by J M Gregson
Rushton stood up and switched on the lights. The room was getting darker as the bank of clouds built outside, heavy and ominous. Resuming his seat, he flashed up the paragraphs of information on Taggart on his monitor screen; the letters glowed brightly in the darkening room. ‘Taggart would have known the second victim too, wouldn’t he?’
Lambert shook his head. ‘He says he was aware of him, but only as a problem student whose name came up in meetings. That sounds about right. He knew that Upson had a meeting arranged with Jamie Lawson on the afternoon of the day when he disappeared, because he saw Upson himself just before that meeting and asked him to go for a drink.’
Rushton nodded. ‘An offer which was refused.’ He swung round from his screen to face the other two. ‘Perhaps if we knew who Upson was off to meet when he refused to go for that drink we’d have our murderer. But I’ve had extensive enquiries made on the site, and no one else but Taggart and Lawson seems to have seen Upson on that Friday afternoon.’
Hook said, ‘I can’t see any reason why Taggart should be involved. If he had any connection with the supply of drugs, he’d be well in the frame — perhaps making a bid to take over Upson’s lucrative corner of the trade. But he seems to be totally clean, as far as that’s concerned.’
Rushton flicked to the second page of his information on Charlie Taggart. ‘He’s also in the clear for that Friday night when we think Upson was killed. He was playing in an evening cricket match. When Upson refused the offer of a quick drink with him, he went straight off to the cricket club. Helped to mark out the wicket, played in the match, stayed drinking afterwards until the last group broke up at nearly midnight. There’s a whole group of his team-mates who confirm that.’
Bert Hook grinned his satisfaction. ‘Charlie Taggart can’t be a murderer, then, if he’s a cricketer. If he was a bloody golfer, he might be up to all kinds of wicked things.’
He glanced sideways at Lambert, who refused to rise to the bait. ‘It seems almost impossible that the deaths of Upson and Jamie Lawson aren’t connected. And if they are, the connection must surely be drugs. The connection we know of is Simon Kennedy, who certainly knew all about what was going on and is involved in the drugs racket in a big way himself. One rung up the ladder from Upson, it seems. Chris, did you —’
He was interrupted by the sound of a phone, ringing out unnaturally loudly in the evening quiet of the Murder Room. Rushton picked it up and was immediately alert. They heard only his clipped responses. ‘Yes… When was this? … How long was he there? … Did they leave together? … No, just stay with him… Use your own judgement on that. Ring in again if there are any further developments.’
He put down the phone, glanced at the figures he had jotted on the pad on front of him. turned back again to face John Lambert. ‘That was DC Evans, sir. The tail you asked me to put on Simon Kennedy. Reporting in. Kennedy was at his dry-cleaning shop in Gloucester this evening. On his own. Until he had a visitor, that is. At just after six o’clock.’
He paused, as if he wanted to make the maximum impact with this news, and Lambert rapped impatiently, ‘Who. for God’s sake?’
‘Derek Minter.’
If Rushton had indeed sought to create an effect, he had it. All three of them knew that name, knew that Minter was a contract killer, operating for the tycoons of the criminal world they fought, operating with such cool efficiency that so far there had never been the grounds for an arrest, let alone a charge. Even among these experienced CID men, death carried its own aura, and the name brought a chill into the warm room.
Lambert’s first thought was that they had yet a third murder to contend with. ‘Has DC Evans seen Kennedy since Minter left?’
‘Yes. He left about quarter of an hour after Minter had gone. Looking shaken, Evans said. He’s at his home now.’
Outside the building, there was a sudden vivid flash against the purple sky, and a roll of thunder, distant but prolonged, rumbled through the brooding air. The first heavy drops of rain began to thud down on to the parched ground.
Fourteen
On the morning of Tuesday 29 June, Clare Booth woke early after a restless night. The thunder rain which had hammered so hard on the Velux window in the roof last night was over now. She could see white clouds and a patch of blue sky through that window, and the birds sang out their celebrations in the clear, fresh morning air.
Clare lay for a moment looking at the high ceiling of her bedroom. The builder had been right to leave the soaring vaults of the school ceiling as a feature when he converted the old stone building into houses, she thought inconsequentially, even if it made it difficult for decorating. It gave the room character, where modern bedrooms tended to be just one more small box in a boxy house.
Matt had always liked it when they lay here together, looking at that ceiling and chatting quietly, after the high exchanges of passion were spent. Those had been some of the best moments. Matt had been at his best then, too, most relaxed and most happy. She thought of his body, which had once given her so much pleasure, lying now cold as alabaster in its black cupboard in the wall of the mortuary. It would not be released until his murderer was arrested, she knew, and probably not even then. The defending counsel would have a right to a second, independent post-mortem examination, if he wanted to challenge the findings of the original one. Matt’s poor body might be torn apart anew, his organs weighed and examined by strangers who had never known that body as a living, moving thing.
She shuddered, but did not move. For ten minutes and more she lay reviewing their time together, analysing where things had gone wrong. She felt a little resentment still, but none of the wild, unreasoning anger, that wish to hurt and hurt badly, which she had felt on that last, fateful morning.
She knew what she must do today: she had gone over what she planned so often in her mind that it now drummed in her head like some sort of formula. And once she was moving around her neat little cottage, action brought its own kind of release. She even managed to eat and savour a small helping of cereal and a piece of toast. She had thought as she tossed restlessly through the small hours of the night that she would not be able to eat at all.
She knew the girl she wanted to see, knew that she would still be around the university, because she had her final first-year examination to sit on the following day, 30 June. Clare had thought originally that she would contact her at that moment, as she came out of the examination hall. But then she realised that all the students would be on a high as they came out of their last examination. She might not be able to secure the serious hearing she desired; even more important, she wouldn’t be able to ensure the privacy she needed, with the girl’s fellow students around her, chattering excitedly. And she couldn’t afford to start tongues wagging by separating her from her peers in those happy moments of relief from exam stress.
So she must find her today. The snag was that she didn’t know where the girl would be, and she didn’t want to attract too much notice to herself as she sought her out. She tried the registrar’s office first, where she knew all student records were kept. ‘Have you any idea of the present whereabouts of Sharon Webster?’ she asked. ‘She’s one of my personal students and I have an urgent message for her.’
The girl behind the desk turned up her computer records, discovered that they hadn’t seen Sharon since the beginning of term, offered her the girl’s home address in Walsall if Miss Booth wished to forward her message.
‘That’s all right,’ said Clare brightly. ‘I have her home address in my filing cabinet anyway, but I know she’s still on site because she’s got an exam tomorrow.’ She left as swiftly as possible, annoyed with herself that she should have drawn any attention to her quest, even from that moon-faced girl who went back to her coffee and her gossip with every appearance of having dismissed this contact from her mind as soon as it was concluded.
As soon as she entered the Humanities building, Clare spotted one of Sharon’s friends, who told her immediately where she wou
ld find the girl.
Sharon Webster was where Clare should have sought her at first, in the library. She was an earnest, dutiful girl, with small, thin-rimmed spectacles halfway down a nose that seemed too slender to carry them any higher. She had long, dark straight hair, which fell around her shoulders in a rather undisciplined way, unexpectedly large and beautiful eyes above the spectacles, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. In the year she had spent as one of Clare’s small group of personal students she had grown from gawky schoolgirl into something much more attractive. In a year or two she would be a rangily beautiful young woman, in many ways a younger version of Clare herself.
At various times during the past year Clare had found herself having to resist the temptation to take the girl in hand, to deposit her with a good hairdresser, put her in some figure-hugging clothes, and then help her with a discreet application of cosmetics. Sharon Webster could be like one of the stock characters in the old British movies Clare much enjoyed, the librarian who threw away her glasses, let down her hair, smiled a dazzling smile and became suddenly enormously glamorous and the centre of male attention.
But Clare had realised quickly that there was no question of her taking such a personal interest. The girl had a crush on her.
A relatively harmless, transient thing, Clare judged it, a product of a retarded adolescence. At the end of each term tutors held one-to-one sessions with their personal students, to check on their academic progress and discuss any problems. At the first of these, just before Christmas, Sharon had muttered about ‘exploring her sexuality’. She had even attempted glances of languorous sensuality from those surprisingly large, soft-grey eyes, and permitted herself a sigh that was intended to convey a wealth of feeling.
Clare had brusquely ignored these signs, concentrated her remarks upon the girl’s generally satisfactory academic progress, and dismissed her to her Midlands home with banter about boyfriends and mistletoe.
She had been careful not to be left alone with Sharon throughout the Lent term, and when it had been inevitable that they should be together for the end-of-term assessment of the girl’s progress, she had revealed enough of her relationship with Matt Upson to show that her own preferences were resolutely heterosexual. She had not felt she was breaking any confidences with Matt, for their affair was already common knowledge among the staff and the more percipient students.
There had been much sighing from Sharon Webster, and the girl had played the tragic victim of misplaced love around the site a little at the beginning of the summer term, but Clare judged that she was over her breathy infatuation by now. Nevertheless, she thought she could rely on a certain loyalty from the girl, an unquestioning compliance. That was what she needed now.
She stood at the end of one of the island rows of books, studying Sharon Webster carefully, trying to work out if the man sitting four feet to her left was a friend of hers or merely another library-user who was there by chance. The problem was solved as Clare pretended to consult one of the large tomes on the development of the Third Reich. The man she did not know looked at his watch, shut his book, rose and disappeared. He did not take his leave of Sharon Webster.
Clare came out from behind the shelves and stood on the other side of the library table until Sharon looked up The girl was surprised, a startled hamster as she regarded her tutor over the small round lenses. ‘I need a word,’ whispered Clare. ‘Not here. Can we go to my room?’
Sharon nodded, trying not to look apprehensive, wondering what student sin she had committed that she should be summoned thus from her studies. It was less than a hundred yards from the library to Clare Booth’s tutorial room, most of it down a wide, deserted corridor. Clare strode ahead of the puzzled girl, anxious that no one should remember seeing them together, that no one would be able to hint at the collusion she was now planning.
Clare shut the door of her room carefully. Now that lectures had finished for the year there were not many tutors around, but she knew she needed to be careful. She made herself sit down, gestured with a forced smile to the chair on the other side of her desk. ‘It’s nothing much, really,’ she lied.
‘Is it one of my assignments?’ asked Sharon anxiously. ‘I think they were all in on time — well, one of them was a day late, but Mr Dempsey said that was all right. I might have —’
‘No. No, it’s not your work, Sharon. No need for you to be worried on that account. It’s — well, it’s just something I wanted you to do for me, that’s all. Nothing very important.’
The girl’s young, vulnerable face flushed pink with pleasure, the glow extending right down to her long, rather elegant neck. ‘Anything, Clare. Glad to be of any help!’ Most of the younger tutors encouraged students to use first names, and Sharon, coming from a strict girls-only school, had found that difficult at first. Now she produced Clare’s name readily, as if she felt for the first time an equal with this woman who had been for so long at the centre of her breathy fantasies. The idea that she could do something to help this loose-limbed, athletic older woman was an enormous, totally unexpected bonus.
‘It’s nothing much really,’ Clare repeated, giving her a quick, nervous smile. She was trying to disguise how important this was to her, and feeling that she was failing completely to do so. ‘It’s just that — well, it would help me if I could say I was with you at a particular time.’ All the words she had rehearsed so feverishly in the dark hours before the dawn had suddenly gone, and she felt like a foolish girl trying to deceive an experienced adult. Deceit wasn’t her thing; she wasn’t practised in it, and she was in danger of making an awful mess of this.
Sharon was eager to help, but puzzled. ‘When was this? I’m sure there’ll be no difficulty.’ She brushed a strand of dark hair away from her face and smiled her obedience.
Now it was Sharon who was like a bright child, anxious to please a favoured adult, thought Clare. Suddenly this no longer seemed a good idea, but she couldn’t think of any way of turning back now. ‘It was quite a while ago now. Nearly three weeks ago — the eleventh of June. A Friday, I think it would be.’
Her attempts at vagueness were triumphantly dismissed. ‘The day that Matt Upson disappeared!’ said Sharon delightedly, thus pinpointing the very event Clare had hoped that she would miss.
‘Was it? Yes, I suppose it was. Well, I’d just like you to tell anyone who asks you about it that you were with me on that morning, that’s all. Unless you’ve any real objection, that is.’
‘None at all. I’ll be delighted to do anything that helps to repay you for all your care and attention during the year. I couldn’t have had a better personal tutor, and —’
‘That’s all right, then? If anyone asks you, you’ll tell them I was with you on that morning?’
‘Yes, of course I will. What time, exactly? I mean, when was I with you, and for how long?’
She was making it seem more of a big deal, more of a plot between the two of them, than Clare had envisaged when she had thought of this idea. She wished again that she could drop the whole thing, tell Sharon to go away and forget all about it, but she knew she could not do that now. The girl would be even more intrigued, even more curious, if the drama she had glimpsed was now whisked away.
Clare tried to sound offhand as she said, ‘Time? Oh, yes, I suppose we should agree on something. Well, suppose you say we met at about ten on that morning, and that our meeting lasted for about an hour.’
‘Yes, I see. And what were we talking about? An hour is quite a long time, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. Well, let’s say we were reviewing your progress for the year, shall we?’
‘All right. But would you allot all of your students a full hour for that? That’s the kind of question the police are likely to ask, isn’t it?’
Clare looked sharply into the eager, attentive face. It was the first time the police had been mentioned. She had intended to avoid all reference to them, to leave it vague whom this story might be intended to deceive. But this g
irl had seen immediately what she was about. If she was as transparent as that, what chance did she stand against those two experienced and watchful CID men who had come to her cottage five days ago? She tried to quell a panic rising to the back of her throat as she said, ‘I suppose you’re right. Well, let’s say that I was helping you a little with one of your nineteenth-century theme studies. The rise of Bismarck, shall we say?’
‘Yes, all right. And his relations with Kaiser Wilhelm, eh? That’s fresh enough in my mind, if they want to follow it up.’ For a moment, she looked as if she was going to make a note of the topic. Then she just nodded her head several times with satisfaction.
She’s enjoying this, thought Clare. She suddenly wanted to be as far as possible from Sharon Webster, to be free of those large, earnest and resolutely loyal grey eyes. ‘Well, that’s agreed, then. It’s a hundred to one that neither the police nor anyone else will ever ask you about that Friday, but if they do, we know what we’re both going to tell them. Now, I mustn’t keep you from your studies any longer, not with your last exam tomorrow. Very best of luck with that, by the way, though I’m sure you won’t need it!’
Sharon glanced automatically at the electric kettle and the mugs in the corner of the room. She had hoped for a coffee, to savour the moments of tutor and favourite student made intimate by the spirit of collusion, but apparently it was not to be. She wondered what her lovely Clare’s connection could be with the death of Matt Upson, that she should think it necessary to concoct this story, but she wouldn’t press her further. Rather would she display her unquestioning loyalty to her heroine. Perhaps she might find out more in a few months, when this was all over and the danger to Clare averted. She stood up determinedly and took her leave, resisting the temptation to lay an assuring hand on Clare’s arm.