Through a Narrow Door

by Faith Martin

  Hillary, knowing her cue when she heard it, smiled briefly and said, ‘I’m sure it will. We’re all here to get the job done, after all.’ She was glad Frank wasn’t here right now. The poisonous little git wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from guffawing out loud. As it was there was a brief moment of awkwardness before the DCI nodded and went back to his office.

  Janine glanced at Hillary curiously, wondering what it must be like to have to report in to the man who’d once tried to put you behind bars, but her boss was already reaching for her bag. ‘Right, we’d better each take our own cars,’ Hillary advised. ‘And don’t forget, it’s the brand new comprehensive we’re going to, not to be mistaken for Bicester Community College up near the sports centre in King’s End. OK?’

  *

  ‘I got the feeling he was always bright enough, but like a lot of ’em these days, he had a severe case of idle-itis. Lazy through and through, but get him interested in a subject, and he was like a sponge, lapping it all up.’

  The speaker was a Mr Colin Brentwood, and he taught modern history. He was saying pretty much what Mrs Wilkins (sociology), Pat (no Mr for him) Dringle (English literature) and Pam Dawber (mathematics) had all said.

  ‘And what did interest him?’

  ‘The sixties,’ Colin Brentwood said shortly, surprising Hillary who hadn’t thought that the sixties was included on the modern history syllabus. When she’d been at school, modern history had meant the Victorians, empire and both world wars.

  ‘He was fascinated by the culture of stardom,’ Brentwood went on, which given his ambition, didn’t surprise Hillary at all. ‘And of course, the sixties was when London ruled the world, pop music and fashion-wise.’

  ‘Were you surprised to hear that he was dead, Mr Brentwood?’ Hillary asked, more to shake the man out of his matter-of-fact attitude than anything else. She had talked to several of his teachers so far, and although all had seemed shocked and appalled, none of them had seemed to feel any particular pity. And it was beginning to grate.

  ‘Of course I was. You read about things like this, of course, but they always seem to be happening in the big cities. Manchester, Birmingham and so on. You don’t expect it in a small market town in Oxfordshire do you?’

  Another thing she’d been hearing a lot that morning.

  ‘Do you know of any reason why anyone would kill Billy Davies, Mr Brentwood?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ the history teacher said, a shade huffily now. He was one of those small, sandy-haired men with a little goatee, wire-rimmed glasses, and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, who seemed to advertise their profession. She’d almost expected him to start smoking a pipe, but so far he’d shown no signs of this ultimate in academic props. ‘He wasn’t the nicest kid around, and when he and that Lester Miller got together, they could be a real pain, but to actually kill the poor little blighter … no. I don’t know why anyone should do that.’

  Hillary sighed and nodded. It was all very much as she’d feared. Still, perhaps someone, somewhere, had a little snippet that could get them started on the right track. ‘Is there anything you think I should know? I mean, can you remember some small incident that struck you as odd? Something about his personality that made you uneasy. Anything like that?’

  Colin Brentwood shrugged his puny shoulders. ‘Not really. He was a greedy child, always wanting things. The give-me-more culture that seems to pervade nowadays had a willing acolyte in Billy. And he was a big lad, well able to take care of himself, and he wasn’t all that averse to throwing his weight around if he felt like it. The other kids tended to give him a wide berth, but he wasn’t an obvious bully. It was more as if he saw school as a necessary evil, and one he didn’t have much patience with. He wouldn’t have been one to hang around after sixteen in search of a higher education, I can tell you that. He wanted to be out in the world, earning, consuming, getting his hands dirty, impatient to be free and independent. He was that sort of a kid, you know?’

  Hillary did know, only too well. They were often the kind she ended up arresting.

  ‘Oh, Billy was definitely the leader,’ Viola Grey (her real name, apparently) said a quarter of an hour later. ‘Tea? I keep a kettle and illicit chocolate wafers in a cubby hole. Nobody’s supposed to know about them.’ Viola Grey taught biology, and the scent of acid and the nearness of Bunsen burners and singed wooden desktops, for some reason, put Hillary right off the thought of chocolate. Something she’d previously thought was impossible.

  Ms Grey was talking about the close relationship that had existed between their victim and Lester Miller.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Hillary waved down the offer of elevenses. ‘I understand Lester Miller is well off? That is, his father owns his own company. I’m surprised he didn’t put his son into a private school.’

  Viola Grey, a plump woman who could only just be out of her teens herself, pushed a strand of long dark hair behind a rather prominent ear, and shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps he isn’t that rich, or perhaps he’s got socialist leanings, or maybe he just doesn’t think Lester needs a proper education, since he’ll be going straight into the family firm. I think he supplies oil to domestic customers. Or is it anthracite? Or does he just supply the lorries the fuel companies use? I dunno, something like that anyway.’ She gave a massive shrug. ‘All very lucrative, no doubt, in these days of burgeoning fuel prices, but I don’t think you need know the finer details of the reproductive cycle of a herring gull to be an office manager.’ She pointed at a poster on the wall, depicting the life cycle of a seagull. ‘And Lester doesn’t seem to think so either, according to his mock exam results.’

  ‘Is there anything you can tell me about Billy that might shed light on why someone would want to kill him?’

  But although Viola Grey could have told her what a two-week-old seagull chick might eat for breakfast, she had no idea who might want to stick a pair of shears into a fifteen-year-old boy’s chest.

  ‘You ask me, that boy was cruising for a bruising sometime, but I can’t imagine what he’d done to deserve this.’ Christine Bigelow, French.

  ‘He spent most of his time secretly reading photography magazines in class, which didn’t worry me, to be perfectly honest. At least it kept him quiet. He sure as hell didn’t care how the Cairngorms had been formed.’ Jeffrey Palmer, Geography.

  ‘I don’t understand it at all.’ Maurice Jenkins, Art. ‘He was a smashing kid, very enthusiastic. He did a “coffee-table book” for his special project this year, you know, a mock-up of those expensive illustrated books that nobody ever buys. It’s theme was Oxford, rural and academic. Great shots of the colleges, but also of the countryside. One photo in black and white, of a tractor pulling a plough and being followed by this huge flock of black-backed gulls was superb. I had him put it in for the Collingsworth Prize, and it got an honourable mention. Great kid. He had talent.’

  ‘Did he ever confide in you, Mr Jenkins?’ Hillary asked, sensing at last, a teacher who actually cared that Billy Davies was dead. Who actually felt some kind of loss. ‘Did he ever say anybody was bothering him? Was he depressed or worried recently?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. In fact, the reverse seemed to be true. The last few days he seemed very upbeat. You know, he’d come in whistling through his teeth and grin a hello at you. He was always bored by paints and sculpture, and bookwork was something he loathed, but even the day before yesterday, the last time I saw him now that I come to think of it, he smiled all through my talk on Degas’s ballerinas.’

  Jenkins was approaching retirement age, Hillary guessed, and had prematurely stooped shoulders and an unfortunate dandruff problem which had no doubt earned him some horrific nickname from his pupils, but he seemed bright enough. Probably after a lifetime in teaching, he’d become very observant of the young. Hillary felt her pulse-rate accelerate a little. At last, a nibble.

  ‘Very up, how? Did he say anything in particular?’ she pressed.

  ‘Oh no. He wouldn’t
. He didn’t confide in teachers, you know, not even me.’ Hillary nodded. She’d got the same impression from all the other teachers too.

  ‘But you knew him better than most,’ Hillary said flatly. ‘Any ideas why he was so chipper?’

  Jenkins sighed heavily. ‘Billy was a very talented photographer, but a very flawed human being, I’m afraid. If he was excited about something in particular, it would almost certainly have something to do with gain. Billy wanted things. Money, of course, always. The best toys. Power. Knowledge. He was a boy who spent all his time and energy acquiring things for himself. He was probably the most selfish boy I’ve ever known – and I’ve known a few. And he was sly. Clever in ways only the sly, as opposed to the truly intelligent, are. You understand?’

  Hillary thought that she might. Blackmail. Billy Davies’s art teacher, although he would never say so in as many words, suspected Billy was the type to indulge in blackmail.

  And everything she’d heard about him so far seemed to fit. He was greedy, clever, sly, and hard-headed. His family was obviously living on a tight budget, which had probably fostered his resentment. Yes, he’d have felt no qualms about extorting money. In fact, Hillary could only find one thing wrong with that theory.

  What secret worth killing for could a fifteen-year-old boy living in a tiny hamlet possibly uncover?

  ‘Blackmail sounds a bit iffy to me,’ Janine said right away, when the three of them met up at one o’clock by the admin office, as arranged. ‘I mean, would any adult really take him seriously? I can’t see any man standing for it. Having his arm twisted by a snotty-nosed, working-class yob.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t,’ Tommy said at once. And mimed the stabbing through the chest with a pair of shears. Janine grimaced. ‘We’ll have to take a close look at all the neighbours,’ Tommy mused. ‘Although he might have put the bite on somebody here,’ he added, looking at the school speculatively.

  ‘Well, let’s not get hung up on it,’ Hillary advised. ‘We’ll keep it simmering on the back burner, but that’s all.’ She knew from bitter experience how one single idea could get a hold of a murder inquiry and screw it up totally. ‘We need to keep an open mind, yeah? So far, we don’t have any leads worth a damn. Janine, I want you to concentrate on the family. I don’t need to tell you what the statistics say about victims and family members.’

  Janine nodded. She couldn’t see the mother being up for it, but the father maybe. And uncles were always in the frame. ‘I’ll start digging, boss.’

  ‘So, what do the kids in his form have to say so far?’

  She listened to their reports, but they had nothing new. They only served to confirm that if anybody would know what was going on in Billy Davies’s life, it was his alter ego, Lester Miller.

  ‘Is Miller in today?’ Hillary asked.

  ‘Yes, guv,’ Tommy said. ‘I hadn’t got around to him yet,’ he added, guessing that she’d want to be in on it when he did.

  Hillary sighed. ‘Right. Let’s find a pub and have a sandwich, then we’ll tackle him.’

  The Fox was a pub she hadn’t been in before, but as she ordered a round of ploughman’s for everyone, and an assortment of soft drinks, she barely paid any attention to the ambience. Something was niggling at her. Something had been niggling at her before she’d gone to bed last night, and it was still niggling at her now. Something she’d seen or heard yesterday, obviously. Something that shouldn’t have been there. Or something that should have been there, but wasn’t. She didn’t think it was something someone had said.

  As the barmaid brought their order to the table, she was still replaying her actions yesterday. Something at the death scene, in the shed. Something in his bedroom maybe. But it wouldn’t come.

  Tommy too was distracted; with the approach of June, his upcoming wedding was an ever-growing presence in his life. He had no real feelings of panic though. He wanted kids, and a home of his own, and a wife to come home to. And Jean was level-headed and hard-working, two traits any copper’s wife needed in abundance. He sighed heavily and bit down into a tomato.

  Janine wondered if Paul Danvers had a girlfriend.

  Lester Miller had freckles. A lot of freckles. All over his face and on the backs of his hands. There wasn’t anything really surprising about that, given his ginger hair and pale complexion, it was just that Hillary had never expected Billy Davies’s best friend to be a freckled beanpole of a boy with eyes so pale a blue they were almost white.

  ‘This is about Billy-Boy, right?’ he said at once, the moment they walked into the deserted classroom. He’d been due for a session in the language lab, listening to a tape-recorded session between a supposed French housewife doing her morning shopping. But he’d far rather be here.

  As Hillary sat down at a desk opposite, turning her chair around to face him, she could detect no redness around the eyes, no fine trembling in his hands. No pinched whiteness around the eyes or mouth. Lester Miller didn’t seem that upset that his best friend was dead. Unless he was just very good at hiding it. Some teenage boys liked to take bravado to the nth degree.

  ‘Billy-Boy. Is that his nickname?’ Hillary asked, and Lester grinned.

  ‘Nah, not really. It’s just what I call him. To make him narked, like.’ He was dressed in stone-washed jeans and a green-and-white checked shirt. He wore an expensive wristwatch, and was slumped in his chair like a pile of nutty slack. Perhaps the reality of his friend’s death simply hadn’t hit him yet.

  Hillary smiled. ‘You liked to get him narked?’

  Lester grinned again, showing a line of uneven teeth. ‘Sometimes. He was a mate, wasn’t he? He didn’t really mind.’

  ‘Sounds like you got on really well. We’ve been talking to others in his form and they all seem to think that you and he were really tight. He spent a lot of time at your place too, they said.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you can hardly blame him, can you? His place is a right dump. Talk about depressing. Billy couldn’t wait to leave. Him and me were going to go halves on digs in Oxford. Find some sort of cheap student bedsit, move in, have some fun. Once we were sixteen, like, the old parents couldn’t do much about it, right?’

  Hillary said nothing. She didn’t ask what these two sixteen year olds were supposed to do for money. That was obvious. Get jobs. Easy. Earn their way, be free, pull girls, find out about booze and drugs maybe. She could read it all in Lester Miller’s open, grinning, unknowing face. And suddenly it hit her how young these boys were. The one dead, and never to grow any older, and this boy in front of her now, who had no idea what life was all about, but would, in the years to come, soon find out.

  It made her feel suddenly very tired.

  She opened her notebook and pretended to read a few lines. ‘A lot of Billy’s friends seemed to think he was a bit of a troublemaker. A bit of a bully. Is that true?’

  ‘Nah,’ Lester Miller said at once. ‘They’re just jealous, see. Billy’s smarter than all of ’em, and they know it. And he had balls too, you know?’ He said the crude expression with studied calm and insolence, but the quick look he darted at her to see if she was shocked somewhat spoiled it.

  Hillary, in no mood to play along, merely nodded and looked bored. ‘So, did you bully anyone, Lester? Did Billy-Boy egg you on?’

  ‘Nah, I told you. Billy couldn’t give a toss about any of the tossers around here, and neither could I. We’ll only be here another year and then we’ll be gone. Most of the losers bad-mouthing Billy and me now will still be stuck here, stacking shelves in Tescos or working the tills in Woollies, while me and Billy will be long gone. London, eventually.’

  Hillary noticed all those present tenses and wondered if Lester was aware of them. Time, she thought grimly, for a reality check.

  ‘But Billy won’t be joining you in Oxford, or London now, will he, Lester? Billy’s dead, and someone killed him. Do you have any idea who?’

  Lester’s freckled face flushed a dull ugly red, then paled. Then he shru
gged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ Hillary said. ‘You’re his best friend. You and him were like that!’ She held up two entwined fingers. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know what Billy was doing. Even his art teacher could tell he was excited about something.’

  ‘Oh, “snow-man” Jenkins,’ Lester said dismissively. ‘He don’t know nothing.’

  ‘But you do. So tell me. Don’t you want to see whoever killed Billy pay for it? You’re his best mate – don’t you want to help get his killer?’ She used the provocative language on purpose, of course, but Lester Miller didn’t bite. Sometimes an appeal to someone’s need for vengeance worked where threats or pleas didn’t. But for some reason, Lester Miller didn’t seem interested in helping to get justice for his friend.

  And Hillary found that fact very interesting.

  As the silence stretched, and Lester began to shift on his chair but remained stubbornly uncommunicative, Hillary shifted tack. ‘A good-looking lad, Billy,’ she mused. ‘I imagine he had a girlfriend?’

  She knew, from listening to Janine and Tommy’s reports that he’d had several, and had prided himself on having the prettiest girls in school fighting over him. But she wanted to hear it from Lester. From the much less physically attractive Lester.

  ‘Oh yeah, lots. But Heather Soames was his latest,’ Lester said casually and apparently without jealousy. ‘Though how much longer she wouldn’t have lasted, I dunno. They’d been going out for, like, nearly eight months.’ He said it as if months should mean years. ‘And her dad’s a bit mental. I reckon Billy was gonna dump her.’