An Academic Death

by J M Gregson

  His smile merely broadened at her denial. Compared with the young, worldly wise toughs he spent much of his time breaking down, this slightly gawky but not unattractive young lady was child’s play. ‘We can do this down at the station, if you prefer it. But I’d rather not interrupt your revision more than I have to.’

  ‘You bastard! You can’t —’

  ‘Fact of life. It’s my job to find out things like this. That’s what they’ve paid my last four days’ salary for, to roam around the campus and pick up what I can. If you don’t talk to me, you’ll have to talk to someone. I’ll need to report this, you see, and the top brass will come racing out to see you. Lean on you, until you do your citizen’s duty and spill the beans. Because it is, you know. Your citizen’s duty. Pretentious phrase, but factually true. A man’s been killed; no one has the right to retain anything which might be relevant. Sorry, but there it is.’ He seemed genuinely apologetic that it should be thus.

  ‘Clare didn’t have anything to do with Matt Upson’s death! You can be sure of that!’ Yet even as she raised her voice so vehemently, an awful doubt crept for the first time into her mind.

  ‘Then the best thing you can do is tell me what she was about this morning. If it proves to have nothing to do with this case, it won’t go any further.’ He looked around at the students scattered across the wide expanse of polished floor.

  One or two had looked across when Sharon raised her voice, but they took it to be no more than a lovers’ tiff as he spoke so softly and reassuringly to her.

  He seemed almost genuinely sorry to be having to do this to her, thought Sharon. The pig! No wonder other students called them that. She said stiffly, ‘I’m sure that it’s nothing to do with your precious murder! Clare merely wanted to remind me of a meeting we had a while ago.’

  He nodded, made a small, wordless, encouraging noise in his throat, like a dentist encouraging a courageous patient through the discomfort of an extraction. ‘And when exactly was this meeting?’

  ‘I don’t think I should tell you that.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you’re going to, Miss Webster. When?’

  ‘Eighteen days ago. Friday, the eleventh of June.’ She could not believe she had been so precise. She was selling out much too easily to this modern Mephistopheles. His smile was like a hypnotist’s watch swinging before her blurring vision. She repeated the formula she had agreed an hour before with Clare: ‘I was with Miss Booth for an hour. Beginning at about ten o’clock.’ They were almost Clare’s own words, she thought. They felt like Judas’s kiss upon her lips.

  Mark Whitwell nodded, as if he was merely confirming what he had known all along. ‘But this meeting never took place, did it, Sharon?’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course —’

  ‘Otherwise she’d have had no need to pull you out of the library to arrange the details with you, would she?’

  ‘Well, she just wanted to confirm —’

  ‘She wanted to confirm the details of a meeting which never took place, didn’t she?’

  ‘No. Clare wouldn’t —’

  ‘Sharon, I’m trying to protect you. I don’t think you’re a natural lawbreaker. I don’t think you realise the trouble you’ll get yourself into if you start lying to the police about a serious matter like this. Now, please tell me what really happened this morning.’

  She wanted to go on lying, to proceed from a blind loyalty to Clare. But this man’s quiet, insistent tones had worn her down. They were going to expose this anyway, the police. Clare had been silly ever to think she could get away with it. ‘I agreed with Clare on the details of that meeting. The details that I’ve just given to you.’

  ‘A meeting which never took place.’

  ‘Well, no. I did meet Clare, because she’s my personal tutor, but it wasn’t for a full hour, and not at that time.’

  ‘Nor even on that day.’

  ‘No.’ Clare was suddenly near to tears, but she felt relief mingling now with her distress.

  Mark Whitwell put the fingers of his right hand briefly on the back of hers as it lay on the table. ‘You’ve done the right thing, Sharon. She shouldn’t have asked you to lie for her. It was inevitable that it would come out.’

  Especially if you were foolish enough to put yourself in the hands of a willing but inexperienced accomplice like Sharon Webster, he thought, as he went away to report his findings.

  In the cafeteria, Sharon was staring miserably at an empty coffee cup. She had drunk Mephistopheles’ offering after all, without realising it.

  *

  The air smelt fresh as a seaside breeze after the rain. The gardener was completing the last broad stripe of his mowing of the long lawn in front of Simon Kennedy’s house when Hook parked the Mondeo as quietly as he could on the gravel below the front door and he and Lambert climbed unhurriedly out. The man completed his task, stopped the mower and looked curiously at the two large men, as they surveyed the results of his handiwork in the weedless lawn beds and the borders of annuals that were coming towards full bloom.

  Kennedy noticed his gardener’s interest. He was standing in the open doorway before the CID men had time to ring the bell. ‘It isn’t convenient, you know, your coming here like this. People start talking when they see police around.’

  Hook allowed his eyebrows to rise in rather hurt surprise. ‘We could have done it at the station, Mr Kennedy. Or in one of your dry-cleaning shops, if you’d preferred it. The choice was yours, when I rang.’

  ‘Well, you’d better come in, now you’re here.’ Kennedy stood for a moment above them on the top step before he turned away, trying to look taller than he was, as if he needed to boost his confidence. He took them into the room to the right of the front door where they had talked on their first visit, watched them as they sat down in the same chairs, with their backs to the light from the window. When they had been here two days previously he had tried to take that position for himself, and been frustrated. This time he did not even attempt the move, as if he recognised that the odds in this strange game of lies he was playing had been subtly changed.

  Lambert was unhurried, watching his man without embarrassment, studying the changes in his demeanour from Sunday night. His well-cut dark hair was tousled, and his hand strayed nervously to stroke the earring in his small, well-formed right ear. In his ruffled state, the small, tightly cut triangle of hair on the point of his chin looked even more ridiculous, like a piece of stage make-up applied by an over-ambitious amateur. He was waiting for a question; when it did not come, he could not resist the compulsion to speak. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, anyway. We said all we had to say to each other on Sunday evening.’

  Lambert smiled, noting the man’s discomfiture, watching it grow in the silence. He looked round the room, with its expensive drapery and furnishings, its tastefully framed prints of British cathedrals, its air of little-used, anonymous opulence. Then he said, ‘On the contrary, I think you have a lot more to tell us, Mr Kennedy.’

  Simon ran his hand through his hair, trying desperately to find some means of keeping his end up in this contest where he seemed to have so few weapons. He hadn’t played it often before. Only now was he realising that you never knew exactly how much the police knew, how much you could give away by some remark which might reveal a fact they did not already possess. He tried not to show any nervousness, then found himself doing the most obvious thing of all: licking his dry lips before he spoke.

  But it was necessary: they felt like sandpaper beneath his desperately working tongue as he said, ‘I told you on Sunday: I’m a respectable small businessman, becoming larger, making a success from modest beginnings. This amounts to harassment, you know. You seem to think there’s something shameful about growing from one shop to three in four years.’ He jutted the absurd black-triangled chin at them and said with an attempt at heroic defiance, ‘Well, I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not going to apologise for success.’

  ‘And we wouldn’t expect you to, would
we, DS Hook? Not if that success was achieved by legitimate means.’

  They were playing with him. He felt like a bull waiting for the thrusts to come while they indulged in passes. ‘I told you, I’m not going to apologise, and you shouldn’t be coming here —’

  ‘Come off it, Kennedy.’ Lambert’s voice was suddenly a whiplash of contempt, startling even Hook in that quiet room. ‘We all three know where your money comes from. We all know just where you got the funds to buy this place, to run your Porsche, to pay that gardener out there.’

  As if responding to a cue, the worker outside passed close to the window, a hoe over his shoulder, risking a swift, curious glance inward to try to see what was happening between the police officers and his employer.

  Kennedy’s right hand was fingering the earring again. The left one ran suddenly through his hair, a limb which was running out of control. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Really, if you’re going to go on like this, I think I feel inclined to contact my lawyer and —’

  ‘Do that! He’d better be good. Because we’re interested in something even more serious than drugs, Mr Kennedy. Murder. The unlawful killing of Jamie Lawson, student and dealer in ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Supplied by one Simon Kennedy. Through his middleman, Matthew Upson. Also murdered, two weeks earlier. Reactions, please, Mr Kennedy. Or would you rather do this in the presence of your lawyer?’

  Kennedy glanced from one to the other of the two impassive, observant faces, as if seeking some avenue of escape. ‘I didn’t kill Matthew Upson. I didn’t kill Jamie Lawson. You’re mad to suggest it! I can account for my whereabouts when they were killed. I’m sure I can.’

  Lambert continued to watch him squirming, like a rabbit caught in the glare of those grey eyes, which seemed never to blink. It was Hook who said quietly, ‘Maybe you didn’t kill him yourself, Mr Kennedy. To those who make their money in the drugs industry, there are other means readily available. Contract killers.’

  ‘I — I don’t know what you mean.’ But the conviction had drained from his voice even as the colour left his face. Suddenly, he felt he knew what was coming. And he could see no way out of the nightmare in which he was floundering.

  Lambert’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance as it said. ‘I think you do, Mr Kennedy. You were visited by a known contract killer last night, in the Gloucester branch of your dry-cleaning firm. He arrived at two minutes past six and left twenty minutes later. Why did you summon him, Mr Kennedy? Were you planning his next assignment? Or merely paying the balance due on the last one?’

  Simon stared at him, wanting to pinch himself and awake from this, knowing that he could not because it was not dream but reality. He had felt his world collapsing about his ears when Minter had told him that his drug supply days were over. Now it was not bankruptcy and the sale of all he held dear but murder charges which were threatening him. He said hoarsely, ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t summon Derek Minter. He arranged that meeting, not me.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  The thin shoulders rose, then fell helplessly. ‘Not killing. And not to be paid for killing. Minter brought me a message, that’s all.’

  ‘Really. And what precisely was this message that was brought to you by a man whose business is murder, Mr Kennedy?’

  ‘He — he was warning me not to get involved in the drugs business, that’s all.’

  Lambert snorted his derision. ‘I’m losing patience, Mr Kennedy. Are you going to tell us why Minter visited you, or not?’

  ‘I — I can’t! It’s too — well, too complicated.’

  Lambert said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. Simon Kennedy, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Jamie Lawson. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be recorded and may be given in evidence.’

  ‘You can’t mean to… You’re making a big mistake.’

  ‘Ask your lawyer about that!’

  They stood one on each side of him, like young coppers guarding a man being taken into custody, whilst he told his astonished wife what was happening. Then they led him past his open-mouthed gardener and Lambert sat beside him in grim-faced silence while Hook drove the Mondeo back into Oldford.

  When he was safely under lock and key, the custody sergeant, always reluctant about holding people ‘on suspicion’, said uneasily to Lambert, ‘Have we enough to make it stick?’

  ‘Not at the moment. But we can hold him for twenty-four hours. Let’s see what a night in the cells does to loosen his tongue.’

  Lambert’s own words rang in his ears as he drove his old Vauxhall Senator wearily home from the station. They had a rather desperate sound.

  Sixteen

  It was Wednesday 30 June. Nineteen days now since Matt Upson had died, sixteen days since she had reported him missing, nine days since the body had been found, eight days since she had identified it as that of her husband. Liz Upson ticked off the figures, as she had done each day since Matt disappeared. They were a catalogue of her loneliness.

  She had read somewhere that most of the murders which were not solved within a week remained unsolved. Perhaps they would never be able to establish who had killed Matt now.

  Liz felt very isolated. She had a need for reassurance, a need to know what was going on in this investigation, what kind of progress the police were making. There was no definite sign that they were getting nearer to an arrest. She wondered if she had overdone the obscenities when she had spoken to the police herself. On that first occasion, when she had reported Matt’s disappearance to that stolid Sergeant Hook, she had been driven on by a need to shock him out of his complacency, to startle that weather-beaten, decent face into some sort of reaction. She smiled at how he had almost winced when she kept calling her missing husband an ‘arsehole’ when she was supposed to be conventionally anxious about his disappearance. Well, she couldn’t have known he was dead then, could she? She was only reporting him as a missing person. So it wasn’t in such bad taste, after all.

  After the body had been discovered and the two of them had come to see her, she had found that superintendent fellow, Lambert, more inscrutable. But anyway, she hadn’t said anything which wasn’t true. Matt was an arsehole of a husband, had become increasingly so in the last years of their marriage.

  She would give him a decent funeral, in due course. There was no need to upset the children more than was strictly necessary. She saw herself dressed completely in black, the demure, dignified widow. She would not simulate weeping grief: no need for that sort of hypocrisy. She would be austere but controlled, an isolated icon of mourning, compelling sympathy from the onlookers at church and crematorium by the stoicism with which she was conducting herself through the ordeal.

  She had rehearsed this scene often in the last few days. Playing the part would give her great pleasure, and infuriate that bitch of a mother-in-law, who would know her real feelings all the time. And it would put Matt firmly in the past, draw a line under that troubled and mistaken chapter in her life.

  Then she would be able to get on with the future, as she longed so heartily to do. That yearning made her feel again how lonely and vulnerable she was, beneath that carapace of contempt she had used to hide herself from the police. It wasn’t easy to maintain your composure when the only conversation you had was with two children of eight and ten.

  It was a splendid morning, with blue sky and high white clouds, moving fast on a warm south wind. A bracing English day; it was the kind of morning on which she would have loved to feel the wind tossing her hair as she climbed the spine of the Malverns, with her lover at her side. But the thought that she could not do that only made her sense of isolation more acute.

  Her loneliness seemed to surround her like a hostile presence, with a life of its own, observant and mocking. At ten thirty on that Wednesday morning, she could stand it no longer. She rang h
er lover.

  She felt a thrill at the sound of his voice, cautious as it was. She spoke quickly, beset by a sudden, irrational fear that he might ring off. ‘It’s me. Liz. I know we weren’t supposed to communicate, but —’

  ‘We weren’t, no. We agreed, Liz. It can only bring suspicion that we don’t need. The police are floundering about looking for a killer they can’t identify. It can only bring suspicion down upon us if they know about us. Upon you, in particular. We agreed, Liz.’

  She could picture his anxious, caring face at the other end of the line as he tried to convince her. It made her want to cry out her love for him. Instead, she said, ‘I need you. I just want to be touched, reassured, whatever you like. I’m lonely, having only the kids to speak to, avoiding the very mention of Matt all the time.’ She realised that she was pleading, when she had meant never to plead again with a man for the rest of her life. But the circumstances were surely extraordinary. Unique, in fact.

  Perhaps he caught the note of hysteria that she had been determined he would not hear. He said, ‘Where are you ringing from?’

  ‘I’m at home. There’s no one around.’

  ‘We can’t meet there. Or here, for that matter.’

  It was an admission that they were going to meet somewhere. and both of them realised it.

  Liz said joyfully, ‘Where, then? You suggest a place and a time. You think these things through better than me.’ It was true enough, though it sounded like a shameless piece of flattery, and in a less stressful moment he would have teased her about it. She thought for an instant about the many such moments they would have in the future, and the pleasure of the thought almost dissolved her into tears.

  She heard him breathing at the other end of the line, almost as if he was beside her. Then he said, ‘Tonight. In that park near the centre of Malvern. Where we met once before. As near to dark as possible.’

  ‘Nine thirty? I can’t rely on a babysitter for much later than that.’

  ‘All right. Nine thirty it is. By that small lake. There are plenty of benches round there. Sit down somewhere quiet and I’ll find you.’