by Alice Castle
On the Sunday, she was spared the football as her beloved brother, Josh, tipped up just before lunch. At 36, Josh was her big brother, but he had always operated – so the family said – in reverse dog years and often seemed much younger than Ben. He was naturally carefree and, though he loved his work as a press photographer and had done well, it was by accident rather than design. The rootlessness that came with the territory suited him perfectly.
Though Beth worried about him when he was abroad, she was the first to agree with his own assessment that bombs and bullets would always simply bounce off him, if he even stayed in the same place for long enough for someone to take aim. He was much the same with girlfriends. Magazines were full of articles bemoaning commitment phobic men, and much as she loved her brother, Beth could see he pretty much ticked every box. He was a nightmare with women. Today was a case in point. He’d arrived with a lovely Swiss girl in tow, who seemed to have been acquired on a recent assignment.
Josh was as careless about her as if she’d been a Toblerone he’d picked up in Duty Free, introducing her then promptly abandoning her in the kitchen while he ran out to give Ben a masterclass on headers in the garden. Magpie the cat, who normally shunned all visitors, had a huge soft spot for Josh and deigned to pat the football with a black-and-white paw when it came near her, and ran after it for a while with Ben. She’d soon had enough of the rough and tumble, though, and stalked back into the kitchen via her cat flap, giving Josh’s new girlfriend a very wide berth and flicking her tail in final disdain as she disappeared into the sitting room.
Beth and the girl smiled at each other warily. Beth had been here too many times before. In fact, she did sometimes wonder whether Josh’s attitude was somehow putting her off dipping into dating again herself. It had been years now since James had died. Though she still thought of him every day – and Ben growing into his carbon copy helped keep him with her in a way – she knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone forever.
She remembered that precious feeling of being held, safe, in a beloved man’s arms, and she was sad at thinking that might not happen again. But somehow, it never seemed to be time. Ben, and life, and now this whole murder business, contrived to keep her busy enough not to feel too bereft. And maybe all men were like Josh now, unable to make a decision. There was always someone new just a swipe away.
She sighed inwardly, rather wishing Josh hadn’t brought Marlene with him. It was worse if she got to know the girls, because they were always so lovely (Josh had great taste, she’d give him that), and she really felt for them when things started to go wrong. The poor things would start texting her, or even worse, ringing or dropping round, for advice and comfort. But what could she say? There was no magic formula that was going to make the relationship work. Josh got bored after two years, and that was that. If only he could tell them that at the beginning, Beth thought longingly, catching the beautiful Swiss girl gazing out of the kitchen windows at him with unmistakably googoo eyes. She was crazy about him. Soon she would be made crazy by him.
Beth should just get a job-lot of T-shirts printed with the slogan, ‘It’s not you, it’s HIM’ and wear them every time Josh visited with a newbie. She sighed again – this time audibly.
‘Is everything ok?’ said Marlene, with a tiny frown. ‘Josh told you I’d be coming with him?’
‘Yes, and no,’ said Beth, smiling at the girl but already unable to assuage her doubts. Josh, of course, had said not one single word about poor Marlene, and probably never would. That tiny frown on the girl’s perfect creamy brow was already growing bigger. It was going to be a long afternoon.
Chapter Ten
With one thing and another, Beth was actually very glad when Monday rolled around. There was a lot to be said for a secure routine. Ben, who’d been delighted and exhausted in equal measure to see his beloved uncle, had slept like a log. Beth, who’d felt the same about Josh but with a massive side order of sympathy for poor Marlene, had not slept nearly so well. The wind had whistled in the little house’s chimneys as she’d turned and turned again to no avail in her too-big bed.
She replayed the day, and worried about whether she should have given Marlene a hint. But that would have been so disloyal to Josh, who enjoyed the girl’s company as far as that went (not very far in his case). They’d done plenty of snogging, which Ben had looked disgusted at, much to her relief. She certainly didn’t want him to get any ideas about love and relationships from Josh. Oh, it was all so tiring. She wouldn’t think about it any more. She couldn’t do anything to change her brother, and she wasn’t sure if anyone could. But she could push on with her little investigation.
This, of course, gave her a new set of things to worry over, and chased sleep still further away. Should she, or should she not, come clean to Inspector York about the lumps of cash littering Dr Jenkins’ bank account? Would the police find out about them anyway? She had no idea whether they would investigate his finances as a matter of course, or if that only happened when there was a whiff of impropriety in the air. Mind you, getting murdered seemed, fairly or unfairly, to be a moral condemnation of a sort anyway. Unless you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, there must be the implication that there was something about you that annoyed the perpetrator enough for them to break the ultimate taboo and bash you on the head. Or, in this case, stab you.
Beth had spent quite a lot of the night wondering whether it was possible that Jenkins had come by the cash legitimately. He could have been phenomenally lucky at the National Lottery. He could have been addicted to scratch cards. There were none in the office, but possibly there were giant stacks of the things inside those dark cupboards in his Gilkes Place kitchen. Maybe he just had very, very generous friends, who loved to give him piles of money. He could even, she supposed, be organising some sort of school collection – maybe a really spectacular farewell present for a colleague.
Or he could just be a blackmailer.
Jenkins had not been a nice man, so blackmail – a nasty crime if ever there was one – wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him. On their slight acquaintance, she was pretty sure he had the relevant skillset, being sneaky, unpleasant, secretive, and obnoxious. And, of course, it gave whoever was on the receiving end of his demands an absolutely 24 carat motive for murder.
Beth wasn’t sure whether, if she revealed what she’d found out to Inspector York, she’d get into such huge trouble that she would just regret it. And also, if she did tell the police, how could she then get any further with her digging? They wouldn’t obligingly tell her how they were getting on. She’d already had one warning off – York might not be so restrained a second time.
In the end, Beth decided, as she dropped Ben off at school, that she’d say nothing for the moment. It was just easier that way. The decision made, there was a spring in her step as she strolled to the school. The magnolia trees were in bloom now, their waxen petals delicately flushed with pink. Beth thought of Marlene, suffused with blushes when Josh had tossed her a careless compliment. Already, a few petals had fallen, heavy and waxen, to the pavement after a windy night. The air was fresh but not too cold. A night’s buffeting had left the new day feeling rumpled but clean, like a sheet fresh on the bed.
She passed the porter with a smile. On the way to her office, she exchanged hellos with the Middle School head Alison Lincoln and the combative mathematician Sam Radley – one of her Prime Suspects after that tense lunchtime talk from the Bursar. Neither he nor Alison Lincoln was looking particularly shifty or plagued by uneasy consciences.
She didn’t know whether to be glad about this or not. It was exactly a week now since her grisly discovery, and a large part of her wanted closure on the whole matter as soon as possible. Meanwhile, she had to admit that a tiny part of her was quite enjoying the investigation and she had a very real anxiety that, as soon as the Bursar discovered how little she was doing in the archive office, her lovely job would be gone.
The more time had passed, the m
ore she had realised with crystal clarity that the school did not need a full-time archivist. Goodness only knew why they had so recently appointed a second person as well. She was glad they had, of course she was. And the job, while not bringing in a fortune by any means, was pretty crucial to her – and to Ben. But, even while occupied with a murder investigation, she had more or less got on top of the filing in one hectic afternoon. She hadn’t finished, by any means, but she knew now how to get the place in proper order, and it wasn’t going to take months, or even weeks. What she would do with herself when that was accomplished was another matter.
Luckily, she had more than enough to occupy her at the moment, puzzling over Jenkins’ ill-gotten loot, she thought as she fumbled to get her swipe card ready as she turned the corner in front of the archive office.
Then, she saw, she had no need of a card at all. The door was swinging open.
Beth approached with great caution. If the events of the last week had taught her anything, it was to expect the unexpected. With her phone in her hand, already scrolling through recent calls to get York’s number, she edged into the doorway. The storage area, crammed as ever with the bits of sports kit which seemed to have no other home, seemed much as usual.
She climbed the rickety stairs as quietly as she could, cursing the faint unavoidable rattling of the cheap aluminium rungs. The door at the top of the stairs was swinging open, too. She looked in, and only realised she’d been holding her breath when she let it go in relief. There was no sign of a dead body. Thank goodness for that.
But that was all the good news. The archive office, which she’d left in such good order on Friday, looked as though a Wizard of Oz-style cyclone had torn through it. The filing cabinets were overturned, every single box was upended, her desk had been pushed over, each drawer thrown onto the floor, and drifting across the lot was a sea of papers. Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t help herself. She had spent so much time sorting everything out and bringing a sense of purpose to the little room. She had felt quite peaceful here afterwards, and had been looking forward to building on that good start and really settling into her job – as well as solving the Jenkins business, of course.
Now, all that was wrecked. It was hard, as she walked forward onto a mound of documents, torn and strewn this way and that, not to take this as a personal attack. She felt great sorrow at the destruction. She also, for the first time since the initial terror of finding Jenkins’ dead body, felt afraid. Was this some kind of warning to her? Did someone know what she was up to? And was this their way of telling her, in no uncertain terms, to stop?
‘Hello? Hello?’ It was York’s disembodied voice, cutting in on her thoughts. She looked in surprise at her phone. She must have pressed the dial button by accident. Well, that saved her having to make a decision.
‘Inspector? It’s Beth Haldane here, from Wyatt’s,’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘What is it?’ York’s reply was terse, but Beth could feel the concentration in his voice. She had his full attention.
‘It’s the archives office. It’s been… destroyed.’
Two hours later, and with another cup of tea clamped in her hands, Beth knew she had been a little over-dramatic. The office had been trashed, yes – but not destroyed. The shelf of Wyatt school magazines that she had organised the other day was untouched, their breathless reviews of long-past productions and speeches of thanks to dead headmasters too boring even to be stamped on by a burglar. It was just everything else that had been thrown on the floor, trampled and torn.
While she was sheltering in the Bursar’s office, and sitting pretty in his luxuriously padded leather chair while he grumpily took temporary shelter next door with the administrative assistants, Beth reconciled herself to redoing all Friday’s work again. It was a task that would be made much more difficult now that everything had been thrown out of order, and quite a lot of the documents were damaged or destroyed. But what really worried her was those lovely leather-bound ledgers, the ones that had looked as venerable as the school itself and which she had been dying to decipher, just as soon as she’d got somewhere with her investigation.
Now, she was cursing herself roundly. The investigation, such as it was, seemed to bring nothing but trouble in its wake. And the few objects that had seemed worthy of serious study in the archive were, if not destroyed for ever, then probably damaged beyond repair. She had been such a fool. Her job was to safeguard those ledgers, not to poke and pry into her dead colleague’s affairs. She had missed her chance of really making a difference to the archives.
Her head was bowed over the strong builder’s tea as York rushed into the room. ‘What do you think they were looking for?’ he demanded, without ceremony, dragging a chair up to the desk where Beth sat in state.
‘Looking for?’ Beth raised her head, surprised.
‘Yes. They were searching for something, whoever did this. And they got quite angry when they couldn’t find it. You know what was in those records. What was it?’
Beth hesitated. It could have been the ledgers, or it could have been…
‘Jenkins’ bank statements,’ she said flatly.
‘What? You had those there?’
Beth flushed a little. ‘Not exactly. I… stumbled across them. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them… so I took them home.’
‘You took them home?’ said York, sitting back a little, eyebrows hitting his hairline. ‘What the hell? We’d better get them straight away. I don’t need to tell you those were private property. What did you think you were up to? Is this more of your poking around? I thought I told you that was going to get you into trouble?’
Beth sat there, shamefaced. It was probably the first time someone sitting in the Bursar’s big chair had suffered a ticking off. Usually things were the other way round. She wasn’t enjoying it.
‘I suppose you had a good look, did you? You might as well tell me what you found, save me a bit of time at least.’
Beth kept her head down and mumbled, ‘Blackmail.’
York sat up straight. ‘Let me get this right. You found evidence of blackmail, and didn’t think to tell me?’
Beth shrugged. ‘I didn’t know how you would take it,’ she said.
He subsided – but only a little. ‘Well, I suppose you were right to wonder. And now you know.’
‘I didn’t know for sure, of course. It’s just that he’d been receiving lump sums of cash, getting bigger, over the past few months. It’s possible that it was from some legitimate source,’ she added, her shoulders rising hopefully. York gave her a sceptical glance and she slumped a little.
‘We’d better go and pick up these statements right away. I’ll check with the team and then you’ll come with me,’ he said gruffly, and stalked out.
Beth, left to her own devices and still feeling like a naughty child in the huge, throne-like chair, started to do what a child does when left alone in daddy’s office. She swivelled the swivel chair, she fiddled with the photos on the desk, she pulled at the drawers – and in the top one on the right-hand side, she found a key. Suddenly grown up again, she held it up in front of her. No, it couldn’t be – could it? She put it back down on the desktop then reached round to her handbag on the floor. She got out her own key to the inner door of the archive office. She placed it on top of the one she’d just placed on the Bursar’s desk. They matched exactly.
Perhaps it was because she’d just endured such a major bollocking, but Beth remained silent about the twin keys throughout the short car ride back to her house to pick up the statements, and even when she was dropped back at work. She felt a bit sulky and uncooperative. She knew it was silly, and she recognised it as childish; it was precisely the behaviour Ben exhibited on the rare occasions when she had to lay down the law. But it was ok, she’d let York in on this newest revelation. At some point. For the moment, she just wanted to get back to her poor, beleaguered office, to start putting it to rights – and to check on the ledgers.
>
Her heart sank a little as she stood on the threshold. The mess had not been improved by a lot of policemen’s feet joining the burglars in stomping on everything, and the further addition of drifts of fingerprint powder here and there just made things all the more grungy. The powder particularly annoyed her, as York had told her more or less straight away that whoever had broken in had worn gloves and managed to keep their DNA to themselves – thank goodness – while they were about their wrecking. So why dust for fingerprints everywhere? It was the icing on a particularly rubbishy cake, as far as she was concerned.
She sighed deeply as she started picking up sheaves of papers. No doubt there were police protocols that were always followed, even when it was clear that they would serve no purpose. Fine for the fingerprint guys – they didn’t have to clear up after themselves. No wonder crime scene cleaning companies were springing up these days, she thought a little crossly. More than anything, she needed to clear a path over to the filing cabinets somehow. So, she might as well work her way across the room by doing a quick triage of all the poor papers flung hither and thither.
She quickly realised that the mayhem had been worse than it looked, but she was making good progress. Most of the papers strewn on the floor, she decided after a cursory glance, were fit only for the bin now anyway, so that was easy. She just jammed the lot into plastic bags and stacked them outside the door for the recycling bins. She wasn’t that keen to take them down there herself – for obvious reasons – but she was sure she could appeal to the porter or one of the grounds staff to help her out.