Funeral Music (20 page)

She sighed again and the flicking of the cloth became lethargic.

‘I wondered once or twice if it might lead to a proper job. A partnership or something. If he’d like to do that instead of cooking. I wouldn’t mind.’ She added wearily, ‘I’d love to go to Paris. Have you ever been?’

‘What? Oh, yes. I used to love Paris,’ Sara said. ‘But I haven’t been for a long time.’ There was a pause. ‘Look, I really hope it works out. I’m sure it will.’

‘Yeah. Well, thanks. Sorry. I mean, it’s not really about Bernard, is it? I shouldn’t go on.’

Sara took her leave and went to join James. She swam up and down, considering that no, it really wasn’t about Bernard, it was about Sue’s lack of instinct for survival.

THEY POUNCED on a pair of loungers the moment their charred and blinking occupants rose and stumbled back to their rooms. Sue made sure they got their lunch promptly and brought it proudly a few minutes within a half hour of their ordering it. They were appropriately grateful and Sue went off smiling. Bernard or no Bernard, she had worked out that when her shift tomorrow finished at eleven she could just wait at Paul’s for him to come back from his pub crawl with Bernard. He would be not drunk exactly, just easygoing with beer and she would be able to stay the night and then hang around a bit in the morning to see if there was going to be any time together on Saturday. That’s what she would do. Not in a clingy way, of course.

James said, ‘So what’s the latest, then? Andrew keeping you up to date?’

‘Not at all,’ Sara said, with her mouth full. It was not only a day or two since she had been out, but more than that since she had spent longer in the kitchen than was necessary to collect something that could be carried up to her haunt by the pond and eaten in her fingers. She was wolfing down her posh chicken and mayonnaise sandwich with trimmed crusts, and a properly dressed salad of yellow, red and green peppers sliced into strips like long needles, relishing the way that everything on her plate had been thoughtfully selected for colour, texture and taste and the whole combination skilfully executed and beautifully arranged – by somebody else.

‘He comes to play the cello. And anyway, he’s been very busy with those other cases: that baby from Victoria Park and the canal boys. They really got to him, you know. It does to all of them, not just the ones who’ve got children.’

Her mind went back to the evening about ten days ago when Andrew had phoned to say that he would not be able to make it for his lesson at seven thirty, but he still very much wanted to see her and he hoped it would be all right if he came late. He had arrived well after nine o’clock, white, tight-shouldered and haggard. Reminding herself that she was his music teacher and that he had only come to play the cello, she had resisted an urge to hug him. He had refused a drink. He had avoided looking at her and she had felt quite disproportionately hurt. Only after half an hour’s playing, exchanging brief remarks to do with the music, had he paused. Then he had told her mechanically about the discovery of the boys’ bodies that afternoon and Sara had listened, in horrified silence. How fatuous it was to think that a hug, or a glass of wine, or even music, or any solace of human devising could give comfort against the truth that Andrew had that afternoon been forced to see; that there were people, at least one person, who had derived gratification from stripping and tying up two little boys, raping them, pushing sticks into their lacerated anuses, beating them round the head so that they could hardly breathe and could no longer see through the swollen tissue and bone fragments that had once been their faces, before finally placing a bootlace round their necks and pulling it tight, so that the veins in their eyes exploded and their blackening tongues swelled up from their throats and lunged out between their stretched blue lips before they died. Because that was what somebody had done.

By the time Andrew had finished speaking his voice was hoarse. Sara, unable to stand his untouchability any longer, had placed her hand on his, still saying nothing. And when the story appeared in the next day’s
Chronicle
, he had gone on, it would simply say the only thing it could say, that the boys’ bodies had been found, that they had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and that the families were being comforted by relatives. It would not say that in fact there could be no comfort for those people, now or for the rest of their lives. When he had risen to leave, Sara had said, ‘I wish there was something I could do.’

And Andrew had simply replied, ‘Ah, well now. But there isn’t. Mind you lock up now.’

James was saying, ‘What about the Sawyer case, though? It’s no less important, really. A murdered man, a murdered boy. Two murdered boys.’ For a few moments they pondered miserably on this.

‘But one thing you can be sure of,’ James continued sadly. ‘It takes just one sicko like the canal boys’ killer to bring the anti-gays out waving and shouting. Put all the poofs on Alcatraz. Castrate the pansies. It used to make me angry. Now I just get depressed.’

‘Is there much of that?’ Sara asked. ‘I mean, locally? Isn’t a place like Bath fairly enlightened?’

‘Oh, my dear,’ James said, in his Lady Bracknell voice, ‘oh, we are
so
enlightened in Bath. We are
so
broad-minded. We fully accept that being “like that” is not a vice, it’s a misfortune. It goes with being artistic. We can even tolerate one or two of them at our parties, as long as they’re well diluted among our other friends, who are the ones we rely on to uphold proper family values.’

Sara had to laugh.

‘It’s different when it looks as though there might be more than half a dozen of us, though.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this, but anyway, if Andrew’s not telling you much about the case, it won’t matter. I happen to know that Matthew Sawyer was pretty anti-gay himself. You remember Graham?’

‘Of course I remember Graham. How’s Austin coping?’

‘Oh, all right, more or less. The thing is, a couple of months before Graham died, Austin tried to organise a benefit for Buddies. Loads of people,
everybody
was going to come. They booked the Tea Room in the Assembly Rooms; it was going to be a concert and then a bit of a party. It was just about coinciding with Graham’s birthday, which everyone knew would be his last. He was determined to be there if he could.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well, Austin rang up the Assembly Rooms about a fortnight before to ask if there were any display boards there that they could use. And when they were sorting out all the arrangements, like how many wheelchairs and things, they asked him what the charity did and he told them: you know, befriending Aids and HIV patients, helping them, being there. And four days later he got a letter from Matthew Sawyer saying he’s sorry but he has to cancel the booking, there’s been an administrative error and the Tea Room is no longer available.’

‘And that couldn’t just maybe, possibly, have been true?’

James gave Sara a pitying, sarcastic look. ‘Oh,
please
. Oh, sure, it could have been true. But he wouldn’t speak to Austin about it, wouldn’t take his calls. So decide for yourself.’

‘Yes, I see, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Despicable. Didn’t Austin complain? I mean, there are laws against that sort of thing.’

‘Are there really? Look, darling, you’re being a little naïve. Austin had a disabled, blind, but very articulate and angry partner, they both knew he was dying, and there was the shop to run. And who would he complain to? Some retired lady on the council with a perm and a handbag? A great use of his time. So now you know,’ James said bitterly, ‘why I gave a false alibi. I was just scared.’

‘James, why?’

‘Because somebody pointed out Matthew Sawyer to me at the Pump Room that night and it brought back the whole Graham story, that’s why. I thought about how bloody homophobic people can be, sometimes the ones you don’t expect it from. So then he gets killed. And I think we all know the police’s reputation in the homophobia department, don’t we? I mean, I could have done it, couldn’t I? Stayed until I was the last, or hidden somewhere. Or even gone home and changed, and come back and slipped in, and done the bloody deed.’

Sara stared at him.

‘And because, as you found out, I didn’t go straight home. I felt so sad, as if I’d let Graham down, like I’d spent the evening with someone so prejudiced against him. I just wanted to play something for him. So I walked up to the church and played him his favourite tunes. Simple and private, only less private than I’d thought. I was very grateful you produced that vicar and got me out. You were bloody clever to think of it.’

‘I still don’t really see why you wouldn’t tell the police where you were.’

‘Look, when I brought supper round that night, the day you found the body, we talked about it practically all evening. It was clear then there was no obvious reason why anyone would want to kill him. So I knew the police would be looking hard at anyone with
any
motive. Like a peevish old queen, for example, whose friend had recently been grievously insulted by the dead man. Better still, a peevish old queen with no alibi who’s on the radio and the telly; extra points for arresting a minor celebrity.’

‘All right, but why wouldn’t you even tell Tom where you were?’

James looked a little shamefaced. ‘I didn’t want Tom to know how much Graham’s death affected me because I’d always said Graham was just a casual friend. And the fact is that Graham and I had a fling about five years ago. It was over, it was part of the past, and Austin never knew and neither did Tom, and it would have hurt them both a lot to find out. And Tom would have been on to it at once if he’d known I went to the church. I had to tell him in the end, of course. Afterwards. He’s okay about it, thank God.’

Sara nodded.

‘So when the police came round on the Sunday I’d been awake most of the night worrying about it and I just found myself telling them a whole heap of crap about talking to Tom on the phone on Friday night. Needless to say, I hadn’t thought it through from Tom’s point of view. And I’m a lousy liar. They weren’t convinced for a minute.’

‘Oh, James,’ Sara said, ‘you poor darling. You must have been desperate. I wish I’d been there. Did you have to talk to that awful Bridger?’

‘Oh, yes, I had Bridger several times.’ James looked at her with mischief. ‘In a manner of speaking. Eats a lot of chocolate, doesn’t he? He won’t have his own teeth much longer, the rate he’s going.’

CHAPTER 22

EVER SINCE THE supper party Cecily had been sour to the point of insubordination. Not that Derek did not appreciate that it did not do, in 1997, to bandy words like insubordination about. And anyway he knew he could hardly come the heavy boss now, nearly two years on, having put matters between him and Cecily on a more intimate footing within two months of her arrival. But then, swift to give himself his due, he had always made it quite clear that he was married, so there
was
something unwarranted about her sudden lack of tolerance of this fact. He had been spoiling her, he realised, giving her too much of himself. He had been too generous, that had always been his trouble. And she had been behaving very badly for a while, but he had been determined to keep on the right side of her for the sake of peace, as well as for the very nice sex he hoped to continue enjoying with her. All right, mainly for the sex. But that had been up until now. Sourness was one thing, a thing he could even, up to a point, ignore.

But this was something else. This made things rather different. With this latest trick she was showing herself to be not just sour but dangerous. It made him sad to do it, but he was going to have to let her go. He was not going to let her do him real damage, not after all he had already had to do to get this far. She could still be his secretary, of course, at least for the short time left that he would need her. But the other thing would have to stop. Because it was only thanks to the fact that he was such a good proofreader that it had not gone off for printing like that. That, and because he had happened to find it lying around. His was the only school in south Bristol that had a prize-giving now, although of course it was not called that anymore. It was a Celebration of Achievement, and it was this afternoon. The chairman of the board of governors, two councillors, the Community Liaison Officer from Asda (or Asdal, as he had learned to think of it), the new electronic organ whose purchase they had sponsored, along with the piano, Mr Quinnell, his head of music, and the entire school steel band would be sharing the platform with him, and the hall would be full to bursting with pupils, staff and almost as many parents. So it did not bear thinking about what would have happened if the programmes that were to be placed on every seat had read:

She had done it on purpose, of that he was sure, although when he had challenged her she had had the nerve to be as furious as he was. She had pretended she was having trouble with her columns.

‘They keep going wonky. It’s this useless machine. And of course I would have noticed it before it went to the printers, only you took it off my desk before I’d had a chance to look at it properly,’ she had hissed, stabbing at the space bar and hardly taking her eyes from the screen.

So he had not got very far with that. Thinking it over and particularly remembering the sex, he had then pretended to find it funny, and in a public display of magnanimity in front of his admin team had even shown it to his deputy, teased Cecily about it and signalled in every way he could that he was an easygoing kind of guy. Hell, he had a sense of humour. After three days of being great about it, it had had the desired effect, reminding Cecily of how much fun he had been in the early days. She recalled how his tempers and black moods then had been rare, special occasions: his to indulge, hers to understand and theirs to cherish, by commemorating their passing with a relieved and grateful fuck and a good dinner. In the end, of course, she had come round. When no one else was about he could now playfully nip round behind her and squeeze her tits again, taking care to use the words she preferred, like ‘touch’ and ‘breasts’, if he murmured anything in her ear while he was doing it.

It was a relief to have the loose cannon safely chained to the deck once more. He had the interview coming up, and Cecily could spoil it for him in a big way if she decided to get silly and bitter about things now. There was just this one afternoon, the last Friday of the year, to get through and that would be a doddle. He had done so many. He had let Cecily skive off for the afternoon so as to be sure of her good mood, and as soon as he could get clear he would pick up a bagful of things for dinner and get over there for the night, where he intended to drive home just what an easygoing guy he was and make quite sure of his reinstatement in her affections. Cecily did not know it, but this would be their last time together. He did not want the relationship to end with any kind of cloud hanging over the question of his virility (she
had
done it on purpose); he would give the bitch short and thin, only long and thick, and as many times as he, and more than she, could comfortably manage. Three, minimum. Then there would be only two more days next week, during which he could easily avoid seeing her alone, what with lots of meetings and other end-of-term nonsense, before breaking up on the twenty-second, leaving him enough time to prepare for his interview on the twenty-third. And then it would be hoorah for the holidays. Even if she were rash enough to try to ring him at home, with judicious use of the answering machine he could avoid speaking to her all summer, and by September he would be clear anyway and starting the new job. Kinder in the end.

When Detective Sergeant Bridger telephoned the school he got the answering machine, which he thought odd for half past two on a Friday afternoon. He knew they could not have broken up yet. He would just get over there.

As ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’ plinked almost imperceptibly into ‘Yellow Bird’, Derek sat smiling on the platform, privately enjoying some Thinking About the Future of his own. But the steel band’s medley was drawing to a close, so he carefully folded up his mental picture of Cecily stepping out of her knickers and filed it away for later. It was time to concentrate on the Headmaster’s Address to the School. As the applause was finishing he reached into his inside pocket for his notes. Not that he needed them, really, because Thinking About the Future was substantially the same as Our Way Forward (1993), Fresh Horizons (1994), Learning to See Ahead (1995) and New Perspectives (1996).

After more than twenty-five years in teaching Derek was a more than adept public speaker, but no longer remembered what it was like to feel equal or inferior to his audience. It had been at least two decades since he had been nervous enough to worry about whether or not what he had to say was of any interest to anyone. He had also accomplished the knack of speaking while his mind was on something else, and was capable of memorising minute details of the room he was in – how many light switches and windows, the colours of ceilings and so on – while forgetting absolutely everything he said a few seconds after he had said it. By means of some invisible osmotic process, most of those compelled to listen to him found themselves equally in the grip of a strange fascination with fixtures and fittings and afterwards trapped under the same blanket of swift-acting and permanent amnesia. As he rose to speak he was aware only of the first of these facts.

With his first sentence he observed to himself that you hardly ever see kids’ eyes anymore, or even their eyebrows. What you see is fringe, and that is what makes it more difficult than it used to be to know if you are getting through (as if you cared) even when, as now, most of your audience is actually facing you and not obviously engaged in any activity other than listening, apart from gum chewing, shoving one another a bit, scratching their rank polyester armpits and squinting amiably through their hair. He thought fondly of the half-dozen or so farewell cards on his desk, with their sincere and laboriously expressed gratitude to A Brilliant Headmaster, and the sweaty, sentimentally addressed offerings of Quality Street and Milk Tray which had been trickling in all week, delivered by this year’s bashful and lumpen leavers. Kids. Snotty, shuffling, unobservant, inarticulate kids who could still, despite how he resisted, inspire these sudden stabs of love. Derek felt himself about to address a flock of mainly good-natured ruminants.

‘Well, how nice to see the whole school together on this very special occasion.’

One side of the hall was composed entirely of windows, and looking out over the children’s heads he was aware of a car drawing up and parking in one of the staff spaces across the playground. A police car. Great timing.

‘Thank you, face the front please. We are all, at this point in the school calendar, looking forward to the holidays. Aren’t we?’

Smiling at the surging ‘Yes!’ that growled from everyone in the hall, notably the staff lining the back wall, he wondered which and how many of the Year 10 boys had just been rounded up and what routine delinquency they were guilty of this time.

‘Six weeks of freedom to look forward to!’

His eyes tracked the progress of the skinny plainclothes officer and his colleague from the car to the open double doors at the back of the hall, where they were being intercepted by Alan, his bright deputy.
Good lad, Alan
.

‘But just before we are all set free for what seems this long, long time, let’s just think a little bit more about that for a minute.’

Some firm arm-folding going on down there. Alan’s looking a
bit fazed. What’s going on?

‘Now, most of you will be coming back to school in September (groans). Back to a new year, new subjects perhaps, new teachers, new demands, new
challenges
.’

Alan and this plainclothes guy keep turning and looking towards me. Alan’s shaking his head, got a hand on the guy’s arm.
Quite right. If it’s me he wants, he’s going to have to bloody well
wait.

‘And for those of you leaving us this year, the real challenges are just
beginning
.’

What the fuck is going on now? Alan is actually having to restrain the guy. And how am I supposed to get on with this, with all
the kids craning round to see what the fuss is about?

‘Yes, fine now, just turn round, turn round, would you. Thank you, thank you. Yes.
Now
, yes, thank you.
Now
. What does the future hold for us? That can sometimes be a frightening thought, can’t it?’

This guy’s unbelievable. Actually walking up the hall now.
Come on, Alan, keep up, keep up. Does he think he’s coming on the
platform? Alan’s waving at me. What?

‘Because we can never know for certain exactly what is going to happen next, can we?’

He’s asked for it.

‘For example, I have no idea who this gentleman is or why he’s here, but I’m sure he’d like to come up and explain why he’s had to interrupt our celebration this afternoon?’

God, he’s skinny, half my height. A rodent. The kids are enjoying
this. Fuck, so am I!

‘Do, please, step right up. Be my guest. And what can we do for you, Mr...er?’

Make a monkey out of him.

SITTING IN the police car later as it pulled away, Derek reflected that perhaps this had been a mistake. He was numbly wondering what the hell he had done to deserve this, as well as how to react. What is the appropriate response when a plainclothes police officer barges into the most public event in the school year and from the platform asks you if you’d mind answering a few questions in connection with their enquiries? In retrospect, the decision not to switch off the microphone had not been a good one.

‘Well, goodness me, it seems I am a wanted man,’ he had said, but the laughter, especially from behind him on the platform, had been nervous. Just as he was beginning to realise that he was actually going to have to leave the platform, indeed the building, accompanied by the police, Alan had appeared at his side and taken over. Ambitious bastard. From the tone of his voice Derek could tell that he was rubbing his hands as he said,
‘We apologise for that slight interruption, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure Mr Payne won’t be er . . . detained, if that’s the word, very long. Well, boys and girls, I’m sure after Mr Payne’s unexpected departure, we can all come up with some really
fresh
and
new
thoughts about the future . . .’

ANDREW RANG Sara.

‘Sara?’ He sounded like a boy. ‘Very busy. I’m expecting a call on the other line. Bridger may be on to something. He’s spoken to Annabel Sawyer again. Apparently she came across some letter that Sawyer got the day he was killed. He’d been shortlisted for a job. She didn’t think it was important but Bridger got on to the council and thinks he’s found something to go on. He’s got a match with one of the other candidates and a name we’ve already got – someone at the Assembly Rooms. I’m letting him have his head. I probably can’t make the lesson today, but can you manage Tuesday next week? Shall we fix the time later? No, don’t bother, I’ll call you. Good to hear you. ’Bye.’

She had barely managed hello.