Gerry didn’t seem quite sure whether to smile or not. In the end, she didn’t. ‘Thank you, sir. We also know that that Miller was short of money. Maybe he got mixed up with some sort of fraud or a loan shark? They can be pretty nasty when it comes to getting their money back.’
‘They usually stop short of murder, though,’ said Banks. ‘After all, they do want their money back.’
‘Perhaps he wasn’t meant to die? It could have got out of hand. Miller fought back and ended up going over the bridge. Or he was used as an example.’
‘Possible,’ Banks agreed. ‘We’ll look into it. About the five thousand pounds in his pocket. Do you think perhaps he might have resorted to blackmail?’
‘He could have done,’ said Gerry, ‘though I haven’t found any evidence of it so far. I’m also checking into the drugs connection, possible involvement in rural crime rings, something of that sort. Poverty can push people into crime, sir, and that’s a dangerous and unpredictable world.’
Banks made more jottings on the board. ‘We’ll be making a thorough examination of all Gavin Miller’s recent comings and goings,’ he said. ‘We should also make inquiries at all the farms within, say, a five-mile radius. Can you arrange that, PC Kirwan?’
‘I’ll organise some of the local beat bobbies to get on it right away, sir.’
‘There has to be someone who knew him, or who saw something,’ Banks said. ‘Liam’s working on Miller’s phone and computers right now, and he should have something for us later today. Thanks, Gerry, you did a fine job. Stefan, anything on forensics yet?’
‘It pains me to say it,’ Nowak said, ‘but the rain washed everything away, if anything was there in the first place. We have no prints, either foot, finger or tyre. It doesn’t look as if the road that runs from the cottage out into the moors has been used recently. It would at least appear churned up in places, even if we couldn’t get any clear tyre tracks, but the surface seems smooth enough, even in patches where it’s muddy from the recent flooding.’
‘Someone must have used it,’ Banks said. ‘How did Miller get his post?’
‘He had a box at the post office in the village, sir,’ answered Gerry.
‘OK. We’d better check that out, too.’ Banks glanced back at Nowak. ‘Sorry, Stefan. Please go on.’
Nowak spread his hands. ‘That’s about it.’
‘Will the money lead us anywhere?’ Banks asked.
‘Up a garden path, most likely. The bills are relatively new, it’s true, but they’re still used. And fifties are fairly rare, but these are not sequential. We might be able to trace some back to specific banks, but I doubt very much that we’ll be able to trace them to a specific person or transaction, if the owner had his wits about him. There are some prints, which we can try to match against our database, but so far all I can say is that a number of different people handled the bills. Sorry.’
‘Anything on the drugs Winsome and I found at Miller’s house?’
‘Some hash and what appears to be two tablets of LSD,’ Nowak said. ‘We didn’t find anything else. Thing is, the quantities are very small. Strictly personal consumption.’
‘But he had to get it from somewhere, didn’t he?’ said Winsome. ‘However tentative, it’s still a drugs connection. That could link him with some dodgy people. Where there’s drugs there’s money, and where there’s money there’s always the possibility of violence.’
‘True,’ said Banks. ‘Maybe you should have a word with the drugs squad later today? See if they can suggest a possible source. Well done. Anything else?’
‘Well,’ Winsome went on, ‘there was no diary, nothing to give us an account of his daily activities, or an address book. No landline, either. He did have a scratch pad in one of his drawers, and it has a few numbers and names scribbled on it. I passed it on to Liam, and he’ll be trying to coordinate with the information he gets from Miller’s mobile and computers. Then Gerry can try and track down the names and addresses. It’s my guess he had so few appointments, and he knew so few people, that he didn’t need an address book or appointment diary. Then there were the photos we found. That’s it.’
Banks turned to PC Kirwan. ‘Find out anything more around the village?’
Kirwan opened his notebook. ‘A little, sir. Nobody had seen Miller since Friday, when he’d been to the Spar on the high street to buy a few provisions and some wine on sale. He’d also been drinking in the Star and Garter before heading home.’
Banks gazed at the glass board. There was a lot more written on it now than there had been at the start of the meeting, but how much of it was of any use? He needed connections, not disparate facts and guesswork.
‘There is just one more thing that might be of interest, sir,’ said Kirwan. ‘I talked to a Mrs Stanshall, who says she’s certain she saw someone come over the stile from the woodland path into the car park, then get in a car and drive off. She’s another dog walker. It was dark, though, and she couldn’t give any more details, either about the car or the person, but she’s certain it was about half past ten on Sunday night, same time she always takes the dog for a walk, rain or shine. The timing’s about right. If someone was coming out of the woods and getting into a car at that time, there’s a good chance he may be connected with Miller’s death, isn’t there, sir?’
‘If someone did kill Miller, yes, I suppose so. It was definitely a he?’
‘That was all she could be certain of. Something to do with his size and shape.’
‘There are big women.’ Banks looked at Winsome, who was six foot two in her stockinged feet.
‘Are you saying you think someone might mistake me for a man, sir?’ Winsome asked sweetly.
‘Well, no … I mean, perhaps, in the dark …’
Everyone laughed. ‘Don’t go on, sir,’ Winsome said, hardly able to keep back the laughter herself. ‘You’ll only put your foot in deeper.’
‘She said it was the way he moved as well, sir,’ Kirwan rushed on. ‘And his shoulders. There are streetlights that cast a little illumination on the car park. Not much, mind you, and the car was in one of the darker areas near the back, but enough to see silhouettes and such, so she’s probably being as accurate as she can be. There’s no locked gate or anything.’
‘CCTV?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Pay and display?’
‘No, sir. It’s free.’
‘Normally I’d rejoice at that,’ said Banks, ‘but a written record of the time our mystery man arrived would be nice right now.’
‘Sorry, sir. But at least we know when he left, for what it’s worth. Anyway, she said he was bareheaded, but with hair, not bald, and that he was wearing a raincoat and trousers, definitely the kind of style of clothes a man would wear. She saw him get into the car, and she said women get into cars differently. I don’t know about that, but she seemed certain. Maybe someone should have a word.’
‘There’s a few things to follow up in Coverton,’ Banks said. ‘This Mrs Stanshall might be more perceptive than you think she is. Seeing as Stefan tells us that the track from the cottage probably hasn’t been used by any cars recently, then it makes sense that our man parked in the village car park and perhaps walked through the woods or along the railway path. Anyway, I’ll head out there later this morning. Winsome, you can come with me and talk to Mrs Stanshall. Maybe check out the post office box, too.’ Banks turned to Nowak. ‘And Stefan, would you have your team go over the woodland path again. I suppose if anyone used it, there’s always a chance of some fabric caught on a twig, or even, God help us, a preserved footprint.’
Nowak nodded. ‘We’ve been over it once, but we’ll do it again.’
‘Anything else?’ Banks asked. Nobody spoke up. ‘Right, you’ve all got your tasks. Just one more thing to consider. You might bump into one or more members of the media on your travels. The AC has suggested, and I agree, that we should keep all knowledge of the five thousand pounds to ourselves for the moment. It gives us a ca
rd up our sleeves should we need it. All clear?’
Everyone muttered their assent, and the meeting broke up. When they had all gone, Banks stood and gazed at the pictures and writing on the glass board. He sensed Gervaise behind him. ‘No forensics,’ she said. ‘That’s a bit of a disaster for us.’
‘We’ll manage,’ said Banks. ‘I’ve often thought that solving a crime has far more to do with understanding people and their motives than it does with spectrographic analysis and DNA.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Gervaise. ‘But in the end it’s forensics that will get a conviction any day over motive.’
* * *
Gold and russet leaves were spiralling down from the trees that lined the street of large Victorian houses. Along with the chill in the air, they reminded Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot that winter was coming. She parked her car and got out. The weather was fine enough at the moment, and there were even a few patches of blue sky between the clouds drifting across the sky like balls of fluff accumulated in a vacuum cleaner.
Annie walked past groups of students carrying rucksacks and satchels, chatting and laughing as they came and went from the warren of bedsits and flats inside the houses. The Arts Department was housed in one of the sixties buildings at the heart of the old campus, all flat roofs, prefab concrete and glass, broad horizontal blinds. Most of the buildings were about three stories high but built in sprawling L-shapes, or forming squares around quadrangles in some sort of grotesque parody of Oxford or Cambridge.
To get to Lomax’s office, Annie had to walk through iron gates and across a square of scrappy lawn, then climb two flights of stairs. She tried to get plenty of exercise, including yoga and Pilates, but since the shooting and the time spent both in hospital and in convalescence, she found that she had less energy than before, and she was slightly out of breath when she knocked on the door. The doctors told her she would improve over time, but that it would be a long, hard haul. She already knew that. It had been a long, hard haul to crawl away from the bright white light that had beckoned as she lay bleeding on the floor of Banks’s conservatory over a year ago. There were sometimes days when she wondered whether it had been worth the effort. Something had broken in her, and she wanted the old Annie back.
She had telephoned ahead to make an appointment, so Lomax was expecting her. His voice called out for her to enter when she knocked, and she was surprised to find herself not in a vestibule with a fearsome secretary on sentry duty, but standing in the office itself.
To say it was book-lined would be both too generous and inaccurate; it was book-crammed, book-piled, book-besotted. They were everywhere. They probably bred overnight. The room even smelled of books. Here was a man who had never heard of a Kindle. The books were on the wall-to-wall shelves, on the floor, on the windowsills, the chairs, on every flat surface, and even balanced on some of the curved or angled ones. Oddly enough, Lomax didn’t look in the least bit bookish, Annie thought when he stood up to greet her, at least in the way she understood the term. There were no unruly tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles, no tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, no pipe, no thick glasses, no flyaway eyebrows. He was about fifty, Annie guessed, tennis-playing trim, casually dressed in a black polo-neck jumper and jeans, grey hair neatly parted on the left. He was quite handsome, with an engaging dimpled smile, a twinkle in his eyes, and a firm handshake.
‘Do pardon the mess,’ said Lomax. ‘I’ve been fighting for a larger office for some years now, but it never seems to materialise. Sometimes I feel they’d like to get rid of the arts faculty altogether.’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Annie, sitting on a chair Lomax had cleared of books for her. ‘Perhaps we should just give up and hand the country over to the bankers?’
‘I thought they already owned it? Anyway, you mustn’t talk like that. Never give up. That way lies philistinism and totalitarianism. Rage against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas put it. He was talking about death, of course, not revolution or protest, but perhaps the loss of all we value most could be seen as death of a kind, too, don’t you think? Kierkegaard said the loss of the self can occur very quietly, unnoticed, as it were. Anyway, just listen to me prattling on. You’d think I hadn’t talked to anyone in months. Would you like some tea or coffee? I can ring down for some. It won’t take a minute.’
‘If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Coffee, just black, please, no sugar.’
‘Not at all.’ Lomax picked up the phone and asked for two black coffees, then smiled sheepishly. ‘It makes me seem more important than I am,’ he said. ‘Maria will only bring coffee when I have a guest in my office. When there’s just me, I have to go down and fetch it myself.’
Annie laughed. A few moments later, there was a soft tap at the door, followed by the appearance of a pale, plump woman in a peasant skirt, her mousy hair tied in a ponytail. She balanced her tray on one hand and handed Annie and Lomax cups of coffee without cracking a smile or saying a word. Then she was gone. ‘You must excuse Maria,’ Lomax said. ‘She’s from Lithuania. Her English isn’t very good. She’s got two young children to bring up alone. She takes evening classes, and she also does a bit of office cleaning. She’s a very hard worker, and she probably doesn’t have a lot to smile about.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Annie. She thought of Krystyna, the Polish girl she had helped out of a jam earlier in the year. She still received letters or postcards from her every now and then. Krystyna’s English was improving, and she seemed to be finding her feet in the restaurant business back home in Krakow. Her last letter had talked of trying to get into chef’s school. Annie wished her well; Krystyna knew how hard life could be when you started out with so little.
‘Was Gavin Miller a particularly good teacher?’ she asked.
‘No, not really. I’m not saying he didn’t know his subjects, or that he wasn’t passionate about them. Don’t get me wrong. He knew his stuff, all right. But Gavin didn’t suffer fools gladly, and as you can imagine, he often had quite a lot of fools in his classes, especially the film classes. He tended to be very sarcastic, and irony’s not a good teaching tool. It tends to go over the students’ heads and rub them up the wrong way. They just feel as if they’re being insulted.’
‘But you say he had a passion for his subject. Is that essential for a good teacher?’
‘You need some sort of engagement, commitment, some sense of vocation, as with anything in life. Besides, why would you do it, otherwise? The pay’s not very good, and you don’t get much in the way of thanks.’
‘Sort of like my job,’ said Annie, pausing a moment before asking, ‘Why did he leave? It all seemed rather sudden. He’d only been here three years and he was, what, only about fifty-five?’
Lomax avoided her eyes. ‘Well, you know. It was time to part company. Move on. He … you know. These things happen.’
‘Actually, I don’t know what you mean, Mr Lomax. Was he fired? Made redundant?’
‘I suppose you could say that, yes.’
‘Which is it? There’s a difference, you know. Did you fire him for being a sarcastic teacher?’
‘Look, this is all very awkward, I must say.’
‘Awkward? Why?’
‘It was a most delicate situation.’
‘What did he do? Shag one of his students?’ Lomax blushed, and Annie wasn’t certain that it was entirely due to her language. ‘He did, didn’t he? That’s why you’re so unwilling to talk about it.’
‘I’m not unwilling. It’s just … well, the college would rather avoid any adverse publicity. It was an internal matter. We’ve put it behind us.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m the soul of discretion. This could be a murder inquiry, Mr Lomax. I think you’d better consider that seriously and weigh it against your concerns for the reputation of the college.’
Lomax seemed to shrink in his chair. ‘Yes, all right then. His dismissal was due to a sexual indiscretion.’ He shot her a glance. ‘But it wasn’t what you think. He d
idn’t have sex with the girl, well, not with either of them, really.’
Annie sighed and leaned back, notebook on her lap. ‘I think it would be best if you just told me about it, don’t you? You’re saying that Gavin Miller’s passion got him into trouble, not his sarcasm?’
Lomax sipped some coffee and eyed Annie sadly over his mug. ‘I don’t think there was a great deal of passion in what happened to Gavin,’ he said. ‘Not on his part, at least. That’s what was so unfair about it all, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gavin had no interest in young girls, especially girls like Kayleigh Vernon and Beth Gallagher, his accusers. They were just gum-chewing airheads to him.’
‘Gum-chewing airheads with big tits?’
‘Believe it or not, I doubt that really made a difference to Gavin,’ he said.
‘Why not? It does to most men.’
‘I think in some ways he was more interested in ideas than in life, in the dream rather than the reality. That was probably at the root of his problems.’
‘What problems?’
Lomax paused. ‘Before I go on, you have to understand that I wasn’t a member of the committee, or disciplinary board, that held the hearing and finally dismissed him. I was a mere outsider. As his friend and head of department, I was regarded as biased in his favour. If anything, I tried to defend him.’
‘What was his defence?’
Lomax slapped his desk. ‘That’s the problem. Right there. With this sort of thing, there really is no defence. It’s a “when did you stop beating your wife” situation.’
‘You’re saying that any lecturer who gets accused of sexual misconduct loses his job?’
‘Basically, yes. Pretty much. Sexual misconduct with a student, at any rate. That’s how it works. You could probably get away with murder and keep …’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Bad taste. That was stupid of me.’
‘That’s all right. Go on.’
‘Well, what I was meaning to say was that, in today’s climate, it’s the most heinous crime there is in the teaching environment. Next to plagiarism, perhaps. It not only has overtones of rape, but it also touches upon abuse of power and betrayal of trust. Put those things together and they can be a powerful combination. Very hard to forgive or forget.’
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