by Faith Martin
Hillary thought that she could understand it very well. Michael, an only child, studious and perhaps shy, would have been nervous and unsure of himself in a new school. It didn’t surprise her at all that he would have instantly been drawn to a much more outgoing, open and comfortable lad, such as Kevin must have been, even back then. And Michael, coming from a small village school, would have found the larger comprehensive one hell of a culture shock, whereas Kevin, who’d always lived in the area, would have been more at ease.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Kevin’s larger size had also appealed to Michael Beck, assuming the lad had also been big back then. It was far less easy to be bullied if you had a hefty friend to stand up for you. And wondered if the help went both ways.
‘Did he help you with your studies?’ she asked, happy to ease him gently into the interview, while at the same time learning more about the personality of the dead man. Her old sergeant in training college had always drummed it into her that people were murdered for a reason. And the more you knew about the victim, the more chance you had of finding out what that reason was. And, from that, who had the motive.
‘He tried, poor sod,’ Kevin laughed, glancing at the photograph on his wall with a smile. ‘But even he eventually had to give it up as a bad job. Oh, it wasn’t that I was totally thick or anything. I was OK at some things. Reading — loved to read about pirates and adventures and stuff like that. And art — loved painting and drawing. In fact, it was me that got him into photography,’ he tacked on proudly. ‘But proper academic stuff . . .’ Kevin shook his head ruefully. ‘Not in me, I’m afraid. I was always thinking outside the box too much to be a teacher’s pet.’
‘Was Michael a teacher’s pet?’ Hillary asked, thinking of Dr Durning.
‘Oh sure. But not in a smarmy way, you know?’ he added hastily. ‘He didn’t go around trying to butter them up or anything. Mike wasn’t like that — there was no side to him at all. Not like some. No, with him, what you saw was what you got. And he was straight with you too. None of this back-biting or constant hustling like you get with some people, you know? But he was quick and interested in his lessons, which is bound to make any teacher happy, right?’
He leaned back in the chair, making it creak a little in protest. ‘I mean, I never thought about it at the time — well you don’t when you’re just a sprat, do you? But now, looking back . . . poor buggers, teaching hundreds of know-it-all little brats. What a life! I’m surprised they ever bothered turning up in the mornings!’
Gareth, who was inconspicuously taking notes, realized that they weren’t going to have any trouble getting this garrulous man to open up. He only hoped his pencil was up to the challenge.
‘So it’s not surprising kids like Mike made their day,’ he concluded, finally running out of steam.
Hillary nodded. ‘He was especially interested in history though, yes?’
‘Wasn’t he just!’ Kevin let out a burst of laughter. ‘I can remember that programme . . . you know, the one where they dug up ancient sites and stuff . . . with that bloke from Blackadder in it . . .’
‘Time Team?’ Hillary recalled the television show that featured archaeological digs in sites around the country, which had been popular several years ago.
‘Yes, that’s the one!’ Kevin nodded enthusiastically, making his double chin wobble a little. ‘I can remember Mike watched it religiously. And this is when we’d have been about . . . what . . . sixteen or so? It was the sort of show you expected your granny to like! Me, I couldn’t see the attraction of digging in the dirt for bits of pottery or hidden walls, or what have you, but Mike loved it. He loved all that kind of stuff. Mind you, he could get “fads”, you know, hobbies that he’d really be into for a year or so, then slowly lose interest. Like that,’ he nodded at the photograph on the wall. ‘For a couple of years he drove me mad, dragging me around places so that he could snap away at rabbits and whatnot. But he was bloody good at it, wasn’t he?’ he added wistfully.
‘Yes, you’re lucky to have something of his.’
‘Oh, his mum and dad let me pick one,’ Kevin said, and swallowed hard. For a moment his eyes shone with unshed tears, and for a moment, Hillary wondered if he was going to hold it together.
But then he shrugged, and forced a smile. ‘That was Mike for you. Whatever he was into, he was into it one hundred per cent. And was always good at it. Me, I’d sort of go into things, like collecting comic books, say, but only for fun. You know, more to read and enjoy than to actually work at it.’
Kevin gave another engaging grin. ‘Bone idle, me, that’s what my mum always said! Now Mike, if he’d done the same, he would have researched the subject to death, hunted down rare copies, and wouldn’t have let up until he’d got what he wanted. Not that he was into comics, mind, his hobbies were always more high-brow. But history was always the one keeper, for him. He never lost interest in that.’
Hillary nodded. ‘So you weren’t at all surprised when he chose ancient history to study at uni?’
‘Hell no. I probably know more about history than any other subject, just from being around him! But not dates,’ he held his hands up. ‘Never could remember dates.’
‘Me neither!’ Hillary lied again, with a grin. ‘You never went to uni yourself?’
‘Hell no!’ he repeated and laughed. ‘I couldn’t wait to leave to school, set up my own business and earn a bit of cash. And the first thing I bought when I made a bit of lolly was an old transit van! Got it cheap, since it was a bit of a rust-bucket, but at least it was transport, and I felt about ten feet tall riding around in it. Which made me one up on Michael, ironically, who still had to make do with his push bike!’ He laughed reminiscently.
‘You’ve always been self-employed?’ she asked.
‘Yup! Always preferred not having a boss,’ Kevin explained with another snort of laughter. ‘They can be so unreasonable! Expecting you to be on time and what have you. No, seriously, I have ideas, that’s all, and like to see if I can make ’em work. Some do, some don’t,’ he added ruefully. ‘Some earn me a fair bit of money, then I can suddenly crash and burn. But, on the whole, I do OK for myself. I’m not exactly rolling in it, but so long as I make enough to get by, I’m happy enough.’ He looked around him with satisfaction. ‘Mike would never have been able to live like I do though. Oh, not because his family is well off, don’t misunderstand me. Mike never cared that he had more stuff than I did. He was no snob!’ he said in earnest, looking at Hillary anxiously. ‘I just meant that he was always a planner, you know? He liked to look before he leapt, know where things were going, and weigh up the odds and stuff. He’d have been constantly worrying about making enough to pay the bills and all that. No, he had his whole life mapped out. Get an education, get a good job, meet a nice girl, have a family, all nice and steady . . .’
There was an appalled moment of silence as everyone in the room realized just how much good Michael Beck making a life plan had done him.
‘But uni didn’t work out well for Michael in all respects, did it?’ Hillary said mildly, and saw the other man’s rounded, once-cheerful face fall even further.
‘That thing with his tutor, you mean? No, that was a bit of a sod, wasn’t it?’ Kevin drew in a deep breath. ‘Oh man, that was ugly. I just don’t get it, really. Mike was never gay, never even gave off that vibe, you know?’ Kevin shook his head. ‘I can’t understand why that other guy thought . . . But it really upset Mike, that whole thing, I can tell you. He actually felt guilty about shopping him, did you know that? I told him he’d done the right thing — I mean, what else could he have done? But I’m not sure Mike was ever convinced. He blamed himself for not realizing what was happening sooner, before it had the chance to get out of hand, like.’
‘You still saw him often then?’ Hillary mused, and when Kevin gave her a puzzled look, added, ‘Sometimes when school friends leave school they can drift apart.’
‘Oh, right, got you. No, we were always meeting up w
henever we could. In the holidays, like. Summer, Easter, Christmas, all that,’ Kevin nodded. ‘I mean, we were close, you know? He was my main friend and I was his. Even though he made other friends at Bristol, and I made friends I met through my various enterprises, we still kept tight. And after he’d got his BA, and had to come home, I tried to help him find a place to rent. I know this area like the back of my hand, and we spent quite a bit of time slogging around. You can’t always rely on ads in the paper or online to find a place, can you? They’re gone in a flash. We’d go to the newsagents, pubs, places like that, putting the word out. You’d be surprised how often you could get a nibble that way.’
‘But not on that particular day — the day he died. You weren’t flat-hunting that day?’ Hillary asked gently, and saw Kevin’s smile instantly vanish.
‘No, worse luck,’ he agreed quietly. ‘Not on that day.’
‘You told DI Weston at the time that you didn’t know what Michael had been doing that day?’
‘No, that’s right. We’d arranged to meet up that evening to have a drink in the pub in Islip — the one halfway up the hill, not opposite the river, but . . .’ He shook his head.
Hillary wondered if Kevin had heard about his friend’s death in good time, or if he hadn’t, and had gone to the pub to wait for him — a friend who had consequently never shown up. She hoped that hadn’t been the case.
‘Do you have any ideas at all about who might have wanted to hurt him?’ she asked gently.
Kevin sighed heavily. ‘Not really — not unless it was that weird girlfriend that he’d just broken up with.’
‘Mia de Salle?’
‘Yeah. Her.’ Kevin shifted his bulk a little uncomfortably on the sofa. ‘Funny, I still see her quite a bit.’
‘You see her?’ Hillary, caught off guard, couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.
Instantly, Kevin coloured. ‘No! Hell no. But yes. I mean,’ he paused and laughed unsteadily. ‘I don’t mean see her, as in we’re dating or anything. Man, that would be just weird. Seriously weird. I never even fancied her. She was always sort of odd-looking to my mind anyway. I never quite understood why Mike was so taken with her. No, I just meant every now and then I’ll see her around. You know, walking down the street. Coming out of a shop. That kind of thing. I know Oxford isn’t exactly London, but it’s not that small a place either. I suppose it’s just one of those weird things that sometimes happen in life, you know? Like, when you see a strange word that you’d never seen before, and then in the next week you see it everywhere? A bit like that.’
Hillary nodded. ‘Coincidences happen.’
‘Yeah, I suppose. It’s just that it always makes me feel a bit uneasy afterwards. I mean, I didn’t really know her all that well, considering she was my best mate’s girlfriend and all that.’
‘Why was that do you think?’ Hillary asked, genuinely curious.
Kevin shrugged his well-padded shoulders and sighed. ‘I dunno really. Perhaps it was because they were both brainboxes and I’m not? I mean, when they got talking about intellectual stuff — and that girl liked to show off about how brainy she was, let me tell you — well, I felt right out of it. And I could tell she didn’t like me — well, you just know that sort of feeling, don’t you? You can feel it. And in her case, she was so possessive of Mike, I got the feeling she was jealous of me, of our friendship.’
Hillary had come across this phenomenon before.
‘It got to be a bit . . . I dunno, awkward. It just got to the point where I avoided her. I began to make sure that if I was seeing Mike, it was when he was on his own, you know?’
Hillary nodded. This was the third time she’d heard that Mia de Salle had a strange effect on people. The original investigator, DI Weston, had ‘liked’ her for the crime. The dead boy’s parents hadn’t been able to get on with her either. And now Kevin, whom she suspected could get on with almost anybody and everybody, was saying the same thing.
‘Do you think she really might have killed Michael?’ she asked bluntly.
At this Kevin shifted nervously. ‘No. Yes. Maybe. I dunno. Oh hell . . .’ he shook his head. ‘Sorry. I just don’t know. Michael getting murdered . . . I mean murdered . . . It just felt so unreal, you know? I mean, even after the shock had worn off. Even now, all these years later, it just doesn’t seem possible somehow.’
He heaved a massive sigh. ‘I know that sounds daft. I mean, he was murdered, wasn’t he? And I know that. But it still seems . . . I dunno. As if the cosmos made a mistake somehow. Why would someone kill him? I mean, he was such a nice, normal, everyday bloke. Like me. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, you know?’
Hillary nodded sadly. Yes. She knew.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Six months ago
DI Robin Farrell had just finished eating his supper when he got the call. Divorced from his wife, Diana, five years ago, he’d miraculously managed to hold on to the semi-detached family house in Osney Mead. Mainly, he’d had to admit, because Diana had quickly remarried a big-headed know-it-all Yank with a stock portfolio that kept afloat most of Texas, according to Diana. (And her new husband.)
Thus, having secured such a catch, she’d been less inclined to go for his jugular in the divorce court. Their two grown-up children, Adrianna and Luke, had probably had a lot to do with it too. Not impressed with the Yank, they’d threatened to sever relations with her if she forced the sale of the house out from under him.
Robin was, more than most perhaps, happy just to go home at the end of the day and enjoy the simple pleasures of down time.
The ringing of his mobile phone had found him in the living room, where he’d been watching telly with a microwaved lasagne in pride of place on a tray.
On answering it, he was not best pleased to hear that he had another call out to a potential murder scene and yet another dead body to deal with. Two in one day was almost unprecedented in Oxford. He’d been inclined to point out that he already had enough on his plate with the murder of Simon Newley, and surely somebody else could take the case instead. But when his superintendent gave him the details of all they had so far, he understood precisely why he was being rousted out of his home on a chilly autumn night.
Now, at just gone ten-thirty, he stood in the lit-up driveway of the home of Lionel Kirklees and watched as his second body of the day was being examined.
This latest victim had been discovered by his next-door neighbour, who’d stepped out to give his dog her usual evening walk. Said dog, a particularly alert and pretty spaniel bitch, had all but dragged him to next-door’s gate and commenced to bark so long and so frantically that the dog owner had gone so far as to climb halfway up the gate and peer past the shrubbery.
No doubt the sight of a body lying on the gravel not far from the front door had been enough to get the man scrambling for his phone and reporting it to the police.
A local patrol car had been dispatched, and on finding life to be extinct, the PCs had set in motion the events leading to Robin Farrell barely having time to finish his lasagne.
As he got a closer look at the scene, Robin realized that the medical man was the same doctor who had been called out to Simon Newley earlier that day, which might explain why he’d insisted to Robin’s superior that he be informed right away. The similarity in the murder method must have stood out a mile.
Robin waited until the doctor had finished his examination, then nodded at him as he stood up.
‘Doctor,’ he greeted him cordially.
‘Inspector Farrell. Well, somebody besides us has been kept busy today,’ the other man said laconically, glancing over his shoulder at the prone body. ‘The MO is identical to your other chap. He was hit with a taser, then hit over the head with something rounded, probably metallic. The curvature of the wound is too narrow for something like a baseball bat, but too compact for something like a frying pan or shovel.’
‘Have you had a chance to take a closer look at Newley yet?’ Robin asked curiously.
‘No.’
The shortness of the answer warned Robin not to push it. ‘Well, when you’ve done the autopsies, let me know,’ he said equably. ‘I take it we can at least assume he was hit with the taser first, then bashed over the head?’
Again, this drew a rather weary smile from the other man. ‘Well, technically, I can’t say. But I’m damned if I can see why someone would bop him over the head and then fire a taser at him, can you?’
Robin grunted. ‘Stranger things have been known to happen. My super said you found ID for him?’
‘Yes. Kirklees. Lionel. This is his residence apparently,’ the doctor said, waving a vague hand at the house behind them.
At this, Robin let out a long, slow breath, and glanced back at the form on the ground. Under the lights set up by the SOCOs he couldn’t see much, beyond the fact that the victim was male, lean, lying face down, and well-dressed.
‘Someone finally caught up with our Lionel,’ he said slowly.
‘Known to you then?’ the doctor asked, with only vague curiosity.
‘Oh yes. We know Lionel all right. Money lender, principally. Nasty sod. Loaned you a thousand quid, and by the time the month was out, you owed him ten times that much. And woe betide you if you didn’t pay it.’
‘Broken bones?’
‘Or worse,’ Robin said shortly. ‘We’ve been longing to play host to our Mr Kirklees ever since he came here, but you know what it’s like.’
The doctor nodded sympathetically. ‘Nobody would testify against him.’
‘No.’
The doctor shrugged, with that casual attitude that said that he was glad it wasn’t his problem. ‘Well, one bright spot. At least it looks as if his poor clients are going to be singing for joy when they read about his demise in tomorrow’s papers.’