They had found only two tabs of acid among Miller’s stash, it was true, so he clearly hadn’t even got around to taking the LSD before he died. Winsome had promised herself not to shift into reformist gear with Lisa, but it was difficult. Here was another bright, promising young girl perhaps on the verge of throwing her life away, as Winsome saw it. Once again, she admonished herself to focus on the task in hand and not to stray into the muddier avenues of rehabilitation. Maybe selling a bit of cannabis wasn’t such a terrible thing, after all. Plenty of the people had smoked it where Winsome came from, and they hadn’t all been drug-crazed criminals. ‘OK,’ she went on, ‘so you don’t think Gavin Miller was a dealer, and he wasn’t likely to become one?’
‘Right. He just liked to get off his face every now and then. What’s wrong with that?’
Winsome could think of a few things, but she didn’t want to sound even more prudish, so she sipped some coffee then wiped her mouth with her serviette. ‘We’re trying to find out who killed him, Lisa. You say you liked him. He was an oddball, OK, but there’s nothing illegal in that. Everyone says he was harmless, so who would want to harm him? Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lisa. ‘I really don’t. But I’ll bet you it’s got nothing to do with drugs. Maybe he owed someone money or something?’
‘A moneylender? What makes you think that?’
‘I dunno. Just that he was always broke. Whenever I talked to him, anyway, which wasn’t that much or that often.’
Winsome knew that she couldn’t mention the five thousand pounds yet. The public still didn’t know about the money. If Gavin Miller wasn’t involved in dealing drugs, as she was coming to believe was the case, then the money probably had nothing to do with that, or with Lisa Gray. Lisa certainly wasn’t at a level to deal in numbers that high, and it wasn’t a price that Miller could afford to pay. ‘Just out of interest,’ she said, ‘you were around when Mr Miller had his spot of trouble at the college, weren’t you?’
‘Spot of trouble? They fucking crucified him.’
‘Were you in his class at the time?’
‘It’s not like school. You have classes with different lecturers. I was in his Film History course, yes. There were a lot of slackers there because they thought it was a doddle and all you had to do was sit and watch movies week after week, but it was really quite tough, and lots of people dropped out early on. Quite a few failed, as well.’
‘What about Beth Gallagher and Kayleigh Vernon?’
‘The Bitches of Eastvale? Actually, they were prize cunts.’
‘Do you think Gavin Miller did what they said he did?’
‘No way.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me. He was clearing his desk, and there was no one around. All his so-called mates who shared the office space were too embarrassed to be there to say goodbye when he left. I was walking by the office. His door was open. I said goodbye and that I was sorry to see him go. And he told me.’
‘Why you?’
Lisa shrugged. ‘I told you. We got along OK. I listened to him. Maybe he liked me and my good opinion mattered to him. Or maybe I just happened to be there at the right time. I don’t know. I like to think he felt he could trust me.’
‘Was there any—’
‘No, I wasn’t fucking him, if that’s what you’re after. There was nothing like that. He never even tried it on. Was always a real gentleman. A bit shy about all that, really.’
‘What did he actually say to you that day in his office?’
‘He said he’d been accused of making an improper suggestion to Kayleigh Vernon and letting his hand brush over Beth Gallagher’s tits, and he’d been asked to leave. He swore to me that he didn’t do it. He said that he was innocent, and he didn’t know why the two girls would want to do something so cruel to him. That he wanted me to know that, whatever anyone else believed. That it was important I should believe him.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him that I believed him.’
‘Were you sure?’
‘If I wasn’t then – which I was, pretty much – then I certainly was later.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I overheard the two cunts talking in the toilet when they thought there was no one else around.’
‘When was this?’
‘Later. Two or three weeks after he told me.’
‘What were they saying?’
‘That they’d got away with it, got rid of him, and how easy it was. They hadn’t expected everyone to just believe them, but it was so easy they couldn’t believe it. They were laughing at the way the members of the examining tribunal, or whatever they called themselves, had simply believed them, especially when Kayleigh put on the waterworks.’
‘But why did they want rid of him?’
‘It was Beth, really. She was the ringleader. She put Kayleigh up to it, then she weighed in herself when they thought another voice would do it.’
‘Was it some sort of practical joke?’
‘Fuck, no. Sorry. But no. If you’re searching for a drugs connection, perhaps this is it. They said how pleased Kyle would be. That’s another thing I didn’t find out until later, and something Mr Miller obviously didn’t know about, either. Kyle McClusky hung out with Beth and Kayleigh, and he was starting to deal a bit. Quite a lot, actually. I’m surprised your lot weren’t on to him. And Kyle dealt the really bad stuff, stuff I’d never touch with a bargepole.’
‘Such as?’
‘Crystal meth, coke, oxycodone, even heroin. He sold roofies as well.’
‘Are you saying …?’
‘Kyle McClusky was a piece of shit.’
‘So what did Gavin Miller have to do with all this?’
‘He found out about it. Or someone told him. He knew McClusky from one of his classes and gave him a chance, told him he’d better leave while he could, or he’d report him to the college authorities and the cops. If you’d known Mr Miller, you’d know how much effort it cost him just to do that. And I don’t know if he was smoking spliffs himself then, or anything, but I very much doubt it. There was never any talk, anyway. If you ask me, it was just something he got back into after he lost his job. He always seemed pretty straight at college. Weird, but straight, if you know what I mean. I think when he lost his job, he started drifting back into the past, trying to relive his favourite years. I can understand that. Sometimes the future doesn’t seem worth facing.’
‘You’re too young to be talking like that, Lisa.’
‘How old do you have to be to know that life sucks sometimes?’
‘What happened to Kyle McClusky?’
‘Fuck knows. Or cares. He just disappeared, eventually. I think he’s in Manchester or Birmingham or somewhere. Ask your drugs squad. Even they’ll probably have him on their books by now. Course, he was really pissed off with Mr Miller for ruining all his dreams, though from what I knew of him he didn’t have a hope in hell of realising them to start with. He was probably more pissed at his nice little drugs business going belly up, and those cunts Beth Gallagher and Kayleigh Vernon came up with a plan to help him get his own back.’
‘Didn’t Gavin Miller try to explain all this to the college authorities? It would have given the girls a motive for getting him sacked, for lying about what happened.’
Lisa snorted. ‘That’s a laugh, that is. What could he prove? Nothing against Kyle McClusky, that’s for sure. Remember, he had known what Kyle was up to ages before he got hauled up before the board, but he hadn’t reported him. That wouldn’t look so good to a committee of stuck-up prigs, would it? It was the girls’ word against his, and the college believed the girls. End of story.’
‘Did Gavin Miller know that Kyle hung out with Beth and Kayleigh?’
‘I don’t think so. Not till later. Kyle was only in one of his classes, and not the same one as Beth and Kayleigh. No one made the connection until too late.’
‘But you found out later?’
‘Yes. I saw the three of them cosying up together and giggling at a party, totally stoned, sharing a joint. But that was a few weeks after Mr Miller got kicked out. Again, far too late, it seems.’
‘So Miller ruined McClusky’s dreams, and McClusky, with the girls’ help, lost Miller his job,’ said Winsome. ‘But at the time he had no way of linking the two incidents: what he’d done to Kyle, and what Beth and Kayleigh were doing to him. But what about you? You say you were his friend. You knew. Or you found out later. What did you do with your knowledge? Why didn’t you help him? Why do you say it was too late?’
Lisa stared into the remains of her foamy coffee. ‘I was having problems of my own then. I wasn’t very clear about things.’
‘Drugs?’
‘No, it wasn’t drugs,’ Lisa snapped. ‘For crying out loud, you lot seem to think everyone’s problems are down to drugs. If you looked a bit closer, you’d see that some lives are actually improved by them, but that’s too much to expect of you, I suppose. It was … just life. That’s all. I was going through a bad time. A rough patch. You don’t need to know the details.’
Winsome held her hand up. ‘Sorry, Lisa. I have to ask these questions.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you do … but it just makes me so … If you want to know the truth, I don’t do drugs. Well, except for a little dope now and then. But no speed, no E, no crystal meth, no downers, coke or heroin. Never have. Not even acid. Don’t touch them. I was drinking and smoking too much, sure, but no other illegal drugs. And, no, I don’t care to explain or justify myself. So just move on, will you.’
‘OK. Did you ever tell Gavin Miller about what you’d overheard?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘What was the point? It was too late, like I said. They weren’t going to reopen the inquiry. It would only make him more bitter. Besides, it was after he left, moved away, and we’d lost touch. We didn’t see each other again, not until quite a while later when … you know, he phoned and asked me about the weed and all. I mean, we weren’t mates, we didn’t socialise or anything. I didn’t even know where he was living. And I was away a lot of the time.’
‘He sought you out?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he get in touch?’
‘He phoned me on my mobile. This was ages after he got the sack, like, maybe three years or more. I’d left Eastvale for two years and come back and all that.’
‘Why you?’
‘When I was at college, when we had our little chats, he once talked about the old days and how they all used to smoke up and listen to the Grateful Dead or whoever and talk about enlightenment and the Tibetan Book of the Dead – like getting wasted wasn’t just a bit of fun for them, but part of some sort of deep spiritual search, and how all that had changed – and I laughed and told him, damn right, the people I smoked up with wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything like that. They just wanted to get stoned. He laughed with me. He wasn’t judgemental, and he obviously remembered that I was someone who might know where he could get hold of some hash or grass when he wanted it.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Less than a year. Spring.’
‘Did he say why he wanted it all of a sudden?’
‘No. We met in a coffee shop. Not this one. He told me he had a lot of time on his hands, and he’d been doing a lot of thinking about those old times he told me about, remembering, you know, what it was like back then, the music, the eastern religions and tarot cards and stuff. He sounded like he’d done it all before, but not for a long time. He said it had been years since he’d done anything like that. He wanted to try smoking a joint again and maybe dropping a tab of acid, and he asked if I could help him out.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘I don’t know. He seemed sort of defeated, a bit sad. Like his life didn’t have much meaning, and he was trying to lose himself in the past.’
‘Were you surprised by his request?’
‘Of course.’
‘Didn’t you suspect it was some kind of entrapment?’
‘No. Why should I? He was always good to me. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t a snitch. To be honest, he was also a bit of a deadbeat when we met, a bum, with the old clothes and straggly beard and all. Not that some of your undercover colleagues don’t do a pretty good job of looking like deadbeats, but there’s always the tell. Their shoes are too clean, or their teeth, or something. But Mr Miller was genuinely down on his luck. I honestly thought he just wanted to recapture something from his lost youth, or something like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’d had visions of angels and heavenly light or something. There was just something sort of … haunted … about him.’
‘Let’s get back to what you were saying before. What did you do to help Gavin Miller after you’d overheard Beth and Kayleigh admit they’d set him up?’
‘Best thing I could think of when I was together enough. I talked to his mate, didn’t I? Told him the whole story.’
‘Who? Jim Cooper?’
‘No. Not that useless pillock. Mr Lomax, the head of the department. He’d stuck up for Mr Miller before, at the hearing, or so Mr Miller told me. He said he’d see what he could do.’
‘And what happened?’
‘You know as well as I do. Fuck all happened. Kyle McClusky was gone. Mr Miller was gone. Beth and Kayleigh were graduating. The boat wasn’t rocking any more, and that’s the way everyone wanted to keep it. Including, I should imagine, Mr Trevor fucking Lomax.’
‘So it appears that the college disciplinary board sold Gavin Miller down the river,’ Winsome said in the Queen’s Arms that evening, after she had finished telling Banks and Annie about her meeting with Lisa Gray.
‘According to Lisa Gray,’ said Annie.
‘She’d no reason to lie.’
‘Everybody lies,’ said Banks.
‘More so if you cosy up to them,’ said Annie. ‘Then they think you’re their mate.’
‘But they also tell you far more than they ever would if you kept your distance,’ Banks argued. He had long been a proponent of the casual, chatty interview, leading the interviewee slowly through shared interests, opinions and small talk towards more pointed questions. True, it gave him more chaff and wheat to sort out, and it posed a few challenges when it came to discerning the truth, but in his experience people tended to clam up, or lie outright, when he came at them with a stiff and official approach. Not everyone agreed, of course, and Banks was also quite willing and able to use the harder method when he felt it was justified. The only thing you had to remember was that people lied no matter which approach you took.
‘I’m not saying that Lisa didn’t lie,’ Winsome said. ‘I think there’s a lot she didn’t tell me, and a lot she evaded. But I also think there’s a good deal of truth in what she said, that’s all. Remember, Trevor Lomax also seemed to think Gavin Miller had been ill-treated.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Banks. ‘No wonder the poor sod was bitter. This Lisa have an alibi?’
‘At home watching telly with her mates.’
‘Check it out, will you?’
‘Lomax didn’t do much to help the situation, though, did he?’ said Annie. ‘Not according to your Lisa. And he certainly didn’t tell me about her coming to see him.’
They sipped their drinks. Even Winsome was having a gin and tonic She said she needed it after her meeting with Lisa Gray. ‘But it’s still the sort of break we’ve been looking for, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Now we’ve got another possible suspect in Kyle McClusky. I know it’s a long time after the events at the college went down, but something could have put him and Gavin Miller in touch again – drugs, for example – and something could have flared up. McClusky shouldn’t be too hard to find. We’re going to have to talk to the girls, too.’
‘There was no record of calls to any of them on Miller’s mobile,’ Banks pointed out. ‘Not Kyle McClusky,
not Beth, not Kayleigh.’
‘Maybe they were too careful for that.’
‘And as Annie said, there’s still Trevor Lomax,’ Winsome went on. ‘Lisa said she told him what she knew about Gavin Miller warning Kyle off, and what she overheard the girls talking about in the toilets, but he didn’t do anything. Maybe he was involved, too. Maybe he didn’t try to help Miller as much as he professed to do because something would come out about him?’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Banks. ‘Maybe if Miller had actually reported Kyle McClusky – you know, officially – then things might have turned out differently. But the incident was well over by the time Lisa Gray knew and told Lomax about it, and I doubt very much that he wanted it all raking up again on the say-so of some young junky student friend of Miller’s. Imagine how well that would go down. They’d probably try and prove he was having it off with her, too.’
‘Lisa wasn’t a junky,’ said Winsome. ‘And she wasn’t “having it off” with Miller. I believe her on that score. She’s full of attitude, swears a lot, likes to sound tough, but she wasn’t a junky. She just said she had some personal problems. Besides, Lomax might have had other reasons for not doing anything.’
‘Like what?’ Annie asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe something came up between Trevor Lomax and Gavin Miller? Maybe Miller only just found out that Lisa had been to see Lomax back then, that she had told him the truth and he had done nothing. Lisa said she didn’t tell Miller what she’d done, but maybe she’s not telling the complete truth about that. Maybe she told him shortly before he was killed. I don’t know for sure. All I know is that it’s given us a lot more to think about.’
Banks turned to Annie. ‘Maybe it’s time you and Winsome started to ruffle a few feathers at Eastvale College. Cooper. Lomax. Even that Dayle Snider woman. She might not work there, but she’s connected. Talk to the girls. Track down Kyle McClusky. Find out what Lisa Gray’s problems were. And someone should try to get in touch with the ex-wife in New Zealand. She might be able to tell us something.’
Annie made a note. ‘Where’s Gerry?’ she asked.
Banks glanced at his watch. ‘She should be here soon. The poor lass has been on the telephone and the Internet most of the day. She running down a few things for me.’
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