Gallows View (12 page)

Things changed for the school when the comprehensive system was turned loose on the country. Now teachers struggled with overcrowded classes of such mixed abilities that it was impossible to nurture the bright and do justice to the slow. Often the children had to suffer inept teaching by fools who knew more about athletics and rugby than Caesar’s conquest, Shakespeare, or the square roots of negative numbers.

Banks knew the place, though he had never set foot inside the main building before. Both Brian and Tracy went there, and the tales they told did a lot to undermine Banks’s faith in the comprehensive system.

As a working-class boy in Peterborough, he had always felt a strong aversion to any kind of elitism, yet as a moderately well-educated man with a taste for knowledge, he had to admit that no amount of special treatment and mollycoddling could turn a lazy, hostile slob into a star pupil; far from it, too many mediocre minds could do nothing but discourage exceptional students from doing their best. At school, he remembered, kids want to belong; they do not want to be ostracized by their peers, which happens if they excel at anything other than sports.

As far as natural abilities went, he had no real opinion. Perhaps some were born with better brains than others. But that wasn’t, to him, the issue—the point was that everybody should be given the
chance to find out, and the idealistic basis of the comprehensive system seemed to grant just that possibility. In practice, it didn’t seem to be turning out that way.

In his own education, he had been very lucky indeed. After failing his “eleven-plus” exam, he had been condemned to the local secondary modern school, there to be moulded into an ideal electrician, brick-layer or road sweeper. He had nothing against manual occupations—his own father had been a sheet-metal worker until angina forced an early retirement—except that he wasn’t interested in any of them.

Fortunately, because he did well at his studies, he got a shot at the “fourteen-plus.” He worked long and hard, passed, and found himself a new boy, an outsider at the grammar school. It seemed that all the relationships had been formed already during the three years he had spent in exile, and for the first two terms he despaired of making any friends. It was only typical schoolboy stand-offishness, though. As soon as the others found out that he was a terror in a scrap, owned the toughest conker in the school, and made perhaps the finest rugger scrum-half the team had ever seen, he had no problem gaining acceptance.

It had been a cruel process, though, he reflected. The first exam split his groups of friends in the most divisive way: grammar school kids rarely talked to secondary modern boys, no matter how many games of commandos or cricket they had played together in their childhood; and his next exam accomplished much the same thing in reverse. This time, however, the friends that Banks had made at the secondary modern school never spoke to him again because they thought he had betrayed them. Entering the gates of Eastvale Comprehensive somehow brought back the good and the bad of his own schooldays.

When Banks walked through the yard it was lunchtime; the children played hand-tennis or cricket against stumps chalked on the wall in the yard, or smoked behind the cycle sheds, and the teachers lounged in the smoky staff room reading the
Guardian
or grappling with the
Sun
crossword. The head, however, was in his sanctuary, and it was into this haven that Banks was ushered by a slim, pretty secretary, who looked hardly older than school-leaving age herself.

The institutional-green corridors were half glass, so that anyone passing by could look into the classrooms. Now, the desks stood empty, and the blackboards were still partly covered in indecipherable scrawl. Many of the desks, Banks noticed, were just as desecrated with the carved initials of girlfriends and the names of famous cricketers, footballers and rock-and-roll bands as they had been in his own schooldays. Only the names had changed. And the place smelled pleasantly of bubble gum, chalk dust and satchel leather.

The head was sipping tea in his panelled office, a well-thumbed copy of Cicero on the desk in front of him. He greeted Banks and turned sadly to the book. “Latin, Inspector. Such an elegant, noble language, quite easily capable of sustaining lengthy flights of poetry. Nobody, it seems, has any use for it these days. Anyway,” he sighed, standing up, “you’ve not come to hear about my problems, have you?”

The head, like his book, looked as though he had seen better days. His face was haggard, his hair grey, and he had a pronounced stoop. His most noticeable feature, however, was a big red nose, and it didn’t take much imagination to guess what nicknames the kids had for him. Though he wore a bat-like cape, there was no mortarboard in sight. The study looked so much like Banks’s old headmaster’s lair that he felt the same quiver of adrenalin as he had all those years ago while waiting for the cane.

“No, sir,” Banks smiled, slipping easily into the language of respect. “I came to ask a few questions about one of your boys.”

“Oh, dear. Not been getting himself into trouble, has he? I’m afraid, these days, it’s very difficult to keep track of them, and there are several bad elements in the school. Do sit down.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s nothing definite,” Banks went on. “We’re just faced with one or two discrepancies in a statement and we’d like to know if you can tell us anything about Trevor Sharp.”

There was no flash of recognition in Buxton’s expression. Obviously he had long since given up trying to keep track of all his pupils. He got up and walked towards his filing cabinet, from which, after much muttering and tut-tutting, he pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“Reports,” he said, tapping the papers with a bony finger. “These should tell us what you want to know. I’d appreciate it, though,
Inspector, if this got no further than you and me. These are supposed to be confidential . . . .”

“Of course. In return, I’d be pleased if you didn’t mention my visit, especially to the boy himself or to anyone who might tell him.”

The head nodded and started turning the pages. “Let me see . . . 1983 . . . no . . . winter . . . summer . . . 1984 . . . excellent . . . ninety percent . . . very good . . .” and he went on in this fashion for some time before returning to Banks. “A bright boy, young Master Sharp. The name suits him. Look at this.” And he passed Banks the reports for the previous year. They were full of “excellents” and high marks in all subjects except Geography. About that, his teacher had said: “Does not seem interested. Obviously capable, but unwilling to work hard enough.”

As it turned out, that lone failure foreshadowed the more recent reports, which were scattered with remarks such as “Could do better,” “Does not try hard enough” and “Takes negative attitude towards subject.” There were also several complaints from the teachers about his absences: “If Trevor were in class more often he would attain a better grasp of the subject,” wrote Mr Fox, his English teacher, and “Failure to hand in homework and to appear in class have contributed greatly towards Trevor’s disappointing performance in History this term,” commented Mr Rhodes.

“What this adds up to, then,” Banks said, “is a promising pupil who seems to have lost his way.”

“Yes,” Mr Buxton agreed sadly. “It happens so often these days. There seem to be so many distractions for the boys. Of course, in most cases it’s a phase they have to go through. Rebellion. Have to get it out of their systems, you know.”

Banks knew, but the transformation from star pupil with a great career ahead into truant and slacker was certainly open to other interpretations.

“Who are his friends?” Banks asked. “Who does he hang around with?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, Inspector. It’s so hard to keep track . . . .

His form master, Mr Price, might be able to tell you.” He picked up his phone, handling it as if it were a severed limb. “I’ll ask Sonia to bring him in.”

When Mr Price arrived, he looked both annoyed at having been disturbed on his dinner break and apprehensive about the purpose of the call. The head soon put him at ease, and curiosity then gained the better edge, turning him into a garrulous pedant. After trying to impress both Banks and the head for several minutes with his modern approach to language teaching and his theories on classroom management, he finally had to be brought around to the point of his visit.

“I’ve come to inquire about one of your students, Mr Price—Trevor Sharp.”

“Ah, Sharp, yes. Odd fellow, really. Doesn’t have much of anything to do with the other lads. Rather sullen and hostile. One simply tends to stay away from him.”

“Is that what the other boys do?”

“Seems so. Nobody’s actively against him or anything like that, but he goes his way and they go theirs.”

“So he has no close friends here?”

“None.”

“Is he a bully?”

“Not at all, though he could be if he wanted. Tough kid. Very good at games. He always dresses conservatively, while the others are trying to get away with whatever they can—purple hair, mohawk cuts, spiky bracelets, studded leather jackets, you name it. Not Sharp, though.”

“The others don’t make fun of him?”

“No. He’s the biggest in the class. Nobody bothers him.”

“I understand from his school reports that he’s been absent a lot lately. Have you talked to him about this?”

“Yes, certainly. In fact, last parents’ day I had a long chat with his father, who seemed very concerned. Doesn’t seem to have done much good, though; Sharp still comes and goes as he pleases. Personally, I think he’s just bored. He’s bright and he’s bored.”

There was nothing more to say, especially as Banks had no concrete grounds on which to investigate Trevor. He thanked both the headmaster and Mr Price, repeated his request for discretion, and left.

As Banks was shuffling through the reports in the headmaster’s office, Trevor himself was about a mile away. He had gone out of bounds to meet Mick at a pub where the question of drinking age was rarely broached, especially if the coins kept passing over the counter. They sat over the last quarters of their pints, smoking and listening to the songs that Mick had chosen on the jukebox.

Trevor kept sucking and probing at his front teeth, pulling a face.

“What’s the matter with you,” Mick asked. “It’s driving me bleeding barmy, all that fucking around with your gob.”

“Don’t know,” Trevor answered. “Hurts a bit, feels rough. I think I’ve lost a filling.”

“Let’s take a look.”

Trevor bared his teeth in an evil grin, like a horse with the bit in its mouth, while Mick looked and pronounced his verdict. “Yeah, one of ’em’s getting a bit black round the edges—that little one next to the big yellow one. I’d see a fucking dentist if I was you.”

“I don’t like dentists.”

“Fucking coward!” Mick jeered.

Trevor shrugged. “Maybe so, but I don’t like them. Anyway, you said we’d got two jobs on?” he asked when the music had finished.

“That’s right. One tonight, one next Monday.”

“Why tonight? It seems pretty short notice to me.” “Coming back from ’oliday tomorrow, aren’t they? And Lenny says the pickings’ll be good.”

“What about next Monday?”

“Bird always goes to her country club Mondays. Lenny’s heard she always keeps quite a bit of jewellery around the place. Rich divorcée, like.”

“Has Lenny given you any idea about how we get in?”

“Better.” Mick grinned pimplishly. “He’s given me this.” And he opened his parka to show Trevor the tip of what looked like a crow-bar. “Easy,” he went on. “Just stick it between the door and the post and you’re home free.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“Nobody will. These are big ’ouses, detached like. And we’ll go in the back way. All quiet, nobody around. Better wear the balas to be on the safe side, though.”

Trevor nodded. The thought of breaking into a big, empty, dark house was frightening and exciting. “We’ll need torches,” he said. “Little ones, those pen-lights.”

“Got ’em,” Mick said proudly. “Lenny gave us a couple before he split for The Smoke.”

“Fine, then,” Trevor smiled. “We’re on.”

“We’re on,” Mick echoed. And they drank to it.

Jenny laughed at Banks’s theory about the peeper spying on female pub
habitutées
: “Only been working for me three days and already coming up with ideas of your own, eh?”

“But is it any good?”

“Might be, yes. It could be part of his pattern, like his fixation on blondes. On the other hand it was perhaps just the most convenient time. A time when nobody would miss him or see him. Or a time when he could depend on his victims going to bed after a few drinks. He wouldn’t have to hang around too long to get what he came for.”

“Now you’re doing my job.”

Jenny smiled. They sat in deep, comfortable chairs by the crackling fire and looked as if they should have been drinking brandy and smoking cigars. But both preferred Theakston’s bitter, and only Banks puffed sparingly at his Benson and Hedges Special Milds.

“How many pubs are there in Eastvale?” Jenny asked.

“Fifty-seven. I checked.”

Jenny whistled through her teeth. “Alcoholic’s paradise. But still, you must know which areas he operates in?”

“Random so far. He’s spread himself around except for picking two from the same pub, so that doesn’t help us much, but we do have some evidence that indicates a possible link between our peeper and the Alice Matlock killing. Could it be the same person?”

“Do you expect a yes-or-no answer?”

“All I want is your opinion. Is it likely that the peeper, after watching Carol Ellis get undressed, ran down the street, knocked on Alice
Matlock’s door and, for some reason, killed her either intentionally or accidentally?”

“You want an answer based purely on psychological considerations?”

“Yes.”

“I’d say no, then. It’s very unlikely. In the first place, he would have no reason to run to Alice Matlock’s house. If he’d been spotted, his impulse would be to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.”