the truth. ‘Wouldn’t you say, Crispin?’
‘Wouldn’t I say what?’ He was confused.
‘Well, if it wasn’t Holly with you, which is what we presumed – stupidly, as you’ve explained – then who were you with in your room last night?’ Crispin looked blank, a canvas of nothing, except the faint wash of fear. ‘Because you were with someone, weren’t you?’
‘So why are you here exactly?’
asked Tamsin.
Benedict, formerly the ghost, sat looking slightly smug in the interview room, almost as if he were interviewing them. There was no sign now on his face of the white paint he used when he wandered the corridors at night.
‘Such oppressive pictures, don’t you think?’ he’d said on his arrival, looking around at the photos of youthful success on the walls. ‘Everyone so busy with achievement.’
‘And so young,’ said Peter.
‘Oh, I don’t think I wish my youth back. No, really.’
‘But isn’t that what the school is about, Benedict?’ queried Tamsin.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, isn’t that why people pay the money they do – so their children achieve?’
Tamsin had no qualms about achievement. She woke every day to achieve – what else was there but some terrifying hollow of nothingness?
‘It kills you in the end,’ said Benedict. ‘As a way of life.’
‘Did it kill you?’
There was nothing in his manner which suggested fear of this interrogation. And really, why would there be?
‘I mean, you have achieved quite a lot,’ said Tamsin. ‘Financially, at least. Background checks show you to be worth somewhere between six and eight million pounds.’
Benedict smiled as one struck by an amusing thought.
‘These things are rather meaningless, don’t you think? They’ve never excited me much. Numbers on a screen, figures on a page – there’s an unreality about them, I always feel. Better the wayside flower, in my opinion. As the poem says, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”’
‘But for one so wealthy, the question does remain: what are you doing here? Why does a man who could live anywhere, choose for himself a little room in a minor public school accessed by a wardrobe and a rickety staircase?’
‘There’s more to life than a big house?’
‘But what exactly?’ asked Tamsin. ‘Apart from the wayside flower, of course – which you must tire of eventually.’
It was a genuine question from Tamsin.
‘The wonderful world of education!’
‘But you hate the school.’
‘I dislike aspects of the school . . . but a school is many aspects and there’s much that I’m profoundly attached to.’
‘And what sort of an aspect was Jamie?’
Benedict thought long and hard, smiling along with the game . . . a game you sensed he was rather enjoying.
‘An energetic aspect. Yes, Jamie saw which way the tide was turning. A good business man – and to be fair, he ran a good business.’
‘There’s something faint about the praise.’
‘A school is not a business,’ he said politely but firmly.
‘And he didn’t mind you being here?’
‘I’m not sure he had a choice – so whether he minded or not was quite immaterial.’
‘You didn’t converse?’ asked Tamsin.
‘We didn’t “converse”, as you put it, no.’ Tamsin did wonder why she’d used that word . . . not usually in her vocabulary. Perhaps being in a school was contagious, with seventeenth-century language being one of the symptoms. ‘He’ll have been aware of my views – and made sure he never had to hear any of them!’
‘And Terence?’ asked Peter. A seagull swooped past the open window, screaming loudly. It was that time of year, the gulls frightened for their fledglings making tentative first flights from the nest.
‘What about him?’
‘Did you ever discuss anything other than rental payments?’
‘Poor Terence,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Why poor?’
‘Well, whereas my God is delighted I’m gay, Terence’s God was absolutely furious – really very angry. As would have been his pastor and Church friends. Eternity was too short for the punishment due to him. So, of course, I stopped the relationship when I saw the self-disgust and terror at work in him. Rather gracious of me.’ Tamsin and Peter remembered the letter found in Terence’s room, begging for the chance to see Benedict again.
‘He took that rejection hard?’
‘Apparently,’ said Benedict, with a sadness that sent Tamsin back to the slumped figure in the car, red tie askew, garrotted by a rope round a tree and an accelerating vehicle. ‘When you’re hated for simply being what you are, and for something one has no control over, then life is difficult. I couldn’t have saved Terence from that. Well, no one could have saved Terence from his God.’
Peter nodded, not wishing to appear heartless; but he had to ask, because really, the question had not been answered by Benedict, not in a believable way.
‘So again, Benedict – why exactly are you here?’
‘I do believe I’ve answered that question; there’s only so many ways of saying the
same thing. So let me give you another – as you are about to see him. It’s more of a puzzle really: Bart, Italy and a rucksack on a rope – spot the connection!’
Bart did not wish to be interviewed,
this was quite clear.
‘Come stai?’ said Tamsin.
‘Bene, grazie,’ said Bart. ‘Now, can we get on with whatever it is you want to get on with?’
‘Italy,’ said Tamsin. ‘What is it with you and Italy, Bart?’ He looked taken aback. ‘I mean, you’re an Italian speaker, who owns a Porsche, feels for the first-century Roman émigrés and holidays in tree huts in Tuscany. Why do I not think Bart Betters is your real name?’
Bart looked at them.
‘This has nothing to do with anything.’
‘Our decision, I suppose.’
‘I was born in Italy, so what? Don’t tell me you were born in England,’ he said, looking at the dark hair and olive skin of Tamsin.
‘The difference is – well, one of the differences – I’m not a suspect in a murder case, who’s withholding information.’
‘Sorry – did I miss the moment when you asked for my place of birth?’
It was clever but awkward, delivered with jumpy, angry eyes.
‘It’s just that – contrary to what you told us – you were at Stormhaven Head on Sunday afternoon, when Jamie fell to his death.’
‘That just isn’t true. Who told you?’
‘Some runners.’
‘What runners?’
‘I visited the Stormhaven Striders last night. Some fit folk there, eh?’
‘Ultra-marathon runners, some of them. We’re training for the fifty-miler from Worthing to Eastbourne along the South Downs Way.’
‘Really?’ said Tamsin in a manner that denoted no interest at all. ‘No wonder they were looking apprehensive. And it was a bit of a long-shot – but I just wanted to know if any of them were up there around the time of Jamie’s death. Worth a try, surely? And clearly I interrupted a lot of body worship, so they weren’t delighted to see me – but being law-abiding folk and mostly middle-aged, male and bored in their marriages, they gave me five minutes.’
‘Males don’t like being stereotyped any more than women.’
‘Women know when men are looking at them, Bart.’ He grunted derision but Tamsin was unconcerned. ‘And then one of them – one of the two women present – told me she’d seen you up there, with your weights rucksack. You, Bart! She said you were looking around like Burglar Bill on a night job – or perhaps Burglar Guglielmo in your case.’
Bart raised his eyebrows.
‘So I was up there, so what?’ he said, with self-righteous incredulity. ‘I was on my way back from the Long Man of Wilmington. What of it?’
‘What of it, Bart? You said you weren’t.’
‘I wasn’t at the place of the murder.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘I would have seen something.’
‘You do know that lying to the police, wasting police time, obstructing a police inquiry – these are all fairly career-finishing charges, certainly in education.’ Bart looked affronted. ‘I mean, there may be openings in the underworld – as long as you don’t rattle on about wellbeing too often. I think that might get on their nerves.’
Bart’s knee had stopped bouncing.
‘I didn’t kill Jamie, that’s a fact, right?’
‘It’s hard to spot the facts with you, Bart, amid such a crowd of lies. It’s a bit like Where’s Wally?’
‘But if I say I was there, it looks like I did kill him!’ There was desperation in his voice, the whine of a frightened little boy, fearing the shame. ‘Why would anyone tell the truth in my situation?’
‘How about trying it, anyway?’ said Peter quietly. ‘The truth does set us free – even if it can feel like an ice shower at the time.’
Bart went quiet, silent eyes, lost eyes, contemplating a bleak terrain in the distance. He sighed, and almost shook as he did so.
‘We’re all skewered on dilemmas,’ said Peter, reassuringly. ‘We’re all making uncomfortable choices. The inspector here can be rather aggressive.’ He looked at Tamsin, who was unperturbed. Aggression was a compliment not an insult. ‘But that’s only because she has demons of her own, things unresolved which she transfers onto others.’ Now Tamsin was perturbed. What the hell was Peter going on about? ‘So you see, there are no good people or bad people here. Just people skewered on dilemmas, trying to do their best, as I’m sure you are. But we do need the truth, Bart. And not a word out of place – disinformation, misinformation, withheld information – or you’ll be abandoned by all who are good, which is not a place I wish for you.’
Peter’s words were prescient. Being exiled from the front room to the staircase had been a terrible punishment for Bart when young. A deep terror of abandonment remained. And so it was that Bart told them his story. And when he left, the abbot and Tamsin sat in silence for a moment, wondering what to make of it all.
‘Well, there’s a tale,’ said Tamsin, still unsure.
‘And a true one, I feel,’ said Peter. ‘Though that was truth at its most odd . . . and he gives me an idea.’
Tamsin’s phone rang. It was quickly out of her bag. ‘Moron alert,’ she said to Peter. ‘It’s Chief Inspector Wonder.’
She answered: ‘Hello, Chief Inspector. All good, I hope?’
‘You interview Cressida,’
said Tamsin. ‘I’ll go and talk him out of it.’
‘I’m not confident,’ said Peter.
‘He’s panicking – I’ll calm him down.’
Wonder had been in a flap on the phone, mindful of his reputation in a high-profile murder enquiry.
‘This isn’t some homeless man with mental issues, knifed in a churchyard, Tamsin!’ He quickly added that it was sad, of course, when such events occurred. ‘But it happens at that level of society: everyone reads about it on Sunday, shakes their head . . . and then moves on. But this is different – this is the head of a famous public school, pushed over a cliff, for God’s sake! And Jamie King was a high-flier – unfortunate phrase in the circumstances, obviously – and there are rich people involved, large bank accounts and a sense of entitlement, you know the sort.’ But Tamsin wasn’t allowed a word. ‘People with power are looking on aghast at the value of their investment in their children’s education: “What the hell is Wonder doing about my investment, eh?”’
‘You’re hearing that question?’
‘I’m hearing it in my sleep, Tamsin! And when one murder becomes two – the head’s PA, no less, battered and poisoned down at Tide Mills – then I’m truly worried. I mean, what’s going on there?’
‘I can explain.’
‘And so I’m thinking, what the hell’s Shah playing at with her tame monk? And then the last straw, the third murder – the bursar this time.’
‘It wasn’t murder.’
‘The bursar, for God’s sake! Not just a cleaner or a gardener!’
‘About the gardener . . .’
‘Not a good trinity, Shah: the headmaster, the head’s PA and the bursar!’
‘The bursar was suicide.’
‘And it may be a suicide, Shah, but does the watching world give a fig? You know how it looks. It looks like bloody Midsomer!’
‘Is that good?’ asked Peter, as Tamsin recounted the call.
‘No, it’s bad,’ said Tamsin.
‘Bad in what way?’
‘It’s getting out of control, Abbot.’
‘What is?’
‘The case – it’s not working out.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not good enough, things will have to change. Operationally, I mean.’
Somewhere along the way – at some point in Tamsin’s telling – it had begun to sound like an accusation against Peter. Well, it was an accusatio
n against Peter, with Tamsin eaten up by Wonder’s words. The murders, the suicide, the slow progress – Tamsin had to blame someone.
‘Hold him off until the morning, Tamsin – and we’ll have our killer. I think so.’
‘You think so?’
She smiled condescendingly, she couldn’t help herself. The man opposite her suddenly appeared old and frail. Perhaps Wonder had a point. Would it be better if the abbot got back to the public library – or whatever it was old people did with their mornings? It had possibly been a case too far for him and she’d need to cover her back.
‘It’s over, Abbot.’ It was suddenly settled in her mind.
‘What?’
‘We tried and failed. Or rather, you failed – as far as he’s concerned. He’s going to bring in two more experienced detectives to work with me.’
‘OK.’ It wasn’t OK. ‘So you’re giving up on me.’
‘I’ll try to dissuade him. I mean, Wonder is a runt, he doesn’t tell me what to do. But . . .’
But he would tell Tamsin what to do, Peter knew this. He knew what it was to be a man in a panic, stumbling blind and terrified in the face of some imagined but all-consuming monster. It was not the moment for rational decisions. Wonder would not have made this call if he were open to debate. Panic is the climate for nothing but irrational and disastrous certainty – and the certainty now would be the dismissal of Peter. And sadly, Tamsin would agree with him, he knew his niece; and not because she agreed with Wonder – she’d never agree with Wonder, even in paradise. But she’d agree because, in the end, it was her own skin that mattered to her . . . and Wonder’s panic would transfer. For Tamsin, when a partnership could not park itself on Success Street, then it was the partnership, not the journey, which must be abandoned.
‘Just do your best,’ he said to Tamsin, who looked slightly hollow-eyed. ‘You haven’t put a foot wrong in the case, not in my opinion, so no cause for head-bowed apology. Sacrifice me, do what you have to do – I’m sure you will, this is your career, not mine. But whatever you do, hold him off until the morning. Give me until the morning.’
A (Very) Public School Murder Page 19