Children of the Revolution

by Peter Robinson

  ‘You?’ said Annie, almost choking on her curry. ‘Cricket?’

  Winsome smiled. ‘And why not? It’s practically a religion where I come from. If you can’t beat them, join them. And I was a pretty good off-spinner, if I say so myself.’

  ‘You played, too? Wonders never cease.’

  ‘I got Brian Lara out first ball in a charity game.’

  ‘He must have been knocking on a bit by then.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t.’

  ‘Just teasing. Anyway, this boy?’

  ‘William, his name was. His father was a minister.’

  ‘So what was the problem?’

  ‘Well, we did have a lot in common and everything, but … well. He picked his nose.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘I told you. He picked his nose.’

  ‘And for that you dumped him?’

  ‘Would you go out with a boy who picked his nose? It’s a sign of poor hygiene, and poor hygiene means bad character, which in turn hints at moral bankruptcy.’

  Annie thought of some of the boys, and men, she’d been out with and shook her head slowly. If all they’d done wrong was pick their noses she would have had a much easier time of things. ‘Winsome, I’m certainly glad I don’t have to worry about coming up to your standards.’

  Winsome gave her a puzzled glance. ‘Anyway, he tried to put his hand up my dress, too. So there. I was right about him.’ She pushed her tray away and folded her arms. A few seconds passed, then she looked at her plate. ‘That was terrible,’ she said, and started laughing.

  Annie laughed, too. ‘I heartily agree. But let’s get back to Dayle Snider. She was pretty quick to condemn Gavin Miller, don’t you think?’

  ‘Clearly Gavin Miller had problems with women,’ said Winsome. ‘I don’t like to pass judgement without full knowledge of the facts, but from what I’ve heard, I would have to agree that a man like him – timid, weak, frustrated, but lustful – might well have tried to get his own way with a girl by devious means. It wouldn’t be the first time a man’s done something like that.’

  ‘Well, it lost him his job,’ said Annie.

  ‘Quite rightly. You can’t have people like that in contact with the young and vulnerable.’

  Annie felt a presence hovering over them and turned to see a man in an open-neck checked shirt and baggy chinos. He was in his mid-fifties, she guessed, hair thinning at the front and far too long at the back, plastered down by some sort of gel. He was wearing a Celtic cross on a heavy silver chain around his neck, and a gold earring dangled from his left ear. On the whole, Annie was suspicious of men who wore jewellery, and she hated men with earrings on sight. She didn’t know why; she just did.

  ‘Jim Cooper,’ he said, sitting down in the free plastic orange chair and offering his hand. Annie shook it first, then Winsome. ‘I didn’t think you were students,’ he went on. ‘Not that we don’t accept mature students here, of course.’

  Well, thought Annie, here’s a man who knows how to ingratiate himself with you right off the bat. She imagined he and Gavin Miller might have been comparable in their lack of social graces and general appeal to the opposite sex. Maybe Cooper didn’t pick his nose, though Annie wouldn’t have been surprised if he did, but she bet he was the sort who would stick his hand up your dress on a first date. It was a snap judgement, of course, the kind that got her into trouble far too often, but sometimes a woman just knew. So far, Eastvale College wasn’t doing terribly well in the ‘best place to find a man in Eastvale’ stakes. And then there was the earring. She would have to work hard at maintaining a polite front throughout the interview.

  Along with Cooper had come a new influx of students anxious to sample the vegetarian curry, and the noise level was making it difficult to hear. ‘Do you have an office or somewhere quieter we could go?’ Annie asked Cooper.

  He glanced around the refectory. ‘Yes, I suppose it is a bit of a racket, isn’t it? Funny how you get used to such things. My office is about the size of an airing cupboard, but if you’re not up for a game of sardines, there’s a staff coffee lounge where we should be able to get a bit of peace and quiet. And a decent cup of coffee.’

  ‘The lounge will do nicely,’ said Annie.

  They walked out of the canteen and across a busy square into another three-storey concrete monstrosity. Towards the back was the staff lounge, and Cooper turned out to be right. It was practically deserted, decorated in soft, muted colours, with vertical fabric blinds and padded sofas and armchairs. They each got a coffee from the machine and took a corner table. Annie’s armchair was lumpy and badly angled, however, and nowhere near as comfortable as it had appeared. She had been far more comfortable in the moulded plastic orange chair in the canteen.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have very long,’ said Cooper, checking the time. ‘I have another class at two. Communications.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Winsome.

  ‘Mostly it’s a matter of teaching parts of speech and sentence structure to people who don’t speak English,’ Cooper said, ‘but it’s actually meant to cover the whole gamut of human communication, how we think, and what it all means. Trouble is, most of the students don’t think.’

  ‘All of them?’ Winsome asked.

  ‘No. Not all,’ Cooper conceded. ‘You do get the occasional one who stands out.’

  ‘Was Kayleigh Vernon one of them?’ Annie asked.

  Cooper’s eyes narrowed. ‘You go straight for the jugular, don’t you? As a matter of fact, there were only two things about Kayleigh Vernon that stood out, and I’m sure you can guess what they are.’

  Annie gritted her teeth. ‘So she was no genius,’ she managed to grind out.

  ‘You could say that. Average. Uninspired and uninspiring, except to thoughts of idle lust on a summer’s afternoon. Definitely second-rate material, intellectually speaking.’

  ‘And this test that she failed?’

  ‘Wasn’t the first or the last. Oh, she managed to scrape through in the end with a good enough diploma to get her a job as a tea-girl in a film studio, or some such job, if she was lucky.’

  ‘Is that what she’s doing?’

  ‘No idea. I’ve no more interest in them once they leave.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound as if you have an awful lot of interest in them while they’re here,’ Winsome commented.

  Cooper gave her a surprised glance. ‘It’s a job,’ he said. ‘What can I say? They come and go. I remain.’

  ‘You were a friend of Gavin Miller’s both before and after the incident,’ Annie went on. ‘What did you make of it all?’

  Cooper’s rumpled face took on a more serious expression, and he ran his hand over his hair. ‘Poor Gavin,’ he said. ‘I really am very upset about what happened to him. I still get angry when I think about it. I suppose I try to cover up my feelings with flippancy, but it’s a real loss.’

  ‘Not many people seem to agree.’

  Annie was aware of Winsome giving her a puzzled look and realised that she might have been just a bit too harsh. Fortunately, Cooper didn’t notice, or he simply ignored it. ‘Gavin was a good mate,’ he went on. ‘I’ll admit he was a bit eccentric, and not to everyone’s taste, but I think the college could have treated him with a bit more respect.’

  ‘What did he say to you about what happened?’

  ‘You’re asking me if he confessed in private?’

  ‘If he did, I’d be grateful if you’d tell me, but I’d prefer the simple truth. Believe me, all we want to know is whether the sexual misconduct incident could be in any way connected with Gavin Miller’s death. We’re not after blackening his character.’

  ‘Just as well. You’d have to join the queue. And you’d be a bit late. The simple truth, eh? Now there’s an oxymoron if ever there was one. Surely even in your job you must be aware that the truth is rarely simple?’

  ‘Stop pissing us around, Mr Cooper. Did Gavin Miller maintain his innocence?’

  Cooper swallowed and gla
red at her. ‘Always.’

  ‘And did you believe him?’

  ‘He was my friend.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘Does it really matter what happened in the Marabar Caves?’

  Annie and Winsome gave one another puzzled looks. ‘What are you talking about?’ Annie said.

  ‘A Passage to India. David Lean or E.M. Forster, depending on your point of view. An Indian man is accused of raping an English girl in a cave. The viewer, or reader, doesn’t really know what happened. It’s the consequences that are important.’

  Annie smiled at Winsome. ‘Well, don’t you just love intellectual show-offs?’ She leaned forward and stared hard at Cooper. ‘We didn’t do that one at school. We did Howards End, and I bloody well wished it would. End, that is. The consequences here were that Gavin Miller lost his job, and now he seems to have been murdered, so what went on in his office that day does happen to be important.’

  ‘I told you, the truth is never simple.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Annie. ‘It’s only complicated when people like you complicate it with literary allusions.’

  ‘Then, yes, as it happens, I did believe him.’

  ‘Alle-bloody-luia. Thank you. Now why would Kayleigh Vernon lie about something like that?’

  ‘Kayleigh? How would I know her motives? I’d guess it was probably her idea of a joke, a bit of fun. But I’d guess that Beth Gallagher probably put her up to it.’

  ‘You knew them both?’

  ‘I taught them Media Studies. It’s not the same thing as knowing them. They were both cheats and teases. Gavin’s first big mistake was letting himself be alone in his office with one of them. Kayleigh Vernon was failing. Half the time she didn’t turn up for his classes, and when she did she was too busy admiring herself in her mirror or touching up her nails to do any work. Failing the test would mean failing the course, and she’d have to repeat the whole thing the following year. She needed to pass that course in order to graduate.’

  ‘But why would he put his arm around her?’

  ‘To console her. For all his brains, he was soft, was Gavin. Not quite as cynical as me.’

  ‘And Beth?’

  ‘I’d say Beth was more of an opportunist. They often go far.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Gavin Miller didn’t touch either of them?’

  ‘I’m saying we don’t know for certain that he did, but that it doesn’t matter. The whole thing was a joke, a farce. There was no evidence, no case.’

  These were Annie’s feelings exactly, but she kept quiet. She didn’t want to show Cooper that she agreed with him on anything.

  ‘I told him he should go to the press with the story,’ Cooper went on, ‘but he wouldn’t. I should have known. Gav was shy of all the attention bad publicity like that would bring. He couldn’t have handled it.’

  ‘But weren’t the girls risking a lot by lying?’ Annie asked.

  ‘What were they risking? You can see what happened for yourselves. The deck was stacked in their favour. It could have been any one of us.’

  ‘But it was Gavin Miller.’

  ‘Yes. And I’m not sure he ever got over it. Gav wasn’t the sociopath some make him out to be; underneath it all, he was soft and sensitive. True, he was awkward with women. He was shy, yes, but even when they laid it on a plate for him, he wouldn’t take the bait. Hopeless.’

  ‘Are you sure he wasn’t gay?’

  ‘If he was, he never tried it on with me. No, he fancied women. There’s no doubt about that. I mean, sometimes we’d get pissed and watch a bit of porn together, and—’

  Winsome held her hand up. ‘Whoa. Too much information.’

  Cooper frowned at her. ‘What? Oh. It wasn’t anything illegal. Just … Anyway, Gav wasn’t gay.’

  ‘I take it you’re not married, then, Mr Cooper?’ Annie said.

  Cooper grinned. ‘Never found the right woman.’

  Annie could see why it might take a bit of searching, but she just nodded and went on. ‘What did you think of Dayle Snider?’

  ‘That ball-busting bitch. God knows why Lomax thought she was even a remote possibility for Gav. I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be a dyke.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us what you really think, Jim?’ said Annie.

  He caught her tone and gave a sheepish smile. ‘It was just another humiliation for Gav, that’s all. So I have no reason to like her. I don’t know the details, but Gav probably felt so intimidated he couldn’t get it up or something, and no doubt she made her dissatisfaction known and humiliated him further. He didn’t talk about it. And she dropped him the minute his troubles started.’

  ‘What was she supposed to do? According to Dayle, he came over to her place drunk one night and started raving. Maybe she had good reason to think he was guilty?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe he’d tried something similar with her?’

  ‘No way. Besides, he wouldn’t need to. She’d have spread her legs at the drop of a hat.’

  Annie rolled her eyes. ‘What did the two of you talk about when you were together?’

  ‘Well, with Gav it wasn’t as easy as most blokes around here – you know, football, telly, complain about the students and the administration. He liked a drink, though, as do I, so we’d get in a bottle of Johnny Walker or a box of wine or even go out to the pub sometimes. The Star and Garter in Coverton.’

  ‘Who paid?’

  ‘Well, I usually paid the lion’s share. Gav was broke most of the time after he got the sack. They didn’t give him a nice pension, you know, and he spent all he had on the down payment for that bloody cottage. Wanted somewhere isolated, away from it all.’

  ‘Did he talk about the old days a lot?’

  ‘Sometimes. We’d listen to old sixties stuff. Dreadful, some of it. I’m more into punk, myself. He’d ramble on about escapades on the road in his American days, going to Grateful Dead concerts and what have you.’

  ‘Did he give you any details, like where he was at what time, names of people he knew, that sort of thing? Anything specific?’

  ‘Nah. It was years ago. I mostly tuned out, anyway. He just seemed to ramble on. Probably tall tales, too, toking up with Jerry and the lads backstage.’

  ‘Drugs?’ said Winsome.

  ‘That was back in the early eighties,’ said Cooper. ‘There must be a statute of limitations. Besides, he’s dead.’

  ‘Did he ever take, or mention drugs when the two of you were together?’ Annie asked. ‘I mean other than old escapades. Anything more current?’

  ‘No, not really. He got a bit nostalgic about the old scene once in a while, said he wouldn’t mind travelling back in time. But nothing serious, no.’

  ‘So as far as you know, Gavin Miller wasn’t involved with drugs, either as a user or a seller?’

  ‘That’s right. Not when I knew him, anyway. I dare say we all committed a few indiscretions in our youth. It’s what youth’s about isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s get a bit more up to date, Jim,’ Annie went on. ‘Sunday evening, around ten o’clock. Where were you?’

  ‘Me? At home marking papers, most likely.’

  ‘Most likely?’

  ‘Well, I went down to the George and Dragon for a couple of pints at some point in the evening. I don’t remember exactly when.’

  ‘People saw you?’

  ‘Sure. I’m a regular there.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who harboured a grudge against Gavin?’

  ‘Not that I can think of.’

  ‘What about Kayleigh and Beth?’

  ‘Nah. They got what they wanted. They won, didn’t they?’

  ‘Parents? Big brothers? Boyfriends?’

  ‘For crying out loud, it was over four years ago.’

  ‘Some say revenge is a dish best served cold,’ said Winsome.

  Cooper stared at her. ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’

  ‘Enough of that,’ Annie snapped. �
�What about Dayle Snider? Might she have harboured a grudge?’

  ‘I suppose she could have done. You know, taken it as a personal insult to her sexual allure if Gav couldn’t come up with the goods. And she’s certainly got the muscles for it, especially in the last while. Gav had been losing weight terribly. Poor sod hardly got a square meal every day. He was just flesh and bone.’

  ‘When did you last talk to him?’

  ‘Middle of last week.’

  ‘And how was he?’

  ‘Remarkably cheerful, actually.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No. He just said the lean times might be coming to an end.’ Cooper snorted. ‘Well, they certainly did, didn’t they, but not in the way he meant.’

  ‘He didn’t elaborate?’

  ‘No. Just that. Like, watch this space. He’d been going on about opening a record shop in the village for some time, vinyl only. A collectors’ paradise. He said it would bring in punters from all over the country. The Chamber of Commerce would be on their knees thanking him.’

  ‘And he was in a position to do this?’

  ‘You must be joking. It was a dream. Gav was nothing if not a dreamer. But I must say he seemed remarkably optimistic about it the last time we talked. I told him he must be crazy, in this day and age. Everyone buys online now. The market for collectors must be a pretty small one.’

  ‘Was he worried about anything?’

  ‘No. I just told you, he was quite cheerful.’

  ‘Before that?’

  ‘He was always worried about money, and he sometimes got a bit depressed and angry when he talked about his ex-wife. She left him for a plumber, apparently. I don’t think he ever got over her. And sometimes his resentment over what happened at the college would burst up to the surface, and he’d relive it all over again.’

  ‘Might he have wanted revenge on Kayleigh and Beth?’

  ‘I would if I’d been him, but I think he just saw it as the system being against him. Mostly when he got angry it was the board and the committee he insulted. The ones that actually fired him. The ones he thought were supposed to support him.’

  ‘So he felt betrayed by the college authorities?’